I spent four months with Daniel. Four amazing, incredible months.
It was August now, twelve weeks since we’d had our talk. The tourists were back, and I’d watched them breathe life into Daniel’s town.
The ice-cream and fudge shops were open, the pizza place and Mexican restaurant were back and had an hour wait every night, and the RV park was packed. The Grant House was booked seven days a week, and I helped Daniel with it while I was there. He usually wouldn’t let me get up to put the coffee on. He wanted me to sleep. But I spent the rest of the day doing what he did. Making beds, checking in guests, helping prepare breakfast.
I hated to admit it, but now that I helped Daniel, I understood what Neil had meant about me not knowing how to run a house. It was a lot. Repairs, maintenance, landscaping, cleaning. Even if these things were being delegated, they were a ton of work.
I’d been so shielded and privileged growing up. We’d had a property manager who dealt with it all, and then Neil had done it when we moved in together. Even in my ER, my nurses did all the dirty work for me. But I was learning. And it was changing how I saw the world around me and how I wanted to be seen.
I didn’t like that others had to take care of me. I wanted to know how to take care of myself. I wanted to pull my weight and learn to be self-reliant so that when I did depend on someone, it was by choice and not necessity. And it was Daniel who was teaching me how.
Daniel empowered me instead of stripping me. Lifted me up instead of keeping me low.
Daniel gave me everything he knew. He kept nothing for himself, the way Neil always did. Daniel gave his knowledge freely and happily, even though it lessened any advantage he might have had over me—and in doing it he weakened the last bit of hold Neil had, even if all Daniel did was show me I was capable of anything I needed to do.
It was Tuesday, and I was at home. I usually worked days, but I’d covered a shift for Bri last night and I didn’t get in until midnight. I didn’t want to get to Wakan at two a.m. so I decided to sleep here and drive over in the morning.
I loved being at Grant House.
It was warm and lived in. It felt almost alive somehow. Every single thing in those walls had a story. It was color and depth and crackling fireplaces and quiet nooks. A creaking step that felt like a gentle sigh under my feet. Ancient ferns and hand-wrought crown molding, the hundreds of delicate stained-glass butterflies on the window on the landing, black-and- white pictures of strangers that felt familiar now.
My blood pressure was lower in Wakan. It was like a finger pressed to my lips with a long shhhhhhh. And Daniel was a gentle hammock, rocking. Everything about them was centering and calm.
And I’d fallen in love with them both. I wish I’d never met him.
Letting Daniel go was going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I felt like I was swimming out to sea with him, getting farther and farther from shore, and I’d saved no energy for the swim back.
I’d made an Olympic sport out of avoiding Neil. It was almost possible to pretend he didn’t live in my house. The only reminder I got was my dad
occasionally showing up unannounced—not to see me, of course. To have drinks with my ex. To golf with my ex. To go on boat cruises with my ex. I was invited—as long as I was okay hanging out with Neil.
I wasn’t.
I made excuses and Neil didn’t push it, so my dad didn’t care that I didn’t go. Other than that, Dad had been quite pleasant the last few months. With me vying for chief and him thinking Neil and I were in counseling, I was his little princess again. Mom looked like a thousand-pound weight had been lifted off her chest, probably because Dad was back to being the better version of himself.
It was amazing how lovable and agreeable he could be when you were doing what he wanted.
What I wanted was to be in Wakan.
The only time I’d spent in Minneapolis these last few months outside of work was the once-a-week coaching session I had with Mom to practice my speech for the quasquicentennial. She’d written it. Not a word of it was mine—which was fine, since I had no idea what I’d even say if it was.
I’d completely stopped going to therapy, just to give the hour to Daniel instead. I didn’t have enough of them to spare. I used up most of my vacation time to give me extra days with him. I even stayed for a ten-day stretch back in July. Didn’t go home once. Told my parents I was on a yoga retreat.
