I shook my head. “I find that hard to believe, that you, smart as you are, couldn’t figure out where I was.” I tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed my hand. “Where have you been for twenty years, Frank? What have you been doing all this time that kept you from coming back before now if all that’s really true?”
He stared at me and burst out, “My dad, D, he’s gone.”
And just like that, I was in the past, back in Frank’s house, laughing on his porch while his daddy grilled hot dogs. I putmy hand over my heart as my breath caught in my throat. I had loved Frank’s daddy. He had loved me. I used to dream that I had a daddy out there who was just like him, that he would come find me one day.
“Frank,” I said, his name tasting warm and familiar in my mouth, as if it hadn’t been twenty-two years, as if no time had passed at all. “I am so sorry.”
He shook his head. “For all these years, Diana, I haven’t been able to move on. All I’ve dreamed about is you.” He seemed sort of out of breath, and I found myself, as much as I didn’t want to, reaching over to touch his arm, to steady him. “I just wanted you to be happy. I thought my staying away was the best thing, even if it meant that I would be miserable.”
“So why now? Did you suddenly decide that you didn’t care about me being happy?” I was trying to lighten the mood, but I could tell by his serious expression that that wasn’t in the cards.
“No. I’ve known all this time that I’d never really be happy without you.” He took my hand in his and said, “But it took me until now to realize that maybe this is how it is with true love, that it never goes away. And I thought that maybe you couldn’t really be happy without me either.”
CHAPTER 9
gray: a summer thing
It had been three weeks.Three weeksof no Wagner. Three weeks since I had ruffled his shaggy blond hair or kissed his sweet, doughy cheeks—which were losing their doughiness by the minute, much to my chagrin—or pulled him into me for one of those great hugs where his entire body went slack. I was literally counting the minutes.
Sure, I wasn’t thrilled about having to see Greg, but it was totally worth the trade-off. Despite being at odds, we were able to keep things civil around Wagner.
I’ll just say, I gave myself most of the credit for that. My mom taught me to be the bigger person, to turn the other cheek. Some days it was harder than others to think about my husband—and, even more so, my son—with another woman, but I was tolerating it.
As I sat on the porch waiting for my boy to get back to me, I automatically picked up my phone. When I realized what I wasdoing, my throat burned. Almost ten months later, ten months after she had died, I was picking up my phone to call my mother. I wanted to tell her how excited I was that Wagner was coming home. Would this feeling ever go away? Would it ever get easier?
My phone dinged, breaking me out of my unhappy thoughts. Andrew.I don’t think I can make it a whole week.…
When I had decided that I couldn’t fully let Andrew go despite my initial intentions, I’d mustered up the nerve to tell him I didn’t want him around Wagner. Andrew had laughed, and, oh, the dimples. “Well, I’m around him all the time, G. I’m his badass, supercool tennis teacher.”
My turn to laugh. And roll my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you just need to relax, babe. We’ll let it play out like it needs to.”
I smiled in spite of myself, thinking about it. I had expected the tennis pro situation to be a one-day thing that maybe turned into a two-day thing. But, as Marcy sagely advised, why couldn’t it be a summer thing?
I stood up and stretched, thinking,How on earth did I get here?I couldn’t count the number of times I had thought that nothing would ever come between Greg and me. Nothing would break us up because we were as solid as couples came. Even on those days when our relationship wasn’t thrilling, we had something deeper, a firm foundation that would help us weather any storm. Boy, had I been wrong.
Part of me hated him for abandoning me. The other part of me, the part that didn’t mind having a tennis pro pining after her, texted Andrew back.Friday night I’m all yours.
He texted me back immediately.Great. I’ll pick you up at 7.
I laughed. He was good for that, making me laugh. After the year I’d had, I needed to laugh. The thought must have softened me a bit, because I texted back:How about I call you tonight after Wagner goes to bed?
How about I drive over there and kiss you good night when Wagner goes to bed?
Greg’s car appeared in the driveway. I think it must have been the sight of Brooke behind the wheel that made me type back:We’ll see.…
Greg was having fun. Why shouldn’t I?
But, really, this was nothing compared to the way my heart leapt as I ran at top speed down the four steps to the driveway and opened my arms for my little boy to fly into.
“Wags!”
“Mom!”
I kissed the top of his head. “I missed you so, so much. I can’t even tell you. I want to hear about every detail of your trip.”
He grinned up at me, his arms still around my waist. “Look. I lost a tooth!” He opened his mouth to reveal that the stubborn straggler in the bottom row had finally given up the ghost.
