Here to Stay (20 page)

“I’d love if you gave it to Daisy,” Christine said.

Erik tipped the stone from one palm to the other. He took a taste of his mother’s love and his heart swelled under his ribs.

So much Christine never told him. So much he simply never asked. Save for the necklace he wore, he had turned his back on Clayton and his name and dismissed it all.

Christine could have sold the diamonds. Said
to hell with love. Love is a pipe dream. Cash in hand is what sustains you.

Instead, in her wisdom and grace, she chose not to throw the souvenirs of the past on the bonfire of spite, but keep them safe for a day that might not even come.

“Funny,” Erik said. “For a time I thought all the women I loved made me feel useless. Like nothing I did was good enough. But now I see those women have always picked up the things I threw away or buried and kept them safe. They saved the best parts of me.”

Christine slid her arm around his shoulders and pressed her lips to his temple. “Because you’re worth saving, Byron Erik,” she said.

“Did Dad give you an engagement ring?”

Her hand ran soft over his hair. “He did. But I sold it to help pay for Pete’s cochlear implant. I have my wedding band, though. Upstairs in my jewelry box.”

“You kept it?”

“I did.” She pushed the tissue paper toward him. “Now wrap that diamond up tight. Take the little box, too.”

AMERICAN THANKSGIVING IN NOVEMBER marked a year since Erik picked up the phone and started turning things around. He and Daisy flew down to Pennsylvania to spend it with Joe and Francine.

La Tarasque was shrouded in fog Thanksgiving morning. Erik slipped from his and Daisy’s bed in the carriage house. He walked across the yard and up the porch steps.

In the study, Joe was at his desk with coffee. Francine curled in her chair by the window with the paper.

The lemon trees were in flower.

“Erique,” Francine said, folding down the pages and peering over glasses. “You’re up so early.”

“I wanted to show you something,” Erik said. “Before I show Daisy.”

Joe came around the desk. Francine pushed her glasses up on her head. Erik took the box from his pocket and opened it to show them the ring.

“Oh, darling,” Francine said, clapping her hands together.

Joe’s hand dropped on Erik’s shoulder, fingers reaching to tug his earlobe.

“The diamond belonged to my grandmother,” Erik said. “My cousin Vivian helped design the setting.”

“It’s beautiful,” Francine said, running a knuckle beneath one eye before she reached up to take the ring from its velvet slot.

“I’m touched you wanted to show us first,” Joe said.

“Well. You don’t seem the type to grant permission for her. But I…” Erik rolled his lips in, thinking. “I left once. This time I’m staying. I guess that’s really the point of me showing you first.”

“Darling,” Francine said again, holding the ring up to the window and letting it catch the light. The sun had broken through the fog and was slicing through the lemon blossoms. “The point isn’t that you left,” she said, making the diamond throw tiny rainbows on the sleeve of her blouse. “The point is you came back.”

The ring stayed, shy and secret, in his pocket through Thanksgiving dinner. A half-dozen times he went for it, only to balk. Thinking irrationally,
what if she says no?

Don’t be stupid. She won’t say no.

He didn’t know what he was waiting for.

It’s never going to be the perfect moment or the perfect place. Just fucking do it.

Will texted the next day.
Have you fucking done it yet? I’m dying here.

Finding out the ring was still burning the proverbial hole in Erik’s pocket, Will called to give cheerful hell. Erik grabbed the compost pail and headed outside to talk.

“Good Lord, you’re a wuss,” Will said. “Where’d you propose to your first wife?”

“She proposed to me.”

“Oh.”

“In bed.”

“Hey, bed is a perfectly respectable place to pop the question,” Will said. “You’re horizontal, you’re most likely naked, you’re in the most intimate room in the house save for the bathroom. Just do it there.”

“Where’d you propose to Lucky?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Shut up.”

“I carved ‘will you marry me?’ into a bar of soap. Left it and the ring on the little ledge thingie just before she got into the shower. I waited. And waited. She’s singing. She’s jabbering away. I’m shaving at the sink and dying. Finally, I just yanked the curtain aside and pointed to the damn thing like
Hello?”

Erik laughed. “I think the more elaborate the proposal plan, the more chance it has to bomb.”

“Seriously. Go simple. Just ask.”

Friday night they went to the bruschetta festival, hosted by the county’s Italian cultural society. The parking lot of the volunteer fire department had been transformed into a Tuscan piazza. A long line of grills made from split oil drums held charcoal fires. On lopsided tables made from boards and sawhorses, volunteers were slicing loaves of bread. Others were dealing the slices down the long length of grill, or turning them to reveal the charcoal stripes. The toasted slices went into giant bowls where a third gang of workers drizzled them with olive oil, salt and pepper before setting the bowl out. The crowd grabbed and the bread kept toasting.

