The drive home from Duke is quiet. We both have a lot to digest.

Celina rides the entire three-hour trip with her earbuds in and music on. The mother in me wants to ask her if she’s okay, to reassure her that everything’s going to be fine, to hold her in my arms and protect her from every curveball life throws her way.

But I don’t.

She’s a mature fourteen year old and this is what she does. She takes in information, she considers it, she asks questions, and then she decides.

I shoot a sideways glance at her. She appears to be calmly looking out the window, her body at ease, but I know the wheels are turning. Her mind is spinning, going over all that the doctor said, sifting through that information and picking out nuggets that matter the most to her, which are slightly different than the ones that matter to me.

While she is mature for her age, she is still just a child. Her thinking is very short-term. That’s to be expected. She wants the easiest path for now. But I’ve learned that the now will eventually be the past, and the past is what we have to live with in the future. And she has so much future left, so much life out ahead of her. It’s my job to help her make the best decisions in the now so that she doesn’t have regrets in the future.

Only that’s harder than I ever thought it would be.

My choices are combing through endless pamphlets and reports and papers to determine which is the lesser of an array of evils. My job is to figure out what will give my child the best chances for a healthy, normal life, yet not completely disregard how it will affect her now. It kills me to think of her suffering, and there’s a significant chance that’s what she’ll face no matter what we decide.

So, although my heart is heavy and I want to help her as much as I can, I’m giving her the space she needs to deal with this in her own way. I hope that’s the right thing to do. My mother always tried to control everything. She wanted to run my life according to hers and what she felt was best. She never took into consideration what I might want or how I might feel. I fault her less for that now because I do believe she loves me in her own way and she really did want a good life for me, but I still wish things could’ve been different. A lot of pain has resulted from her inflexibility. I don’t want that for Celina. More than my own wellbeing, I want her to be happy. Every day of her life if possible.

When we arrive back at the house, Momma is waiting for us. I see her open her mouth to ask how it went. I catch her eye and shake my head the slightest bit. She snaps her lips shut and walks back toward the office, from whence she came. I roll my eyes and follow Celina up the steps. She goes left to her room; I go right toward my room-slash-home office. I want to be close by if she comes looking for me. Besides that, I have work to do.

Only she doesn’t come looking. Celina remains holed up in her room until Momma comes and gets us for dinner. She comes out and we go down to eat. She converses about as much as usual, even though there’s a tension at the table as my mother waits for one of us to tell her how it went. I’m determined not to get into it with her until I’ve had a chance to talk to my daughter.

After dinner, Celina excuses herself back to her room and I begin the cleanup. Momma hangs around for a few minutes longer than usual, waiting. I smile as I pass her, but say nothing. Eventually, she walks away without a word, which makes me feel kind of bad, but my primary concern is Celina. Always. My mother’s feelings come a very, very, very distant second place. Probably not even that. I am glad, however, that she isn’t pushing, that she at least has the sensitivity to wait until we’re ready to talk about it.

When the dining room and kitchen have been restored to their eerily spotless state, I return to my room, this time to pour over all the information I brought home from Duke. There is hope in all of it, but there are also risks and side effects. There is no way forward for her that isn’t going to dramatically affect her in some way, whether now or later.

The more I read, the more overwhelmed and dejected I become.

At just before ten, I get up and go to Celina’s room. The light is still on, so I knock softly and wait for her to answer. I can tell by her two-word response that she’s as burdened as I am, probably more so.

I poke my head in to find her sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed. There’s nothing in front of her, or even on the bed with her, which leads me to believe she’s just been sitting there thinking. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.

“What’s up, buttercup?” I ask, stepping inside and closing the door behind me.

“You came to my room. Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

I walk to the bed and climb on, sitting in front of her and mirroring her position. “Fine. Then ask me.”

One corner of her mouth quirks a little and she asks, “What’s up, buttercup?”

“I came to check on my daughter. She had a big day today and she hasn’t said a word about it. It sorta worries me, because, you know, I’m a parent and it’s sorta what we do.”

Celina simply nods and looks down at a flower on the comforter that she begins to trace with her index finger.

I give her a couple of minutes, and when she doesn’t speak, I try again. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“I’m sure you know what they are.” Her voice… It sounds like the weight of the world rests on her shoulders, and it breaks my heart to hear it. These are the carefree years of her life.

At least they’re supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I curse that day at the park. If only I’d taken her on a different day or to a different park, maybe she wouldn’t be going through this. None of this would be happening.

