I left, my mind still reeling with the information she’d given me.  I believed her that she’d find some way to make me pay if she saw me again, but that wasn’t why I left.  If Danika had wanted me there, I would have stayed with her, not matter what.  No one could have kept me away this side of death.  But that was the problem.  She didn’t want me there.  She’d been very clear about that.  I wasn’t good for her.  She could do better, and she finally saw it that way.

I went to Dean’s funeral.  I seethed through the entire thing.  I’d lost people, close people, but never had I lost someone and realized that I loathed them.  I should have felt bad, but I wasn’t even sorry he was dead.  In fact, the only use I would have for an alive Dean after what I knew he’d done was to kill him with my own hands.

Even when he’d pissed me off, I’d still trusted him not to do something like that.  It was a hard pill to swallow; how misplaced my trust had been.

If he was capable of drugging Danika and doing God knows whatever he’d been planning, what else had he done?  It was downright devious, outright evil, what he’d done.  If it had been anyone but an incensed Bev who had told me about it, I wouldn’t have believed them.  She had no reason to make a thing like that up, and she was not a woman that dealt in misinformation.

I spent a week in pure hell, torturing myself with regrets, dosing myself liberally with any drug at hand.

Seven days after I saw Danika in the hospital, I checked myself into rehab.

DANIKA

They gave me details.  So many pointless details about loss of cartilage and muscle tissue.  Painful details about irreparable damage to my uterus.  Endless details about surgery and physical therapy.  The gist of it was:  I was now a cripple, and I could never have children.  My response to that reality;  I will not let this define me.  So help me God, I won’t even let it slow me down.  I wasn’t a dancer anymore, and I would never get to grow a child inside of me.  Those were facts.  I refused to cry about it, or if I did, to even so much as acknowledge those fucking useless tears.  I would find something else to define me.  I just had to figure out what.

Bev took time off work to take care of me.  I was shocked, as I’d never known her to take more than a week of vacation from work before.  But she took nearly a full month off for me.

She helped me around the house, kept me company, kept me sane.

“Why are you so good to me?” I asked her at one point.  “Why have you always been so good to me?  I’m such a burden to you, and you’ve done so much to help me.  We both know I can never repay all of your kindness.”

Bev gave me the saddest smile, and one of her soft hands moved, as though in slow motion, to stroke over my hair.  “Oh, you poor girl.  Don’t you know?”

I blinked at her and shook my head, completely lost.  “Know what?” I asked her.

“You were never a burden, Danika, and this isn’t kindness.”

I shook my head at her again, my brow furrowing in confusion.  “If it’s not kindness, then what is it?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and the look on her face made my heart turn slowly in my chest.  “My dear, this is what’s called family.”

I was completely undone by that.  I began to sob, the sounds loud and harsh and broken.  She just embraced me, murmuring soothing words into my ear, her soft voice filled with tears.

Family, I thought, absolutely floored by the thought.  Family, I realized, my mind flashing back through the years of Bev and Jerry’s unfaltering generosity, their unfailing kindness.  Family.

The thing I had yearned for had been mine without me ever having to ask.  It was just there, through better or worse.

Family.

DANIKA

A few months after the accident, I got a call from my sister.

She was in labor.

I drove for five hours and made it to her just in time for the delivery.

We’d been talking on the phone and corresponding via email.  I’d even gone out to see her a few times, before my first miscarriage.

But that birth is what made us sisters again.

It was a bittersweet joy to share that special moment with her.

I was the only family present, the only one there for her.

She named him Jack Markova, and I was one of the first to ever hold him.  I cut his umbilical cord and fell in love with that darling boy.

I drove her home from the hospital, and helped her settle in with the new baby.  I stayed with her for two weeks, staying up with the baby, letting her get some much needed rest while she recovered from her ordeal.  I limped around her house and tried to help make it a home for that fatherless little boy.

I was tucking her in one night, the baby asleep in a bassinet beside her bed, when she looked at me and said, “I do know who the father is.”

I sat down at her hip, and she found my hand with her own.  I stared at her face and waited.

I knew it was going to be something truly awful.  Just knew it.  The nature of that awful, however, eluded me.  My head was in a dark place, and so the possibilities were endless.

The thing I feared the most, though, was not the worst thing that could have happened to her.  I knew this because, the worst thing had happened.

She squeezed my hand tight and closed her eyes tighter.  “I had no boyfriend.  No lover.  I didn’t know what had happened to me, until I realized I was pregnant.  But I did remember a few nights that were…out of my recollection.  And after those nights, I did know that something was off, things were askew.  I woke up in ways and places that didn’t add up.”

“Oh no, Dahlia,” I whispered, stroking her cheek.

“It took me a while to piece it together, but…I had a few nights that made no sense, and as I began to uncover the facts, I realized that Dean had drugged me.  A few times.  I confronted him, and he wouldn’t admit it aloud, but I saw his guilt.  And then, when I told him I was pregnant, it didn’t even faze him, and he straight up told me that he was the father.

“I hated him.  Before any of that even happened, I couldn’t stand him.  I didn’t have the stomach to get rid of the baby, or even to give it away, but I got the hell away from him.  No way was I going to let him be in this baby’s life.  He was a rapist and a lowlife.  I wanted to press charges, but I didn’t see what good it would do.  I was so stupid.  By the time I realized what had happened to me, all of the evidence was gone.”

“You poor dear,” I told her, kissing her forehead, aching for her.  “I’m so sorry you got mixed up in that.”

Her hand moved from her side to rest on Jack’s little head in the bassinet beside the bed.  “I’ve made peace with it.  I love this baby, Danika, with my whole heart I love him.  The rest is in the past.”

I had so much bitter poison inside of me, so many regrets, and it didn’t slip my notice that Dean’s ugly proclivities had produced a beautiful baby boy, while my and Tristan’s love had only ever ended in tragedy.

Life was so very cruel, but there could be no doubt that I loved that baby.

We doted on him, my perfect little nephew.

SIX MONTHS LATER

I didn’t look at his face, but listened to his words, hearing more what he didn’t say, than what he did.

We were sitting in the small cafe where I’d agreed to meet him.  He was here with two other people, a young man and woman.  I’d told him I hadn’t wanted to meet him alone, and that had been his solution.  I hadn’t wanted to do this, but when he’d explained the purpose of it, as part of his rehab program, I hadn’t been able to refuse.