A Shiver of Wonder

by Daniel Kelley

  David, though, could detect more than a hint of wistfulness in both his tone and his expression. He rose as well. “Has the actuality lived up at all to the anticipation?”

  The elder David appeared to be fighting off tears. “Twenty-seven years is a long time to wait. It’s a long time to keep a secret like this. I have no complaints, though. About anything.”

  David nodded as well. “Thank you. For all that you said. For… reassuring me, or trying your best to do so.”

  “I hope you can use what you learned in here.”

  “You already know that I did. Or will. Or however it’s best phrased. I… well, I hope that things continue to be good for you. I hope you find Clair. I’d ask you to thank her for me, but you already will, won’t you?”

  “If I find her. You never know, she might want to be found. She obviously knew how to find me.”

  Both men looked up as a slight draft brushed over the tops of their heads. It was through almost before it started, though.

  Their eyes found each other again.

  “You think?” asked David, his voice catching in his throat.

  “Probably not,” replied the other man evenly. “But I’m not going to say it’s not possible.”

  David glanced toward the narthex. “I’ll see ya, then” he said as he began pacing toward Willow Avenue. “Or rather, I’ll be ya.”

  “That you will,” was called out from behind him. “Good and bad, blissful and sad.”

  David pivoted. “Oh, please tell me that getting older doesn’t involve saying things like that all the time!”

  A beam broke out. “You’re the one who’ll say it, David. Feel free to polish any of the dialogue. Didn’t work for me, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

  David grinned as he headed again for the doors. Good and bad, blissful and sad… how could he alter a pearl like that?

  He turned once more just before exiting the nave. He waved goodbye, slowly. And David returned the gesture. He took one last long look at himself, and then left before the older man could see the tears that he undoubtedly remembered were in his eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  David paused for a couple of minutes in the narthex. While part of him felt an urgency to pull open the door to the nave again – if only to catch a glimpse of himself one last time – another, more logical, part of him understood that all he would find was a church devoid of people. The other man was already gone. He was even right now making his way down the same center aisle that David had just traversed, only at a far different point in time.

  He glanced toward the doors that led to Willow Avenue, but knew that he wasn’t prepared yet to reenter the present-day world.

  Clair, Clair, Clair. Would his memories of that wonderfully bizarre girl remain as strong over the coming years as they were now, only a week after he’d last seen her?

  If what his older self had relayed to him was any indication, the answer to that question was an unequivocal yes.

  But why would he search for her, or for the redoubtable Mrs. Rushen, knowing already that he would discover nothing, unearth no trace of the pair over the next twenty-seven years?

  Because he would have to! All human beings pursued goals that were deemed impossible, unachievable, inane or unwise, no matter who or what informed them of the cold hard facts about their aspirations.

  Even if their aspirations were as simple as desiring a relationship with someone who was considered beyond their reach.

  What did David desire? Whom did David desire?

  For all of his flirtations with Lydia, not to mention his ineffable delight with her returned affections, he wanted Genevieve. He needed Genevieve. Truly, she was an amazing creature, rich with unexplored pockets of warmth, and uncharted depths of feeling. She was the woman with whom the man that David aspired to be belonged. And he wanted to be that man. He wanted to become that man.

  But hadn’t he just met the proof that his desires would be met? What was David the elder if not the distinct realization of the goals that David had already set for himself?

  Yet knowing that he would eventually arrive at those goals was not the same as having undertaken the arduous journey to get there.

  Was there a possibility that his older self had been a chimera? A delusion planted in his mind by weakness? By Clair? By his disintegrating hopes for the continuance of the better life that he had finally forged for himself here in Shady Grove?

  But perhaps these agonizing doubts were why he had needed reassurance. He had needed to be told that things would work out, eventually if not instantly. He had required a shot in the arm.

  Clair had done this. Clair had arranged all of this for David.

  Why? To demonstrate that she bore him no ill will? Because she had enjoyed their occasional chats in the courtyard of the Rainbow Arms? Or to chalk up another purportedly good deed to place on the internal scales that she, along with nearly every other resident of this Earth, obviously spent immeasurable time and energy balancing?

  David didn’t know. And he suspected that he would never know.

