Holly and Ivy

by Fern Michaels

  “Holly, it’s much more complicated than that.”

  “How?” she asked. Certainly a reasonable question.

  Daniel considered her simple question. Exactly how complicated was it? A nagging thought nudged him in the back of his mind: It’s only as complicated as you choose to make it.

  Had he spent the better part of the past eight years making Holly’s and his life more complicated than it needed to be? He had loved Laura dearly. He reserved a special place in his heart for her in life and for his memory of the life they had shared together. Deep down, he knew Laura’s profession was not the cause of her death. He’d always believed that if Laura had not been involved in the theater, and singing, all that went along with her career, that she would be here with them now. Nothing would change the facts, and though it hurt to admit this, even if only to himself, Holly should not be punished for this enormous talent given to her by her mother. In denying his daughter’s natural gift, he realized he was denying his past, Laura’s past, and, quite possibly, Holly’s future.

  Holly yawned, stretching her arms out in front of her. “So, are you finished? I am, like, really, really sleepy.”

  He stood up and leaned over his daughter, kissing the top of her head. “I think I have said enough. Go on to bed, and we’ll talk more in the morning.”

  “Okay. Night, Dad. I really had a good time tonight,” Holly said, then gave him a quick hug. She headed off to her bedroom. “I really like Ivy, too. Just so you know.”

  He did, too. And he liked Ivy way more than he wanted to admit to Holly, or even to himself.

  “Night,” he said as he pushed both dining-room chairs beneath the table and turned off the lights. As he headed to his den, his thoughts were all over the place. He’d been content to live his life just the way he had been living it for the past eight years; then Holly sneaks off, and he does a complete 180. He sat down at his desk, opened the top drawer, and removed a key to unlock the right-hand drawer. It had been years since he had opened the drawer and actually read through its contents, but it was time.

  Stacks of newspaper clippings highlighted the horrid crash that changed his life. Laura’s name had been mentioned in several articles. Had she not been on her way home from auditioning for Paul Larson, he doubted her name would have been mentioned in any other context other than the flight’s manifest, just another unlucky soul to board the doomed flight. The flamboyant Paul Larson told The Charlotte Observer that he had decided to choose Laura to star in the musical she had auditioned for. He never knew if that was true, or if this was just the Broadway producer’s way of garnering publicity for his upcoming musical. It did not matter, not really. It changed nothing. The musical continued to play on Broadway to this very day and had won several Tony Awards. No doubt this would have been the highlight of Laura’s career if Paul Larson’s claims were true. He supposed he would never know.

  As he skimmed through the articles, a name caught his eye. More than once he’d briefly passed over the name, but now it seemed significant. He located the article with the flight’s manifest.

  Ivy Fine. Mrs. John Fine. Formerly Ivy Macintosh.

  He read the piece again, his heart racing so fast, he thought it would explode from his chest. There had to be a mistake; this was merely a coincidence.

  Daniel crossed his fingers and unlocked the left-hand drawer, which held his laptop computer. If his daughter knew he possessed the technology she had been asking for since third grade, she would never forgive him. Putting that thought aside, he booted the computer up, logged on to the Internet, and began his search.

  Chapter 35

  Before she could change her mind, Ivy inserted the key into the lock. Expecting the lock to be rusty or difficult to unlock, when the doorknob turned easily, for a split second, she thought she had made a terrible mistake. When the knob turned gently in her grip, she gasped. By entering one of the rooms she had kept off-limits for the past eight years, Ivy was taking the next step of joining the world again. She knew that if she was to ever come to terms with her past, she had to confront her memories of the two little children who would forever be in her heart, always.

  Tears filled her eyes as she stepped into the room. Inhaling, she smelled something in the air, a lingering scent of . . . baby lotion? She used the sleeve of her sweater to blot her eyes. Looking around the room that she had not entered since the accident, she took in the single bed. It was covered with a faded pink comforter; the other twin bed, with its plain blue blanket pulled up to the top, waited next door.

