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Rigo dropped Gloria off at Inez’s house and then went outside and peeled off the boards from as many windows as he could before he went out to meet his lifeguards to work search and rescue. Alone with her thoughts, Gloria noticed Inez’s downstairs wasn’t in any better shape than her own house, but the upstairs had at least been untouched and would give her a safe place to stay while she worked out a plan.
Kicking pots and pans released from Inez’s kitchen cabinets out of her way, Gloria walked around, opening windows in all four directions in order to catch whatever cross breezes might come that way. Victorian homes had to be retrofitted to have any kind of modern conveniences, but the one thing they all came equipped with was large windows designed to maximize airflow. Some of the windows stuck, the wooden frames warped softly from their recent hours under water, but with a little elbow grease, Gloria was able to get them all opened fully.
“Oh, good. I tried that earlier and couldn’t get any of them to budge.” A voice behind Gloria made her jump. She pressed her hand to her heart.
“Inez! What are you doing here? You scared me to death.”
Inez looked at Gloria as if she was crazy. “This is my home. Where did you think I was going?”
“I thought the doctors from the clinic were taking you off the island for observation and treatment.” Gloria’s gaze wandered upstairs. “Tanna isn’t here, is she?”
Inez waved her hand in front of her face, shooing away Gloria’s crazy idea. “Of course not. About an hour ago, the winds died down enough that a helicopter could land on the pad behind the Grand Provident. They took her out on one of those medi-copters. They wanted me to go, too, but, ay yi yi...there’s nothing wrong with me. So I flagged down an officer friend of Rigo’s to drop me off.”
The older woman had even changed into different clothing and somehow managed to fix her hair. She must have superpowers. Gloria knew that she herself looked as if she’d been narrowly pulled out of a floating Dumpster.
“Did you get a shower?” If so, Gloria was pretty sure she’d never been more jealous in her life.
“I got a bucket of water out of the tub and tried to clean up a little. Now I just have to figure out what to do down here.”
Gloria had known Inez casually for most of her life but had never spent much one-on-one time with her. Clearly, though, Gloria was finding out why much of the neighborhood depended on her. She was a force of nature.
“Have you seen your house?”
Gloria tucked a wayward strand of her still-hurricane-styled hair behind her ear. She nodded soberly. “Yes. There’s not much left.”
Inez nodded. “Lo siento, Gloria. I’m very sorry. But you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to. It’ll probably be a mess all over the city for a few days. Usually is with these things.”
Inez leaned over and picked up a spindly wooden chair from the ground and turned it upright, then sat down.
“How many hurricanes have you been here for, Inez?” Gloria leaned up against a wall. It still felt faintly damp.
“Oh, well, let’s see...I’m eighty-three now. My parents were young when the Great Storm of 1910 came through, so I’ve heard lots of stories about that. Last night reminded me of some of those.” Inez started naming off names. “There was Carrie, Elise, Linnie, Elaine, Carlene and Jovie. And then several tropical storms, too. So I’ve probably seen ten or so good storms in my day. They come through every few years, even though it’s been quiet here for a good long while now. It’s just part of living on the coast. I love it here, though. You just have to take the bad with the good.”
Gloria laughed without mirth. “Boy, isn’t that the truth?”
“It is.” Inez’s tone left no room for disagreement. “And I know you’ve had a run of bad the last few years, Gloria. I know Rigo has had a lot to do with that. But rarely is anything all bad or all good. This hurricane is the same way. It seems bad now, but watch and see. Port Provident will come out and be better than before. And so will you. And Rigo.”
“I just wish I knew what to do next.” Hot air blew through the windows in a huff, bringing the smell of stagnation into the room from outside. In a way, it reminded Gloria of her own life. Stagnant. Without a whole lot of direction. “No husband, no child, no home, presumably no job for the near future, since I’m sure the birth center will have to be rebuilt. What do I have to call my own?”
“Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions, mi querida. Maybe it’s not about you.”
Gloria had no response, despite the loving endearment Inez had used to address her. What a terribly odd thing for the older woman to say. It felt like being in school all over again, being chastised for not following directions. All she needed was a chalkboard to write her name on.
“You don’t like that I said that, do you?” Rigo’s aunt balanced her elbow on the chair’s narrow armrest and tapped her chin with her fingers.
