by Nicole Baart
Natalie took a step back and gave Dani a calculating look. “Tell me this: Will there be a specific reason for me to come home?”
Dani could have feigned naïveté, but she knew exactly what Natalie was talking about. A few days after the memorial, late one night when the wind howled outside and the first few winter snowflakes began to whip against the windows of her little house, Dani had broken down and told her sisters about Ell’s infidelity—and the consequences thereof.
“What are you going to do?” Kat’s reaction was visceral and immediate. She leaned almost desperately over the table and clutched at Dani’s hands as Char and Hazel looked on. But while Kat’s emotions boiled, the two older women remained unyielding as ice. They were thin-lipped and silent, and Dani could tell that they both wished Dani had kept her mouth shut.
“I don’t know,” Dani said slowly. Her eyes flicked around the circle, trying to gauge everyone’s reaction at once.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Char and Hazel spoke at exactly the same time.
“It’s a pretty life-changing decision, don’t you think?” Dani couldn’t help feeling defensive. “Sam is giving the baby up for adoption no matter what. Either I take the baby or some stranger does.”
“You’re some stranger,” Char reminded her. “You are no more connected to this child than some random housewife from Anytown, USA.”
Dani could feel her jaw slacken. She snapped her mouth shut and swallowed hard. “But . . . but it’s Ell’s baby,” she said, struggling to articulate how she felt. “We may not be flesh and blood, but still.”
“How could you move on? How could you ever heal if you have to deal every single day with the living reminder of what happened?” Hazel’s skepticism was even harder to take than Char’s.
“I thought you of all people would understand.” Dani shook her head in disbelief. “This baby is like your grandchild.”
Hazel recoiled as if she had been struck. “No,” she said firmly. “Someday, when this is far behind us and you have learned to love again, your baby will be like my grandchild. I look forward to that, Danica. To building a family again. But this child . . .”
When Hazel trailed off, Kat dove in. “This child is unwanted? Is that what you’re saying? That he or she was an accident?”
“Of course not.” Hazel exhaled sharply as if she could blow the very notion away. She seemed to struggle for words, then cast an oddly despairing look in Char’s direction.
“That’s not what she’s saying.” Char leaned forward in her seat and tried to pick up the conversational slack. “It’s just that you’re in a very vulnerable place right now, Dani. You have more than enough to deal with without throwing the child of your husband’s one-night stand into the mix.”
“I was the child of a one-night stand,” Dani muttered.
Char rolled her eyes. “No, you weren’t. But even if you were, it’s apples and oranges. You were my baby.” She softened, the lines around her mouth disappearing as she gave Dani a faint, sad smile. “You are my baby. And you’ve got a long way to go. A long life ahead of you. I don’t want you to be chained to this. I don’t want you to wake up five years from now with a preschooler who looks like your dead husband and like a woman you hate, and think: ‘What happened to me?’”
“You’re so young,” Hazel said. “A strong, lovely young woman with the entire world spread out before you. You’ll have a baby of your own. Someday.”
It was obvious to Dani that Kat disagreed, but her sister didn’t say anything further. Natalie remained conspicuously silent, her face angled toward the window over the kitchen sink, where a cardinal had taken up residence in one of Dani’s naked trees. Of course, in the middle of a growing storm, the vivid bird was nowhere to be seen, but they had all learned in a week’s worth of communing at random times in Danica’s kitchen that he would be back eventually. He seemed to like watching them as much as they enjoyed catching the merest glimpse of him.
“Well.” Dani put both her palms on the table and pushed herself up. She bustled around the chairs set at crooked angles, trying to hide the tremor in her voice by clanking plates and glasses together as she swept them into her arms. “Nothing has been decided yet. But when I do decide . . . I hope that . . . I’m going to need you all to be . . .”
“Danica.” Natalie finally spoke, and when she did, the room seemed to go still. “We’re here for you. All of us. Come what may.”
And a few days later, standing in almost the same spot in the kitchen as she said good-bye again, Natalie repeated those words. “You are my specific reason to come home,” she told Dani, waving away her earlier question. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. And don’t worry, I’ll keep coming back. Come what may.”
“Even if I decide . . . ?”
“Whatever you decide,” Natalie assured her.
“I don’t know what I want,” Dani said. “A part of me wants to start over. I deserve that, don’t I? A chance at love? At life? Maybe even a baby of my own instead of the child he gave to someone else.” Dani’s throat tightened and she had to fight to get the last few words out. “Sometimes I want to tear out the pages of this chapter in my life and make a clean break.”
“Is there such a thing as a clean break?”
“Of course not. And even if there was, how could I entertain such a thought? This is Ell we’re talking about. I just want to do the right thing.”
Natalie seemed to think about that for a few seconds. “I don’t think you can do the wrong thing, Dani. I would never dare to presume that I know what is going to be healing for you. And once you make that decision, it’s done. Your life takes the shape of the choices you’ve made. No matter what, it’s going to be hard. Life is never easy.”
“Tell me about it.” Dani’s laugh was dry and brittle, short-lived. “I want to just walk away, but I don’t know if I can bear the thought that there’s going to be a piece of him out there somewhere. I feel like I’d spend the rest of my life looking, waiting for the moment when some little boy would run past me in an airport and give me a one-dimpled smile. Etsell’s smile.”
