Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  They’d forged links to each other in Kavsak that no one else could comprehend. Having made it through war together, could they survive peace?

  The weather report was correct. When Margaret woke early Saturday morning, the sky was blue and cloudless, the sun already warm. Quietly plucking the car keys from the dresser where Alden had emptied his pockets, she tiptoed downstairs.

  Rounding the base of the stairs, she noticed that Brenna’s bedroom door was open, her bed neatly made up. She unlocked the front door and stepped out, pausing on the front steps to admire the day. She couldn’t get over how intensely green D.C. was already, compared to Portland.

  She pointed the key fob at the car and pressed the button to unlock the doors. She had brought two purple bee-balm plants from home to transplant into Daniel’s garden and she wanted to get them into the ground.

  Cradling the pots, she went up the driveway, opened the side gate, and entered his garden.

  She saw Brenna sitting under the pergola by the flagstone barbeque. It must have taken her some effort to traverse the deck, the steps, and the uneven brick path to get there, Margaret mused. She had gotten herself as far as she could get from the house without leaving the premises. Self-exile.

  “Good morning, Brenna, dear,” she said, setting the pots on the potting bench near her. “Beautiful day.”

  She nodded, a single tip of the head.

  She looked uncomfortable, probably still feeling awkward after last night’s dinner. Daniel had been so tongue-tied. The last thing a man wanted to hear from his lover was tales of her sexual liaisons with other men, no matter how far in the past. Still, she was convinced that Brenna, faced with Alden’s speculation, had not addressed the issue of her reputation solely for Alden’s sake, but for Daniel’s.

  Margaret had to give her high scores for honesty. It could not have been easy. And the way Brenna’s emotions had surfaced, it was clear she had never processed them before. She had compartmentalized them. Bending for the watering wand, she twisted the faucet, and saw the line tauten as it filled with water.

  Brenna lifted her hands out of her lap, steadied one on the armrest of the bench. She was going to bolt. Combat veterans, she knew, often found pleasantries banal. If Margaret was going to establish a connection, she had to skip the chit-chat.

  “There was one thing you said last night that I think was a mistake—” Margaret said, squeezing the handle on the wand, releasing a soft shower over the pots.

  Brenna froze.

  “—that you aren’t a decent woman. On the contrary, your confidence last night not only showed courage, it demonstrated your desire to set things right.”

  Brenna sat back, openly assessing her. “Maybe,” she finally said. “But it doesn’t undo the original behavior.”

  “No.”

  “So when is the sin over with?” she blurted. “Do you just carry it forever and it’s never erased?”

  Margaret pondered not only the question but the way it had erupted. Blurting was impulse, unimpeded. A sign that self-revelation was not customary, but that the urge to confide was powerful. Brenna needed to connect.

  “Well,” Margaret said, “if you accept the concept of sin—which is a whole other conversation, but let’s just use that term—then the Western tradition of redemption requires repentance, restitution where possible, and reform. All of which, as far as I can see, you have done. Only one thing remains undone…”

  “Which is.”

  Margaret put down the wand. “Forgiveness, my dear. You haven’t forgiven yourself.”

  “For screwing up?”

  Margaret shook her head. “For being human.” She grasped the stems at the base and tugged gently. The roots were stuck in the container, bound, unable to expand. Until they were released, the plant could not flourish. “You were young. Motherless. You lacked guidance—and for that, you must also forgive your father.”

  Brenna snorted.

  “Perhaps he wonders,” Margaret went on gently, “when his sin will be erased.”

  Brenna crossed her arms over her chest and changed the focus. “What about Daniel?”

  “Daniel is not part of the original equation. His only role is to decide if he can live with the fallout.”

  Margaret found the garden claw and scraped gently at the root ball, releasing the knots so the roots could spread out once they were placed in fertile soil.

  “I want him to have what he needs, you know. I’m…” She trailed off. The note of defensiveness in her tone changed to uncertainty. “I’m just…not sure I’m the right woman for him.”

