When August Ends(77)

The next two in a row seemed to match. “Livin’ La Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin and Gerardo’s “Rico Suave.”

“You have a thing for Latin men?” I teased.

She rolled her eyes, probably just wanting this to be over, and remained quiet as I continued to plow through her library.

Next up was the theme song from Friends, “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts. That one was tolerable enough to sit through.

I got all excited when I heard the beginning of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Fuck yeah! But my hope was squelched when I realized it wasn’t Nirvana at all. It was Weird Al Yankovic: “Smells Like Nirvana.”

“Oh, hell no.” I laughed.

Heather started laughing.

“I’m crying uncle.” I handed her back the phone and tickled her. “You’re lucky I love you.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE




* * *



HEATHER

FIVE MONTHS LATER




Heather and Noah Do the World had been the time of my life. I doubted anything could ever top these past months. The experiences Noah had gifted me I would take to the grave.

In Australia, we’d visited the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House. From there, we’d traveled to Hong Kong, where we walked along the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade and visited their version of Disneyland.

After Asia, we traveled to Africa and saw the Sahara dunes of Morocco and the pyramids of Egypt.

Europe was our second-to-last stop but where we spent the majority of our time. We spent several weeks living in a rented apartment in Paris. We visited the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and ate our way through the city.

After leaving France, we took a train to Italy and toured Rome and Venice before heading to London.

No amount of college education could have possibly made up for what I’d learned about the different cultures I experienced firsthand.

And now we’d come to the final stop on our trip, a place near and dear to Noah’s heart: Havana, Cuba.

I’d fallen in love with his photos from here when I’d stalked his website. So when he’d asked me where I wanted to end our journey, this is what I chose.

Turns out Noah had been made an honorary family member the last time he’d visited this country. He called Ana “Abuelita,” which affectionately means grandma in Spanish. She’d insisted we stay in her home instead of getting a hotel. Every night she cooked us authentic Cuban food like pork, rice and beans, and fried plantains. Then she’d whip up a delicious mango milkshake for dessert.

Noah agreed that we would stay with her, provided she let him do some work around her house. That physical labor turned out to be more extensive than we’d bargained for, so our Cuba trip stretched longer than we’d planned as we worked together out in the sun, much like we had during our summer on the lake. We knew this was the last leg of our trip, so we weren’t really in any rush to get back.

We were having the time of our lives, yet anytime Noah got even a little tired or—God forbid—complained of a headache, it put me on edge. But I knew I couldn’t live in fear of him having another rupture, so I tried to put those scary thoughts out of my mind.

When Noah and I weren’t working together on Abuelita’s house, we took in Havana’s historic sites. We visited the Gran Teatro with its amazing architecture and toured Old Havana, which was a mix of baroque and neoclassical monuments and narrow streets lined with homes. Havana was the perfect place for people watching and taking lots of photos of urban life. My travel blog had accumulated a ton of followers, and they seemed to love the images we captured here.

On the afternoon of our second-to-last day in Cuba, Noah took me to the area where he’d done the feature on the orphanage six years ago. We were just turning toward Abuelita’s car to drive back when he froze, his eyes fixed on a kid in a wheelchair across the street.

“Come on.” He took my hand and led us toward the boy, who was with a woman.

He stopped a few feet away and said, “It’s him.”

I knew instantly what he meant. “The boy from the orphanage…”

“Daniel. I would recognize his face anywhere. My God, Heather, it’s him. He looks so grown up now.”

We approached them, and Noah began speaking in Spanish. I hadn’t realized until we got to Cuba that he was pretty fluent. He knelt down to be eye-level with Daniel.

The boy reached out and touched Noah’s face. At least on some level, he seemed to remember him. Though he didn’t speak, Daniel typed something on a device that looked like an iPad. He flipped the screen around and showed us what he’d written.

Naranja.

A huge smile engulfed Noah’s face. “That’s right! Naranja. Orange. You remember! I used to bring you little oranges, clementinas.”

My heart turned to mush as Noah embraced him.

Noah continued talking to the woman and then entered some of her information into his phone.

“Bueno. Adios. Hasta ma?ana,” he said.

“Tell me what you were saying,” I said as they departed.

“She said they had to leave to get him to a doctor’s appointment. Her name is Rosita Jimenez. She adopted Daniel about three years ago, so that would be a couple of years after I visited. All this time, they’ve lived right down the street from where the orphanage used to be. He was placed in foster care and ended up with her. He’s been doing great and making a lot of progress. Since he can’t speak very well, he uses that device to communicate. Even though he was in a wheelchair today, he’s able to walk some now. I got her information so we can go visit them before we leave tomorrow. I want to bring him a whole bunch of clementines.”