The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(137)

“Of course there is, honey.”

“If he did call…would you hang up or listen?”

He heard her draw her breath in and let it out. “I hope I say this the right way,” she said. “I would slam the phone down on the father of my sons. Because I will never forgive him. I would listen to the man I loved. Because part of me needs to hear what he has to say. Am I making any sense, Byron Erik?”

“Perfect sense, ma’am,” he said. “And I’m sorry he never came back and set you free.”

A soft laugh caressed his ear. “Sometimes people surprise you.”

“Or they don’t.”

He waited. For dismissal of the past. For platitudes or philosophy.

“You know, Erik,” she said. “While your father was here, he was a good man. And I see a lot of him in you. The good things. Don’t be ashamed of them. Because I also see how you’re different from him. Especially right now. You couldn’t be more different.”

If he had crafted her response it couldn’t have been more perfect. Erik swallowed hard, curled up tight into her words. Basking in them, he told her he loved her.

“I love you. I’m thrilled you’re doing this. What you had with Daisy deserves a second chance. You go find out. Listen to each other. And then you’ll both be free.”

After hanging up, Erik flopped on his back and rolled toward his bedside table. He took out the blue leather case with Joe Bianco’s Purple Heart and lifted out the inset. The flattened penny was still there but it wasn’t what he wanted. He pried up the postcard of the Metropolitan Opera House, trimmed to fit precisely within the bottom of the case. The last thing Daisy had written to him. The only words of hers he had kept.



I’m sorry, Fish, I know how important it was to you. I feel terrible it’s lost. I hope you find it.



He held the card to his face, inhaling a scent that wasn’t there.





Matryoshka


With a quiet hum, the doors of the hotel slid open, and Daisy walked into the lobby. She wore a camel wool coat over jeans and boots. Her dark hair drawn back, not a tight ballerina bun, but loose and casual, her curls falling over one corner of her sunglasses. Hands in her pockets. Head turning to the right and the left. Anticipation in her shoulders.

Erik had been sitting in a chair by the fireplace. He stood up. His heart expanded until he was nothing but a heart. A giant pounding heart on two shaking legs walking over to her. His own hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, clenched, holding on to the lining, holding on tight or he would fly out into space and lose her forever.

As he got close she took her sunglasses off, revealing her eyes. Blue-green and bright. Older, a little shadowed, faint lines at the corners. Looking at him.

Trembling all over, he looked at her.

Trembling just as much, she smiled. “Welcome to Canada.”

He swallowed. “My new favorite place on earth.”

Carefully they moved into each other’s arms. Erik held her, paralyzed with feeling. He wanted to crush her to his chest, seize her tight and never let go. He mustn’t. Not yet. He held his embrace in check, then worried he was coming across too casual. He couldn’t find a compromise. His arms kept starting and stopping. He couldn’t take it in.

I am holding her. I have not touched her in twelve years. She is in my arms. I can smell her. I am holding her. This is happening.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. One of her hands pressed against the back of his head, then slid away. “I’m shaking.”

“No, that’s me,” he said, trying to still the tremors taking over his legs. Gently he turned his nose into her hair. He felt light-headed. His heart was going to burst right through his chest. “You smell the same,” he said, a little stupidly.

She let him go, stepped back and looked him over. He held still and let her.

“You’re the same,” she said. “I know you’re different but you look just the same.”

She was beautiful and he couldn’t speak. He just stared as she pressed her fingers to her mouth, then curled them into fists beneath her chin while she kept looking him up and down. She reached tentatively, touched his necklace. “I’m so glad we found it.”

“Me too,” he said.

They hugged again, still carefully, not giving over to it yet. Erik felt himself fall backwards in time, coming to rest on a quivering freshman night when he first gathered her against his body. Thank you, he had thought then. Thank you, he thought now.

“Well,” she said. “Should we go try to be normal?” She held out her hands, showing him how they shook. “If this is normal.”

“The new normal,” he said. His shy hand came up to touch her cheek. Not meeting his eyes, she took his fingers, squeezed them as she moved his hand away. She was biting her lips and shaking her head the tiniest bit.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Now she nodded, still looking past him.

“Nauseous?”

She nodded harder and he laughed.

“I’m all right,” she said, and let go his hand. “What should we do?”

“Show me where you work,” he said. “I’m dying to see.”

“We can walk there,” she said, putting on her sunglasses. A different flicker of discomfort had passed over her face though, and Erik frowned.