  The light in the narthex, already brighter than before, began to glow as the sun high above peeked out from behind the clouds. The storm was departing Shady Grove, its outskirts not having punished the town much beyond a few drizzly lashes.

  David stepped toward the doors and pushed outside. Before him lay the public square, exquisitely framed by Willow Avenue directly ahead, and Second and Third Streets on either side.

  He smiled as he wondered if the other David had stopped for a moment to savor the same view as well. Birds were singing, the damp tree limbs were crackling, and pedestrians had begun to stroll the sidewalks again.

  And one of those pedestrians, striding directly in front of the church on her way toward the business district, was Genevieve MacGuffie. She too was holding a furled umbrella. Her hair was down, her footsteps were light.

  “Genevieve!” David called out.

  She looked up, and then immediately halted. “David? What are you doing here?”

  He grinned as he started to jog down the steps. “I had some time to burn, so I decided I should finally see the inside of the church.” His feet slowed as he came closer to her. “You were right. It’s beautiful.” He stopped. “You look good, Genevieve. Really good.”

  She smiled, and he noted that his honest compliment had brought a flush of pleasure to her cheeks. “I forgot,” she said quietly. “We were going to do that some day, weren’t we?”

  David shrugged. “Spending time with myself in there wasn’t so bad. I just… I’m just glad to see you. I’ve missed you.” His eyes dropped to the pavement for a second, but then rose to directly meet hers. “It’s been a terribly long week. I’ve wanted to call, so many times. And each time I began to…”

  Her smile was widening. “You were afraid,” she finished for him.

  He nodded. “Yes. Pathetic, I know. But I can’t help it.”

  Genevieve was suddenly moving forward. Before David could even register what was happening, she had grasped the back of his head with her free hand, and was kissing him, almost savagely.

  And then, just as swiftly, she retreated. And once again, they were in the same positions as before, though each now exhibited the same silly expression on their countenance.

  “I love you, David,” she stated. “I do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just spent two hours with Abby, and that dear woman had to listen to me go on and on about something that she apparently has known all along. Which is that I love you, and I need you.”

  David remained silent. He gazed into her eyes, and did his best not to burst into tears again.

  “She told me that I’ve been making life hell for you, for me, for both of us. That it was time for me to put a stop to my… endless tinkering with the recipe is what she called it. I don’t really know what it is that I’m always doing, but if I’m tired of it, I can’t even begin to guess how terrible I’ve been to you!”

  �
�Genevieve, I…” But David didn’t have a genuine demurral to offer.

  “No. Abby is right,” she continued. “When Janice came to the store last week to try and explain what I’d seen, I was already getting angry with myself. I’d been a complete bitch to you at Longworth House, and I knew I’d acted like a fool when I stopped by your building the day before. So when Lydia came into the kitchen to get me, and told me that Janice Templeton was out there, sitting at a table and wanting to talk to me, I just shut down entirely. I felt so ashamed that this poor woman had to come all the way up there to tell me something that I never should have needed to be told.”

  She reached forward to take hold of his hand. “I need to be better than that. I want to be better than that. And I don’t want you marrying Lydia, even if she is wonderful, not to mention everything that I’m not!”

  “She showed you my text?” David asked in astonishment.

  But Genevieve shook her head before inhaling deeply. “No. She informed me just before we opened that if I didn’t make up my mind, and either repair the damage I’d caused or end things entirely with you, she’d have no choice but to step in and carry you away for herself.”

  “Ouch.” David grimaced as he desperately clamped down on his swiftly inflating ego.

  She squeezed his hand. “I should have told her to go right home for saying that, but I ended up sending myself home instead. She was right, and it was what I’d spent all day yesterday trying to realize. I walked over to Abby’s around eleven, and… well, obviously I received a second dose of the same medicine.”

  “Rough day,” he said gently. “How’s Gâteaupia going to function without you?”

  “Oh, it’ll just have to manage!” she exclaimed. “Last week was the most awful week ever. The store was busy to the point of insanity, but all I could think of was you. Of us. And all that has happened over the past year and a half. By Sunday night, I felt more exhausted than ever; I would have been perfectly thrilled if someone had told me that I’d never have to bake another cake in my life! I shouldn’t have even gone in this morning, but… it’s what I do, so that’s what I did.”

