Dreaming August (19 page)

“Water. Thanks.”

Dan handed her a bottle of water, cracked a beer for himself. Benny scooted between his legs, rested her back to his chest. They sat facing the tombstone, silent as his mother in her grave.

“She was only forty-one,” Benny said softly. She tilted her head back, looked up at him. “That’s just a year older than you are now. She was too young.”

He took a bigger-than-necessary pull from his beer, swallowed the lump rising in his throat. “The cemetery is full of those who died too young.”

Instead of stiffening as he feared, Benny snuggled more comfortably against him. “I don’t think I knew she died this time of year. Is that why you watch the fireworks with her?”

I watch them with her now because I didn’t when I should have. When I could have
. Dan lifted the bottle to his lips, then set it down without drinking. “The accident was on the Fourth. Dad was drunk, as always. Mom left me and Evelyn with our friends and took him home. They never got there. He died on impact. She hung on a few days.”

Benny brought one of his hands to her lips, kissed it tenderly, lingered there. “I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t realize…there’s only your mom’s name on the stone. I thought…” She took a deep breath. “It must have been so hard, losing them both at once.”

“It was hard losing Mom,” he said. Above, the first stars twinkled to life. The pale pink and deep purple on the horizon would soon be gone, and the first rockets would blare into the sky. Dan gathered Benny closer. He buried his face in the hair at the nape of her neck. Love he never believed he’d feel for another living person soothed the rage, the grief this time of year always presented like an offering to old demons long quelled but never vanquished. He could tell Benny why his parents were not buried together, that he refused to subject her to an eternity with him for appearances never close to true. He could tell her he believed his mother crashed on purpose rather than continue on another day. He could tell her about abuse and depression and how badly parents could fuck up their kids’ lives. But if he spoke the words, those demons so close to the surface this time of year would get loose, and Dan was not going to give them the satisfaction of ruining this day of days.

“When I was, oh, about eleven…” Benny spoke, her voice like a whisper out of the past. “I found a kitten out behind the post office. It was way too young to be separated from its mother. Cutest little thing. I was so afraid it would die. My dad is really allergic to cats. As it happens, so is Peter, but he wasn’t born then. Anyway, I knew I couldn’t keep it, but I couldn’t put it back and hope someone else came by. I sat there crying for hours before someone noticed me and asked me what was wrong.”

“You cried on a street corner in Bitterly, for hours, and no one stopped?”

“So I’m being dramatic.” She laughed as softly as she spoke. “Let me finish my story.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

She smiled up at him. Above, the first rocket launched into the sky. “A man stopped. He said, ‘Aren’t you Timmy’s baby sister?’ And I think I told him I wasn’t a baby. He asked what was wrong and I showed him the kitten. He took it from me and held it against him, to keep it warm, he said, because kittens so small couldn’t regulate their own body temperature. He told me he’d take care of the kitten, if it was okay by me. His daughter had been asking for one. I thought he was the nicest man ever.”

The hair on the back of Dan’s neck prickled like a thousand ants skittering along his skin. Dan remembered the kitten. Evelyn had it until just before she and Paul moved to the renovated house on Division Street. “So what’s your point? That my dad wasn’t all bad?”

Benny sat on her knees, her arms winding about his neck. “I didn’t know your father. Tim was scared of him, but I was just a kid. What would I have known? My point is that it’s easier to remember the bad stuff, because we can be glad we don’t have to deal with it with anymore. Remembering the good stuff is harder.”

He never missed a daddy-daughter dance
.

Dan closed his eyes, blocking out the fireworks sparkling and Benny’s beautiful face. He rested his head to hers and tried. He tried so hard. But whatever good memory of Daniel Greene the elder might exist in his head, he couldn’t bring it out.

“I’m sorry.” Benny took his face in her hands. She kissed his nose, his cheeks, his lips. “Dan, I’m sorry. I was trying to help. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine, Ben,” he said, tried to grin and made it halfway to one. “It sucks to find out the funny-man is really the tragic clown, huh? What’s that opera? Pagliacci?”

“I have no idea.”

“And you call yourself Italian?”

“Don’t joke.”

Tears rolled down Benny’s cheeks. He thumbed them away. “Better to laugh,” he said. “My dad took too much from me, Benny. I’m not letting him have any more. I’m damn sure not giving him tonight.”

