by Dee Tenorio
“Your grandmother does not hate you.” She’s just impossible to please. Penelope felt the weight of her daughter’s misery around her shoulders. She knew it too well and she’d made every effort to please her mother. How much worse was the disappointment for Chloe, who fought for her personality with every scrap of energy she had.
“Well, she sure as shit doesn’t like me.”
“Chloe!”
“Sorry.” But the peeping smile said she probably wasn’t. Much.
“I’d ask where you hear all these things, but I’m really afraid you’ll tell me.” Penelope pushed her unfinished plate away, her appetite gone. Talking about Chloe’s father was one thing. Lorna was a whole other discussion that Pen just didn’t have the energy to dig into.
Part of her heart cracked, realizing that as different as she and Chloe were, the apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree. Somehow they’d both ended up lonely, looking in at happy families and wishing desperately they could be a part of them. She’d never wanted that for her own child. Never.
But there were so many things that Pen never wanted to turn out the way they had.
“Look, I know it hasn’t been easy for you. It hasn’t been easy for either of us and that’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it goes for some people. But we’re still a family. We have everything they do, there are just fewer of us. And if you think about it, almost no one has a family as big as the Montengas, but everyone else is doing all right, aren’t they?”
Chloe’s expression proved she wasn’t sold.
Penelope swallowed the lump in her throat. From the moment she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d lived in fear of not being enough for the life she was bringing into the world. Pure selfishness had made her go through with it anyway. Wanting the baby who was little more than a thought, needing someone to love who could love her back. Who would. And yes, even the idea that the baby could be hers and Raul’s…in her heart, keeping the baby had never been a question. Hard as it sometimes was, she hadn’t questioned her choice once. Not until this moment, seeing the hurt on her daughter’s face.
“I love you, Chloe.” She made sure to look into her daughter’s eyes, made sure Chloe knew they weren’t just words to her. Weren’t something she’d only been expected to say. “I love you so much, honey.”
“I know, Mom. I love you too.” Chloe blinked the sheen off her eyes, rubbing at one with the back of an impatient fist. “It’s just…sometimes I want…more.” Actual tears slipped free, smeared across round cheeks, and the pain in Penelope’s stomach grew a hundred times. “I’m tired of how mean she is, Mom. They actually like each other at Danny’s house. Why can’t I be with people who like me?”
She opened her arms and Chloe came as if she’d been jolted out of her chair. She settled on Penelope’s lap, her head on her shoulder. She didn’t sob and she’d probably never sit like this again, but for a few minutes, at least, Penelope got to have her little girl all to herself again.
Petting Chloe’s drying hair, Pen made herself sober. “No matter what we want, hon, you can’t just make someone be your father. It’s not fair to him.”
Chloe sat up, wiping her face furiously. “He doesn’t want me?”
Oh, how to answer that one. “That’s not it. First we have to find out if he’s your father or not. We’ll run a DNA test tomorrow and get the results back in a week. We’ve waited this long,” she added when Chloe opened her mouth to argue. “A few more days won’t kill anyone.”
“But what if he’s not?”
Penelope couldn’t bring herself to think about that. “Then we’ll deal with that when we know. You and me. Not you and whichever guy you think might have a funny-looking birthmark on his butt, okay?”
Chloe finally smiled. Small, but good enough.
Penelope squeezed her again. “And please stop running away from your grandmother’s house. Please, Chloe. Anything could have happened to you and I wouldn’t have known where you were. I couldn’t have helped you.”
Chloe withstood the hug as long as Pen thought she could stand before wriggling away with the dishes, full of fake outrage. “Fiiiiine.”
“You also owe a dollar to the swear jar and you’re grounded for two weeks. No Danny’s unless it’s a practice day.”
“Mom!” Nope, outrage was real that time.
“But I’ll make you a deal. You can serve your time with me at the office.”
The smile she got in reply was the reason she knew she loved being a mother.
It passed too quickly. “Man, this is going to be the longest week of my life.”
Penelope watched Chloe rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, her pleasure fading away as the words sank in. “Yeah. Mine, too.”
{{{
The phone was starting to make his ass itch. Raul stared at the black receiver on his desk. For the last three and a half days, he’d jumped at every ring, nerves pulled tighter than fishing wire with nothing to show for it. His mood had gone into the shitter and everyone at the firehouse had made mention of it, like that was really going to help. Paperwork was piling up and the duty roster was full of guys he’d just noticed were total assholes. All they did was laugh and fuck around when there was work to do. Work he couldn’t focus on.
The schedule he was supposed to have posted was still in front of him, not a single name or time slot making any sense. Josh Whittaker had had to take over drills the last few days—not a big sacrifice, Josh lived for that shit—but it was getting annoying to not be able to settle on anything but the results of that swab stick test Penelope had taken on Thursday morning. She’d warned him that they might not hear until Monday, but that she knew the folks in the lab who might do a rush job for her. No promises, she’d said.
