Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Kim
Bella is insufferable and won’t stop talking about Cami. Kim feels sorry for Jorie, whose envy of the Mary Fowler jersey is thick and green.
But finally, Kim and Bella stand on the wooden porch outside Danika’s blue front door, where Cami’s soccer boots nestle up to a pair of bright-yellow Crocs that, going by the dirt on them, Danika uses for gardening.
If Kim has taken any care with her appearance, she’s told herself it’s to make Bella proud of her, to not let Bella down. But that’s a crock of shit. She knows that somehow, she’s done it for Danika. That Danika might notice she looks nice. That she might be someone Danika would call a friend.
Cami answers the door before the echoes of the chimes have stopped.
She’s dressed in a Matildas shirt. Bella’s wearing the Mary Fowler shirt again, but Kim has another one in her bag—Bella’s under-10 team shirt.
Bella has realised the wisdom of not wearing the Mary shirt too often, because wear means dirt, and dirt means laundry, and laundry means the signature will wear off.
But she has to show Cami. Show her sister, she said.
Cami’s face lights up when she sees them, and she makes a quick move forward, as if she’s going to hug Bella, then stops.
“Hi, Kim,” she says, and flicks her a glance, then returns her focus to Bella.
Bella reaches out and grasps Cami’s hands. “I missed you.”
Cami’s tension dissolves, and the next thing is the girls have linked arms and Cami’s dragging Bella off to the back of the house to show her something—Kim doesn’t know what—and Bella goes willingly without a backward glance.
“Cami missed Bella so much.” Danika has appeared in the space where her daughter was until ten seconds ago. “It was so hard not to call.”
“Thank you for respecting that.” She sets the basket she’s carrying down at her feet. “You said picnic food. I included a bottle of wine. Mainly so that if our daughters end up fighting, we can drink pink wine and maybe not care as much.”
“Not much chance of that,” Danika says with a laugh. “The fighting, that is. But there’s every chance you and I will enjoy a glass of pink wine. Come on through.” She leads the way to the kitchen.
A ceiling fan turns slowly, stirring the dry air. It’s a hot Melbourne summer day, not so hot that it’s unpleasant, but enough that the fan is welcome. There are bushfires in the western part of the state—Kim heard that on the news. Every year, more fires.
She puts the basket on the counter. “Do you have any room in your fridge?”
Danika pulls the door open. It’s a huge fridge, double door, American style, maybe twice the size of the smaller one in her apartment. It brings home sharply how different their lives are—and how similar too. Danika shifts some Tupperware to another shelf and gestures.
Kim unloads falafel, salad, and spinach dip and puts them on the only shelf with space.
Danika opens the wine and pours two glasses.
Unsure of what to do next, Kim looks at Danika. As her gaze drifts from the top of her shiny dark hair down over her plain t-shirt and navy drawstring shorts, she thinks Danika is doing okay.
There’s a fullness to her cheeks that wasn’t there the last time, as if some of the worry and sadness has drifted away or been pushed into a deeper corner of Danika’s mind.
Danika’s bare brown thighs draw Kim’s gaze as if on strings.
They’re slender—she almost certainly has the sought-after thigh gap—but it’s not the leanness that comes from exercise, more from being too busy or distracted to eat.
She traces the line of them with her gaze and for a fractured second wonders what they would feel like under her palms. Soft she imagines, not muscle-hard.
Then Danika pushes her hair behind her ear, and Kim becomes aware she was staring.
Danika looks out through the wide glass doors to the rear, where Cami and Bella are already taking it in turns to tackle each other. “Thank you,” she says. “I’m sure you had some hand in Bella’s change of heart.”
Kim shakes her head. “Bella said some time ago she missed Cami. And the soccer jersey was the excuse she needed.”
“I’m glad.”
Kim is happy too, and it’s not only for Bella’s sake.
It feels right to be here in Danika’s kitchen.
The client, Eliza, who reminded her of Danika, isn’t the real thing, which is why she never called her to ask her out after the job finished.
Kim stares at Danika’s fingers where they rest on the fridge door.
She imagines them on the keyboard as Danika works.
She’s sure Danika is fast and efficient in what she does.
“I told my parents you were coming around today. They’re happy for us,” Danika says.
“Mum said again that she’d love to get to know you and Bella when the time is right.