“You can’t bury these things.”

“I don’t bury them,” he said. “I let them go. There’s a huge difference. The past is the past, and unless you have some sort of time machine, there’s no changing it.”

“But—”

Dan kissed her silent.

“—you can be—”

He kissed her again, pulling her gently closer. Benny straddled his hips. She wound her arms about his neck, made no protest when he teased the t-shirt free of her jeans and slipped his hands underneath. Her body arched to his touch. She sighed against his lips. Overhead, a burst of light. A boom. Illuminating his mother’s tombstone. His moment’s pause gave Benny the chance to speak.

“You can be sad with me, Dan,” she said. “Okay?”

“How could I ever be sad when you’re around?” Rolling with her onto the blanket, his heart lurched. She squealed a half-hearted protest. Dan reached for the buttons of her jeans.

“Here?” Benny whispered. “On your mother’s—”

Dan kissed her, swallowed the words he refused to hear. If he did, it would spoil everything, and he wasn’t about to let it happen.

“She’s not here.” His fingers flicked open the top button, started on the second. “This is just a place for bones, Benny. Just their bones.”

* * * *

You can do this, Benny. You can totally do this.

Leading Dan up the back stairs to her apartment, her hand in his, Benny gave herself the pep talk of her life. This was it. In moments, he would know they were having a baby. Would he weep? Whoop? Crack a joke? Whatever his reaction, Dan was going to be happy. Benny knew this beyond all doubt. The trembling of her insides wasn’t fear, but the good kind of anticipation, akin to, if not the same as, the belly-churning sensation of making love to him in the cemetery. The goth-chick ever alive within her found it incredibly sexy even if it seemed a bit morbid to her adult self. At the time, she hadn’t cared, and still didn’t.

“I feel like a kid sneaking into your house when your parents aren’t home.” Dan kissed the back of her neck as she fumbled with the keys. She shoved him playfully off and opened the door.

“First of all,” she said, “my parents will see your truck in the driveway when they get here. Secondly, my dad’s going to grin like a Cheshire Cat and, thirdly, my mom will probably make us breakfast in bed, so…”

“Breakfast?” Dan waggled his pale eyebrows. “Is that an invitation to stay the night?”

“What did you think we were coming back here for?”

“Round two?”

“Daniel!”

“What? You think I can’t?”

“I know you can.” She tweaked the front of his jeans. “I’m counting on it.”

She hung the keys on the hook beside the door, peeled off her hoodie and tossed it onto the couch. “Make yourself comfy. Want a glass of wine or something?”

“Sure, thanks.” Dan flopped onto the couch, legs spread and arms across the back.

Benny closed her eyes and turned away before Henny’s ghost superimposed itself in the exact position. The past was the past. There was no changing it.

“Red or white?” she called from the kitchen.

“Red’s good.”

She uncorked the bottle of merlot waiting months for someone to drink it. Pouring, Benny squelched the image of Henny drinking from that glass, eating from that table, sleeping in that bed she hoped to take Dan to after she told him about Cricket. She poured herself lemonade. She sat beside him, a leg curled under her.

“You didn’t have to open a bottle for me,” he said. “I’d have had lemonade.”

One of us needs to toast what I have to tell you with wine.

No, no, no. She needed something better.

That wine’s been sitting on my counter since before you knocked me up.

Benny’s cheeks burned. She pressed the cold glass to them.

“Dan, I have…I have something to tell you.”

Dan set his wineglass down, took her lemonade from her and did the same. Turning sideways on the couch, he took her hands in his. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just… I need to go to the bathroom.”

Benny made a dash for the bathroom. Her head lightened and her lips buzzed. She sat on the toilet lid, head in her hands. “Dan has been here a million times,” she told herself. “He’s eaten at my table, watched football on my couch.”

But he’d never slept in her bed. The bed she shared with Henny.

Benny slammed to her feet, looked herself squarely in the mirror. “Stop it,” she growled. Softly. “Do you hear me? You just made love to him on his mother’s grave and sleeping in the same bed with him here is bothering you? You’re an idiot, Benedetta Marie Grady. You’ve already wasted too much time. You love him. He loves you. Now get out there and tell him you made a baby together.”

