Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  He glimpsed her, on his turns, her eyes shining and happy. That’s my girl, he thought. Let me give you this. Goofy family time, music, good food. A few caresses. This was life on a human scale. Saving the world was too big a job for one woman. Even a magnificent one like her. He brought his feet together, clapped, put some shoulder into his shimmy, and stopped precisely on the final beat of the song, facing her.

  Gary ended on the beat, too, sweat gleaming on his forehead, a big grin on his face.

  She sat there, eyes glued to Daniel.

  “I didn’t win, did I?” Gary pretended to be worried. “Tell me I didn’t win.”

  “Huh?” she said, slowly turning her head toward him as if she was surprised to see him. “I’m sorry, Gary. Were you dancing, too?”

  He guffawed, his hands flapping at his face like a fan. “Oh! I’m so relieved. So relieved.”

  Daniel cuffed his arm with a playful swat. “Cowboy. You were never at risk.” He leaned over Brenna, tapping his lips with his index finger. “Right here, judge.”

  She captured his face in her hands and gave him a knee-melting kiss on the mouth.

  Bent over her, arms braced against the back of the couch, he savored the prize. Just as he was wondering how he was going to pull himself away, the front doorbell rang.

  James glanced at his watch.

  “Dang,” Daniel muttered, tracing her cheek with his fingers. “Should have put a sign out: Go away. I’m kissing the judge.”

  Walking down the passageway to the front door, Daniel wondered who it could be. His friends knew to come around the back. He hadn’t ordered anything UPS might be delivering. Maybe a neighbor’s kid, selling chocolates for a school fund-raiser.

  He turned the deadbolt and swung the door open.

  And there stood U.S. Special Envoy Brendan Rease, his trademark coat draped over his shoulders, his white mane catching the breeze. A long black limousine with dark windows was parked at the curb with a waiting driver.

  “Er…” Daniel was surprised, unprepared. How did you address a Special Envoy when he might become your father-in-law? “Mr. Ambassador.”

  “I’m here to see my daughter,” the Envoy proclaimed.

  “Of course. Please, come in. She’s in the back with James and Gary.”

  The old man’s lip curled at the mention of Gary’s name.

  Daniel gestured in the direction of the family room. The Envoy advanced, frankly assessing the house as he went. Daniel closed the door and caught up with his unexpected visitor.

  The Envoy stopped behind the couch. James and Gary were both already standing. The old man issued his daughter’s name like an edict. “Brenna.”

  She stretched her arm out along the back of the couch and twisted uncomfortably to see him over her shoulder. Her jaw jutted pugnaciously.

  Daniel pictured the scene from her perspective. Her damaged body, having to contort. Her father looming imperiously, barking out her name.

  No, he thought. No good. She might drag about two minutes of politeness out of that scenario before she turned away.

  “Father.” Her voice was flat.

  Nope. He corrected his assessment. Thirty seconds. Maybe. Especially having arrived on the heels of music and dancing, this was a buzz-buster. And yet. He was an old man. Whatever antipathy lay between him and his daughter—and her tabloid headlines alone would have given an old-school man pause—he kept appearing at her side. He’d been in Weisbaden, at the Naval Medical Center, here. Despite his presiding over talks in Vienna.

  The Envoy was reaching out.

  He stepped up behind the statesman. He’d already lied to him. Might as well commit the ultimate sacrilege and strip the priest of his holiest sacrament. He lifted the coat from the elder’s shoulders.

  James and Gary looked aghast.

  Brenna bit her lip.

  Daniel didn’t see the Envoy’s expression. Probably didn’t want to, either.

  “You’re just in time,” he said, quickly draping the garment over a hook in the hallway. “We’re having an early dinner tonight. Come to the table. We’re just sitting down.”

  He guided the Envoy with a hand on his back, while holding out his right to show him to the chair Gary had taken that morning, across from Brenna. “Gary,” he shot over his shoulder, “would you please help Brenna to her usual seat? James, why don’t you get your Dad a glass of wine? We can open a new bottle. Red, or white, sir?” He pulled out the chair.

  The Envoy sat down.