“Probably, but I want to hear it from you.”

She sighs and, even with her head tilted down, I see her chin begin to tremble. “I don’t know what to do, Momma.”

I take her hands in mine, quelling my urge to cry. “We’ll figure it out, honey. You don’t have to decide right this minute. Your counts still look good from your last blood transfusion. You’re healthy, gorgeous as ever.” I say the last with a smile and as much dramatic flare as I can manage when I feel like my chest is being ripped open. “And you’re as strong as anyone I’ve ever met. You’ll not only make the right choice, you’ll come through it like a champ. Because that’s what you do. You are my daughter after all.”

She says nothing at first, but then finally casts a questioning look up at me through her lashes. “Are you going to tell him?”

My stomach drops through the floor. “Am I going to tell who?”

I know exactly who she’s talking about. He’s as much on her mind as he is on mine.

“Him.”

She knows I know who she’s talking about, too. She’s a smart girl.

“Do you want me to?”

She shrugs and returns to tracing the flower.

A whole new set of worries unfurl before me, much like the flower she’s tracing would if it were real. Petal after petal opens, and with each one, something else to consider.

I don’t want Celina to get hurt. That’s always my first concern. And while I wouldn’t have thought twice about her heart being safe with the Dane that I used to know, the man I’ve seen since we’ve been back in Shepherd’s Mill isn’t him. He’s different. He seems…colder. Not that I can blame him. This place almost got its hooks in me and I was only here for five years. What if I’d been here for the last fifteen as well? As an adult?

At least when I lived here, I had Dane. He kept me sane, kept me tied to the real world where we could be anything and anyone we wanted. He kept me from drowning in the ugliness here.

But he didn’t have me.

I left and he didn’t have anyone to keep him afloat for the last fifteen years, so whatever he has become, I can’t help feeling a little bit responsible for it. I abandoned him. Not because I wanted to, but because I made a poor choice that cost us both, only he didn’t know about it. He just thought I left.

Celina’s voice brings my mind back to the troubles at hand. “Do you think he’d care?”

“Of course, he would care. You’re his daughter.” I hope he cares. God, I hope he cares!

“I wonder if…” She pauses for an eternity, or at least that’s what it feels like. Probably because I’m so on edge I’d need a horse tranquilizer to calm down right now. “Do you think he’ll want anything to do with me?”

I know she’s just looking for reassurance, but I don’t want to give her false hope. She can’t take any more devastating news right now. “I think he will, yes. Once he gets used to the idea. Men…sometimes they don’t deal with things the same way we do. It might take him a little while to work this out in his head. He probably won’t be very happy with me, but I had good reasons for the way I handled things. My main concern would be you two and your relationship. And, Celina Holland, once he meets you, he’ll fall in love. You’re the most wonderful, loveable person I know.”

She nods as I speak and I’m praying as I go that I’m saying the right things, in the right way. The last thing I want is to cause my daughter pain. Moving here was supposed to help her, not hurt her.

“I tell you what,” I say, taking her hands again and loudly kissing her knuckles. “Once we get our plan figured out, maybe we can get together with him. How does that sound? You can meet him without any big confessions first. Would that make you feel better? No pressure on either of you.”

She gives me a weak smile. I’m sure that wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it’s all I can give her right now. I don’t want to make things worse. “Yeah. Okay.”

I unfold my legs and climb off the bed. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? We can hash all this out after I’ve got a better grasp on everything. The charts will tell the tale. You know how I love my charts.” I grin and bend to kiss her forehead. I’m a very visual person and, a long time ago, I started making charts to keep me on track. Charts for Celina’s activities, charts for my school stuff, charts weighing the pros and cons of vacation spots (the beach always won), charts for Christmas spending—you name it and I had a chart for it. I really am every bit the nerd my daughter thinks I am.

“I hate those charts,” she says petulantly. I let it slide. She deserves to be a little snappish today.

“Just wait until I start making charts for college options and wedding plans and baby showers. Then you’ll love my charts.”

“If I make it that far.”

A sucker punch to the chest. “Oh, little girl, you’ll make it. If I have to drag you that far, kicking and screaming, you’ll make it. You’ve got a lot of life left to live. You’re nowhere near the end yet. Nowhere near.”

I smile as I make my way to the door. I slip through and close it behind me, and I barely make it to my room before I clamp a hand over my mouth and sink to the floor.