If Wakan had been closer, I’d have gone there just to spend the night. I’d have gone there on my lunch break. But one thing I’d discovered over the last few months was that the second the tourists came back, the traffic started. Road work, a fender bender—any little thing backed up the roads. One day it had taken me four hours to get to Daniel’s.
It was like the universe just wanted to reiterate how unsustainable all of this was.
But still, I made the trip as often as I could. And the town didn’t seem to mind, because Daniel’s garage had turned into a minute clinic over the last twelve weeks.
Ear infections, bladder infections, poison ivy, sprained ankles, burns. If I had what I needed to treat them, I did. So far, I’d only had to send one person to Rochester. And I’d been showing Doug how to do things. He was going to treat them anyway. At least if I gave him some instruction, the outcome would be better. He was a very good student. And counterintuitive to the rest of what I knew about Doug, his bedside manner was remarkably good. I’d actually suggested he go into nursing last week.
Anyway, it was good someone would be there to pick up the torch once I was gone. Because in a few days, I would be gone. The board was voting on the chief position tomorrow, and after that, my training would begin. Then a few weeks after that, I had the court date for the final determination on who got the house.
And I’d have to break up with Daniel.
I was doing my best not to think about it and failing miserably. The vote would be the beginning of the end. The first domino to fall.
Everything was about to change.
It was eight a.m. I was under the sink, fixing the garbage disposal, when Neil came in.
“Oh. You’re here,” he said, sounding surprised.
He should be surprised. It had been weeks since I’d run into him at home.
I didn’t answer.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I adjusted my headlamp. “Sticking a hex-head Allen wrench in the breaker socket at the bottom of the garbage disposal. I need to get the flywheel to turn to free the jammed impeller blades.” I gave it a crank. “Annnnd done.”
I scooted out from under the sink and stood, flicking on the disposal. It ran. I cocked my head at him.
Neil blinked at me. “How do you know how to do that?”
The question made me think of all the times I’d asked him the same thing, and he’d given me some snide comment about not having the time or the crayons to explain it to me.
I took off my headlamp. “The things I’m capable of would shock you, Neil.”
The buzzer went off on the oven, and I put on mitts and pulled out what I was baking. A surprise for Daniel. I set the quiche on the stovetop to cool. “Spinach and broccoli. My favorite.”
His jaw dropped.
Daniel had shown me how to fix the garbage disposal last month. He’d also shown me how to change a tire and put in a car battery and putty a wall. He taught me how to use an iron to get the cloudy white spots off a wood table and how to lift wax out of a carpet. I knew how to roast a chicken and make strawberry jam and compost for the garden. I knew white vinegar got smells out of clothes and how to make a campfire and what poison ivy plants looked like. I could replace a doorknob and install a bolt lock—and I did this on my own bedroom to keep Neil from poking around in there when I wasn’t home.
Neil was watching his power over me dissipate like steam from a shower. I hoped it made his brain explode.
Neil cleared his throat. “I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Nope. I’ll talk to you when we start our therapy sessions. That’s more than enough.” I started to walk out of the kitchen.
He spoke to my back. “Did you rehire Maria?”
I stopped in the doorway and groaned internally. He’d fired our housekeeper last week. “Yes,” I said, turning to him with my arms crossed.
“Why? She broke half the coffee mugs.”
“She tripped carrying a tray of them up from your room. It was an accident, and she hurt herself. She has a contusion on her shin the size of a lemon. You added insult to injury by firing her.”
“That was my favorite mug in there,” he said, looking wounded.
I squeezed my eyes shut and rallied my patience before opening them again. “Neil, grace costs you nothing—and God knows I’ve given you enough of it over the years.”
I turned for my room. “If you don’t want her, get a different person for your floor of the house. I’m keeping her.”
“Ali—”
“What?!”
“I’ve been going to therapy like you asked.” His voice was hopeful.
