Sift

by L. D. Davis

  “We just spent three years traipsing about the earth, sometimes not even knowing where we were going to sleep or how the hell we were going to leave,” I pointed out. “We got lost in Thailand for a week, Connor. I think we can handle a little bit of risk, and we can handle anything as long as we’re together.”

  He kissed me softly, and said, “You are disgustingly optimistic for a dumb cow.”

  I slapped his arm, making him laugh and pull away to avoid another blow.

  “If you keep calling me a cow, I’m going to start to feel like one. You’re gonna give me a complex.”

  I went to slap him again, but he caught my hand and pulled me close again.

  “You are beautiful.”

  I gave him a doubtful look. “Even though my ass is clearly bigger?”

  “I love your ass, no matter what size it is.” He reached down and squeezed the side of one cheek. “I love every part of you. Every inch. I always have and I always will.”

  Three and a half years later…

  “It’s going to be a nightmare, isn’t it?” I asked Connor in a whisper as we watched the two little girls fight over a doll.

  “Taking a three-year-old and a two-year-old on a long plane trip halfway across the world? Do you want me to lie to you or tell you the truth?”

  I closed my eyes and begged, “Lie to me, please!”

  I felt his kiss on my neck. “It’s going to be great, baby. It won’t be a nightmare at all.”

  I sighed and opened my eyes. “That was a terrible lie. Are you going to go break that up?”

  I gestured to where our daughters Hadley and Quinn were on the living room floor, still fighting, each of them screeching at the top of their lungs. I didn’t even think that either one of them even liked that stupid doll.

  “No, I thought that we could put a cage around them and sell tickets for caged baby fighting.”

  I snickered. “Hadley the Hell Raiser and Quinn the Conqueror.”

  He chuckled softly. “We’d make a killing.”

  He left me at the kitchen counter and stepped into the fray. Maybe I should have been worried that my husband might get attacked by killer toddlers, but I wasn’t. He’d live.

  Hadley had been the biggest reason we had left Portugal with the intentions of staying in Virginia. I’d been three months pregnant when we flew home. She’d been our next big adventure until Quinn had arrived a year later. Then we’d had two big adventures, long adventures. According to my daddy, they were adventures that we would have for another thirty years or so.

  Connor was still with the software company and doing well. I stayed at home with our girls and did some small orders for pastries on the side, but I also miraculously landed a freelancing blogging job for one of the networks on cable that focused solely on food. I told a lot of stories about my travels with Connor. I also had videos on how to make recipes I shared, or little tips to help in the kitchen. I didn’t make big bucks, and my following was decent but not staggering, but I loved doing it.

  When I informed the network that my family and I were going to start traveling again, they offered us a show. An actual show! It would have been about our foodie travels as a family. It would have appealed to other young families in addition to others that wanted to travel, but Connor and I declined the offer.

  We wanted our time abroad with Hadley and Quinn to be just our time with Hadley and Quinn. We didn’t want to have to worry about cameras and the objectives of any producers, and, selfishly, we didn’t want to share our daughters or each other with the rest of the world like that. I did promise to blog, though. I would blog our travels and share pictures and some video from time to time, but my main focus was going to be on our family.

  In less than a week, we were going to Greece for a month, followed by a couple weeks back in Evora, Portugal, where Connor and I had made good friends. After that, we were going to spend a couple weeks on Madeira Island, Portugal. We wouldn’t stay away any longer than two months. The kids would miss the rest of the family, and the rest of the family would miss them. Two months was more than enough time and would be a big enough challenge, but as the girls got older, we would go away a little more and stay a bit longer.

  I had been perfectly happy at home with my family instead of hopping around the world. For a long time, I didn’t know if I’d ever go any further than Mexico or Canada again, but one night Connor and I were reminiscing about our travels.

  I had said, “I still would like to see Greece before I die.”

  And he had said, “So, let’s go. All of us. Let’s do it.”

  So, we were going to do it. I was excited and petrified all at once, but we were going to do it.

  Some people questioned our decision to take our children out of the country, but most of those people were stationary kind of folks. They rarely went anywhere.

  That had always blown my mind, how there were still probably millions of people in the United States that never saw the ocean, or never saw the mountains or any of the great forests or lakes. They would never leave their little blips on the map, never know what it’s like to look down from thousands of feet in the air and see nothing but water under them. To step out of that flying contraption and to put your feet on a land that was literally another world from home.

  That could have been me. I could have been that stationary blip on the map. I almost was. But someone gave me a magic ticket, and then we gave our children magic tickets. You can’t waste a magic ticket. You gotta use it before you lose it.

  “Alright, are y’all done fightin’?” I called into the living room, where the girls were bouncing on their poor daddy. “Who wants to bake?”

  Three cries of, “Me!” arose from the other room.

  “Mama said you ain’t loud to bake,” Hadley told Connor as they walked into the kitchen hand in hand.

