I looked at the clock on Danny’s wall.
It was a cheap wooden clock with a little brass pendulum. The hands showed ten past three, though I had the feeling the clock was running slow.
I had driven two hours to get there.
I had spent fifty-eight years believing a man I loved was dead.
Now I was sitting across from him, trying to decide which question deserved to come first.
Danny rested both hands on the blanket over his knees.
His fingers were thin, and the skin across his knuckles looked almost transparent. I remembered those hands holding mine beside the river, his thumb rubbing the back of my fingers while he talked about the future.
I looked away before the memory could turn into something I couldn't bear.
“Did you ever try to find me?”
Danny didn't answer right away.
Selena stood near the kitchen doorway, holding a glass of water. She had the same careful expression she'd worn when she'd first opened the front door.
“Yes,” he finally said.
I waited.
“Not soon enough. Not the way I should have.”
“That isn't quite an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It isn't.”
He glanced at his daughter, then back at me.
“I asked my mother about you after I came home. She said you'd moved on. She said you'd written to tell her you didn't want to hear from me again.”
I felt my fingers tighten around the arms of the chair.
“I never wrote to your mother.”
“I know that now.”
“When did you learn that?”
He rubbed one thumb over the other.
“Years later. She was sick. We were arguing about something else, and she said she'd done what she thought was best.”
“What did that mean?”
Danny closed his eyes for a moment.
“She told me she'd written to you. She admitted she'd said I was dead.”
The room seemed to grow quieter.
Even the clock's ticking became hard to hear.
“She told me you were buried in Ohio,” I said.
His face changed.
“She told you that?”
“She said you had died after being burned overseas. She said you were buried in her family's cemetery plot. She told me not to come.”
Danny stared at the floor.
“I wasn't buried in Ohio.”
“I know that now.”
“I never even went to Ohio.”
I swallowed.
“Then where were you?”
“San Antonio. That's where they sent me after I was hurt.”
He shifted in his chair, and the blanket slipped down his shin. Selena stepped forward to fix it, but he raised a hand to stop her.
“I can do it,” he told her.
She hesitated, then let him pull the blanket back into place.
I noticed the effort it took.
For a moment, I saw the man who had left Reno with a small diamond ring's price still fresh in his pocket and a promise on his lips. Then I saw the old man sitting before me, struggling with a blanket.
“What happened after the hospital?” I asked.
“I stayed in Texas for a while. Then I came home to California.”
“Why California?”
“My mother had moved here by then. She said I needed family nearby.”
He gave a small, bitter laugh.
“Funny thing about family. Sometimes they're the ones who make the biggest mess, and then they tell you they're the only ones who can help clean it up.”
I didn't laugh.
“Did you believe her when she said I had moved on?”
“I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Because the other possibility was that you were waiting for me. That you thought I was dead, or that I'd abandoned you. I couldn't stand the thought of either one.”
“But you let yourself believe I'd rejected you.”
“Yes.”
“And that was easier?”
“No,” he said. “It was just something I could live with.”
I looked toward the window.
Outside, a small patch of grass lay between the house and the fence. A plastic watering can sat on its side beside a flowerpot with nothing growing in it.
I thought of the lemon tree in my yard, the one that had never given me a single lemon.
Some things stayed in place for years without giving you what you had hoped for.
“Did you ever get married?” I asked.
Danny nodded.
“Once. It was a long time ago.”
I had not expected the answer to hurt, but it did.
I reminded myself that I had married Ted. I had built a life with him. I had loved him, and I still loved the memories that belonged to us.
Danny had been a young man when he left me. He had lived an entire lifetime after that.
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Marianne.”
“Did you love her?”
He took a long breath.
“Yes. In the way I knew how to love someone then.”
I appreciated that he didn't pretend otherwise.
“What happened?”
“We were married eleven years. We had Selena. Then Marianne got sick.”
Selena lowered her eyes.
“She died when I was little,” she said. “I don't remember much of her.”
Danny reached for his water, but his hand shook enough that Selena took the glass and held it while he drank.
I watched them.
There was tenderness between them, but there was also a kind of practiced caution. Selena seemed to know which movements tired him and which questions made him retreat into himself.
“How old were you when she died?” I asked her.
“Eight.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She set the glass down.
“Dad never talked much about his life before California. I knew he'd been engaged once, but I didn't know your name until I found the letters.”
I turned toward Danny.
“You kept my letters?”
He shook his head.
“No. I kept what I had written. I don't have yours.”
I remembered how often I'd written to him in those first months. I remembered the blue envelopes and the stamps I'd bought one at a time because money was tight.
Then I remembered the last letter I'd sent.
It had never been answered.
“I thought you had stopped writing because you didn't want me anymore,” I said.
“I know.”
“And I thought you were dead.”
“I know.”
He didn't defend himself.
That made the room feel heavier, not lighter.
“I can't give you those years back,” he said.
“No.”
“I can't ask you to forgive me just because I'm old now.”
“No,” I said again.
He nodded, as though he had expected nothing else.
For a while, we sat without speaking.
Then I asked him the question that had been waiting beneath all the others.
“Why now, Danny?”
He looked at me.
“The flowers?”
“The flowers. The card. The phone number. All of it.”
He drew a breath and let it out slowly.
“Because I started thinking about the things I'd leave behind.”
I looked at the little clock again.
“I'm not dying today,” he said. “At least, nobody's told me I am. But I'm old, Sukey. I don't get to pretend I have endless time anymore.”
He reached toward the small table beside him.
A photograph sat there in a silver frame. I could see the shape of a young woman in a light dress, though I couldn't make out her face from where I sat.
“I found the old address in a box,” he continued. “Your name was on an envelope. It took me a while to work out whether the address was still useful.”
“Fifty-eight years is a long time for an address to last.”
“I know. I asked around. I found out you were still in the area.”
“Who told you?”
“Someone who knew your family. I didn't ask too many questions. I was afraid that if I learned too much, I'd lose my nerve.”
He looked embarrassed.
“So you sent flowers instead.”
“I thought I could manage that much.”
“Black-eyed Susans,” I said. “And blue flowers. And one dandelion.”
His mouth lifted at one corner.
“I told the florist what I wanted.”
“Did you choose the jar?”
“Yes.”
I pictured him sitting at a table, explaining to a stranger why one weed belonged among the flowers.
“Why write the name that way?”
He looked at me as though I had asked why the sky was blue.
“Because that's how I've always written it.”
For the first time since I'd entered the house, I almost smiled.
“You never did learn.”
“No,” he said. “I suppose I didn't.”
Then his expression softened.
“But you never corrected me.”
I looked down at my hands.
“No. I didn't.”
The clock continued to tick.
I had come to find the truth, and the truth was not a single thing I could pick up and carry home.
It was a long chain of choices, some made by Danny, some made by his mother, and some made by me because I had been nineteen and had believed the only story anyone had given me.
I had no idea yet what I would do with it.
But I knew I had to hear the rest.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: I Told Him About the Man Who Had Loved Me for Thirty Years
I Kept Thirty-One Letters From the Boy I Thought I Had Lost, Even After I Built a Whole Life With Another Man
Part 9 of 12
