by T. S. Joyce
“That’s not all the news I have.” He downed his glass of Merlot and took his time setting the empty just so near the candle between them. “Laura is pregnant.”
She stared, a mass of confusion churning in her middle, chilling her vocal chords until it became impossible to speak. His wife was pregnant. After so many years of trying, she would give him the child he’d always pined for.
“It’s a boy,” he said, voice cracking as he leaned back in his chair.
“Congratulations.”
“She didn’t tell me until she was farther along because she was afraid of losing the baby. We’ve been trying for so long.”
“I know.”
He cocked his head, and an apologetic quirk took his thin lips. “This is the last time I’ll be meeting with you for dinner.”
She pursed her lips and nodded, the rhythm calming her. “And Oleanna?”
The corners of his lips drew down with some emotion she couldn’t understand, and he leaned forward. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you.” His voice came out a rasp. “For months I’ve watched you wither, and I know it’s because of me. One hundred percent, I did that to you. I was wrong for never telling you about my wife, and I’ve been wrong every day since I manipulated you into coming back to the city. I just—I just wanted to be a part of my daughter’s life.”
“Her name is Oleanna.” That he wouldn’t say it bothered her more than anything else. “What does this mean? Just say it straight. You’ll never see or claim her as yours? You have a son now so she doesn’t count? You got a redo on fatherhood with a child you want more?” She didn’t even try to hide the disgust in her voice. “Why did you bring me back here Miles? After I told you my happiness was in The Landing, you watched me suffer the entire plane ride home. You watched my heart break, and you never softened in your quest to bring me here.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t benefit from it, Farrah. The man you love now has his son back. You did a good thing. I did a good thing.”
“You’re right.” Her voice shook as she inhaled a shaky breath. “I am grateful for what you did, but I haven’t asked for anything else from you, not for me, not for our child. You offered to do that, and I obeyed your terms.”
Misery painted the caramel hues in his eyes. “I know.”
“Are you letting me go?”
His throat worked as he swallowed and nodded slightly. “Oleanna is all yours.”
She sniffed her disappointment at his casual tossing away of his own daughter and asked, “Can you take me back to my apartment now?”
The ride stretched on and on as the soggy streets slushed by. Miles’s lips felt cold and clammy as he brushed them against her cheek. She resisted the urge to squirm away. If that was what he needed to feel like he’d done the right thing, fine. Her farewell was to say nothing and leave without a single glance back.
She couldn’t run in her condition but she risked taking the stairs two at a time to find the safety of the apartment. When the door was closed behind her, and her back pressed against the cold wood, she stared at the single light, still on like she’d left it.
Miles’s dismissal of his child was disappointing, but nothing she was surprised by. He’d treated his wife, her, and every mistress he’d ever kept the same way. He was who he was.
And now, she was free.
Throat so tense she could barely breathe, she dialed Briney’s Bar, something she’d wanted to do a hundred times. She didn’t have Aanon’s cell memorized, but Briney’s came easy.
Nobody answered, and she dialed again immediately.
“What?” Briney answered.
“It’s me.”
“Who’s me?”
“Farrah.”
“Shhhit. Where are you? What number are you calling from? I don’t have caller ID.”
She recited the number. “Can you have him call me?”
Instead of answering, Briney yelled for Burtlebey. Moments later, the sound of fabric swished across the line and Briney murmured, “Can you watch the bar for an hour? I need to run to Falk’s place. And if I find out you gave away free drinks, I’m going to ban you from this place for a week.” More rustling, and then he said, “Farrah, you still there?”
“I’m here,” she said through a tear-filled laugh.
“I’m going to get him. Wait by that phone, girl.”
“I will,” she promised.
The next half an hour was the longest in her life. Would he still be angry with her for leaving? Perhaps he didn’t want to talk and wouldn’t call. Maybe he’d moved on.
Minutes ticked by, and she stared at the phone sitting on the counter. She crossed and uncrossed her arms and chewed her lip until it hurt. To busy herself, she made hot chocolate, a treat that always got Oleanna dancing.
The phone rang. Terrified she’d imagined it, she flipped it open and the words caller unknown fanned the screen.
Her voice shook when she answered. “Hello?”
“Farrah?”
God, it was so good to hear Aanon’s voice again. “Yes, it’s me.”
A long, hitched sigh filled the line. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I just—I wanted to tell you congratulations.”
“You heard?”
“Yeah, I’ve been keeping track of your court dates. Cheering you on from New York.”
“I tried to find you,” he blurted. “I’ve been trying for months, but I hit a dead end. I thought maybe you didn’t have a cell phone, or you didn’t want to be found, or…I don’t know.”
He’d looked for her. She sank against the cabinets until she was sitting on the cold tile floor. When she could speak again, she said, “It would’ve been too hard for me to talk to you.”
“Is he treating you okay?”
“Who?”
“Miles.”
Her laugh was bitter. “No. He let me go. He told me Oleanna is mine now.”
“Oleanna,” he whispered, like it was a prayer on his lips.
“She’s due next month.”
