“You know, it’s only ever been you for me. It’s only ever been you,” he said, tugging on my heart strings with his every word. “Here I am again. I’m alive baby. I’m here to hold you and love you whole, yet you hesitate…don’t you love me anymore?”
“I love you very much,” I replied. “I just… I don’t see myself being on the run with you forever.”
“It won’t be forever,” he promised. “What about South Texas? Me, you - it was okay then, what about now? Why is it not okay now?”
“So much has happened since then,” I told him.
“This I know, but my love for you hasn’t changed,” he replied. “If anything, it’s gotten stronger.”
“I hear you baby,” I told him.
“So, what d’ya say to taking a chance on me again? What d’ya say to taking a chance on our love again?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “I know you’re worried about David. He’ll be fine. I had to do what I did, for if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you now. I don’t expect you to bail on him straight away, but I’m hoping you’ll be with me soon.”
“I’m not planning on bailing on him,” I replied.
“Okay,” he replied, resigned to accept my position. “I’ll be around. Wherever you are, I’ll find you.”
I shrugged in response.
He leaned back into the driver’s seat, his shoulders heavy with an invisible weight I could not carry.
“So, is this it? Is this where our story ends?” he asked. “In my heart I feel this is not the end. You’re still my wife. I’m still your husband. We were supposed to get through anything and everything together. My heart won’t rest until I’m back with you. I’ve wanted you from the start. I…,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “I will love you always, Temwani.”
The tears fell down my face unabated.
He hated to see me cry. “Sugarpie, I’m sorry. I can’t just be without you and the kids. Not now and not ever. Without you, effectively I’ll have nothing.”
I wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry for all of this. All I’ve put you through, and all I’m putting you through,” he said, raising my hand to his lips for a featherlight kiss.
In that instant, my phone rang. Jude.
“Temwani. Let me speak with him,” he said immediately, shocking me. Jude knew where he was. I handed the phone to Daniel, who hesitated initially, before putting it on speakerphone.
“How far are you willing to go to protect your family?” Jude asked.
“To the ends of this here earth,” Daniel replied without hesitation. I sighed inwardly, thinking of all the things he’d already done in the name of protecting our family.
“You need to come back to Texas then,” Jude advised.
“No chance of that,” Daniel replied.
“If you don’t come back to Texas there’ll be hell to pay,” Jude warned.
“I’ll take my chances,” Daniel said, hanging up the phone.
Jude called back immediately.
“Let it ring,” Daniel requested, and I did.
I had a million and one questions on my mind. How did Jude know Daniel was with me? How did…
“Watch out for your friends,” Daniel warned.
“Sorry?”
“Ernesto. He’s as dirty as they come,” Daniel stated.
“I find that hard to believe,” I replied.
“Watch out for your friends,” he warned again. Slipping his sunglasses back on, he stated, “I’m hitting the road now. I see you’re not planning on coming with me now. But I know you will be, soon. So, I’ll be seeing you,” he stated assertively, giving me a quick kiss on the lips before abruptly opening the car door and walking off.
I wanted to run after him but I didn’t. I owed it to David to stay behind. As Daniel turned to slip into an alleyway, he gave me a salute, his lips mouthing the words I love you.
In the interim, David’s stint in jail lasted 48 hours. He was released without charge, since the playback on the video footage showed he was an innocent party, and had known nothing of Daniel’s plans to escape.
On his release, I found that on the contrary, he had known.
“I knew he was up to something,” he told me. “I just didn’t know what. When has he ever really wanted to see me in person? I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“If you knew what he was up do, why didn’t you stop it from happening?” I asked. “Things could’ve ended badly for you.”
“They could have, but they didn’t,” he rationalized. “All’s well, ends well.” After an audible pause, he stated, “I know he came to you.”
I felt my heart sink at the thought of his heart hurting over me. Yet again.
“I’ll stand by whatever decision you make, but I won’t fight the fact that he’s still your husband. The only way I can be with you is if he lets you go. Somehow, I don’t see that happening any time soon,” he said, stroking his lightly bearded chin. “However, if by some miracle of fate he agrees for us to be together, and I then have to choose between being with you and having him in the background doing everything he can to win you back, I’d choose to dedicate myself to God and ministry, entirely. I’m not sure I can take losing you again.”
I loved David more than I cared to admit, and my heart hurt more than I thought it would when it came to him. David and I had shared something special. He’d loved me all those years, and a love like the one only he could give felt pure and unadulterated. Still, I understood his position. If he couldn’t have me, he’d rather be alone.
In the days that ensued, he went to great pains to avoid being alone with me. We’d have dinner together, but once the kids were asleep, he would be in the study, out, or anywhere other than where I was. His avoidance of me hurt deeply, and it was in those moments alone that I wished I had left with Daniel when he’d asked me to.
Still, I remained patient and stayed there with David. Josiah and Adalia loved him, and I saw no withdrawal of his love for them, only a deepening of his devotion to them, and through them, me. What hurt the most was letting go of a love that was meant to last.
