Maybe This Time (30 page)

When she moved out he would want to see Billy, not her. Stupid of her to think they were going to hang out together like a family. Stupid to believe he’d changed how he felt about her because they’d made love. Stupid, stupid, stupid, for falling in love with him again and leaving herself vulnerable. Hadn’t she had enough heartache?

“Actually, that would be good.” She managed to say it coolly. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Em? Thanks for calling about Dad.”

“No worries.”

She clicked off and retrieved Billy from Tracey. “Come on, mate. We’ll see your grandpa quickly and head home—”

She caught herself but not before the thought had formed. When had she started thinking of the apartment over the pub as home? Not because it was so homey but because Darcy was there. The sooner she was disentangled from him and out from under his roof, the better off she’d be.

* * *

D
ARCY WAS ON
a stepladder, untacking pennants and listening for Emma’s return when he heard the rear door to the pub open.

“We’re back.” She put Billy’s car seat on a table and pushed her hair behind her ears. Her shoulders in a sleeveless dress were lightly sunburned, making the faint freckles stand out. Her bare legs ended in thin strappy sandals.

Darcy climbed down the ladder and dropped the stack of dusty, faded pennants into a box. He felt a bit awkward with Emma. Already she seemed to be withdrawing from him. Was it appropriate to kiss her on the cheek like a friend? But she wasn’t
just
a friend. Her cheek would never be sufficient.

“Thanks again for checking on my dad.”

“He’s looking so much better. He’s going to be fine.” She gave him one of her hugs, moderate on the Emma scale but still full of warmth and caring. It was just like her to set aside their differences to offer her support.

He hugged her back then released her reluctantly. Their gazes met, and her eyes were filled with compassion and guilt and wariness. Darcy leaned over the car seat. His love for his son was less complicated than the confused mixture of emotions he felt for Emma. “Hey, monkey face.”

“Nice way to talk to a baby.” But she couldn’t hide a smile.

Billy blew a raspberry. Darcy gasped melodramatically and wiped a drop of moisture off his cheek. “Who taught you that? Who taught you to spit at your daddy?”

Billy waved his arms and laughed. In his tight fist he held the plastic ring of keys.

“He’s really got a good grip now,” Darcy said.

“He’s changing every day.” Emma stroked her baby’s cheek. “Aren’t you, bub?”

“Then I need to see him every day.”

She glanced at him then away, her blue-green eyes as unfathomable as the deepest ocean. “It’s hard to imagine the pub any different than it is now.”

What was that look? That evasive answer? Was she going to have a problem with giving him access to Billy? He supposed every day wasn’t practical but damn it, this was his child. “I’m looking forward to seeing the pub as it was originally intended. It will make the place feel more like mine.”

Plus, Emma’s barb about his procrastination had hit home, and he was determined to prove her wrong.

“I said some things...” she began.

“Never mind. You were right. I am a dreamer, but I’m determined to do this.”

“I really hope it works out.” She picked up the car seat. “I’ll go nurse Billy and put him down for his nap. Then I’ll come and help you.”

“What about your packing?”

“Packing can wait. This is part of my history, too.” She headed for the stairs.

Now for the job he’d been dreading the most. Darcy started to take down the photos on the big corkboard opposite the bar. Many were yellowing and curled at the edges, some completely obscured by newer layers. There were pictures of Darcy and his brothers and sister as kids—fishing off the pier, playing at the beach and eating ice cream in the park. He’d never quite understood his father putting family photos in the pub until he’d had Holly, and he spent so much time there that he wanted a pictorial reminder of her while he worked. It was equivalent to an office worker having framed photos of his wife and kids on his desk.

There were quite a few snapshots of him and Emma, of them with Holly, of Emma and Alana on a sailing dinghy, their hair blowing back from laughing flushed faces. The bay waters in the background reminded him of the cruise. It hadn’t turned out anything like he’d hoped. Instead of finding a new woman who would take his mind off Emma, he’d entwined his life inextricably with hers forever through Billy. A year ago he would have kicked himself for being so dumb. Now he thanked God for his good luck. When he thought of how close he’d come to not having this child...

