The Cinderella Hour (33 page)

At
4
:
00
p.m. on Saturday, November nineteenth,
Daniel Hart opened his eyes. Vivian was the first to know. She was with him at
the glorious moment—and left his bedside before his searching gaze found her.

Snow was in Quail Ridge at the time, shopping for the gold
band she would put on Luke’s finger the day they were married. Luke was in
Quail Ridge, too, on duty at the station.

As Snow browsed the selection at the jeweler’s, two doors
down, at Jan’s Kitchen, Bea and Bert sipped steaming bowls of chicken noodle
soup. They had been strolling, hand-in-hand, all afternoon. Bert was limping
less every day, and laughing more than he had laughed in years, and on an
enchanted evening in the not-too-distant future, they would go dancing. For
years—yes, decades—Bert had received annual invitations to the Glass Slipper
Ball. Thanks to him, generations of Prince Charmings had dazzled their
Cinderellas in tuxedos provided by him.

This year, if the idea appealed to Bea—and he believed it
would—he would accept the offer. She would have such fun,
they
would have
such fun, showing this year’s sophomore girls the charm she had gotten at this
very ball, with this very prince, fifty years ago.

It was
5
:
00
p.m. in Atlanta when Daniel
opened his eyes. Ellen was reassuring a mother-of-the-bride about an upcoming
ceremony. Go with the flow, she advised. The emotional flow, she added, of the
moment.

Ellen was becoming an expert on emotions. Her own. As her
daughter, her
daughter
, knew. She and Snow talked to each other, or emailed
each other, or both, every day. There was, after all, a wedding to plan. But
there were times, so many times, when the wedding wasn’t even mentioned.

Ellen’s daughter would wonder whether she had heard from a
certain police lieutenant in Boston—and if so, or even if not, whether it would
be all right with Ellen if Snow invited Patrick to the wedding. Snow liked the
man who, in a different life, would have married the woman who would have been
her aunt.

Ellen had heard from Patrick. Not every day, but often. More
and more often. When she told him Snow wanted him at her wedding, he said he
would be there.

Patrick asked her one night what she had meant, in her voice
message to Snow, about life imitating lies.

Well, she told him, she was the wedding planner now that she
had pretended to be.

Was that all? the homicide lieutenant wanted to know. The
only pretense?

Ellen could have said yes. The wedding planner lie was the
only one that had actually come true.

But she admitted to Patrick her other lie—that, while living in
Atlanta, she had fallen for a hero cop.

And she heard, in the long-distance silence, what had to be a
smile.

Across town in Atlanta, at
5
:
00
p.m., a mother named Olivia was reunited with her baby boy. She was Olivia
again, as the psychiatrist who prescribed the antidepressants promised she
would be. Her husband knew it, her in-laws believed it, and Rory patted her
happy face with glee.

Olivia’s psychiatrist wasn’t surprised by her recovery. But
he was pleased for her and her family. And it was nice to share in an uplifting
outcome at a time when the nation’s psychiatric community was reeling from the
loss of one of its own. Indeed, celebrating Olivia’s triumph over postpartum
depression was an appropriate way to celebrate the man who had dedicated
himself to just such triumphs.

The psychiatrist believed that Dr. Blaine Prescott would have
been pleased.

The belief would never be shattered. Those who knew the truth
about Blaine had decided not to reveal it. The monster was dead. The good he had
done would live on.

Thomas and Wendy were playing checkers when Daniel opened his
eyes. Eileen was suggesting moves, and occasionally making them, with her paw.
Mira watched from what had become her nest on the living room couch. Her energy
was returning. Slowly. As everyone, Thomas included, told her it would.

No one in Thomas’s condo was paying any attention to the
time. Neither he nor Mira would know, in retrospect, if it was precisely four
when Wendy walked to the window. Both were accustomed to her sudden silences.
And both knew that, more often than not, those silences would pass only after
she stood by a window for a while. They didn’t know, would never know, if what
beckoned her were the unseen stars overhead . . . or the call of a heart mere
miles away.

Thomas always knelt beside her at the window.

He was there, with her, when the telephone rang.

Wendy didn’t follow him when he answered it. But she was
facing him, looking at him, when the conversation ended.

“I have something wonderful to tell you, sweetheart,” he
whispered.

It was Vivian who made the call to
Thomas. She waited in the nurses’ station until Daniel’s doctors gave her the
go-ahead.

Daniel was awake, alert, and, with a minimum of filling in
the blanks, oriented to person, place, and time. In the past week, his “numbers”—lab
results—had improved to the point where his survival was no longer in doubt.
Even his renal failure was reversing. He wouldn’t need lifelong dialysis or
transplantation, after all.

It was safe for his daughter to know he was alive.

Vivian had seen photographs of Daniel’s Wendy. Snapshots,
from Daniel’s Christmas cards to Thomas, were on display at his bedside.

As she was leaving the ICU, Vivian saw Wendy herself. The
little girl was holding Thomas’s hand. Mira walked beside her.

“Vivian.” Mira greeted her sister with a gentle embrace. Mira
was recovering from major trauma. But it was Vivian who seemed most frail. “You’re
leaving?”

The question caught Vivian by surprise. Of course I’m leaving,
she thought. Daniel’s awake.

“You must be Wendy,” Vivian said.

“I’m going to see my daddy!”

“I know you are. He’ll be so happy to see you.”

“Come with us, Vivian.”

Vivian shook her head. “Go, Mira. He’s waiting.”

Daniel wasn’t going to die, but he
looked like death. His skin, although no longer jaundiced, had the sallow hue
of illness. And his face was gaunt.

Too scary for his little girl?