A tiny muffled voice in the background said, “I want to talk to her,” and Aanon said, “In a minute, buddy. I need to talk to her for a few minutes first.”
“Is that Dodge?”
“Yeah. We’re celebrating him moving in with me tonight. He said you took him to get ice cream once, and he wanted the same kind he got when he was with you. Problem is, he didn’t remember the place you got it from so we had to search the whole town until he found the right one.”
She laughed and wiped tears from her eyes. “It was from the gas station.”
“Yeah, we figured it out eventually. Farrah?”
“Yes, Aanon?”
“I know I don’t have a right to ask this. You have some great life in the city, and it’s selfish of me to beg. But please come home.” His voice cracked. “It’s not the same without you here. It’s empty. I’ve been working so I can pay Miles back every penny he put up for the lawyer. Just please, come back to me.”
“And me,” Dodge said in the background.
“And I don’t just want you in the cattleman’s cabin. I swear I’ll be upfront about everything I want from now on. No one is ruling my life anymore, Farrah. No one except for you. I can’t stop thinking about you. You’ve filled this place with good memories. You taught me how to care about someone again, and every day that goes by without you here, I feel like the good parts of me are going to disappear. I want you to live with me in the big house.” His voice lowered and grew thick. “I want to be there when Oleanna is born. She’s mine as much as Dodge is. Please, Farrah—just come home.”
She clasped her trembling fingers over her mouth to contain the sob that threatened to fill the room. “Do you still love me?” she whispered.
“With everything I am.”
“I don’t have enough saved up.”
“Don’t worry about that. Briney started a Farrah Fund at the bar. The Landing’s people have been dropping money in it for three m
onths just for a plane ticket back. Everyone wants you back here where you belong. I can book a flight tonight. You can come home whenever you want.”
Home.
Hope bloomed inside her, filling her until warm tears of utter happiness touched her cheeks. “Can you make it for tomorrow?”
Chapter Twenty
Aanon set the phone down slowly and stared at it on the table. He hadn’t just imagined her, had he?
Briney leaned against the sink with his arms crossed, and his bushy eyebrows lifted to his hair line. “Well? What did she say?”
“We’re going to need the Farrah Fund.”
A slow smile spread across the old man’s face. “I’ll take care of the plane ticket. When does she want it?”
“Tomorrow.” His own voice sounded dreamy, far away, but Briney slapped him on the back, then gripped his shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled, slamming reality back down like a hammer on a nail.
When the old bartender grinned like a fool, he couldn’t ever remember seeing so many of Briney’s teeth.
“You must really want to retire,” Aanon teased.
“Darn tootin’ I do. And I don’t trust nobody but Farrah to run my bar. I’m going to go. Plane tickets to reserve, you know. Give me your number, and I’ll call you with the times and information she’ll need.”
Aanon scribbled the digits across the back of an old grocery receipt, and Briney shoved it in his pocket. “I can’t believe she’s coming back.”
“Well, she never should’ve left, if you ask me. That”—Briney halted and glanced at Dodge, who was wrestling a carton of milk from the fridge—“ex fox of yours got you two all tied up. Cunning little critter, she was.”
Briney let himself out, mumbling about how Burtlebey better not have burned his bar to the ground, and Aanon watched Dodge slowly toddle his way back to the table with the milk.
Scooting his glass from lunch closer, Dodge prepared to pour.
“You need help, bud?”
“No, I’m big.”
Dodge spilled a bit, but it was nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up. Most of the milk poured into the glass, and a sense of pride filled Aanon at his son’s independent streak. It would serve him well if he ever decided to run the homestead like the generations of Falks before him.
She’s coming home.
The thought was a warm brush against his heart, stirring life there once again. The months since she’d left had been hollow and clouded with fear. He’d been adrift without her here, and scared about losing Dodge for good. Aanon had lost part of himself he thought he’d never get back. But the thought of her coming back to him stirred within him a glimpse of what could be. Something he hadn’t dared dream about before, when everything had gotten so out of control.
Dodge chugged the drink and wiped the creamy mustache from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “Aaah,” he said with a satisfied grin, and Aanon chuckled.
“You and me, we have to clean up this house. Farrah is going to be staying here, and we can’t have her coming home to an untidy bachelor pad, can we?”
Hours later, as he rinsed a sponge out in the bathroom sink, he glimpsed his reflection in the mirror. His face looked sunken and tired. He ran a hand over his newly shaven jaw. Before the court hearing that morning, he’d shaved his beard. He hadn’t had the capacity to worry about shaving after Farrah left but wanted to look less like a hobo for the judge. He hadn’t given much thought to anything besides losing her and the possibility of losing Dodge, too. But now? His life had meaning again. Purpose. He’d be given a chance to do it right this time. Give Dodge a stable home and provide for him and Farrah. And Oleanna.
A ghost of a smile brushed his lips. There he was again. He wasn’t totally lost because that smile was so familiar. It’s the way he used to see himself before everything went belly up.
Oleanna.
The name was Norwegian, and even if Farrah hadn’t said she loved him with words on the phone earlier, the declaration of the baby’s name said them for her. She loved him still, and if anyone could bring him back completely, it was her.
