For Now and Forever

Just then, the heavens opened and a sheet of rain began to thunder down on the house. The sound was phenomenal, like pounding drums.

“Wow,” Emily said, raising her eyebrows. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

The percussion of rain was accompanied by a sudden gust of screaming wind. Daniel peered out the gap again and Emily suddenly realized that he was looking over at the barn.

“You’re worried about the darkroom, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Daniel replied with a sigh. “It’s funny. I haven’t been in there for years but the thought of it being destroyed by the storm makes me sad.”

Suddenly, Emily remembered the stray dog she’d met when she’d been in there. “Oh my God!” she cried.

Daniel looked at her, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a dog, a stray who lives in the barn. We can’t leave it out in the storm! What if the barn comes down and crushes him?” Emily began to panic at the thought.

“It’s okay,” Daniel said. “I’ll go get him. You stay here.”

“No,” Emily said, tugging on his arm. “You shouldn’t go out there.”

“Then you want to leave the dog?”

Emily was torn. She didn’t want Daniel to put himself in any danger, but at the same time she couldn’t leave the helpless dog out there in the storm.

“Let’s get the dog,” Emily replied. “But I’m coming with you.”

Emily found some raincoats and boots and the two of them suited up. As Emily opened the back door a bolt of lightning cracked through the sky. She gasped at the magnitude of it, then heard the enormous rumble of thunder in the air.

“I think it’s right over us,” she called back to Daniel, her voice eaten up by the roar of the storm.

“Then we’ve picked a great time to head out into it!” came his sarcastic response.

The two of them trudged across the lawn, churning the neatly manicured grass into mud. Emily knew how much Daniel cared about his yard and knew it must be killing him to know he was damaging it with every one of his heavy footsteps.

As the rain lashed against Emily’s face, making it sting, a flash of a memory hit her with a force much stronger than the winds that whipped around her. She remembered being a very young girl, out with Charlotte in a storm. Their dad had warned them not to go too far from home, but Emily had persuaded her younger sister to go just a bit further. Then the storm had come and they’d gotten lost. They’d both been terrified, crying, wailing as the winds battered their little bodies. They’d been clinging to each other, their hands locked, but the rain had made them slippery and at some point she’d lost hold of Charlotte.

Emily froze on the spot as the memory flashed through her mind’s eye. She felt like she was back there, reliving that moment when she’d been a terrified seven-year-old girl, remembering that awful expression on her dad’s face when she’d told him Charlotte was gone, that she’d lost her out in the storm.

“Emily!” Daniel shouted, his voice almost entirely swallowed up by the wind. “Come on!”

She turned her attention back to the moment and followed Daniel.

Finally they made it to the barn, feeling like they’d trudged across a vast swampy wilderness to get there. The roof had already been blown off by the force of the wind and Emily didn’t have much hope for the rest of it.

She showed Daniel the hole and together they squeezed inside. Rain continued to lash on them through the gaping exposed roof and Emily looked around to see that the barn was filling with water.

“Where did you find the dog?” Daniel called to Emily. Despite the raincoat he looked like he was soaked to the bone, and his hair stuck to his face in tendrils.

“It was over here,” she said, beckoning to the dark corner of the barn where she’d seen the dog’s head when she left it.

But when they got to the place Emily thought the dog would be, they were met with a surprise.

“Oh my god,” Emily squealed. “Puppies!”

Daniel’s eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the pink, naked, writhing pups. They were newborn, possibly even less than a day old.

“What are we going to do with them all?” Daniel said, his eyes as round as moons.

“Put them in our pockets?” Emily replied.

There were five puppies in all. They popped one in each pocket and then Emily cradled the runt in her hands. Daniel saw to the mama dog, who was snapping at them both for having disturbed her puppies.

The walls of the barn were shaking as they walked back to the hole with the squirming puppies in their pockets.

As they walked back through the barn, Emily could see the damage the rain was doing to everything inside, and she realized that it would surely be destroyed – the boxes of her father’s photo albums, Daniel’s teenage photography, the aged equipment that might be worth something to a collector. The thought broke her heart. Though she’d already taken one box into the main house, there were still three more filled with her dad’s photo albums inside the barn. She couldn’t bear to lose all those precious memories.

