She’d stayed over every weekend since we told her who she was, and joined us for dinner here every weeknight, tucking Harry into bed before going home to finish homework or working her shift at the café. She took it all in her stride, as I knew she would, but I gave too much credit to the old Ara. That girl could have taken on the world, moved mountains, but she had a lifetime to become that way. When she was a teenager, she was moody and spoilt and unmotivated. Not at all like this Ara. To be fair, this Ara didn’t have any of the training or worldly experience, and yet she outdid her old self in every department.
I was proud of her, now that I’d stepped back long enough to see her, and I realized, laying here in the dark by myself, that I needed to tell her that. It wouldn’t be enough to just come out with it, though. It would be through my actions that I let her know how I felt—how sorry I was that I pushed her away for the simple crime of being herself. Let her know that I could see her now, and that I was starting to realize just how amazing she was after only two days.
There were so many angles to her, so many things that she’d become now without the stress of such a tragic life. So much joy in her innocent heart and so much trust—trust that I had broken, repeatedly, with my cruelty. No one had ever been cruel to her in her short life, and I hated the fact that I taught her what it was.
My mission now wasn’t so much about getting my Ara back. It was about making this girl realize that I did still care for her. Even though she couldn’t remember the past, she was still a sweet girl, still talented and beautiful and always smiling. Still the mother of my children. The kids had both accepted her for who she was now, as did Vicki and Mike, even Em, but I seemed to be the last one to get on that train.
I put a shirt on and crept downstairs to the den, intent on waking her to hold a late-night conversation about nothing, like we used to, but the covers on the couch were folded neatly and the pillow placed on top, with no sign of her anywhere.
I checked the kitchen and the bathroom, quietly whispering her name, but she was gone. It was only when I realized she wasn’t here anywhere that I saw the note on the hall-stand by the front door.
Good morning, Harry, she wrote. I remembered I had some homework to finish so I went home after you fell asleep. I’ll be back after school tomorrow. Love, Mommy.
I scrunched the note up in a tight fist. She didn’t have homework. I knew for a fact that she’d finished all of her assignments early, because I heard her telling Cal on the phone. So where had she gone?
Outside, the hot spring air had left a dewy cloud of moisture over the grass, and fresh footprints marked her direction. I grabbed Mike’s brown garden boots from the doorstep on my way out and walked with quiet footfalls down the street. I couldn’t track her like I once could with my immortal senses, but I was pretty sure she did actually go home. Not to Cal’s. If she’d walked there, her footprints would have been headed in the other direction.
When I made it to her house, I expected it to be dark with everyone asleep, but the lights were on all through the house and as I reached the front door, I could hear voices. I knocked lightly, the door opening before the second rap.
“What are you doing here?” Falcon said harshly.
“Why did she leave?”
Ara appeared in the doorway then, her eyes red from crying. She took one look at me in my long-sleeve shirt, plaid bed shorts and garden boots, and laughed, stepping back to let me in.
“What happened?” I asked her, cupping both of her arms in firm but loving hands. “Why are you crying?”
She looked at Falcon, and he knew the look as well as I did.
“Are you sure you want me to go?” he asked. “I can stay and—”
“It’s okay,” she said.
He nodded, backing away, and then he vanished, the front door closing behind him. I looked at Ara. “What happened?”
“Mike offered me the spare room. He said he’d clear out all the junk and…”
“And?”
“And I wondered why he never had before.”
My brows inched closer in confusion. Good question. And why hadn’t I offered?
“He said that, since it looked like I was never getting back with you, I might as well move in there and make it my room,” she said, and started crying. “And I realized that I’d been kept on the couch like a temporary guest until I could learn to love you—”
“Aw, Ara.” I went to hold her, but she pushed me away.
“He figured I’d sleep in your room when I finally ‘came around’, and I just felt so unwelcome—”
“Ara, please.” I moved in to hold her again, but she shook her head, walking away from me.
“These people used to love me,” she said. “They were once my best friends, and now they can’t love me unless I love you—”
“Please don’t say that,” I said, because it hurt to hear it out loud, knowing it was true. We had all just expected that she would fall for me again when she knew about our past. None of us had been prepared for an Ara that didn’t love me. None of us wanted that Ara. She was right. We had shut her out. We had been unkind to her. We had formed a posse of sorts and told her she wasn’t in the club unless she changed her heart. And I was so sorry for that now. So sorry it had gotten to the point where she noticed—where she felt unloved. I still loved her. The old version and this one. In fact, this one was more humble and forgiving, sweeter in a lot of ways and, while she had less compassion, it was not to the detriment of others but more to the salvation of herself. I wanted to tell her that, but it really was too late. She was hurt. Deeply. And there was no apologizing for it now.
I sat down on the lounge under the window and kept my eyes on her. She looked up from her feet after a while, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, and she smiled.
I smiled back, patting the seat next to me. As deeply as she was hurt, it was clear she wanted resolution. She didn’t want to feel like this any more than I wanted to let her.
As she sat down, I tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was, “Hi.”
Ara laughed through her nose, wiping it on her hand after. “Hi.”
“I’m David.” I put my hand out to shake hers.
