“Move it, Julia. We have television to make.” She smirked as I walked past her.
“Almost thirty years, you still say that every time?” We worked together up until I left when the boys were teenagers.
“Only for you. I don’t talk to the other reporters much. They’re young, nervous, and any comment from me sends them into a tizzy.”
She was the best person to train new talent. Calm, laid back, no stress, even when standing with a camera in waist deep water during a hurricane. She was my safe place for the past few years.
“I’m sure they’re grateful.” Picking up my pace in front of her, my ankle boots clicked across the tile floor.
She laughed. “There are a couple who won’t make it through hurricane season. I’ll have to rope them to the van.”
I could see that. The station put us on the air nonstop as soon as there was a hurricane warning and kept us there until it was over. That’s when I met Jorge. Standing in front of his restaurant on the Hollywood boardwalk at 3 a.m. He came by to check on his place right as a wave pushed me over. He pulled me up and asked me out. That was it. I was sure I’d never look at another man with that level of desire again. So far, I’d been right.
I reached for the door handle as a loud knock startled us. “What the hell?”
“It sounds like Bigfoot has come to carry you away,” Amy joked behind me.
“Bigfoot? In Fort Lauderdale?” I pulled the door open slowly.
She poked my shoulder. “He got tired of hairy women?”
“He left a note.” There was a fancy envelope tucked into the doorknocker.
Amy walked around me to check the driveway. “Dear Julia, run away with me. I’ll let you shave my back.”
“Shut up. I’d need a lawn mower.” My hands shook as I opened the letter. The last person to handwrite a note to me was Jorge. Who could be writing me now?
Written in beautiful longhand, it was from Viviana, the owner of the Candy Man Delivery Service. My breath caught. I’d been chosen. Backing up a few steps, I pulled the door closed, barely aware of Amy’s protests.
“Dear Julia, your request was received. Eros has picked you to receive a chocolate carved man. He has already chosen the flavor. I’ve begun sculpting him today. He will be delivered in two days. Please think carefully about what you want in your dream man, as a god with those qualities will inhabit him. Yours, Viviana.”
“Oh shit. I didn’t do this. I didn’t ask for this. I want a man to play with and send on his way. I don’t want another passionate love. I can’t take another loss.” The words tumbled from me.
Amy peered around the door. “I put your name in there.”
Now I was pissed. “Why would you do that? I had Jorge. My forever is over.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “No, it isn’t. That’s why I did it. He wouldn’t want you alone. He wanted you to start dating days before he passed.”
“He was teasing, Amy.” I’d cried alone in the pool for hours after he said it.
“No, my love. He wasn’t.” Pulling me into her arms, she held tight, expecting me, I’m sure, to collapse.
The tears fell down my face, leaving marks on the note. How could I even consider accepting? Betraying Jorge in his home? Oh shit. I was in trouble.
Amy lifted my chin until our eyes met. “This was a home built from love. It aches now. Jorge wouldn’t want that for you.”
She knew me too well. “Dammit, I’m mad at you.”
“I love you, too. Now move your ass before you ruin your makeup. The beach breeze is harsh enough.”
I had to go to work when all I wanted was to crawl into my bed—our bed—and remember him. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t welcome another man into our home this week.
Knowing Amy would drag me if she had to, I stumbled through the door as she held it open, handing her the keys. My vision was too blurry to find the keyhole.
The interview went well and too soon, I found myself at home eating a microwave dinner on the pool deck. I called Maribel. The oldest of our children, she was twelve when Jorge and I met. At the time, our ten-year age difference seemed huge.
“Hi, Mom.” Her voice soothed me. “What’s up?”
“I have to talk to you.” I couldn’t keep the pain from my voice.
“What’s wrong?” She was a wonderful daughter.
I explained what Amy had done, that I’d been chosen. “I don’t know if I can betray your father.”
