Chapter 21
Daphne
When Mom left, I tried to keep this house comfortable. I added small things here and there that Dad wouldn’t think about. Getting new kitchen towels when ours got all threadbare and gross, or remembering that Mom never skimped on buying name brand toilet paper or laundry detergent, but wouldn’t waste her money on something like fabric softener. Everything in the laundry aisle looked the same to Dad.
I’d taken pride in the way I cared for the house, but it was never mine.
Now I was back here, and it felt even less like home.
I wouldn’t be home until Chris came to his senses, until I could throw my arms around him and plaster my body against his. The trouble was, now that I wasn’t following him around, bugging him to want me, to love me, to touch me, he probably felt the opposite.
Relief. That was probably what he was feeling.
He’d gone back to his cat and his life and could hold his head up, knowing he hadn’t sacrificed his ethics, and had extricated himself from a problem that would ruin his career. And his life.
Dad and I ate Christmas dinner as quietly as ever. Talking only minimally just to be polite.
I’d overcooked the turkey, then berated myself for it, nibbled on the sausage dressing and green bean casserole, and let my hot fudge sundae melt into glop. I didn’t have room to swallow much besides my disappointment.
It had settled into my belly, rising higher and higher into my throat. Every minute, it threatened to well up in my sinuses and spill out of my tear ducts. If I started, I’d never stop. I needed a dam. A diversion of some sort.
While Dad played the new video game I’d gotten him, I retreated to my bedroom to mope until the start of the semester.
I sat cross legged on my bed, watching The Muppet’s Christmas Carol on my laptop, but not even the meeces with no cheeses could lift my Christmas night funk.
I let the audio of the movie keep running in the background. It was precarious, doing that with old technology. It would likely crash my computer, but so what if I had to restart the ancient brick one more time? I had nothing better to do.
I opened the online copy of Journal of Forensic Science and searched for Chris. A listing of hundreds of results for Christopher Carter, DDS, PhD populated the screen, including thirty-seven articles where he was a lead author. Only Decca had published more. After Dr. Bass, of course. He was the scientist who’d started the field of forensic anthropology, so if you had to come in second—or third—he was the one you’d want to beat you.
I clicked on the first article. I’d read it before. Before we’d been something to each other. Re-reading about palatal rugae morphology in children aged eighteen months to thirty-six months wasn’t alleviating the ache I felt for him. I didn’t know what I was even looking for here. I couldn’t hear his voice in his academic writing—only the rigor of his study. He was everything an academic should be—detached and removed from his subject.
And I’d tried to take him away from that. From a world that needed him.
My phone buzzed.
My heart rate increased. I was tempted to look at the screen, but it wouldn’t be him. I knew better than to get my hopes up again. He wasn’t going to talk to me for two years. By then, he’d probably find someone else. Someone older, equally illustrious in her career, who looked good on his arm and didn’t fangirl over hot water or got grease under her fingernails.
I looked at the screen anyway. Decca.
I hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas, my bright young anthropological shooting star!
It was sweet and almost maternal, and it almost brought a smile to my face. I double-tapped the text, hoping it wasn’t too rude not to wish her a Merry Christmas. I just couldn’t right now.
I sighed. I should probably call my mom. Talk to my brother and sisters. I scrolled through and clicked on her name.
“Hi, Daphne,” she said.
“Merry Christmas, Mom.”
“Livi, turn off the drone, I can’t hear Daphne. Merry Christmas, baby! I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Mom.” I gave her back the empty words I just needed to say and she just needed to hear. I’d stopped chasing after the love she’d never give me long ago, but sometimes I got caught up in her promises and forgot not to care. Like the other day, when she forgot I was supposed to go caroling with the family and they all left without me. Well, everyone except my stepbrother, Raleigh, who actively hated my mother. He and I had spent the afternoon before Decca’s party watching movies and eating all the cocktail meatballs my mother was probably saving for Christmas Eve, when Steven’s parents would come over.
They had traditions. Mom had taken ours with her when she left. Then acted like they were mine again whenever I came back to her house—her house that was definitely never my home.
“How was caroling?” I asked, knowing whatever answer she gave would be another stab to my gut. Maybe that was exactly what I was looking for now. The kill shot.
“Oh, it was a mess. Emma’s soccer party ran late and she insisted she didn’t need a coat because all the kids walk around with throw blankets over their shoulders these days. But guess what...? She got cold. Just like I told her she would. And the Clifton’s dog pooped right on the Murphy’s lawn during The First Noel, and Sheila was livid, because Debbie had nothing to clean it up with,” She sighed.
