“You were going to teach me how to make your chicken curry. Guess it’s too late now.”
“I’ll invite you over next time I make it.”
“Okay.” He tossed a broken frame into the discard box. “Actually I was thinking of buying another house. Someplace with a yard.”
“Another house?” she repeated, looking a bit shocked.
“Did you think I was going to live above the pub forever? It was only a stopgap.” He had the craziest urge to ask her again to marry him. But he tamped that down. Why subject himself to another rejection?
“I—I didn’t think about it at all. It’s nothing to me.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
She straightened. “What do you mean?”
He walked over to her and tweaked a lock of her hair. Somehow they’d gone from being intimate to standoffish, and he didn’t know how to get back to closeness. So he resorted to teasing.
“You’re jealous,” he said, and her eyes widened. “You’d love to have a garden again. To grow your plants and to let Billy play outside in the grass.”
“You’re wrong. I’m over gardening. An apartment is so much less work.” She turned away and started pulling down the horse brasses a friend of his father’s had brought back from England once upon a time. “If you had a yard, a fenced backyard, somewhere safe, it would be good for Billy...when he visits you.”
She was over gardening. Just like he was over football because of the association with that awful spring day nearly three years ago. Their biggest interests—besides Latin dancing—had been destroyed, along with Holly. It was wrong. He was tired of living in limbo.
He crossed the faded crimson carpet to the corkboard to pick out his favorite photo of Holly, one of him holding her as a baby. With a fingertip he traced the outline of his daughter’s tiny face. So small. He closed his eyes and was enveloped by the memory of her soft, soft skin and her sweet baby smell. He could hear her giggle, and the way she called, “Daddy!” when he came through the door at night.
Too many times he’d given her horsey rides and piggybacks then handed her off to Emma for the bath or the feeding. Emma should have let him do more. He should have insisted. Until Billy, he hadn’t realized how much bonding came from mundane acts of physical caring.
Billy was the one who mattered now. Yet to pretend Holly had never existed in the hopes that he could forget the grief and pain clearly wasn’t working and it dishonored her memory.
He carried the baby photo of Holly over to Emma. “Don’t you think Holly and Billy look a lot alike, even though she had your coloring?”
Emma stiffened. She glanced at the photo, looked at him, and then slowly reached out to take it. Her fingers trembled as she held it.
Darcy slid his arm around her shoulders and drew her in close. “Just a little, about the eyes?” He heard her breathe. Then she sniffed. He tightened his hold.
“Sh-she was so beautiful.”
“She was an angel.”
“Oh, Darcy.” Emma turned her face into his chest with a sob. “I miss her so much.”
“I do, too.” His other arm wrapped Emma and drew her in to hold her tightly. His tears spilled into her hair as she wept in his arms.
Grieving together was so simple, so basic and necessary to the healing process, yet they’d never done it. It was his fault. Guilt and recriminations had gotten in the way. And he’d never been brave enough to face the pain.
“I wish I’d been able to talk about her,” he murmured into Emma’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
She drew in a ragged breath. “I know it hurts.”
He went on holding her for a long time after both their tears had dried. His chest ached with the sadness, with Emma’s pain, with the loss of his daughter. But he felt more at peace, as if he’d moved out of that limbo state and could look forward and back instead of peering blindly through the fog.
“Come over here and sit down.” He pulled Emma to a table and brought over the stack of photos of Holly. “Let’s look at these together. It might be less painful.”
Emma nodded tearfully. She took the top photo. “I remember this day. It was really hot and her ice cream melted before she could eat it.”
“She was so funny, trying to lick it off her elbow.”
“The neighbor’s dog got most of the ice cream, as I recall.” She