by Corbit, Dana
“I wish you could have known her better.”
“Yeah, me, too. She died about six months after we moved in.”
“By the time you met her, the uterine cancer had already taken so much of her spirit.” The flames drew Hannah’s attention as she settled on the sofa and drew her stocking-clad feet up under her dress. “Sometimes it seems like so long ago that she died, and other times it feels like just yesterday.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
His words drew her out of her haze. When she looked up at him, Todd’s face was hidden in shadow.
“You know, I probably never would have survived those first few months, the first few years even, without you. So if I didn’t remember to thank you then, I want to do it now. Thank you.”
“You didn’t need to thank me, then or now. I wanted to help if I could. You just didn’t realize how strong you were. You would have found your way eventually on your own.”
“Fortunately, we never had to know that for sure.”
Todd watched Hannah closely as he tried to absorb what she’d just said. Her comment was as strange and unexpected as so many of the things she’d done lately, from including him in her private Christmas celebration to spending hours making that incredible photo album for him. What message was she trying to give to him?
“Have you ever wondered ‘what if’?” The second the words were out of his mouth, Todd regretted speaking them. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the moment? This was the first time since he’d moved back that Hannah had allowed him to get this close, and he had to sabotage it.
Todd rested his elbow against the mantel and waited. Instead of striking back as he expected she might, Hannah simply stared at him from across the room.
He rushed to backtrack. “I don’t mean what if we hadn’t made— Or if you didn’t get—” Finally, he stopped himself, staring at the floor. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His head jerked up, and he searched her face for whatever she wasn’t saying.
Her eyes were shiny, and her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips. When Todd was convinced she wouldn’t say more, she cleared her throat and began.
“I’ve wondered what if. About a lot of things.”
“But not about having Rebecca.” He didn’t even need to pose it as a question. He knew what her answer would be.
She used the back of her hand to swipe at her eyes. “No. Never Rebecca. I’ve never even questioned my decision to keep her, though a lot of people thought I should have considered adoption.”
Something cold gripped his insides. He’d always believed adoption to be a great thing—still did. Many strong families were built by the selflessness of birth mothers’ difficult decisions.
But if Hannah had made that choice, he might never have known that their child existed. He wouldn’t even have known to mourn the empty place in his life that would have been there without Rebecca.
The thought weighed so heavily on his mind that he crossed to the sofa where Hannah sat and slumped onto the opposite end.
Hannah turned so she faced him and leaned her back against the sofa’s armrest. “I sometimes wonder what our lives would have been like if I’d told you as soon as I knew I was pregnant.”
He’d wondered the same thing so many times himself and had blamed her for guaranteeing that neither of them would ever know. But now he couldn’t work up the energy to continue holding a grudge.
“If only I’d told my father the whole story,” Hannah continued, staring at her hands. “Dad would have convinced me to tell you.” She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “You had the right to know.”
“It’s all in the past now.” He leaned back and popped his feet on the box-shaped footstool next to the couch. “Anyway, I can’t promise I would have come off as a hero back then. We both know I didn’t make the best decisions at seventeen.”
It was good to see her stark expression soften even though her eyes still looked damp.
“My decisions weren’t exactly stellar, either.”
Todd smiled, his memory of that teenage girl and the woman she had become melding. Her sweetness and vulnerability—things he’d loved about her but believed she’d lost—were still there, just buried beneath layers of self-protective armor.
“Whatever mistakes you made, you’ve done an amazing job with Rebecca. She’s an incredible kid.”
“She is pretty great, isn’t she?” Hannah settled back into the sofa again, some of her tension from moments before seeming to ebb.
Todd found himself relaxing, too. “She’s happy and kind and well-adjusted. You see, God always had a plan for her—for all of us.”
Tilting her head, Hannah studied him, drawing her eyebrows together. “There it is again. You lived next to me for two years. You went to church every Sunday with your parents and even with me a few times. In all that time, I don’t remember you talking about your faith.”
“I didn’t have much faith to speak of at the time,” he said with a chuckle. “Oh, I believed in God and all. I’d heard the message from the cradle. It all seemed reasonable enough. I just didn’t see any reason to take it as personally as you did.”
Hannah suddenly straightened and lowered her feet to the floor. “Personally? If I’d been focused on my personal relationship with God, then— Oh, I don’t know. But we weren’t talking about me, were we? This was about you.”
Todd shrugged. “The story of my faith journey is pretty pedestrian. Unoriginal. I had to hit rock bottom before I looked up.”
Her front teeth pressed into her bottom lip, and for several seconds Hannah said nothing. But, in a whispered voice, as if she didn’t want the answer but had to know, she finally asked, “When was that?”
“When I was ten thousand miles from here, on one of the most beautiful tropical islands in the world and so lonely that I thought I might die. It did no good to call. My letters just came back unopened. It felt as if someone had carved my heart out and left it beating outside my body.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with her hands. “Now that was graphic.” When she lowered her hands, she crossed her arms over her chest in a nervous self-hug.
