Page 31 of Ten Years and Then…
“Nice job! We had a fireplace in the apartment we lived in when I was in grade school, but my dad could never get it going.” She turned to Daniel, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I learned every curse word there is by the time I was seven, from him yelling at that stupid fireplace.”
“Tell my Dad what you just said,” Daniel said out loud. “It’ll make him feel better.”
Nora had no idea what that could mean, but she did as her boyfriend asked, and—Daniel was right—his father shook his head and grinned. “This one here,” he reached over and ruffled Daniel’s hair, “learned them all from me and my neighbor across the street watching the Giants. We thought they couldn’t hear us—Daniel and his kids—until Mrs. Parlato down the street heard the three of them cursing up a storm walking to school one morning and she ran over here to complain. I never saw an old woman run that fast in my life. And I couldn’t even punish Daniel, because he didn’t have any idea what any of the words meant.”
That was too cute. Nora could picture little first grade Daniel saying the foulest language to his little friends with a big smile on his face.
“Dad! She’s never going to let me live that down now.”
“You’re the one who made me tell her the story,” his father said. And just like that, she felt her shoulders relax, her breath come more easily. All the tension she’d been feeling drained right out of the room.
Daniel, two hours later
It had gone better than Daniel had dared hope. Nora had been a little uncomfortable at first, but she relaxed when Dad told the story about inadvertently teaching him how to curse. Everything had been easier after that. And both his parents seemed to really like her.
How could they not? What was there not to like?
His mother even invited her to Christmas dinner on Saturday. “It’ll be a full house,” she’d said. “Lisa’s coming with her roommate, and my sister, and Tony’s brother and his wife and the Barnabys across the street. Everyone’ll be too busy arguing over whose gravy is best to interrogate you like we did tonight. So you can just come and enjoy yourself, Nora.”
Nora had gratefully accepted.
After dessert and coffee, Daniel drove Nora back to the train station. The only thing she’d asked him on the way there was, “You invite your neighbors to Christmas dinner?”
He sighed. “Mrs. Barnaby died a couple of years ago. Right before Jane and George—they’re the ones Dad taught to curse along with me—right before they went away to college. She was in a wreck. It was a drunk driver.”
Even now, two years later, he shuddered. It could have been his Mom, or Dad or his sister. Or him. It was just dumb luck that it had been Mrs. Barnaby at the wrong intersection that morning.
“That’s horrible,” Nora whispered. He felt her arm slipping around him as he pulled into the parking lot.
“Yeah. The whole street looks after them now. Somebody invites them for every holiday. Everybody knows everybody around here. We all look out for each other, you know?”
Nora made a quiet, pained sound he hadn’t heard from her before. Then, after a moment, “I wish I knew that. Is that how you learned—I don’t know, how to be how you are? How to care about me?”
He pulled into a parking space, turned off the car, and leaned over to hug her. “Maybe,” he said. “But I think even if I grew up somewhere else, I would have known how to care about you. I look at you, and there’s nothing I want to do except make you happy.”
She kissed him, and he kissed her back, and in moments the windows began to fog. If she touched him now—really touched him—they’d end up in the backseat, uncomfortable seatbelt buckle or not.
But she didn’t. Her willpower held. So did his.
“Daniel, I wish …”
“So do I.”
Thank God it was freezing out. It was a good distraction from what they both wanted so desperately.
He walked her down the stairs, this time in front of her. “Same logic, right?” she teased. “I fall, you cushion my landing?”
“Something like that,”
They didn’t talk for a while after that. They just stood there on the platform, wrapped in each other’s arms, until the train arrived.
“I’ll call you when I get back to Rachel’s apartment,” she said. “Just so you know I’m safe. And—let’s do something tomorrow. You’re the native New Yorker, your call.”
She stepped inside the train, blew him a kiss before the doors shut and he jogged down the platform, waving at her until she disappeared from view.
Chapter 10
Christmas Break, Part 3—Manhattan, NY/Bronx, NY
