I turned to face my grandmother, the woman who raised me, whom I trusted and loved more than anyone else. “What happened, Bibi?”
She heaved a sigh, her shelf of a bosom rising under her housedress. “I wish I knew, honey. But Marie is closed off to protect herself.” She gave me an arch look. “Just like you.”
After seventeen years, I was used to Bibi’s gentle lectures on how I needed to open my heart to other experiences. But as wise as she was, she didn’t understand. I had to work hard to make something of myself and prove that I was worth the choice Mama made to keep me.
Opening my heart is how the pain gets in.
“Did you see your boyfriend again this visit?” Bibi asked after a minute.
“Jalen is not my boyfriend. We have an understanding.”
“An understanding. How romantic.” She frowned over her knitting. “I’d feel better if you came home crying over how you were going to miss that boy and wondering how you’d survive until the next time you saw him.”
“Ugh, no thanks. I don’t get mushy over boys.”
My mother’s rejection was enough to contend with, thanks very much. Bibi said a woman’s heart was like a catacomb. Mine was more like a trashed hotel room I was trying to keep locked. No way was I going to let some guy move in and wreak his havoc too.
Bibi hmmphed. “You two were careful, I presume.”
“Of course.”
Careful to use protection and careful not to let Jalen think I was about to get serious. But I didn’t need to worry. He and I had known each other for years, our friendship growing into experimental messing around since we were fourteen. He was the quintessential friends-with-benefits: hot, smart, not interested in catching feelings. Just the way I needed him to be.
“Always careful, my Shiloh,” Bibi said to her knitting. “Careful, driven, ambitious.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. And on that note, unless you need anything, I’m going to hit the garage.”
“Already? You just got home.”
“I have online orders waiting to fill.”
She heaved a sigh. “Working day and night. My very own Tiana.”
I grinned. The Princess and the Frog was another of Bibi’s favorite themes. The cute Disney movie had somehow become a metaphor for my life.
“She got her restaurant, didn’t she?” I said.
“She also learned to make room for love along the way.”
“Might I remind you that Tiana was also—briefly—a frog. It’s a fairytale. This is the real world.”
Bibi sniffed, needles hooking and poking. “Be that as it may, I don’t like the idea of you in that garage all day, every day. It’s not healthy and has to stop.”
“Stop?” My heart dropped. Ethel felt the tension coursing through me and jumped off my lap. “But…I need the garage. It’s where I work. It’s—”
“Not good enough for you,” Bibi said, smiling to herself. “Which is why I put an ad in the paper for a handyman. I’m going to hire someone to build you a workshop.”
“A workshop. Where?”
“In our backyard.”
I blinked. Aside from the vegetable garden and small patio, our yard looked like Northern California’s version of a tropical jungle.
Bibi read my thoughts as she so often did. “This man can clear the overgrowth and build you a little place to work with your soldering tools and chemical polishes and what have you. I won’t have you breathing in all those fumes another minute.”
I sat back against the couch, envisioning it already: my own little space with a proper table that could handle a bench pin instead of the teetering old card table I had in the garage. I could get caught up on my Etsy orders while making the pieces that would eventually fill a brick-and-mortar shop in downtown Santa Cruz. That had always been my dream. Someday. Now, thanks to this amazing woman, someday just got a little bit closer.
Then the vision vanished like a mirage.
“Bibi, we can’t afford it.”
“Don’t you worry about the money. I took an account of my savings and there’s plenty. And what am I going to do with it? Travel the world? I’m happy as a clam right here.” She smiled. “It won’t be a chateau, so don’t get your hopes up. But you need it, Shiloh. You have incredible talent—that was obvious a long time ago. And while I tease you about making room for more in your life, I know how important your work is to you. This isn’t some hobby.”
“No,” I said softly. “It is my life.”
Her hand came up and found my cheek. “I want to do whatever I can—no matter how small—to bring you closer to your dreams. Even if it means I’ll see you less than I do now.”
I threw my arms around Bibi’s shoulders. “I can’t thank you enough. But I can help pay. The handyman or the materials—”
“I forbid it. You need every dollar for your shop. This is my gift to you, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
I hugged her tighter. “Thank you, Bibi.”
“You’re welcome, child. Now go. I know you’re itching to get back to work. I can feel it running through your bones.”
I laughed and kissed her cheek. “I love you.”
“Love you, baby girl.” She blew me a kiss and went back to her knitting, humming along to Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted, and Black,” a knowing, satisfied smile on her weathered face.
I hurried to the garage where my materials were crammed into bins that lined one wall. A tiny worktable butted against Bibi’s ancient Buick that was mine now. The single bulb wasn’t enough light, but I hated working with the garage door open. I felt exposed, my business visible to anyone walking their dog or taking out the trash. Working in the privacy of my backyard would be a dream. A level up.
And the next level is my own shop.
I put in my headphones. Rihanna sang in my ear as I sat down at the table in front of my latest project. Before I’d left for Louisiana, I’d braided lengths of brass and copper for an eventual bracelet. Feeling at home on my stool, I slid the rough bracelet down a mandrel, then took up a rubber mallet. Hammering lightly, I shaped the coils of metal on the cylindrical rod until it was perfectly round and the size I wanted.
In minutes, I had another finished piece for a woman named Christine in Texas who’d ordered off my Etsy page. That website had been exactly what I needed to get my work out there and build some revenue for my eventual shop. By next summer, even.
Thanks to Bibi.
Love for that woman filled me up, making me warm and erasing the vestiges of Mama’s cold shoulder. Bibi was the only person I loved without reservation.
I turned over her words as I turned the new bracelet around and around in the light—her warning that I’d become closed off like my mother. Stuck behind a wall of our own making and lost at the same time. But what else could I do? Every brick in Mama’s wall was one I added to mine.
It was the only way I knew how to survive that my own mother hated me.
Chapter Two
“Ronan?”
I turned toward the sound of my name, scanning the baggage claim crowd, and there he was—Nelson Wentz. My only living relative.