Only Love (37 page)

Rissa sat in Aubrey’s lap, watching her mom’s demonstration, really watching for guidance before she put her tiny hands on the dog.

“Gentle, gentle,” she said softly, moving her hand with the growth of Sammy’s long hair. She learned so fast, grew so fast, and the thought choked me that I’d miss any of it. Was I being punished? Still, after Abby’s accident? I couldn’t help but wonder.

I jumped a bit when my mom’s hand landed on my back. Leaning in, she whispered. “Help me with lunch?”

But as I followed her, I knew there was more to what she said than that. Especially when she directed me to sit in front of the bar, well away from the grilled chicken sandwiches she was constructing. She didn’t want help. Not at all. She wanted to talk to me.

“Well? What’s going on?” she asked, spreading sauce on a bun with a spoon.

I turned my head, watching Aubrey, Rissa, and Joan before getting up. My mom didn’t question as she lowered her spoon, letting me take her away, and still didn’t as I escorted her into the study, asking her to take a seat.

She kept silent the whole time, the entire time I poured my heart out to her, and when it was over she put her hand to her mouth, tilting her head.

“Oh, Adam,” she said and I knew why. She understood how bad this was, how terrible. I thought this case at work was finally over but it seems it never would be. For years the case had been at the back of my mind,
achingly long
years, and I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t stop myself from dwelling on it, the case hovering over me constantly as I did my job, lingering with me well after Manuel Lopez was behind bars. I continued to let it stay with me every day I did my rounds. It caused me to often check up on the Hispanic communities in town, check up on Josephine Ruiz and her grandchild, Emelia, though from a distance so she wouldn’t know. But that man Don and I stopped that day in traffic because of his music, let me know people did know. They knew I was there and still felt for these people long after the fact, long after they lost a member of their community due to my partner, and really, myself too. I was there. I was a part of all this and couldn’t escape responsibility for that.

“My partner killed Javi’s brother,” I said, if to my mom, if to myself, I didn’t know. Either way it hurt to say the words aloud, to make them real.

Don killed Carlos Ruiz in a robbery gone wrong. Carlos, son of Josephine and father of Emelia Ruiz, and now, as I found out upon seeing his program this morning, the brother of the late Javier Ruiz, the man who also happened to be the father of a little girl. A little girl who was now calling me “Daddy.”

The whole thing made me sick to my stomach.

Taking a seat on the arm of my mom’s end chair, I scrubbed my hand over my face. “What should I do, Mom?” I asked, though I didn’t stare at her. I stared only ahead, lost at the information, lost in my thoughts.

Placing her hand on my lap, she grabbed my hand there, smoothing her own over it. “You gotta tell her the truth, sweetheart.”

I knew she’d say exactly that. I knew I had to do exactly that. But that realization didn’t make things any easier, didn’t lessen the pain of the thought.

She squeezed my hand. “And probably sooner rather than later, love. You don’t want her to find out on her own. You don’t want that,” she paused shaking her head. “You don’t want that.”

My lids lowered over my eyes. I was going to propose to the woman I loved tonight, finally make this thing that took so much strength to build permanent between us.

Again, I asked myself if I was being punished.

I followed behind Aubrey, a sleeping Rissa in her arms as I toted gifts from my moms’ over the threshold to her apartment. I didn’t ignore the fact that I thought of this place as being hers, not mine alongside hers. It never was mine with her.

“God, your moms.” She laughed, rubbing Rissa’s back. The little girl lifted her head, yawning sleepily as she allowed her mom to take her jacket off. I helped her after I placed the gifts down, so she could get her own off as well.

“What about them?” I asked, taking both jackets and hanging them up, then my own. I planned to stay, if only for a little bit.

Aubrey had taken the baby down the hall before she turned at my question. “Nothing. They just love her so much you know.” Her eyes twinkled at the words. Like beautiful starlight, and they were. She was the bright light in my dark universe. Always had been.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to dwell on what she said. They did love her, which made this whole thing so much harder.

Aubrey continued on down the hall with her daughter. “I’m going to put her down real quick. Be right back.”

I let her go, and then went to the couch. I didn’t take my shoes off. I didn’t feel the need. Absentmindedly, I picked up the remote. Turning on the TV, I clicked through the channels, hoping to distract myself. But then, the very topic that consumed my thoughts blasted before me across the television. I shouldn’t have been surprised they were discussing the case on the news tonight despite it being Christmas. Chief said the verdict happened yesterday.

This all felt so fitting that when Aubrey finally came from the hallway, I didn’t turn the TV off. Perhaps, this being on would help me explain. What I didn’t anticipate was her bringing my present, wrapped so perfectly in gold paper. She had the square box in her hand, chewing her plump lip, and my stomach turned for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

She set in on my lap and I simply stared at it, looping my finger around the matching gold ribbon she tied it with.

“I left yours upstairs,” I told her, thinking about the white-gold ring with hollowed diamonds on the band and a square cut diamond in the center. I saved a few months’ salary for it. I even wanted to dip into my savings but something told me Aubrey wouldn’t have wanted that. She never liked being fawned over. Something I loved about her.

“It’s fine. I want to see you open yours first anyway,” her voice came from the side of me as she sat down on the couch. I couldn’t read her face as I refused to look at her. But I lifted my head when she picked up the remote to turn the TV off. She wasn’t doing so for any specific reason I didn’t think at first, but then her gaze stopped on the TV.

Staring at her, I watched her expression as she studied the news. Representative Garcia was talking, going over the victory he fought for by getting Manuel’s sentence lowered, and as he spoke, Aubrey’s expression changed. Her lips went tight, and then turned down. She lifted the remote again, shaking her head. “I’m so tired of hearing about this.”

Her finger rose to click, but I placed my hand on hers. “Leave it,” I said.

