Chapter 24 #2
I stood, pushing in my chair. “I have a headache. Going to head home. Gillian, would you mind dropping Annie off later?”
They were all staring at me.
“Don’t go,” Lila said softly. “We can talk about something else. Anything you want.”
“I have to go,” I said, voice cracking. “Please, just let me. You all stay and chat about your perfect lives and your great marriages and all the stuff you have to look forward to. I don’t fit in anymore.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Seraphina said. “The five of us are growing old together.”
Esme’s eyes had filled, pools of blue glimmering in the fading light. “Is that how we’ve made you feel? Going on and on about how happy we are? Because, if that’s true, then we’ve let you down terribly. We’re on your side. Always.”
“We’re sorry,” Gillian said. “And we’ll back off, okay?”
“You have nothing to feel sorry about,” I said. “I’m glad for all of you, but the truth is—we’re no longer in the same stages of life. We won’t ever be again. Some things just aren’t meant to be forever.”
With that, I gathered my bag and headed out the door to my car, then drove home, crying the entire way there.
The next day I spent at the gallery. Thankfully it was a busy day, so I didn’t have too much time to think.
By the time I closed up and drove home, I just wanted to take a shower and go to bed.
However, I knew Annie would be waiting with questions about why I left the dinner without her.
I’d feigned sleep when she came in and left before she woke, mostly to avoid the conversation.
How could I tell her that I’d blown up the most important thing in my life besides her?
My friendship with the four women who had carried me through so much.
Over, just like that. I wasn’t sure either one of us could forgive me for that.
When I pulled into my driveway, my heart skipped a beat. Dorian’s car. What was he doing here?
I got out, leaving my bag on the passenger seat. Dorian and Annie were kneeling near my potting shed. As I came nearer I saw that they were digging in the dirt. My dirt. A raised bed had been built, long and skinny that ran along the side of the shed. To the side, was a bag of daffodil bulbs.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They both startled and jumped to their feet.
“Hey, Mom. Surprise.” Annie gestured toward the bed with dirty hands. “Dorian’s built us this for daffodils. My favorite flower.”
“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t comprehend any of this. Dorian in my garden? Planting daffodils? “It’s the wrong time of the year to plant bulbs.”
Dorian still hadn’t said anything, but he stepped closer to me now. “I wanted to … give you something that would tell you how sorry I am for what I did and said and didn’t say.”
“Daffodils?” I asked. “You’re planting daffodils?”
“Just getting the bed ready,” Annie said. “And then we’ll plant them in October and they’ll bloom in early spring. The first color in the garden. Reminding us that spring is coming.”
I closed my eyes, the dream from weeks ago coming to mind. Dorian had been in my garden, cutting my peonies, music all around us. He’d said I needed to let go. Of what, I’d asked. But he hadn’t answered because I’d awakened before he could.
However, this was not a dream. Dorian was not cutting anything.
He was making a bed for Annie’s favorite flowers.
She’d asked for some for years, but I always told her no.
They’d been my mother’s favorite, and the sight of them made me mad.
I’d never told Annie the truth, making something up about how they were too ordinary.
But really, they were too much. Too bright.
Too early. Too full of judgment. Too much my mother.
Yet, here they were preparing to plant them. Without asking me.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Dorian.
“Before you answer, I’m going to head inside for a cold drink,” Annie said. “You two talk.”
She sprinted from the garden, pony tail bouncing.
“Delphine, come sit. Please.”
Feeling numb, I followed him over to the chairs under my apple tree, well shaded and scented with the ripening fruit.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he said once we were settled.
“I didn’t handle things well, and I now know why.
I was operating from a place of fear. Loving someone as much or more than I did Nate scared me to death.
The thought of losing you and Annie sent me into this weird tailspin of insecurity.
I’m not unsure how I feel about you. I’ve been in love with you for a year.
I always thought it would just be from afar, but then, I saw a chance and I took it.
And lord have mercy, as my mother would say, I fell hard.
The weeks with you were some of the happiest of my life.
Which made them dangerous. But I know I love you.
I want you in my life for as long as I can have you. Even if it hurts when you leave.”
“You love me?”