  There it is, Margaret thought. The interior door. The one that led down a passageway to other rooms: self-esteem, self-image, self-worth. For some people, another door also existed down that corridor: Secrets. Out of sight, tightly locked, it was where Awful Truths resided. The guilty used the room to hide their misdeeds. For the innocents, it was the place for self-recrimination, where they transformed bad luck, tragedy, and helplessness into guilt. Guilt, terrible as it was, served as the remedy for powerlessness. It gave the illusion of control where none had actually existed.

  The Awful Truth could never be given voice. My father had sex with me and I had orgasms. I accidentally killed my buddy in a firefight. I didn’t help the woman they were raping in the courtyard. Whatever the secret, it proved you unlovable, unworthy.

  And so Secrets were protected at all costs.

  But the effort of living with the Awful Truth, of keeping others from discovering it, was crushing. The longer it remained hidden, the more damage it caused. Ultimately, it was more than most people could bear. They turned to alcohol and drugs to blunt the pain. They engaged in high-risk behaviors that jeopardized their lives. It was better to die than to admit oneself unlovable.

  Margaret swept her gaze over Brenna.

  Not long ago, Brenna had stepped on a land mine. She had survived the same harrowing ordeal Daniel had. She had spent thirty months under fire before that. Yet, during the entire prior afternoon and evening, she had not said a single thing about Kavsak. Not one.

  Her silence was breathtaking.

  The keys to the interior doors were cut from trust, and Margaret had not yet earned them with Brenna. She would not place her at further risk by picking at something she would not be around to help heal.

  “So,” Margaret said, returning to Brenna’s statement, “who is the right woman for Daniel, do you think?” Read carefully, a job ad revealed as much about the person who was leaving, as about the desired replacement.

  Brenna pondered the question. “He needs someone…fresh. Someone balanced, who’d be a good wife, give him children.”

  Daniel had told Margaret about Brenna’s vehement reaction on the topic of children. She knew that four little ones had been lost when Brenna hadn’t been able to get back to them. Again she decided to leave the issue untouched. Too close to the core. She picked up the second flower pot, starting anew the process of releasing the plant. “Someone ‘fresh’, as you say, would not understand the forces that have shaped Daniel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, how complete a mate could a woman be, who didn’t know what it is to break and put yourself together again?”

  Brenna looked taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to her that hitting bottom was a qualification.

  “And how about Daniel? Is he the right man for you?”

  The catch in Brenna’s breath, the brightening of her eyes would have been proof enough. The blush was outright advertising. Margaret busied herself brushing soil off the work bench, giving Brenna privacy until the color in her cheeks subsided.

  “He’s kind,” Brenna finally replied.

  No doubt the highest accolade a woman who had been caught in Kavsak’s crossfire for thirty months could bestow upon a man.

  Back from his ride, Daniel locked his bike up in the shed, hung his helmet on the hook, and entered his house by the front door, hoping to catch Brenna in the privacy of her bedr
oom. He’d left her last night with nothing more than a terse goodnight. It was the best he could do at the time, but not a good way to leave things with an emotionally-fragile woman.

  Her door was open, the bed made, her clothes folded and neatly piled. It reminded him of her hotel room in Kavsak. Everything in a given place, things equally ready to be used or left behind.

  He went on to the kitchen and found his parents there. His dad was pouring himself a steaming cup of coffee, a rare treat for a surgeon who needed steady hands. His mom was stirring a pitcher of freshly-squeezed lemonade with a wooden spoon. Four ice-filled glasses sat on a tray beside her.

  “You were out,” she said, surprised.

  “Morning, son.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Daniel said, pecking his mom’s forehead with a kiss, smiling at the pleasure in their voices. He not only loved his parents, he liked them. He enjoyed their company. Respected them.

  His mom put down the spoon and snaked her arm around his waist.

  “I’m sweaty,” he warned.

