Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

I round the corner and see Jay in our booth at the end, his back to me, and I’m so ready to grab his arm and make him leave with me.

Then I realize he’s not alone.

I stop where I am, the waitress nearly slamming into me with a muttering of annoyance.

I don’t care.

My mother is sitting where I was sitting in the booth.

She’s leaning forward, panic in her eyes, saying something to Jay.

He nods but if he’s saying something back, I can’t tell.

After what happened in the bathroom, I know this can’t be a coincidence. It has to be a demon’s trick. But why is Jay indulging it?

And why do I know in my heart, the core of all I am, that this isn’t a trick at all?

This is the first time seeing my mother outside of a dream.

She’s made her way into my world this time.

I’m torn between wanting to run over to her and stay where I am, give her time to say whatever she’s saying to Jay. God I wish I could just talk to her about him, about everything. Hey mom, a lot’s happened since you’ve passed on . . .

Then she looks up and sees me. Her face falls.

She quickly gets out of the booth with preternatural grace and exits the restaurant faster than I could have predicted.

“What?” I say to myself and then start running down the restaurant after her.

I pass by Jay but don’t even look in his direction, I just keep going until I’m swinging open the door and running out into the sunshine, nearly run over by an old man in a scooter as he putters down the sidewalk.

“Watch it,” he grumbles but I pay no attention.

My mother is nowhere to be found.

I whirl around, out of breath, but all I see are tourists and storefronts, a car rolling past.

“Mom?” I cry out, disoriented as I keep spinning around in vain.

“Ada!”

Jay is bursting through the doors, grabbing my arm.

“Ada,” he says again, his grip tightening as he pulls me to him.

“My mother,” I whisper, eyes searching the street. “I saw her inside, talking to you. She just left. Why would she leave?”

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

I can only shake my head. How could she run from me?

“Ada, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jay continues and I finally meet his eyes. They are icebergs laced with disbelief.

“It was my mother’s ghost!”

“There was no one there,” he says calmly, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I was alone the whole time you were in the washroom.”

I shrug him off, refusing to be coddled. “Then it was a demon.”

“Ada, I would have seen her if it was either one. It’s in your head, okay. You said in the car you used to come here with your family when you were young—”

“No!” I cry out, squinting in the sunshine. “It was her. I saw her. You talked to her.”

“Then what was I saying?”

I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

“Then how do know I was talking to her?”

“You nodded,” I say feebly. “She was talking to you, she was scared, and you nodded like you understood.”

“I could have just been moving my head to take a sip off coffee,” he says. “Please. Ada. This is only doing you harm.”

Tears are starting to well in my eyes. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I don’t want to be the girl who can’t get over her grief, the one who breaks down all the time.

“Hey,” he says gently, brushing his thumb underneath my eyes, as if to clear the tears before they start. “Look at me, princess.”

The way he says princess is disarming. Not sarcastic, not belittling. It’s more than a term of endearment. In this moment, he’s whispering it with tenderness that makes my heart feel soft and pliable. Warm. Full.

“Let me go pay,” he says, keeping his eyes glued to mine. “We’ll go back to the hotel. I’m sure the room is ready. We’ll get some wine. Order some room service. Have a party.”

I can’t help but let out a weak laugh. “It’s, like, two p.m.”

“It’s always five o’clock somewhere,” he says. “Didn’t a President say that?”

“I think that was Jimmy Buffet.”

“The Margaritaville guy? I guess that makes sense.” He gives me a kind smile. “Come on.”

For a moment I’m terrified that he’s going to leave me on the sidewalk, that he’ll disappear into the restaurant and never come back out and I’ll be forever lost. Not a rational thought but a terrifying one all the same.

But he grabs my hand, holding it in a vice-like grip, then leads me inside. He pays the bill, throwing down one more twenty than he should, and then we go back out into the ocean air.

We’re only around the block when I mention to him what I saw—or think I saw—in the bathroom.