Against better sense, Emily rushed over to where she’d found the stack of boxes. She knew that there was a mixture of Daniel’s pictures and her dad’s in the boxes, and the top one she found was one filled with her dad’s photo albums. She popped the runt on the top of the box and heaved it into her arms.

“Emily,” Daniel called. “What are you doing? We need to get out before this whole place falls down!”

“I’m coming,” she called back. “I just don’t want to leave them.”

She tried to find a way to take another box, stacking it below the first and wedging them both between her chin, but it was too heavy and cumbersome. There was no way she would be able to rescue all the boxes of photographs.

Daniel came over. He set the mama dog onto the floor, then tied a leash for her from some rope. Then he grabbed two more boxes of Emily’s family photos. They now had all three of her dad’s remaining boxes of photographs, but not a single one of Daniel’s.

“What about yours?” Emily cried.

“Yours are more important,” Daniel replied stoically.

“Only for me,” Emily replied. “What about – ”

Before she could finish her sentence the barn made a terrifying creaking noise.

“Come on,” Daniel said. “We have to go.”

Emily didn’t get the chance to protest. Daniel was already charging from the barn, his arms laden with her precious family photographs at the expense of his own. His sacrifice touched her and she couldn’t help wondering why he would go out of his way to put her needs above his own.

As they ducked back out through the gap in the barn, the rain lashed against them fiercer than ever. Emily could hardly move the wind was so strong. She battled against it, making her way slowly across the lawn.

Suddenly, an almighty crash came from behind. Emily squealed with shock and looked back to see that the large oak tree at the side of the property had ripped out of the ground and smashed into the barn. Had the tree fallen just a minute earlier, they would both have been crushed.

“That was a little bit close for comfort,” Daniel yelled. “We’d better get back inside as quickly as we can.”

They made it across the lawn and to the back door. When Emily pulled it open, the wind ripped it off its hinges and flung it far across the yard.

“Quick, into the living room,” Emily said, shutting the door that separated the kitchen from the living room.

She was dripping wet and making huge streaks of rain water across the floorboards. They went to the living room and put the dog and its puppies on the rug beside the hearth.

“Can you start a fire?” Emily asked Daniel. “They must be freezing.” She rubbed her hands together to get the circulation going again. “I know I am.”

Without a single complaint, Daniel got straight to work. A moment later a blazing fire warmed the room.

Emily helped the puppies find their mama. One by one they began to suckle, relaxing into their new environment. But one of the puppies didn’t join in.

“I think this one’s sick,” Emily said concerned.

“It’s the runt,” Daniel said. “It probably won’t make it through the night.”

Emily felt tearful at the thought. “What are we going to do with them all?” she said.

“I’ll rebuild the barn for them.”

Emily laughed in mock derision. “You’ve never had a pet before, have you?”

“How did you guess?” Daniel replied jovially.

Suddenly, Emily noticed that there was blood on Daniel’s top. It was coming from a gash in his forehead.

“Daniel, you’re bleeding!” she cried.

Daniel touched his forehead then looked at the blood on his fingers. “I think I was snagged by one of the branches. It’s nothing, just a superficial wound.”

“Let me put something on it so it doesn’t get infected.”

Emily went into the kitchen to search for the first-aid kit. Thanks to the wind coming in through the space where the back door used to be, it was much harder to move around the kitchen than she thought it would be. Wind was racing around the room, throwing any item not bolted down to the ground all over the place. Emily tried not to think of the devastation or how much it would cost to fix.

Finally she found the first-aid kit and went back to the living room.

The mama dog had stopped whimpering and all of the puppies were feeding except for the runt. Daniel was holding it in his hands, trying to coax it to feed. Something about the sight of him made her heart stir. Daniel continued to surprise her – from his ability to cook, to his fine taste in music, his talented guitar playing, and his handiness with a hammer to this, his gentle care over a helpless creature.

“No luck?” Emily asked.

He shook his head. “It’s not looking good for the little guy.”

“We should name it,” Emily said. “It shouldn’t die without a name.”

“We don’t know whether it’s a boy or girl.”

“Then we should call it something gender neutral.”

“What, like Alex?” Daniel said, frowning with confusion.