  “We’re drinking red,” Daniel proffered. “Would that suit?”

  The Envoy gave one curt nod.

  “Red for your Dad, James.”

  The glass appeared. James refilled his own. To the brim.

  “Why don’t you all come sit, now? I’ll bring the rest of the fixings. We’re making pizzas,” he told the elder. “These are the toppings. Each man builds his own. I bake ’em. There’s also a green salad.”

  Gary arrived with Brenna, helping her into the chair across from her father.

  She sat there, sullen-faced.

  Billie Holiday’s soulful voice drifted out of the speakers. Gary had put on Strange Fruit, the once-banned 1939 protest song about lynching.

  “Gary.” Daniel peered over his eyeglasses at his purported brother-in-law-to-be, tacitly rebuking him for his musical selection.

  Gary blinked, wide-eyed, innocently.

  Christ, Daniel thought, scanning the clan. They looked as if they’d been invited to partake in a human sacrifice. He set his shoulders. “James, there’s an extra chair by the wall that you can bring over for Gary. Why don’t you put him at the head of the table, beside us?”

  James, with a grateful nod, retrieved the chair.

  “Gary. Before you sit down—please cue up some piano, David Lanz, Deuter’s Sea and Silence. Maybe some Diana Krall. Natalie Cole. Set up a few harmonious discs and hit ‘Random’.”

  He tied his apron around his hips. There was work to do.

  Unrest to quell.

  “Brenna. Drink?”

  “Bourbon.”

  The Envoy scowled.

  “A double,” she said, glaring back. “Straight up.”

  So. Alcohol was a hot button. Given the role it had played in nearly bringing the Envoy’s career to an end, it was little wonder. Her request was telling, though. Kavsak she could take sober. But not her father. The rift between them had to be huge. He opened the kitchen cabinet, withdrew a water glass, clinked ice into it, and made her another cranberry juice spritzer. As apology, he perched a paper umbrella on the edge.

  Daniel leaned over Brenna’s shoulder, and set the drink in front of her. “Brenna’s had a good day today,” he told the Envoy. “Why don’t you tell your father about it, sweetheart? I’m sure he’d like to hear.”

  With a glare at him, she picked up her glass, snatched out the umbrella, thumped it on the table, and proceeded to drink. The whole glass. Without stopping.

  “As you can see,” Daniel told the Envoy imperturbably, “she’s getting enough fluids.”

  James took mercy on him and his father. “Daniel fixed us fabulous home-made waffles this morning, Dad. As good as Ma’s.”

  The Envoy nodded, following his son’s lead. “Anne was good in the kitchen. Loved to prepare her mother’s recipes, handed down, really, from the great-greats in the Auld Country.”

  “Waffles are Belgian, Father. Not Irish.”

  “I’m not referring to waffles, although she made those, too. Sundays, after church, she often made boxty—traditional Irish potato pancakes, served with butter or sour cream. You would have been very young. You probably don’t remember.”

  Daniel returned to the kitchen, gathering the items he needed, listening as her father spoke.

  “She’d pull out that yellowed page, dusty with flour, blotted with butter, scratched with faded handwriting only she could decipher. All her family recipes were like that. I offered to have them typed up for her, but she liked them that way. She sa
id it gave her a sense of continuity with the women who had come before.”

  “I suppose you got rid of her cookbooks,” Brenna accused.

  “No, child. They’re in storage boxes, your mother’s recipes tucked in the pages, as she left them. I thought—well, you never showed an interest in the kitchen.”

  “Because there wasn’t anyone to show me, Father.”

  Daniel’s heart skipped. She likely intended indictment, but the waver in her voice betrayed forlornness. He picked up the dinner things and returned to the table.

  “Here you go, love. Lesson one.” He set down a wooden cutting board with two balls of fresh dough in front of her, one for her, one for himself. “Sir? Here’s your board. James. Gary.” He handed theirs across, then took his seat beside Brenna. “Okay,” he reached over, handed her one of the balls of dough, dipped his fingers into the little bowl of flour he’d already set out, and lightly sprinkled some on her board. “Gentlemen, you too.”