Natalie shrugged. “There’s something poetic about that.”
Dani tilted her head and regarded her sister. “Since when are you a romantic?”
“I didn’t say romantic, I said poetic. You have to admit that there is something incalculably fitting about Ell’s child wandering the big, wide world.”
“Ell’s child wandering,” Dani repeated, her words carried on a ragged breath. “Ell wandering. His wife wandering.”
“You’re not wandering,” Natalie said.
Dani nodded. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I’m not.”
The day Natalie left for New York was the same day that life went back to normal for Dani. Hazel and Char stopped spending so much time at the house, and Kat picked up some extra shifts at the gentlemen’s club to make up for the time that she had missed.
“I thought you were going to look for a new job,” Dani said as Kat crouched on the floor, lacing up a pair of suede, high-heeled boots. They were riveted from toe to knee and hugged her slender calves like a second skin.
“I’m looking.”
“You are?” Dani could hardly contain the excitement in her voice.
Kat gave her sister an arch look and brushed her long bangs back behind her ear. The Audrey Hepburn cut was growing out, and Dani guessed that by Christmas Kat’s hair would graze her shoulders. Of course, Kat was gorgeous as always, but there was something about her that suggested she was caught in a moment between. A place where her past and future met at a crossroads. Dani could relate.
“Anything look promising?” Dani couldn’t stop herself from probing.
“Lots of things look promising,” Kat said. “But the illusion of promise and the reality of it are not always the same thing.”
“Oh, don’t be like that.” Dani lightly nudged her sister’s arm with a pointed toe. “I’m just taking an interest in your life
.”
“My life is not very interesting.”
Dani lifted one shoulder noncommittally and then held out her hands to help Kat stand. They gripped wrists and Dani pulled until Kat was teetering before her, looking beautiful and tired, and not at all excited to head to work.
“I’ll help you if you’d like. Look for a new job, I mean.”
“I’ll help you if you’d like,” Kat parroted, but she didn’t explain how she intended to do so. Did she want to help Dani cope? Help her change diapers if she decided to raise Ell’s baby and encourage her to leave the past behind if not? Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was enough that they were willing to take each other by the wrist. Help each other stand.
The house seemed empty with everyone gone, and since she hadn’t booked any appointments at the salon for one more day, Dani wandered the halls aimlessly. Everything could have used a good cleaning, but she wasn’t in the mood, and instead of scrubbing toilets or running the vacuum in the living room, Dani decided she needed a breath of fresh air. She ended up slipping her feet into a pair of snow boots and stepping outside without a coat.
It was still snowing, but the wind that had raged the night before had decided to sleep away the day, and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of a breeze. The flakes fell straight and true, delicate slivers of shaved frost that clung to the dark sleeves of her sweater and alighted in her eyelashes.
Dani didn’t really have a destination in mind, and when she found herself standing at Benjamin’s back door, she woke as if from a trance. She really had no idea how she had gotten there or what she hoped to accomplish by waylaying her neighbor in the middle of the day. Surely he was at the church office working on his sermon or whatever pastors did in the middle of the week. She could go back home and pretend that she had never come at all. But when Dani turned around, her footprints marked a straight line in the snow from her back door to his. Evidence of her unanticipated visit. Dani had never knocked on Benjamin’s door before. Not once.
And, as it turned out, there was no reason to knock now. The door creaked open and a warm gust of air greeted Dani at the same moment that Benjamin said her name. “Is everything okay?” he asked, concern evident in his voice.
She whipped around, blinking at her neighbor through a lacy curtain of new fallen snow. “Fine,” Dani said just a little too quickly. “I’m fine, Benjamin. I just wanted to get out of the house and . . .”
“Why don’t you come in?” He stepped back and held open the door, revealing a kitchen much larger than her own. The countertop was overflowing with thick books and looseleaf paper, and an austere, wooden stool stood bellied up to the chaos. At least Dani knew how he had discovered her presence at his door. Benjamin had watched her come.
“Oh,” she demurred. “No. I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to say thank you. For the service, I mean.”
Benjamin gave his head a sad, little shake. “It’s never enough, you know?”
“No,” Dani interrupted before he could go on. “It was enough. It was perfect.”
They stood there for a few seconds with the door open, Benjamin in his stocking feet and Dani collecting snowflakes in her hair like diamonds. She didn’t even realize she was cold until she shivered violently, an unexpected quiver that sent a shower of snow drifting from her shoulders.
“You’re cold!” Benjamin said. The discovery seemed to startle him. “You’re not wearing a coat. Let me get you a coat or—”
“I’m fine,” Dani cut in, clutching her arms tight to her chest. “I’m just fine.” But her teeth had begun to chatter, and though it was partly due to the snow and the way the winter air nipped through the loose weave of her sweater, there was an earthquake of emotion just below the surface. All at once, it bubbled up and out of her, spreading hairline cracks through the very foundation of her being and making her shudder uncontrollably.