My child is afraid for her life. She’s worrying about treatments and survival rates, while most girls her age are worried about whether to cut their hair or which boy smiled at them in science class. And now, on top of that, she’s got a father thrown into the mix.

As I lean against the door, sobbing silently into my hands, I realize that there’s a great likelihood that I’ve made as big a mess of my child’s life as my own mother did of mine.

Maybe that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

* * *

Sleep. It’s a beautiful thing.

When you have it.

When you can get it.

When you can access it.

But when you don’t, when you can’t…

It’s an elusive bitch.

I don’t even rumple the covers on my bed. I don’t bother getting on it. I know sleep is far from me, so I sit in front of the window, like I did when I was a girl, and look out at the night, at the blank slate I wish life could be.

In the night, troubles seem far away and the new day seems like it’s full of possibilities. There is a feeling of being able to reset the world when darkness falls. At least that’s how it’s always felt to me.

I see the movement, and I think some part of me recognizes who it is right away. It’s just that it takes my brain a little longer to catch up. My brain seems to think that the dark image of a man standing at the edge of a crescent of light is a figment of my imagination, not a real, live person. It’s when he takes another step into the light that I realize I’m not seeing things. There’s someone down there, and I don’t have to wonder for one second who it is.

My fingers are shaking when I unlock the window and push it up. It groans like an old man, probably because it hasn’t been opened since I was last here, talking to Dane James through it, a teenaged girl in love.

God really does have a sense of humor.

“Dane James.” Just saying his name sends a shiver down my spine. This, all this, feels like a lifetime ago in some ways, and like just yesterday in others.

“Can you come down?” The voice is a bit different, the hair is a bit different, but the rest of this is so achingly familiar, I want to cry all over again.

I don’t hesitate. “Be right there.”

I make my way downstairs and the irony of returning here, fifteen years later, a grown woman, and sneaking out of the house to meet the same guy I ran away to protect is not lost on me. Neither is the wild butterfly house my stomach has become. It’s full of fluttering and dancing all the way to the door.

When I step out into the night, Dane rounds the corner. I stop and wait. He continues toward me in that sexy swagger of his, fingers in his front pockets, eyes trained on me. Even in the dark, I can feel the heat of his attention. It’s like the sun on a fall day. It warms me through and through, even though we are far from the boy and girl with stars in our eyes that we were fifteen years ago. A wide chasm filled with bad choices and half-truths stands between us now, and I’m not sure we’ll ever find our way over it.

Dane stops in front of me. He says nothing, just stares down at me. This whole scene takes me back to better days, days I thought were the worst, and it makes me long for a do-over.

Slowly, like he’s trying not to spook me, or maybe like he isn’t sure he’s doing the right thing, he reaches for my hand where it dangles at my side. I don’t resist when he threads his fingers through mine, and I don’t hesitate when he tips his head toward the field and takes a step in that direction.

I follow him just like I always did. I wonder if I always will, if that’s one of the things that hasn’t changed.

Neither of us speaks as Dane leads me down the driveway and across to the field. It feels as though the wheat parts for us when we step into it, like it remembers us, remembers our love, and is bowing down in homage to it.

As I did so many years ago, I hold out my free hand and let the fuzzy tips of the wheat scrape across my palm. It’s one more sensory link between today and yesterday, the present and the past. The woman I am and the girl I was.

When we reach the rock, as always, Dane hops onto it first before reaching down to help me up. Once my feet are on the solid surface, he backs up and then sits down, drawing his spread knees up and wrapping his arms loosely around them.

I don’t say anything. I just sit, too, as I wait for Dane to begin conversation. He came to get me, after all. He must have something to say.

“Did you change your mind?”

I don’t answer right away. I have no clue what he’s talking about. “About what?”

“Coming with me to the river.”

I slap my forehead. “Shit! I completely forgot.”

He slides his eyes toward me and studies me. “You sure that’s all it is?”

“What else would it be?”

One big shoulder lifts in a shrug. That damn shrug. I have a love-hate relationship with it. “We’ve got a lot of history. Most of it not good. I can’t say I’d blame you for running like hell.”

“You think most of our history is bad?”

“Don’t you?”

I think about his question for a long time before I answer. “No. I don’t. Every time I think of you, it’s good. Every time. I don’t have any bad memories of you. None.” I pause for a second before asking, “You must not be able to say the same thing about me.”

He doesn’t answer, probably because he can’t deny it. And that hurts.

Inordinately.

