by H. M. Ward
When we walk inside, I come to a complete stop at the sight of the casket at the front of the room. The lid is open and I can just barely see my father's folded hands. Mom continues past me just as a hand touches my elbow. Turning, I see Lanie, her eyes red-rimmed from recent tears. She puts her arms around both CJ and me, hugging us tightly and telling me how sorry she is. She releases me, but clutches my hand tightly as we walk up to the front of the room.
At this point, I'm numb to everything going on around me. Certain things catch my attention, but they’re meaningless—the scent of the home, the way it smells like lemons, and the ugly pink carpet beneath my feet. This can’t be happening. I wish to God this were a cruel joke. I wish Daddy would sit up, smiling, and say he played a prank on us. But it won’t happen. The time to bargain with my deaf deity has come and gone.
CJ starts struggling in my arms and saying, "Pops! Pops! Pops! Pops!" over and over again. I didn't think my heart could break further, but watching him try to get to his Pops almost breaks me. I pull him closer to me, murmuring nonsense words in an attempt to keep him calm.
"Here, let me take him," Lanie says quietly, reaching to lift CJ from my arms. I don't want to let him go, but I can't bear listening to him call for his grandfather. He doesn't understand why Pops won't get up and come get him. He keeps calling my dad and every time it drives a nail into my heart.
“Pops is asleep, baby. You’ll see him again.” I kiss his forehead and hand him to Lanie. CJ goes willingly because he loves Aunt Lanie and her huge-ass earrings. His chubby little hands immediately reach for a hoop. "Thanks, Lanie."
Mom thanks her too and Lanie walks out of the room. The next two hours pass quickly, a blur of faces and condolences until I can't remember any one person who came in. Everyone moves to the chapel for the service. Scanning the crowd, I feel a painful jolt at the sight of Daniel standing at the back of the room, his eyes locked on me. We stare at each other for only a few minutes, before my mom nudges me to keep moving and take my seat.
The service goes by in a blur; I can’t tell the title of a single song that was played or any of the words that were said. I sat in my seat, stunned, numb, and mute. We go through the motions like robots and I’m sitting there, thinking too many thoughts, my mind jutting off in too many directions. I think about anything and everything, because I don’t want to think about the part where we lower my father into the ground.
I shift my mind to Daniel—I can't believe he came, that he's here. It’s strange, especially after the way we parted. I called him a gold-digger and he shows up on one of the worst days of my life with nothing to gain from standing there. I wonder if mom is wrong. How desperate is Daniel to live his own life without his horrible father? Would he really pretend to care about me? Would he show up at a funeral to keep the gig going? That seems beyond cruel, especially after he was outed. So, then, why is he here?
You were wrong. Occam’s Razor, dumbass.
God, she’s getting pissy. There’s a time for logic and there’s a time to lock it up and follow your heart.
What do you think I’m telling you to do?
My stomach drops when I realize what I’ve done. That voice, the one that tells me all these things I’ve chosen to ignore, wasn’t the rational side of me at all. It’s my heart. I’ve locked her up since Cade died and refused to let her out. She’s the part of me that let me live and love, laugh and enjoy my life. And now that I’ve realized it, I have no idea how to let her out again. I don’t trust her anymore—that part of me brought me incredible heartache—how can I trust her after that?
Because you’re turning into a shell of the woman you should be. You locked your heart away from the world so you wouldn’t get hurt again, but it didn’t change a damn thing, Genny. You’re still hurting.
My heart races because the end is coming. I can’t stand and watch them lower him into the ground.
At the end, everyone gets up to leave, many of them planning to come to our house later. I search the room, trying to find Daniel in the crowd, but I don't see him anywhere. I start pushing through people, intent on finding him. I don’t know why or what I’m going to say when I see him, but my gut instinct—the one I’ve been blocking—is that I made a horrible mistake. As soon as I escape the funeral home, I see him walking toward his truck.
Trying to hurry over, I'm cursing the fact that I wore heels. I'm definitely not coordinated enough to run in them, hell, I can barely walk in them. But, my mother frowned deeply at my flats, so I wore the shoes she picked out instead. Of course, they have three inch heels and it's been raining today, so I'm likely to break my neck before I make it over to him.