I knew he’d been going. He’d been emailing me the weekly invoices. He was on week twelve of the sixteen-week ultimatum I’d given him. And he’d gone to some intensive four-day weekend therapy retreat thing last month too, which was weird. He missed Philip’s birthday because of it. He also hadn’t told my parents I wasn’t going with him. He was keeping all his promises, which was not only surprising but also annoying, because it meant I would have to keep mine.
“I only have four more sessions,” he said. “Then we can go together.”
“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.” I went up the stairs to my room and locked the door.
I’d made a deal with the devil, and it was almost time to pay. It was almost time to pay for all of it.
By next month I’d probably be chief of emergency medicine. I’d either be the sole owner of this house or I’d be moving out, Daniel and I would be over, and Neil and I would be in couple’s counseling. The only good part of any of this was that I might get the house. But besides that, I had more to dread than to look forward to.
I took a shower, grabbed my quiche, and headed to Wakan. I got there just in time to help Daniel with chores.
Check-out of the Grant House was eleven a.m. If we cleaned the rooms fast enough, we got done by noon. The new guests didn’t arrive until three o’clock, so we got three whole hours to go do stuff. We’d go to lunch or take a bike ride or walk around. We went to the antique store and browsed, one of our favorite things. Sometimes we’d just curl up together on the four-season porch and read.
Today we were floating down the river on tubes with Doug, Brian, and Liz.
We packed a cooler with drinks, put on a tiny Bluetooth radio, tied our tubes together, and went drifting.
Brian, Liz, and Doug had broken off and were behind us, upriver a few yards. Daniel and I were alone, holding hands.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I said, tipping my head back to look at the branches arching over the river.
“You should see it in the autumn. All the beauty falling down around you.”
“I’ve never done anything like this,” I said quietly. “It’s so relaxing.”
“Never been to a drive-in, never floated down a river,” he said, smiling. “What kind of stuff did you do as a kid?”
I shrugged. “We summered in New England usually.” He laughed. “Why does this not surprise me?”
I smiled. “Hey, don’t make fun of me.” “Did you have a governess?”
I flicked water on him. “It was an au pair, actually, and it sounds fancier than it is.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hey, I don’t hold your childhood against you,” I teased.
“Maybe you should try it. You like holding things against me.”
He leaned over, slipped fingers into the back of my hair and kissed me, and the whole world disappeared around us. It was always like this, the complete and total submersion into Daniel. It got me every time.
Doug made a sharp whistling noise from behind us. “Hey! Keep it clean!”
We laughed and sat back into our tubes.
I looked at Daniel. He was so handsome. He had on dark blue swim trunks and sunglasses, his tattooed forearms popping against the black tube. His body was defined and toned, his hair wet and slicked back.
He got hit on a lot. A lot.
I saw girls look at him all the time. Even when he was checking in guests, he’d get smiles that I knew were more than just smiles.
I wondered how fast he’d move on once I was gone. A few weeks? A month?
It was like he was reading my mind.
“So the hospital vote is tomorrow, right?” he asked. I nodded. “Yeah. At six.”
“And then what happens?”
I raised my foot out of the water and let droplets drip into the river off my toes. “And then if I get it, I’ll start my new job a few days after that.”
He went quiet for a moment. “You said eighty hours a week, right?” “Maybe more.”
Even with his sunglasses on, I could still see the light fading from his eyes. Or maybe it was the light fading from mine.
We were nearing the end.
There were two ways we could do it. Break things off cleanly and just stop talking—or let it die a slow and painful death.
We’d put it on life support, try to keep things going, and it would delay the inevitable. His texts would go unanswered because I’d be too busy to reply. I’d make plans to go see him once or twice a month and then end up canceling when I got called in. We’d try to talk, but I’d be too tired. I’d get invited to holidays and celebrations with parents who wouldn’t have him, so he couldn’t come.
Then maybe he’d meet another woman. And he’d tell me this. And then
it would be over.