“You open your front door, you let that statue inside, and you enjoy every moment of passion. My father adored your spirit. It was your unbridled joy, with no filter, that put a smile on his face, one I’d never seen before you came into his life. He built that house for you.” Irritation laced her voice.
I wondered if Amy had colluded with my children about this. After all, the reason I refused to sign up was the difficulty in explaining an animated chocolate statue living with their mother.
I started to protest. She heard me take a breath.
“No, you don’t interrupt me. My dad built that home out of love for you. If you have any doubts, call Carlos. Go to the restaurant for dinner and talk to him. I want love for you, Mom. We all do.” Her voice gave away the worry she held for me.
They were all scared I would die of a broken heart. She’d said it at the funeral service. I began to cry. “I’m afraid.”
She laughed. “That’s not the mother who raised me.”
“I’m not that woman anymore.” Strength left me as life left Jorge. It hadn’t returned.
“Yes, you are. You have time to find her again. That woman wouldn’t mope,” she admonished me.
The words were true. “I’ll do my best.”
“Call Carlos.”
“Okay, I love you.” She made me a better person.
“I love you, too.”
I heard the click absently as I stared at the phone. My youngest child was the image of his father. He’d gone to culinary school to become a chef while still a teenager. He took over the restaurant his father built. I didn’t need to talk to him to hear his reply. “Do it, Mom.”
Taking a deep breath, I put the phone down. The sun setting behind me colored the sparse clouds orange against the blue sky. The leaves of the palm trees rattled around in the breeze. I never told the children what I did with Jorge’s urn. They each had a small one of their own. Looking to the corner of the garden, I saw the marker I left. Right where he grew his favorite herbs, there was a blue spatula, his favorite utensil in his favorite color.
“Jorge. I’m scared. I know you’d want me to do this. If the statue had shown up before you passed....” I laughed. “You would have asked to watch so you could give him directions on what works best.”
Tears soaked my cheeks, dropping onto my t-shirt. “I loved you more than I thought I could. I can still hear your laughter in the house. Turning to see you, I remember you’re gone and ache again.”
Sitting quietly, I let my mind clear using a technique Amy taught me from her time as a yoga instructor. A peace came over me. Not quite an excitement for the change coming, but the loss of resistance. The time had come to take a chance again. Maribel knew me more as a friend than a mother. Yet, she was okay with this. The other kids would listen to her if they had doubts. I needed to push aside my wife and mother instincts and decide what I wanted as a widowed woman.
Stripping my clothes off, I stepped into the pool. Cool water washed over me as I swam back and forth. Swimming calmed my mind the way yoga worked for Amy. Lap after lap, I ran through different scenarios in my mind. Rejecting the statue; accepting the statue; turning them away only to run after them; waking the god inside and regretting it.
The one thought going through my mind each time was, give it a chance. Him, give him a chance. Stepping out of the pool, gathering my clothes, it hit me. I needed to take a chance on me. That’s what Maribel was talking about. I take chances, defy fate, and step into the dark without looking. That’s the person I lost when Jor
ge died. The part of me I stored away in a safe place.
“I’m going to do it.” I announced to the empty house.
“Good.” Amy’s voice startled me. “Maribel called; she said you sounded awful.” She came in from the yard, her key to the back gate dangling in her hand.
“That was hours ago.”
Amy scoffed. “Like I answer my phone.”
“True. The only time you picked it up was when I was pregnant.” She and her husband were godparents to our boys.
“You’re too small to have such big babies. I thought we were going to have a scene from Alien by the third month.” She never mentioned my nudity.
“With which kid?”
She popped a cookie from my last batch in her mouth. “All of them.” She gave me one.
“I did a good job with these.” I loved to bake. It was the only cooking I could do. Jorge and Carlos cooked all of the meals here.
“Chocolate chip with caramel swirls, my favorite.” She winked at me. “You look well. Feeling better?”
“I deserve a chance.” My tone thrummed quiet as to not awaken the thundering doubts.