Emily laughed. “No, I meant more like Rain.”

Daniel shrugged. “Rain. That works.” He put Rain back with the other pups. They were all clambering to be close to their mom, and the runt kept getting pushed out. “What about the rest of them?”

“Well,” Emily said. “How about Storm, Cloud, Wind, and Thunder.”

Daniel grinned. “Very appropriate. And the mama?”

“Why don’t you name her?” Emily said. She’d already gotten to name all the puppies.

Daniel stroked the mama dog’s head. She made a content sound. “How about Mogsy?”

Emily burst out laughing. “That’s not very on theme!”

Daniel just shrugged. “It’s my choice, right? I choose Mogsy.”

Emily smirked. “Sure. Your choice. Mogsy it is. Now, let me look at that wound.”

She sat on the couch, guiding Daniel’s head toward her with gentle fingers. She swept the hair from his brow and began to disinfect the gash across his forehead. He was right in that it wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding profusely. Emily used several Band-Aids to hold the wound together.

“If you’re lucky,” she said, sticking another piece on, “you’ll have a cool scar.”

Daniel smirked. “Great. Girls love scars, right?”

Emily laughed. She stuck the last strip in place. But instead of moving away, her fingers lingered there, against his flesh. She swept a stray piece of hair away from his eyes, then traced her fingertips down the contour of his face, down to his lips.

Daniel’s eyes smoldered into hers. He reached up and took her hand then pressed a kiss into her palm.

He grabbed her then, pulling her down from the settee and into his lap. Their drenched clothes pressed together as he pressed his mouth into hers. Her hands roved all over him, feeling every part of him. The heat between them ignited as they peeled one another’s wet clothing from their bodies, then sunk against one another, moving in a harmonious rhythm, their minds so consumed with one another that they no longer noticed the storm that raged outside.

Chapter Thirteen

Emily woke tangled in Daniel’s limbs. The sun was shining fiercely, making it seem like the storm hadn’t happened at all. But Emily knew it had, and she knew the damage would be extensive.

She untangled herself from Daniel’s octopus-like grip and slipped on a thin camisole dress, then went downstairs to inspect the damage.

In the living room, Mogsy had clearly had a bit of a freakout during the storm. One of the cushions was all chewed up, the stuffing strewn around the room. The rug was also badly stained from her and Daniel’s discarded, muddy, wet clothes. She smiled to herself at the memory of the way they’d peeled them off one another.

Well, if a muddy rug and a chewed up cushion are the only things that got ruined then I’ve done pretty well, she thought.

The biggest surprise to Emily was that Rain the runt puppy had survived the night and was suckling happily. But that also meant she now had a dog and five puppies to look after. She had no idea what she was going to do with them all, but figured she’d deal with that later – after she prepared some leftover chicken for Mogsy, who was probably hungry. And after she focused on the house.

She heard Daniel stirring upstairs as she continued to do her rounds of the house. When she passed through the dining room toward the ballroom entrance, she heard Daniel’s footsteps pattering up behind her.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

Though he’d never expressly said it, Emily knew that of all the rooms in the house the ballroom was Daniel’s favorite. It was the grandest, the most magical, and the room that had first brought them together, had sparked this whole thing. Without the ballroom, last night might never have happened. To think that anything might have happened to it was dreadful for them both.

Emily looked inside tentatively. Daniel was close behind.

“It looks okay,” Emily said. But then she noticed something glittering on the floor and rushed over. Her suspicions were confirmed when she picked it up and saw it was a shard of glass. “Oh no,” she cried. “Not the Tiffany window. Please, not the Tiffany window!”

Together she and Daniel pulled down the plywood covering the antique windows. As they did, more shards fell, shattering onto the floor.

“I can’t believe it,” Emily wailed, knowing that it would cost too much to replace, that it was indeed irreplaceable.

“I know someone who might be able to help,” Daniel said, trying to cheer her up.

“For free?” she said glumly, hopelessly.

Daniel shrugged. “You never know. He might do it just for the love of it.”

Emily knew he was trying to make her feel better, but she couldn’t help but feel tearful. “It’s a big job,” she said.

