Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Danika
The house is echoey and empty without Cami. Shirley came down and swooped her up with promises of Disney movies, pizza, and ice cream, which was enough to distract Cami from her questioning about what Danika was going to do for an entire night while she was gone.
Danika doesn’t exactly know.
Sure, Kim’s coming around, and they’re going to look at photos.
And talk. Danika’s put a bottle of white in the fridge, and a bottle of shiraz is open and breathing on the counter.
They’ll drink wine. They’ll talk. Kim will have to go home, as Bella has soccer in the morning, as does Cami. So maybe not too much wine then.
“Don’t hold back,” Shirley had whispered as she hugged Danika goodbye. “Be brave.”
Danika is still not entirely sure what her mother meant by that, except that she’s been championing Kim all week.
She takes a last look around. The bedroom door is open—deliberately.
She tells herself it’s so Kim has the chance to be as nosy as Danika was in Kim’s apartment, but a less charitable part of her knows it’s so Kim, too, has that moment of pain when she looks at the marital bed, where Danika and Chris loved. Fucked. Conceived a child.
Her lips compress. She’s accepted that this whole…
situation…isn’t Kim’s fault. That Chris manipulated both her and Kim into a situation they wouldn’t otherwise have accepted.
But she’s sure that if not for Cami and Bella she wouldn’t have approached Kim at soccer camp, would have stuck her fingers in her ears and sung “La, la, la, can’t hear you” as if she was the eight-year-old instead of Cami.
But the unstoppable juggernaut of a friendship that is actually more, even though the kids don’t know it yet, is the catalyst for her acceptance.
Danika goes to the kitchen and checks the oven.
She’d debated doing something complicated for dinner tonight, pulling out all the stops, not to impress Kim, but to make it obvious she was trying.
No supermarket roast chook and a bag of salad, which was often dinner for her and Cami when life was too overwhelming to think of cooking.
But Kim is vegetarian, and so Danika settled for something she and Cami often have—a sundried tomato and capsicum frittata along with a quinoa salad. Simple and delicious.
The frittata is ready, so Danika pulls it from the oven and sets it on top, covering it with a tea towel. She’s set the table for two. It’s too cold to eat on the deck, but it’s pleasant looking out over the garden.
The doorbell rings.
Nerves jump in her stomach, and she smooths her suddenly damp palms down her jeans. She walks to the front door and opens it.
Kim is there, holding a wicker basket. A cloth covers the contents, but the neck of a bottle of wine protrudes. “Hi.” Kim offers a smile, but her fingers are white-knuckling the handle of the basket.
“Welcome. Please come in.” Danika swings the door wider so Kim can enter.
“Shoes off?” Kim is already toeing out of her chunky leather clogs.
“No need unless you want to.” Danika only enforces the no-shoes thing if it’s Cami and her friends in muddy soccer boots.
She leads the way along the hall, past the open doorways. Cami’s room. Bathroom. Her room. She doesn’t look back to see if Kim is looking, although she’s sure she is.
When they reach the kitchen, Kim sets her basket on the kitchen counter. Her lips are pale, and for a moment there’s a defeated look on her face.
Guilt shreds Danika’s chest. She should have closed the doors.
It is callous of her to allow Kim this glimpse into the life she’d had with Chris—the king bed, the large room, the photos.
It’s not about money, about showing off her house, which is so much bigger than Kim’s apartment.
Yes, she’s more comfortable with Chris’s life insurance and superannuation payouts, but Kim seems to have a comfortable lifestyle too.
It was a statement—a cat pissing in the corner.
This is mine. This is what I had. This is what I still hold—the position of wife.
She snorts. Wife was not something she ever aspired to, and she’s never considered herself superior simply because she married someone.
“I brought wine,” Kim says. She holds out the bottle. “I wasn’t sure what you preferred. I hope this is okay.”
It’s a pinot grigio from the King Valley, a label Danika doesn’t recognise. “Thank you. Shall we open this now?”
Kim nods. “And you said not to bring anything, but if someone invites me for dinner, I like to contribute in some way.” She removes a container and lifts the lid to show cookies covered in flaked almonds. “Italian cookies.”
“Did you make them?” The cookies aren’t the finished perfection Danika associates with store-bought. These are rustic and delicious-looking.
