No wonder all Inez did was to make sure she was physically safe and had food and water, but then had gone back into the huddle with the other soldiers. There was no time for a weak momma. Was no time to just sit and put her arms around her to let her cry and make sense of a totally insane new world. Stella and Frank Weinstein were blessed to have a son like Dan and a daughter-in-law like Heather, who made time to make sure their hearts and minds were all right. However, she couldn't even be mad.
Jesus knew that if she'd been a better mother, then maybe someone would have come over by now to check on her--and she certainly wasn't going over there while the team generals were discussing what to do. She'd already been humiliated enough time and time again with the Neteru team for making mistakes . . . last thing she wanted was to get yelled at in front of all of these people she didn't even know.
Guilt lacerated Delores as she sat on the ground, dirty, terror-stricken, tears streaming down her face, head leaned against the wall with her eyes closed. But she gave a start at the sound of someone sitting beside her.
"I'm sorry," Monty said. "I didn't mean to frighten you-- and after all we've seen, I should have announced myself."
"It's all right," Delores said in a flat monotone. "It doesn't matter. If something was that close, I was dead anyway." "How can you talk like that?" Monty said gently. His gaze was tender, his voice nonjudgmental and caring. He was the first person since her world had turned upside down that had spoken to her with any patience or understanding. Everyone else just pushed her to the side and acted like she was in the way, but he seemed to be waiting for a real answer from her.
"Because," she said after a moment. "I really don't matter.
I'm probably just here to make sure that, while they fight, nothing happens to the baby . . . but then again, look around. There're so many others that can take good care of my pumpkin. Plus, I just make people mad. Won't be long before one of these times I fall, or slip, or can't keep up and one of those things we saw out there takes me."
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, for the first time really giving voice to her fears. "I'm not special. I don't have the gifts. I've messed up my life so ... messed up my daughter's life, and for a while Damali's, because I didn't want to see some things I should have seen. Now, in hindsight, the terrible things I'm seeing are all from the same place--they're all demons, just not in disguise. If it wasn't for this little baby girl, I'd be nothing to anybody in the world, not even my own daughter."
"Oh, no, ma'am," Monty said, closing his eyes against her words and shaking his head slowly. He surprised her by taking up one of her hands and patting it between his. "I was on the yacht when your daughter and your son-in-law thought you and the baby had perished." Monty opened his eyes and stared at Delores hard, his intense brown eyes seemed haunted with the memory. "They had to literally tie your son-in-law down to the deck to keep him from hurting himself. Your daughter nearly flung herself overboard at deep sea, weeping at the rails."
"You are kind, sir, and have a good heart," Delores said, sniffing hard. "But me being gone isn't what upset them like that."
"Monty. I am Monty," he stated firmly, also holding her hand tighter.
"All right, Monty," Delores murmured, gazing down at the sleeping child on her lap. "But all that upset was for this little precious angel, as it should be. If they knew she'd made it, no one would scream and wail for me." Delores looked away from Ayana and Monty, staring off into the distance. "I thought I'd be able to make up in Yaya's life all the things I did wrong in my daughter's life . . . and maybe that would help Inez to forgive me for all the mistakes I'd made with her . . . like not seeing what I should have seen, not being there and listening when I should have been there to listen." .
Delores swallowed hard as tears refilled her eyes and her voice broke. "That's all I wanted to do. I thought that would give me a role and a place. Do you know what I mean?" She glanced at Monty briefly and then extracted her hand from his palms to wipe her tear-streaked cheeks. "But this baby girl here needs, like, what do they call 'em . . . Special Ops soldiers with guns for a grandma." Delores laughed self-consciously as her voice hitched and her lip began to quiver. "I don't even make a good grandma in this crazy world."
Monty pulled Delores into a loose hug with Ayana still dozing between them. He petted Delores's frazzled hair and rocked her gently. "You are a good grandmother, just for loving that child the way you do. I heard the stories of how you put your life on the line for her more than once."
He made Delores look at him by pulling back a bit. "You're blessed because your daughter is still alive and you have a courageous and wonderful son-in-law. I know about not having those things . . . and about losing them and wondering what role is left for you in the world. So you go ahead and cry and let it all run out of you. This time, maybe, let someone else take care of you--since you've been trying so long to take care of everyone else while so afraid."
"You don't even know me, but you know me," Delores said in a thick, quiet sob. "Why do you care about some old, broken-down woman who is useless?"
"Because you are not some old, broken-down woman--and you are most certainly not useless, even though I am some old, broken-down man without a family or anybody to care about me ... and after a lifetime of caring about other people, and feeling needed, suddenly I had no role." He brushed her hair off her face with a weathered, meaty palm and then hugged her again for a while. "I know how terribly lonely that can feel."
They sat that way for a long time, her crying quietly, him blinking back tears as he kept his gaze on the tunnel ceiling, each thinking about the gnarled journey of their lives. Finally she pulled back, wiping her nose on the back of her blouse sleeve.
He held Delores away from him and looked at her, wiping tears from her face. "I was all by myself, Delores. They all died. Didn't even have a pretty grand to hug close to my heart to remember them by. When angel Damali and the others found me, I was sitting in an empty confessional, where even the priests had fled. And I was asking God to excuse me for getting ready to take my own life . . . and then all these young people flooded into my life, needing this and that: 'Can we borrow your boat, Mr. Sinclair, can we use your linens and your navigational skills?' They overran my life and my ship, the only two things at that moment that I had left in this world."
Monty chuckled and wiped his eyes, hugging Delores again. "At first I thought, Am I going mad? And then I remembered that I really wanted all the chaos. I had prayed for it, and now I'm on the adventure of my life." He watched her studying his face and his eyes. "Giving up that last bit of what I was clinging on to from my past made me feel so alive. The yacht is ruined, and I may never see it again . . . but who cares?"
"You think we'll make it?"
"I honestly don't know, but I promise as long as I'm here in this fine quagmire with you, I won't leave you to die alone. That's a vow," Monty murmured, and then looked down at Ayana.
Delores nodded and sucked in a huge, steadying breath. "Thank you for saying that. Everything is changing, our roles are changing . . . better get used to it--life ain't never going back to the way it was before."
"No, I'm afraid not. But, so what if our roles change?" He glanced at Delores directly again. "So what if this tiny angel has more people than you to help her grow up--look at all these magnificent individuals fighting for good . . . and look at all the cousins about to be born. She'll be surrounded by love and excellent role models."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Delores said quietly. "Funny how things work out. If she was growing up with me in the old neighborhood, the way I had to raise Inez . . . there was nobody good, I mean, really positive for her to emulate. I don't even have anything she could really model herself on, except I think I know right from wrong . . . but some days I'm not even sure about that."
"We all have special skills, Delores. Okay, so I can navigate a ship. You also have something positive you can do. It will be revealed." He smiled broadly. "Or maybe you've already prayed so hard about wanting to take care of children you'll be saddled with a whole kit and caboodle of crying infants at once? Can you actually see the very serious-minded Marlene Stone playing nursemaid to a houseful of Guardian tots?"
When Delores cracked a smile, Monty pressed on. "I promise you, she will bop those children over the head with her magic fighting stick as quick as look at them--being a grandmother and finger painting with peanut butter and jelly is a very highly specialized skill, madam. Not everyone is up to the task. That's Special Forces."
When Delores laughed softly Monty wagged a finger at her. "So, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it."
"Thank you, Monty," she said, taking up his hand again and squeezing it.
"The pleasure is all mine."