The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Yeah. Well, sort of.” She glanced around the very elegant but far too crowded suite filled with toddler toys from one end to the other. “I’m in the process.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’m, uh, back in Pittsburgh.”

  She had no way of knowing what the silence on the line meant. Was he angry? Glad? Worried?

  “You’re home?”

  She didn’t want to put it that way. But, “Yeah. Mayer and Mayer offered me a partnership. As a junior, but the money was right and—”

  “You’re home?” So much for his congratulations on the partnership....

  “I’m in Pittsburgh.”

  “Where are you living? Did you buy a place? When did this happen? How long have you been here?”

  No indication, now, if he was more than just curious....So she gave him the bare facts. Ending with, “I’ve been so busy getting caught up at work that I haven’t gone out to look for a place, yet. My stuff’s already here, but in storage.” Except for the things she’d gone over and collected to have at the hotel.

  He made polite responses. Didn’t offer to help her find a place. Or move in. Instead, he ended the call.

  She couldn’t sleep that night. All she could think about, besides Danny and Kora, was that once Jake had known she was back here, he’d no longer pushed her for a meeting.

  What did that mean?

  * * *

  Three weeks after Danny woke up, Dr. Gordon, renowned neurologist, called me to his visitor’s office on the top floor of the three-story convalescent center.

  I felt sick to my stomach as I rode the elevator up one flight that Friday afternoon. The staff had run a new series of tests that week, and I wasn’t completely ready to hear what they’d revealed.

  Danny talked to me all the time now, answering questions or relaying information. But we were as much like strangers as we were husband and wife. He remembered some special moments and it was obvious that they meant a lot to him. That I meant a lot to him. He expected a kiss when I arrived and before I left. Yet he wasn’t really a partner. He never asked about our house or even told me to drive carefully when I went home alone late at night.

  He was like a lost soul watching a movie of our lives. Emotionally detached.

  Dr. Gordon invited me to sit. I did. His white coat and gray beard were comforting in their familiarity. I’d never been to the upstairs office before. The neurologist’s full-time office was on a floor at the hospital. Our previous meetings had taken place there.

  He asked how I was doing. If I was sleeping. He asked what I thought of Danny’s progress. I wasn’t even sure what I told him. All I could think about was what he’d have to tell me.

  Had Danny progressed as far as he was going to? Was this shell of a man what we were going to live with for the rest of our lives?

  If so, I’d deal with it. I loved him and would be his wife in whatever capacity was left to me. But my heart was crying, too.

  “How do you feel about taking him home?”

  I jerked as the force of his words hit me. “You mean, soon?”

  He nodded, leaning back in his chair with his fingers threaded across his stomach. “He’s eating on his own. His vitals are holding steady at normal. He’s reclaimed all his bodily functions with complete normalcy....”

  I’d celebrated every one of those victories over the past weeks.

  “He’ll need a walker, at least for a while, and he’ll still need daily therapy, until that right side catches up with the left.”

  Finally, I’d heard something I could grasp. “So you expect it to?”

  He nodded.

  Okay. Good. “We’ll send a van for him,” the doctor was saying. “I understand that you have to work, but I’m confident that he’ll be fine on his own during the day. He’ll be here, in therapy for most of the time you’re gone anyway, just as he’s been this past week.”

  He made it all sound so manageable.

  “Do you have a bedroom on the ground floor he can use?”

  Danny was supposed to have his own room?

  “Our bedroom is down there,” I said. The guest bedroom and the room I used as our home office were upstairs. With the guest bathroom. I supposed I could move up there, but...

  “Good.” He nodded again. “The sooner he can get back into some kind of routine, into any part of the life he led before the accident, the better off he’ll be.”

  I was confused. Or maybe just afraid to be too hopeful. The ups and downs of the past weeks, of the past few years, had left their mark.

  “By normal life, do you mean...are you saying Danny might be able to work again?” Or have a real relationship?

  “From everything I’ve seen this week, I think there’s every chance that he will.”

  I felt weak all of a sudden. And excited. And still...scared as hell.

  “The main thing is not to expect too much of him. In addition to his physical challenges, Danny has an emotional quagmire to work through. It won’t be easy for him as he attempts to take up the reins of life again with a gaping year and a half hole. He’ll get angry. He might cry. It’s natural for him to feel afraid. In short, he’ll be going through all kinds of emotions he’s never experienced before.” Dr. Gordon paused. “It’s my understanding that he’s going home to a house he’s never seen.”

  I nodded. I never should have moved.

  “Even the emotional reunions with friends and family, which are to be expected and can’t be avoided, will be difficult for him at times. It will feel like everything and everyone is coming at him, needing him, sometimes needing more than he can handle.”

  I was taking it all in, my stomach in knots.

  Danny was coming home? I thought of the house, of the dusting and vacuuming that wasn’t done, the empty refrigerator. The boxes in the garage I’d never gotten around to unpacking. I had to wash the sheets and put out fresh towels and get him an updated cell phone with a new contract. His old one had expired a year before and...