“That’s my girl.” She kissed the top of my head. “Do you want me here when they deliver him?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t think so. But stay by your phone.”
“I’ll change your ring tone back to the pregnancy one.”
“Thanks, Amy.”
“Love is worth every chance you give it,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.
“Yes, it is.”
I slept naked that night. Rising to a blinding sunrise, I walked to the pool, slathered on sunscreen, and lay quietly in the morning light.
Chapter Two
Seated in the news director’s office, I began to fidget. He summoned me from my morning respite saying, “We need to talk.” In my life, that never ended well. My level of distraction while interviewing lifeguards may have tipped him off something was wrong.
That was yesterday. Today, he seemed surprised by my appearance. I’d put on a full face of makeup, pulled my hair up, leaving a couple of ringlets by my ears. I knew the sun from last night and this morning gave my skin a glow.
“It’s like being in the principal’s office.” Amy dropped into the seat next to me.
“I never did that.” My parents would’ve grounded me for a year.
She looked comfortable. “I did. Often. It wasn’t my fault the teachers didn’t like my practical jokes.”
Turning my head, I glared at her, a smile on my face. “You lubed the boys locker room bench.”
The director walked in, staring at us. He looked awful. “There was a huge pile-up on 95. Lots of dead and wounded filling up the emergency rooms, and I need, no, I want, your face out there.” He waited.
I hadn’t covered a story with death or illness in it for years. It was a prime assignment, an unspoken question hung in the air.
“We’ll do it.” I stood up, realizing he’d teared up. “Who?” Someone in his life was in the wreckage.
“My daughter is in there with my baby granddaughter. Find them if you can. I want to hear it from you.” I was the field reporter when he started as an anchor. He told me it was my voice he wanted to hear relate even the worst news with a hopeful twist. I knew I could do it again.
Amy walked around his desk and bear-hugged him. He collapsed in tears. I waited for my knees to buckle. They didn’t. For the first time in years, I knew I was healed. “Amy, let the man go. We need to find his baby girl.”
She folded him into his chair, closed the window blinds, shutting the door behind us. “If you go in there and disturb him, I’ll kick your ass,” she announced to the newsroom.
They knew. Expressions around the room hovered between sadness and fear. The silent pain of unknowing filled the room. The air stood still, afraid to move.
Outside, I climbed into the van as Amy ran an equipment check in the back. She slid into the driver’s seat. “You’re okay with this?”
“Yes.” I was taking a newly healed wound into the chaos of death and pain. I’d damn well better be okay.
“I know.” She reached over, patting me on the knee. “Have you put together the list of things you want from the statue god-man?”
Until now, I hadn’t given it much thought. I knew, in that moment, there was no doubt. “I want a man who I can come home to after a day like today will be. To make me feel loved and wrapped in warmth that I can take with me to a job where I report on horrors and atrocities humans shouldn’t be capable of.”
“That was beautiful.” She sniffed.
I glanced at her. “Shut up.”
“No, I mean it. It summed up your relationship with Jorge, it’s my marriage, too.” She was crying.
“Thanks.” That’s what I needed and wanted. A smoking hot body wouldn’t hurt either, although, with a Viviana sculpture, that was guaranteed.
My mind wandered through my favorite flavors in chocolate. I knew Viviana’s Adonis was milk chocolate. Another woman, a local bartender, got a lighter skinned man. Their beach wedding made the local papers. I wanted to keep my man a secret.
My man. I really thought that.
How strange to think of a statue, sitting in someone else’s home, as my man? Hope fluttered past me, and I grabbed on with both hands.
The wreck site proved awful, the air filled with scents of gas, tire rubber, and blood. Florida’s afternoon thunderstorms ran up to tropical storm wind speeds. Trees on the sides of the road bent with the wind. It would take the worst of the death smells and disperse it away from humans. Vultures circled above, waiting for us to leave them something for an early dinner.
