Beach House Reunion (Beach House #5)(9)

“Elena shadowed me for several months, and we grew quite close. Neither of us knew many people in the city. She was from Mexico; did I mention that?”

The two women shook their heads.

“But her English was flawless. We would have lunch together at work, and once we even went to a Spanish guitar concert together. Then she just disappeared.” She lifted her shoulders. “No good-bye, no note. Nothing. I was hurt, I can’t lie. But I wrote it off to the callousness of youth.”

Hope made a noise, but Emmi gave her the spoon, which she promptly inserted into her mouth.

Cara continued in a somber voice: “It wasn’t callousness at all, though. I should have known that wasn’t like Elena.” She paused. “It turned out she was pregnant. Apparently a one-night stand with some American boy she thought was cute. She drank too much. . . .” She shrugged and lifted her palms as if to say, You know the rest of this story.

“?‘Apparently’?” asked Emmi. “You don’t know?”

Cara shook her head. “I never talked to Elena. Never saw her again. One day last January I got a message from Social Services. They told me that Elena had died after a car crash and that she had a daughter. They contacted me because Elena had listed me as next of kin at the hospital.”

“Next of kin? But . . .” Emmi tilted her head. “Can she do that? You’re not related.”

“Apparently she can.”

“Next of kin is a legal term,” Flo explained. “But . . .” She turned again to Cara. “The agency seeks first to place the child with family, a relative. Didn’t she have parents? Grandparents?”

“She does. In Mexico. Elena was in the country illegally, so it slowed the investigation down. Eventually they tracked her family down through the school she was enrolled in in Chattanooga. Turns out they’re a well-to-do family, and I’m sure they were heartbroken by the news. But according to the agency, they were ashamed that Elena had had a child in America and cut her off.”

“Imagine cutting your child off in a foreign country,” said Emmi. “There’s nothing my boys could do that would make me that kind of angry.”

“We don’t know what really happened,” Flo said. “They may have offered to fly her home, put the baby up for adoption.”

Cara spoke again. “Poor Elena. Whatever they said, she didn’t feel like she could go home, and she remained here as an illegal alien. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. Pregnant, alone, and then with a new baby. It must’ve been very hard. She worked as a maid at a hotel.” Cara exhaled heavily. “Now that I’m taking care of Hope, I swear, I don’t know how she managed.”

“Horrible. Sad,” Flo said, her eyes flashing. “I’ve seen that happen far too often.”

“That was pretty much Toy’s story,” recalled Emmi. “Her parents gave her the boot and Lovie took her in.”

Cara remembered the bumpy road she’d traveled with Toy Sooner, her mother’s caretaker, when she’d arrived at the beach house after leaving Chicago. She’d been jealous of their relationship at first, but in time she came to feel like Toy’s older sister. She adored Toy and was an aunt to her daughter, Little Lovie. That sweet child had filled a deep void in her and Brett’s life during the years they’d tried for a child of their own.

“I only wish Elena had tried to contact me. I’d have helped her. I remember how tough it was when I first left home. My parents had abandoned me. I felt I was on my own with no one looking out for me.”

“You made it,” Emmi said with admiration.

Cara nodded. She didn’t think she could ever fully explain to her best friend how hard and lonely those years of being young, alone, and without support had been and what they had cost her.

“Look how far Toy has come,” Emmi added.

“I’m sure Elena could have too. But she’ll never have the chance now. . . .”

The women lapsed into silence, each brooding over the sadness of the situation.

Flo scratched her head. “I’m trying to get this straight. The agency tried to place the baby with relatives first. And no one claimed her? No uncles or aunts?”

Cara shook her head. “No one.”

“So they contacted you.”

“Yes.”

“Extraordinary.” Flo smirked. “I’m guessing they did an assessment to determine you were, as they say, fit and willing?”

“Oh, yes,” Cara replied with an eye roll. “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d pass the grade. A single woman in my fifties. On the one hand, getting older isn’t easy on the ego. But on the other hand, I can be proud that I’m financially stable and”—she lifted her brows in mock modesty—“relatively mature. We older parents have devoted decades to building careers and are now ready to say yes to being parents.”

She took a long sip of her coffee and set the mug back on the table. “And a lot of us are women like me who’ve spent years trying. Infertility treatments, waiting and waiting, only to be disappointed. The heartbreak. The money spent. The years wasted. All those years dreaming and hoping. Then giving up. And then suddenly this . . .” Even now, after all these months, the realization had the power to give her pause. “This opportunity to be a mother came out of nowhere. I was speechless. A deer caught in the headlights. I swear I couldn’t breathe for days while I agonized over the decision.”