“And the people here are good,” Daniel said. He took her by the shoulders. “Come on, there’s nothing we can do at the moment anyway. Let me make you breakfast.”

He steered her into the kitchen by her shoulders, but it too was in bad shape. Daniel and Emily picked up strewn items, then Emily put the coffee on to brew, grateful that the coffee pot hadn’t succumbed to the same fate of smashing against the floor like the toaster had.

“How do you feel about waffles?” Daniel asked her.

“I feel pretty good about waffles,” Emily replied as she sat down at the breakfast table. “But I don’t have a waffle iron, do I?”

“Well, technically you do,” Daniel replied. When Emily frowned he went on to further explain. “Serena reserved it at the garage sale. Said she’d come back and pay for it another time. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not but she never came back so I guess she didn’t really want it.” He came over and plopped a steaming cup of black coffee in front of Emily.

“Thanks,” Emily said, feeling a little shy about the innate intimacy of Daniel cooking her breakfast.

As she sipped her coffee and watched Daniel cooking, spatula in hand, she felt reborn. It was not just the house that had been transformed overnight; she had too. Her memory of their lovemaking was itself hazy, but she could remember the feeling of ecstasy that had rippled through her body. It had almost been an out-of-body experience. She squirmed in her seat just thinking about it.

Leaving the waffles to cook, Daniel sat opposite her and took a sip of his own coffee.

“I don’t think I’ve said good morning properly yet,” he said. He leaned across the table and took her face in his hands. But before he got a chance to plant a kiss on her lips, a shrill beeping noise shattered the moment.

Emily and Daniel sprang apart.

“What the hell is that?” Emily exclaimed, holding her ears.

“It’s the fire alarm!” Daniel yelled, looking back to the counter where the waffle iron was spewing out clouds of black smoke.

Emily leapt up from her seat as sparks began to fly into the air. Daniel was quick to take action, grabbing a tea towel to smother the flames.

Smoke billowed around the room, making Daniel and Emily cough.

“I guess Serena won’t be coming back for her waffle iron after all,” Emily said.

*

After breakfast, they set to work fixing up the house. Daniel went up on the roof to inspect it.

“Well?” Emily asked hopefully once he climbed back down from the attic.

“It seems to be okay,” Daniel said. “There is some damage. Hard to tell. We won’t really know how bad it is until the next big storm rips through. Then, unfortunately, we might find out the hard way.” He sighed. “As long as there isn’t another storm anytime soon I think you’ll get away with it.”

“Fingers crossed,” Emily said, thinly.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked, picking up on her downbeat mood.

“I’m just finding it a bit depressing,” Emily said. “Walking around the house working out what’s broken or damaged. Why don’t we work on the grounds instead? At least the sun is shining.”

It was a beautiful day. The storm seemed to have chased away spring, leaving summer in its wake.

“I’ve got an idea,” Daniel said. “I haven’t shown you the rose garden I planted yet, have I?”

“No,” Emily said. “I’d like to see it.”

“It’s this way.”

He took her by the hand and led her out across the grounds then over the single-track road toward the ocean path. As they strolled down the pebbled slope, Emily caught sight of the ocean. The view was breathtaking.

There was a clump of vegetation ahead of them that looked like it would lead to nothing but an overgrown patch. But Daniel led her straight to it, then swiped back a large branch.

“It’s a little hidden out of the way. Careful your clothes don’t snag.”

Curious, Emily ducked in through the opening Daniel had created. What she saw as she emerged on the other side made her breath catch in her lungs. Roses, in every conceivable color, were everywhere. Red, yellow, pink, white, even black. If stepping into the ballroom and seeing the light through the Tiffany glass had been awe-inspiring, this was even better.

Emily twirled in a circle, feeling more alive and free than she had in years.

“It survived the storm,” Daniel said as he emerged through the foliage behind her. “I wasn’t sure it would.”

Emily turned and threw her arms around him, letting her tousled hair fall down her back. “It’s incredible. How did you keep this a secret from me?”

Daniel held onto her tightly, breathing in the scent of her as it mixed with the pungent perfume of roses. “It’s not like I take all the girls I date here.”

Emily moved back slightly so she could gaze into his eyes. “Is that what we’re doing? Dating?”

