Page 64 of Shifting Gears

“At the time, I wanted to. I was probably better off with Carol and Sarah, but…it didn’t really matter. I didn’t have much choice.”

Dani sounds so heartbreakingly sad that, for a moment, Nora wonders how difficult it would be to send someone to Toronto to drag this Garreth to Riverwalk by his ear.

“Have you ever thought about getting in touch with him again?” Nora prompts, aware that this moment of openness won’t last forever. “Getting some closure?”

Dani’s gaze is distant as she looks out sideways at the treeline on the horizon. “I’d just get in the way of his life. He’s happy, I think. I don’t want to bring up stuff he’d rather forget.”

“You mean his mistakes? Why are his feelings more important than yours?”

Dani doesn’t answer, but a deep furrow appears in her brow.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to push you,” Nora says quickly.

“No, you’re right. Ever since he left, I worry that I’m losing them,” Dani whispers against Nora’s skin, as if she’s sharing a deep secret that she can’t trust to the open air. “My parents. That if I don’t keep talking about them with someone, they’ll disappear forever like they never existed. I’ll lose that part of myself.”

The fear in Dani’s voice strikes a chord in Nora. She can remember feeling it, too when her mother passed, but soon enough that instinct was overpowered by pure survival in a house where every facial expression was scrutinized by the series of strange women her father tried to slot into the role of mother. The few details she could hold onto had gradually gotten blurrier until they’d disappeared entirely.

“You can talk about them to me,” Nora replies softly. “I can tell you from experience that it’s…surprisingly easy for things to slip away.”

Dani’s hand moves to anchor at Nora’s hip. She grips it like it’s her tether to the earth. “Do you remember anything about her at all?”

Nora’s usual answer is a simple no. She doesn’t like thinking about the past when she can look to the future instead. But lying here with Dani, staring up at the wide blue sky, Nora tries to remember.

“She had dark hair,” Nora says finally. A fuzzy memory swims in her mind, half formed. “And eyes like mine. My father always said we looked alike.” Dani’s hand shifts a little, a thumb rubbing at Nora’s hip bone, and it settles her. “I think that bothered him. Whenever I try to remember more, it’s just…shadows. Moments.”

“Like?” Dani asks. Her hand spreads out, moving from Nora’s hip to splay out against her sternum. The weight of it somehow makes it easier to speak.

Nora takes a breath, trying to conjure one of the hazy flashes she can recall. “I remember a vacation house. I don’t know where. Somewhere on the coast, I think? And I don’t remember my father being there.”

Nora puts a hand over Dani’s to keep it in place. The more she talks, the more solid the memory becomes. Rustic stone walls and a warm kitchen. A dark-haired woman kneading dough. A feeling of safety.

“It rained a lot,” Nora says; it’s almost a whisper. “I remember sitting at a big red table and my mother making bread.”

Dani hums. “That sounds nice.”

“It’d be nicer if I could remember her face.”

“Did the bread taste good?”

It takes a moment to process the question, but Dani’s question blasts away the dark tendrils that were starting to curl around Nora’s mood.

“Yes,” Nora says, the memory of warm bread and sweet marmalade getting sharper like a camera lens struggling to find focus. A loving hand on her back, and a crackling record player. “I think it did.”

Dani nods, as if that fact is incredibly important to her.

A hot, prickling sensation tingles behind Nora’s eyes, and she clears her throat and sits up before it can get out of hand. It dislodges Dani from her place on Nora’s chest, and she rolls off with a cute disgruntled noise. Nora grabs the towel she’d been lying on, draping it over her shoulders. “We should probably go inside before I get sunburnt in places I’d rather not mention.”

Nora does get sunburned, but Dani takes special care to rub aloe on her tender skin every hour in apology.

Chapter 15

Dani seems determined to provideNora with every experience that Riverwalk and the surrounding area has to offer before the summer ends.

She takes Nora bowling with Mila and Ryan, wearing the silliest pair of shoes the bowling alley has to offer and playing intentionally badly to make sure Nora doesn’t come dead last her first time. She takes Nora fishing, which amounts to the two of them making out in a rickety aluminum boat for most of an afternoon without making a single catch. And she shows Nora the hilarity of going to bingo night with the sole intent of watching senior citizens threaten to physically fight each other over a five-by-five piece of cardstock.

And to top off the most enjoyable July Nora has ever had, Dani takes her to the drive-in.

“I genuinely thought that these didn’t exist anymore,” Nora says incredulously as Dani pays their eight dollars each and steers her truck toward screen three. “I’ve only ever seen them in old movies.”

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