The silence fell with weight around the room as Gloria started and stopped ten different responses in her head. The challenge made her prickle with a bit of anger. She’d just lost everything. Why couldn’t it be about her, just for a minute?
“Do I really need to answer that?”
Inez tapped her chin again. “Well, no. But you ought to at least think about it. Rigo’s made mistakes, Gloria. But he’s also had to pay a price for them. He lost his best friend, and he does blame himself. But since he’s come back, he’s been a different man. He’s been commended by the city for his work on the beach patrol. He hasn’t even missed a week of church. He has to go to the eight o’clock service because of his other obligations, but he goes every week. And he comes home and earns his keep around here with me.”
Gloria didn’t really want to hear about all the changes in Rigo. It was easier for her to believe he was the same impulsive, self-centered man she had believed him to be since the day she listened to that message on her answering machine. It made it easier to be around him now if she knew she was getting ready to close the door on him again. She’d only called him because she was panicked and out of numbers in her phone to call. And like he said, he’d only answered because it gave him a chance to make amends.
He’d come clean about the past, and he’d helped her during the recent craziness, but now that the hurricane had passed and they’d cleared some of the heated air between them, Gloria didn’t really want anything to do with him in the future. She’d gotten the answers she needed and she’d survived the storm.
And she knew Rigo didn’t want much of anything to do with her, either. He said it himself. His goal was for them to be okay with coexisting in the same relatively small city.
But Inez wasn’t finished. She caught Gloria’s gaze and locked on to it with her own dark eyes. “And something else—he lost the woman that he loved. Truth be told, I saw how he looked at that woman last night. I think he still loves her. And I think she’s the last piece in the puzzle of putting back together his life. You know, Gloria, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself along with the other person. It means you can both move on without living in the past.”
Gloria shook her head. She could feel pinpricks of anger under her skin. “I understand that Rigo’s your nephew and you want to help him. But my son is in the past. My heart is in the past.”
Inez stood with purpose and without acknowledging Gloria’s words. “I’m going down to La Iglesia. Do you want to come with me?”
No. Gloria didn’t want to have any opportunity to continue this pointless conversation. “To the church? How are you going to get there?”
Inez raised one foot and then the other, clad in white leather tennis shoes that clearly hadn’t seen the light of day more than once or twice. Low-heeled leather pumps were more in line with Inez’s fastidious style. “Well, I’m going to walk, of course. It’s less than six blocks.”
Six blocks of boards, nails, shingles, palm fronds, household goods and who knew what else. She couldn’t let an eighty-six-year-old woman make that walk alone. She’d just have to do her best to change the conversation.
But to what? As much as she didn’t want to talk about Rigo or forgiveness or the past, Gloria definitely didn’t want to talk about the weather, either.
“Okay, I’ll come with you.” Gloria felt almost as reluctant about this as she had about entering her waterlogged house earlier.
“Bien!” A smile lit Inez’s face, making her cheeks stand out like small apples. “You’re probably too young to remember Hurricane Jovie too much. That was the last big storm to make landfall here. But those of us who stay always go check in at the church and start seeing what we can do to help.”
“Yeah, I was about ten when Jovie came through. I just remember cleaning up a big mess at Mamí and Papí’s restaurant. They opened back up the next day, cooking fajitas on a charcoal grill.” She’d almost forgotten those days after Hurricane Jovie. Thinking about it reminded her of how proud she was to be Mamí and Papí’s daughter. They’d put a bunch of food in coolers and iced it down with dry ice before the storm. Then the next day, as crews worked to restore the power, they’d showed love for their community in the best way they knew how—a hot meal. They’d only settled in Port Provident a few years earlier and wanted to support the rebuilding of the place that had allowed them to rebuild their own lives after coming from Mexico.
“I remember when they did that. Your mother has a heart as big as the sky. And your papí has never met a stranger.” Inez opened the door. “Now, come on. Let’s go see what we need to get started on. It’s going to take the strength of everyone working together to bring back Port Provident.”
Strength. There was that word again.
Gloria was beginning to think maybe it wasn’t just a verbal coincidence anymore.
But why? Why now?
