Coming Home (38 page)

“Yes. But probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

Leah turned her head slightly, looking up at him.

“I’m not afraid of being in prison,” he said. “I’m afraid about what will be happening out here while I’m gone.”

“What do you mean?”

Danny looked down, shaking his head. “For one, I don’t like that Gram will be alone. Jake’s going to make sure she’s taken care of financially, but—”

“I’ll take care of her.”

He smiled sadly, kissing her head. “You’ve been taking care of people your whole life, sweet girl. You don’t need someone else to look after.”

Leah sat up, turning toward him as she shook her head. “It’s not a burden, Danny,” she stated simply. “It’s a given. I love you, and you love her. So of course I’m going to make sure she’s okay.”

Danny stared at her for a moment, the adoration clear in his eyes before he closed them. He dropped his head back on the edge of the tub, exhaling before he said, “It’s not just Gram I worry about. I’m afraid of leaving you too.”

“Don’t be. You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

He opened his eyes. “I know you can. You’re one of the strongest people I know, and I really hate that life keeps making you have to prove it.”

Leah swallowed, dropping her eyes to the heap of frothy bubbles between them.

“You’ve been through enough, Leah. You shouldn’t have to suffer through anything else. And the idea that you’ll be suffering because of me…” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It makes me fucking sick to my stomach.”

“Danny,” she said softly, her eyes still downcast.

“And what if that asshole starts back up again?” he asked, his voice hardening slightly.

Leah shook her head before he was even done with his question. “No. That’s over. I’m not going to take the easy way out anymore. Honestly, after what happened at Paddy’s, I really don’t think he’ll be coming around again, but if he does, I’ll do whatever’s necessary. I’ll tell my brother. I’ll call the cops if I have to.”

Danny looked down with a nod, but she could see in his face that he wasn’t appeased. There was something he wasn’t saying.

“If you think I’m strong enough to handle this, then what are you afraid of?”

He wet his lips before he lifted his eyes to hers. “I’m afraid you’re gonna resent me.”

Leah’s back straightened. “Well, you have no reason to be afraid of that, because it won’t happen.”

“Leah,” he said gently, “there’s not a question in my mind that what we have is real. I don’t doubt it for a second. But your life is going to be put on hold. Years of your life, wasted. For me. Because of me. And I just…I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head. “Just know that I wouldn’t blame you if it became too much. If it became too long, and you needed to move on. I wouldn’t hate you if it happened. I’d rather you take care of your needs than resent me. You deserve to be happy, with or without me.”

He held her eyes for a few more seconds, making sure his words were received, and Leah shook her head slightly, looking down as she trailed her fingertips through the suds.

“When I was a junior in college, I was working on this project with a girl from one of my classes. I remember sitting in the library with her one day, and she was going on and on about how much she hated her father’s girlfriend, and it hit me all of a sudden that in all the years since my mother had been gone, my father hadn’t been out on a single date. Not one.”

Danny glanced up at her, his brow slightly furrowed as he tried to figure out the relevance of what she was saying.

“I couldn’t believe I’d never realized that before, but after that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. By that point it had been almost ten years, and I just kept thinking about how lonely he must have been. And then I started feeling really guilty, because the only reason I could come up with for why he wasn’t dating was because of us—because of me and Chris and Sarah. I figured he didn’t want to upset us, or to make us think he was trying to replace her. I mean, that had to be it, right? Because why else would somebody
choose
to be alone?”

Leah saw the sadness flicker behind Danny’s eyes as she said, “I really hated the thought that he was depriving himself of being happy because of us. And I wanted him to know that he deserved to have a life too. That if he moved on, it would be okay, and we would understand. I just wanted him to have a chance at being happy again.”

Leah scooped up a handful of bubbles and leaned forward, spreading them over the strong planes of Danny’s chest.

“So one day, I told him.” She smiled, shaking her head. “He listened to me go on and on, justifying actions he hadn’t even taken yet. And when I finally finished, he smiled at me and thanked me for my concern. And then he told me it wasn’t necessary. He said he hadn’t been on a date because there was no reason to go on one.”

Leah looked up at Danny. “He said that if he was lonely, it wasn’t because he needed to be with
someone
. It was because he needed to be with
her
. And if he couldn’t have that, he didn’t want anything else.”

Danny’s eyes softened as he looked at her, and she smiled.

“You know, I don’t think I ever fully understood what he meant until just now. It won’t be a man I’ll be needing when you’re gone. It won’t even be companionship. It will be
you
.”

The way Danny was looking at her caused a faint tingling over her skin, and she found his hand under the water, twining their fingers together.

“And I’m lucky, Danny. Really, I am. Because my dad…all he wants is her. And he’ll never have that. But you,” she said, placing her hand over his heart, “you’re coming back to me. I know it’s not forever. So I can wait.”

Danny’s eyes fell closed, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. When he opened them, he shook his head slightly.

“Do you have any idea how perfect you are?” he whispered.

Leah dropped her eyes. “I’m far from perfect.”

She felt his fingers under her chin, lifting her gaze back to his.

“You’re perfect for
me
,” he amended.

