Dani missed her already.
She sat and the chair’s plastic creaked slightly underneath her. Dani’s skin molded around the seat’s back. She folded her arms, unfolded them, and finally just laid them on her lap as she tucked her legs underneath and around one leg of the chair.
Sandy chuckled, hoarsely, and stated, “They’re damn uncomfortable, ain’t they?”
Dani smiled abruptly. There was the Mae that she remembered from her last visit.
“Something like that.” Dani nodded.
“So, you come for your second visit today. I suppose you want what I promised you.”
“If you’re up for it.”
“What do you care?” Sandy asked abruptly. Shrill.
“I care.” And Dani realized that she did care. Very much.
“I don’t even care, how am I supposed to believe that you care?”
“I’ve learned, recently, that there are people out there who do care. And I think I’m a little like you, but I’ve learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Her grandmomma studied her intently for a moment before she sighed and lay back down on her bed.
Dani watched her grandmother for a moment, returning the favor, and asked, “Have you always been like this?”
No answer.
“Is this why my aunts don’t talk to you?”
There wasn’t an answer for a while. Dani waited, suddenly filled with an uncanny calmness. The strength filled her and she didn’t know where it came, but it always seemed to come at times such as this.
She’d felt the same strength as she held Pang’s body in her arms.
As she held as many of those kids as she could.
She also realized that she could feel strength and weakness at the same time. And she could feel surety and terror at the same time too.
She felt that again as she saw her grandmomma’s crumbs lay patched together as skin.
Finally, Sandy O’Hara broke the silence as she remarked, dryly, “My daughters don’t talk to me because they don’t know I’m here. I only told one person that I was here.”
Dani bit back the inevitable question.
Sandy added, “And that was their father. No one else knew I was here.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Dani shook her head in confusion. “How’d my mother know you were here?”
“Because she got told by someone else. I got a guess who that was, but it ain’t for you to know.”
Those were Mae’s words too.
Dani felt the same wall slam shut against her.
She leaned forward and said softly, “I think it is my business. I don’t think it’s right to have secrets in families.”
“Yeah, well, we got so many secrets, generational secrets, that I don’t feel it pertains to us. We don’t pertain to be a family anymore. We got broke long ago.”
“Who’s my grandfather?” Dani had asked a different question on her last visit. She had asked for her father, but now she wanted to know who lay at the start of the roots. She wanted to understand how the branches had grown as they did.
“Your grandfather ain’t around anymore. He’s long gone.”
“Did you love him?”
Sandra O’Hara quieted and her movements stilled in the bed. As still as she was, Dani would’ve easily believed that death had just overtaken her grandmomma’s breath.
And so her answer was even more eerie when she replied, “That was the problem. I did love him, but that was the doom of my gloom.”
Dani frowned.
Her grandmomma mused further, “The two of us together broke a lot of folks. We weren’t supposed to love each other, but we did. I loved him and he loved me and it wasn’t right. We were supposed to stop, but we never did. I got pregnant three times from him. That’s another secret.” Sandra laughed a bitter laugh. “Everyone thinks that my babies were born of different daddies, but they weren’t. Whole-blooded sisters, they were. Same thing with your momma. She had the same sickness as me. All of you had the same daddy. I’ll tell you that bit.”
“You’re not ever going to tell me who my daddy is, are you?”
Her grandmomma didn’t respond and Dani knew she wouldn’t.
She sat up and peered at her grandmother from a better angle.
Dani saw the emptiness in her grandmomma’s eyes. “What happened to you?” Dani asked, but she didn’t expect a response. Hell, Dani wasn’t sure who the question was directed towards. Herself or her grandmomma. “What happened to us? All of us? What happened to my momma?”
“We fall in love with the wrong men.”
“What if we don’t fall in love?”
“Then we don’t live.”
“Are you alive?” The question was an afterthought.
The answer was whispered in return. “No.”
“Sometimes,” Sandra spoke to the air, “I don’t know where I am. Sometimes I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know what’s real or what’s from my head. When I met him, he made me feel alive. He made me…I got an anchor to the world, like I belonged somewhere when he held me, even though we both knew it wasn’t right. I could’ve stopped it, but he could’ve too. Neither of us stopped because I needed that feeling. I needed…it’s why I’m in here. He left me and my sadness came back. I stopped living in some ways, Dani.”
Dani closed her eyes. She heard a hallowed wistfulness in her grandmomma’s voice and she realized that her grandmomma had forgotten who sat in her visitor’s chair.