“Sounds like it could’ve still been fun though.”
“Maybe if Emma had actually sung, instead of just mouthing the words. She’s the one in choir and she never wants to sing. It’s a good thing you weren’t there. It was so embarrassing.”
Yeah, good thing, I almost said. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t give her the lie of polite apathy anymore.
“I wanted to be there, Mom. I was supposed to be there. You left early. Without me.” It was brave for me to say even that much.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, thinking of Chris’s shocked face when I told him I was never real around my mom. I let myself be her friend, her sounding post for how she raised my sisters. Like I was in the thick of it with her. Bouncing back and forth from being something akin to a co-parent, when her life got hard, to her casual friend, when it was easy again.
“Oh, honey, it wasn’t anything like I thought it would have been. We didn’t sound good at all.”
“I don’t care. You should have waited for me. You always treat me like a guest instead of a real part of the family. Your family. That’s how I refer to you all. I should be part of it, not someone Livi and Emma need to tiptoe around.”
“It’s because you’re never here, Daphne. When you come, it needs to be special. Or else you might never come back.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever paid attention to me, Mom. No... that’s… not even fair because it’s partly my fault that I hide myself from you... but I don’t like perfect. I like off-key singing and laughing at dogs pooping on uptight women’s lawns, and being forced to attend your stupid megachurch, even though I disagree with everything that pastor says, but at least it would seem like I’m a real part of your life. You always give me your social media life. Your highlight reel. I want the stuff you hide in your camera because it’s not aesthetically pleasing enough.”
“Well, honey... I didn’t know you wanted any of that. You’ve always been so mature. So good. I didn’t know you needed me for anything.”
“I did though.”
“Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you. I tried my best.”
Did she, though? Maybe.
“I’m sorry I brought it up. I was just—” no, not just. “I was hurt that you didn’t wait for me. You knew I was coming over.”
“But honey...”
“What?”
“You’re kind of pitchy.”
“I’m what?”
“You sing off key.”
“So what? It’s neighborhood caroling.”
“I wanted to make a good impression. The Murphys have their lights. And the Virenzis give everyone in the cul-de-sac a box of the most elaborate cookies.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more of this, Mom. Merry Christmas. I love you.”
“I love you too, dear. Oh, Livi wanted to ask you something, hang on...”
“Livi knows she can text me. I’m hanging up now.”
By the time I pressed END, she was already yelling at one of the girls, as if our conversation, my first declaration of real feelings since I was a child, hadn’t mattered to her at all.
I tossed my phone across the room. It landed somewhere in a heap of laundry. I didn’t care if I never saw it until school started.
I lay on my bed and resumed the Muppets. Marley and Marley were singing their song when the doorbell rang. I cocked my head to the side. No one ever rang our doorbell.
“Dad,” I called. There was no answer.
I wrapped my own throw blanket over my shoulders, for comfort more than heat, and shuffled to the front door that no one used.
Outside the window was a man in black. A man I hadn’t thought I’d see for two years.
I opened the door tentatively.
“Chris?” I blinked. Maybe I’d fallen asleep and this was a dream. Maybe I’d left my wallet in his car.
He pointed to my wreath. The one from the workshop.
“I hung mine, too.”
“I thought you already had a wreath.”
“My new one has better memories. Besides, it’s a Christmas tradition.” He smirked, but his eyes were cautious.
“What are you doing here?”
“You forgot this.” He pulled out my jar of cilantro jelly from his coat pocket. A different coat. Black. Engine grease proof.
“Oh.” My heart deflated, despite how careful I’d thought I’d been not to let it balloon up.
“I couldn’t let you go another night without giving it back to you. You might have needed it for your cream cheese.”
“I’m kind of afraid to try it, now. After the spider.”
“I don’t think any of the radioactive venom made it into the jar.”
“Not radioactive. Still no powers. See?” She made the Spiderman gesture.
“Too bad. I can think of certain positions where those webs would come in handy.” He wagged his eyebrows.
“You don’t get to come here and do that, Chris. You don’t get to turn me on and leave again when you remember there are consequences.”
“There are no more consequences.”
“What do you mean?”
“I resigned. Just came from Jeanette’s office.”
“On Christmas?”
“I didn’t want to spend another night without you.”
“I thought you needed time to think.”
