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Ihad no medical training to base my prediction on, but I had a feeling the woman sitting in the backseat with her daughter and grandchild might not make it.
“We’ll go straight to hospital,” I said to Penelope after glancing over my shoulder and seeing Julie, or DeDe—I’d forgotten which was her real name—was asleep like her mum. “You take the daughter and baby to the apartment. It’s not wise to take an infant into a place where they might catch something.”
“Good thinking, and again, thank you so much for doing this.”
“She means something to you.”
Pen nodded. “From the first time I saw her, I felt like she and I were destined to meet. Maybe this is why.”
Like I had every day for the previous four, I escorted DeDe—whose name I was now certain of—inside the hospital, telling her I’d be in the lounge, waiting for her. When she was greeted by a nurse as soon as we arrived, I feared the worst.
A few minutes later, it was confirmed that Cherrie Smith had passed away from complications from sepsis after undergoing surgery.
I immediately called Pen. “I’ll stay here with DeDe for as long as is needed,” I assured her.
“Thank you, Brand,” she reiterated like she had so many times. And, as I had every time, I told her I was glad to be able to help.
The truth was, I also felt as though DeDe was meant to come into our lives. I hadn’t shared that feeling with Penelope, but I believed it just as much as she did.
A week later, when Pen went to check on her and her daughter, they were gone.
“I get it, you know,” she said when she told me. “I hope that someday she won’t have to run anymore.”
“Do you think she’s hiding from the baby’s father?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t say why, but I don’t.”
“You’re up early,” I said a couple of weeks later when I came up behind her as she stood in the kitchen, looking at a date book. I kissed the back of her neck and, when she still seemed lost in thought, poured myself a cup of coffee. “Warm up?” I asked.
“Please.”
I got some for her, then sat at the counter, next to where she stood. “What’s on your mind, Butterfly?”
She groaned. “The holidays. I hate them. I mean, I don’t hate them, but you’d think, after all these years, my mother would stop asking if I plan to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with her in the Bahamas. Every single year, I say no. At least I haven’t heard from my dad, bugging me to come to LA.”
“Have you heard anything at all from him?”
Pen shook her head. “I probably won’t until he and Hail break up, which I expect will happen any minute now.”
“You usually spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with the tribe, yes?”
“We did when we were all single. Now that just about everyone has kids and grandparents are included, it’s chaotic. There’s a plan to meet in California since three of the five of us live there.”
I pulled her onto my lap. “Where would you spend Christmas if you could do it anywhere in the world?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin…”
“Let’s check. The top ten places in the world to spend the holiday. Prague, the Maldives, Tromsø, Aspen, Rome, Salzburg, Honolulu, and the North Pole.”
“The real North Pole? I thought it was somewhere in the Arctic Ocean.”
I shuddered. “Strike that one.”
“No, to Honolulu. No offense to Hawaii, but it doesn’t seem very Christmas-y.”
“Shall we strike the Maldives for the same reason?”
Pen looked over her shoulder. “Don’t be too hasty with that one, but no, on Rome.”