What stuck in his craw was that for some reason he wanted a few promises from her. What the hell those promises might be, he had no idea, but he wanted…something. Everything just seemed wrong around Pen now. Hell, ever since he’d come back. Finding out about Chloe had only complicated some already confusing impulses.
He wanted to see Pen again. He wanted to touch her face, to see if it was as smooth and soft as it looked. He wanted to wrap his fingers in her hair, just to see if his dreams were really memories. He wanted to know what the hell was going on between the two of them almost as much as he wanted to know what the truth was about Chloe, and neither answer was coming on its own.
What bothered him most was that she didn’t look at him the same. When she looked at him at all. The girl he’d considered his, like it or not, wasn’t there anymore. She was guarded now, her eyes shrouded and cool. He missed looking at her and seeing everything she was thinking. In place of the fragile girl was this woman, a stranger in a lot of ways, made of something stronger. Something forged. And it bugged the shit out of him that Penelope might have been forged by his stupidity.
Finally, on the end of the fourth ring, he reached out wearily and picked it up. “Captain Montenga.”
“Raul?”
He closed his eyes, releasing a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. She’d changed in a lot of ways, but not in the way she said his name. Husky. Unsure. As if she had some kind of pleasure just saying it but didn’t want him knowing about it.
“Hi, Pen.” Fuck it, who cared if she could tell he was relieved to hear her.
She didn’t say anything for a few raw seconds either, then seemed to snap out of whatever was happening in her head. “The results are here. D-do you want to come in or should I just open it now?”
His hand tightened on the receiver. She really was nervous. But why wouldn’t she be? A question she’d been too terrified to deal with was about to be answered. She hadn’t said as much Wednesday night, but he knew Penelope. The old Penelope, anyway. Couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her to realize she wasn’t sure who she’d just had sex with. As a first experience, too. He couldn’t see making her wait any longer. “Now’s good.”
“Oh, o-okay.
” The sound of an envelope crinkling and paper shuffling. Even with his balls pulling up into a knot, he had to stifle a laugh. He’d have torn that fucker up trying to get at the information inside, but not Pen. She probably calmly ran her finger under the flap and folded it back to pull out the results. “Um…here…a ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine, nine—”
“I think we can skip the nines, Pen.”
“—percent probability of inclusion. She’s yours.” A small gasp, almost a sob that had him closing his eyes in relief.
Wait. Relief?
“She’s yours, Raul.”
He definitely didn’t mistake the sound of tears now. Not loud noisy ones, like his sisters cried. Pen was never into drama. But it made him wish they’d waited until he could be there. It seemed the kind of moment when she could have used someone to wrap their arms around her. Hell, maybe he just wanted someone to hold on to him.
“Are you okay?” he heard her ask.
“What?”
“You’re quiet. A-are you all right? I mean, I know this is a lot to take in, all at once and everything.”
Raul thought about it. He was breathing okay, his spine had finally relaxed and even his tortured nuts had gone back to their general laid-back ways. At least until it hit him like a two-by-four between the eyes that all those dreams, those fantasies, those haunting moments of sexual perfection he’d suffered all these years were based in reality. In Penelope. “I’m fine.” His voice was rough as he closed his mind to what all of that meant for the two of them. This wasn’t the time. This was about Chloe. And about her, he was fine. How weird was that? “Are you okay? It’s probably a relief…um, to know.”
“Uhm.”
Was that agreement? Better not to ask. “So what happens now? Do we tell Chloe?”
“If we don’t, she’ll start gnawing the wood on my file cabinet.” That was one thing he was liking about this new Pen. A dry humor she hadn’t had before. Then again, she had seemed to get a kick out of his impressions of her that night on her couch. Maybe it had always been there and he hadn’t noticed, self-absorbed little shit that he’d been. How much else had he not known about her all those years ago?
“When does she get out of school?” He checked his watch. Eleven now.
“Two-thirty. She gets off the bus here around three.”
“How about I meet the two of you there when she gets off? We should do this together. As soon as possible.”
She took a long time to answer. “Are you sure about this, Raul?”
He got the feeling she wasn’t talking about the time. Strangely, he didn’t have a second’s doubt. “I already missed eleven years, Pen. I don’t want to miss any more.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you at three.” She hung up with a basic click. Cool, efficient Penelope. He blinked at the irritation that roused, shoving it aside to concentrate on the important thing.
He had a daughter.
Despite the absolute terror of that little bit of reality, he couldn’t help a small grin. He had a daughter. A crafty, sneaky, foul-mouthed kid who loved baseball and beating up her cousin.
Karma was better at her job than he ever gave her credit for.
Raul grabbed his lightweight coat and was already shrugging into it on his way out the door to his office. It didn’t take long to find Josh riding herd on the probies with a whistle and a clipboard as they did speed drills with rolled hoses. The bastards were heavy as hell. Which meant the tall dark-haired control freak he called his buddy was having a hell of a good time watching the torture.
“I need to go off-site for the rest of the day. Think you can hold things down?” He could call in Bower or Quint if necessary, but Raul held out hope that after twenty days without an emergency, the day might stay light.
Josh flicked him a quick glance. “Who do you think has been holding things down the last few days?”
