by Violet Howe
“Pretty much all of the above.”
“Can you give me something to go on? What happened?”
“Galen wants Gerry to walk her down the aisle.”
“Ah. I can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. Hold on, and let me tell Hannah to pause the movie. This isn’t going to be a short one.”
“I’m sorry,” I said when Sandy returned. “Here I am, yet again, coming to you about Gerry Freaking Tucker.”
“Oh, please. Don’t piss me off by saying stupid stuff. You know we don’t apologize for needing each other. Now, what happened? Did you talk to Galen?”
“No. She wrote an email because she doesn’t feel like she can talk to me. My daughter can’t talk to me. That’s not the kind of mother I wanted to be. You know how my parents will react if Gerry shows up, and I can’t begin to imagine what Cabe will do. Not to mention that I don’t want Gerry there. Galen had some good points, though, and it means a lot to her for him to walk her down the aisle. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, it is her wedding. And as much as I’d like to see the S.O.B. dropped off somewhere in Siberia without a coat, he is her father. Why don’t you compromise? She wants him to walk her down the aisle? Let him. But then he leaves after the ceremony and you get to enjoy the reception in peace.”
My mind automatically rejected any option that included Gerry, but I had to admit that her idea had merit.
“I don’t know. Maybe that could work.”
“As far as Bill and Peggy, you have to talk to your mom and let her know this is what Galen wants,” Sandy said. “Your mother is a freaking rock, and she’ll do anything for those kids. You know that. Talk to her and let her deal with Bill. She’s the best at managing him anyway.”
Sandy’s calm demeanor was bringing my blood pressure back down, but I still felt a measure of panic when I considered everything I needed to deal with.
“Everyone’s been so excited about the wedding, and I feel like this is going to ruin it.”
But it’s not,” she said. “At the end of the day, if Tate and Galen are married, and they’re happy, that’s all that matters. I can tell you from all the weddings I’ve done flowers for, any number of things can happen, but it’s not usually as bad as it seems.”
“I don’t know. This all seems pretty bad right now. How’s Cabe going to react? He had planned on walking his sister down the aisle. To be replaced by Gerry is not going to go over well.”
“Cabe’s got a good head on his shoulders. He cares a lot about his family. He’s gonna do the right thing. You just tell him what you need from him.”
“But that’s just it, Sandy. Why do we all have to do the right thing, and Gerry doesn’t? Why am I still jumping through hoops to make this okay?”
She sighed. “Maybe him walking her down the aisle is the right thing. I don’t know. I know you’ve had to make up for a lot to those kids. But this is kind of the last hurrah. Once Galen’s married, you’re done with Gerry. She can deal with him if she chooses to. Cabe can do what he wants. But you’re done when the wedding is over.”
“That’s what Dax said.” My heart clenched like it was in a vise grip when I said his name.
“Is he there? Is he with you?”
“No. He left. I think I broke up with him.”
“What the hell? What do you mean you think you broke up with him?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I sort of told him we had no future and he needed to go.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because we’re complete opposites, Sandy! He’s all cowboy, outdoors, sleep in the woods, ride in a truck. And I’m…not.”
“From what you told me about your trip to the woods, you adjusted pretty well, Ms. Skinny Dipper. What about all the things the two of you have in common? Are you just scratching those off the list so you can get rid of him?”
“It’s not going to work, Sandy. I’m not moving out to that ranch, and he’s not moving here.”
“I didn’t realize the two of you were discussing moving in. When did this happen?”
I groaned and walked out onto the patio to breathe in fresh air. “We haven’t discussed it, but I need to be realistic. There’s no future with Dax.”
“C’mon, Maggie. I know things feel out of control right now, and you’re overwhelmed, so you’re going to push away the one person you can get rid of. The only problem I see with that strategy is that you’re in love with him.”
I sat on the sofa and propped my head in my hand.
“I’ll take your silence as confirmation that you know I’m right,” she said. “Look, Mags. I’ve been begging you to put yourself out there for years. I know you’re scared, and I know this wedding is bringing a lot of things to a head. But you seem to have something pretty special with this guy. Don’t let any bullshit with Gerry take that away from you. God knows, he’s taken enough already.”
“Dax and I were asked by our ballroom dance teacher to perform in a dance recital.”
“That’s awesome! You two must have some pretty good rhythm. Is this a recital I can attend?”
“I’m not doing it!”
“Why not?” Sandy asked.
I exhaled and rubbed my temples to try and ease the pain. “I can’t. I can’t get up there and dance after all this time. I can’t go from being the principal dancer of Miami City Ballet to doing the cha cha at the community center.”
“Mags, nothing you do now will change the fact that you were the principal dancer. That accomplishment stands no matter how your tenure ended. And nothing you do now will change the fact that you haven’t been that for thirty years. Let it go. We all can look back at our glory days and wonder where they went. Do you enjoy dancing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you enjoy dancing with Dax?”
“God, yes,” I said, my voice cracking.