And when he leaned forward and brought his mouth to hers, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind it was true.

“Here, have a little more,” Gram said, leaning over to put another slab of corned beef on Danny’s plate, and he shook his head, using his hand to deflect it as he chewed.

“Nuh-uh,” he said around his mouthful of food. “I’m tapping out.”

“Oh, come on now,” she said, swatting his hand away before dropping the piece of meat on his plate. “I’ve seen you eat more than this.”

“Gram, I’m seriously gonna puke,” he said, sitting back and holding both hands over his stomach.

“It’s a holiday, Daniel. You’re supposed to stuff yourself with good food on a holiday.”

Danny laughed, tossing his napkin onto the table. “I’ve never met a Sicilian woman so enamored with Saint Patrick’s Day. Aren’t you supposed to be wandering around the house mumbling something about ‘those damn Irish’?”

“Oh hush,” she said, taking her seat on the other side of the table. “Besides, it’s a holiday that involves cooking large amounts of food. That’s good enough for me.”

“You know, you’re only supposed to cook large amounts of food when you have a large amount of people who are going to eat it.
This
,” he said, gesturing to the spread on the table, “was a bit of an overshoot for two people, don’t you think?”

Gram shrugged. “I don’t know how to cook for only two people.”

Danny burst out laughing as he stood, grabbing his plate and hers. “This is true. I should be morbidly obese by now.”

Gram chuckled as he rinsed off their plates before putting them in the dishwasher, and then he did the same with the pans on the stove before he grabbed a few plastic containers and brought them back to the table so Gram could start packing up the leftovers.

“Here,” he said, handing one to Gram before he started to fill the other. “Do you want to save the cabbage, or will that go bad?”

“Daniel, we need to talk about something.”

“About what?” he said, piling the slices of corned beef into the container.

Gram placed her empty tupperware on the table. “Can you sit down first?”

Danny froze with his hand on the platter before he lifted his eyes to hers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she stated simply.

He stood there for a few seconds, studying her expression, trying to assess her honesty.

She gestured to his chair. “Sit, please.”

Danny slid the fork back onto the platter before he walked back to his chair and sat down, shifting it so that he was facing her fully. He had only seen her look this way a handful of times, but they were all associated with bad memories.

It wasn’t anger or sadness that filled her eyes. Instead, it looked more like resignation. Or resolution.

Or both.

She smiled gently as she turned to face him.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and…it’s time,” she said.

“Time for what?”

Gram reached across the table and laid her open hand in front of Danny; instinctively, he brought his hand up from his lap and took it in his own.

She gave it a gentle squeeze before she said, “It’s time to let Bryan go.”

Her words had the effect of a battering ram to his stomach; first the stealing of his breath, followed by the immediate onset of panic, and then finally the staggering pain.

They were so unanticipated that Danny couldn’t even open his mouth to attempt a response. In some twisted way, there had always been comfort in the fact that Gram hadn’t given up. Danny knew Bryan wasn’t coming back, but the fact that she still believed…it made it seem like perhaps—in some far-off, remote world—there was the tiniest possibility it could happen.

He didn’t want her to give up. He needed her to believe, even when he couldn’t.

“It’s been long enough, Daniel. He’s tired. I know he’s so tired.”

Danny’s stomach was churning, and he swallowed repeatedly, trying to keep his dinner down.

No. Don’t give up on him
.

“There’s a thin line between being hopeful and being selfish, and I think I crossed it a long time ago. I just hope he’ll forgive me for making him stay so long.”

“Gram,” Danny choked out, but his voice sounded strange, like it was coming from some place far away and not his own mouth. “Doctors aren’t always right. Maybe—”

She shook her head. “I know my Bryan. He would have come back to us if he could have. He would have fought and fought and fought. But he’s tired, love. It’s time for him to rest.”

Danny removed his hand from hers and ran it up through his hair before shaking his head. “We don’t have to decide this now.”

“Yes, we do,” she said softly.

“
Why
?” Danny snapped, slamming his hand down on the table.

Gram didn’t even flinch. Instead, her shoulders softened as her eyes met his. “Because I want you to be able to say your good-byes…before you go.”

The chair screeched abruptly as he stood from the table and walked through the kitchen. With a quick jerk of his arm, he swiped his keys off the half wall and strode out the front door, slamming it closed behind him.

Danny sat in the back seat of Leah’s car, staring at the buildings as they blurred past the window. Every so often he’d glance at the rearview mirror, watching the reflection of her eyes until they flicked up and found his. Whenever it happened, he’d feel his pulse slow in his veins, the nauseous swell in his stomach temporarily subside. Every time. As if she were somehow siphoning all of his anxiety, all of his suffering, with merely a look.

He looked over to where Gram sat in the passenger seat, her eyes trained on her purse, which sat primly in her lap. She’d been quiet all morning, lost in some faraway place, so that Danny found himself having to say something two or three times before she heard him.

After Danny had stormed out on her that night, he drove around aimlessly for two hours before he eventually ended up at Leah’s apartment. Gram had said she was doing it because she wanted Danny to have a chance to say good-bye.