  She gave him a two-armed hug anyway. “We thought you were upstairs, sleeping in.”

  “A little steam to blow off.” Thirty-some miles worth.

  “Brenna’s in the garden,” his mom said, glancing toward the French doors, making the connection. “She was already out back when I came down.”

  Which said something. His mom slept with the windows open and woke to birdsong. “How is she?”

  “Well,” she said, picking up one of the glasses and lifting the pitcher to pour him a drink, “she’s still on the property.”

  He winced, recalling his churlishness the night before. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Yes, I did.” She held out the lemonade. “I made my first solo foray.”

  “Was she polite?”

  “Surprisingly forthcoming.”

  His father, now settled at the table with the newspaper spread out, turned a page and humphed. “Your mother could get the Rock of Gibraltar to confide.”

  Daniel glugged his drink. It was cold and tart and quenching. He held the glass out for a refill.

  His mom steadied it and poured. “It isn’t just me, Alden. Daniel’s made great progress with her.”

  “War,” Daniel explained. “Any other circumstance, I’d just be some shadow she walked past.”

  His mom stopped pouring, gave him a direct look. “You’re more than that, Daniel. She has eyes.”

  He shrugged, stared at the lemon pulp floating in the glass. “I need to talk to her. I acted like a jealous knucklehead last night.”

  “Your father and I were just heading out to Connecticut Avenue to get groceries, then we’ll be back to fix brunch.”

  His dad, coffee mug halfway to his lips, looked surprised. “We were?”

  “Yes, Alden. First, we’re getting a latte at that coffee shop you like, then we’re shopping. We’ll be out of the house a while.” She picked up a second glass. “Here, Daniel. Take Brenna a drink. She’s been out there all morning.”

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  He toed the French door open with the tip of his shoe and patted across the deck and onto the brick path, holding the overfull glass away from himself, sipping off the top so it wouldn’t spill. He was halfway to Brenna before he looked up.

  He stopped dead. The glib rejoinders he’d been rehearsing for his apology fell out of his brain.

  She was sitting under the pergola on the edge of the bench, enveloped in a silky teal bathrobe that crossed her breasts and tied at the waist. The palm of one hand rested atop her thigh. The fingers of the other were tucked between them at the knee, as if she had been straightening her gown and frozen in mid-action.

  She was staring at the paving stones, her eyes unseeing, her face as disengaged as if she were an exquisitely-realized statue, an optical illusion—posed, scarcely breathing, profoundly, unnaturally still.

  This, he realized, was her despondency, the void she carried within her that she had been covering like an illusionist, with speech and movement and little daily acts to give the impression of animation where there was none.

  If he watched long enough, he would see her turn to dust.

  Fear jabbed his heart, stole the air from his lungs.

  She blinked, a measured closing and re-opening of the eyes. Her head rose. Her eyes slid upward, regarding him.

  He felt as though he’d been caught watching a naked woman without her consent.

  Her eyes shifted to the drinks in his hands. Her tongue darted over her lips.

  He closed the distance to her, held out the lemonade.

  She emptied the glass quickly, testament to how long she’d been sitting in the morning sun, to her reluctance to re-enter his house and face him after last night.

  He pressed his lips together, angry he hadn’t done better by her. He took her empty glass and held out his full one.

  “That’s yours,” she said.

  “I had some already.”

  She took it, drank most of it before balancing the remainder on the armrest.

  He crouched down in front of her, on the balls of his feet, resting his hands on the bench on either side of her knees to keep his balance. “You been up long?”

  She shrugged. “I heard you leave.”

  Five-ish.

  “Just a bike ride, Brenna.”

  She shrugged again. They both knew it wasn’t.

  He ran his hand over his beard stubble. “Bren? I went to Kavsak with you and discovered a brutish, primitive man inside myself. Someone I never believed I could be. That man sprang up last night. Jealous. Caveman-ish. Willing to impose himself on you without the protection you wanted. It was all I could do, not to enter your room.”

