Selena didn't move at first.
Her hands remained on the door, and her face had gone still in a way that made her look suddenly younger.
I stood on the porch, afraid that if I spoke, the moment would disappear.
Then the door opened farther.
I could see a narrow hallway, a coat hanging from a hook, and a walking stick resting against the wall.
Beyond that, someone sat in a chair.
I couldn't see his whole face yet.
I could see one hand resting on the armrest.
The fingers were thin.
The skin was marked with age.
That hand had once held mine beside the river in Reno.
I took one step inside.
Selena looked at me, then toward the chair.
She seemed to be waiting for him to change his mind.
He didn't.
"Come in, Dandylion."
My knees felt weak again.
Nobody had called me that in fifty-eight years.
I had heard my children say Susan.
I had heard my grandchildren call me Grandma.
Ted had used my name in the easy, familiar way a husband does after decades together.
But nobody had said that particular name with that particular mistake.
I crossed the threshold.
Danny sat near a window, where the afternoon light fell across his shoulders.
His hair had turned almost entirely white.
His face was thinner than I remembered, and there were deep lines around his mouth.
He wore a plain shirt with the sleeves buttoned at his wrists.
A blanket lay over his legs.
For several seconds, I couldn't make the man in the chair match the boy from the dance.
Then he looked straight at me.
And there he was.
Not the same, of course.
No one could remain the same for fifty-eight years.
But his eyes had the same way of holding a person's attention, as though he was listening to something they hadn't yet said.
I gripped the back of a chair.
Danny tried to rise.
He managed to lift himself a little before pain or weakness stopped him.
Selena moved toward him immediately.
"Don't."
"I'm all right."
"You know you're not."
He gave her a tired look.
"I said I'm all right."
It was such an ordinary exchange that I almost laughed.
A daughter fussing over her father.
A stubborn old man pretending he needed less help than he did.
I had imagined a hundred possible reunions during the drive north.
None of them had included that small argument.
It made the whole thing feel real.
Danny settled back into his chair.
He looked at me again.
"You came."
I couldn't decide whether he sounded surprised or disappointed.
"You sent me flowers."
He lowered his eyes.
"I did."
"You signed the card."
"Yes."
"Then why didn't you want me to come?"
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the armrest.
For a moment, I saw the young man who had once struggled to say what he meant.
Then he looked up.
"I didn't know if I could face you."
I had spent two hours driving to his house.
I had spent fifty-eight years believing he was dead.
And now that I was finally standing in the same room with him, I found myself unable to ask the question that mattered most.
Instead, I asked something smaller.
"How long have you been here?"
He seemed confused.
"Here?"
"In Susanville."
He glanced toward Selena.
She answered for him.
"He's been here a long time."
Her voice was guarded.
I could tell she wanted the conversation to stop before it went anywhere she wasn't prepared to follow.
Danny shook his head slightly.
"Let me talk to her."
Selena pressed her lips together.
She looked exhausted.
There were shadows beneath her eyes, and I remembered that she had been wearing scrubs when she answered the door.
Whatever had happened in that house before I arrived, it hadn't been easy for her.
Still, she stepped away.
"I'll put the kettle on."
She walked toward the kitchen.
I remained beside the chair.
Danny looked at me as though he had expected me to say something different.
I had no idea what he expected.
I was trying to understand why I was looking at a man who had supposedly died in Texas in 1969.
His mother had written to me.
She had told me about the burns.
She had told me about the hospital.
She had told me he hadn't survived.
I had believed every word.
"Your mother told me you died."
Danny closed his eyes.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he nodded.
"I know."
The answer was so quiet that I almost missed it.
"You know?"
"Yes."
I waited for him to explain.
He didn't.
I looked toward the kitchen, where I could hear a cupboard opening.
Then I turned back to him.
"I thought you were buried in Ohio."
His fingers tightened around the armrest.
"She told you that?"
"She said you were in her family's cemetery."
He stared at the floor.
I could see him breathing slowly, as though even this much conversation required effort.
I wanted to reach for him.
I wanted to shake him.
I wanted to ask how he could have allowed me to live with that belief for so long.
Instead, I stood still.
I had loved this man once.
That love hadn't vanished simply because another life had followed it.
But love did not mean I owed him an easy reunion.
I was seventy-seven years old.
I had come a long way to see him.
I deserved answers.
"Why did she tell me you were dead?"
Danny lifted his head.
"I can't explain all of it yet."
I felt something harden inside me.
"Yet?"
He swallowed.
"I know how it sounds."
"No, Danny. You don't."
My voice surprised me.
It was steadier than I felt.
"You don't know what it was like to get that letter when I was nineteen."
His eyes filled.
I kept going.
"I had no money to go to Ohio. I didn't even know which town you were supposed to be buried in. Your mother told me not to come, and I believed her."
He didn't interrupt.
"I spent a week in my room."
My throat tightened.
"I thought the man I was going to marry was gone."
Danny bowed his head.
"I'm sorry, Sukey."
That name nearly undid me.
I sat down because I no longer trusted my legs.
For a little while, we said nothing.
The room had a clock ticking somewhere near the kitchen.
A car passed outside.
Danny's hand rested on the blanket, and I noticed how carefully he kept it still.
I wondered whether he was afraid I would touch him.
I wondered whether I was afraid to.
Selena returned with two cups of tea.
She set one beside me and the other near her father.
Neither of us had asked for tea.
It was simply what she knew to do when people were sitting in a room with too much to say.
She remained standing.
I looked at her.
"I don't want to cause trouble in your home."
Her expression softened for the first time.
"I know."
"But I need to understand."
She glanced at Danny.
He nodded.
Selena pulled another chair closer to the window and sat down.
For the first time since I arrived, it seemed possible that nobody was going to send me away.
Danny looked at the three of us.
Then he said, "I should have written to you."
It wasn't the explanation I had come for.
But it was the first thing he had said that didn't try to hide from what had happened.
I wrapped both hands around my cup.
The tea was too hot to drink.
I waited.
Because after fifty-eight years, I was finally in the same room with Danny Wirth.
And I wasn't leaving until I understood what had happened to the boy who promised to marry me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: Selena Watched Her Father Struggle for Words, While I Tried to Understand How a Dead Man Had Grown Old Without Me
I Kept Thirty-One Letters From the Boy I Thought I Had Lost, Even After I Built a Whole Life With Another Man
Part 5 of 12