  He adjusted Quinn in his arms. “Maybe someday mama will let me bake again.”

  “The fire chief said you can’t bake, too,” I pointed out and held up my hands. “I ain’t gonna defy the fire chief.”

  “You did a fire,” Hadley agreed solemnly.

  “Icky,” Quinn concluded.

  Connor’s brown eyes narrowed on me. “I feel like there is a conspiracy.”

  I laughed as I turned away to start pulling out ingredients for a chocolate cake. “Your feelings would be correct.”

  The four of us spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen baking. We made a big mess, as usual, but I never minded. Teaching my girls early about baking and food was a good thing, but more than that, we had fun together.

  Later that night after Hadley and Quinn were asleep, Connor and I sat on the back patio in front of a fire pit, snuggled up close.

  “Are you excited?” he murmured into my hair. It had grown back, of course, and was once again the same length and style Connor had fallen in love with all those years ago.

  “Of course I’m excited,” I said. “You know, you asked me that same question when we were about to come home from Portugal three-and-a-half-years ago.”

  “That was different. We were expecting a baby. Now that baby is here, plus one more. It was a different kind of excitement.”

  “Not much different, but yes, I’m excited. I know Quinn won’t remember much about this trip, but hopefully, it will be one of Hadley’s first memories. Something she’ll be able to look back on twenty years from now and remember at least some of it.”

  “I hope that this trip is good for you—good for all of us, but especially you.”

  I turned my head and looked up into his face. “Why? Do I have a terminal illness you ain’t telling me about?”

  He kissed the corner of my mouth. “No. It’s just that I remember how much you wanted to travel all those years ago. I remember all the things you wanted to do, and I know you didn’t get to do it all. I know you’re happy and that you enjoy being a mom, but I don’t want you to say years from now that you had any regrets or didn’t quite have the life you’d ex
pected.”

  “I didn’t get the life I expected,” I said. “But I don’t have any regrets now, and I won’t have them later. I told you back in Portugal a few years ago that if I never got to go anywhere again, that I would be okay.”

  “Six—almost seven years ago when you showed me your ticket, if I hadn’t shown you mine as well, you were going to leave without me. I know you were.”

  Confused and unsure of where he was taking this, I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders at the same time.

  “Yeah, but…I would have come back to you, Connor. What are you saying?”

  He took a breath and continued to speak calmly. “I am saying, Darla, that maybe by taking me with you that I held you back. Maybe you would have done more if you only had yourself to think about. You were always so excited to race off into the next unknown thing, but then there I was, lagging behind, slowing you down. I’m just saying that I feel like…I feel like I still owe you so much, that I have a lot to make up to you.”

  I almost laughed, but stopped myself because he was dead serious.

  I moved from my spot on the couch and straddled him. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I said, “You are ridiculous, Connor Chandler.”

  His hands moved up my back. “Why am I ridiculous, Darla Chandler?”

  “Almost eight years ago, I sat in your big, black truck and told you that I wanted more.”

  He nodded. “I remember. I will never forget how your face lit up that day. You told me you wanted to eat your way through every continent.”

  “I also said that I wanted the world, didn’t I?”

  Connor frowned. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working yet.”

  “Shut up. When I said that I wanted the world, maybe I did mean it in a literal sense at the time, but maybe that was because, with all my big thoughts and big ideas, I was still…limited in my thinking. I couldn’t even imagine this life that I have now. I couldn’t imagine what it was going to feel like having your babies inside of me. I couldn’t have known what it would do to me, how it would change me to see Hadley’s eyes for the first time. I had seen you many times with a baby in your arms, but I couldn’t have imagined what it would be like to see our babies in your arms. To see y’all rolling around on the living room floor or to see Quinn covered in flour and chocolate cake.

  “Baby, this trip is gonna be amazing. I’m sure that it will also be stressful at times, but you don’t have to worry about trying to make anything up to me, Connor. You don’t owe me anything that you’re not already giving me. Your love and devotion to me and the girls is all I need from you.”

  His thumb stroked my cheek. “But I wanted to give you the world,” he whispered.

  “Honey,” I whispered back. “You already did. You, Hadley, and Quinn are my world. It doesn’t matter where on this planet we are, as long as we’re all together, that’s all the world I need.”

  Acknowledgments

  Special Thanks to:

  Tina “The Machine” Kleuker, as always, for your amazing graphics work, and even more for your steadfast friendship.

  Nikki Costello for being the best PA ever in the history of the world!

  Jackie Hernandez-Narvaez for holding down the fort.

  Marta Vilaca for answering my questions about your home of Portugal even though you were in pain.

  My friend Karleigh Brewster for answering my unending medical questions and for the consistent comic relief.

  Michael Baker for answering all of my small-town Virginia questions.

  The readers that keep coming back for more.

  Also by L.D. Davis

  Accidentally on Purpose: Trilogy

  Girl Code

  Tethered

  Friction

  Things Remembered