Laying of Hands Read online

  “Maribel,” Adel said softly. “Dr. Myers said to never forget that this was not your choice and it was not your fault. She wants you to know there’s a difference between having sex and being sexually assaulted against your will. You didn’t choose to share yourself with someone else that day, you were assaulted. Those are two different things.”

  Maribel’s face softened, and she met Adel’s eyes. “So, it doesn’t count?”

  Adel smiled. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t count.”

  Maribel nodded, her eyes shut tight against the tears, as Hannah squeezed her hand softly and left them alone in the room.

  An hour later, after Maribel had walked through the front doors and disappeared into the busy stream of rush-hour traffic, Adel finally gathered her bags from behind the front desk.

  “Sorry about your suitcases.” The receptionist, in faded Disney scrubs, glanced up at Adel as she squirted a white pile of gardenia lotion into her palm. “It’s my responsibility to keep things safe around here.”

  Adel thanked her and hid a smile as she wedged her rolling bag out from behind the front desk and into the waiting area as the door buzzed open in front of her. She’d started to regret packing so much stuff, but her editor had been worryingly vague about how long she’d actually have to be on location for this assignment. It had been originally assigned to a senior reporter who had prepped for it for months, but he’d had a sudden heart attack the week before and was unable to fly. Which worked out well for her. A story like this was a huge opportunity that could land her name on the cover if she nailed it, and that was the holy grail of anyone in the magazine industry, especially in Manhattan.

  The late afternoon sun was intense, even for early June, and hovered above the street in a dense gold haze that instantly enveloped her as she stepped outside the doors. Adel parked her suitcases on the sidewalk and opened her Uber app before she realized the address was buried in the bottom of her laptop bag. She let it slip from her shoulder to the crook of her elbow as a taxi whizzed by, searching the bottom of the bag with her fingertips until she found the crumpled notepad she’d scribbled it into. The wind picked up and ruffled the pages as she flipped to the last page and typed the address into the app with one hand.

  She glanced up to pull her luggage closer to the side of the building, and something at the end of the building caught her eye. Long, dark blond hair blowing past the edge of the brick building, only to fall and rise again with the next gust like an ocean wave breaking on the shore. The traffic waned just enough for Adel to hear muffled crying from the same direction, and she sighed as she clicked off her phone without finalizing her ride.

  She leaned against the wall of the building, rubbing her temples and looking longingly at the specials board at the diner across the street. The short flight she thought she was signing up for had been delayed that morning, so she’d spent the first part of the day in the airport, and the second she’d walked off the plane she’d picked up the call from a volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood. The clinic location where they needed the interpreter was Lockwood, New York, where she was headed for the assignment anyway, so she quickly accepted and headed for the taxi rank outside the airport, dragging her luggage behind her, the vague possibility of a late lunch forgotten in the rush.

  Adel spoke fluent Spanish and Portuguese, but it was the fact that it was a call for a Portuguese interpreter that ended up being the deciding factor in accepting the call. Her own family was Portuguese, from Mystic, Connecticut, and she’d seen firsthand how difficult it was for the poorer community with limited English to get adequate health care, especially in the recent political climate surrounding immigration. All in all, it had been a much longer day than she’d planned, and all she wanted to do now was to get to where she was going, order a massive pizza, and watch trash TV. Crime documentaries, preferably, but after the day she’d had, she could even zone out to one of those car-crash Real Housewives of Orange County reruns.

  She glanced down the side of the building again. The hair had stopped blowing around the corner but she still heard sobbing. Enough to know that it was a woman.

  Fuck.

  Adel hiked her bag back up on her shoulder and scraped the wheels of her suitcases behind her over the cracks in the sidewalk as she approached the corner of the building. When she looked around it, a young woman sat sobbing against the side of the building, her knees pulled up to her face, the wind still picking up her hair and dropping it around her shoulders, her long skirt pooled like water around the white Keds on her feet.