  She turned her head, side to side, slow denial of the impulse he damned near hadn’t quashed.

  He covered her hands with his. “Yes,” he insisted. “I can count. Two weeks since your last period.” He needed her to understand how dangerous he could be. “I want you irrevocably tied to me. I was scared, Bren, that I wanted it so much I would force you.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  He stood up. “After Kavsak, I’m no longer sure what I’m capable of.”

  “You would never hurt me, Daniel.”

  Looking down at her, he felt a surge of love for her. She had seen humanity at its worst. Seen him, in Kavsak. And still, she believed the best of him.

  Brenna watched him plod up the path to the house. He was going to shower and shave, he said, then come back and fix her something to eat. Tall, muscular, his strong body clearly outlined in his fitted cycling gear, he was so full of self-reproach when, in truth, she was the person perpetrating the injury.

  He had merely come to her last night as Ari had come to her years before. Shaken. Possessive. Trying to make sense of an ancient male impulse. But what she had given Ari—relinquishment, assurance of her devotion, unprotected access to her body—she refused to Daniel.

  And Daniel set his kindness before her anyway—a generous gift bestowed time and again before an unworthy recipient.

  No good could come of this. Not for him.

  The thought propelled her to her feet.

  Inside the house, his parents were nowhere in sight. She went upstairs, tapped on Daniel’s bedroom door, and called his name. There was no answer. She turned the knob and went in.

  The shower was running. She glimpsed him behind the frosted glass. Her heart racing, she sat on his bed beside the T-shirt, boxers, and shorts he had laid out. She took the gold bracelet off her wrist. She could never be fair to him. She had secrets.

  The shower turned off. He came out, naked, briskly rubbing his hair with a large white towel. He stopped, startled to see her.

  “I knocked.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You can come in my room.”

  She lifted her hand, the bracelet in her trembling fingers. “Daniel. This, with us—”

  “No,” he whispered. He dropped the towel, sprang forward, urgent as if s
he were slipping over a precipice. He captured her face in his hands, pressed his thumbs across her lips. “Don’t.” His voice was husky, filled with emotion. “Don’t say it.”

  “I’m hurting you.”

  “Ah, Bren,” he said, resting his forehead against hers, passing a current between them, making a connection that transferred his will into hers, his desire into the place where hers resided. “It was me, don’t you see? I hurt you. I didn’t protect you—you or the children. Whatever I did or didn’t do that night in the apartment—it was the wrong thing. I got knocked out. I wasn’t there for you. You needed me and I was lying on the damn floor.”

  She saw him, in her mind’s eye, sprawled on the cold concrete. She felt the curl of nausea, felt fear as fulsome as it was that night when she didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. She remembered him, before that, easing toward Aleksandar, calling him ‘son’ in that placating voice of his.

  “Don’t you see, sweetheart? You cradled Squeak. You made Mr. Fierce laugh. You named Kristjan. You had it in you. But I didn’t keep you safe. I failed you. I stole motherhood from you.”

  His logic dumbfounded her. He wasn’t responsible. She was.

  “Daniel,” she said, taking his face in her hands, locking her eyes on his. “You’re the one good thing that came out of that room. I want you to have someone who can love you well, give you everything you need.”

  He shook his head somberly. “Who, Bren? Who could I expose this mess of a man to? Who would understand, if I tried? I don’t know who I am, myself, half the time. A brute? A coward? A collaborator? A decent man, doing the best he could? Kavsak stole my easy answers,” he said. “Everything I thought I knew has evanesced. You’re the one person who understands that. Who could know me like you do? Who could forgive my failures, or see something good in me, if not you?”

  She slid her hands down his bare chest. Day-to-day, he carried himself so well, she hadn’t realized he was floundering, that he felt as reduced as she did. Writing the script for the documentary, he was raking over the events in Kavsak in minute detail. He was forcing himself to remember what would best be forgotten. He was blaming himself for Kavsak being what it was.