  “The important thing is to keep his environment as calm as you can. Take everything one day at a time. Try not to have expectations of him. Let him define those for himself for now.”

  No expectations? That I could do. I could manage calm, too. And if I couldn’t, I’d find a way. My husband was coming home.

  “He...there’s a lot he doesn’t remember,” I said, voicing one of my greatest fears. “Do I fill in the blanks?” For the rest of our lives? “He got kind of testy with me a few times when I tried to tell him something. I know it’s frustrating for him, I just...”

  “It’s best if he remembers things on his own, when he’s emotionally ready to deal with them,” Dr. Gordon said. “If he asks a direct question, then, absolutely, answer it. But it’s quite likely that his vegetative state was connected to something his psyche was trying to suppress.”

  We’d had that conversation shortly after the accident. When the doctor had required candid answers to questions that might help explain Danny’s condition. Dr. Gordon knew about William Daniel’s death. About Danny’s sterility. And that last awful scene I’d witnessed between Danny and Bailey.

  “It’ll be healthiest for your husband if he comes to terms with those things in his own time. His own way.”

  I nodded. I was actually fine with that. There was so much I wanted to apologize for. The way I’d thought only of myself, my own pain, after I’d lost our son. And how I’d failed to understand that Danny no longer felt like a whole man when he found out he’d never be able to father another child. I’d been so hell-bent on showing him that he was no less a man in my eyes that I’d completely bypassed his personal suffering.

  “What about physical limitations?” I asked. I was pretty comfortable with Danny’s abilities. And certainly with my own ability to tend to him. A
fter eighteen months of witnessing and administering daily care of all his bodily functions, I’d grown adept. But it was all different now with Danny awake and wanting to do things for himself. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d run down the hall searching for Aimee or Leticia or one of the other nurses to ask if Danny was allowed to take a shower on his own. Or go outside for a walk around the complex.

  “Physically, there are no limitations.” The doctor’s words shocked me. We were talking about a man who’d lain in bed for eighteen months. Whose muscles had atrophied and...

  “Danny knows his limits. And he’ll push them as far as his body will let him. Overall he’s a very healthy young man.”

  “What about sex?” I couldn’t help it. I wanted to make love with my husband. Even this distant version of him. I wanted to erase the touch of Danny’s best friend from my body.

  “Whenever he’s ready,” the doctor said, his tone gentle. “But don’t be hurt or surprised if it takes a while. There’s a mental, and to some extent, emotional component to a man’s ability to have sex. Danny might struggle a bit to find enough focus to maintain an erection.”

  I had a flashback to my husband in another hospital bed, begging me to do him with my hand so he could be certain everything still worked.

  But Danny had been conscious and talking to me for a couple of weeks now and he’d never mentioned sex.

  “If you need time to prepare, we can continue as we are for another week or two,” the doctor was saying. “Believe me, after all you’ve been through, it’s understandable that you’d have some misgivings—”

  “No!” I sat forward, completely sure on this count. “I want my husband home as soon as you say it’s safe for him to be there,” I said. “I’m ready and willing to do whatever he needs me to do.” My voice was filled with my conviction.

  “How about this evening then, if Danny’s agreeable?”

  Until that second it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be.

  “Tonight?” My heart was beating furiously. Dusting and refrigerator be damned. “You mean I can take him today?”

  “If he’s comfortable with the idea.”

  Would he be? Oh, God, I hoped so. My old Danny would have been. It killed me that I didn’t know for sure what the man who was waiting for me downstairs would want.

  “I was thinking that this way you’d have the weekend to get him settled before you go back to work on Monday. It’s a good idea to give him those days to adjust before we start outpatient therapy, too. Just the trip home will exhaust him. He’ll probably sleep for most of the weekend.”

  Danny was coming home.

  If he wanted to.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Bailey found a house. The seller was willing to rent to her until closing, which allowed immediate occupancy. It was across town from the neighborhood she’d shared with Danny and Koralynn. Even farther from the area where they’d grown up. Another new beginning.

  The place wasn’t huge, but it was by the river, in an upscale neighborhood with wide quiet streets where Mattie could learn to ride a bicycle and play ball. She told Jake about it one night when he called after she’d moved in. But didn’t invite him over. Even with Danny at home, and seemingly making daily progress, Jake still called often. Keeping her in the loop.

  Every day she told herself this would be the day she didn’t take his call. And every night, she grabbed it on the first ring.

  He went away with Jenna for three days after Danny had settled in at home. Bailey painted two rooms and stripped wallpaper from a third while he was gone.

  She’d driven Mattie by Koralynn’s school once—but on a weekend when she knew her friend wouldn’t be there. She’d had to connect, even if only in that indirect way, before she’d written the offer on her new home.

  And every night she prayed for Danny and Kora. Sending wishes into the great unknown that her friends would be watched over and able to thrive. Theirs was one of the great love affairs of their generation. The exception that proved all the rules.