A small crowd of about twenty people stood on the lawn of La Iglesia de la Luz del Mundo. In English, the name meant The Light of the World Church, and it had been a staple in Gloria’s community for several generations. Gloria could make out Pastor Marco Ruiz at the center of the small group. He was waving his hands animatedly, just as he did every Sunday in the pulpit.
What would he do now? It looked like the church had been hit pretty hard. The landscape had been ripped up and a patchwork of holes showed where shingles on the roof used to be. Based on her observations at Inez’s house and inside her own home, if it was this beat up on the outside, Gloria knew the church had to have taken a knockout punch on the inside.
“Inez, Gloria! Praise God. You’re safe.” Pastor Ruiz navigated around a few of his parishioners and came to give both women a tight hug.
“Pastor. It’s so good to see you. I knew the church members who’d stayed would be gathering here, so Gloria and I came to join you.” Inez patted him on the shoulder, then walked over to the group. Gloria recognized several faces from the Bible study group Inez shared with her mother.
Thinking of her mother made Gloria’s heart ache a little bit. Although she was thankful they were all safe in San Antonio, the Garcias were rarely apart. Not knowing when her parents and Gracie and Jake and their new baby, Gabriela, would be able to return to Port Provident only increased the sense of loneliness Gloria had felt since she’d stepped in her home earlier today.
Her memories were gone, and for the time being, her family was, too.
“Gloria, come on over. We have drinks and crackers.” Monica Hernandez reached into a cooler and pulled out a plastic bottle filled with purple liquid. Normally, Gloria tried to drink only water and the occasional iced tea, but this second sports drink of the day seemed as good to her as a ritzy sparkling water poured over ice with a fancy lemon twist. It looked divine, and she took it gratefully, gulping it down in just a few swallows after she ate a handful of trail mix and saltine crackers.
It wasn’t quite the steak she’d shared with the lifeguards earlier, but it settled her mildly rumbling tummy, and it was nice to be surrounded by familiar faces.
“Have you heard from your sister?” Monica asked.
Gloria picked up another small bag of trail mix from the table nearby. “She and the baby and Jake were headed to San Antonio with Mamí and Papí when I last talked to them.”
Pastor Ruiz turned and joined the conversation. “That Gabriela is muy bella! Such a beautiful girl. I’m glad they’re all safe. Jake’s family will be busy once the rebuilding starts. There are a lot of houses and buildings that will need to be brought back to life. I’m sure the foundation will be active with grants and other programs, too. Maybe I can talk to him about helping us here. From what I saw around the neighborhood, the residents of the La Missión area are going to need a lot of help. And La Iglesia...”
The pastor waved his hand in the direction of the mud-splattered building as his words trailed off. He didn’t need to say anything. If a picture was worth a thousand words, seeing this kind of destruction for herself had to be worth a million.
“Is there anything left, Pastor?” Gloria asked, almost certain of the answer.
He shook his head. “No. Not much. All of our seats were completely soaked. All of the electronics were standing in water, so they have to be ruined. The cross is still standing on the back wall, though. I guess that’s all we really need, right? As long as we have Jesus, we can rebuild the buildings and the lives of the people in them.”
Gloria nodded in casual agreement.
There were going to be long days ahead for Port Provident. Who knew when the electricity would come back on or when they could do something as simple as take a shower again? Rebuilding seemed like a distant idea. Kind of like kids always waiting for Christmas. They knew it was coming eventually, but it was so far out on the horizon.
“I’m hoping that everyone can return to the island soon,” Pastor Ruiz continued. “We’re stronger when we’re all together.”
Gloria’s head snapped up toward the sky. “Really? Again?” She spit the words out under her breath.
“Did you say something, Gloria?” Monica asked.
“Not really. The strangest things keep happening to me the last few days. Everywhere I go, it seems like someone is talking about strength.” She hesitated even saying it. They probably all thought she was crazy. But she figured she couldn’t look much crazier, since she’d just been caught red-handed talking to the clouds above.
“Maybe it’s just your subconscious talking to you, Gloria.” Monica screwed the orange lid back on her drink bottle. “You know, like when I got my new car last year. I thought I was getting something unique. Next thing I know, I see a green Volkswagen convertible at every stoplight. I still don’t know if there was some kind of Beetle convention on the island, or if I just became more aware of them.”