From booth to booth, Erik and Daisy followed the masses, trying all the toppings. Endless finger food, the ultimate cocktail party under the stars. Erik had the ring in his pocket and contemplated giving it as they sat eating on some hay bales. But a hundred people were around and his hands were a juicy mess, as were hers.

“You’re so quiet,” she said as they walked along the wine vendors’ booths, tasting.

He shrugged and hooked his arm around her. “I’m just wordlessly happy.”

A couple more times she asked if he was all right. On the ride home, she gave him a few sideways glances. Some puzzled. Some amused. He held her hand on his thigh. He played with her fourth finger but if she noticed, she didn’t say anything.

Later, he sat on the bed, watching through the bathroom door as she washed her face at the small sink. Adorable in her underwear and his T-shirt. The fine hairs around her temples drawing up into little curls.

He remembered making love in there on a November day fourteen years ago. Up against the wall of the shower. Swallowing steam and conquering their demons. Finding themselves again. It had been one of the last good times before they spiraled down into the dark.

He got up and went in behind her.

“Do you ever think about marrying me?” he said.

She splashed her face and spit water out. “If I marry anyone, it’ll be you,” she said, and spit again. “Can you get me a towel?”

He set one hand on the ledge of the sink, and held the other with the ring in front of her. He watched the mirror reflection as she groped at him, eyes shut. Her fingers touched the diamond and pulled back. Her eyes opened.

“What is…?” Still bent over the basin, her breath caught in her throat.

Erik held the ring still and slid his other arm around her waist.

Her hand reached and stopped. She ran her damp palm along the front of her shirt, then reached again with shaking fingertips. She didn’t take the ring. She just touched it.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. Water dripped off her chin.

“It’s yours,” he said.

Her fingers extended. Down the fourth one, he slid the shining gold band with Astrid’s diamond. She pressed her hand to her chest and he covered it with his. Felt the beat of her life within.

“I love you so much,” he said. But his voice was hoarse and the first two words got lost.

You so much.

It settled into his heart like a creed. He said it again. “You so much.”

She turned her head up to him. “So much you,” she said.

She turned all the way around, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “The bathroom,” she said, her mouth soft against his. “Seriously?”

Laughing, he picked her up. Laughing, she wrapped her arms and legs around him as he carried her to the bed. He set her gently on her back, still wound up in her limbs.

“Better?” he said, kissing her wet face.

“Not yet.” She dragged his shirt over his head.

Her skin slid along his. He thought her kiss had never been so sweet. Swore he had never sunk so deep into her body or known what the word
wife
truly meant until her hand came up to caress his face and his grandmother’s diamond caught the light.

“Will you marry me?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s all I think about.”

THE HOLIDAY SEASON ARRIVED and Erik fell into a state of celebration he hadn’t known since he was a child. It was
Christmas.
The world frosted with snow and outlined in white lights. Daisy busy with
Nutcracker
rehearsals. Carols in the background and the smell of wood smoke and pine in the crisp, thin air. Loved ones to shop for and the tree to decorate—together, as a couple. Cards to send with their engagement photo. Both their names on the return address:

Erik Fiskare & Daisy Bianco

Barbegazi

Stevens Road

Saint John, New Brunswick

“You look happy,” Daisy said, grating orange zest for pepparkakor, the Swedish spice cookies.

“I am.” Erik leaned on his elbows on the counter top, watching her, in love with his life again. “Do you think you’ll change your name?”

“To Fiskare? Do you want me to?”

He did, but at the same time, he respected how much investment she had in her maiden name. Thirty-five years as Daisy Bianco to her friends and loved ones. Her long stage career as Marguerite Bianco. And now Madame Bianco to her students. Erik knew the Madame was an earned honorific, not merely a French courtesy.

“Not professionally,” he said. “I would never ask that.”

“I actually like the sound of Madame Fiskare,” she said. “It sounds a little Russian.”

“Just marry me,” he said, reaching to flick a bit of orange zest off her diamond. “I don’t care what you do with your name.”

She leaned and kissed him, laughing. “Yes, you do.”

He smiled against her face and breathed in the scent of oranges. “Stop knowing me.”

They had three weeks off from work, then Erik was heading to Riverview with a car full of groceries and clean clothes. The engine of the old routine reluctantly turned over and coughed back to life. It chugged along, feeling old now. Reluctant and grouchy in the cold winter months. Worried about no end to the situation. Would they be living like this when they were married?

They gritted their teeth and dealt with the separation, laughing at it, crying over it or bashing through it. Erik got his union card. His set designs were pulling excellent reviews in local papers. The dinner theater broke even then started pulling in a profit, to the point where Erik did a double-take at his bank balance one day. The euphoria died when he remembered he had to file taxes in both the United States and Canada.

“Fucked two ways to Sunday,” he said to Will.