The Winters(67)

“Yes. Go.”

“You know I love that brat,” he said. “I mean, I love her more than you. But you’re catching up really fucking fast!”

I gave him a half-hearted laugh, and he ran back to join the men.

It was a slow walk up the hill to Asherley. The rentals truck, now emptied of its chairs and tables, beeped a warning and backed out of the side drive. I could see the workers testing candles in the greenhouse, their long shadows dancing across the now-sparkling glass. How different the greenhouse looked spruced up and populated, like a breathing organ that felt vital to the house, not a useless, decorative appendage. I cursed the chill that dusk brought, soothing my anxiety by running through a litany of the good fortune that was hurtling towards me. In twenty-four hours, I would marry inside Rebekah’s greenhouse, making Asherley my home, then one day my children’s home. When I was old, I’d rest on that porch chair and put my feet up on that wicker ottoman. Max would grumble about the ancient ivy threatening to blot out our view of the bay, while I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I would traipse every acre of this island with my children in their little red raincoats. We’d drift down inlets in a boat, spying on nesting ospreys and the swans raising their cygnets in the rushes. While we ate on the warm rocks, I’d tell them about their ancestors from the paintings, the bad ones who owned people and sheltered pirates and the good ones who fought for the Union and worked to protect one of the largest stands of white oak on the entire Atlantic Seaboard. These things were finally at hand, but not if my happiness remained inversely proportionate to Dani’s sadness.

I looked up, aware she was watching me before my eyes confirmed it: Dani, in the turret, defiant as ever. No lock could keep her out of there. We looked at each other. When she did not return my wave, I took Max’s advice and left her alone, heading to the boathouse to scrub my dirty hands clean.





TWENTY-FOUR


Over these past few months, I’ve come to understand more about what trauma, both emotional and physical, does to the brain. It’s remarkable how the mind’s censors can work over a conveyor belt of madness, discarding the rotten bits so we consume only the parts that are acceptable. I don’t recall waking up next to Max on the morning of our wedding, or whether we had breakfast together. I do remember being in the boathouse that morning, in my bathrobe, where Dani found me checking to see if the stencil was finally dry. It wasn’t how I had planned to unveil her gift. I’d hoped to wait until after the ceremony. But when Dani poked her head inside the door, my heart leapt at the sight of her scrubbed face, her hair wet down her back.

“Dani, I’m so glad to see you. I have—”

She walked over to me and gently clasped my wrist. “Come with me,” she said, tugging. “Right now.”

“What is it?”

“Just . . . come,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

There was no anger in her voice, or worry, just instruction.

“Wait. I have something I want to show you.”

“I know. You refinished Grandpa’s boat. Nice job.”

I freed my hand from her grip and pulled the tarp back. “Look at the back.”

After her eyes scanned the hull, she walked around the boat, stopping to read the words across the transom. “Dani’s . . . luck.”

“For Daneluk,” I said.

A slight smile cracked her stern expression. She looked at me then at the boat. “Why did you do this?”

“I wanted to give you something of your own on our wedding day.”

She kept looking at the name. She seemed sad.

“We can take it for a spin around the lake later if you—”

“Daddy let you do this for me?”

“What do you mean? Of course he let me,” I said, skipping the part where he strictly said not to get the spoiled girl who has everything a wedding gift.

Before I knew what was happening, she made a tiny leap into my arms, and I wished for Max to see this, our détente turning into what I hoped was a lasting peace. He was so wrong about this and I was so right and I couldn’t wait to tell him.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re not very cool, but you’re a nice person. Now it’s my turn to show you something. But you’re not going to like it at all. Please promise me you won’t freak out.”

“Okay, but . . .”

She grabbed my hand and dragged me across the lawn, past Louisa ordering florists around in the greenhouse, past a frantic Katya shooing caterers to the second fridge down the hall, then across the foyer where we could hear Max and Jonah laughing in the den, and all the way up to her room, the whole way me repeating, “Where are we going? You’re worrying me, Dani. What’s going on?” and her saying, “I don’t want you to worry, everything’s going to be okay,” our roles strangely reversed.

She flung me into her room and shut the door behind her, marched over to her closet, pulled out the garment bag, and threw it across her bed. “Okay. It’s a problem, for sure. But I don’t think it’s a total disaster.”

She bent to unzip it, freed the wedding dress from its plastic cocoon, and carefully laid it on her bed.

We both looked at it, fists on waists.

“That is . . . not my dress.”