Goldie had spent the entire service bawling her eyes out and moaning Pippa’s name under her breath every few minutes. If I hadn’t already been dealing with a broken heart, the sounds of her grief would have broken my heart clear in half. I knew that during whatever moments of clarity Goldie’d had during the service, she’d most likely prayed to the Virgin Mary to deliver Pippa into the loving arms of the couple who was so desperate to adopt her.
Jennifer and Daniel Warner were sitting across the aisle from us in the opposite pew. I’d noticed Jenn glance over at the baby every few minutes during the service. She kept her hands either clutched together in her lap or folded inside Daniel’s larger ones between them. I had very mixed feelings about the Warners adopting Pippa. On the one hand, I knew they’d been trying for a long time to have a second child, and they were already wonderful parents to their six-year-old son Nathan. On the other hand, I felt a proprietary ownership of Pippa. I’d been there for Adriana’s pregnancy, Pippa’s delivery, and the first four months of her life.
I’d envisioned helping Adriana raise her—not as a parent, obviously, but a good friend. Adriana had been alone and had never revealed who the baby’s father was. She finally confessed the truth about her pregnancy to me the night she died, and she’d made me swear to make sure Pippa knew how much she was wanted.
Adriana and I hadn’t been close friends until she came to me for care during her pregnancy. I’d known her, of course. Everyone in Hobie had known her. And she’d been in some of my high school classes growing up. But it wasn’t until her prenatal care and subsequent delivery of Pippa that we’d become close. The long hours of her labor had been a bonding experience unlike any I’d ever known. She’d told me all kinds of things she’d never told another soul.
Once the baby was here, I’d become her support system. She was alone, and I knew there was no way a single parent should have to handle everything on her own.
Adriana had just been settling into a routine and needing less help with the baby when she’d gotten the pulmonary embolism that had suddenly ended her life. With Goldie’s help, I’d immediately taken over Pippa’s care until social services had forced us to turn her over to them. Luckily, it had only taken several hours to process her back into Goldie’s care, and I lived in fear of what it would be like when I no longer had access to her whenever I wanted.
I followed Goldie out of the church, noticing the punk dude was no longer sitting in the back pew. Once I stepped into the bright sun of the churchyard, I spotted him standing off to the side, speaking to Honovi Baptiste, an attorney in town. As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, I noticed the man with the blue-and-purple hair was actually strikingly beautiful in a way that looked familiar to me. Well, he would have been beautiful if he weren’t sporting a scowl on his face and wearing clothes that looked like he’d borrowed them from someone’s great uncle Melvin.
Despite the ridiculous button-down shirt and khaki trousers, the man was the furthest thing from a traditional Catholic churchgoer. His hair was short and dark on the back and sides but long on top and colored a rich purple with alternating stripes of deep turquoise. He ran his hand through it in apparent frustration, which made the colored locks ripple like an animation of a My Little Pony shaking out his mane. His ear was lined with tiny spikes and hoops, and as I walked closer, I noticed a small silver barbell through one dark eyebrow, a small loop in one of his nostrils, and twin piercings on his full bottom lip. He had tattoos peeking out from his cuffs and collar as well as on his hands and fingers. I couldn’t help but wonder what ink and piercings might be hidden by his clothes, and the thought made my dick twitch. I ground my teeth at the inappropriateness of my response to this absurd character at my friend’s goddamned funeral.
Fair or not, I blamed the asshole for my response to him. He should have stayed away from Adriana’s service and met up with his lawyer some other time. He probably needed someone to defend him from a petty crime. Maybe the outfit was meant to make him look like an upstanding citizen in court. As if that were possible.
Before I had a chance to lead Goldie to where I’d parked my truck, I heard Honovi call out to me.
“West, come over here, will you?” he said. “You too, Mrs. Banks.”