  “Bink bank,” she said out loud. James’s name for his twin’s favorite pink blanket. Ivy walked over to the bed, and smoothed the wrinkles from the precious covering. She brought the pillow to her face and inhaled, expecting to breathe in the clean scent of the organic shampoo she had used on both children. Musty and dank, it smelled only of a long-closed room.

  Holding the pillow, she sat on Elizabeth’s bed, where Mr. Tibbles, her teddy bear, usually rested, but Ivy did not want to think about the bear now. Hugging Elizabeth’s pillow and breathing in its scent, she could swear she smelled her favorite perfume, just a hint. And then she remembered that the last night she had put Elizabeth to bed, they had played makeup after her bath. Ivy had let her spritz herself with “Mommy’s big-girl spray” before putting her to bed. She had forgotten about that night until just now. The tragedy had pushed aside this special memory, and Ivy cried at the injustice of what had happened to her sweet, innocent children. And John, too. She returned the pillow to its place at the head of Elizabeth’s bed.

  Standing in the center of the room, she slowly turned around, taking in eight years of . . . a room.

  As she continued to spin around the room, she thought how this was simply a room in a house that was no longer a home, that had not been a home since the fatal crash.

  She stopped and closed her eyes until the room stopped spinning. There were two chests in the room, a pink one and a blue one. She hadn’t gotten around to moving James’s dresser and his toy chest into his big-boy room. She opened the top drawer of the blue chest, expecting to find his clothes neatly folded, as they’d been the last time she had opened the drawer.

  It was empty.

  She opened the next drawer and the one below. Both were empty.

  Flying across the room to Elizabeth’s pink chest, she opened all the drawers and, again, found nothing. Not a trace.

  Who had removed the clothes that belonged in these drawers? She whirled around the room, realizing all the toys, books, and games that belonged to her daughter were no longer tossed around the room. Elizabeth’s Dora the Explorer dolls had been removed from the shelf above her bed. Her miniature table and two matching chairs were gone as well. All of James’s books were gone, too. His ant farm, the plastic containers of Legos, were nothing but a memory.

  She wanted to . . . She was not sure what she should do. All of this, or, to be more precise, the lack of her children’s possessions, stunned her. What had she expected? She was not sure. Ivy had no memory of anyone’s clearing out their rooms, but she had not been in any shape to recall exactly who came and went the first couple of years after their deaths.

  Her father, perhaps? Or Rebecca, most likely, had cleared out their rooms, leaving nothing more than the barest reminders of the two who’d spent such a short time in them. While she wanted to feel anger at whoever made the decision to remove all traces of her children from their bedrooms, she found she could not. Had she discovered that their toys and games had been removed a few years ago, she felt sure she could have mustered the proper emotion, be it anger, sadness, or grief, but now, all she felt was relief. So many years she had dreaded this confrontation with the past, feared the emotions it would stir up. Whoever chose to remove James’s and Elizabeth’s toys and clothes had only done so to spare her the horrid task that no parent should ever have to undertake and the accompanying emotions that no parent should ever have to endure.

  Feeling sad, but incredibly r
elieved, she went over to the single window opposite the bed and pulled the curtains aside. She remembered when she had instructed the deliverymen to place the bed on the wall away from the window. Then her thoughts had been on chilly breezes seeping through the window, bringing on a stuffy nose and a sore throat. How simple her worries had been then, she thought as she struggled to open the window.

  Using both arms and what strength she possessed, she was able to push the double-framed window up. The night air sent a chill through her. Briefly she thought her decision to keep the children’s beds away from the windows in their rooms had been a wise one.

  Ivy lowered the window just enough to air out the room’s mustiness without turning the upstairs into a meat locker. She stood in the center of the bedroom, seeking the proper emotion, but all she felt was a deep-rooted sadness in her heart at the loss of two bright futures for children whom she and John had created and loved deeply. Still loved. That would never change. A mother always loved her children, no matter what.