Daniel raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You tell me,” he said suggestively.

Emily rose onto her tiptoes and pressed a gentle, tender kiss against his lips. “Does that answer your question?” she asked dreamily.

She moved out of his embrace and began to look around the rose garden more carefully. The colors were amazing.

“How long has this been here?” she asked in awe.

“Well,” Daniel said, settling himself to the ground in a small clearing, “I planted it after I came back from Tennessee. Gardening and photography. I wasn’t particularly masculine in my youth,” he added with a laugh.

“Well, you’re all man now,” Emily replied with a grin. She went over to where Daniel was sitting languorously stretched out like a cat, shards of sunlight and shadow dappling his skin. She lay down beside him and rested her head in the crook of his neck, feeling sleepy, like she could have a nap right here. “When were you in Tennessee?” she asked.

“It wasn’t a good part of my life,” Daniel said, his tone betraying to her that he felt very uncomfortable talking about it. Daniel had always been very private, talking very little about himself. He was more of a doer, a practical person. Chatting, particularly about emotionally charged subjects, was not his forte. But Emily shared that with him. Expressing herself was something she struggled with as well. “I was young,” Daniel continued. “Twenty years old. I was dumb.”

“Did something happen?” Emily asked, gently, careful not to scare him away. Her hand was on his chest, tracing up and down the fabric of his shirt, feeling the muscles beneath.

When Daniel spoke, she could hear him through the ear she had resting on his chest, and his voice sent vibrations rumbling through her.

“I did something I’m not proud of,” he said. “I did it for a good reason but that doesn’t make it okay.”

“What did you do?” Emily asked. She was certain that whatever he said would in no way diminish her blossoming feelings for him.

“I was arrested in Tennessee. For assaulting a man. I had a girlfriend. But she had a husband.”

“Oh,” Emily said, as it dawned on her where this conversation might be going. “And I’m guessing the husband was the man you assaulted?”

“Yes,” Daniel replied. “He was violent. Harassing her, you know? She’d kicked him out way before I met her but this guy would keep coming around. It was getting scary. The cops weren’t doing anything.”

“What did you do?” Emily asked.

“Well, the next time he came around, threatening her to kill her, I taught him a lesson. Made sure he would never show up on her doorstep again. I beat him up. He ended up in the hospital.”

Emily winced at the thought of Daniel pummeling someone so bad they had to be hospitalized. She could hardly marry all the versions of Daniel up in her mind: the sensitive, misunderstood runaway photographer, the young, dumb thug, and the man who planted a garden of multicolored roses. But then the person she’d been just a few months ago when she was Ben’s girlfriend was completely different from the person she was now. Despite the old adage that people never changed, her experience of life had been the opposite: people always changed.

“Thing is,” Daniel said, “she broke up with me after that. Said I scared her. He played the victim and she went back to him. He had such a hold over her that after everything, he was able to manipulate her right back to where he wanted her. I felt so betrayed.”

“You shouldn’t feel betrayed. Her going back to him was more about his control over her than her love for you. I should know. I – ” Emily lost her voice. She had never spoken to anyone about what she was going to speak to Daniel about. Not even Amy. “I know what it’s like,” she finally said. “I was in an emotionally abusive relationship once.”

Daniel looked stunned.

“I don’t like talking about it,” Emily added. “I was young too, still a teenager, in fact. Everything was great until I was heading off to college. I thought I was in love with him. We’d been together for over a year, which seemed like such a big deal at the time. But when I said I wanted to study out of state, something in him shifted. He became very jealous, seemed convinced I would cheat on him as soon as I left. I broke up with him because of how terribly he was behaving, but he threatened to kill himself if I didn’t take him back. That’s how it starts, the manipulation. The control. I ended up staying with him out of fear.”

“Did he stop you going out of state to college?”

“Yes,” she said. “I gave up one of my goals because of him, even though he treated me like shit. And you know what’s happening is crazy but you play all these psychological tricks on yourself, rewriting situations you know in your heart aren’t right but telling yourself that it’s a sign of how much you’re loved. To everyone on the outside it looks like insanity. When it’s over, it looks like insanity to you too. But when you’re there, living it, you find ways to make it make sense.”