Raul rolled his eyes. “I haven’t been that bad.”
“You’ve been a pain in the ass— Hey, Rodgers, if you don’t get that hose head off the ground, I’m gonna shove it up your ass right next to your head!”
Rodgers didn’t so much as huff, he just adjusted his hold and kept running.
Raul only shook his head. “And you wonder why none of them like you.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who had them scrubbing toilets with their own toothbrushes.”
“Yes, you were.” Raul cracked a smile.
“You sure?” Josh frowned, blowing the whistle hard enough to nearly burst Raul’s eardrum as Rodgers hit the speed drill deadline. “Next!”
“Wasn’t me. I’m the one who rang the bell while they were in the showers so they’d go down the pole naked.”
“I thought that was Wilde.”
“Please, Wilde sucks at pranks.” They looked at each other. “Maybe Wilde was the one with the toothbrushes,” Raul conceded. It didn’t really matter. “Can you handle it or not?”
“Depends, you gonna tell me what’s going on with you or not?” His attention sharpened on the slow-running probie about to lose his hose. “You drop that son of a bitch, Conners, you’ll be shittin’ through it, I kid you not!”
“I like that one,” Raul threw in with a nod. “Colorful.”
“Yeah, but I need some variation. There’s only so much you can do with a hose and some guy’s ass.”
“You’d know better than me.” Raul started walking toward the lot, ignoring the sideways smirk Josh was throwing at him.
“Hey, I didn’t say I was helping you, you lazy shit,” Josh called out.
Raul gave him the finger without looking back.
“Fine, go. But I expect some answers when you get back, Montenga.”
Raul only laughed to himself. Josh just had to have the last word. Raul could let him get away with it every now and then. Now just happened to be a good then.
Besides, he owed someone else an explanation first.
Ten minutes later, he pulled up in front of the ranch-style house he’d grown up in. The color had changed three times since he’d moved away at the age of twenty-two, but not much else had changed. The lawn was thick and green, the porch a garnet concrete that had been worn almost as smooth as glass. Shoes from countless family members were stacked on racks outside the door, most haphazardly, some he was pretty sure had been there for years. Opening the door, he toed off his own boots and stepped inside.
“’Ama?” Raul bellowed into the house, shutting the door behind himself. He always loved the first step into his parents’ house. The carpets were soft, the air scented with the wax of prayer candles and years of cooking, whether anyone had lit either kind of flame or not. Today, someone was cooking. Tortillas and…something beefy.
“Raul? Vente, mijo. Ven.” His father’s voice beckoned from his perennial spot at the dining room table.
Raul had to step out of the foyer and into the living room to see the older man sitting, as he always did, at the head of a huge table.
It still surprised Raul to see his father smiling at him. Not that Thomas Montenga had been a bad father, but for most of Raul’s teen years and early adulthood he’d been mired in the older man’s disappointment. Thomas had wanted his son to get a job, find a nice girl and settle down, just like his older brother and pretty much all of his sisters. The job was supposed to be in house painting, the family business. The girl should have been selected from old family friends, any number of which could be found all over San Diego County. The Montengas were blended with all the old families, from the North County Alvarados and the Chula Vista Serranos to the Garcias in Escondido and the Flores bunch that seemed to have filled out everything in the middle. Thomas had been so sure that, if Raul had just done what he’d been told, chosen as obediently as his siblings and fallen in line with everyone else, he’d be happy. As an adult, Raul understood it was worry and love and a genuine desire for his son to be fulfilled that had been at the root of the loud arguments about coming home in the middle of the night, having been Go
d only knew where, doing God probably didn’t want to know what. As a kid, though…
But if things had been any different, Chloe wouldn’t exist.
Raul leaned down to put an arm around his father, the man he knew he took after in more ways than looks and build, and hugged him a little tighter than he normally would. This situation might not be what Thomas had wanted—was probably what Thomas feared all those years ago, actually—but even having only known her for a few hours…the world wouldn’t be right without that small face in it. Chloe had too much energy, too much personality, not to have deeply impacted everyone she met.
Thomas’s lined face expressed puzzlement at the one-armed hug, but before he could ask anything, Raul headed into the kitchen to find his mother.
Ophelia Montenga was where she always seemed to be, in front of the old green stove she refused to allow her children to replace, flipping tortillas on the comal with one hand, stirring some kind of bovine heaven in an oversized pot with the other. Despite the fact that all her children had moved out years ago, she still made fresh tortillas each day and enough food for two armies at lunch. She wore her customary simple, short-sleeved house shirt and black cotton pants on her relatively small form—tall enough to almost be considered average height and squishy enough in the middle for the grandkids to consider her hugs the best. Her hair must have been recently colored, the champagne gold frost darker where the thick tresses flowed together at the back of her head. The whole style looked kind of like a pillow curving around her head, but no matter how much he teased her, she’d only shake her smooth oval face at him and make that weird tsking noise without moving her lips. She turned, eyes still on her tasks, presenting her soft golden cheek up for him to kiss.
