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“You’re talking to the mistress of complicated.” She added syrup to the table. “How can I help?”
“I don’t know. I really screwed up.” I relayed what I’d told David, about the food poisoning and losing my rental.
“Wow, that super sucks. If David wasn’t going to compensate you, why didn’t you reach out to Vera’s father, surely he should’ve had an invested stake in the health of his unborn child?”
A shudder rolled through my body just remembering him. A man-child if ever there was one. The kind of guy who had more desire to have a tooth extracted without pain meds than to have a child, as I sadly learned. A man who broke me when he dismissed me, with his blatant refusal to accept that after his forced intrusion on my personal space he’d fathered a child because I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant. He claimed I was a liar and just after him to stir up shit.
“I did reach out, but after the fact. I needed to get back on my feet first.” I turned my attention back to the pancakes, a couple of which were quite dark, but not fully burnt when I flipped them over. “But you know what, that gives me an idea. David asked me to open up, so I think I should tell him about her father.”
“Tell me first,” Francesca pleaded. “You never talk about—”
I covered her mouth as Vera dragged her feet into the kitchen. I wasn’t going to say a word about the jerk in front of his child; those were details Vera didn’t need to know now or ever. Only one person knew the nitty-gritty details surrounding Vera’s father, and Adam had been sworn to secrecy about all nasty details. Not even my parents knew the full truth.
I put the rest of the pancakes onto the plate. “Dig in while they’re warm.”
Vera grabbed a couple and blew on them, while I went and grabbed her hairbrush. As she ate, I silently styled her hair into two braids. I thought it looked cute, like something Libby would wear, but Vera didn’t care for it. She was all about the Rey hairstyle, and all about it coming from her aunt.
“Well, now you look like Ahsoka Tano.”
“Who?” I cocked my eyebrow at my sister, who was talking and signing to Vera.
“She’s a Jedi Knight. Very tough. No one messes with her.”
Vera signed. “Princess?”
Hand flat above her lips, Francesca pulled it away, curling it into a thumbs-up position. “Better.”
Vera grabbed the braids and ran her hands along the length of them, a smile building on her sweet cheeks. “Okay. I like.”
“Thank you,” I mouthed to Fran.
“I want details.” She winked and stabbed a stack of pancakes.
The bus honked, and with her backpack and lunch bag, we both walked her to the bus and sent her off to school.
“I need to get to work.” I was already two steps closer to the shop.
“But I thought you’d tell me things.”
“Not with your charges arriving.” I nudged toward the car pulling into the driveway. “See you at supper.”
Safe from the interrogation I suspected I hadn’t completely avoided, I set to work adding the details to the remaining pieces.
Somehow, by the grace of Francesca’s never-ending child-minding and multiple trips to the shop to bring me food and drinks, I completed the mural ahead of schedule, barely. As it was, it was only four days ahead of his amended date. I’d put all my energy and time into it, and I practiced snapping it together to make sure it would work. Getting it apart proved trickier than I expected, but eventually it came apart – with no damage. It truly had become my magnum opus.
Piece by piece I hauled it out to the truck and loaded it into the scratched and weathered bed. Despite my daily attempts, David never returned my text messages nor answered my calls. Since I hadn’t wanted to show up at the restaurant unannounced, with no place to put the mural pieces, I made sure to let him know in one of the messages. I wasn’t expecting to see him when I arrived.
But he was there, and he was as expectantly silent and unwavering as ever.
As per the instructions from the crew who happened to be there, since I didn’t dare ask David, I brought in the first of several pieces and set them in the tarped area, ignoring the pinched expressions of the dining patrons. I’d taken care to lay the wooden slats out in the order they’d need to hang up and included detailed instructions on how to mount everything. Once I walked away, it was in the hands of the renovation company, especially since I wasn’t going to collect the rest of the payment and had no intention of following up with David. The business deal was dead. Just like our relationship.
Too many nights I’d cried myself to sleep wondering what I could’ve done to prevent our split. The only thing was not being a malicious bitch hellbent on revenge. But I didn’t know David the person back then, I only knew the manager, whose name I never recalled getting.
Heart aching from hanging out in his restaurant, and somehow feeling he was present yet invisible, tormented me. Every trip to and from the truck, I scanned and scouted, and sighed in great disappointment.
Was he in the dining room talking with his customers? Not on any of the searching I did.
Was he in the kitchen watching his cooks, making sure everything was perfect? Again, I saw no sign on the trips I took.