“With everything I have. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I shut down. Please, give me another chance.” He gestured toward the bag of bulbs. “This is a symbol of my commitment to you. A bed, then planting in the fall, and then being here with you when they bloom.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. Residual anger remained, and I almost tried to hang on to it, but then I looked into those blue eyes watching me so intently and with such obvious love, and I let it go.
All that fury was swept away in the ocean breeze and lifted up and out of the garden and toward the sea.
Leaving behind me and this man I adored surrounded by my garden’s blooms and absolutely no way of twisting this into something bad.
“I want to answer your question about the wedding,” Dorian said.
“I didn’t take you because I didn’t know how to deal with it.
Walking her down that aisle, into the arms of someone besides Nate was really, really hard.
I didn’t know how to talk to you about it, so I distanced myself.
And then, after the ceremony, Luci refused to be in the photos and ran away.
I went to find her, and she shared with me how it felt like everyone but her had forgotten her dad. ”
“And that triggered you?” I asked.
“Big time. I started thinking about Annie and how she deserved so much more than I had to give. So I talked myself into pumping the brakes. I couldn’t have explained it at the time, but I know now.
It’s pretty simple, really. Nate’s death made me question everything I thought I knew.
And it made me afraid to hurt that bad again. ”
“I do understand,” I said. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.
Which is why I was so quick to send you away.
It was my way of protecting myself further.
Only it didn’t work because I was already in love with you by then.
These last few days have been awful. I missed you, and it made me so mad, so I just dug the hole deeper. ”
“Will you let me back in?” Dorian asked. “And if the answer’s no, I’ll keep asking. I’ll keep showing up at your doorstep with a bag of bulbs, hoping you’ll give me another chance.”
I started to cry. God, it was becoming a habit. Only this time, they were happy tears. “Yes, I’ll give you another chance. And I’m sorry too. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. We’ve both experienced loss in a way that changed us forever. It’s made us irrational. At times anyway.” He placed his hand over mine. “I love you. I want you and me and Annie to be a family.”
“I want that too,” I said.
He smiled, moving his hand to cup my cheek. “I missed you.”
“I missed you. I’ve alienated my friends too, mostly Seraphina.” I told him about our fight and how I’d stormed off to lick my wounds. “I left, saying they were all in a new season—one that didn’t include me. I acted awful.”
“You’ll work it out. You two are too tight to let one argument get in the way of your friendship,” Dorian said.
“She loved me enough to tell me the truth, even if I didn’t want to hear it. I plan on reaching out later today to say I’m sorry. She was only trying to help, and I shut her down. That’s what I do. I’m not saying I won’t have more moments like that. I wish I could, but I’m flawed.”
“According to Annie, we all are, in our own ways,” Dorian said. “Can I kiss you, flawed though you are?”
“Yes, please.”
His kiss was warm and reassuring but at the same time hinted at the future we would share together. “I didn’t think you’d come back to me.”
“I’ve been miserable without you,” he said.
“I had this dream a while back—you were in my garden cutting all the peony blooms and ‘The Book of Love’ was playing as if from magical speakers in the sky. You told me it was time to let go. I asked you—let go of what? I woke up before you could answer.”
“But you know the answer, don’t you?” Dorian said. “The same one I had to give myself.”
“That’s right. I have to let go of Jon. We did our best. We made a beautiful girl. It’s time for me to forgive myself and him. Embrace what’s right in front of me.”
“I agree on all counts.” Dorian brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you. I haven’t felt like it of late.”
“Let’s work on that, then. I’ll keep reminding you.”
We kissed again and, this time, when we parted, Annie appeared with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses.
“Sorry to intrude, but, since I saw you kissing, I figured it was safe to come out here?” Annie set her tray onto the small table between the two chairs. “Are you thirsty?”
“Parched,” Dorian said.
Annie hauled another chair from the opposite end of the garden, creating a triangle. I poured three lemonades and then we toasted.
“To new beginnings,” I said.
Annie grinned. “To us.”
Dorian echoed our sentiments. “To my two favorite people. And the most beautiful garden in town.”
We clinked glasses.
“Okay, you two need to fess up about this little scheme of yours,” I said. “How did you decide on planting daffodils?”