She rubbed the tears and snot off on her jeans and then put hers in mine, not sure what I was doing. “Ara.”
“Nice to meet you.”
As I released her, her face pulled in amused confusion. “What are you doing, David?”
“Oh, I’m just sitting, you know—thought I’d go for a nice midnight walk in ridiculous clothing—”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, but laughed anyway.
“I know.” I put one arm around her, making her seize up like a piece of stone, my other hand on hers, cupping it tightly. “I don’t want a life of regrets, Ara. I lost someone very dear to me, and I… in fact, all of us have been taking that out on you. But even though you are her in some ways, in many more you’re…” I didn’t want to say ‘not’ because that wasn’t it. She was Ara, but she was also… “You’re also you.”
She smiled, her shoulders going back slightly as she opened up to me.
“And I’m not the man Ara married either. This human version of me…” I thought about all the crying and the misery, and the abuse. “She wouldn’t like me. And she wouldn’t like the way I’ve been treating you.”
Ara laughed then, looking so much like my Ara that it hurt.
“I don’t want to sit here apologizing for the past all night, because, frankly, I’m ashamed of it and I just want to move on—let it all blow in the wind.”
She nodded, looking down.
“But I am sorry,” I added. “And I want to start fresh—as me and you. Not Ara and David.”
Her eyes moved up to meet mine, crushing my heart with memories passed. I shut them all away and saw her for her, seeing me for me through the reflection of her eyes. I looked different too, and the truth was, I had changed. So had she. If we couldn’t love each other changed then we didn’t deserve to find what we had before.
“I can’t promise things will be smooth,” I said, pulling her hand until she leaned into me, her head on my shoulder, “but I can promise you that I’ll be nice, and I’ll stop pretending you’re my wife and start getting to know you.”
“I feel like I’ve heard this before.” She sat up. “It’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”
“It won’t.” I softly touched her cheek, running my thumb down to the corner of her pretty lip before pulling my hand away. “Because what I saw in front of me before was the woman I’ve known for over twenty years. And what I see now, with eyes as clear as the day, is a girl that’s barely a year old, with a heart just as big and a soul that needs time and space to grow and become something else. You’re in a state of metamorphosis, Ara,” I said, and as the words came out, I thought back to a moment in our past—by the lake, when I likened her to the butterfly spending its life in the shadows until it broke free of its cocoon and became what it was always supposed to be. And it was such a profound realization that I couldn’t speak.
“What?” she said.
“You’re just becoming the person you were always meant to be—before life got in the way.”
Our eyes locked to each other’s, and suddenly, in the place where I’d seen pain and sadness, I could finally see light, hope. Without this curse, I wouldn’t love her like I did before. She wasn’t the same girl. But I knew now that I could fall so easily for this one, and my Ara wouldn’t feel betrayed by that, as I guess I’d thought all along. I’d been so blinded by the need to have her by my side again that I missed the fact that she was standing right here all long. But with wings. Beautiful bright blue wings that would carry her away if I didn’t hold onto her tightly and tell her she was everything I could ever have wanted and more.
But damage had been done. She wouldn’t accept my love now as easily as she would earlier this year. She would, however, accept my friendship—my unending and unconditional friendship.
I smiled, knowing exactly how to get that point across.
She looked down at my hand as I offered my pinkie. “What’s that?”
“A finger,” I noted, wiggling it.
“And why are you aiming it at me?”
I took her hand and picked out her skinny little pinkie from the tight fist, wrapping mine over it. “This is a pinkie promise, and it’s not like any other promise.”
“Why?”
“Because if you break it, the magic of the universe makes your pinkie fall off.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I laughed, loving her sweet naivety. “So I promise you, Ara-Rose, that I will be your friend from now on, no matter who you are, who you want to be, or who you fall in love with.”
She looked down at the linked pinkies. “Even if I don’t fall in love with you?”
“Even then. And we’ll just have to be best friends forever,” I promised, meaning it for the first time. “We’re family, you and me. By marriage once before but, more importantly, by the blood we combined into those two amazing kids of ours. And when they grow up and don’t want to hang out with us anymore, we’ll be bound by our past, our friendship, and our new promise.” I made a point of shaking the pinkies. “No matter what. And if I ever forget that, may my pinkie fall off and get eaten by a shark.”
She laughed, wiping tears away that I hadn’t seen until now. Then, as I was about to tell her to pack some stuff and move it into the spare room, she broke away from the promise and threw her arms around my neck. I leaned right into the hug, not holding my wife this time but the sweet girl I met in February this year. She needed to be held more than I’d needed to hold her back then. I thought I was in the dark after losing her, but the shadow I’d cast on her life lately was far darker and a lot colder.
She held me like she’d never been hugged before, and I hugged her back as deeply as I was sorry for all that I had done to her.
“David?” she said, her small voice muffled in my shoulder.
“Yeah.” I pulled back, thinking I was squeezing her too tight.
“Can you help me with something?”
“Sure. Anything.”
She grinned, looking so much like a child that I felt even worse for the way I’d treated her lately, and even worse about what we did in the closet.
Then she took my hand and stood up. “Come up to my room.”