  Grace felt the presence of someone else rounding the corner but decided not to look up and draw attention to herself, her entire body tensing as she silently willed them to just move on.

  “Hey. Are you okay?”

  The voice was surprisingly gentle, but Grace didn’t respond, just nodded slightly, her forehead still pressed to her knees. There was a heavy pause. Grace held her breath.

  “Are you sure?”

  Lifting her head was the last thing she wanted to do, but when she finally did look up she saw someone half leaning around the corner of the building.

  The words were out of Grace’s mouth before she thought to catch them. “What are you doing?”

  The woman leaned back and sank down to Grace’s eye level before she replied. Her skin tone was deeper than Grace’s by a few shades, she wore slim khakis and a black denim shirt, and her dark hair just skimmed her broad shoulders. Grace realized suddenly that she was staring, but it was suddenly impossible to look away from the kind crinkles at the edges of the woman’s amber eyes.

  “You know what? I think we may have met.” The woman nodded toward the front of the building. “You were just in the clinic, right?”

  Grace nodded, then swiped at her cheeks with her palm and pulled the length of her hair over one shoulder. Her stomach sank as she realized that the only thing that mattered was to put as much space as possible between herself and anyone who’d seen her in a Planned Parenthood.

  “I appreciate you stopping.” Grace squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “But I can’t talk to you.” A red convertible passed them on the street, kicking up the leaves settled at the edge of the sidewalk. “I just need to forget that today ever happened.”

  “Okay.” The woman nodded, her gaze intense, but strangely soft. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  An unusually loud grumble from her stomach interrupted at that moment, and they both looked at each other and smiled, then laughed when another rumble erupted, this one lingering for an insane amount of time.

  “Well,” the woman said. “Either I’m about to give birth to an alien, or I might die if I don’t get some of whatever they’re cooking over there.”

  They both glanced across the street to the small diner with a pink-and-white-striped awning and poster boards taped in the windows announcing the specials, faded and curling at the edges. The air held the faint scent of grilling meat, slowly melting into the haze of late afternoon heat.

  The woman looked back at Grace and smiled. “So, what’s your name?”

  “Um.” Grace hesitated, everything inside her screaming at her not to answer that question. “Grace.”

  “Well, my name is Adel.” Adel stood, extending her hand with a nod in the direction of the diner. “I’m new in town and it would be downright rude to make me eat alone, so I guess you’re my dinner date.”

  “Date?” Grace looked up, startled. “I can’t…”

  Adel smiled, still holding out her hand. “I don’t mean that literally. Although if you’ve somehow found me a decent patty melt, that’s a definite possibility.”

  Grace hesitated again, then looked around before she reached up and let Adel pull her to her feet.

  “Don’t worry, I’m kidding.” Adel flashed a wide smile with perfect deep dimples on each side. “Let’s go eat.”

  Grace glanced nervously to both sides as they walked across the street and through the smudged double gl
ass doors into the diner. A yellowed postcard taped to the cash register directed them to “Seat Yourselfs,” so Grace followed Adel as she led them to a small booth in the corner by the windows.

  A rip in the black Naugahyde booth audibly scraped the back of Adel’s jeans as she sat down and handed Grace one of the menus tucked behind the glass sugar container. Grace glanced out the window as two women passed, at least until she remembered where she was, and dropped her eyes back to the table. When she finally looked up, she realized Adel had never taken a menu.

  “Are you not eating?”

  “Oh, I’m definitely eating.” Adel smiled and nodded toward the front door. “I’m getting that patty melt on the specials board outside.”

  Grace took another look at the menu and tucked it back behind the sugar. “So, what’s a patty melt?”

  Adel clicked off her cell phone screen and laid it on the table. “Are you kidding me with this?”

  The waitress, a round woman in acid-wash pleated jeans and a western shirt with pearl snaps down the front, stepped up to their table, her pen poised above her order pad. A worn brown nametag introduced her as Doris.

