Oh, crap.
This required such delicacy and I’d just opened my mouth and spewed!
Mikaela’s smoky-accented eyes widened. Her jaw slacked. Then promptly shut. “Ari.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. I could have said that much more eloquently. Eased you into it. I panicked.” I stared helplessly at her. “It’s just that … we invited you here tonight so that you’d hear it from us, not on some ten o’clock newscast when the rest of the world finds out Dane actually survived the explosion.”
“Survived the explosion.” She said this slowly, tentatively, speculatively. As though I might be crazy and she suddenly feared for her life. “Ari, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“As in, am I on medication? A nut job?”
“That’s not at all what I said.”
“Yet that’s exactly what you’re thinking. I’d feel the same if I were currently in your shoes.”
“Ari.”
“I know. It seems impossible. Implausible. Lunacy, even. I experienced the same shock at first, when I discovered the truth. But then again, this is Dane we’re talking about. And Amano. He’s alive, too. Amano saved Dane. He was really, really messed up and in a coma for a long time and I didn’t know they’d both escaped; no one knew either one of them had survived and that played out well for Dane so that he could—oh, Christ. Just … Let me show you.”
I took a step toward her. She shrank back in her seat.
“I promise I would never, never lie about this to you or anyone else,” I insisted. “It’s not something I’ve made up, Mikaela. And Dane can better explain it all. Just, please. Come with me into the great room. Let me show you,” I repeated.
She’d gone a bit pale. I saw a tremor run through her and her eyes glistened with the threat of tears.
It tore me apart. I knew her pain. I knew exactly how she felt.
&nb
sp; Mikaela wanted to believe me. But it was so far beyond comprehension that it bordered on cruelty that I’d say something like this. Give her misguided hope or make light of a traumatic situation.
I understood completely. And that pained me even more.
“Mikaela. You of all people know that Dane’s life has always been extraordinary and that with him you have to expect the unexpected. In this case, the unexpected has turned out to be cause for celebration. Don’t you want to take a leap of faith and see him?”
“I—” Her mouth gaped the way Amsel’s sometimes did, gulping in air or otherwise floundering, because no words verbalized.
“Please,” I said, balancing the baby in one arm and reaching the other toward her. “Believe me, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.” I offered a smile through my own tension, the tears that flooded my eyes. “It’s another ball of wax when you actually see him in person.”
Several suspended seconds passed. She worked down a hard swallow. A few drops trickled over her high cheekbones. I wasn’t even sure she noticed. Her gaze locked on me, and she apparently tried to discern how detrimental to her it might be if she accepted my reality—and it turned out to hold no validity.
Again, I could relate. I’d once been there myself.
“Mikaela.”
Finally, she placed a slender hand in mine. Got to her feet.
Still eyeing me with trepidation, she said, “Amsel is a gorgeous child.”
“With a gorgeous father. He was worse for the wear at first, but you know Dane. In what world would he ever be defeated?” Kyle and I had previously declared this, which had made it a bit easier to accept the fact that everything I’d believed to be true about Dane’s death was actually false.
We left the study, Mikaela walking briskly beside me, though I could sense her reservation, her inner turmoil. This wouldn’t be easy for her to reconcile, but once she saw Dane she could begin to fully process it all.
The hallway seemed longer than ever before, like it just might take forever to reach the great room and Dane. A heavy weight settled in my chest and my stomach continued to roil. As we finally approached the front of the house, I feared Mikaela might bolt.
I wouldn’t blame her, since she probably still worried about my mental state. Perhaps wondered how dangerous me being off my rocker might be to her own life.
But her pace didn’t speed up; rather, it slowed. She hung back a bit as we neared one of the oversized entryways into the great room.