Finally, he says, “I spent a lot of years watching you, wanting you, never being able to have you. And then when I got you, you took off. I guess I have a lot of years of…mixed feelings.”

“Wow.” That’s all I can think to say. Probably because, from his perspective, I can see how he’d feel that way. “I never meant to hurt you. You know that, right? That if I could’ve changed any of those things, I would’ve?”

He nods. “Yeah, I know.”

“I wanted you just as much as you wanted me. I was just as stuck as you were.”

“This damn town…” He shakes his head and I sigh. It stole so much from both of us. Shepherd’s Mill and Alton. The devil and the antichrist, although I can’t be sure which one is which.

“About the river, I really did forget. I’ve…I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

No.

Yes.

Desperately.

I’m terrified.

“My…my daughter is sick.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah.”

The tremor hits my bottom lip before the tears burn my eyes. It’s been such an emotional day, such an emotional few days that I’m not sure I can talk about this without falling to pieces.

But I have to.

Dane deserves to know, even if he doesn’t yet know she’s his daughter. And Celina wants him to know. After all that I’ve done, to both of them, I owe them this much.

“She h-has aplastic anemia.” With a quavering voice, I tell him how it happened, and how dangerous it is.

He doesn’t say anything, not a single word for an eternity.

“So this is life-threatening?”

“It is. It could be for sure. Hers was classified as moderate until about a month ago. They’ve been given her a few blood transfusions to keep her built up, but they’re becoming less effective. Her condition is steadily getting worse, which means she’s escalating toward severe. We have to get it under control. And today…today we went to see a specialist at Duke, and the options are…are…”

I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to hold in the fear, the worry, the uncertainty, the horrific thought that there is a possibility that I could lose my child in all of this. Dane scoots closer to me and draws me against his side. I think we both realize it feels…tentative, but I’m just glad he’s willing to offer comfort, comfort I so desperately need.

I cry quietly at his side, and he lets me, and when it seems to have tailed off, he asks, “What are the options?”

I take a deep breath and try to pull myself together. I feel like I’ve cried rivers in the last year, and just when I think there’s nothing left, there is more. So much more.

“There is a new drug that shows promise, but it has to be given in addition to a really strong chemo drug. The side effects are pretty awful, but there’s a chance her condition could be dramatically improved, if not cured. The other option is a bone marrow transplant, which would be best in some ways. It has the highest chances of curing her. At her age, it’s almost certain, but she doesn’t have a sibling and another match could be close but not a complete match, so that carries its own risks. The thing is, she’d have to take some awful medication to deplete her own marrow first, which would cause many of the same side effects as the other. And one of the side effects…one of them is that she…she…she could end up being sterile.”

The ache in my heart, the pain of thinking what my daughter might and likely will have to suffer, bears down on me like the weight of a car sitting on my chest. I start to cry again, only harder as I think about the options, my little girl, and her future. “She’s just a baby herself. What if she’s never able to experience carrying a child, holding a warm, wiggling piece of the love she shares with her husband, all because I took her to the park on the wrong day? What if she never gets to experience being a regular teenaged girl, breaking rules and sneaking around, pining over boys and cheering at football games? All I ever wanted was for her to be happy. So, so happy. I wanted to give her everything I never had. And now… Her life might be ruined.”

That’s when I lose it. It’s as though the dam that has been holding me together these past months just disintegrates and all the fear, all the pain, all the helplessness comes rushing to the surface where it overflows.

I feel Dane’s lips move against my hair as he speaks. “You’ll figure it out. I know you, Brinkley. You’ll find a way.”

“I hope so.”

We sit in silence for a while, each lost in thought. Mine are centered on Celina. I have no idea what Dane’s thinking, not until he asks a question that sweeps the legs right out from under me.

“Is her father not in the picture?”

I don’t move a muscle. I don’t breathe. I don’t even think my heart beats for a few seconds.

Now would be the perfect time to tell him, but…I can’t. Celina wants me to wait. But also, I dread the fallout. He’ll hate me. And that’ll kill me, but he deserves to know.

I’ll tell him eventually. Just not right now. Not just yet.

“No. It’s.” I exhale. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You?” I hear the smile, the teasing in his voice.

“Did you come here for me to purposely bore you to death?”

“Your life isn’t boring to me.”

I laugh, trying to be breezy, but feeling distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, it’s definitely not a conversation I want to have right now. Let’s talk about something good.” I lean up and give him a side-eye and a grin. “Like how you ended up with this place. Please tell me you pulled one over on Alton. That would make my whole day. Maybe even my whole year.”