She’d drop everything and come today if I asked, but I said she needed to give us more space by ourselves first. I hope that’s all right with you? ”
Kim nods, touched by Danika’s thoughtfulness. After all, having Shirley here would lift some of the pressure. Shirley’s inevitable questions to Kim would save Danika having to engage as much.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Danika says. “I’d love for her to come over. But today, I’d rather it was just you, me, and the girls.”
They fall silent for a moment. Kim sips the pink wine she brought, glad she bought a decent bottle and not her usual plonk.
“Being a…widow… It’s hard for me, and I have Mum and Dad.
My best friend Mirza. A few other friends.
But I work alone from the house, so it’s been too easy for me to sit at home and wallow.
If not for Cami, that’s probably what I’d have done.
I talked to my GP, but all he did was offer anti-depressants.
I’m sure they’re right for many people in my situation, but for me, grieving is something I need to work through, not take a pill to make it go away.
” She tilts her head and stares at Kim. Her eyes glow warm in the sunlight slanting in through the window.
“Has it been similar for you? Worse, maybe, with no parents close by.”
“Jorie’s mum, Suze, is my rock. I couldn’t have got through losing Chris without her.
Although I didn’t tell her about you and Cami until after I’d seen you.
I’m not sure why, really. I took anti-depressants for a couple of months, but felt I couldn’t be fully present for Bella.
” She shrugs. “That was my experience, anyway.” Kim takes a deep breath.
“I’ve wondered about trying to date. If it’s too soon, too hard, too confronting for Bella, or if I even want to. ”
“There’s no timeline for this,” Danika says.
“It’s not right for me yet. I wish it were, but every time it crosses my mind, I wonder how I can ever trust anyone again.
I trusted Chris, utterly and completely, and look where it got me.
” She looks down at her glass. “It scares me,” she adds in a whisper.
Kim’s heart beats in time with the ticking clock.
That was her worry too. To be betrayed at such an elemental level rocked her to her core.
But over time, as the extent of Chris’s deception became clear, she made a conscious decision not to let that affect her going forward.
Oh, of course, it was never going to be that easy.
But she won’t let it taint her life, nor Bella’s, if at all possible.
“I trust my friends,” she says. “I trust Bella. I trust the banks not to steal my money, the government to steer Australia safely to the next generation and beyond. I trust road users to obey traffic lights, and the bloke who fixes my laptop not to steal my personal data. We all have to trust.”
“You didn’t mention any romantic partners in that list,” Danika says.
“It hasn’t come up. Yet. I hope it will.
” She reaches over and takes Danika’s hand, tightening her grip at Danika’s surprised twitch.
“And I trust you, Danika. I trust you—and that includes Cami—not to break Bella’s heart.
I trust you to do the right thing by us as we untangle this unbelievable mess we’ve ended up in. ”
“Thank you,” Danika says. Her hand relaxes in Kim’s grip. “I won’t betray that trust. There’s been enough of that in both our lives.”
Kim runs her fingers over the back of Danika’s hand. To and fro, back and forth. She means it to be soothing, but the way Danika’s breathing shortens, tightens, it may not be having that effect. “Are you sworn off dating?”
Danika’s tongue darts out and touches her lower lip.
It’s a nervous gesture rather than a provocative one.
“I’m too scared to try right now. But I hope in the future there’ll be someone else.
” She licks her lips again. “Would you date a man or a woman…or, I guess, non-binary?” She huffs a tiny laugh.
“If that’s an inappropriate question or you don’t want to answer, ignore me. ”
“Until recently, I barely thought of dating,” Kim says.
“But although I’m bisexual, I’ve always leaned more toward dating women.
So the odds are in favour of a female-presenting person.
” Like you. The thought somersaults into her mind, but she pushes it aside.
Don’t go there. “But more recently, I’m thinking about dating.
I don’t know what, if anything, I’ll do about it though.
Maybe wait until the perfect person falls into my life. ”
“Mirza has a friend she wants to introduce me to,” Danika says. “A fireman. And please spare me the jokes about long hoses.” She grimaces.
“Truly the last thing on my mind.” For a millisecond, she wonders how Danika and Chris were together, but in the next breath she realises she doesn’t care. Really doesn’t want to know. And it’s too intrusive to ask.
But she’d like to know more about Danika. What she likes in all sorts of ways.
“Maybe we should go out together one night,” Danika says.