  David squeezed her hand, then. “Can we walk?” he asked. “I actually have a meeting with Walter Smithfield in about twelve minutes, and… well, I can be a few minutes late, but…”

  She was smiling as they swiveled in tandem toward Third Street. “You never should have built Gâteaupia such an incredible website,” she scolded. “You’re going to get as crazy as I am soon, if people keep discovering what you can do.” Her hand began to swing, his going along for the ride as it had once done so much more frequently.

  “Yeah, Walter mentioned that he’d talked to you,” returned David. “And by the way, I’ve never regretted that offer. Remember, come what may, the cake keeps on comin’. I’ve got years left on that contract. Till the end of my life, I believe.”

  “Ha!” Genevieve burst out as they began to cross Third. “I don’t believe we ever signed anything that states that! I might have to cut back on your fee. Less Lydia time too, if you’re not always dropping in for a slice of the goods.”

  “We could always include her,” David suggested amiably. “I’ll raise no objections. All those meetings you two have attended, surely there’ve been times when you’ve at least considered trying out some new things just to see if they’re fun! Why don’t we all move in together for a month, and just let everything sort itself out on its own?”

  “And deal with Isabel as well as Johnson in the house? Not to mention the histrionics two jealous women would bring to the table? No, thanks!”

  “Ah, that’s right,” David replied with a straight face. “You’ve done this. At least the two women living together thing. How long were you and Jess housemates?”

  But Genevieve didn’t offer an immediate response. She clutched his hand once more as they began to pass the Culpepper Mills offices. And when she spoke again, her tone was cautious. “I guess we should talk about that some time. About Jess, I mean.”

  “Now’s good for me!”

  She glanced at him. “You’ve got your meeting. And it would take too long.”

  “A few highlights would do.”

  But Genevieve wasn’t about to go down that road. Not in the middle of the Shady Grove business district, not with David about to meet with Walter Smithfield, and not until she’d managed to get at least her end of their relationship sorted out and on a far more solid footing.

  She halted on the sidewalk just before they would have crossed Fourth. Still tethered to her, David swung around until they were facing each other. “I love you, David,” Genevieve said as tears began to build in her eyes. “Not many people deserve to be loved. But you do. You do.”

  And once again, but this time in full sight of the other pedestrians, the drivers on the street, and the entire late lunch crowd at a patio café on the corner, she kissed him, both arms locked around his neck, her umbrella swatting lightly at his back. David, shivers still running through him from Genevieve’s echo of what Clair had said to him, kissed her back for all he was worth, knowing without even a scintilla of doubt that he had loved Genevieve, that he had lost her, and that she was now his again, with that love doubled, quadrupled, compounded beyond any measure.

  Someone honked their horn twice as they passed by. “Nice!” a lady said appreciatively to her companion as they waited for the pedestrian signal to turn green. Several of the tables on the patio broke spontaneously into applause.

  “I love you too, Genevieve,” David managed to say as they unwillingly pulled away from one another, ignoring their audience. “I never want to be without you.”

  Her eyes brimmed over, but it was off of his cheeks that she gently wiped away the tears. “You can tell me that all you want,” she said, her voice sultry, “but in a minute or so, we’ll see how true those words really are.”

  He smiled as he clasped her hand within his and then brought the both of them toward his heart. “Are you going back to Gâteaupia?” he asked.

  Her head shook as a smile pushed its way onto her face as well. “No. I’m going to go home. And when your meeting is over, I want you to get Johnson. And then the two of us together can broach the subject to him of whether he’ll get to sleep from now on in the spare room or with us.”

  David blinked. And when he refocused his eyes on her, he found that the future he had hoped for was already unspooling before him, taking place sooner than he could have ever dared to dream.

  Their lips met one more time. And then they headed their separate ways, David across the street and a half block down for his appointment, Genevieve south on Fourth Street on her way toward her home at Birch Avenue and Seventh.

  Each continued to smile. Each was in love with the world.

  The streets of Shady Grove continued to bustle in the mid-afternoon sun. The dissipation of the morning’s drizzle had enlivened its citizens, and brought a sense of jubilance to the entire town. Raincoats were stowed away, and fresh plans were dreamt up for the remainder of the day.

  The future could offer anything. And anything was possible in a time that was yet unwritten.

  Why not aim for the stars? Why not aim for them, after all?