She thought she was Dani’s momma. Her child. It was the same voice that Mrs. Bendsfield had used as she spoke to a ghost. They both thought the same thing.
“You don’t got the same sickness as me, Dani,” her grandmother whispered painfully to her daughter. “You ain’t sick in the head, you just sick in the heart. But you got a wall inside of you. I made sure to install that. I made damn sure. You need a wall or people gonna take you for a ride. They tried with me. Hell, most think your daddy did take me a ride, but I went with him. I’d go again if the chance arose.”
Dani bit her lip and held still.
Her grandmomma whispered, “I’d love to go again.”
Dani curled her hands into fists and her fingers bit into the plastic seating.
“You raised those girls right. I hear how you talk about them. Julia sounds real proper, like she’s going to be a Queen or something. Erica—she’ll be the sweetheart. You believe me, right now, I’m predicting that. Erica’s gonna wrap everyone in that hand of hers. She’s gonna make hearts thump.”
Her grandmomma fell silent for a moment.
“And Dani.” She sighed, stricken. “She’s the one that’s gonna walk her own path. Julia’ll wear the crown, but Erica’s going to rule the lands. Dani’s just going to walk right through them. She’s got it inside of her to make it. I know it.”
Dani whirled for the door, but she remained in her seat.
Sandra laughed. She was laughing with a ghost.
“You gotta make Mae clean up her act. And you can do that. I know you can. You might not think it, but you just get her at the heart. You promise her one of your girls and she’ll turn about. Mae can’t have kids and that’s where most of her partying comes from. She’s mourning all those unborn babies of hers, but you promise her one of yours. She has to earn it though. She’s gotta walk the straight and narrow.”
Dani jerked slightly in the chair. She tasted salt at the corner of her mouth and realized she had started to cry. Tears had rolled down her face and she hadn’t felt them.
“You give Julia to Kathryn. Kathryn can speak Julia’s language. They the same, but Dani—she’s different. You give her to Mae. Mae will teach her how to walk. I guarantee that. Mae will raise her right. Erica, you best give her to Kathryn too. Erica’s a mix of both her aunts. She’s like you, Danny.”
Dani pressed a hand to her mouth. As it jerked away, she realized that she shook. Her hand shook.
“Dani looks like you, but Erica’s got your sp
irit. She’s a bit more spirited like her sister, Dani, but…she’ll know how to fall in line with Kathryn. Erica knows how to conform to get by. Her sisters don’t, but she does. She best be with Kathryn than Mae. Dani will center Mae. Those two will be good for each other.”
Dani took a breath. She wished for strength, but at that moment, she felt the crumbs inside of her. The same crumbs that were glued together for her grandmomma’s skin.
“No, no,” Sandra O’Hara soothed her daughter. She comforted her with those words. “You be fine. That sickness will work its way through you and you’ll find peace at the end. You loved him true. I know you did. And, even though he’s not around, I know Emmy. He’ll be back. He’ll check in on your girls, but he’ll know that they ain’t his girls. Your girls will be fine, Dani. They’ll be raised right and Mae will come through. You’ll make sure she does or she can’t be a part of Dani’s life. But she’ll do what’s good. She’s got it in her to come clean. I know my girls just like you know your girls. We know them from the first diaper we changed around their bare asses.”
Dani took another breath. Then another.
“Your father wasn’t the same. He left and he left for good, but not Emmy. He be back. Hell, I bet anything he’ll even come for your funeral.”
Her mother’s funeral.
“I’d like to go,” Sandy confessed in a hoarse whisper. “I’d love to go, but it’s probably best if I don’t. Kathy and Mae don’t need to know about me. It’s best that I stay where I am.”
Dani still didn’t say a word.
“Okay,” Sandy whispered in a short breath. She sounded drowsy. “You best be going. I’m getting right tired now. I gotta get my strength for tomorrow. You call and tell me how your doctor appointments go. I want to know.”
She reached over the bed, grinned distantly at a ghost, and grabbed Dani’s hand. She squeezed tightly and murmured, “You done good, Danny. You made sure your girls have a future. You done real good and I’ll see you when I pass away too.”
Dani stood, exhausted, and made her way to the door.
Just before she went through, Sandy called out, “You’re a strong momma and that’s all you supposed to be. Just a strong momma. You’re better than me, Danny. You did better than me.”
Dani couldn’t form any words. Her throat had closed off and she pulled the door shut behind her.