Gloria picked through the trail mix bag, looking for raisins. “I’ve had that happen to me before, too. But this is just getting weird. It’s like you know how they say ‘be careful what you ask for’—well, I guess I got it.”
A chuckle came from Pastor Ruiz. “Oh, I think we all prayed for strength when those winds were howling.”
Gloria knew he was probably right. Everyone probably telegraphed a prayer to God to help them make it through the night. Even nonbelievers did that in times of extreme stress, so it wouldn’t be too unusual. But she’d become a cynic, a lapsed believer, and it had been a long time since she’d really talked to God about anything.
“It’s just that...”
“It’s been a long time since you’ve prayed for anything?” The middle-aged man’s eyes conveyed a tenderness and understanding that made Gloria feel anything but strong. Her knees softened a bit and she adjusted her stance.
“How did you know?”
He clapped a hand on her shoulder and patted it twice. “I’m your pastor. I’ve known you a long time. In the good times and the bad. And I know you’ve just been going through the motions since Felipe and the baby died. Your body is here every week, but your heart isn’t. God knows it, too.”
Of course He knew. Gloria might feel disconnected, but she still remembered all those childhood Sunday school lessons. God knew everything. It made her stomach turn with shame and dry saltines.
She’d tried to hide in plain sight when really, she should have known better.
Instead of moving away, Pastor Ruiz took one step closer.
“But, Gloria, it’s okay. Even the Prodigal Son ran away. What was important was that the son came back.” The pastor patted Gloria gently again. “It’s important that the daughter comes back, too.”
Gloria’s throat scraped with dryness. She was at an unusual loss for words.
The silent pause didn’t seem to bother the pastor. Instead, he used it to make a graceful exit and leave Gloria alone with some heavy thoughts.
“I see my aunt over there. I’m hoping she has an update from city hall. When you need a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, I’ll be here. I think we’ve got a pretty long road ahead. But I meant what I said. We’re stronger together. A cord of three strands is not easily broken, remember?”
She nodded as the pastor walked back across the lawn. He’d said those same words at her wedding.
But Felipe was gone. And Gloria had been so sure God was, too.
If these feelings and words were nudges from Him, what exactly was He trying to tell her? Gloria felt as confused as she had the first time she’d stepped back into her home alone two years ago.
If a cord of three strands was stronger than a cord of two strands, Gloria wondered what that meant a strand of one was.
Leave it to La Iglesia de la Luz del Mundo. The members could turn anything—even a community post-hurricane check in—into a social event. Rigo had been helping with relocating some supplies from a staging point downtown when he saw Councilwoman Angela Ruiz, the pastor’s aunt, and gave her a ride over there from city hall. She’d been hunkered down with city leadership on an emergency strategy planning session and had immediately been swarmed by the cluster of her constituents on La Iglesia’s lawn, all of them desperate for any information.
With cell phone towers destroyed and the power grid still offline, the citizens left on Port Provident were totally cut off from the rest of the world.
Rigo saw Gloria, standing alone, holding an empty drink bottle. She looked distant, as if she was there, but not really there. It worried him a little bit. He was used to the Gloria who would always step in and take charge—like she’d done for Tanna and the baby.
“Glo?” Rigo walked toward the corner of the building she stood near. “You need anything?”
She rolled the bottle back and forth between her fingertips. He recognized it as nervousness. She’d always played with her hands when she was lost in thought or agitated about something.
“Um, no. Not really.”
Rigo gently plucked the bottle out of her hands. “Something’s on your mind.”
“Maybe.” She smiled a half smile. “What do you think about strength, Rigo?”
He didn’t know where she was going with this. “I think Island Workout Club is pretty destroyed. I drove past it earlier.”
The half smile grew into a Cheshire grin. “I wasn’t talking about going to the gym. Not that kind of strength. Besides, if I need to exercise, I have a feeling there are plenty of two-by-fours for me to lift around here.”
Gloria ran her hands through her hair and twisted one of the locks around her finger. Rigo recognized that gesture, too. He knew she’d changed over the years—they both had—but under it all, the same Gloria was still there. She’d put up defenses, to be sure, but at this moment, it was as though he was looking through a crack in her mortar and saw the teenager she’d once been, innocently fingering her hair as she gathered her thoughts.
“So what do you mean?”