“You’re not throwing these out, are you?” Emma pulled the framed photos of 1950s and 1960s Summerside out of the box.

“I was going to take them to the secondhand shop.”

“If they were reframed and hung on the newly painted walls they would look fantastic. The pub has a lot of character. I don’t think you should mess with it too much. Just streamline it a bit, make it less cluttered, with new furniture in an old-fashioned style.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.” It was, although he hadn’t known it until she’d articulated it.

“You should paint upstairs while you’re at it,” Emma went on. “Even renovate the kitchen, make it bigger. With a decent cooking space you might even learn to cook.”

“You were going to teach me how to make your chicken curry. Guess it’s too late now.”

“I’ll invite you over next time I make it.”

“Okay.” He tossed a broken frame into the discard box. “Actually I was thinking of buying another house. Someplace with a yard.”

“Another house?” she repeated, looking a bit shocked.

“Did you think I was going to live above the pub forever? It was only a stopgap.” He had the craziest urge to ask her again to marry him. But he tamped that down. Why subject himself to another rejection?

“I—I didn’t think about it at all. It’s nothing to me.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

She straightened. “What do you mean?”

He walked over to her and tweaked a lock of her hair. Somehow they’d gone from being intimate to standoffish, and he didn’t know how to get back to closeness. So he resorted to teasing.

“You’re jealous,” he said, and her eyes widened. “You’d love to have a garden again. To grow your plants and to let Billy play outside in the grass.”

“You’re wrong. I’m over gardening. An apartment is so much less work.” She turned away and started pulling down the horse brasses a friend of his father’s had brought back from England once upon a time. “If you had a yard, a fenced backyard, somewhere safe, it would be good for Billy...when he visits you.”

She was over gardening. Just like he was over football because of the association with that awful spring day nearly three years ago. Their biggest interests—besides Latin dancing—had been destroyed, along with Holly. It was wrong. He was tired of living in limbo.

He crossed the faded crimson carpet to the corkboard to pick out his favorite photo of Holly, one of him holding her as a baby. With a fingertip he traced the outline of his daughter’s tiny face. So small. He closed his eyes and was enveloped by the memory of her soft, soft skin and her sweet baby smell. He could hear her giggle, and the way she called, “Daddy!” when he came through the door at night.

Too many times he’d given her horsey rides and piggybacks then handed her off to Emma for the bath or the feeding. Emma should have let him do more. He should have insisted. Until Billy, he hadn’t realized how much bonding came from mundane acts of physical caring.

Billy was the one who mattered now. Yet to pretend Holly had never existed in the hopes that he could forget the grief and pain clearly wasn’t working and it dishonored her memory.

He carried the baby photo of Holly over to Emma. “Don’t you think Holly and Billy look a lot alike, even though she had your coloring?”

Emma stiffened. She glanced at the photo, looked at him, and then slowly reached out to take it. Her fingers trembled as she held it.

Darcy slid his arm around her shoulders and drew her in close. “Just a little, about the eyes?” He heard her breathe. Then she sniffed. He tightened his hold.

“Sh-she was so beautiful.”

“She was an angel.”

“Oh, Darcy.” Emma turned her face into his chest with a sob. “I miss her so much.”

“I do, too.” His other arm wrapped Emma and drew her in to hold her tightly. His tears spilled into her hair as she wept in his arms.

Grieving together was so simple, so basic and necessary to the healing process, yet they’d never done it. It was his fault. Guilt and recriminations had gotten in the way. And he’d never been brave enough to face the pain.

“I wish I’d been able to talk about her,” he murmured into Emma’s hair. “I’m sorry.”

She drew in a ragged breath. “I know it hurts.”

He went on holding her for a long time after both their tears had dried. His chest ached with the sadness, with Emma’s pain, with the loss of his daughter. But he felt more at peace, as if he’d moved out of that limbo state and could look forward and back instead of peering blindly through the fog.

“Come over here and sit down.” He pulled Emma to a table and brought over the stack of photos of Holly. “Let’s look at these together. It might be less painful.”