She did, and her look went curious my way. “Why?”

Sliding the remote from her hand, I placed it on the table. I didn’t want to do this now, not today, not on Christmas, but my mom was right. What if she found out on her own? I couldn’t risk that.

Letting out a breath, I turned my head to the screen. “Do you know the details?”

She nodded, but still eyed me curiously. “Yeah. That’s why I said I’m sick of hearing about it. The whole thing disgusts me what happened. I knew the guys involved. Not terribly well, but they were related to Javi. The whole thing was tragic.”

She said it disgusts her, which means inadvertently I disgust her, as I was involved.

Braving myself, I grabbed her hand, smoothing it between mine. I still couldn’t form the words, though. So weak, I couldn’t do it.

“Adam?” she asked, squeezing my hand. The continued worry in her large brown eyes killed me. “Adam, what’s wrong? You’ve been acting so weird today. You’re scaring me.”

My stomach clenched as if in a vise. I kissed her hand. “I don’t mean to do that, baby. I don’t…”

I shook my head, and she touched my cheek, making me stop. Pushing her hand behind my neck, she made me lean in toward her. “What is going on?”

I closed my eyes briefly giving myself a moment, but then, that moment was over. I couldn’t escape it forever. I had to come clean. “I didn’t think to tell you,” I started. “You know I never bring my work home with me. I just didn’t think.”

“What?” The word came out as a whimper, and I knew that she knew something. That this was bad. Something I was about to say was very bad.

I squeezed her hand, making myself look at her, right in the eyes. I couldn’t cower my way out of this. I couldn’t. Not anymore. “My partner and I were the cops involved in the Lopez case, which means we were there the day that convenience store was robbed.”

“You and Don?” she asked, her voice slipping from her lips.

I nodded. “We were there when—”

“Did you shoot Carlos?”

The words were sharp, slicing through my heart. “No. But I was there.”

“So it was Don?” she asked. “Don killed Carlos? Don killed Javi’s little brother. His
sixteen
-year-old brother.”

Every word blazed worse than before with their meaning. I smoothed my thumb along the back of her hand. “He did, Aubrey, and I’m so sorry. Like I said, I just didn’t think to tell you. Neither one of us talk about our work. If I’d known Carlos’ connection to you, Rissa, and Javi I would have said something. I knew Carlos had a brother. I just didn’t know it was Javi. Not until I saw Javi’s program today and read about his family. Josephine, Carlos, and Carlos’ daughter, Emelia. I didn’t even know Javi’s last name until I saw the program. We never talked about that.”

A blast of awareness hit me when I realized that this all could have come out last night. If I hadn’t gotten called in, if I would have been here for dinner, Javi’s mom would have known exactly who I was. I passed through her neighborhood all the time, checking on her and the rest of Carlos’ family, and none of them were strangers to the day all this went down years ago. They all knew who I was. God, how bad that would have been instead of this intimate moment now with Aubrey.

Staring at her, I tried to read her face, but a gamut of emotions resided there. I couldn’t figure out if she was mad, sad. Her hand went to her mouth, slipping from mine, and I felt something I never wanted to feel again in her presence, and that was distance.

“Adam?”

“Yes?” I asked, drawing in close. I needed to know what she was thinking. I needed to know what I needed to do so we could deal with this, so she wouldn’t leave.

“I…” she paused swallowing. “I need to know something, okay? And I need you to be honest with me.”

I didn’t understand her thought process behind this, but nodded quickly. I’d tell her anything, anything she wanted to know.

I watched her hand move down her neck, rubbing her chest like she was trying to relieve an ache. Perhaps, in a way, she was. She dampened her mouth. “A lot of talk went on that day. Even more so now that Manuel’s case was brought back.”

“All right,” I said not knowing how else to respond.

Drawing in a breath through her nose, she let it out through her lips, and I didn’t know why, but with that breath, I felt like what she was about to say would send my world crashing down around me. And then, she said something, and I knew it just might.

“Did Carlos actually shoot Don first?”

She was asking me something I’d essentially answered a million times. But this wasn’t the Chief getting an initial inquiry, this wasn’t a pushy news reporter, and this wasn’t Internal Affairs looking for an official statement. This was my girlfriend; a woman I not only loved, but also had a deep understanding with, and that was respect, wholeheartedly and completely.

I thought long and hard about my next words before I spoke. “Don and the shop owner were right there, Aubrey. They saw Carlos shoot—”

“I’m not asking what
they
saw.” She drew in close, and I watched as she placed her hand on my chest, right over my rapidly beating heart. “I’m asking what you saw. Did you see Carlos shoot first? Did you see that?”

I wanted to explain myself, my logic. I wanted to tell her that my statement was irrelevant. It was unnecessary to the case due to my distance. I was just too far away to see anything that day supporting either claim. I literally didn’t
see
anything one way or another, not Carlos shooting first or the latter. I wanted to say that’s why I gave the statement I had. Two witnesses confirmed something who were right there, not two feet away from the action, one of those being a man of the law, my partner, but no matter how I spun it in my mind, I ended up at the same conclusion. I was making excuses for myself, excuses to support a lie I’d been making myself believe for years.

Glancing away from her eyes, I stared at her hand on my chest. I wanted to take it, intertwine her fingers with mine, but I didn’t think she’d allow that, and I also knew I didn’t deserve that, her. I knew that now.

“I didn’t,” I said. “I saw nothing one way or the other. I was too far away.”

Her lips pursed just then, and she wasn’t looking at me, but at her hand. The one resting on my chest.

“So you didn’t see,” she said, her eyes shifting down like she was lost, lost in a thought. “But the police’s official statement was that Carlos shot first. How could it, though, if you didn’t
see
anything, Adam?”