“It just feels like I’m hearing it everywhere these days. Trouble is, I don’t feel like I measure up.”
Rigo cocked his head. “How could you not measure up?”
She looked down at her feet and dug the toe of her tennis shoe in the squishy mud. “There’s so much to do now. I tried to rebuild my life once before and I don’t think I was very successful at it. Look at them.” Gloria pointed at a group of church members, standing in a circle with bowed heads, holding hands. “They know exactly what to do. And they believe God will get them through all this mess. I...I don’t think I do anymore. I’m scared of having to rebuild again.”
Rigo placed two fingers under her chin and raised it. He wanted to see her face. He knew he had been behind the blows that had broken her spirit. “I’m sorry, Gloria. It’s my fault.”
“You’re responsible for a lot of things, Rodrigo Vasquez, but this is between me and God.”
He’d been in a number of scrapes over the years. Stupid bar fights in Mexico. Tangles with young punks as a cop. And more than one beat-down by an aggressive jellyfish while lifeguarding and surfing over the years. But nothing stung like Gloria’s words.
“If I’d never left for Mexico, I’d never have broken your heart the first time. And if I hadn’t called Felipe for backup that night, well, I don’t know if it would have saved Mateo, but at least Felipe would have been there for you. He died because I called him for help. If I hadn’t called Felipe, your heart wouldn’t have broken again.”
He dropped the plastic bottle on the soggy ground and took Gloria’s hand. It trembled like a baby bird, and Rigo knew he’d caused that, too. He’d probably said too much. But he might never get the chance again. “I don’t have any right to ask this, because I know I’ll probably never be able to forgive myself for that. But I hope that one day you can forgive me.”
Gloria exhaled deeply. She closed her eyes slowly, as though a fighter’s punch had just connected with her head. She exhaled again.
Time seemed to stand still as Rigo waited for whatever she was going to say next. If she cut him out of her life again, he would just have to be okay with it. He’d had the opportunity to do what he said—apologize to her—he couldn’t ask for anything more.
But still, the silence didn’t fall softly. It landed stark and unmoving around them.
Gloria took in one more breath, then flicked her eyes open. They were clear and unblinking.
“Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It lets you move on without living in the past. That’s what your aunt says.”
She laid her other hand gently on top of Rigo’s.
“My home is nothing but a leaky roof and wet walls. My keepsakes are stained with mud and they smell of sewage. I don’t have much left. So I’m going to have to rebuild, whether I like it or not. I don’t want to live in the past anymore, Rigo.”
Gloria squeezed his hand and looked him squarely in the eye. Rigo felt his shoulders tense and his teeth grind together.
“If I’m going to move forward, I don’t think I have any other choice. I have to forgive you.”
To replace the flooded truck he’d had to leave in the streets the night of the hurricane, Rigo had been given another one, which rode out the hurricane in one of the upper floors of Provident Medical’s parking garage. As he patrolled the beaches, making sure everyone continued to stay out of the water, Rigo couldn’t stop thinking about Gloria’s declaration. He thought about the soft touch of her hand and how it still fit in his like it had during summer strolls on the beach. He liked the feel of her palm brushing against his. He liked the memory.
But he felt burdened.
Lord, make me worthy of her forgiveness.
He’d been there and seen for himself the anguish when she realized her carefully constructed memories had been sloshed with mud and tide. He knew she’d had the bandage ripped off her heart today and the pain was real. He knew what it had to have taken for her to offer forgiveness on today of all days.
But maybe, he thought, maybe this was the only day she could have done it. Maybe she needed to lose all the things that bound her to the past in order to walk freely into the future.
Lord, make me worthy of her forgiveness.
The words seared into his mind as he headed back for the rest of his twelve-hour shift, driving slowly around the debris still jumbled in the middle of almost every street.
He knew whatever future Gloria had wouldn’t be with him—she may have uttered words of forgiveness, but that didn’t just rub out the years like a big pink eraser from their school days. But seeing her today, holding her hand, watching her absently twist her slim fingers in her butterscotch strands of hair—it made him wish he hadn’t been so stupid.
It made him wish he wasn’t such a fool to want something he could never have.
He should have been content with her forgiveness.
But Rigo couldn’t stop himself from wishing he could once again have Gloria’s heart.