“Then what the hell are you thinking? Dance with the man. It doesn’t matter who you were then. It only matters who you are now. If you’re going to dance the cha cha at a community center, then be the best damned cha cha dancer there. You’ve got a cowboy hunk who gives you multiple orgasms in one night, sings to you, watches chick flicks, and wants to dance on a stage with you? Do you realize how ridiculous you sound right now?”
“I was horrible to him, Sandy. I said such nasty things. I really screwed up.”
“Then you’re telling the wrong person. Hang up and call him. Or better yet, drive to the ranch and show him. Don’t let that man wake up tomorrow morning not knowing he’s loved.”
“But I don’t know how this can work. Our lives are so different.”
“Give me a break, Mags. No one ever knows how it will work out. We go into it. We give it our all. We do our best. And life throws stuff at us and tries to break us. Sometimes people who seem perfect for each other fail, and sometimes those who seem destined to fail defy all odds and stay together. If you love him, you gotta try.”
“What if I get hurt?” I whispered.
“Well, honey, then you retreat, and you lick your wounds and eat a gallon of ice cream, and you put yourself back out there. It’s past time to take a risk. You have someone worth taking the risk for.”
“Easier said than done. Thanks, Sandy. You’re awesome.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I? I can dispense all this advice because I lucked up and got the best partner anyone could ever have. Speaking of whom, she’s waiting on me to restart the movie. You okay? You off the ledge?”
“Yeah. Give Hannah a hug for me. Tell her I love her. Love you both.”
“We love you, too. Now go rope that cowboy.”
55 NIGHT DRIVE
I feared that if I called and told Dax I was coming, he either wouldn’t answer the phone or he’d tell me not to come, so I didn’t call.
The first half of the drive, I replayed our conversation in my head, cringing at some of the things I’d said. The second half, I developed a script of what I wanted to say, m
entally revising and deleting until the moment I parked by his truck at the barn.
Cody greeted me as soon as I got out of the car, but then he took off and left me behind. There were no lights to guide me as I made my way through the barn, and I nearly broke into a run when the neigh of one of the horses startled me.
The sliding metal door leading out to the camper was open, but the camper was dark. I wondered if it was possible that he’d already gone to bed. I’d changed my clothes and gotten on the road soon after I hung up with Sandy, so he couldn’t have been home very long before I arrived. I knocked tentatively just in case he was sleeping, though. I didn’t think waking him up would be a good start to my apology.
I waited a few seconds with my head tilted toward the door listening for any sound inside, and then I knocked again, a little bolder than before.
“I’m not sure who you’re looking for, but he’s not home,” came a voice from the darkness, making me nearly jump out of my skin as I yelped in fear.
I turned to see Dax in the large hammock strung from the camper to the tree, his face barely visible in the dark.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “I had a message for him.” My voice trembled, and I hugged my jacket tighter around me.
“I can give him a message,” he said, swaying slightly back and forth in the hammock, bringing his profile in and out of the moonlight.
“I don’t know,” I said. “When I planned it out in my head, he was supposed to open the door, and then I had this line from a movie I was going to deliver, and he wouldn’t have been able to resist.”
“Must have been a pretty clever line. Why don’t you try it out on me, and I’ll let you know if I think it would work.”
I walked toward the hammock, my heart in my throat as I considered the very real possibility that I had tossed away the best thing to happen to me in years.
“Well, I would have started by saying hello. And then I would have explained to him that I was overwhelmed earlier. That I felt pressured by Betty, and by dancing, and by my daughter, my family, the wedding, and well, even by him, even though he wasn’t directly applying the pressure. I would have told him that I was sorry that I lashed out at him, that I was sorry for the terrible things I said. And then I would have told him that I loved him, and I would have ended by saying that I was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”
“I don’t know about that first part, but the last part was pretty clever.”
“It’s from Notting Hill,” I said, wishing he would sit up so I could see his face.
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, what do you think he would have said? I mean, if he had opened the door, and I had said all that?”
He put his boot on the ground and stopped the hammock from swinging. Then he sat up and stood, turning up the beer can he held in his hand and draining it.
“Would you like a beer?” he asked, holding one out to me.
“That’s what he would have said?” I was fighting to keep my voice light. “That’s an odd response.”
“I find it interesting that you chose Notting Hill. If memory serves me correctly, his argument was that they were too opposite, and it would end up tearing them apart in the long run.”
“I didn’t….” My voice faltered, and I had no words. I had spoken the truth about our differences, and I couldn’t pretend they didn’t exist.
He tossed the can in the recycle bin by the barn and popped open another beer, the hiss of the foam loud in the silence of the night. “You were right, you know? We do have several things in common, but we’re pretty much opposites. We have a lot we could learn from each other and a lot we could share. I think one of our biggest differences is the way we view love. For you, falling in love seems to be a negative. It hurt you, and it got twisted and warped somehow into something to be avoided at all costs.”
He stood up straight and stretched his back before walking to the fence behind the camper.