  James and Gary picked up theirs without the trepidation the Envoy showed.

  “First,” Daniel told Brenna, “We’re going to flatten it. Lightly. You don’t want to over-work the dough. Makes it tough. Come on. Give it a try. That’s it.”

  He kept his voice low and even as he deftly demonstrated how to stretch the dough without a rolling pin. The music floated around them like warm water in a tranquility tank. The tribe gradually gentled. Daniel topped up the wine glasses, diplomatically guided the Envoy to spread the sauce before adding the toppings, and served the salad while the pizzas baked.

  The Envoy, prompted by James, told stories about the original Elizabeth Anne, painting a portrait of a kind-hearted woman, devoted to her children and her husband, but with Irish fire. Brenna stopped sniping and listened. At the outset of the evening, Gary kept his head down. Eventually, he relaxed enough to throw out a couple of well-received quips. Even the Envoy laughed.

  Once he got the family settled into a comfortable groove, only one bump arose, when Brenna asked what was happening in Kavsak. She’d been without news since she was evacuated.

  “House-to-house, hand-to-hand combat,” the Envoy said. “Both sides have dug in. It is going to be long and bloody unless we settle this accord.”

  Brenna tried to ask follow-up questions, but her father cut her off, refusing further discussion. “Let’s not ruin Daniel’s meal with political talk.”

  When the second bottle of wine was empty, and the last crumbs of the crispy, bubbling pizzas were finished off, Brenna faded. Daniel rubbed the nape of her neck, bent his head to hers and quietly asked if she was ready to call it a night.

  She nodded.

  He would gladly have helped her himself, but believed she would be more comfortable having Gary take her to the bathroom. “Gary?”

  “I’m on it,” he said, his napkin already off his lap and on the table. He pushed his chair back and came around with her walker and the belt.

  The Envoy watched him with her, his sharp eyes not missing Gary’s competence, and his gentle, respectful manner. His expression softened as he watched him encourage her, steady her when she faltered.

  Opinion, revised. Gary’s goodness glinted off him like sun upon a sparkling sea.

  “Well,” the Envoy said. “I’d best be going.”

  “There’s still dessert,” Daniel said, obliquely assuring him that his welcome extended beyond his daughter’s presence in the room. “Tiramisu. Keeping with the Italian theme. And coffee—caff or decaff, as you wish.”

  The Envoy’s eyes narrowed, taking his measure, as he had all evening.

  “Tell me,” he said, “the writing on her wrists—yours?”

  The question startled him. He hadn’t thought about her wrists being exposed to his scrutiny. “Yes.”

  “On both inner wrists. Your name on one, James and Gary’s on the other. Not simply lovers’ play.”

  “No.”

  “To what end have you written on her?”

  Daniel glanced at James, then back at the Envoy. “To remind her who loves her.”

  The Envoy went still, his eyes scouring Daniel’s visage, his powerful negotiator’s brain evaluating the unstated. Suddenly, his face crumbled. The Rease Persona, replaced by a very human father, stricken by the possibility that despite her having survived the land mine, his daughter’s life was still at risk. “She’s suicidal.”

  “Two incidents that I’ve learned of, Dad, in Kavsak. Maybe the hunger strike at the hospital, too—” James wobbled his hand “—though that may just have been heartsickness for Daniel.”

  “You made my daughter heartsick?”

  “No,” James rapidly interjected. “She thought she was doing him a favor, and sent him away.”

  “Yet. She’s here.”

  “Daniel can be persuasive.”

  James mercifully forbore saying how Daniel had achieved the turn-around.

  “She should be in hospital with ’round-the-clock care.”

  “She’s here. She’s eating. She’s dressed. She’s walking. She’s even being unmannerly again,” James said, his eyes straying to the little drink umbrella she’d ungraciously smacked on the table.

  The Envoy’s eyes followed his son’s. “She has your mother’s fire. Though Anne, of course, tempered it. Mostly.” He turned abruptly to Daniel. “Is it true you two are marrying?”

  Daniel glanced at his hands. His lie was back to bite him in the butt. “It’s true it’s my intention.”