  She did. Now that her alcoholic fog was completely gone, she was not about to take one more minute of life for granted. Life was so very short, as she well knew. It was more than a disservice to her family’s memory to cower inside this house in a drunken stupor, getting plastered in order to get through each day. That was in the past, and if she wanted to live in the here and now, it would have to stay in the past.

  With the knowledge that James and Elizabeth would always be remembered and loved by her, she walked out of her daughter’s room, but left the door partially open. She gripped the key in her hand, but knew she would never have to use it again. She would open up James’s room tomorrow morning. The doors to her past would finally be open, and now it was time to unlock the possibilities of what her future held.

  Holly Greenwood’s magical voice came to mind. Recalling her talk with Sarah, and her desire to do whatever she could to make sure the young girl sang in The Upside’s annual Christmas musical, she knew, felt, deep in her heart that helping this child realize her deepest wish was a gift that had been handed to her, and there was no way she was going to turn her back on this unexpected present.

  Downstairs, she filled the teakettle with water and placed it on a burner to heat up. While waiting for the water to boil, she scrubbed the thick globs of burned coffee from the pot she had left to soak yesterday. When the kettle whistled, she removed it from the stove and poured the boiling water over her chamomile tea bag. She added a spoonful of honey and stirred the golden sweetness before heading to the living room. Normally, she would have spent the rest of the evening drinking and binge watching whatever her program of choice was, but now she simply wanted quiet, time to think, time to plan a future, something that she had all but forgotten existed.

  Chapter 36

  “I’m surprised you would even speak to me after the way I treated you yesterday,” Daniel said into the phone. “Holly and I would love to come to your place for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “You can bring a guest, if you like. And as many as you want, too,” Sarah said. “I’m in a giving mood today.”

  Daniel could not help but laugh. How Sarah Anderson had summoned up the courage to call and invite them to her home for Thanksgiving dinner was a mystery, and one he could not solve, but she had reached out to him, and no way was he going to turn her down. Then there was the fact that he had heard what a fantastic cook she was. It would be nice, really. No more fake turkey and instant mashed potatoes. “I’m honored. Truly. It’s been ages since someone cooked for us,” he said into the phone.

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure,” Sarah said. “To cook, I mean.”

  He knew exactly what she meant, and instantly had a killer of an idea assault his empty brain.

  “Thanks, I have . . . a friend who I am sure would appreciate a homemade Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “The more, the merrier. Now, if I do not get busy, we’ll all have to settle for one of those plastic turkey dinners. Give Holly a hug from me.”

  “Sure thing,” Daniel said, then placed the phone back in its cradle. He walked down the hall to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee. It was after nine, and he decided to let Holly sleep in, given all the effort she had put into studying yesterday, not to mention he had kept her up late last night. Or late for a child. Apparently, she had not set her alarm clock.

  He’d spent the better part of the night online reading article after article on Macintosh Air, its owner, and anything he could find connected to the family. What he had discovered blew his mind, and he was not 100 percent sure his findings were what he believed them to be, but he definitely planned to find out. As soon as he deemed it was not too early to make a social phone call, he returned to the phone and dialed the number he’d already memorized.

  “Hello,” came a sleepy female voice.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Daniel?”

  “The one and only,” he said, grinning. She recognized his voice already. That made him happy.

  “Is Holly all right?” she asked, alarm in her voice.

  He could have kicked himself for scaring her. “Yes, she’s still asleep. Is this a bad time? I can call back later.”

  “No, it’s fine. I was just getting out of the shower,” she indicated.

  An image of her getting out of the shower sent a thrill up and down his spine. It felt odd to have these sorts of feelings about a woman he barely knew.