By the time I get to his truck, he's shutting the door and like an idiot I grab it, thinking I can stop him. Thankfully, he has better reflexes than I do and manages, barely, to keep the door from shutting on my fingers. He steps out, watching me closely, as I self-consciously pull the cardigan I'm wearing, over my lightweight black sheath dress, tighter around me.
"I'm sorry about your dad, Gen," he says gently, his eyes softening for just a second, gazing down at me sympathetically before they harden again. This new, hardened Daniel causes my heart to clench and my eyes to water. I sniffle and he reaches out to put his arm around me, but catches himself before actually touching me. Pulling back, he takes a step away from me and the small distance feels like an insurmountable chasm.
"Thanks Dan," I say quietly, feeling the sting of his refusal to touch me in any way. His jaw tightens and he nods, suddenly looking anywhere but at me.
Clearing his throat he asks, "Where's CJ?"
"Lanie has him. He kept—" my voice breaks and I take a deep breath before continuing, "CJ was hollering for my dad and didn't understand why he wouldn’t get up." Daniel gazes at me when my voice breaks, but he still makes no move to touch me.
Daniel's eyes are understanding, but still hard, as he stands in front of me, just out of reach. "I'm sure it's hard for him. He’s too little to understand all of this." He looks away from me again, his whole body stiff and unyielding. "Well, I guess I better be going. I’m sorry for your loss. Yours and your mom's." He turns slightly, grabbing the door to his truck and pulling it open. "I'll see you around."
Before I even realize I'm doing it, I reach out and grip his wrist, keeping him from getting into the truck. "Wait, Daniel. Can we talk for a few minutes?" My voice pleads with him, but he doesn't say anything at first.
Running his free hand through his hair, he huffs out a breath. "I don't think that's a good idea, Gen." I hate that it's like this. I hate that he's calling me Gen instead of Genevieve. That he doesn't even want to look at me.
"Please, Daniel, I don’t want things to end this way." I'm begging now, and completely unashamed. I need to get this off my chest.
He only shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Gen. I just... I can't. I have to go." Then, he hops up in his truck and shuts the door. He doesn't say anything further as he starts the engine, never even looking back as he leaves me standing alone in the parking lot. It's a fairly warm day, but I feel cold. The type of cold that's bone deep and crippling.
Trying my damnedest to keep the tears at bay, I make my way back to the funeral home where my mom stands, glaring at me. She opens her mouth to chastise me, I'm sure, but I put up a hand to stop her. "Not now, Mom." Her mouth snaps shut, her teeth clicking together at the force, but she says nothing. I take my son from her and head for the car, careful not to say anything about what just happened. Today isn't the day for it.
Chapter 16
Over the next three weeks, I try numerous times to reach out to Daniel, sending him text messages and leaving voicemails, but he never responds or calls me back. I'm sure I seem like a stalker, or the creepy ex that just won't leave him alone, but I'm desperate. I need to explain what happened that night. He hasn't been back to mow the lawn either, although I didn't think he would return. My mom told him point blank that he was fired and I didn’t correct her.
By the
middle of the third week, I'm irate that he’s ignoring me. In fact, the last voicemail I left him was pretty harsh.
“Hi, Daniel, it’s me, Genevieve...again. I'd appreciate some kind of response, even if it's just to tell me to go to Hell. Thanks.”
Okay, so maybe it wasn't that harsh, but I don't understand why he's freezing me out this way. Well, actually I do understand, I just don't like it. The last few weeks have been awful, and I miss him. I miss our talks, dinners, the way he made me laugh, and the way he played with CJ. I loved watching them together. CJ asks for ‘da’ which kills me even more. I know he means Dan, but does he have to call him da? I've made such a mess of everything and I have no clue how to fix it. He should have said something. Daniel should have defended himself.
What if I was accused of being after him for his money? How would I react?
Pretty much the same—pissed beyond words, because I actually loved him.
Oh shit. I freeze when I realize what I’ve thought. I loved him. Pressing my eyes together, I pinch my nose and try to avoid the headache that threatens to split my skull in two.