“I did. I like to cook. And Bella likes to eat, so there’s that.”
“So did Chris. As you obviously know.” This is about building connections, finding a way forward for their daughters. They can’t avoid the elephant in the room.
“He did, didn’t he?” A more genuine smile lights Kim’s face.
She’s prettier when she smiles; the curve of her cheeks softens her angular cheekbones.
“Did he eat meat around you?” Danika asks.
“Yes, because Bella eats meat. But we all ate a lot of vegetarian food, too.”
Danika busies herself finding glasses and opening the wine Kim brought. She takes ash brie from the fridge, puts it on a wooden platter, adds dried olives and oat crackers and puts it on the counter.
Kim sits on a stool. “This looks fantastic.” She lifts her gaze and holds Danika’s. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome.” And strangely, Kim is. The tightness in Danika’s chest loosens, just a little. “How’s Bella?”
“Good some days. Not others. Meeting Cami has helped. She still hasn’t stopped talking about her. It’s as if they sense the bond they have.”
“I think they do. Or maybe it’s just that they are physically similar, and recognise that on a subconscious level.”
“Bella just knows her father is missing.” Kim twists the wineglass in her hand.
“I can’t tell her he’s dead, as then she’ll look for facts, things I don’t want to tell her yet.
But she should know.” She stares down into her glass.
“I tell her he must be dead because he would never have left us otherwise, but on some level, she’s still waiting for him to come home.
When Bella saw the psychologist, she insisted her dad was alive. She didn’t go for long—her choice.”
“If we tell our kids the truth, Bella will know her father is dead.” Danika’s fingers twitch. There’s a greyness about Kim as she talks about what Bella does—or doesn’t—know.
“When we tell our kids.” Kim looks up. “I can’t withhold this from her forever. And I’m sorry; I know it will drag you and Cami into it. I hope in time you’ll see that as a positive thing.”
“I’m getting there. We’ll do this, Kim.” She gives in to the urge to touch Kim, maybe for a tiny moment of comfort, of support. She touches Kim’s hand, slides her fingers along the back to where her palm rests on the counter. Kim’s hand is warm, dry, and even touching the back she feels the tremor.
An indrawn breath, and then Kim looks up. Her eyes are damp, shining with unshed tears in the harsh kitchen light.
Danika keeps her fingers on the edge of Kim’s hand. The touch is light, but she feels where their skin connects. Connects. That’s what they’re doing here.
Kim lifts her hand and turns it over, palm up, and clasps Danika’s hand. Her gaze flicks to where their hands are joined, then back to Danika’s face. The tiniest of nods.
Danika’s breath catches. She and Kim are joined, she realises, in ways that can’t be undone.
They both built their lives with the same man.
They both have daughters, so close in age.
And now, well, now, they have each other as…
Well, that she doesn’t know. It’s too early to be friends.
Too late to be nodding acquaintances. What else is there? But they can’t go back.
And Danika doesn’t want to.
Slowly, she disentangles their hands, bringing them back to at least a sense of normality.
She cuts a slice of brie and puts it on a cracker. Takes a mouthful of wine. Nibbles the cracker. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Kim nods once, jerkily. “Me too.”
They graze on cheese. They drink wine. Then they eat frittata and quinoa. Italian cookies and coffee.
And they talk.
They mostly talk about their kids. Life with Chris is…
not glossed over, but not delved into either, by mutual understanding.
What Danika’s life with Chris differed from what Kim had with him.
There will come a time when it gets dragged out, examined, and that will be difficult for both of them, but for now, it’s about them.
About getting to know each other…and their daughters.
Danika brings out photos. She curates them—the early photos in albums, the later ones only on her phone. Cami as a baby, a video of her toddling along the hallway and crashing into a table, which collapses. Holding up her first soccer boots.
Kim laughs at that one and shows Danika a photo of Bella in an almost identical pose. They put the photos together, and there’s no doubting the girls are sisters.
Kim shows more photos of Bella: camping in the Alpine National Park, when early snowfall blanketed their tent.
On the pier at St Kilda, fish and chips in her hands, and the blur of a seagull diving in to steal a chip.
Kim says Bella screamed and dropped the lot, and then it was game on for every seagull within one hundred metres.