Her afternoon had flown by in the drive to St. Francis and back. She wasn’t ready to think about Sandy’s revelations so she was grateful when the restaurant and bar were both filled to the maximum. She wanted to work. She needed her mind off things. Then she saw who was inside again. Boone shared a table with his brother and a few other males. Some of the regulars had taken residence over their stools. Kate and Jake sat on some other stools at the bar’s counter when Dani entered through the bar’s side door that connected to the restaurant.
Mae stood there, grinning, at a story Jake was telling. She straightened as she saw Dani. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you adopt me?”
Dani saw the answer before Mae even responded.
“I can’t…” Dani trailed off as she turned away.
Mae rounded the counter and approached her as if she were an injured animal. Mae was cautious, slow, and full of a loving hand.
At Dani’s elbow, Mae said softly, “Maybe we should talk about this somewhere quiet.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dani said numbly as she gently removed her arm from her aunt’s touch. “I already know.”
“There’s a lot that went on that you don’t understand,” Mae started.
“No, there’s not. There’s the simple fact that you kept something from me. You lied to me.”
“It’s not that simple. It wasn’t about lying or holding back the truth or…”
“Yes, it was. I was a child who wasn’t loved by her caretaker. And the person who did love me, who could’ve taken me in, chose not to. That’s how simple it was.”
“Dani—there’s….there were stipulations…there were things that your momma wanted done before I could even think of making your adoption legal.”
“But you did. Somewhere down the line, you and Aunt Kathryn signed me over and both of you never told me.” Dani silently seethed. “That was wrong.”
“Dani.” Mae gave up in that breath. In that one word, her name.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Dani started to move away, but Mae caught her elbow and kept her in place.
Mae said firmly, quietly, “You will not run from me, not from this. There are a lot of things that you aren’t aware of, things that your momma wanted in place before I could think of adopting you. So before you pass your judgment on me and run, you best be hearing all the facts before you tend to your personal jury.”
Dani stared at her and the two competed in a battle of who backed down first.
Neither broke the gaze, but Dani retracted her arm again from Mae’s strong grasp.
Dani moved a step away and said, “Fine, but this isn’t a trial. This was a lie that was kept from me for years.”
“You don’t run.”
“I’m not about to,” Dani said swiftly. “But I’m mad, disappointed, and hurt…and anything you have to say won’t erase those feelings.”
Pain flashed in Mae’s eyes as she heard her niece’s true message.
Mae jerked back and nodded, “Fine. Tonight for our nightcap, I’ll tell you.”
“Everything.”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
Dani ignored the searching gazes of Jake and Kate as she turned away. She walked back through the restaurant and ignored Boone’s empty table as she pushed through the front doors.
Just outside, with the same blinding sun that warmed her chilled skin, Dani stopped short as she saw Boone and his brother studying her Mustang.
“It’s mine,” Dani remarked to their backs.
Both were tall and lean with the alpha Quandry outweighing the other by twenty pounds. Those pounds had been lost in mourning and Dani stood there, plain as day, as the catalyst for that weight loss.
An emotion flickered in Boone before he masked it and straightened stiffly. He slid his hands into his custom-made suit pants and his brother arched an eyebrow as he raked Dani up and down.
Drew Quandry smirked knowingly and identified her, “You’re Bannon’s girl.”
He didn’t notice the slight jerk from his brother as he added, “You got a nice vehicle. A classic.”
“I thought so,” Dani muttered. She was tense, ready for another fight, for another onslaught of emotion that never seemed to stay away for very long. She got a few breaks from the constant tumultuous winds, but the breaks were few and far between. She’d started to develop coarse skin that could outlast any storm.
“Drew,” Boone spoke up.
Dani tensed again at his weary voice.
Drew turned and frowned in surprise at the sudden exhaustion that fatigued his little brother.
“Huh?” he asked.
Boone sighed and expelled, “This is Dani.”
Drew jerked back to her, sudden alert and comprehension dawned in his eyes, as he breathed out in surprise, “You…”
“This is my ex-fiancé, Drew.” Boone walked around and now stood to the side, between them. They formed a perfect triangle as Dani had yet to say a word to add to the introduction.
“Oh.” Drew reared back and raked his brother over with worried eyes. He turned to Dani and viewed her with sudden suspicion and she caught some of the anger that an older brother would have towards someone who had harmed his little sibling.
Dani understood that.
She understood it all too well.
“I haven’t told Lari or anyone about it,” Boone spoke to his