“Okay, it came from a teenager’s point of view. One who’d been playing too many video games. But those were stark days. I’d been so stupid that I ended up losing everything that mattered. That’s when I hit rock bottom.”
“Then what happened?”
“I turned to God, and He came alive for me.” Todd held his hands wide to show how obvious that answer was. “He was there, showing me that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t realize until later that He’d been there all along.”
“I’m glad.”
Todd drew his eyebrows together. “That I found faith?”
“That, too, but more than that.” She paused to study her hands and push back the cuticles on two of her nails. But finally she looked back at him. “I’m glad you weren’t alone. I know what’s that’s like. To feel alone.”
“Is that how you felt?”
She didn’t answer right away, but her eyes looked shiny in the firelight and then a single tear traced down her cheek. “More than just alone, I felt abandoned. Even before I took the pregnancy test.”
You abandoned me. She hadn’t phrased it that way, but he felt the condemnation of it anyway. Closing his eyes, he could picture Hannah as she must have been then, sitting by herself in her room, keeping a terrifying secret locked up inside.
Of course, she felt abandoned, whether he’d intended it or not and despite that he’d had the argument of a lifetime with his father for taking the foreign assignment. He couldn’t change the fact that she’d been alone, perhaps even more alone than he’d felt without her.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Yeah, me, too.” She gazed into the fire for several seconds. “I’m sorry about a lot of things.”
“Then we have something in common. I’ve been trying to
apologize to you ever since I came back to town. Since before I even knew about Rebecca.”
“There’s no need for you to apologize.”
“But could you do me a favor and let me anyway?”
At first she shrugged, but she finally nodded.
“I’m sorry about pressuring you into— Well, you know. A sexual relationship. You were only looking for comfort, just someone to talk to in those months after your mom died, and I read something more into it. I wasn’t thinking about you, or consequences or sin. I thought only of myself.”
Todd had always wondered how Hannah would react when he finally apologized, but her nervous laughter he definitely didn’t expect.
“Pressure?” Hannah said when she finally stopped chuckling. “It wasn’t like that, and you know it. You can try to take all the blame. For a long time, I would have been more than happy to let you.
“But it wasn’t all your fault. I was there, too. We just became too close and got carried away.”
“Thanks for saying that.” Todd blew out a tired sigh. “We’ve caused each other so much pain. Do you think we can ever get past it?”
“We have to…for Rebecca’s sake.”
“What about for our sake, Hannah? Yours and mine?”
At first Hannah appeared confused. They hadn’t spoken about anyone’s needs but their daughter’s since Todd had returned to town. It was probably a mistake to do it now, but Todd couldn’t help himself.
“A long time ago you and I were friends. Good friends. We were good together.”
Hannah started shaking her head. “It was a long time ago. Maybe we really can’t go back.”
“Can’t? Why not?” Then he stopped himself. He couldn’t push, or he might frighten her away. “We don’t have to go back. But I would like to go forward. This is my what if. I think we owe it to ourselves to explore it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I would be honored if you would consider going out to dinner with me one night this week.”
“A date?”
The word seemed to clog her throat. Todd’s throat tightened, as well. Had he asked too much too soon? Had he become too anxious to reach his ultimate destination and messed up the journey?
He would have backtracked again, perhaps even assured her that their date would only be as friends, if he hadn’t heard the squeak of the front door from the other room.
“Hannah, Todd, we’re back,” Reverend Bob called out, as if he thought it necessary to announce himself.
Though they were adults and simply sitting on opposite ends of the couch, they both straightened and planted their feet on the floor. Sounds of the rustling of outerwear and then approaching footsteps followed.
Their moment, their sweet cocoon of time alone together, was ending, and Todd worried that his chance with Hannah was coming to a close along with it.
“Yes, a date. Well, what do you say?”
The wait for her answer seemed to take hours instead of seconds. She glanced at the doorway through which her father and Olivia would come in only seconds. Was she gauging the amount of time she had to put him off completely?
But then she turned back to him, her lips curving into the most beautiful smile in the world. “Yes, Todd, I’d love to have dinner with you.”
Chapter Ten
“Are you sure this place isn’t too expensive?” Hannah glanced around nervously, first at the crisp, white tablecloths and crystal stemware and then at the candles that cast the whole restaurant in a golden glow. At least he’d warned her the place would be dressy, or she might have worn jeans instead of the long, black-velvet skirt, cream sweater and the dress boots she’d chosen.
This place—maybe her accepting Todd’s invitation altogether—might have been a mistake. He’d made reservations less than twenty-four hours after she’d agreed to have dinner with him, not even giving her time to change her mind.
“Well, I might be a little short. Do you think you can pick up the difference?”
Todd gave that mischievous half smile that had always made her feel light-headed and made her stomach tickle. “I can afford it. Maybe not every week, but I can afford it. I have a job now, remember?”
