“Chris was—” Danika’s cheeks flare red.
“Bella, slow down on the eating,” Kim says, as much to cover Danika’s gaffe as to stop her daughter choking. “There’s plenty for all of us.” Chris ate meat; that was doubtless what Danika was going to say.
Bella is still swallowing the first sandwich as she reaches for the second. “We’ve got lots to do. When are we going to the beach?”
“In an hour,” Kim says, and to Danika, “We can walk there.”
Danika’s barely touched her sandwiches. She takes tiny bites and swallows with seeming difficulty. She’s also quiet. Thinking about Chris, no doubt, but maybe she’s also thinking of the photos she’s just seen.
Kim slows her eating to match Danika.
Cami matches Bella sandwich for sandwich, and they both reach for their third at the same time.
“Take some salad, please, Bella,” Kim says.
Cami slides her mother a sideways glance and takes some, too, but Danika isn’t paying attention.
Cami eats a couple of mouthfuls, and the rest stays on her plate.
Bella shuffles in her seat.“Can we get down?”
That raises a smile from Danika. “Such a cute expression. Like you’re in a highchair.”
“My mother’s from England,” Kim says. “I got it from her, and Bella got it from me.”
“Tell her what you got from Grandpa,” Bella says with a giggle.
“Not for your ears. I don’t know how you know that.” To Danika, Kim says, “Hungarian swear words. Loud and colourful.”
The girls disappear, and Taylor Swift starts up loudly from Bella’s room.
“Are you okay?” Kim says the words softly. She knows Danika’s not okay; it’s there in her rigid posture and faraway eyes. “I’m sorry. I should have closed my bedroom door. Seeing those photos must have been a shock.”
“It was,” Danika says. “But I think I needed it. I’ve been spinning tales for myself as to why…why the situation happened. Most of them are to do with Chris making a terrible mistake and being an honourable man. They last about five minutes. Then I’m back to anger directed at him mainly, but partly at you. Seeing the photos… Well, I’d accepted the shades of grey in this situation. Me, Chris, you. The girls. But the photos, well, they brought in the colour. The colours of love, rainbow colours. It all came alive. Became real. If I were at home, on the couch, with a glass of wine watching this as a TV drama, I think I’d see both sides. I’d have sympathy for both women.” She gulps her water and sets the glass down empty.
Rather than stare at her across the table with what must likely be an annoying fixed expression of sympathy, Kim rises and clears the plates. She covers the remaining sandwiches and puts them in the fridge, scrapes the unwanted salad into the bin, and stacks the dishwasher. With her back to Danika, she says, “I’m not pushing, and I don’t know if this would make it worse or better, but I have lots more photos. And I’d like to see some of yours—if you’re willing.”
The silence behind her hums with hurt. Then Danika says, “I’d like that. But not now, not with Cami here.” She takes adeep breath. “Do you have an evening free during the week? My mum can take Cami for the night, if you have someone for Bella. Would you like to come to my place? Have dinner, a couple of glasses of wine? We can look at photos—yours and mine—and maybe start to figure a way through this mess.”
Kim considers. Suze will take Bella for a sleepover. Jorie will be delighted. The last week has been Cami this and Cami that, and Kim’s caught the hurt in Jorie’s eyes.
“I can do that. Let me check with my friend and get back to you.”
Danika’s smile is less fixed, more free than at any time since she walked in the door. “I’d like that. Any day except Tuesdays.”
Kim nods. Already the butterflies are trembling in her stomach. Her nerves are jumping, although why, she’s not sure. It’s more than spending the evening with Danika—she’s already done the hard yards on that. It’s more that she doesn’t know where they will go with this…relationship, she supposes. For that’s what it will be, in some form or the other, because of their daughters.
If there ever was a script for this, it’s been well and truly burned.
She’s winging it.
Chapter Eleven
Danika
The house is echoey and empty without Cami. Shirley came down and swooped her up with promises of Disney movies, pizza, and ice cream, which was enough to distract Cami from her questioning about what Danika was going todofor an entire night while she was gone.
Danika doesn’t exactly know.