Eventually everything good we had would be strained and faded. And I would have wasted yet more of his time. So I was planning on a quick, clean break. After all, those were the ones that healed fastest, right?
I gazed out over the river. Dragonflies darted around. I could smell freshly cut grass and some kind of flower. Cicadas were buzzing. The leaves on the maples were dark green, and the days were long and warm and bright. I wondered what this place looked like in the fall and winter.
I wondered what Daniel looked like in those seasons too. But I wouldn’t be here to find out.
I’d been listening to Lola’s eleventh and last album on repeat, the one she made before she got sober and started producing. She must have been going through something similar when she wrote it because it was all about lost love. Songs about being torn apart and heartbroken. She had a bonus track at the end. A cover of “Love Song” by The Cure. This crooning, sad, slow rendition that made my heart feel like it was crying.
You could feel Lola through her music, like her emotions streamed out of her voice. She was so raw and vulnerable, and I knew, even without meeting her, how remarkable she was. I knew why Derek fell in love with her.
“Why didn’t you ever marry him?” Daniel asked out of nowhere, breaking into my thoughts.
“Huh?” I looked over at him. He was peering at me from his tube. “Your ex. The surgeon.”
I blew a long breath. “Well, at first he didn’t want to get married. He’d been married once before, and he didn’t want to do it again. Then he did start talking about it, and I didn’t want to marry him.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “The relationship wasn’t good at that point. I think he just wanted to marry me to keep me. He could tell I was unhappy.”
I hadn’t told Daniel much about Neil. He didn’t even know Neil was living in my basement. There was no point in getting into it. This relationship was temporary anyway. Daniel wasn’t my boyfriend, and Neil was less than a roommate and more of a squatter living in a different apartment in the same building, as far as I was concerned.
“Do you want to get married?” he asked. I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Kids?”
“I’d like to have kids. Do you? Want to get married and have kids?” “Yes.”
He was looking at me through his sunglasses, so I couldn’t really see the expression on his face.
It occurred to me that we were talking about things that the two of us would do with someone else one day. If I ever did find a suitable man who my dad wouldn’t hate, I’d have to fast-track everything. Married quick, kids quick. My biological clock was ticking. I might even have difficulty getting pregnant if I started right now, today. At thirty-seven, I was already considered of an “advanced maternal age.” Even thinking those words made me feel ancient.
Daniel wouldn’t have a hard time at all finding someone to marry and have kids with. He had his whole life ahead of him. He could find some twenty-five-year-old who he could take his time with. Wait a few years to start having a family.
We sat there, quietly looking at each other, holding hands.
Daniel.
What a great daddy he’d be. And a good husband. So good. And he was
so gifted.
I’d been watching him finish these woodworking pieces for the last three months, and I was completely in awe of him. There was magic in his hands. He could see a piece of wood and transform it into something that felt like what it was always meant to be. I’d watched him create stunning one-of-a- kind headboards, a gorgeous lightning strike–inspired tabletop that he hollowed out in the middle and then charred along the edges before he filled the center with resin so the crack was flat and clear. He had this twisted, gnarled stump that Doug gave him that I would have thought was nothing but firewood, and he used it as the base for a coffee table where he inlaid
different wood to create a mosaic pattern. He was starting to get noticed on Instagram too, now that I’d taught him how to use hashtags. His last post had over two thousand likes.
There was a bittersweet feeling knowing that I’d never see Daniel become the rest of himself. He was just starting to turn into the man he’d become, and I wanted to be there for it. I wanted to help him and support him.
But I wouldn’t get to.
Everything about this made my heart hurt.
I had the weirdest urge to climb onto his tube and let him hold me. But it would be too heavy. The tube would sink. We’d end up underwater.
Liz shrieked from behind us and Doug let out a loud laugh. We looked just in time to see Brian splash them, and Daniel and I smiled at the trio.
“How long have they lived here?” I asked, nodding at his friends.
