12. Stella

12

STELLA

T he shuffle of feet on linoleum has me looking up from the night desk. You never know when one of the residents is going to go for a late-night wander. But it's only Terry, wheeling the cleaning cart out of the ward.

"Night night Stella." He lifts a hand, and I wave in response.

"Night Terry. Drive safe."

He uses his card to buzz through the doors, and they slide back into place behind him.

I hear him opening the cleaning closet and the squeaky wheels of the cart as it rolls away for the night. Then he's gone out the main doors and into the night.

Silence settles over the nursing home, broken by the occasional heavy snore from one of the residents.

The other night warden is on his late break, and I'll wait for him to come back before I do a walk around.

I grab my phone and pull up a picture I took of me and Will from the first day of the festival. We're smiling, and he's got the bruise on his face. I wonder how it healed and if he's got a scar.

The phone screen goes dead, and I rummage in my purse for my charger. I come up empty handed. I must have left it at home.

I stuff my useless phone in my purse and sigh.

The night shift pays more, and it also gives me time to think. And I've been doing a lot of thinking in the last six months.

The first few days after I left Will, it felt like my heart was bruised. I never knew one person could affect me so much.

Charlie had a respiratory virus, and while he wasn't hospitalized, he was ill for two weeks. It kept me busy at Cleo's helping with Nina and around the house so she could take care of Charlie.

Then she got a call from the agency asking if she could take a kid in who needed an emergency bed. With me taking up the spare room, she had to refuse. It pains Cleo to refuse any of the foster kids who she's asked to care for.

It was time for me to move on.

It was only after I left Cleo's place that I found out what Will had left me growing inside my belly.

It was too late to go back, and I didn't want Cleo to think ill of me. I've been one fuck up after another since our foster care days, and an unwanted pregnancy was just another cliche of foster kid behavior.

Not that it was unwanted. There's comfort in knowing I'll always have a part of Will with me, even if he can never know.

My parole expired that week also, so I left the west coast and headed inland looking for work.

It was difficult to find someone who would give me a chance, but I finally found work in a nursing home on the outskirts of Salt Lake City.

I found a cheap apartment to rent, and for a while it was enough.

But as the months have gone by and my body changes, swelling with the baby inside me, it terrifies me to think of doing this on my own.

Cleo has reached out to me several times, but I don't take her calls. I let her know I'm okay, and that's it. If she knew my situation, she'd only worry about me, and Cleo has enough people to worry about.

She told me Will turned up at the Underground Crows HQ looking for me. That he rode all the way from North Carolina, practically from coast to coast.

When she told me that my heart soared, only to crash down a second later. I can't burden Will with a child. Not with my past. It could end his career.

There's something about the quiet of the air tonight that makes my heart feel especially sore. Loneliness creeps up on you, and tonight it's overwhelming.

I long to speak to Cleo, to hear her voice and hear how the kids are doing.

I reach for my phone before remembering the battery's dead. Instead, I pick up the work phone and dial Cleo's number .

She answers briskly. Charlie cries in the background, and there's the sound of a television playing music from a kids' cartoon.

"It's Stella."

"Stella!" Cleo's relief is palpable, and it brings tears to my eyes. There's someone in the world who cares about me. "Where are you?"

I'm not ready to tell her that. Not till after I have the baby. If I tell her now, she'll insist I come back, and the last thing she needs is someone else to worry about.

"I'm fine," I say, pretending to mishear her. "How are the kids?"

She sighs. "They're fine. Good. We've got another boy staying with us. Just arrived last night. But he's settling in well, and Nina's great with him."

I listen to her chatter about her family and bite my cheek to stop from crying. Despite how tired she sounds, she also sounds happy. Cleo was made to be a mom, and the fact that she's taking in foster kids too makes my heart swell. She always did have her head screwed on. Much more than me.

"Have you been in touch with Will? That man's crazy about you."

My heart skips a beat. "Why? What did he say?"

"It's not what he said. It's what he does. He calls me every week, Stella, to ask about you. The man's crazy for you. If you're not interested, then fine. But tell him. Put the poor guy out of his misery. He's driving me nuts."

She's right. I should harden up and message Will. Cleo sent me his number, and I saved it in my phone. She asked if I could give him my number, but I said no. I thought the guy would get the hint that I didn't want to see him. But he's persistent.

"He's a good guy. If you insist on running somewhere, why not run to him?"

Because if he knew what I really was, he'd want nothing to do with me. Because I'm not worthy of him, but I'm too scared to tell him, because if I allow myself to speak to him again, to make contact, I don't think I'd be strong enough to walk away a second time.

"Maybe." I nibble on the end of my fingernail.

There's a shout in the background and muffled voices. "I gotta go. The new kid just hit Nina, and I need to sort this out. Poor thing, he's only five and doesn't understand what's happening. He's scared and lashing out."

"Of course."

"Call me again, please."

She hangs up, and I sink back into silence. The baby kicks, and I run my hand over my belly. In a few months, I'm going to have a child of my own. And I wonder if I can be even half the mother Cleo is.