Authors: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Either
she’d owned nothing she wanted to hang on to or Cecily made a clean break.
Daniel wondered which as he settled down,
sleepy and relaxed.
Damn, he couldn’t
recall napping since he became an adult, ever, although he knew plenty of guys
who treasured their weekend afternoon dozes.
And the last time a woman cooked for him, it’d been either his mama or a
co-worker’s wife. It sure as hell wasn’t Lisa.
He thrust any thought of Lisa away before he could summon Mollie. He
didn’t want to think about Mollie because it still hurt too much and summoned
nothing but bad memories and negative vibes.
Instead, Daniel focused on Cecily, her pretty face, the way she acted
familiar with him, and how she’d made love with him with a beautiful intensity.
Sleep
crept over him, delicious and seductive, and he drifted.
The pleasant sounds from the kitchen faded
away and deep in dream country Daniel traveled into the past.
He drove up in front of the
ramshackle house on Euclid Avenue, maybe a nice neighborhood a half century
earlier, not so nice now.
Although he
couldn’t see it, he heard the rusty chains of the beat-up old swing set in the
backyard swing in the wind.
On the front
porch, his daughter Mollie rocked a baby doll in her arms, singing ‘Jesus Loves
Me’.
When she heard his car down slam,
she glanced up and squealed.
She ran to
meet him in her almost ankle length dress, long hair flowing down her
back.
Two months ago, he celebrated her
fourth birthday by taking her to Chuck E. Cheese’s, but Lisa didn’t like
it.
She’d said it introduced Mollie to a
sinful world and until today, Lisa hadn’t let him come over despite the court
ordered visitation.
“Hello, Daddy,” Mollie said as he
picked her up.
She weighed very little
and he could feel her thin body through the homemade dress, plain and
unadorned.
“Can we go eat pizza?”
“Not today,
Niña,”
he said. “We’re going to see the animals at the zoo.”
“Mama says we can’t go,” Mollie said,
her green eyes serious in her pale face. “She says you won’t come over any
more.”
“I’ll always come to see you,” he
told his little girl. “We’ll go to the zoo,
then
get a
hamburger or some chicken nuggets.”
“How ‘bout ice cream?”
Daniel hugged her close. “Sure,
ice cream, too.”
“She’s not going anywhere with
you.” The sharp voice cut into their conversation.
He glanced up to see Lisa, hair pulled
straight back and skewered on top of her head.
She wore a shapeless dress too with a hem just above her ankles.
The woman he’d known so briefly had spark and
she’d known how to laugh.
Back then, her
hair fell free in masses of blonde curls and she chattered with happiness.
She’d been pretty, then, in an old-fashioned, different way. When he met her,
she’d been bucking her family’s Pentecostal traditions by going out into the
real world. Although she refused to see a movie or go out for a beer, Lisa made
love with him one night.
She let passion
override her religious objections and Mollie happened.
Daniel didn’t marry her, but he acknowledged
his child. When he moved to Kansas City as an FBI agent, he talked Lisa into
relocating.
He paid child support and
saw his daughter as often as he could, but Lisa retreated into the strict faith
of her childhood.
Their worlds clashed
more often these days and Daniel did the best he could. Sometimes he dreamed of
taking Mollie away so she could grow up normal, healthy, and happy.
“Why
not?” he asked.
“You do the devil’s work and I
don’t want her around you anymore.”
Mollie clung tighter to his neck
and buried her face against his shoulder. He could feel her quiver. “Lisa, I
don’t and you know it,” he said and then stopped.
He couldn’t convince a mad woman of the
realities. “Listen, she’s my daughter and I love her.
I have the right to see her.”
“I want you to go away,” Lisa
said. “You reek of sin and the world. I smell it on you. Put her down and
leave.”
He resisted but after a few
moments, Lisa began to pray aloud, screaming and crying to her god for
help.
Then she babbled in tongues,
supposed to be a gift of the Holy Spirit but it sounded like hogwash to
Daniel.
Mollie began to cry and then
asked him to put her down. “It’ll make Mama stop,” she whispered. “I’ll see you
another time, Daddy.”
After he released his daughter,
she ran to her mother who scooped her up and still praying, went inside and
slammed the door shut.
Daniel waited for
a moment or two then shrugged his shoulders and left.
He bought some booze, went home, and drank.
In his apartment he always kept a
scanner running so if something happened
,
he’d have a
heads up. He heard the fire call go out.
He recognized the address and he drove back to Euclid Avenue, mumbling
the prayers of his Catholic upbringing all the way.
Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles
blocked the street so he parked a block away and ran, his feet hitting the
concrete sidewalks with force.
By the time he fetched up in
front of the house, there wasn’t one, just a blackened, smoldering ruin.
The flames had been dowsed, but the smell of
burning hung over the yard with thick intensity.
Daniel stood there when they brought out the
bodies, Lisa’s and then the small, blackened figure of his daughter.
Crazy with grief, eaten alive with guilt,
he’d pushed his way forward and pulled away the sheet to see her.
What he saw burned into his memory and
imprinted there, unspeakable and horrific beyond words.
And in the dream as he had in
real life, he screamed.
Still
hollering, Daniel woke with a jerk.
He
struggled to breathe and the nightmare clung to his consciousness until he
thought he could smell the rank smoke and other odors.
His throat hurt from the force of his outcry
and in the first few moments, he had no idea where he was or why.