The fingers on his free hands trailed in the water, making little wakes. “My whole life. Liz grew up in South Dakota, but she came here every summer with our cousin Josh and all his sisters. The guys were born here. We grew up together. Literally. They were even with me the day my grandparents died.”
“How did they die?”
He peered out over the river. “Grandpa had a heart attack, and Grandma went later that day.”
“The same day?”
“Yeah. It didn’t really surprise anyone. I always knew it would happen that way. They were inseparable.” He looked at me. “Neither one could live without the other.”
I looked away from him, back at the slowly passing shoreline.
“You know, you really can die of a broken heart,” I said somewhat absently. “I see it all the time. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy. It’s a real thing.”
He paused for a long moment. “I know.”
We rounded an elbow in the river, and the sun slipped behind a cloud. It got instantly dark. A hard wind rustled the trees, and I shivered a bit. “It’s not supposed to rain today, right?”
Daniel looked at the sky and shook his head. “No.” “It looks like it is…”
An enormous thundercloud seemed to have come out of nowhere. And then we saw the figure standing on the bluff.
Jake.
He was in front of the hood of his cruiser, five or six yards away and twenty feet up, his arms crossed. Just…watching. It gave me chills.
I looked back at Liz, and she’d gone completely frozen. I instantly knew why. Because she was tethered to Brian’s tube.
Daniel seemed to realize it too. He looked at me, his expression serious.
Liz put on a bright smile to wave at her husband. The same one she’d put on the day I met her when Jake came into the VFW to return her sweater— only now I saw that for what it was.
It was Jake showing up at her work, just to remind her that he could, at any time. Jake reminding her that he was watching, just like he was reminding her now. And Liz, putting on the mask she wore for the public.
So similar to the one I’d worn for Neil…
“Hi, babe!” Liz called, waving at him, but I could hear the forced cheer. Jake just stood there, glowering down at her.
As far as I knew, Jake hadn’t hit her again since the last time.
I asked her almost every time I saw her. She said things were fine. But I didn’t think she would tell me if they weren’t. Not unless she was injured enough to need me.
They had probably been on the upswing of their abuse cycle these last few months. The honeymoon part right after a bad episode where he’d be on his best behavior and shower her with gifts and affection. Whatever was Jake’s equivalent of Neil’s quiche. But by the look on his face now, that was coming to an end…
We drifted in front of him, slow and vulnerable.
Like sitting ducks.
A voice crackled over Jake’s shoulder mic. He leaned into it and said something. Then he turned and got in his cruiser and drove off.
The clouds parted, and the sun poured back over the river. It wasn’t until they suddenly reappeared that I realized all the dragonflies had vanished.
I looked over at Liz, and she’d gone sheet white. “I’m going to talk to her,” I said.
Daniel nodded and let go of my hand, and as if we all knew what was happening, all five of our tubes split apart and reconfigured, me alone with Liz and the boys downriver.
I paddled with my hands over to her. “Liz?” She looked shaken.
“Liz? Are you okay?” She didn’t answer.
“Do you want me to take you somewhere—”
She shook her head. “No. It’ll be okay,” she said quickly. “Liz—”
“It’s fine. He’ll calm down. I work until midnight. By the time I get off he’ll be calm.”
I eyed her. “I can take you someplace, Liz. Any of us can.” A dragonfly landed on her knee, and she stared at it wearily.
“If I’m lucky, maybe he’ll get tired of me,” she said quietly. “He’ll find someone else and just leave me, and I can be done.” She paused for a long moment. “If I leave, I’ll never be able to come back here. He’ll kill me. I’ll spend the rest of my life hiding, and I’ll never see Wakan again.”
There was the tiniest, almost imperceptible glance at Brian when she said this.
My heart broke for her.
No matter what she did, Jake would win. Neil was still winning too, in a hundred different ways.
Sometimes it feels like the bad guys always do.