  “And hers?”

  He shrugged. “Right now, she’s just trying to get through the day.”

  Brenna’s father cast his glance around the room. To James. To the remnants of dinner. To the bedroom door Brenna had disappeared behind, then back to Daniel. “A man gets ahead of himself, announcing an engagement before the woman has agreed to matrimony.”

  Censure served as etiquette. “Yes, sir.”

  The Envoy glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to forgo dessert. I’m supposed to be at a sit-down dinner at the White House. Perhaps I can make a quick appearance for the after-dinner liqueurs and be excused for my tardiness.”

  The Envoy, in other words, had blown off the President for a home-made pizza and a couple hours with his daughter.

  Daniel walked him to the door. Gave him back his coat.

  The Envoy cast a wistful glance at Brenna’s closed door. “Bid her goodnight for me, would you?”

  “Of course.”

  “James.”

  “G’night, Dad.”

  “Keep me apprised.”

  “I will.”

  “Come again,” Daniel told the Envoy.

  “Thank you. I intend to.”

  Gary emerged from Brenna’s room after the Envoy’s limousine pulled away, and joined James and Daniel in the foyer. “Is it safe to come out now?”

  “Yeah, hon.” James chuckled, and gave Gary’s hand a squeeze. “You were very well-behaved. I’m proud of you.”

  Daniel glanced at Brenna’s door. “Is she still awake?”

  “Yes, she is,” Brenna said from inside the room.

  “Gary and I will clean up,” James told Daniel. “He’ll do most of the work, as all he did was play music all day while you and I slaved in the kitchen.”

  “I provided expert nursing care, handsome. So you can do your share.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Daniel said, watching them head for the dining table to clear. He turned and went into Brenna’s room.

  She was lying on her side, her arm propping up her head, wearing a silky V-necked night gown the guys had brought from her house. She patted the mattress beside her, inviting him to sit.

  “Your Dad said to tell you goodnight.”

  “Thanks for the good day,” she said, ignoring the message. “For giving me the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Father’s face when you took his coat off his shoulders. Would have been worth a picture. Whatever possessed you?”

  “It occurred to me that the problem with getting on a high horse is figuring o
ut how to get off it afterwards.”

  “He’s certainly been up there long enough.”

  “And you,” he said gently. “On yours.”

  Her face shifted, caution replacing amusement. “A couple hours basking in The Magnificent’s light, and you’re already on his side?”

  “Family isn’t about ‘sides’, Brenna.”

  The easy curve of her body became rigid.

  “Honey, he’s reaching out to you.”

  “You can’t make up for lost time.”

  “No. You can’t. But you can make sure you don’t waste the time left. He’s an old man, Bren.”

  “I know how old he is.”

  “He blew off the President so he could be with you tonight. He was supposed to be at a White House dinner.”

  “And that impresses you.”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  “Just because it’s the President.”

  Her casual reference startled him. This was her social milieu, he realized. Her father referred to dinner at the White House as casually as his referred to an operating room. “No. Because I don’t see a career diplomat doing such a thing lightly. It suggests he wants to make things right with you.”

  She pressed her lips into a stubborn line.

  “What hope is there, of peace in the world, if we can’t even live in harmony with the people we love?”

  His question gave her pause. But he also saw anger, quivering beneath the surface. “I don’t love him.”

  “Yes you do. If you didn’t, there would be no conflict.”

  “Don’t get in the middle of this, Daniel.” Her tone was dangerous, her eyes warned him that a prudent man would drop the subject.

  “It’s eating you alive.”

  “He stole my mother from me!” she said, her voice rising. “Dragged me off to Delaware while she was dying and never let me say goodbye. Don’t you fucking dare tell me to make peace with that.”

  Out in the kitchen, the rattle of dishes quieted.

  He stilled himself, letting her rage spill over him, trying not to let it penetrate. Her reaction was visceral, rooted in childhood loss. And yet. She was a woman now, capable of insight and perspective she’d lacked as a twelve year old, and she needed to revisit what she thought she knew before it choked the rest of her life out of her.