  He had not rehearsed what he would say when he spoke to her, but he just could not blurt his questions out. They were way too serious. So how did he go about asking her if what he’d read was true? “I thought you and I could, uh . . . go out for breakfast. I wanted to catch you before you ate.” He sounded like a high-school boy and was a bit embarrassed by the fact.

  “You sure do eat a lot,” Ivy joked. “Will Holly be coming along?”

  Did this mean yes? “She’s asleep. I didn’t want to wake her.”

  “Well, I am up now,” came his daughter’s voice from behind him.

  “Forget I said that. Holly is awake now, and if she would like, of course, she can come with us.”

  “Where?” Holly asked as she danced down the hall to the kitchen.

  Daniel held up a hand. Realizing Holly could not see behind her, he spoke into the phone. “Can you hold on for one second?”

  “Sure.”

  He laid the phone down and hurried to the kitchen. Holly was busy fixing herself a bowl of cereal, just like she did every single day. Sad that he never bothered making her a proper meal, he decided he was going to spend the rest of his life making it up to her. “You want to go with me and Ivy to have breakfast?”

  Holly turned around and stared at him. “You really have gone cuckoo. But yes, I will go. This cereal is stale. Do I have time for a shower?”

  He thought of Ivy and her shower. “Of course you do, but make it fast, okay?” He smiled, then hurried back to the phone.

  “Yes, Holly wants to go.” Daniel just realized Ivy had not said that she would actually go.

  “Do you want to meet at The Blackberry Café? I saw where they served breakfast on the weekends.”

  “Yes, that’s perfect. Is half an hour too soon?”

  “If you can make it forty-five minutes, you have a date,” Ivy said. “My hair is sopping wet, and I do not want to go outside without drying it first.”

  A date? Is that what she thought his invitation was? Dates were for evenings and did not involve talking about tragedies. Or did they? It had been so many years since he’d cared about another female’s ideas, he was not sure what her words meant. Maybe it was just that. A word. He was reading way too much into this.

  “I’ll see you there” was all he said before hanging up. He went to his room and changed into a chambray shirt and a pair of khaki slacks. He always wore jeans, but it was Sunday. He did not want to appear to be more heathenish than he was.

  He combed his hair. Sometime in the near future, he planned to get a haircut. Reach
ing for the new bottle of cologne he’d used last night, he stopped. Holly said he’d used too much. He’d go without, as he’d taken a shower in the wee hours of the morning. One last glance in the mirror before closing his bedroom door. He had not slept in his bed, so he had not needed to bother making it up. And if he did not make up his bed, who cared? His OCD habits were starting to get on his nerves.

  “Woo-hoo! You look like a . . . man,” Holly said, stating the obvious. “I mean not my-dad-kind-of man. I did not know you even had normal clothes.”

  “There are a lot of things you do not know about your dear old dad, but you’ll find out soon enough.” Daniel looked at his daughter. “And you do not look like the eleven-year-old I sent to bed last night. You look like you’re . . . almost twelve.” He laughed, and Holly did, too.

  Holly wore a pair of jeans with a red sweatshirt, her long hair pulled in a high ponytail. Daniel almost said she was the spitting image of her mother, but he did not. It would not mean anything to her, at least he didn’t think so. Maybe someday, when she was older, he would let her look at her mother’s professional photos. She was sure to see the resemblance.

  “I’m almost twelve. You mean I could probably pass for thirteen, right?” Holly asked.

  “No, that’s not what I meant, kiddo. I mean you look really pretty in that red sweatshirt. Now let’s get a move on, so we’re not late.”

  Once they were inside the truck, he turned on the heat to take away the chill from inside. He backed down the drive and headed for The Blackberry Café. He checked the clock on the dash. Right on time.

  “Dad, can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “You’re really not acting like the dad I know. The mean one. Sorry, but it’s true. I can’t remember us ever talking as much as we have in the past two days. Are you trying to be, like, super cool and nice because something bad is gonna happen to you? I am old enough, you know. You can tell me if you’re sick or something.”