The doorbell rings and I go let Lanie and Erin in. Maggie wanted to come, but it's her wedding anniversary and she figured she needed to spend the night with Luke. Both girls hug me tightly as they walk by, heading straight for my kitchen with the four bottles of wine Lanie brought with her. When I make it back to the little room, she's already put three of them in the fridge and is in the process of popping the cork on the fourth. Reaching up, I grab three glasses from the cabinet above the sink. I hand them over for her to pour the cheap white wine into.
"So, what are you going to do about Daniel?" After one hour and one and one-half bottle of wine, Lanie sure doesn't pull any punches. I instantly regret spilling my guts the last time she brought drinks to my house. I probably should have learned my lesson.
I shrug. "Nothing. He doesn't want to talk to me. I'm not going to continue to grovel. Maybe I made a mistake, and I know I hurt him, but I can’t make him forgive me." I can't seem to stop the verbal avalanche once I start. Wine is pretty much a truth serum for me. I'm such a lightweight. Lanie and Erin drink the majority of the wine, I'm only on my third glass and I’m about to fall over.
"You need to look at it from his point of view," Erin slurs, waving her half-full wine glass around in the air. If I weren’t so depressed, I'd be laughing at her obvious drunkenness. She's not much better at holding her alcohol than I am. "He's a guy, Genny! You know how fragile their poor little egos are! You just need to show up at that bar he's working at on the weekends wearing a sexy little outfit. I guarantee he'll listen then!" She starts to slam her wineglass down on the table, but misses it by a mile, sloshing wine all over the floor. "Oops," she mutters, setting it down gently and then almost falling out of her chair when she tries to bend over and wipe the spilled wine off the floor.
I'm not paying attention to what she's doing because I'm fixated on what she just said. "Wait...what bar? What are you talking about? Daniel's working at a bar?” How long has she known about this and why is she just now telling me?
Lanie claps a hand over Erin's mouth, her eyes suddenly wide. "Uh oh, we weren't supposed to tell you that." Then she whispers, "Shit. Stupid, stupid Lanie." She gives me a guilty look, but doesn't say anything further.
"What bar?" I bite out. "How do you know where he's working, and how long have you guys been keeping it from me?" I narrow my eyes, my anger obvious, even to their drunk asses.
Lanie looks everywhere but at me as she answers my questions. "The Esquire Tavern, we saw him when we went there with Maggie two weekends ago. He asked me not to tell you we saw him."
I'm so mad, I can barely speak. "Lanie, I'm your best friend! How could you keep this a secret? You know how badly I want to talk to him." My wine sits on the coffee table, completely forgotten as I gape at her in disbelief. I can't believe she's been keeping this from me!
Suddenly, I can't sit still any longer, so I get up and start to pace. My mind is spinning so fast I can barely keep up, but her words are bouncing around in my head over and over. I need to see him. I feel like my brain’s broken because I think the words over and over again, but it's all I can focus on, the need to see him, to explain, to talk it out.
Lanie and Erin watch me pace, their heads twisting back and forth comically, until I actually see Lanie's skin take on a green tinge. Coming to a stop in front of her, I look down, putting my hands on my hips, and say, "What nights does he work there?"
She shrugs, "I've only seen him on the two Friday nights and once on Saturday." Ugh. If he's only there those nights, that means I have to wait two days before I can see him. "Oh no," she says, her voice suddenly sounding completely sober. "I know that look. What are you going to do?" She leans forward to study me closely, making me want to squirm under her scrutiny.
"Nothing!" I say indignantly. "I'm just going to go talk to him." Chewing on my thumbnail, I give her a pleading glance. "Can you watch CJ Friday night? Please?"
Lanie shakes her head, her expression slightly pitying. "No, Genny. You need to let this go. If he doesn't want to talk to you, if he isn't interested in forgiving you, you can't force him to. I'm not going to help you get yourself hurt any further. This will make it worse."
I appreciate the sentiment and the fact that she's trying to protect me from myself. I'm positive though that if I can get him to just give me his undivided attention for a few minutes and actually listen to what I have to say, he'd talk to me. Then we could fix things and finally move on from this.
“Guys, I'm finally ready to move on—with him.”
