Pink Neon Dreams (11 page)

“I
am,” Daniel said. “Let me wash up, first.”

She
admired his apparent determination to carry on as if nothing happened.
 
While he headed for the bathroom, Cecily set
the table.
 
She put their salad bowls at
each place and then brought the salmon and potatoes out of the oven.
 
Then, after a moment’s consideration, she put
the disposable salt and pepper shakers she’d bought between them and added the
container of Cajun seasoning.

“Whatever
the hell you’re serving, it smells good,” Daniel said.
 
Having failed to hear him come into the
kitchen, Cecily jumped.

“
It’s
lemon pepper salmon filets and some oven potatoes,” she
said. “Plus, there’s a salad to start. I hope you like balsamic vinaigrette
dressing - it’s all I’ve got.”

“Sure,”
he said as he sat down at the table.

Resisting
an urge to grasp his hands and ask a blessing, an old habit from childhood she
hadn’t followed in years, Cecily dripped a little salad dressing over her greens.
 
Then she took a bite and watched Daniel do
the same.
 
“It’s nothing fancy,” she
said. “It’s salad out of a bag from the supermarket.”

“It’s
fine.”

“I
think the salmon will taste better.” Their conversation seemed awkward after
the intimate moment or it seemed so to Cecily.
 
Uncertain how much more she could say about the simple meal, she
finished her salad without speaking.
 
Head down, Daniel did the same.
 
Judging
by the way he cleaned the bowl, he must either be hungry or as ill at ease as
she was.

About
the time she’d decided to scrape her dinner into the trash, she glanced up to
see him grinning. “What?” she demanded.

“Food’s
delicious,” Daniel said. “I don’t get much chance to sit down and eat anything
home cooked so it’s a treat.”

The
sincerity in his voice reached through her prickly mood and Cecily forced
herself to admit the uneasiness belonged to her, not Daniel.
 
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate the
compliment.
 
I didn’t have much chance to
cook for years, but I like it. I used to be a pretty fair cook back when I was
a teenager.”

After
he swallowed, Daniel nodded. “I’d say you still are.”

Her
natural sass surged back.
“Yeah?
So what
do
you eat? Let me guess—bologna and
salami sandwiches, frozen burritos, pizza and fast food or what?”

Eyes
shut in apparent food ecstasy, Daniel sighed and grinned. “Guilty of all of the
above at times, but I’m not always that lame.”

“No?”

He
shook his head. “Once in a while I do make a huge pot of chili and then freeze
it so I can warm it up when I come home from a long day.
 
I can manage to fry a hamburger once in a while
or nuke a couple of hot dogs in the microwave.
 
And you forgot to include canned soup and ravioli.”

“Poor baby.”
Cecily meant to sound mocking,
but the words came out softer than she intended, probably because she felt
sorry he endured such a crappy diet. “Don’t you ever get invited home for
Sunday dinner or over to someone’s house?”

“My
mama lives in El Paso now,” he said. “It’s a long damn way to go home very
often.”

Desire
to know more about him overruled her manners. “I bet she can cook.”

“Oh,
yeah, she can.
 
Her Tex-Mex stuff is
better than any restaurant I’ve ever tried. Burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas,
even tamales.”

“I
think I’m jealous,” Cecily said. “My mom could make the best damn fried chicken
you ever put in your mouth, biscuits and gravy too.
 
She made ham and beans with cornbread so good
it’d revive the dead.”

Once
she realized what she’d shared, her mind froze.
 
Her mother wasn’t someone she talked about, ever, to anyone but
Nia.
 
Remembering hurt too
much,
and she’d schooled herself not to even think about Mom.
 

“Sounds
pretty damn good to me,” Daniel replied. “Does she have you over to eat very
often?”

The
last bite of salmon caught halfway down her throat and she choked, a
little.
 
Cecily drank some ice water to
wash it down and blinked back a stray tear. “Not anymore,” she said. “She died
two years after I got married.”

His
expression altered. “I’m sorry, Cecily.”

“Yeah,”
she said.
 
The words cut her throat like
broken glass on the way out of her mouth. “I am, too.”

The
old grief threatened to kick up again and her emotions must’ve been plain to
read because Daniel reached out across the table and grasped her hand.
 
His fingers curled around hers, warm and
solid. “Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry.
 
I
didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s
okay,” she said and meant it. “I know you didn’t. I have a hard time talking
about it, that’s all.”

 
Most guys would press for details and ask
questions she’d rather not answer, but Daniel didn’t. “I understand,” he said,
voice serious and low. “If you ever want to, though, I’ll listen.”

He sounds like he means it, but
how can he? He’s here on vacation and he’ll be gone in a few days or
weeks.
 
I just got settled and I can’t
traipse off to Kansas City.

“
Thanks,” Cecily said. “Maybe I
will, sometime.”

Strange
but she felt like she could spill it all out to Daniel.
 
He wouldn’t condemn her or blame her when he
heard the sad story.
 
Willard, damn his
soul to the pit, never wanted her to mention it, afraid some of his society
friends might make the connection between his young trophy bride and the
laundry worker mugged, then stabbed to death behind a Southside bar, The Half
and Half.
 
Although he paid for a simple
funeral and burial, he kept it quiet as if ashamed of his mother-in-law, her
humble life, and her horrible death. Cecily shut the memories out before they
swamped her and focused on Daniel as he finished the meal.

“I
think there’s a few potatoes left if you want them,” she said.

Daniel
put down his fork with a flourish. “No thanks, I’m full,” he said. “It was a
good meal.”

