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How could I be so stupid?
What was I going to do?
I'm not sure how long I carried on like that, arms hugging myself as I rocked back and forth, feeling profoundly alone in the world. It felt like hours, when in reality it may have been only minutes.
When I noticed the outside world again, I realized that there was a woman sitting next to me on the bench, just a few feet away, which was not unusual on its own.
What was unusual was that she was crying, like me, sobbing like her heart was breaking, clutching her hands together as though in prayer.
She seemed to notice me at about the time I noticed her. She wasn't even wearing shades, her grief laid even barer than mine.
She wiped her eyes, studying me. My suffering seemed to have calmed hers, as though seeing someone else in need gave her purpose.
And so it did.
It was the type of meeting that imprinted itself on your memory, and looking back on it I realized that it was indicative of her nature—Gina was a woman who always put others needs before her own.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
~Pablo Picasso
PRESENT
SCARLETT
The first time I brought Dante to Gina and Eugene's was the hardest.
They greeted us at the door, and Mercy was with them, flinging herself at me with abandon.
I stroked her hair and let her hug me to her heart's content, my gaze wary on Dante.
The look in his eyes as he saw her for the first time broke my heart all over again.
I knew what he was feeling, and I felt it with him, knew precisely what he was seeing as he took her in.
Mercy was a gorgeous doll of a girl, a lovely mix of her biological parents.
She had her father's blond coloring and the same gorgeous ocean eyes.
And there was no doubt where her wavy hair texture came from, her high cheekbones, her stubborn jaw. Her mother.
But that was all they had in common.
No one called Mercy trash. No one would. No one thought of her that way, she was the opposite, in fact.
And only once had anyone ever thrown her away.
You never make peace with being abandoned. This I know. But we would do what we could to take responsibility for it. To never let her feel the way I had. She was loved deeply, and not just by the parents that raised her. That was a fact.
Dante had known what to expect, or at least he'd had fair warning.
But knowing and seeing are two different creatures.
Not to mention feeling.
