27. Now
NOW
I find Donna on the front porch, on the morning of the opening ceremony. She stares at the small stage that’s been set up in the yard, something melancholy in her face as she gazes at it, at her dream coming to fruition.
“It’s going to be perfect,” I assure her.
“I know. It’s just a happy occasion and a sad one at the same time.”
“Why sad?”
She sighs. “The idea of this house…it’s what got me through those first years after Danny died. It felt like I was moving toward something, with Danny. He was still with me.”
Her mouth pinches closed, trying to hold in her tears.
She’s been moving toward this with Danny.
And tomorrow, once the house is officially open, it’ll be over.
They’ll be parting ways. I know exactly what she means.
I feel it, too, the way I am about to close the door on a part of my life I hated and loved at the same time.
The gala’s a week away, and I’ll leave after that. Where did the time go?
“There will always be more to do here,” I tell her. “The kids coming in will need so much from you.”
She smiles through her tears and squeezes my hand. “I know,” she whispers. “And I know I’m being silly. I just felt like it was us and Danny, taking one last trip together, you know? And there will be other journeys, but he won’t be with me for them.”
She goes upstairs to get dressed because the caterers will be arriving soon, and I start unloading the dishwasher, my stomach tied in knots.
I have done my best to keep these entities separate—Luke, Grady, the press. Today, they all come together. Today, people will be discussing Danny’s life and perhaps his death, creating a fuller picture…and fuller pictures are dangerous.
Luke enters the kitchen. My body blooms to life at the mere sound of his footsteps, but I force myself to ignore him until he steps up beside me with a dishtowel in hand, standing closer than he should.
“Stay away from me today,” I tell him, slamming the dishwasher shut before turning to face him. “I don’t want people thinking the wrong thing.”
He throws the towel on the counter and leans toward me so only I can hear what he’s saying. He’s like a space heater—I can feel the warmth of him when he’s not even touching me.
“My sheets smell like you,” he says against my ear, his fingers grazing my neck as he pushes my hair away, “and I have your claw marks on my ass. I could follow you to your room right now and have you begging me to fuck you in seconds . It wouldn’t even be an effort.
So, explain, exactly, how it would be the wrong thing for anyone to think. ”
I shiver at his nearness, goose bumps climbing up my arms, core clenching.
He walks out of the room, not expecting an answer. I’m so tired of pushing him away, I’m so tired of trying to make him hate me, but God knows it matters today most of all.
When I go to my room to get dressed, I lock the door behind me because he’s right—I’ve never said no to him once, even when I was with someone else, and seven years later I still can’t manage it.
I cannot be trusted. I guess I already knew that, though.
* * *
By the afternoon, the sun is blindingly bright, with no breeze to offset it. The caterers all try to remain in the kitchen as much as possible, and the audiovisual guys are drenched in sweat as they tape down power cords in the front yard.
I emerge from my room just before the ceremony in a beige Dries Van Noten sheath and matching heels. It’s the most prim, conservative clothing I own, but Luke’s gaze still feeds on me like I’m wearing nothing at all.
The board members arrive and come inside to escape the heat while seats begin to fill. When it’s finally time for all of us to file outside to the reserved rows in front, I follow them out…and come to a stumbling halt.
Why the fuck is the reporter from the Times here? I expected local press, but an event like this would only merit a line or two in her article at most—so she must be here for something else.
Is she hoping someone will break?
It’s a gathering of the people who knew Danny best, many of whom were with him when he died, and perhaps she’s hoping one of them will say something about it, that they’ll peel back another layer from the mystery of what really happened to him.
There were thirty of us in the house that weekend.
Thirty people drinking and chatting and having conversations with Danny that I wasn’t privy to.
Thirty people who might have overheard my final moments with him and kept it to themselves all this time, who had suspicions about me and Luke they finally want to voice.
Luke’s sitting at one end of the first row, so I head toward Libby, sitting at the other, and he watches me.
There’s something warm in his gaze, even after what I said this morning, even after the way I’ve behaved since I got here.
As if he knows I’d give anything in the world to be able to sit by his side during this.
That I’d give anything for us to be able to hold hands, just like Grady and Libby are, and not have anyone find it troubling.
Libby smiles at me as I sit. “How are you, hon?”
I force a smile. “Fine. You guys did a great job.”
“ You did a great job. It’s your money and fame that made this what it is.”
I shake my head, unwilling to take the credit. This wasn’t charity on my part. It was penance.
Grady says a prayer and then Donna steps up to the microphone, looking tiny and worn in the bright sun. Her blue eyes swim with tears before she’s said a word.
“Just before we left for Nicaragua,” she begins, then her voice gets rough and she has to stop to clear her throat. “Just before we left for Nicaragua when Danny was five, we stopped to pick up fast food. He had a bit of a tantrum because I wouldn’t let him get a soda.”
I smile. Anyone who’s ever seen a kid in a restaurant knows there’s usually a tantrum thrown about soda.
“When we left, there was a man huddled outside the restaurant asking for help. Danny wanted to give him our food, so we did.” She stops again, her hands gripping the podium so hard they’re nearly bloodless.
“Our stomachs were growling later, and his father said he hoped Danny had learned a lesson from it. And Danny said…Danny said , ‘I can do a bad thing and still do good things.’ ” Donna brushes at the tears running down her face.
“So, when you remember my son, when you think of this house, just know that you, too, can make mistakes, but as long as you can still find a little bit of love inside yourself, it isn’t too late.
” She smiles at me. “That’s what this house is for.
For all the children who are certain they are bad and unlovable.
So that they can find the good that’s been in them all along. ”
Tears stream down Donna’s cheeks, and the ache in my chest can no longer be held in. I press my face to my hands as I start to cry. She just used this moment, her moment and Danny’s, to tell me to forgive myself.
Libby squeezes my knee before she walks to the stage, and then someone takes her seat and an arm wraps around me, too heavy and too perfect to be any arm but Luke’s.
I press my face into the stiff fabric of his jacket and cry like a kid against his chest. I thought it was best that we stay apart here, today, when people are watching. When someone might put it together.
I’m glad he didn’t listen to me.