Run To You

voice mail canceling her appointment and dialed her mom.
    “Hi Mom. What’s up?” she asked, and sat on the end of the bed.
    “Abuela got a jump in her left eye.”
    Stella got a pain in her forehead. She couldn’t keep track of all her grandmother’s superstitions. “Maybe it’s old age.”
    “She said you’re in trouble. Are you?”
    “Well, not really . . . but . . . I’m meeting with Sadie.” It still sounded weird to say it out loud.
    “Your sister? When? How did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I’m meeting her tomorrow or the next day.” She got more comfortable on the bed and started at the beginning. Well, kind of the beginning. She left out Ricky and the Gallo brothers. She didn’t want her mother to worry or Abuela’s eye to jump out of her head. “So I’m just chilling in New Orleans tonight and heading to Texas in the morning. It’s a little over seven hundred miles so I don’t know if we’ll make it all the way.”
    “Who is this man you’re with? I don’t like you traveling with a man you don’t know.”
    “I told you. His name is Beau and he’s a friend of Sadie’s fiancé. We stay in different rooms when we stop.” Except for tonight. “He’s fine, Mom.” In more ways than one.
    “You don’t know him to say that. Only four days.”
    It felt like longer. Maybe because they’d spent so much time together, but it felt like she’d known him weeks, months, maybe longer. How long did it take to know a man well enough to know the way he walked and talked or sat in stony silence? How long to know that his rare smiles reached the corners of his eyes? How long to know the way he ate? Like he had so little time and so much to chow. How long to know the touch of his hand and the way his shoulder felt beneath her palm? How long to know his eyes turned a deeper shade of gray when he looked at your mouth? How long to know the touch of his mouth made your insides feel all squishy? “He’s a retired Marine sergeant, Mom. He’s safe.” How long before you knew you wanted to feel more?
    “Give me his phone number in case something happens and I can’t contact you.”
    Right. “He’s not here right now. I haven’t seen him all day.” She failed to mention she had his business card and his number saved in her phone.
    “Did he leave you stranded in New Orleans?”
    “No.” He hadn’t left her stranded at her apartment or at MIA or dumped her at his mother’s or at the Hard Rock. “He’s helping out a friend. He’ll be back.” She glanced at the clock. It was almost seven. “I’ll call you when I get to Texas.”
    “Are you worried?”
    For all that her mother had her faults and certainly drove Stella crazy, she also knew her. “About Sadie?”
    “Yes. She will love you, Estella.”
    She swallowed and said through forced laugher, “Of course she will. To know me is to love me.”
    “Don’t joke. I think this is all a sign.”
    The pain in Stella’s forehead spread. “What sign?”
    “We’ll have to wait and see. It’s Father’s Day.”
    It was Father’s Day? Shopping today, she’d seen the Father’s Day signs in stores but hadn’t paid enough attention to make the connection.
    “Perhaps it’s a sign from Clive that he finally wants his girls to meet.”
    Doubtful. “I’ll call you.”
    “Soon.”
    “Okay.” Father’s Day was just another day to her. “I love you, Mom.”
    “ Te quiero, Estella .”
    Stella hung up the phone and tossed it on her bed. She grabbed her shampoo and conditioner and headed for the bathroom down a short hall. Today was just another Sunday. Like all the other Father’s Days in her twenty-eight years. It was nothing to her.
    She stripped off her clothes and jumped into the shower. Warm water ran down the sides of her head and back and she closed her eyes. When she’d been told that her father was dead, she’d had little reaction. A man who didn’t want to know her didn’t deserve a reaction.
    Behind her closed lids, the backs of her eyes stung like she was going to cry or something. Cry for a man who never cried for her? For a father who never wanted to be her father?
    Why now? Why was she suddenly feeling all weepy and emotional? Why today instead of the day she’d learned of his death? Maybe because hearing from Sadie had dug at the old hurt in her soul. The hurt she’d patched over long ago, but after four days of relentless picking, she suddenly ached with old and familiar “what ifs” and