“See, I was lucky. My experience of love was much different from yours. I had a love that most people only dream of. The kind that songs are written about. But then I lost it, and I didn’t have any hope of ever feeling love again.”
He took a swig of beer, his face lit up in the moonlight as he gazed out across the field.
“You were wrong about me not understanding, Maggie. I know all too well about hurting the people you love and not being able to fix it. You’re not the only one who’s haunted by the past.”
I moved toward him, but his stance wasn’t welcoming, and I stopped short of going to his side.
“Deanna had gone to her sister’s that Sunday. It was the middle of the busy fall season, and we agreed that she would drive up to Revae’s that morning and come back that night. I was working around the clock separating calves from the herd and going through all the steps to prepare them to ship out, and I needed her to deal with the thoroughbreds in the barn here so my focus could be there. She called and said Revae wanted her to spend the night, and she didn’t feel like driving back so late.”
He sighed, and I took another step closer to him.
“I was irritated. I was tired. Exhausted, really. I made some asinine comment about them being her horses and her responsibility, and the conversation grew heated. She insisted it was best for her to spend the night and get up early the next morning to come home. I hung up on her, and I think it was the only time I’d ever done that.”
He paused, and I took another step to stand beside him at the fence, though I didn’t dare touch him or look at his face. It seemed an intrusion.
“An hour went by and then she called,” he said. “But I was mad, so I didn’t answer. Then about forty-five minutes later, my phone rang again, and it was a state trooper telling me Deanna’s car had left the road. She’d headed home pretty soon after I hung up on her, and she hit a bad storm. A truck pulling a trailer hydroplaned, hitting her car and sending her flying. She flipped multiple times as she left the road, and her car landed upside down a little ways into the woods.”
My hand went to my mouth, and I realized I’d been holding my breath as he talked.
“She wasn’t conscious when the paramedics reached her, and she never regained consciousness. She stayed in a coma for six weeks. But she had been conscious after the crash. It was her that called for the ambulance, telling them where she was and that she was pinned in the car with no feeling in her legs. According to her phone log, after calling 911, she called me. But I didn’t answer. And when I finally listened to her message after the trooper called, there was nothing there. Only silence on the line.”
He turned and left the fence, and I didn’t know if I should follow him or leave him alone. I heard the door to the camper, and I made my way toward it. He’d left it open, so I assumed he wanted me to come inside.
I didn’t see him, and I closed the door behind me and stood waiting, unsure of what to do or say in the light of such heartbreak.
He emerged from the bedroom a moment later, handing me an ultrasound with a grainy picture of a tiny fetus.
“I had no idea she was pregnant. We’d tried for years, and we’d pretty much given up on it ever happening. The doctor told me at the hospital that she was about twelve weeks along. I found a card much later, when I finally had the guts to go through her things. She had planned to tell me over a romantic dinner with that picture of the baby inside the card. She wrote that she waited to tell me until she’d heard the heartbeat and seen the baby move because she wanted to know it was really happening. I’d been too busy to realize why the dinner was important, and I’d put her off when she tried to plan it.”
The paper shook in my hand, and I handed it back to him carefully, treating it like the fragile memento it was.
“Deanna hung in there for six weeks defying the doctors who said there was no way she should be alive. I believe she was fighting for that baby. But then on a Thursday morning, she died. And our baby died with her.”
His do
nation to the trauma unit suddenly made sense, and I felt sick as all the dots connected.
“So, I do understand, Maggie, about hurting the people we love and not being able to fix it. And I had resigned myself to never feeling love again. I thought that any happiness I could ever have had died with her. It was my punishment, and I was all too happy to suffer it.”
He looked at me then, making eye contact with me for the first time since I’d arrived.
“But then you came along. I looked up and saw you that day when Kratos had tossed me in the water, and it was like something came to life inside my chest. My heart started beating with a purpose it hadn’t had in years, and it was like I could finally breathe again for the first time in forever.”
He placed the picture on the end table, turning to take my hand and lead me to sit next to him on the couch.
“You see, you run from love because of the pain it caused you. But I’m in awe of love. I can’t believe I’ve been given the opportunity to feel it again. It was my fault Deanna died. She should have been safe at her sister’s. She never should have been on the road that night. She should have been able to carry that baby to term and be the mama I always knew she would be. If I had been a better husband, a better man…but I wasn’t.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he shook his head and continued.
“I don’t know why I got a second chance, Maggie. I don’t know why the universe sent you across my path. But I know I was certain my fate meant I would never love again, and then you came. So, I don’t intend to pressure you, or push you, but I’ll tell you this. I’m not giving up on us without a fight. By God’s grace, I’ve been allowed to fall in love with you, and I’ll do everything in my power to protect this and nurture it, to never take it for granted.”
I pulled my hands from his and placed them on each side of his face, gazing into eyes haunted but hopeful.
“I don’t want you to give up on us. I do love you, Dax, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified by it, but I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”