  She also made peace with her ex-stepfather judge. He had his own side of the story. One involving an alcoholic wife who wasn’t safe to drive. When she’d been arrested for drunk driving, he’d pulled strings to get her off, but with the agreement that he’d take her car so that she didn’t hurt someone. Of course, that put a whole different complexion on the story about depriving her mother of the car. Still, he was a hard-ass. One who’d been far too stern with, and easily embarrassed by, her weak-spirited, vulnerable mother. But Bailey figured she could face him in court on occasion without losing her lunch.

  And she had a call from Tom, the guy she’d met in the bar in Boston, the divorced guy who had two kids and worked in retail. He was going to be in Pittsburgh on a buying trip and invited her out to dinner. She accepted.

  But didn’t end up going.

  * * *

  Danny had been home for two weeks and we were starting to feel like a family again. Mom and Daddy had flown up for the first week, staying with Danny during the day while I worked. His mom and her new husband had come up from Kentucky for that weekend. Danny liked his new stepfather as much as I did. I’d known he would.

  He had his episodes, just like the doctor had predicted. Got frustrated a lot. And asked too few questions for my liking. There was so much I wanted to talk to him about. But there were some things I didn’t want him to ask, so mostly I was content.

  And ecstatically happy to have him home.

  I crawled into bed a little after ten one night, trying not to disturb him, but going to bed early because all I wanted to do was cuddle with my husband. As Dr. Gordon had also predicted, Danny slept more than he used to. But he stayed awake for increasingly longer periods.

  He’d even started talking about going back to work. He didn’t seem to have much sense of time, got confused by the chronology of events. But his financial acumen was back full steam. He spent hours on the internet, reacquainting himself with markets and figures, and he’d been in touch with his old firm, who’d asked him to come in and meet with them the following week.

  I was proud of him. Scared for him. And more in love than I’d ever been. The Danny I’d known before had been a boy. The Danny I crawled into bed with was a man who’d faced adversity and stood up to the task.

  The past few years had been hard on us. They’d changed us both, in some ways for the better.

  His hand covered mine as I snuggled up behind him. It wasn’t the first time. But it was the first time since before the accident. It used to mean...

  The fingers of his left hand crawled slowly up my wrist.

  In the past it had been his right hand, but...

  My heart seemed to skip a beat. And that old familiar heat pooled between my legs. I hadn’t had an orgasm in almost two years.

  Danny rolled onto his back, tugged, and I was on top of him. He kissed me. I kissed him back. We danced a dance that had been choreographed when we’d still been teenagers. It was exactly the same. Exquisite. And yet...it was new.

  “Are you okay?” His whispered words took me by surprise. Danny and I didn’t talk during sex.

  “Oh, yeah.” And then it dawned on me. Maybe he wasn’t. “How about you?”

  “Baby, you have no idea how okay I am,” he growled, rolling me over to settle on top of me. “All these weeks, watching your sexy little body walking around my bed, and here, getting naked and in the shower....”

  Pushing up my nightgown, he licked my nipple. It drove me crazy. In a wild, wonderful way. “You’re right, I had no idea,” I told him, a bit shocked by his ardor, but turned on, too.

  He kissed me then. Deeply. His taste was just as I remembered. I spread my legs, eager to have him sink inside me and obliterate everything but us.

  “I wanted to wait until I was ce
rtain we’d be okay here together,” he said, drawing back to look me in the eye. “I know this isn’t easy on you, Kor, and I feel awful being so dependent—”

  “Danny, don’t.” I put my finger against his lips. “You’re my husband and you’re more man than I’ll ever deserve.” I wanted to tell him that the accident had been my fault. Because I’d been an immature little drama queen who’d run when I’d caught him being less than perfect. But Dr. Gordon had warned again the other day that I had to wait for Danny to find his memories himself.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d still—” he pushed his rock-hard penis against my vagina “—want me.”

  “Are you kidding?” I laughed then, fully, with a heart that was opening again. “You’re the sexiest man alive and every day, when you get in the shower, I look at your butt and...” I didn’t get to finish. My words were swallowed by a kiss that thrilled me.

  I found out that night that I liked the whole talking-during-sex thing. It added another dimension to something that was still as wonderful as it had always been.

  * * *

  “Koralynn?” Danny’s call greeted me as I came home from school one afternoon.

  “Yeah?” Dropping my briefcase, I hurried through the kitchen into the living room, fearing the worst. He’d fallen and been lying there alone, in pain.

  He was on the living room floor, but clearly not hurt. He’d hauled a box down from the spare bedroom and was going through it.

  My throat dried up.

  “You and Bailey—she hasn’t been around once.”

  “She’s busy.” I knew she was back living in Pittsburgh. Jake had told me. So did Mom. The week Danny had come home, they’d met her for lunch. And taken photos of Mattie on their phone to show me.

  I’d actually been thinking about trying to arrange some way I could see the little guy for myself before he got any older. I didn’t want him growing up not knowing who I was.

  Which made no sense, since I had no intention of having his mother in my life again. Ever.

  “I don’t buy it.” Danny shook his head. “There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”