Emma nodded tearfully. She took the top photo. “I remember this day. It was really hot and her ice cream melted before she could eat it.”

“She was so funny, trying to lick it off her elbow.”

“The neighbor’s dog got most of the ice cream, as I recall.” She gave him a ghost of a smile. Then picked up another photo. “She was so cute in this little dress I made for her. The pattern could expand to two sizes up. I was going to make her another and another as she grew.” She went quiet.

Darcy put his hand over hers. “We had her for eighteen months. We need to be grateful for that and not think about what might have been.”

“It’s so hard,” she whispered.

“I know. It’s hard for me, too, especially thinking I should have spent more time with her, done more with her, the way I’ve started doing with Billy.”

Emma’s face suddenly crumpled. “It’s my fault.”

“Mine, too. I was intimidated by your knowledge. It was easy to let you take over.”

“No, I mean, it was my fault she died.” Emma looked at him, her face wet. “All this time I’ve blamed you for not going on the picnic because I couldn’t bear to admit that I should have stopped him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Darcy said. “You’re not making sense.”

“Kyle. I knew he was drunk. I saw him stagger when he came out of the house. And when he spoke he slurred his words. I tried to get his keys off him but—”

“Go on.”

“He was hitting on me—”

“What?”

“He was always hitting on me. Usually I ignored him, but that day he was leering down my blouse, touching me, making suggestive remarks about how he could come over at night while you were at the pub.”

Darcy swore. “I can’t believe this! Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known, I would have decked him. He wouldn’t have been able to walk, let alone drive. Why didn’t you come inside and get me?”

“I should have. He wouldn’t hand over the keys, and he was too big for me to take them off him. I should have gone straight into the house and got you. But I knew that as soon as I went in he would have driven off so what was the point? I just wanted him out of my yard and away from the house.”

“Oh, Emma.” Darcy got a sick feeling in his stomach. “It wasn’t your fault. The guy is a prize jerk. And I’m at fault, too. I should have been a more responsible host and kept a closer eye on how much people were drinking.”

“It’s not very realistic, though, is it? People should be responsible for their own behavior. Footy parties are notorious for drinking games and overindulgence....”

She was letting him off too lightly. “Emma—”

“Wait, I’m not finished. I want to say this, get it all out.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I was so angry and upset, so focused on Kyle that I wasn’t paying attention to Holly. I went back to gardening. I wanted to get my pansies in. I always plant pansies on footy grand final weekend. And tomatoes on Melbourne Cup Day, the first weekend in November. Holly wanted me to throw the ball to her. I told her to wait. She threw it anyway. It bounced off a tree trunk and rolled onto the driveway. Holly ran after it as Kyle backed up.”

She started to cry again. “I let Kyle get in his vehicle and drive knowing how drunk he was—”

“It’s not your fault.” Darcy pulled her back into his arms. “You just said you tried to get the keys, but he wouldn’t give them to you.”

“I should have been watching Holly. If I’d played with her instead of being so bloody-minded about sticking to my gardening schedule...” She gulped a sob. “If you were out there, you would have been playing with her and the accident never would have happened.”

“But I wasn’t outside with her, was I?” Darcy said bitterly. “I was inside, drinking with my mates. That’s what I feel so bad about, what I could never talk about. I was drunk, too. Too drunk to realize Kyle shouldn’t have been driving. And because of that, our daughter is dead.” He stroked Emma’s trembling back. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” She hugged him fiercely then eased away and gazed at him with a tearstained face. “We’ve both been beating ourselves up for not being responsible enough, playing the
if only
game. We’ve got to stop or we’ll never be able to move forward. It was an accident. A horrible, pointless, tragic accident. But an accident, nevertheless.”

“You’re right.” He pushed her hair off her face, his palm sliding against the tears he wanted to kiss away. Something held him back. He was looking to her for answers, but in her eyes he saw his own doubt, uncertainty and fear reflected. They’d hurt each other so badly. “We’ve finally got everything out in the open. The question is, where do we go from here?”

Emma bit her lip and looked at him sadly. “Maybe now we can move on with our lives. Separately.”