We talked very little about our future but spent the next few weeks preparing for the babies to arrive. The big elephant in the room was the paternity of the babies. CVS sampling was possible, but David was not prepared to take the risk; he preferred to wait until after the babies were born. In the end, we agreed on having the testing done, and would wait until after the babies were born to read the results. With Daniel’s whereabouts unknown, David promised to stand by me, regardless of the outcome of the test. Being the man that he was, he vowed to raise the babies as his while there was no clear idea of when and how Daniel and I would be together again, as a married couple.
As weeks went on and the prospect of welcoming the babies became a reality, we finally sat down and talked at length about plans moving forward, with him being in my life, and I being in his, though not as husband and wife.
“So, I guess you’ll be dropping my name?” he asked. “Going back to being Mrs. Daniel Brennan?”
“Out of respect to him, yes, but I hope I can keep your name – I could just hyphenate it – Davenport-Brennan.”
“Oh, I can tell you right now, he’s not going to like that at all,” he predicted, knowing Daniel all too well.
“Just a thought.”
“What would be the point?” he asked.
“The kids,” I said a little too quickly. “Changing it all up now complicates things,” I said. What I’d meant to say was I was trying to hold on to him and any evidence that we’d been one. I didn’t dare tell him this. Not now anyway.
“I see,” he said, sounding hurt, as though he were hoping I’d keep his name for other reasons. If only he knew the real reason why I wanted to hold on to his name – I wanted to remain tied to him in some way.
“You’ve been the one for me,” he said suddenly, touching my face and tracing my cheek with the back of his finger.
“You’ve been everything for me. You’ll always be the one for me,” he said sadly, before turning away and bringing an end to our conversation.
One afternoon, David sat me down and told me things he had not told me before.
“I have to tell you something Teme,” he said, trembling as he spoke. “Some things.”
I sat up, alert.
“I couldn’t tell you before, but now I have to,” he said, with much difficulty. “What I have to tell you could save Daniel, but it’ll implicate me. It’ll implicate the Brotherhood.”
I listened as he spoke through pursed lips, his tone terse and weary. Declan. The common thread that bound them all. Declan. The source of so much pain. The Brotherhood. The Healer. The Priest. The Muscle. The Judge. The Juror. The Knight. The Gatekeeper. The Marksman.
I’d heard enough.
“I’m going away for some time to serve as a missionary. I’ll be back before you know it. Daniel’s on the run. He wants to meet up with you eventually. I can’t do anything to stop that, but I can do my best to protect you. You being on the run with him is not something I’d support. I accept you cannot be with me now he’s back. However, I won’t accept you being put in the path of danger. I’m laying down plans to keep you safe,” he promised.
I’d heard enough. “You know what? I’ve had enough of you all planning and plotting and scheming around my life. You’ve known all along that this stuff with the Brotherhood would come to a head. You’ve put me in the middle of it all. Jude knows this. Jude won’t stay silent.”
“I’m sorry Teme. None of this was meant to happen this way,” he admitted.
So we parted ways for a few weeks. My heart bled for David. I imagined him all alone, lonely, without anyone to call his own. I imagined him longing after me, I imagined him hurting over me and the fact that he’d loved me all those years, we’d finally gotten a chance to be, and now we were no longer together. I imagined him praying that the babies I was carrying were his. I imagined him crying over the fact that Adalia and Josiah would now only know him as uncle when he’d previously been known to them as Dad. I imagined him still very much in love with me that being with anyone else was out of the question.
Though David didn’t like the thought of me travelling so far into the pregnancy, I decided to take the children to visit my family in Zambia, by way of Texas. Travelling to Zambia would be the first solo tip to the motherland, and my last before the babies were born. David would not be accompanying me immediately – apart from the missionary work, he’d commenced a prison and street ministry which was in full swing. Apparently, it needed him more than I did. In my heart of hearts, and in my plans to head to Zambia, I hoped I would see Daniel again. Whether I’d see him again depended on whether or not he was able to get in.
Adalia and Josiah were on their worst behaviour that afternoon as we sought to check in to the flight heading for Texas.
“You’re going to have to check in your pram now,” the air hostess insisted.
“I was told I can keep it with me, that it could be put in the cabin hold so I could use it to travel through the gates…”
“I’m not sure who told you that but…”
A gentleman at the check-in point to my right interjected, “I can accompany you to the gate with the children, you can check the pram in now.”
I was convinced that his generosity would come at a price.
The man stepped into my lane, placed a carry bag similar to mine immediately in front of the counter, on the floor and mentioned again, “I’ll help you with the children, you are free to check the pram in now.” He seemed familiar to me, up close. “Juan. Te recuerdas? Me conoces?” His eyes. The same sky blue. The Brotherhood.
“Si,” I said in response. “Te conoce.”
“May I?” he asked, lifting my suitcase onto the carousel.
“Okay, just a few security questions. Did you pack your own bag? Are you carrying any prohibited items?” the air hostess asked.
I glanced over at the bag Juan had put onto the carousel. It looked exactly like the one I had.
The bag I brought to the airport, I packed myself. “No… I mean, yes, I packed my own bag.”
“Gate 53, boarding at 10.50pm,” she announced, handing me the tickets.