  “Afternoon, girls. What can I get ya?”

  The curls in her gray hair were perfectly round tubes stacked in neat rows across her head, as if she’d just slid the curlers out the side and varnished it into place with a slick of Final Net hairspray.

  Grace hesitated, then asked for grilled cheese and a Coke, which she wasn’t even sure she’d seen on the menu. Adel ordered the patty melt with extra sauce.

  “Smart,” Doris said, sticking the end of the pen in her mouth and tearing the order off the pad. “Those assholes wouldn’t know how to sauce up a decent patty melt if it was the only thing they had to do all damn day.”

  Grace couldn’t quite suppress a smile as the waitress left to slam the order down in the kitchen window and ring the bell with equal force. “What’s this sauce that everyone’s so passionate about?”

  “Wow. You really haven’t had a patty melt, have you?” Adel shrugged off her jacket and rolled up the sleeve of her black denim shirt to her elbows. “Actually, I don’t know the answer there. I’m not sure anyone really does.”

  “Well, what does it taste like?”

  Grace watched as Adel’s eyes settled onto hers, then moved slowly to her lips and lingered.

  “Do I have something on my face?” Grace brushed her fingertip under her eye. “An eyelash?”

  Adel looked quickly up to meet her eyes. “Sorry, no, I just lost my train of thought. It’s been a long day, to say the least.”

  She glanced over Grace’s shoulder toward the entrance as a cash register door slammed shut, followed by muffled voices as a group of diners made their way out the door and onto the sidewalk. “A patty melt is really just a hamburger patty in a sandwich. It’s the sauce that makes it, but it’s hard to describe. It tastes like mayo, ketchup…and relish, maybe?”

  Grace smiled, pulling her fork and knife out of their white paper bag and laying them on the table. “So you’re saying I’m not missing much?”

  “Keep talking, newbie.” Adel smiled. “You’ll be begging me to switch plates with me after one bite.”

  Grace looked out the window toward the clinic, her smile slowly fading. The silence settled between them for a long moment, until Doris brought their drinks and rolled her eyes at the bell that clanged at the order window the second they hit the table.

  Grace unwrapped her straw and sank it into her glass. “You saw me in the clinic, didn’t you?”

  Adel nodded but didn’t say anything else. Grace jumped when the bell clanged against the glass door as another couple strolled in, and she remembered Adel had been behind the counter in the waiting area. “Why were you there?”

  “I’m a volunteer interpreter with Planned Parenthood.” Adel pulled her staff card out of her wallet and held it up. “Usually I get called in on an as-needed basis in Manhattan, where I’m based, but my branch happened to see a request come through here in Lockwood and knew I’d be close to the area, so she put me in touch.”

  Grace nodded, tracing a scratch in the tabletop with her fingertip. “I was wondering why you disappeared down the hall without them calling your name.”

  Adel just nodded, and Grace felt her watching as she twisted an empty straw wrapper tightly around her finger.

  “I left right after you got there.”

  The wrapper split and fell apart around her finger. Grace picked up the pieces and closed them into her fist.

  “Why did you leave?” Adel lowered her head to catch her eye and smiled. “And yes, I realize it’s none of my damn business.”

  Grace laughed suddenly, letting the pieces of wrapper flutter out of her hand to the table. Adel reached out and swept them aside, replacing them with her own unused straw. Grace looked up and smiled, peeling the wrapper carefully and setting it aside.

  “Well, I almost didn’t get to. The receptionist was unpacking like a stack of random suitcases in front of the doors, but I managed to squeeze past her.”

  She started to say something else but stopped herself, then twisted the soft plastic of the straw around the same finger. Adel was silent, listening as if Grace was still talking. She wasn’t. But something about Adel made her want to.

  “I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but it just seemed like my only shot, and if I didn’t take it, I wouldn’t get another one.”

  Doris appeared out of nowhere with their plates, settling them onto the cracked Formica tabletop with a clatter and disappearing again without a word.