Lanie’s eyes fill with tears. She springs up, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing me so tight that I feel like my eyes are going to burst from their sockets. "I'm so glad you're ready to move on, Genny! But, maybe you should chalk Daniel up as your rebound guy and find someone else. I mean, it's one thing to fantasize about the younger guy, but is he really who you should try to build a life with?" She pulls back to search my eyes, and whatever she sees there must tell her how I feel about calling Daniel my, "rebound guy".
"That's not what he is Lanie. He brought me back to life. He makes me feel beautiful and capable. He understands me in a way no one has since Cade. I can't help it, that’s how I feel. And it makes me feel better that Cade was the one who hired him in the first place—he picked him out. That sounds weird—listen, I mean that Cade thought he had potential, that Daniel was a good guy.”
Lanie still looks skeptical. "Yeah, okay... I'm glad he makes you feel that way, but come on Genny! Cade hired Dan-the-kid to mow his grass. He didn't hire Daniel the man to take his place if he was out of the picture."
"You're right," I say, with a sigh. “But, Cade wasn't planning to be out of the picture, Lanie. He trusted Daniel to look after the house while he was gone, and Daniel was a man when Cade was deployed that last time." A memory flashes behind my eyes—Cade and Daniel talking. When I walked into the room, they went silent. I don’t think he was raffling me off, I think he was asking Daniel to look after me. Cade asked everyone to look after me, so it wasn’t abnormal.
Lanie knows that I'm stubborn when I finally make up my mind about something, so we spend the remainder of the night drinking wine and watching bad television. My mind is half on the matchmaking show we're watching and half on planning exactly how I'm going to approach Daniel on Friday night. Lanie and Erin are both still refusing to watch CJ while I go talk to him, so I've got to figure out how to get my mom to babysit without telling her exactly what I'm planning to do.
Once Lanie is passed out in the guest room, it's just me and Erin left watching this stupid show Daniel introduced me to. She's had just enough wine that when she says, "I really should go on that show," in a completely serious voice, my head swivels around to look at her in shock.
"You should go on Catfish? Why?" Not long after Cade died, Erin caught her fiancé doing the dirty with his secretary. She hasn’t talked about other men s
ince.
She shrugs, "I've been talking to this guy online for awhile and every time we're supposed to finally meet, something comes up and he has to cancel his plans. I’m betting he's probably either the girl in college who wanted to convert me, or a sixteen-year-old boy that's going to have me taken to jail for indecent liberties, thanks to all the phone-sex we've been having for the past six months."
"What the hell?" I spit out my wine and double over laughing. "Where do you find these people? Good God, and this from the person I’m asking for dating advice." It probably wouldn't be that funny if I wasn't so tipsy, but I have to ask her one more question. "So was the girl hot?"
Erin gives me the stink eye, socking me in the arm hard. "Shut up, it’s not like I’m certain he’s a chick. We've been talking for a few months. He looks cute in his pictures and he sounds really sexy on the phone. He lives in Colorado, has never been to Texas, and owns his own business. If he were really a girl, it wouldn’t be horrible. When I was in college I did some things. Let’s just say there's a reason I never said anything about her. I don’t plan to start talking about it now."
Holy shit! Is that the reason she hasn’t said anything about anyone for the longest time? Because she was messing around with a girl? I think I need to get Erin drunk again, preferably when Maggie and Lanie are around. She'll never be able to tell them no. Then, I realize what she just said. "Erin Michaels, you met a random guy on the internet and wanted to more than friend him.” I waggle my eyebrows at her.
“It’s not like that, dork! It’s just nice to have someone to talk to, and chat with at the end of the day. There’s this thing I get when I go to sleep at night, and it’s worse if I’m alone.” My smile fades into concern. Erin just waves her hand at me. "Don't worry about me. You’ve been through hell and back. I’m just trying to get by and figure things out. And this guy, he makes me smile. If he were closer I would have met up with him, but he’s not.” She smiles and looks down at her hands, shrugging. “Like I said, he's probably some sixteen-year-old kid with a deep voice. He can't drive past nine, so I'll never have to worry about him breaking my heart or being an ax murderer. Double score!"
