He smiled slowly. It transformed his face, that smile, reminded her of a dozen times long past. “It’s a graphic novel about a pair of best friends. Kids. He’s a good kid from the wrong side of the tracks with a mean drunk for a dad. She hides him in her barn. Their friendship, it turns out, is the last true innocence, and it falls to them to destroy the wizard’s ball before the darkness falls. But if they kiss—or go farther—they’ll lose their power and be ruined. I just started submitting it to publishers.”
“It’s about us,” she said. At the realization, it felt as if a doorway somewhere opened, showed her a glimpse of a hallway she’d never seen. “Why didn’t you show me before?”
He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and stood up to face her. “You stopped seeing me a long time ago, El. You saw the gangly, screwed-up kid I used to be, and the quiet always-there-for-you guy I became. But you haven’t really looked at me in a long time.”
“I see you, Cal.”
“Good. Because I’ve waited a long time to tell you something.”
“What?”
He took her by the shoulders, held her firmly.
And he kissed her.
Not a friendly peck or an I-hope-you-feel-better brushing of the lips. An honest to God, send the blood rushing to her head, kiss. Tongue and all.
Ellie resisted at first—it was all so unexpected—but Cal wasn’t letting her run the show this time. He backed her up against the wall and kept kissing her until her breathing was ragged and her heart was beating so fast she thought she’d faint. It was a kiss that held back nothing and promised everything.
When he finally drew back, making her whimper at the sudden loss, he wasn’t smiling. “You get it now?”
“Oh my God.”
“Everyone in town knows how I feel about you.” He kissed her again, then drew back. “I was beginning to think you were stupid.”
She didn’t know how a nearly forty-year-old twice-divorced woman could feel like a teenage girl again, but that was exactly how she felt. All giddy and breathless. In an instant her whole life had clicked into place. It all fit now. Cal.
Behind them the door opened. Ellie turned around slowly, still feeling dazed.
Peanut stood in the doorway. Like flowers from a single stem, three little faces hovered beside her. Peanut said, “Go put on your jammies. Daddy will be up in a minute to put you to bed.” When they were gone and their footsteps on the stairs had faded to nothing, Peanut’s gaze moved from Cal to Ellie and back to Cal.
A smile finally tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You kiss her?”
Ellie had the thought: Peanut knew? and felt a flash of irritation. Then Cal was pulling her toward him and she forgot about everything else. In those eyes she’d known forever, she saw love. True, this time; the kind that began on a cold day between two kids and lasted for a lifetime. He squeezed her hand. “I did.”
Peanut laughed. “It’s about damn time.”
Ellie put her arms around Cal and kissed him. She didn’t care if Peanut was watching. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been on Main Street, in uniform, during a traffic stop. All her life she’d been looking for love and it had been there all along, across the field, waiting for her. “It is,” she whispered against his lips. “About damn time.”
JULIA KNEW SHE WAS HOLDING ALICE TOO TIGHTLY, BUT SHE COULDN’T seem to let go. Neither could she think of her as Brittany. For the last hour, no matter what she did—or appeared to be doing—Julia was also watching the clock, thinking Not yet. But time kept moving on, slipping past her. Every second that passed brought her closer to the time when George would drive up to the house and knock on the door and demand his daughter.
“Read Alice.” The child thumped her finger on the page. Somehow she knew exactly where they’d left off.
Julia knew she should close the book quietly, say that it was time to talk of other things, of families that had been split up and fathers who came back, but she couldn’t do it. Instead she let herself hold her little Alice and keep reading, as if this were any other rainy January day. “‘Weeks passed,’” she read, “‘and the little rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore except to the boy.’” Julia’s voice gave out on her. She sat there, staring at the words, watching them blur and dance on the page.
“Want Alice real.”
She touched Alice’s velvety cheek. Every time they read this story, Alice said the same thing. Somehow the poor little girl thought she wasn’t real. And now there was no time to prove otherwise to her. “You’re real, Alice. And so many people love you.”
“Love.” Alice whispered it softly, as she always did, with a kind of reverence.
Julia closed the book and set it aside, then pulled Alice onto her lap so they were looking at each other.
Alice immediately looped her arms around Julia’s neck and gave her a butterfly kiss. Then she giggled.
Be strong, Julia thought.
“You remember Mary and the secret garden and the man who loved her so much? The man who was her father? He’d been gone, remember?” Julia lost steam. She stared into Alice’s worried face and felt as if she’d fallen into the turquoise pools of her eyes. “There’s a man. George. He’s your father. He wants to love you.”