Someone spoke, though, in a hushed voice
brimming over with concern and said his name.
Daniel
looked up into Cecily’s face as she knelt beside the couch, her eyes wide with
anxiety.
He sat up and rubbed his face, hands
trembling.
“Sugar,
what’s wrong?” she asked and he thought she must’ve asked the same question
several times.
“Bad
dream,” he said. “It’s an old nightmare.”
“Well,
you scared the crap out of me,” Cecily said. “Are you okay? You look like death
warmed over.”
Before
he had time to form an answer, she opened her arms and embraced him.
She held him close and it wasn’t sexy but far
more intimate.
Daniel doubted he’d felt
such a sense of comfort, of almost coming home since he’d been young enough to
curl up on his mama’s lap.
Cecily’s
touch banished the terror and tempered the grief down to a bearable level.
With
shock, he realized he could love this woman—if he didn’t now.
Chapter Seven
Feeling
like the ultimate domestic goddess, Cecily turned a few Yukon gold potatoes, an
onion, and some salmon fillets into a five star meal.
With a little olive oil, some lemon and lemon
pepper, a dash of salt, and some real butter, she took ordinary ingredients and
made them something special.
She
couldn’t take credit for the salad because all she did was take it out of the
bag and toss it a little or the bottled dressing, but she took pride in
everything else.
She hummed and
occasionally broke into snatches of song as she worked.
Midway through, she’d peeked in the living
room and found Daniel asleep.
She
couldn’t resist tip-toeing over to plant a kiss on his mouth before she
retreated back into the kitchen.
She’d
just put the potatoes and salmon into the oven when her cell phone rang.
Cecily picked it up so it wouldn’t wake
Daniel.
“Hey, Nia,” she said.
“Hey,
yourself,” her cousin said. “Where in the hell have you been, bitch? I thought
you’d call me last night after you closed up the store to let me know how
opening day went down.”
Shit. I meant to call her and
would’ve, but Daniel distracted me.
“I got kind of tied up,” she said with a
little giggle.
Nia, lifelong confidant,
guessed the truth. “You hooked up with some dude.” She squealed.
“Oh,
yeah, I did,” Cecily said.
“He’s pretty
freaking awesome, too.”
“Tell
me!”
“Can’t,”
she said. “He’s here and I’m making dinner.
I’ll call you first chance and we’ll catch up, cross my heart, but I
gotta go for now.”
“You
sound happy.”
“I
am.”
“’Bout damn time!
You deserve it.”
“Thanks.
TTL.”
Chin
resting on the steeple of her folded hands, Cecily reflected on Daniel.
In the short time since she met him, a chance
customer at her shop, desire flared between them with the heat of a struck
match. But it wasn’t just physical attraction.
He touched some deep chord within, and she thought she managed to evoke
something similar in him.
She’d never
opened up to anyone with such speed or experienced such a sense of closeness or
connection.
If anyone tried to tell her
she’d hook up with a guy, sleep with him, go out for a day of fun, and bring
him back home for dinner, Cecily would’ve have suggested insanity.
A
hoarse cry sliced into her reverie and put her on high alert.
Shit,
that’s Daniel.
Cecily jumped out of the chair with such haste it toppled to
the tile floor, but she didn’t stop to pick it up.
Anything awful enough to evoke such a
reaction from a tough guy had to be rock bottom bad.
He lay on his back on the couch, eyes closed,
but he writhed and wiggled.
At first she
thought he must be suffering intense physical pain and her mind raced through
some possibilities — appendicitis, gall bladder, heart attack, migraine — but
when Daniel woke, his eyes met hers.
Naked pain, darker than the worst midnight, deeper than the lowest pit
of hell, radiated from his gaze.
“Sugar,
what’s wrong?” she asked, one hand stroking his short-cropped hair.
He didn’t appear to hear her voice and she
repeated the question, twice, before he responded.
“Bad
dream,” he croaked. “It’s an old nightmare.”
“Well,
you scared the crap out of me,” Cecily said. “Are you okay? You look like death
warmed over.”
His
anguished expression ripped her heart and she hurt for him.
Without thinking, just reacting, she rose up
as high on her knees as possible and wrapped her arms around him.
Cecily held him, the gesture meant to soothe
him and to make him aware someone cared.
Whatever old demons haunted him, she wanted to chase them far away.
A wave of protective affection washed over
her, so strong it almost drowned her ability to think.
Although she couldn’t begin to fathom why she
felt this way, she did.
As
she embraced Daniel, his body began to relax.
His rapid, erratic heartbeat slowed to a normal pace and his breathing
returned to average.
His stiff arms
uncoiled to wrap around her and they clung together for a few minutes.
He broke away first but he said, “Thanks,
querida
.”
“No
problem.
Are you okay now?”
He
made a face and nodded. “Yeah, I’m great.
Not really but I’ll do.”
Cecily
rose from the floor to sit beside him on the couch.
She rested one hand on his right knee. “Want
to talk about it? Sometimes it helps.”
Daniel
jerked. “No,” he said. Then he sighed. “But, yeah, I do, I think.
I should and maybe I will but later.
Maybe I’ll talk about it after we eat if
you’ve got any booze in the house.”
“I
might be able to find some,” she said with a smile she didn’t feel. “Supper’s
about ready, though, if you’re hungry.”