I quickly glanced at my ticket before putting it in between the pages of my passport. Hobart to Melbourne, Melbourne to Lusaka. Lusaka? What happened to going to Texas? This was some sort of a mistake. Before I had a chance to turn back to the stewardess, Juan stated just above a whisper “Aguas.”
“What?”
“Aguas. Something bad is going to happen if you go back to Texas now,” he warned.
The children’s terrible behavior seemed to peak at that very moment. Juan reached into his pocket and produced some lollipops. “Adalia and Josiah,” he said smoothly, kneeling down to be at eye level with them. “Which one would you like? Red, orange, green?”
Having Juan with us on the journey from Hobart to Melbourne, then Melbourne to Lusaka via Abu Dhabi was a blessed relief. The children were reasonably well behaved on the journey, with occasional bursts of sadness. Adalia struggled to come to terms with the fact that her father had gone away on a long trip. I felt for her. Josiah missed David terribly, but I was certain that in time he would be fine. I resolved to keep them very busy when away, so as to not have them notice the absence of Daniel or David too much.
A few weeks into being in Zambia, and I realised how well loved Daniel was when everyone who knew me asked after him. He’d set quite the impression on my family and friends. The support was overwhelming. Offers to help with the children and offers to prepare meals were plentiful.
Inside, I still thought of David constantly, wondering about him, worrying about him. Despite what he’d said, I knew he was cut. I knew there would be more to him letting me go than he let on. The love he felt for me would not just dissipate. It was destined to grow and reshape into a different mold, perhaps one stronger than the former. Still, I had to let him go.
He had planned to join us in our last week in Lusaka, but changed plans at the last minute. I was heartbroken, as I’d hoped it would be one last occasion for us to live the fantasy – that he was mine and I was his. One last chance to be with him again. No such luck, David was not joining us.
A few days before we were scheduled to fly back to Australia, the decision was made to go to Livingston Lodge, a Safari park just a few kilometers out of Lusaka. Heavily pregnant, the trip was going to be the last before the babies were born. The trip planned by my family was an attempt to take my mind off the stress I under. The possibility of the children being Daniel’s was not raised at all. Though they all knew Daniel was still alive, there was no reason to not assume that the babies were David’s.
The day we arrived, the children busied themselves with all the available activities – swimming, pony riding, bike riding. I opted out of everything except for the Safari drive which would commence at dusk. As I stood in line waiting for the 4WD to arrive at the Safari pickup point, a familiar voice and touch on my shoulder caused my heart to flutter.
“Sugarpie,” the voice said, and I turned around to face Daniel. “So good to see you again,” he stated. His deep blue eyes beheld my gaze and I fell for him all over again. His skin was heavily tanned, evidently from days out and under African skies. Though it had been only a few weeks since I’d seen him last, he looked older. Streaks of auburn red hair merged with grey and deep brown hair. He traced my face with his fingers as though he were imprinting and committing a visual of me to his memory forever. In that moment, I was his, once again. I embraced him fully and wholly, not wanting to let him go.
“Let’s lose this crowd,” he urged, just above a whisper, sending tingles through my body. “Wife, lover, friend, it’s good to be here with you again, beholding your beautiful face, your beautiful body, your mesmerizing eyes, your warm and generous heart, again,” he said, planting a kiss on my lips. “Let me show you just how much I’ve
missed you,” he urged. I felt my body melt in response to him, and I let go of all my defences. In that moment, what David and I shared was far from my mind. In that moment, I only had eyes for Daniel.
“Ba Boss,” the safari guide interjected turning to Daniel. “It’s only the two of you remaining now. Can we put you on the next ride? The one before is fully booked.”
“Shall we?” Daniel asked, slipping a hand around my waist. I nodded to the affirmative. I needed to sit down, gather myself and get over the fact that he was here with me, again. “Yes, we’ll go on the next one,” he confirmed on our behalf.
“Okay, Boss, the driver will be here in a few minutes,” the tour guide said. “I’m Melvin by the way,” he stated.
“I’m Daniel. This is my wife, Temwani,” he said in response, beaming from ear to ear.
“Temwani, one of ours,” Melvin noted. “Welcome back to Zambia,” he said, cordially.
“I’m Zambia’s latest son,” Daniel stated.
“Welcome to Zambia Boss,” Melvin stated, shaking Daniel’s hand. “Anything you need while you’re here, just let me know,” he offered.
“Cheers, na totela,” Daniel replied, thanking him. They engaged in small talk in Bemba before Melvin walked off to respond to the call on his walkie talkie.
I had a million and one questions for Daniel. “Since when do you speak Bemba? How did you know we’d be here?” I asked. “How did you get here?”
“I told you I’d find you wherever you are,” he reminded me.
“About how I got here, there’s ways. The important thing is that I’m here with you now. Me you, the kids, we’re finally together again.”
My heart leapt at the thought of him with his children again.
“Let’s do all the talking we can do now,” he said. “Something tells me there’ll be a lot less talking and a whole lot of action later,” he joked. I laughed heartily in response. It had been a long time since I’d felt so happy.
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