Dane grins. “I have to admit, it was pretty damn cool.” The smile is both wolfish and delightful.

“Tell me everything.”

We huddle together, on our rock, in the night, and Dane tells me all about how he took his knowledge of the wheat operation, got a degree going to night classes when he could and taking as many online courses as he could.

“I made sure I knew everything there was to know about not just wheat and business, but about this operation. So when the opportunity arose for me to do something about it, I did.

“In that letter he left for me with his will, Dad told me Alton was trying to expand, for me not to let go of my stake in this place, not for any amount of money. So I kept my ear to the ground, made some superficial friends at the country club, and when I heard murmurings of Alton looking for investors, I incorporated and I bought a little more heavily into this place. Of course, he didn’t look into it, had no idea I was behind it, which just made it that much better. And then when he wanted more money, he went out again, so I bought more through a different company. Four times, he sold shares of this place to investors. And four times, I bought them. I guess the one piece of satisfaction I have is that, before he died, I got to tell him that I owned him. I’d already gone to him with the court papers showing my interest in the company, but that wasn’t enough. And he knew it. But to watch him learn that I had the controlling interest in his family’s business…Jesus, that was incredible. He never wanted it to come to me, of course, so taking it, taking it from him was…it was pretty damn great.”

My mouth drops open. “That’s…God, that’s awesome! I’d have given anything to be there for that. I bet it felt so good. What did he say? What did his face look like?”

“At first he didn’t believe me, so I showed him the certificates from all the different companies. He got a little pale at first, but then he turned beet red. He stood up from his desk and said, ‘You son of a bitch.’ I stopped him right there. I swear to God, I think my blood actually started to boil. All I could think about was what he’d done, what kind of a bastard he’d been all his life. I reached across his desk and grabbed him by the throat. I think he might’ve pissed himself a little when I did.” Dane laughs and I laugh right along with him, the mental image almost as satisfying as it would’ve been to be there. “I told him to be very careful about what came out of his mouth next, not to forget that I owned him. I could destroy him if I wanted to.”

“What did he say?”

“Not one damn thing. He knew it was true. And I planned on following through eventually, but…he died before I could. That asshole got the last laugh anyway.” Dane’s bitterness returns with a curl of his lip.

“No, he didn’t. You hit him where it hurt. That was the only weakness he had, and you stole it right out from under his nose. That’s the best revenge you could’ve gotten.”

Dane’s expression has turned serious. “It doesn’t feel like it. I’ve hated him for so long, I don’t think anything short of watching the life drain out of him while I choked him to death would make me feel vindicated.” He pauses for a long minute before he glances over at me. “But that probably wouldn’t even help. Living with that kind of hate…I just think it’s time to let it go. I have to.”

“Did—” Impulsively, I start to ask a question, but with that one word, I reconsider. I might not want to know that answer.

Unfortunately, Dane doesn’t want to let it drop. “Did what?”

“Nothing.”

“What? What were you going to ask?”

Hesitantly, I ask, “Did you hate me? Do you hate me?”

Dane’s eyes search mine. Even in the low light, I can see that they’re back to the warmer shade I could never forget rather than the cold ones I returned to. “No. I thought I did. For a while. But it never really took.”

I nod. I don’t really have a response. It stings, yes, but I guess I just have to be glad that isn’t the case anymore.

We fall quiet again, and I’m suddenly aware of how exhausted I am. Without meaning to, I sway against Dane.

“You’d probably better get back. Get some sleep. I know you must be tired.”

I nod and Dane stands, offering his hand, which I take. This time, he holds it as we walk to the edge of the rock, and when he jumps down he lifts both arms toward me. I don’t know why, but that seems significant, like he’s opening up to me. Or maybe that he’s telling me it’s okay to fall.

Or maybe I’m just overwhelmed and overtired.

At this point, it could be anything.

I lean down and let Dane help me to the ground. He’s a little slower to release me this time, which gives me a pleasant jitter. I’m smiling when I say, “G’night, Dane.”

“See you later, alligator.” I can’t miss the twinkle in his eye. And it’s almost my undoing.

“After while, crocodile.”

All of a sudden, I feel like laughing, like a carefree young girl.

“Sleep well, Brinkley Sommers.”

This… It’s an olive branch.

I think.

Or I could be delusional.

It wouldn’t be the first time Dane James has caused me to lose my mind.