****

A
glass of sweet red wine mellowed Daniel’s mood. He sat slumped in a plastic
lawn chair, feet propped on an old milk crate in Cecily’s back yard, totally at
ease.
 
As he sipped from the blue plastic
goblet, he glanced over at Cecily, seated at his side.
 
Although the tiny backyard offered nothing
besides overgrown grass, a few straggly weeds, and a sagging clothesline, he
liked the place and the company.
 
She
grew on him and he couldn’t help but tag his growing emotions to her as some
kind of addiction.
 
His reaction to her
offered comfort startled him and yet he savored it too.
 
Their relationship—a word he didn’t even want
to believe he used - wasn’t just the sex, although it’d been mind blowing so
far.
 
They connected on another level
too, down where whatever might be left of his soul lived deep within.

They
hadn’t spoken in several minutes when Cecily broke the silence. “So, did you
want to talk about your bad dream?”

Damn.
 
He’d said he might and he probably should,
although it was the last thing he wanted.
 
Sharing would destroy his peace, but if he didn’t, Daniel figured the
dream would return. Then he’d have more explaining to do.
 
“I suppose I should,” he said.

Cecily
stretched out her hand to stroke his. “You don’t have to if it hurts,” she
said.

“It
does, but that’s why I do,” Daniel said and hoped his words made sense.

She
nodded. “Okay, so tell me what the dream was about.”

He
drew a long, deep breath and exhaled.
 
Then he plunged into it before he lost his nerve. “It’s as much memory
as nightmare,” he said. “Sometimes I dream about my daughter and the day she
died.”

Her
hand held his and squeezed tight. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Of course she didn’t.
 
I’ve known her for what, two days if you
count today.
 
I know more about her
because I’ve read her file. I’m supposed to be investigating her, but there’s
no way she’d know.
“Her name was Mollie,” he said, each word stabbing into his heart like a knife
wound. “She’d just turned four when she died.”

“Oh,
sugar.” Her voice resonated with soft compassion. “That must’ve been very hard
for you and your wife.”

“No
wife,” Daniel said. “I never married her mother, Lisa.
 
But there wasn’t any doubt Mollie was mine,
so I paid child support and got visitation.
 
I saw her the night she died, a few hours before.”

“What
happened?”

“House
fire,” he said. “Accidental or so the report said, after. They couldn’t
determine how it started, but it was probably bad wiring.
 
The house was a wreck.
 
Thing is, Mollie should’ve been with me, but
her mother wouldn’t let her go.
 
So I’ve
always felt it was my fault.”

“It’s
not,” Cecily said. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up like that.
 
I’m sorry you lost your little girl, but you
can’t blame yourself, Daniel.”

A
bitter laugh thrust up from his belly. “I have for the last nine years,
chica,
and probably always will.”

“You
have to let go or it’ll eat you alive,” Cecily said. The way she spoke, it confirmed
what he’d already figured out—she knew pain, too.

“Easier
to say than to do,” he replied. “Is there more wine?”

“Sure,”
she said as she lifted the bottle to fill his glass again. “And another bottle
if we want it.
 
Drinking may dull the
pain, but it won’t take it away.
 
If you
want to banish those old heartaches, you need to talk about them.
 
Then they don’t have so much power.”

“I
can’t.” As soon as the words were out, however, Daniel knew he would.
 
He spilled everything, all about Lisa and how
he met her.
 
He sketched a realistic
portrait and left out nothing, not her naïve innocence or how he seduced her to
prove he could.
 
Although he cringed to
tell it, Daniel told about Lisa’s fundamentalist religion and how it grew to
take over her life like choking kudzu.
 
And he talked about Mollie, not just her death but for the first time,
he shared memories of his kid.
 
“She
loved those damn Disney channel shows, the ones about teenagers most of all,”
he said as his voice broke. “Poor kid never made it to be one, but she loved
that shit.
 
She adored animals, so we
went to the zoo a lot. I think she would’ve eaten pizza for every meal.
 
Lisa didn’t want to let her watch Disney or
eat pizza, too much of the wicked world, so Mollie did both at my place.
 
And she had a laugh, Mollie did, like music.
God damn, I miss her.”

Cecily
gave him a few minutes of space before she said, “I wish I could’ve known her,
sugar.
 
I love kids.”

To
shut off the pain radiating through his body, Daniel asked, “You got any?”

He
knew she didn’t, though, but he wondered why so he asked.

“Nope,”
she said. “I would’ve loved some but ‘the mister’ couldn’t father any.
 
He’d been fixed, something he never mentioned
until we’d been married three years.
 
It’s a good thing,
though,
it would’ve made
things a lot more complicated to get out of his house and away.”

She’d
make a good mother, he thought, with her caring, her compassion, and her urge
to nurture. “You’d be a great parent,” he said. “You’re young enough you might
still get the chance to have some children one day.”

Those
dark eyes widened for a moment and then she said, “True. And you might have
another kid or two, too. You’re not quite an old man just yet, sugar.”

Her
words hit him harder than a punch to the solar plexus.
 
Daniel never considered another child.
 
Mollie, as beautiful and loved as she was,
had been an accident.
 
He hadn’t allowed
himself to get close enough to a woman to consider a child, and he’d made damn
sure he used protection.
 
His long range
plans involved nothing but working for the bureau and growing old, alone.
 
But Cecily made him think; she evoked a want
he hadn’t even been aware he possessed.
 
And for a few moments, he couldn’t speak for the intense emotional pain.