Stepping out of the van after Amy parked on the shoulder, I fought an urge to throw up. Nerves weren’t going to take me out of the game. This was my job, one I was proud of, and today, someone needed me.
“Good afternoon, ladies.” A new EMT strolled up beside us with his testosterone flaring. Wavy brown hair blew in the wind. He stared at me, then Amy with piercing blue eyes, wriggling his eyebrows for full effect, his walk—more of a saunter—to impress the ladies standing around. This obviously worked for him in the nightclubs. He didn’t expect the ripple of laughter from the experienced news crews.
“Keep moving, stud. We’re spoken for.” Amy turned the camera on. He blew a kiss strolling away, shooting one look over his shoulder to make sure we watched.
“First timer.” We’d seen it before. His first mass casualty scene. He’d be barfing on the side of the road soon. “Ten minutes.”
Amy laughed. “That ego? Twenty minutes.”
There were four other news crews there, all familiar faces. They nodded in recognition as we approached. I heard a child’s cry. It ripped through me. Please, God. The faces of my own children appeared in my memory, small crying faces pleading for me to take the pain away. I still knew when they were upset, a mother’s instinct.
The EMT strutted up to a car, posing for the cameras on the way. He leaned in to reach for the child. Seconds ticked past, the child’s cries muffled as he filled the window. He emerged with a small toddler, the smirk on his face replaced with ashen horror. Putting the toddler down, he barfed right there.
“You win,” Amy whispered behind me.
The toddler walked over to him, patted him on the head, and said, “It’ll be okay.” She couldn’t be more than two years old.
I heard myself gasp before I realized I’d made a noise. The hell with protocol. I reached for the police tape to get to the child and found a fellow reporter holding it down for me. Running to her, I heard a scream that frightened me. The baby started crying as I picked her up.
She turned to me. “Mommy’s yelling.” Oh, God. I knew this child. I only hoped her mother, my boss’ daughter, would survive.
The rush of police and rescue almost crushed us as they mobilized. A female EMT stood next to me inspecting the baby for wounds, washing the blood from her tiny legs. She didn’t
have a cut on her. The safety seat kept her from getting scratched.
I spent one harsh hurricane season with my kids in snowsuits and the air conditioning on blizzard, figuring that what the seat didn’t protect, the sausage=like insulation of the suits would. My kids still tease me about it. Yet, last week, I noticed they weren’t in the linen closet anymore. Seems my grandchildren were wearing them now.
“You son of a bitch, I’m stuck.” The news director’s daughter was still conscious. I knew her voice from holiday parties. Looking over at Amy, she understood, pulling her phone from her pocket.
The jaws of Life took two hours to free her. Both legs were broken and she had a nasty gash across her stomach, but she’d live. No one died. The officers walked around shaking their heads in disbelief. They didn’t say the words out loud, just in case.
I walked over to Amy, describing the scene for our audience. The baby in my arms pulled on my earrings. Under any other circumstance, I would’ve kept the child off air, but I wanted her grandfather, and his family, to see she was okay.
The director arrived, face covered in tears, to accompany his daughter in the ambulance. I hadn’t moved, only rocked back and forth as the baby fell asleep in my arms. Her father showed up in time to kiss his wife as she was loaded in the back. I handed him his daughter. The baby didn’t wake up, cooing as she snuggled into his neck.
“Thank you, Julia. We owe you.” He’d met me twice.
“My pleasure.” I’d missed this—making a difference in the roughest moments of someone’s life.
My heart filled with love and compassion. Clothes streaked with blood, I walked back to Amy who’d filmed the entire thing.
“I need a shower.” I patted her on the shoulder.
She wrinkled her nose. “You stink.”
“Thanks.” I’d been paying attention to the child, not my appearance.
“You’re back.” Smacking me on the shoulder, she popped open my door than made her way to the back to stow away the gear.
I was. “Yeah.”
The ride home took a while as we avoided the associated traffic delays. A hot shower rinsed the day from my body. My phone screen was filled with text messages from my sons.
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