Dani didn’t know where to turn, or what to do with herself, but before she could give it much thought, Benjamin stepped from the golden halo of light that spilled from his kitchen and took her into his arms. She gasped, shocked at his touch, and he immediately pulled away.
But Dani’s arms were already around him, her forehead pressed to the place where the collar of his shirt hung crooked against his neck. She clutched at his back, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, and savored the faint thrum of his heartbeat beneath her skin. Benjamin was exotic, foreign, and the fit of their tangled arms, their heads bowed together, was lopsided and imperfect. But Dani didn’t care. Everything about the way they held each other was unfamiliar, but it didn’t feel wrong.
Benjamin’s breath was cool against her cheek and somehow, impossibly, it seemed, laced with the scent of fresh cucumbers. Clean and sharp, as if she could taste the cold snick of the knife as it sliced a perfect white-green disk. It was a surprise, the fresh caress of his exhalation, and as his mouth found the hollow beneath her ear, Dani stifled a cry.
He didn’t kiss her, not really, but his lips hovered against the taut line of her skin, daring here and there to press closer, to light upon her cheek, her neck, her collarbone as if he was checking for the warm pulse of Dani’s blood beneath his timid exploration.
For some reason, she was grateful that he didn’t smell of peppermints. Sermon candy. She could picture an entire glass jar of the lozenges on his desk at church, a subtle charity for everyone who sat in the faded leather chairs that surely flanked his desk like tired old friends. Dani would have pushed him away if he reeked of Sunday. Or stale coffee. The tea-colored Beech-Nut blend that congregants sipped in the fellowship hall after a quiet service. She couldn’t have handled that.
But Benjamin smelled new. New and unexpected and completely different from what Dani always imagined a pastor should smell like. Completely different from anything that she had ever known. She drank him in. And then, because she forgot that he was Ben—or maybe because she knew exactly that he was Ben—Dani touched the line of his jaw, tilted it toward her face. She couldn’t see him, but it didn’t matter. His lips found hers, and the tenderness of his gentle ministrations was suddenly, irrevocably gone. There was an urgency in his mouth that startled her. That left her gasping for more.
Benjamin Miller kissed Dani long and hard, and when he finally pulled away they fell back from each other as if they had been stung. They stood apart, panting, astonished, and Dani raised her finger to her lips, searching for proof of what had happened between them. She found the place where his tongue had smoothed away all the tremors that shook her.
“Danica.” His voice cracked on her name like it was a powerful incantation, something he hardly dared to utter. “Dani, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry.”
“But—”
“Not now,” Dani said. And as the words fell away, she could see the crossroads of her life mapped out before her. It was a wheelhouse of choices, a future that contained so many possibilities, so many chances at redemption that the very fullness of it all was dizzying. She thought of her first date with Ell, their childish kiss behind the hangar. The subsequent years that had knit them together, the moments she believed they were made for each other, and the times when she could hardly stand to look at him she was so angry. So fed up with trying to make it all work. But it was exquisite, Dani decided. Worth every single minute. All of it. And maybe, just maybe, the best was yet to come.
“When . . .” Benjamin stopped himself. Started again. “If . . .” He released a jagged breath and ran both of his hands through his hair. His dark waves were instantly mussed; they stood on end in the most endearing way. “I’m here,” he finally said simply. “I just want you to know that I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Dani smiled, turned her face to the soft cloudburst of snow. “Me either.”
Epilogue
Danica
The breeze was less than a breath, but it drifted across the patio all the s
ame, carrying the mingled scents of Russian sage and garlic from the potatoes that were just starting to brown on the grill. I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the table, spread from end to end with plates and neat little clusters of silverware, a centerpiece of green hydrangeas, wineglasses that caught the final rays of sunshine and cast it back against the cherry-colored wood in bursts of crooked rainbows. There were Christmas lights in the lilac bushes, and Chinese lanterns hung from a crisscross of fine wire that arched over the patio in a haphazard pattern.
Over the winter, Hazel had helped me make a bench for one side of the trestle table, and I indulged myself by trailing my fingertips over the high gloss of the seat. It was a seamless plank of black walnut that swirled and eddied in waves of coffee and cream, a masterpiece; an extravagant creation that was perfectly mismatched with the table that already bore the scars of an abundant life.
But I rarely sat on the bench. My seat was the Queen Anne, the claw-footed relic that I refinished in one frenzied afternoon. The seat was re-covered in sprout green, the wood painted a brown as deep and dark as bitter chocolate. As rich as earth. It was my place to sit and think, slouched low with my feet curled beneath me and my head tipped against the backrest, tilted toward the sky.
I liked my feet on the ground, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the heavens. Following the arc of stray clouds as they scudded across a sea of blue so endless it seemed full of possibility. I slept with my eyes open sometimes, or rather, I dreamed. And every daydream ended the same: with a flicker at the corner of my vision, at the place where my conscious began to blur every edge. The flash of a Cessna on the horizon, the merest hint of red-and-white.
But today I didn’t have time for turning my face toward the sun. They would be here soon, all of them, and the thought made my heart trip over itself. I was little more than an excited child, I decided, and laid my palms against the smooth tabletop, focusing on my to-do list, making sure that it was complete. It was.