He found his way back up to the apartment. If he could get in this easily, he was going to have a word with Annika about her personal security. He found the door he wanted and knocked before he lost his nerve. “Annika. It’s Daniel.”
She cracked open the door and peeked out, and just the sight of those brown eyes calmed his breathing some. She closed the door and unlatched the chain, and it seemed a year before Daniel could see her eyes again.
“Hey... Daniel.” She eyed him with trepidation as he walked past her as if he lived there.
“Can I have two glasses, please?” He was brusque and he knew it, but his breath was short and his mind would not settle.
She opened a cabinet, pulled out two short tumblers and set them in front of him. He set down his helmet as the weight of her gaze bore through him. Undaunted, he opened the bourbon and poured them each two fingers.
“What’s going on, Daniel?” There was no anger in her voice, but her tone demanded an answer.
He raised his glass to her and waited until she did the same. He took a gulp of his bourbon and enjoyed the burn as it flowed through his body and warmed him. Annika’s mouth gaped open.
“Sheila’s having another baby.” He said it as if that explained everything, then turned to examine his surroundings. They were standing between her small kitchen and the dining area, the bourbon bottle resting on the high granite countertop that was large enough to serve as a breakfast bar. The small dining room was open to the adjoining family room. In the back of the family room, an open door led to a bedroom. A small statue of Ganesha stood on the counter.Remover of obstacles, ha.Obstacles were never removed—only added.
Annika sipped her drink. “Your ex-wife is having a baby, so you’re drinking?” She narrowed her eyes, her gaze penetrating. “Are you still in love with her?”
“No.” He had the presence of mind to catch the worry in her voice. “That’s not the problem.”
“Okay, Daniel. What’s the problem?”
He gulped down his drink, poured another. Some might call it liquid courage, but it was never that for him. It was more like liquid memories. His muscles relaxed. Even his mind calmed a bit. He focused on those brown eyes as if they were his lifeline. Where to begin? “She’s having a replacement baby.”
Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head, confused. “Replacement?”
Finally, he was ready to tell her everything. “Sheila’s new baby is going to replace the child we had.” He wasn’t making any sense to Annika, he knew it, but how did you tell someone that you had a beautiful girl at one time, but now you didn’t?
“You had a child...” Her voice drifted off, and then her eyes met his, and she gasped. Her next words were barely a whisper. “Daniel, what happened toyour—”
“Sara.” However softly he spoke her name, it was still too loud for him. “She was five.”
“Was?” She walked toward him and stopped just two steps from him. Tears shone in her eyes. “Sara.” Her breath hitched.
At the sound of his daughter’s name on her breath, the sound of her surprise and sorrow, tears prickled at his nose. Tears he had never allowed before blurred his vision and clogged his throat.
“Beautiful name.”
Daniel nodded slowly. If he moved too fast, he would lose his mind. A tear escaped, falling directly to the floor as if even his own tears needed to escape his sorrow. He took another gulp of his bourbon and spoke. His first words had to fight the backlog of emotion in his throat. “She had curly brown hair and blue eyes, and she loved school.”
Annika smiled through her tears. “She looked like Sheila?”
He nodded, his mouth automatically forming a frown. “Except when she smiled.”
Annika nodded, knowledge in her eyes. “The dimples.”
“Yeah.” He could barely even whisper. Her smile had been a miniature version of his from the start. Everyone had commented on it. He had thrilled in seeing that little piece of him in another human being. In the end, it was the thing that he had come to avoid.
“She, uh...she had made a card for her teacher and wanted to go to school early to give it to her. Sheila said no, but I felt bad because the night before I had played only one song for her on the piano, instead of two, because I was tired.” Self-loathing overwhelmed him as it did when he thought of that second song. “I was such an ass. It would’ve taken three minutes to play that damn song, then I wouldn’t have felt guilty, and then...” He polished off his bourbon.
A sound like a laugh escaped him, but it was mean. “So, I took her.” Nausea flooded him at the memory. Sara had hopped out of the car and grabbed his hand. Her tiny five-year-old-little-girl voice clear as if she were standing in front of him.
Thanks to the bourbon.
“Thank you, Daddy. Ms. Groller is going to love this card. She’s the best teacher I ever had. I love her almost as much as I love you and Mommy.”
The air had been warm that day. It was close to the end of the school year, so Sara had on her favorite blue dress with small white dots and flowers. Daniel had left the house in his blue scrubs. There must have been lavender growing nearby, because Sara had commented on the pretty smell, but Daniel had found it cloying.
She had taken his hand in hers and smiled up at him as they walked up to the doors to be buzzed in. He remembered thinking that her hands were sticky again, and that no matter how many times a day he washed her hands, they always seemed to be sticky.