She splashed water on her face, toweled off. Catching sight of her smug expression in the mirror, Benny chuckled softly, secretly. A loud bang cut it short. She cocked her head. “Dan? You okay out there?”

No answer. She flew out of the bathroom. “Dan?”

No Dan. Only an empty apartment. Outside, his truck sputtered to life. Benny flew to the door and onto the top landing in time to see him pull away, his tires spitting gravel.

“What the hell?”

Benny stumbled back into her apartment, looked stupidly around. Her lemonade sat dripping condensation onto her stained coffee table, but Dan’s glass was gone. She found it in the kitchen. On the counter. Beside the ultrasound picture no longer pinned to her refrigerator door.

Wildly Through The Woods

He didn’t remember driving home. Dan only hoped he hadn’t careened through the streets of Bitterly the way his thoughts were careening through his head. Flashed images of Benny, the fireworks, and the grainy image of what he knew to be an ultrasound picture danced like sparkles behind his eyes. His truck chewed gravel going up the driveway, stopped abruptly at the top. Dan slammed it into park, rested his head to the steering wheel, and tried to calm down.

A baby.

Was it his? Or had she not told him because it wasn’t? Did he care? Maybe it was Henny’s, a baby beyond the grave by way of sperm-kept-on-ice. It certainly wasn’t a sibling. Peadar and Clarice Grady were way beyond their childbearing years. Peter’s? A neighbor’s? Anyone’s besides Benny’s? His better sense tried to reason with him, but irrational thoughts pushed them back.

Instead of bounding up the front steps, he headed to the entrance around back. Dan took the steps two at a time. The open door and bright lights showed Evelyn, at least, was home. He selfishly hoped the kids weren’t. He needed to talk to his sister, to talk this out, to somehow make sense of the craziness whirring in his head. Passing through the kitchen, into the mudroom, he was stopped short by the voices coming from the family room beyond.

“…school where you’ll go is really nice.”

Paul’s voice. Dan’s stomach clenched.

“But what about my friends?” Mabel whined. “Daddy, can’t you just move back here?”

“No,” Evelyn said. “No, sweetie. We need a fresh start, away from Bitterly. You’ll make new friends in Colorado.”

“Can I learn how to snowboard?” Joss asked and Paul laughed—a sound Dan couldn’t remember ever sounding real before. His scalp prickled, but he slipped quietly closer to the doorway, peered from the shadow of the mudroom, unseen. Paul sat on the floor, Joss between his legs and his arm around Mabel’s shoulders. The man had changed, physically, at least. The marine-buzz haircut was now skater-dude shaggy. Gone was the power-suit and tie he once lived in and instead he wore jeans with holes in the knee, and some kind of graphic t-shirt.

“I’ll teach you myself.” Paul kissed his son’s equally shaggy head. “I know it’s a big change, and it feels like this is all coming out of nowhere, but your mom and I have been talking for a while…”

Dan backed slowly away, back into the kitchen, back outside. Betrayed. Twice in one night. By the only two women he loved, had loved, besides his mother. Ever. In the yard he built himself from stone to plant, Dan breathed deeply, slowly. Not even the Casablanca lilies’ scent soothed. He tried to be happy for his sister, for his niece and nephew, and even for Paul. He really tried. Maybe if he hadn’t found an ultrasound picture on Benny’s refrigerator, he might have been.

Maybe if he had stuck around for an explanation.

There was no room for the small, rational voice inside his head. Seeing the picture on Benny’s fridge had let loose those demons still too close for comfort. They dredged up the dazed, hurt, humiliated little boy on the ground, looking up at the man who had always been his hero. It gave him the teenager stepping between his parents, taking the smack that would have knocked his mother out, bearing the brunt of all his father’s fury aimed at her for being whole and beautiful when he was ruined.

Dan needed to do something, something physical. Build a wall. Dig a hole. Mow a lawn. He slammed open the door of his detached garage, stood in the doorway looking for something, anything that would make him sweat. Not a project in sight. Dan was way too good at keeping up on things, and now it bit him in the ass.

And then he remembered.

He grabbed a shovel from the pegs. If Evelyn was moving to Colorado, this house would become his. He could do what he wanted, and right now, he wanted—needed—to sink that scrap of cement into the dirt under the grape arbor, put those kids’ handprints where they belonged.