Addison Falk skipped through the stalled traffic, tossing up an apologetic hand in the direction of a taxi driver trying to inch forward. An airport traffic cop was closing in on her friend Cyn’s Honda Insight, which was parked illegally at the far curb. Addison wasted no time tossing her bags into the hatchback and sliding into the front seat. “Sorry I’m late.”
Cyn lurched into the exit lane. “What took you so long?”
“It’s Miami,” she said, knowing her explanation would suffice.
“How’s your mom?”
“All right, I guess. Hector built her a studio and she’s getting back into painting again. She says hi.” Cyn Juarez, her best friend since middle school, knew her mother because she had come along six years ago on a visit to Peru.
“I bet she was surprised to see how much you’ve changed.”
“No shit.” Since the start of her training last March, Addison had lost the extra fifteen pounds she had carried since puberty.
“Did you keep up your training?”
“I ran four miles a day—on hills.” Her mother’s neighborhood in suburban Lima had proven a greater challenge than the flat streets of Coral Gables. “I got Hector to pledge a thousand bucks, and he’ll double it if I get to the top.”
Friends of theirs had used the Kilimanjaro climb last year to generate press and raise money for breast cancer. Cyn liked the idea, and had coordinated with Summit Trail and Safari to do the same for the Miami Hunger Coalition. She and her husband Javier promoted it through Mercy Hospital, where Javier worked as a physician’s assistant, and Addison had garnered almost twenty thousand dollars from the corporate sponsors she had developed as co-director of the Coalition, a volunteer position she had held throughout her MBA program.
“Javier and I have about six thousand between us.”
“Six? You guys had about eight when I left. What happened?”
“It’s complicated.” She shot Addison a sheepish look. “I’ll explain it when we get to your house.”
Ten minutes later, they turned onto a posh, tree-lined street in Coral Gables. Addison’s home was a two-story Mediterranean, yellow with a red tile roof. A For Sale sign stood at the curb.
“I can’t believe your father’s really selling this house.”
“Believe it. Reginald Falk at his finest.” Her father had moved to his native London when Addison finished high school, but kept the house for her while she had attended college at the University of Miami. Now that she had wrapped up her master’s degree in finance, he expected her to join his investment firm. Selling the house out from under her was his way of forcing the issue.
“I can’t believe you’re really moving. Have you gotten any nibbles from the résumés you sent out?”
“If I did, they’re lying on the floor,” she said. She pushed open the heavy oak door and dropped her bags in the foyer. Someone, most likely a real estate agent, had stacked her mail on a table, but Addison was too distracted to look through it. “So what’s this about you losing pledges?”
Cyn drew a deep breath and said in a squeaky voice, “We’re not going.”
“What?” Addison refused to believe she had heard that. Three of their other friends had already dropped out, and that left only her. “This whole trip was your idea.”
“I know, but…”
She wanted to get angry, but something about Cyn’s expression stopped her. “Spill it.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Her jaw dropped suddenly as Cyn’s face broke into an enormous smile. “Aaaaaaah!” she screamed, wrapping Cyn in a fierce hug and twirling her around. “Tell me everything…well, not the icky boy stuff.”
“I went to get my shots for the trip and the nurse asked me if there was any chance I might be pregnant. I’d skipped a couple of periods, but I thought it was all the training. I said it might be possible, so they did a test. I’m due in February.”
“So you guys cancelled. Did you get your money back?” She let go of Cyn and whirled around to grab her backpack, where her cell phone was tucked in the side pocket. “I should call and cancel too.”
“You can’t. You’re the last one, and with our pledges, that makes almost thirty thousand dollars for the Coalition. You have to go, Addison.”
“By myself?”
“You were going to be paired with somebody anyway. And you’ve done so much to get ready.” Cyn looked at her with pleading eyes. “Just go. You’ll have a great time. I’ll feel guilty if you don’t.”
Addison groaned and dropped into a chair. She thought again about why their plans had changed, and her misery gave way to happiness. “A baby.”
“A little Javier.”
“Awwwww.”
“And I already bought a whole bunch of stuff for the trip. You can take it all—toilet paper, camp soap, water purification tablets.”
“You’re making this sound like so much fun.”
“It will be. Look at it as your last hurrah before joining the rat race.”
Addison snorted. “I’ll probably come home to find my stuff in the street.”
“Then you can come and live with us. You can be our nanny and teach little Javier how to invest his allowance.”
“Be careful what you ask for.”
Cyn shrugged. “There could be worse things than having you help my kid get rich.”
“I can’t believe it, Cyn. This is so great. I bet Javier’s over the moon.”
“He’s panicking already. At first he wanted his mother to come live with us.”
“Shouldn’t you be the one panicking about that?”
“Actually, we’re talking about the possibility of moving back to Puerto Rico. Javier has this big idea about raising his son the way he was raised, on a simple farm with his family all around. You know, like your parents wanted before you threw a fit and refused to go with either one of them.”
Indeed, Addison knew that story well, though her upbringing had been far from the simple life Javier wanted for his son. Her parents had fought bitterly after their divorce over whether she would be raised in Peru or England. A family court judge had seen fit to ask her what she wanted, and at fourteen, the answer was simple. She wanted to stay in Miami, so her father reluctantly obliged. Her mother married Hector and returned to Lima, and Addison visited over Christmas and summers until college. “Would you be all right with that?”
Cyn shrugged. “I like it there. And I can’t argue with how Javier turned out.”
Selfishly, though, Addison felt the walls caving in. The house would sell soon and her best friends were probably leaving Miami. Not that it mattered. Her father expected her to start work in London as soon as she finished the climb. This part of her life was officially ending.
“I need to go,” Cyn said. “I’m supposed to do a pickup at the food bank and take it down to Homestead. Want to come?”
Addison was exhausted from her long flight. “Not tonight. But I’ll call over to the Coalition tomorrow and see if they need me for any runs this weekend.”
“Okay. I’ll bring that stuff over Sunday night and help you pack.”
Alone in the big house, she eyed her suitcase and decided unpacking could wait. A quick perusal of her unopened mail yielded eight responses to her employment queries, five of which were polite rejections. The others invited her to proceed to the next step, which was to fill out the formal application packet.
She no longer had the luxury of time. She had only until the house sold to explore other options before making the move to London. It wasn’t that her father’s offer was unattractive. His company, Global Allied Investments, financed business development all over the world. Addison’s chief complaint was that they focused more on industrialized countries, such that the people who made money were the ones who already had it. She felt they could make a bigger mark by working with third-world governments to launch more small businesses on a self-sustaining scale. Once she made her philosophy known, her father had turned it into the proverbial carrot, promising her the chance to research and identify communities that might benefit from her vision—as long as she also found lucrative opportunities for their investors.
It was the idea of moving to London that gave her pause, though she enjoyed the city. She loved visiting and even had friends there, a group of lesbians she had met four years ago during London Pride. In her heart, though, she was American born and bred. She belonged to its history and culture, just as her father belonged to England and her mother to Peru. Both of them had chosen to go home, and while it felt disjointed to have her parents separated by nine thousand miles, she understood their yearnings for home.
If only she could make her father understand hers.