“But Five Lakes Grill? It’s so extravagant.” She glanced out the restaurant’s front window that faced Main Street. Garlands still wrapped the streetlamps and holiday lights still glimmered in the store across the street, but she could see a few signs in the windows that read After-Christmas Sale.
“You finally agreed to go out with me. I wanted to impress you. Did it work?”
Hannah glanced around the room again and then back at Todd. He’d impressed her, all right. Dressed all in black, from his wool sport coat to his turtleneck and trousers, he’d never looked more handsome. Even the candlelight seemed to give him special attention, dancing over the blond highlights that remained in his hair.
She cleared her throat. “You didn’t have to impress me.”
“But I did, didn’t I?”
She nodded, pressing her hand over the flutter in her stomach. Though she glanced away from his intense gaze, she could still feel him watching her. Why was she so nervous, anyway? During the short span of their friendship, she’d gotten to know this man better than most people ever knew each other. They’d shared their deepest thoughts, their failures and their fears.
Todd had borne the pain of her mother’s death as if the loss had been from his own heart. How could she have forgotten all those stolen hours of intimacy that had nothing to do with the physical and everything to do with why she’d fallen in love with him?
Then the idea struck her that although they’d shared food and conversation together so many times, they’d never gone on a real date before. Dating had seemed extraneous to the relationship they’d already built together.
“Can you believe this is our first date?”
Hannah stiffened at his words, and her cheeks warmed. She shouldn’t have been surprised that his thoughts had traveled the same path as her own, but she was.
Either the candlelight hid her discomfort or he pretended not to notice, but he continued as if she’d already answered him.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m really nervous.”
An ironic chuckle bubbled inside her throat. “It doesn’t seem right, does it?”
He shook his head. “We know each other too well for us to be nervous.” His eyes took on a faraway look as he lifted a hard roll from the bread basket and buttered it. “Or at least we used to.”
“We still do,” she assured him, not because she didn’t share his uncertainty but because she wanted so badly to erase that sadness from his eyes. She set a slice of nut bread on her bread plate but didn’t take a bite.
“It’s okay if we don’t know every little thing about each other today,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Unable to meet his gaze, Hannah looked down and traced spinning circles on the tablecloth with her fingernail.
“At one time, we knew each other better than anyone. We finished each other’s sentences. Before I sneezed, you’d pass a tissue into my hand.”
Her fingers calmed against the cloth as she allowed the memories to blossom inside her thoughts where she’d once held them in perpetual winter. “It was like that with us, wasn’t it?”
“I want it to be different this time.”
As Hannah looked up from the table, Todd reached across it and covered her left hand with his right. How opposite their hands looked—hers finely boned and pale from the long Michigan fall and his hand, broad and strong, still clinging to its island tan. His skin felt so warm, his touch as sure as the man he’d grown to be.
It would be best for her to pull away discreetly—she knew that. Then both of them could pretend nothing had happened. But how could she pull away when the connection felt so right?
They stayed like that for a few minutes, just touching. Todd probably expected her to move her hand, but when she didn’t, he finally spo
ke again.
“This is our first date. We’ve had many experiences together, but this is new. I want it all to be new like this.”
Hannah gently removed her hand from his this time, and he lifted his fingers to let her go. Immediately, her skin felt cold.
“As nice as all this sounds, Todd, we can’t rewrite history.”
He nodded as if to concede that point. “But we can add new pages to our history. I know it—we—can be different together this time.”
“Can there be a chance for us after all that’s happened?” Even as she said it, she felt a wave of loss thinking that the past might need to remain the past and the future only an unattainable dream.
“Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to come. If you want, we could leave instead of ordering. We’re only ripping open old wounds and taking the chance that we’ll create even deeper ones. Wounds that won’t heal.”
“We’re doing all of that?” Todd held his finger to his lips as if in deep concentration. “I thought we were just having dinner.”
Despite herself, Hannah laughed. Seconds before she’d been contemplating pain and loss, and now he had her laughing again.
Todd laughed with her, his deep baritone turning the heads of a few other restaurant patrons before he lowered his voice. “Now are you sure you’re just a photo-taking accountant? I see a future for you on the stage. You have a flair for the dramatic.”
“I like to keep my professional options open.”
He smiled at first, but then his expression turned serious. “I know a lot has happened between us, but can’t we think of tonight as just dinner? We can pretend we’re just two single adults getting to know each other better. We’ll keep all our baggage carefully hidden the same way everybody else does on first dates.”
When Hannah paused for a moment to digest Todd’s suggestion, the waiter must have seen the break in conversation as his chance because he approached the table to take their order. The parchment-style menu still rested on the table where she’d laid it earlier. She’d been too busy talking to even decide what she wanted to order.
She met Todd’s gaze across the table. If she ordered, it would be admitting that she’d decided to stay after all. After a quick look at the menu selections, she turned back to the waiter and ordered a puree of butternut squash soup and roast duck in a bread pudding.
