I could feel the golden glow emanating from my pores, a type of glee I didn’t even know I could feel seeping out of every organ.
My Dan was back.
It was precisely the same thought I had standing in that art gallery that day, him chattering on with the owner.
“I’m lost here, Lovey,” Annabelle said.
“I’m so sorry, darling. The picture isn’t of us, but that’s precisely how D-daddy and I got together. He kissed me in Times Square when the war was over.”
“Wait. I thought you two grew up together.”
Dan interjected, “In the rush of the celebration, I kissed the first woman I saw. And when I pulled away, it was her, that beautiful girl that I had carried in my heart since the day I waved good-bye to her out of the window of my daddy’s Chevrolet.”
I could see tears standing in Annabelle’s eyes. I knew that those tears weren’t from the heartwarming story; they were from having a man she loved like fury talking to her again. “When you know, you know, right?”
I nodded. “I knew when I was still that girl in pigtails. But coming back together like that, running into each other out of random chance and complete coincidence practically a world away from where we grew up... We knew it had to mean something.”
Dan smiled up at me, and, in his face, I still saw a remnant of the boy I had fallen for a lifetime ago. Even the nurse pushing his wheelchair laughed as he said to Annabelle, “Don’t believe a word she says. I would never, ever leave something as wonderful as being with my Lynn to chance.”
As the woman behind the counter wrapped my photograph in brown paper, I glanced at it one last time. The utter shock and awe of that day, the freedom, the relief. The war was over. Dan was home. We were safe. I was having an experience a country girl like me never even dreamed of. Nothing had touched it until now, until, if for only a moment, my love had come back to me. Standing in the store that day, we may not have been kissing, lighting fireworks and making babies. But, all the same, holding his hand, knowing that he was the same man he’d always been to me, was totally exhilarating. And, even though I knew it’d hurt like hellfire tomorrow, I let myself think, like I always did:Maybe this time he’s back for good.
Annabelle
Exactly What He Wants
Lovey and D-daddy had a secret that kept them happily married for a lifetime: They made a deal that whoever left the other had to take the five daughters with them. It’s hard to imagine it now, looking at my little Lovey. It’s hard to think that, within her frail body, she would have had the strength and stamina for five children, cooking three meals a day, mounds of laundry, ironing a fresh shirt for her husband every minute and touching up five little church dresses every Sunday morning. Even with a parade of help, Lovey’s life, while privileged, seemed like an awful lot of drudgery.
D-daddy might have been the one that went to work every day, rose through the ranks of the financial ladder. But Lovey was the one that held the family together. She was his walking stick, the extra hundred-dollar bill in his back pocket for emergencies. Her love for D-daddy was the thing that gave him the confidence to take the big risks that mostly paid off in their life together.
“It was two dollars,” Lovey said, staring over the water, her coffee steaming in response to the unseasonably chilly September morning.
“What was, Lovey?” I asked, wrapping my arm around her thin shoulder and taking in the harbor. It was perhaps the thing I loved most about Martha’s Vineyard. You knew that the money was all around you, but you couldn’t quite spot where. Billionaire chiefs of industry captained twenty-five-year-old Boston Whalers, and hundred-millionaire heiresses walked amongst the crowd in fisherman sweaters and plain gold wedding bands. It was like Lovey always said: “When you have it, you don’t need to flaunt it.”
“Our marriage license,” she said, smiling.
It was such a rare treat to hear Lovey talk about the past. She was so determined that her life would be over once she sank back and let the tide of her memories wash over her. I could almost picture them drowning her, stealing her last breath. I knew, without her having to say it, that she was terrified that D-daddy would outlive her. And, on this trip, I was almost as convinced as she was that maybe he could emerge from that semi-catatonic state in which he had been living the last three years, his brain revived and refreshed like a flower after the rain.
“Did you know that I paid for our marriage license?” she asked.
I shook my head and smiled. “I didn’t have a clue.”
“Dan only had a hundred-dollar bill and they couldn’t break it. So I paid for the first thing we bought as a couple.”
As she looked out over the water, I could tell that she was back in that day, seeing D-daddy, flustered, I’m sure, an ounce of that temper flaring, her soothing it instantly and him responding with that jovial laugh that had been my favorite thing about him.
Lovey looked back at me. “It was the best investment I ever made.For two dollars, I got a husband, five daughters and someone to take care of me for the rest of my life.”
We both laughed. My phone rang. I looked at the screen, held it up and said, “Speaking of.”
“Hi, honey.”
“Hi, TL.”
I could tell instantly by his tone that something was off. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s fine,” he said briskly. “Just missing you. Y’all having fun?”
I held Lovey’s hand and smiled. “Oh, we’re having a blast. It’s chilly here but so, so beautiful. I’m sorry you couldn’t come.”