“I had plenty of time. I walked into my apartment and all I could think about was you. I went to the piano and started playing your song. My parents want to take you to Germany with them this summer. Everything is you. Christmas isn’t Christmas without you. Then Gita came and forced me out of my head and told me she’d never forgive me if I came back to my apartment without you.”
“I think I like Gita.”
“The feeling is mutual for her.” He looked around, into my dark house, the dark exterior. “I— Can I come in? Or can you come out? This feels…”
“Don’t say a word about the mess. I’ve been busy lately.”
I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him through the house—just a few turns, unlike his family estate—and into my room, where…
“Wow.”
“You said you wouldn’t say anything.”
“Right. I just don’t quite know where to…” he leaped over a waist-high pile of half-dirty laundry and two smaller piles of all-cleans and all-dirties and stood in front of me. “Nice race car bed.”
“Thanks.”
“You didn’t tell me you still use it.”
“Still works. It’s big enough for me. Dad built it to fit a twin.”
“You’re fucking adorable.”
“So are you.” I wanted to touch him, stroke his stubbled cheek and feel him drop the weight of his cares into my palm. But he needed to do this for me first.
“I keep thinking about today,” he said. “With Carol.”
“Yuletide Carol!”
He smiled and took a deep breath. “Today I got to really watch you in your element.”
I winced. “Oh, God, I hope car mechanics isn’t my element. I know I’m going from a dirty job to an even dirtier job, but at least dirt and decomp wash off.” I held up my hands. “Unlike grease. This is why I paint my nails black, by the way. So you can’t see what’s underneath.”
He looked at me like I had no idea how wrong I was about to be proven. “Watching you open up that engine and check the... whatever you were looking for—the best competency porn. But I don’t mean just the car. I mean your kindness. You make friends with everyone wherever you go. From the guy at the rest stop, to Patty and her granddaughter, to Valentine the Stripper—”
“Exotic dancer and geriatric nurse.”
“Right, I love the way you care about people. I think that might be what I love most about you.”
“Even if I did get grease on your coat?”
“I don’t care about the coat, Daphne. I love you. I’m sorry for not telling you twelve minutes after we met, but I’m telling you now and I’m not going to stop.”
I said nothing. I was too stunned, too busy exploding with brilliant happiness to even think. I let his admission settle like—well, another blanket around my shoulders, heavy and perfect, until I could trust that I’d heard it for real.
“Every time I look at you it takes my breath away. I knew it was you. I knew it’d be you from the first time I turned my head and you were standing in front of me.”
“Three days ago.”
“Yes, three days ago. And look what we’ve gone through in three days. You said, earlier tonight, that we hadn’t seen hardship. But that’s patently false. We’ve had weeks, maybe months of hardship. Crammed into three days. We work together. We just do. We’re two valves, calibrated in to mix the perfect amount of fuel and air for combustion… And yes, I looked that up before I came here, but it’s true about us. The past three days have proven it over and over again.”
He researched the fuel injection system; my heart could burst from that alone.
“Did I get the engine part right?”
A tear leaked down my cheek as I laughed. “Not really, no. But I love that you Googled engines for me.”
“I’ll get books. Big, fat textbooks on engine mechanics. I’ll take classes. I want to know about everything you love.”
“So, what happens now?”
His eyes flickered mischievously. “That depends on you, darling. I can stay resigned and be extraordinarily happy being your personal chef, sommelier, and sex slave.”
“Sounds pretty good.”
“Or…” he looked down at the pile of clothes. “Why do you have so many…” He reached down and grabbed an armful of clothes and shoved them on top of the other piles and I didn’t care one bit.
“Or?” I said impatiently.
“Or…” he took another deep breath and knelt on one knee. “You marry me. Now. Before the start of the semester. We stay together. And we work together. As a team.” He kissed my knuckles. “I’m sorry I don’t have a ring. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow when the jewelry store opens. I wanted to spend the last few moments of Christmas together.”
I brushed his hair to the side and stared at his boyishly handsome face. “The second option does seem like a much better use of your degrees.” He smiled his lopsided smile that told me he really would give it all up without any regrets. But I didn’t want that. “I want so badly to be your team, Chris. I want to keep being your biggest fan. Read more of your research. Co-author with you. Learn from you.”
He nodded as his eyes welled with tears. “You’ll do it? You’ll marry me?”
“On the other hand… I do like the sound of you as my sex slave.”
He rose back to his feet. “Sweetheart, that’s a given either way.”