Page 74 of Just a Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“SO,” GRACESAIDmatter-of-factly as she heated up leftovers in the microwave. “You broke up with your man?”

The penny finally dropped. Via had been utterly bemused after the staff meeting to find Grace and Shelly practically zipping her into her coat and dragging her back to Grace’s house. Grace only lived a few blocks away from Via, so it wasn’t a huge imposition. But Via had had no idea why she’d been ushered into an unexpected dinner of leftovers in Grace’s snug little one-bedroom on Eighty-first Street.

“We couldn’t help overhearing at the meeting,” Shelly said with just the slightest bit of pink on her cheeks.

Via wondered with chagrin exactly what else they’d overheard over the last few weeks. She knew that her feelings for Sebastian couldn’t exactly have been considered covert.

“Oh. Yes. Evan and I broke up.”

“What a shame,” Grace said as she took out the container of chicken stew from the microwave, stirred it and put it back in. “Shell, would you mind slicing that bread? Via, are you the kind of girl that requires a salad at every meal?”

“Um.” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“If you are, go ahead and fix yourself one.”

Via laughed at the judgment in Grace’s tone, as if eating salad at dinner was something she wanted very little to do with. “I’ll be fine with whatever we’re having. Uh, thank you for inviting me for dinner.”

She was really stretching the meaning of the wordinvite, considering they’d basically frog-marched her to the house.

“Whenever we hear that one of our colleagues is going through a hard time, we try to have a sit-down with them,” Shelly explained, putting the bread on the table and coming back to sit next to Via.

Was that what was happening to Via? Was she going through a hard time? Via thought of the way breakups were depicted in movies. Pints of Häagen-Dazs and tears over rom-coms. She was sad over ending things with Evan, sure, but she had to admit, she hadn’t had that drafty feeling since she’d come back from upstate and packed up all his things from her apartment. She chewed her bottom lip.

“Actually, this is how we became such good friends with Sebastian,” Grace said, groaning a little as she lowered herself into the chair across from Shelly and Via. The stew steamed on the table and Via did the honors of serving up a bowl for each person. She was glad for the task because she could feel each woman’s eyes on her face and she knew that they were looking for a reaction to Sebastian’s name. “When we found out he was a widower, we had him over for dinner, told him about our husbands, and we all just sort of bonded from there.”

“He mentioned that you’d both lost your husbands. I’m so sorry about that. Was it recent?”

To Via’s dismay, Shelly’s eyes filled with tears. “Richard passed about five years ago, but it feels recent for me.”

Grace leaned across the table and squeezed Shelly’s hand, and then she pointed to a picture hanging on her kitchen wall. It was of a very young Grace and an equally young Latino man who stood behind her with his arms crossed over her chest. “Esteban died about thirty years ago. My kids are starting to get after me to date.”

Via hid her surprise. It had never occurred to her that Grace had been in an interracial marriage. But that was probably because Grace was an older white lady and Via had just made assumptions. She suddenly thought back to her lunch with Sadie when Sadie had been so surprised to hear that Via was a foster kid. It made sense in a new way now. You never could tell who someone really was unless you broke bread with them, actually stopped to listen to what they were trying to tell you.

“Thirty years is a long time,” Via mused. Unbidden, a question popped up and out of her. She didn’t mean to ask it, but maybe her conversation with Sebastian about grief had greased some internal wheels because Via didn’t feel uncomfortable asking. “Do you ever get over it?” She cleared her throat. “I lost my parents when I was twelve. And some days it feels just as hard as it was back then.”

Grace raised her eyebrows in a knowing way. “Get over it? No. Not if what you actually mean is forget about it.”

“In my experience,” Shelly chimed in, “the way I feel has changed a lot, but I can’t imagine ever getting over it. My sister wants me to date, too, just like Grace’s kids.” In an uncharacteristic show of temper, Shelly let her spoon clatter back to her bowl of stew. “What is it with people’s fascination with other people’s dating lives?”

“Shell,” Grace said in a dry tone, “what do you think we’re doing with Via right this very moment? Sticking our noses where they don’t belong.”

Via laughed. Now that Grace had actually said it out loud, any suspicions Via had had about their motives just sort of evaporated away. These were two well-meaning new friends, who were trying to support her. Could she really blame them if they wanted a little gossip as a side dish?

For some reason, she got the impression that whatever she said tonight was not going to be repeated. Her confessions were protected by these two women who’d been through plenty in their own lives. Even so, she resolved not to let on anything about how she was feeling for Sebastian.

“You don’t seem so nosy,” Via assured them.

“So...” Shelly started, laying a hand on Via’s forearm. “You’re all right, then? Not too torn up about the breakup?”

Via thought back on her last month, wanting to give an honest answer. “The first few days were really hard. You know, picking up your phone and realizing that you don’t have anyone to call.”

And realizing that you invested two years in someone who did not fit into your life. Who didn’t even want to fit into your life.

She gulped. “But I had my foster sister there with me for most of it, force-feeding me popcorn and tea and making me talk about my feelings.”

Grace and Shelly both laughed, exchanging eye contact. Via instantly understood that their bond was one of friendship and sisterhood just like hers and Fin’s.

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