Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I hand it over and she grins, setting the box on the bed and looking at the card on the front, which has her name upon it, written in Christine’s handwriting.
“Where are Christine and Danny?” There’s a hint of a pout in it. A slight worry or disappointment perhaps at the fact that they’re not here with me, awakening her on her very special day. A very special day made even more special than all the other special days she’s enjoyed over the years because of what has been promised to her.
“They’re about. Danny had his dawn yoga on the beach and Christine wanted to wish you happy birthday with this.” I nod at the box with the sealed card. They’ll be here when we get back tonight.
“What’s Lizzy doing?” She seems suddenly nervous, like she’s having anxiety over what we’ve discussed and now wants to have buffers about in the event it proves more than she’s prepared herself for.
“Lizzy’s around.”
“Maybe she wants to come with us?”
“No. She’s still… We agreed that when you turned sixteen I’d tell you everything. Danny and Christine want to extend that same rule to Liz. This is your day to know all. Hers will come soon enough. Go ahead, read your card. Open your gift.”
She nibbles at her lip, unsure.
“We don’t have to—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“No. I want to… I want to.”
I nod, grin, and wait.
She opens the card first. I have no idea what’s written in it. Christine didn’t share it with me and I didn’t ask to see.
I watch Alexandria’s face as she reads. It starts worried, turns quickly to amusement; she laughs once, again, then I can see tears start to form around the edges of her eyes. She finishes reading it, puts the card back in its envelope, and tucks it away in her nightstand, where it will stay until and unless she ever decides to share it.
Then she starts to carefully peel open the wrapping paper. She’s cautious that way with everything. No rampant tearing into a thing just to see what’s inside. She approaches everything with a certain kind of measured caution. So very much like Danny in that way.
Once she has the wrapping paper pulled off and folded neatly to the side, she opens the box and, for the first time in over twenty years, I see it.
The yellow dress.
As we walk along the edge of the water, she waves to Danny, sitting on the beach, post-yoga, digging his toes in the sand. I look over at him as well, and though I’d never be inclined to call Danny Fortnight “a most happy fellow,” he seems to be at least content at the moment. I can only imagine what’s going through his mind, but I have to assume it’s some version of what’s going through my own.
His is very likely different than mine, but it is my version that Andra will hear today because I am the one, we all agreed, who should share it with her. She spins, showing off the dress that Christine gifted her, and Danny smiles, then just as quickly tries to pretend he didn’t. It’s a silly game. But we three know as well as anyone alive that if you are given the time and space to play a silly game… seize it.
I wave at him also, a gesture intended to signal We’ll see you later, and he waves back in kind, then closes his eyes and turns his face to the sun.
… LATER.
As we sit on the edge of the bluff, cool sea breeze blowing around us and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below, I see Andra’s curiosity, which has been on display since this morning, turn to brow-furrowing discontent.
“So, Christine was pregnant before…?” she says.
Prior, as we’ve walked and talked, and sat and talked, she’s gone from amusement to amazement to wonder to disbelief as I’ve recounted the tale of Alec, Christine, and Danny, the people she knows as her parents.
She has always known that her mother passed away and that I am her biological father and not Lizzy’s and that Lizzy is the progeny of Danny and Christine and I am her parent only by virtue of association, and she has never questioned it or found it odd. She nor Lizzy. Why should they? It is their truth. Their reality.
But on this, Andra’s sixteenth birthday, it is the first time she has been given the whole story. (And, to be sure, not the whole whole story. Many of the details need not be shared and many other of the details are surely lost to the mists of forgotten time anyway, but she is receiving as complete a picture as the three of us deemed appropriate.)
Today, she has heard about the childhood Christine and Danny had and how they found each other and escaped, and she looked sad but hopeful.