  “Why do you say that?” Adel pulled the patty melt plate over to her side. “Your only shot at what?”

  “I shouldn’t be talking about it. I need to just forget it.” Grace sat back in the booth and met Adel’s eyes for the first time since she’d brought it up. Tears crowded the words in her throat, and she looked up to the ceiling as she spoke. “I don’t know why I can’t just be normal.”

  Adel paused, then dipped a French fry into the ramekin of sauce beside her sandwich and offered it to Grace, who ate it, then quickly took another fry off her own plate and dipped it into Adel’s sauce. It was a while before she spoke again, her sandwich forgotten in front of her.

  “I’m engaged.” She pressed the aluminum edge of the table with her thumb, watching it slowly fade to white. “I just found out.”

  Grace watched as Adel glanced at her bare ring finger and picked up half her sandwich. “I’d say congratulations, but you don’t look too excited about that.” Adel paused, patty melt suspended in mid-air. “What do you mean you ‘just found out’?”

  “I am. Excited, I mean.” Grace stared out the window as a crowded group of cyclists sped by, then disappeared around the corner of the building. “Or I will be. That’s what everyone says, anyway.”

  Adel nodded in the direction of Grace’s plate. “Based on the look on your face, I’m guessing that grilled cheese might end up being more exciting than your wedding.”

  Grace picked it up and took a bite. The golden brown, buttery bread offered a satisfying crunch as it gave way to the center melt. She smiled and savored the bite, eyes closed, then took a long sip of her Coke.

  “Well,” she said, examining it leisurely at eye level before taking another bite. “That certainly raises the bar.”

  “Damn, girl.” Adel shook her head and picked her sandwich back up. “You look like you appreciate good food.”

  “Always.”

  Adel smiled and sat back in the booth. “Well, you don’t know me, and you’ll probably never see me again…” She paused. “So you might as well tell me what’s got you so freaked out you ran out of the clinic.”

  Grace dipped another fry in the sauce that Adel had pushed to the center of the table. She was quiet for more than a minute, then looked up and met her eyes.

  “What do you think it is?” She paused again. The fact that she’d secretly tried to get birth control she knew was
forbidden suddenly seemed like a surreal, faded dream. “I mean, the reason I left?”

  Adel smiled, leaning back and stretching her arm out onto the back of her booth.

  “Well, it’s entirely possible you found me so attractive you knew you needed to leave before you jumped over the front desk and kissed me.”

  Grace stopped, her sandwich frozen in her hand halfway between her mouth and her plate.

  “What?” she said softly as a slow flush crept up her neck. She laid down her grilled cheese and gripped the edge of the table with both hands, her jaw suddenly tense. The chilling sensation of being suddenly naked, as if everyone in the diner was suddenly staring, washed over her like water laced with shards of ice. “Why would you say that to me?”

  “I’m kidding.” Adel sat back up quickly and held Grace’s eyes, her voice suddenly soft. “I was just joking, I promise.”

  Grace looked around the dining room, then picked up her jean jacket with shaking fingers. “Thank you for what you did, Adel, but I have to go.”

  The reality of what she’d just done hit her like a blind bullet from behind, taking the memory of breath with it. She stopped, her eyes closed tightly against the panic squeezing her heart from every direction. Just by allowing herself to be seen at Planned Parenthood, she’d just given this stranger the power to derail her entire life. Or, if that information reached the right people, end it.

  She struggled with a tangle of bills in her jacket pocket but Adel shook her head.

  “Don’t worry about that.” Adel met her eyes for just a moment before Grace looked away. “I’m just sorry I upset you.”

  Grace slid out of the booth like it was on fire, pivoting sideways to avoid running into a group of giggling teenage girls on their way into the diner. She glanced up at Adel again before she slipped out the glass front door, where the wind picked up her hair and spun it around her shoulders like a makeshift curtain as she ran down the sidewalk to the corner and disappeared.