His phone rang, and in a rush, he accepted the call. He was only a little disappointed when it was Briney with the flight information. It would’ve been a relief to hear Farrah’s voice again so soon, but knowing when she would arrive in Anchorage was the next best thing.
Besides, now he had a reason to call her back.
****
The four hour layover in Phoenix was torture. Farrah had plenty of time to leave the airport and find some local fare to eat, but paranoid about missing her flight, she’d settled on a fast food burger restaurant outside her terminal. Staring out the window, she watched flight after flight take off and prayed for time to pass so she could be up in the air, on her way to him.
Oleanna stretched within her, and she rested a hand over the movement. “We’re almost there, baby.”
When her flight was finally called, she ignored the suspicious glances from fellow passengers that said they thought she’d deliver at any moment. Nothing could dampen her mood. She’d never thought to see Aanon again, and now every mile she traveled brought her closer to him.
She settled into her seat on the plane and fidgeted impatiently. Five more hours and she’d see his face.
“Excuse me,” said an older woman with a stylish bob and glasses framed in a rosy hue to match her lipstick. “I’m in the window seat.”
“Oh, here let me stand and let you pass.”
The woman pressed her carry-on bag into the compartment above and scooted into her seat.
Farrah settled back in and worried a loose thread on her jeans with her fingertip.
“Nervous flyer?” the woman asked.
“No. Just ready to get to Anchorage. Someone is meeting me there.”
“Corinne,” the woman said, offering her hand.
“I’m Farrah.” She settled her palm in the woman’s for a shake.
“Are you meeting your husband?”
“My husband?” Farrah asked.
Corrine pointed to her protruding stomach.
“Oh no. I’m not married.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I just assumed.”
“It’s okay.” She felt the need to explain Aanon to the stranger so she’d understand. But what could she say about him? Calling him her boyfriend wasn’t enough. He was so much more. “I’m meeting a man who has been really good to me, though. My love story is complicated.”
An easy smile brightened Corrine’s face, making her look years younger. “I’m not an easy flyer like you are.” At a questioning look from Farrah, she asked, “Would you mind sharing your complicated love story with a stranger?”
A pleasant looking woman with curly red hair and rosy cheeks leaned across the aisle. “Two strangers?” she corrected with a questioning arch to her brows.
The flight attendant stood in front and gave a short lecture on safety procedures and how to use the seat belts. Directly after, the plane taxied the runway.
“Okay,” Farrah agreed as the plane took off. “I first met Aanon when I was six.”
And for the first hour, she told of how she’d come to be on this flight, in her last trimester, running back to the man she loved. Conversation after that drifted and flowed this way and that as the other women shared stories of their lives. There was something freeing about talking to people she’d never see again, and her earlier wish was answered. Time passed quickly.
As the plane descended on Anchorage, she became quiet and restless again. What if he didn’t like the changes in her? Residual sadness still clung to her like a second skin, and as much as she didn’t want the past three months to come between them, he’d see what they had done to her. The Aanon she remembered didn’t miss anything. What if he gave her back, like Miles had done?
“Go get him,” Corrine said with a kind pat to her leg.
She smiled her thanks and pulled her carry-on from the bin above. The wheels of her ratty pur
ple suitcase made a hitched rumbling sound as she followed the others out of the plane. Gripping the handle of the luggage, her palms began to sweat, and her body felt as if it was floating. She stopped on the loading ramp and leaned against the wall as others passed, eager to meet friends and family waiting for them. God, what if she wasn’t enough for him?
Gasping against the panic that pressed against her chest, she leaned her head back until it rested on the cloth wall. She’d just have to work to be worthy of his love as he had worked for hers. Emotion shook her as she stepped unsteadily toward the exit.
In the bright light of the terminal, reunited families clung to each other. A trio of business men in suites shook hands and smiled their greetings. Children giggled and ducked out of the way when family members threatened to tickle them.
He wasn’t there.
Her heart sank lower and lower with each pass over the chaos of the lobby.
And suddenly, a fare haired little boy with Aanon’s blue eyes weaved through the crowd. A tiny bouquet of flowers was clutched in his tiny hand, and he yelled her name. Dodge plowed into her, gripping her legs as his head rested against her stomach.
“Ms. Farrah,” Dodge said again.
A warm smile stretched her face as she rubbed his back. “I’m here.”
And then he was there, too, her Aanon.
He stood stark against the background of motion. Everything blurred behind him, making him brighter, clearer. He stood with an uncertain look on his face. He’d lost weight, and ghosts danced in his eyes where none had dared before. The corner of his mouth pulled up in a questioning smile. He was magnificent.
Her hand slid from the handle of her luggage as she and Dodge stepped toward him. Shaken from whatever trance had taken him, Aanon reached her in four long strides, and his lips crashed onto hers with the emotion of a tidal wave. A helpless sound left her throat as tears slid down her cheeks. He was hers, and nothing stood between them anymore.
Dodge clung to their legs, and she pulled back an inch. Her free hand to Aanon’s cheek, she brushed away the moisture she found there. “My boys,” she said, her lip trembling.