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There was a crack in the steely hatred she felt for Linnea, but she wasn’t about to let Taylor intrude upon Analise’s happiness. “If you’re wondering about Isa—don’t. She’s fine. She decided to move on after what you did to her.”

He drilled a hard, unforgiving stare into her, and slowly folded the Dala horse, methodically creasing each edge. He lowered his eyes and said quietly, “Please, don’t wait long. Isa has my number when you’re ready.” He turned and left.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Analise

Analise lay in bed that evening, her eyes refusing to close, listening to Dany brush his teeth in the bathroom. She stared at the dresser opposite the bed, knowing inside the top drawer a tiny perfume sample that still belonged to Dany’s late wife remained tucked inside. Since moving in here three months ago, she’d done nothing to redecorate their bedroom, to remove traces of Sofia.

Dany climbed onto the bed, folding his length along her body. He pressed a minty kiss in her hair, and Analise wondered if he compared her to his first love. Did he remember holding Sofia the same way when she was dying?

Taylor’s mom is dying.

Dany slipped his hand under her shirt and she didn’t respond.

He removed it. “What’s bothering you?” he nudged. “Wedding stuff⁠—?”

“No,” she interrupted. “No, it’s not that,” she said, perhaps too quickly to convince herself.

“Is Pen stressing you out?”

“Pen is always stressing me out,” she grumbled.

Dany propped his elbow and cradled his head to look down at her. “I was thinking . . . I wanted to bring this up after we were married, but I don’t see why I can’t mention it now.”

She traced the dark crinkles around his eyes, lines caused by hours of squinting in the sun thanks to his constant misplacement of sunglasses.

“What if I adopted Penelope?”

Analise turned her head away and dug her cheek onto the pillow. There was a time she would’ve said yes without pause, at the promise of a lifted burden from being a single mother. She had Ulla, but it didn’t feel the same, and Dany understood that sinking feeling of doing it all wrong. He was offering her a gift. She linked her hand through his calloused one and kissed it, yet found herself saying, “Let’s ask Penelope.”

“Sure,” he responded, “of course.”

Her thoughts returned over and again to Taylor. She looked at Dany’s hand inside hers. It felt nothing like Taylor’s from earlier that morning. Not like reconnected wires. She closed her eyes and tried to banish him.

After hours of tossing, Analise flung aside the bedcovers and went to her daughter’s bedroom. She glanced around it in the dark. The girls wanted to share a room, but Analise had no clue how that would work, given Julia’s taste for anything the color of Pepto-Bismol and Penelope’s mix of gothic and sporty. They compromised by redecorating the entire room in Harry Potter, except Julia was Gryffindor and Penelope was Ravenclaw.

Even in sleep, neither girl let go of their personality. Julia was in a serene ball next to Penelope’s wild disarray of hair and limbs.

She marveled at her daughter’s beauty, even more so when she slept because she was at peace, retreating back to innocence, her face not twisted up with hormonal passions. Analise admired the thick blonde strands, the wisps of baby hairs that still grew and curled around her heart-shaped face, her impossibly long eyelashes, an endless subject of awe from Dany’s older sisters. She traced her daughter’s bone structure with a finger, finding the groove of her “butt” chin, as Penelope so often complained, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. Such beauty couldn’t have come from ugliness and pain. Or maybe Penelope was a testament that beauty could still be born from it.

Analise clicked the door shut and padded back to the bedroom where Dany breathed heavily through his mouth, deep in slumber. Analise quietly opened the closet and stared at her wedding gown. With a quick backward glance at Dany, she took it out, trailed it to the bathroom, and closed the door.

The slide of the zipper down the garment bag seemed abnormally loud in the still night. It was a used gown, found at a tiny vintage boutique in Minneapolis amongst 1980s prom dresses and tacky formal garb. Not wanting to spend a lot of money, it felt serendipitous—because this dress was the one. The one she wore in her recurring dream. The dream that came to her so often, the dream she’d linger inside while awake. When she felt all out of sorts, it would comfort her.

As she held the gown up to her body and looked in the mirror, the dream became reality. A vision. A memory? The woman staring back aged in reverse. Her eyes grew lush with mascara, her lips filled with gloss, and her hair formed into styled curls with a crown pinned atop. She smoothed her hands over the V-neck bodice. Someone else appeared in the mirror. A king? He, too, wore a crown. And he kissed her. The kind of kiss felt beyond her lips, tapping into a deep well of desire.

The world within the mirror shifted. Analise’s stomach lurched, and her reflection hurtled upon her. She sunk to the ground, stifling a cry.

Disoriented, but working quickly to get off the bathroom floor, Analise stuffed the gown in its garment bag and returned it to the closet. Her breaths came in muffled chokes as she took flight down the stairs and found her purse. And Taylor’s number. Her mind dizzied with the possibilities, the potential consequences of her next decision.

With her phone and purse in hand, she retrieved her coat, shoes, and car keys. When she stepped outside, the wind pushed through the leaves, sending them skittering across the sidewalk and street. Once inside the Pontiac, she dialed his number.

Taylor answered on the first ring.

It was drizzling when she drove into the hotel lot at 4:15 a.m. The windshield wipers slapped every few seconds. Analise parked next to his silver Audi. Her pulse hammered into her throat.

Taylor got out of his car and dashed into the passenger side of the Pontiac. Analise couldn’t look at him, at his expectant eyes. Her first thought was to apologize, but she’d already done that, profusely, over the phone when she called, waiting for some confirmation that she was irrational, and that he was irritated at being woken up at such a bizarre hour.