That was his worry in the moments before she arrived. Maybe
it would be better for her if they waited until he bore at least a slight
resemblance to the robust pumpkin farmer she had known.

The casts, which would prevent him from hugging her to his
skeletal frame, might be all she recognized. They were bright white, as when
she had seen him last—and had spent several happy hours drawing pictures on them
before the floodwaters began to rise.

Daniel was trying to convince himself to postpone the reunion
when she appeared at his door . . . and let go of Thomas . . . and ran.

There must have been leaping, too, for there she was, curled
in the space between plaster cast and skeletal rib cage, as if it was just as
comfortable as that special place had always been.

“
Daddy
.”

“Wendy,” he whispered. “My precious Wendy.”

“You didn’t drown!”

“No. I didn’t.”

“But did you go to heaven? Did you see Mommy?”

“I did see her.” He had. In heaven? Perhaps. When he had been
buried beneath tons of water moving at breakneck speed. “And you know what? We
decided it was too soon for me to join her. She wanted me to be with you, and I
wanted me to be with you. So here I am.”

“But she’s going to keep watching us, isn’t she?”

“Watching us and loving us. And smiling at us, Wendy, from
the stars.”

“Time to go home,” Mira said when
Vivian answered her law-office phone.

It was nine p.m., three weeks after Daniel Hart’s reunion
with his daughter.

“I’m leaving soon.”

“Good. I’d like Daniel to meet a rested version of you.”

“We’ve discussed this, Mira. Daniel is never going to meet
any version of me.”

“He wants to thank you, Vivian. In person. He knows what you
did.”

“Only because you told him.”

“Everyone told him. It wasn’t a secret. I don’t understand
your reluctance.”

“It’s not necessary, that’s all.”

“Well, Daniel thinks it is. Besides, you’re going to meet him
eventually. It might as well be now.”

“I’m going to meet him eventually?”

“Yes. You are. He’s decided to sell his farm and live here.
The land’s valuable, despite the recent floods. Maybe it will never flood
again. But Daniel’s unwilling to expose Wendy to even the possibility of another
flood. And,” Mira added quietly, “Wendy has family here now.”

“Thomas,” Vivian said. “And you.”

“And you, Vivian. Thomas and I are planning to have lots of
family get-togethers, and you’d
better
be there. Tomorrow seems like the
perfect time to get over your awkwardness about Daniel thanking you in person.”

Tomorrow
? “I really can’t drive to the hospital tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to. Daniel was discharged this afternoon.
They’ve given him light weight casts that can be worn beneath his shirts. It
will be months before his muscle strength fully returns. He’s going to spend
the time with Wendy, and finding a place to live, and thanking you. Thomas is
working tomorrow, and Wendy and Daniel and I going visit to Quail Ridge. While you’re
having coffee at Jan’s Kitchen with Daniel, Wendy and I will be enjoying buckeyes
at Bea’s. So, Vivian, when should I plan to drop Daniel off at Jan’s?”

“Oh, Mira.”

“It will be
fine
, Vivian. He’s a very nice man.”

It wasn’t Daniel’s niceness that worried her. Or so she
thought. Halfway through her sleepless night, Vivian decided it was his
niceness that worried her most. What if splinters of what she had told him lay
embedded in his subconscious? They would be the most piercing splinters, the
most damning ones, like her cruelty to Snow.

Daniel wouldn’t remember her words. But the sound of her
voice might trigger an ugly, piercing, not nice memory.

When Mira pressed her for a time when she could make the
half-block walk to Jan’s and have a quick cup of coffee with Daniel, she had said
11
:
00
a.m. That was her earliest opening, and it felt early
enough.

But as she slipped into her coat for the short wintry walk,
it felt way too late. She was exhausted. And it was only ten-forty-five. She
would have a cup of coffee, she decided, before he arrived.

The man standing in her reception area was lean, pale,
striking. He had very blue eyes, and his hair was thick and brown.

Daniel’s hair had been brown, and thick. It hadn’t grown in
the weeks before he awakened, nor had it died. And the eyes that had opened, and
from which she had fled before they found her, had been blue. Gray blue.

Not
this
blue—the blue that seemed to have cleared
itself of all its clouds just for her . . . because of her.

“Are you Daniel?”

“I am. Hello, Vivian. I thought I would walk with you to Jan’s.”

“Thank you. You’re early.”

“So are you.” He smiled. “Just as Mira said you’d be.”

Ten minutes later, in a booth with a Main Street view and
mugs of coffee steaming between them, Daniel said the thank you he had been
wanting to say.

“You’re welcome. Even though I really didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not the way I hear it.”

“The rumors are greatly exaggerated.”

“I doubt that. I wish I could remember what you told me.”

“You can’t?”

“Not a word. But it must have been riveting.”

“Hardly.”

“I wonder if you’ll ever tell me.”

“What I said to you? You’d be bored.”

“I doubt that, too. Very much. But I’m sensing you would just
as soon change the subject.”

“That would be good,” Vivian said. “Mira says you won’t be
returning home.”

“I am home, Vivian.”

She had worried about ugly splinters piercing his
subconscious. Now something sharp yet sweet pierced her heart . . . for it felt,
as if to Daniel,
home
and
Vivian
were one and the same.

“Do you know where you’ll live?”

“I didn’t until today. Now that I’ve been to Quail Ridge, I’m
going to look for a place right here. I’m a carpenter by trade. Once I get my
strength back, I’ll look for work.”

“You’ll find it. There’s a lot of building going on.”

“Then Quail Ridge it is. I bet you can even see a sky full of
stars from here.” Daniel paused, waiting for her answer. “Can’t you?”