The boy tugged on Gavin’s sleeve. “¿Ahora?” he asked.
Gavin nodded.
He dug through the pockets of his coat, like he had when he produced the yellow chicle. This time, though, he pulled out a small blue box, proudly passing it up.
To Gavin.
To his father.
I found I was able to say the words in my mind. Gavin was a father. A father again. He’d never stopped being one. And even if I never got another chance to try it again, I would not stop being a mother.
The ring inside the box was not the one he gave me all those years ago, but a new one, silver with a clear diamond on top. He knelt on one knee, and without prompting, the boy, his son, Manuel, did it too.
Jenny nudged me with her elbow. “I think he asked you a question.”
The seagulls swooped and cawed overhead. The sun was warm on our faces. Everyone turned to me, waiting, expectant. Gavin watched me, patient, and, I could see, utterly unsure of what I might do or say. How could he not know? How could he think for a minute I would want to be without him?
“Yes,” I said, and everyone let out their breath at once. The man by Rosa suddenly remembered his camera and began snapping like crazy, flashes bouncing off the sand. Gavin took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger, the wrong one, and everyone laughed as I switched it to the other side. Manuel found the laughter infectious and threw himself backwards on the ground, giggling his head off and filling his hair with sand.
Gavin stood up and held me close. “We’re going to make this work. We will absolutely make this work.”
Manuel got up suddenly and crashed into us, one arm around each of our legs. I startled at the contact with this unfamiliar child.
“¡Paleta!” he said, and dug through his pockets again, coming up with a handful of suckers in a rainbow of colors.
“¡Paleta!” he said again, holding a yellow one up to Gavin, who took it from him.
“¡Paleta!” He thrust a pink one up at Jenny, to match her hair.
He gave a purple one to Tina, who took it, laughing. “You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”
Manuel stopped beside me. “¿Paleta?” he asked and held a green one out to me.
“But you like the green ones best,” Gavin said.
He tapped my leg with the lollipop. “You like?”
I knelt down next to him. “Okay.”
He pushed the sucker into my hand. “You like!” He got shy suddenly and ran back to his mother, burying his face in her coat.
I stayed down low a moment, looking at the sucker in my hand. I wasn’t sure how much of my love I could give over to a child that reminded me exactly of what I had lost.
“Picnic!” Jenny announced and set the basket on the ground. “I’ve got sushi! I’ve got tacos! And I’m going to let you all eat cake!”
Gavin reached for my arm and lifted me up to stand beside him once more. We turned back to the sea, impassive, ever-changing, and endlessly blue. If I once thought I wanted to get lost in it, to let it take me away from all the hardship, I knew now I wanted to be by its side. We were meant to be here, Gavin and I. Our memories would happen on its shore, the walks, the sand castles, the laughter, and growing up.
“Come eat, engaged people,” Jenny said, “or the kid will steal all the cake.”
None of us were alone anymore. Rosa had her son, and he had his father. I had Gavin, and Jenny, and now Tina. No matter how isolated any of us once felt, from this point on we would be together to catch one another, no matter when or how we tried to fall.
Epilogue
The door jingled as Gavin came into the bakery, pulling Manuelito along behind him. “Sorry about this.”
I glanced at the boy holding Gavin’s hand, my heart squeezing the same way it always did when I saw them together. Not a good squeeze or a bad squeeze, just bittersweet, wishing the child was ours, not his. In the two weeks since we’d found out he was Gavin’s son, we’d seen him almost every day. Gavin liked to take him to eat hot dogs or pizza after he got off work. Since he needed my car, I often went along. We were managing while Rosa came back and forth arranging paperwork.
Jenny hopped down from the counter where we were sampling wedding cakes, licking frosting off her fingers. “It’s cool. We’ll sugar him up and send him back.”
“Bud wouldn’t have called me in if it wasn’t a crisis.” He looked around the shop. “This looks fancy.”
“Wedding cakes should be fancy.” Jenny took Manuelito’s hand and led him to a stool. He happily transferred his trust to her, a trait that was endearing to most people but made me worry about who he might run off with if he wasn’t watched. She lifted him up on a sparkly pink cushion. “We’re making grumpy dad pay for it.”
Gavin looked a little out of place in his mechanic’s shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, surrounded by the shop’s delicate filigree decorations, spun sugar, and lace curtains. Normally this was his afternoon off, and he’d planned to take Manuelito to a park while Jenny and I checked out the bakery. We’d decided not to put off the wedding. By combining incomes and expenses, we could do a better job of helping Rosa with the boy.
He came up behind us and leaned over my shoulder. I lifted a lump of pink icing to his lips.
He took in far more of my finger than was necessary, sliding his mouth along the full length. I widened my eyes at him and glanced down at Manuelito, who was staring bug-eyed at all the miniature cakes lined up on the counter.
“He’ll have to get used to us being all gross and kissy,” Gavin said, grinning.
“Have you talked to Rosa about his first overnight yet?”
“Not sure I’m ready.” He frowned as he actually tasted the frosting I’d given him. “That’s a weird one.”
“Yeah, it has cayenne. No thanks.”
Gavin shuddered. “Oh, yeah, that’s really bad.”
I handed him my glass of water. “Here. Wash it down.”
He gulped for a second, his eyes traveling back to Manuelito, who was about to snatch up one of the cakes. “He’s going for it.”
Jenny pushed it away. “That one’s got spearmint,” she said. “And I don’t mean the flavoring. I mean actual leaves.” She pointed to a piece of green caught in a spongy cross section of cake.
Manuelito looked up at her, confusion creasing his brow.
“Vegetables,” Jenny said.
The boy made a face and pushed it farther along the counter.
“Yeah, he understood that,” Jenny said. She shoved at Gavin. “Go, Daddy dearest, off to work. We’ve got this.”
“You girls picked a crazy place.” He ruffled Manuelito’s hair. “You be good for Corabelle, okay?”
The boy nodded, now looking with suspicion at all the other cakes.
Gavin leaned back toward me and kissed my hair. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I know this still isn’t easy.”
I squeezed his hand. “We’ll be fine. Jenny is total aunt material.”
The woman who managed the weddings reappeared from the back, holding another small tray of cakes in front of her pink apron. She looked like a housewife from a 1950s ad.
“I brought some more traditional selections out.” She glanced at Gavin’s retreating figure. “Was that the groom?”
“Oh yeah,” Jenny said. “But don’t let him in your dish room. Things get pretty sticky.” She elbowed me.
The woman smiled as though she were used to customers saying completely random things. “Oh, and I see we have a new little addition.”
Manuelito was just pulling his finger out of a tiny tub of chocolate frosting. His eyes got wide as saucers, realizing he was caught.