Previously

“You sound like you’re really conflicted.”

“My name… I’m Hope…”

Hope sat on the couch with her legs curled up underneath her. Two magazines lay next to her, virtually ignored;Sports Illustrated and Elle, which seemed to exemplify the struggle, however needless, between in her emerging self and her past. She stared out the large window at the Red Maple in the front yard as a squirrel scurried up the tree. The front door opened even as a knock came on the door frame.

“Hey? Lina? Susan?” Danny called out; still standing in the doorway.

“Oh…Hi… they’re off to look at apartments,” Hope sighed.

“Oh…so soon? I guess it’s better to get that done,” Danny said as he walked into the living room.

“Since Noorah is going to school in the city and Susan is still deciding, they…I guess Jersey City is a good compromise.”

“Sorry…I guess that means you won’t be seeing them as much.” Danny sat down in the wooden rocker across from the couch. Hope turned away nervously and coughed. She shrugged her shoulders; a gesture not uncommon even when she ‘wasn’t’ Hope. Danny recognized the frustration immediately.

“Hey, maybe they’ll change their minds. Still not hard at all to commute if you have to.” He smiled but he knew that wasn’t likely to happen. Things change. People change. That idea wasn’t lost on him at all. He looked at the girl on the couch. A best friend from childhood who still was a good friend even if they both went through confusion over the years; majorly in the past two years.

“Maybe…” Hope sighed again. Danny looked at her and wondered how things could be so different and still remain much the same as they had been only months ago. He noticed her face hadn’t changed much other than a bit of eye shadow and newly trimmed eyebrows along with slightly glossy pink lips. Apart from that, her face was fairly the same as it had always been. A nose that might have been okay on a boy seemed bigger; though he would never say that to her. Her chin was stronger perhaps than most girls might like, but somehow her appearance had suddenly become ‘striking.’

“What?” Hope put her head down even as her face reddened.

“Oh…sorry.” Danny was almost not sorry at all. Things between them were changing even as old feelings began to resurface. Exploration between them as twelve-year-olds was now called into tentative recollection. Both of them had managed to keep a pre-teen tryst secret from everyone, but the feelings they had shared were coming to the forefront as young adults. Danny leaned on his knees and half-smiled.’

“Damn…. It’s not like we don’ t know each other?” But it was. The boy Danny thought he knew all along was slowly retreating; at least in demeanor. And things that Danny thought he remembered about Tim seemed to take on new meaning as Hope continued to emerge.

“You don’t have to stay, Danny. I’m okay. You don’t have to keep me company or hang around on my account. I understand.” Trouble was, neither really understood the other even though both desperately wanted that.

“I….I want to stay, H…Hope,” Danny double-clutched on her name; still fairly new to everybody and almost completely foreign to the young man sitting in the rocker across from her.

“W…why..?”

“I think…. We need to talk, Hope. I know I do, and I think you might as well.” He paused and looked away, searching for strength.

“I’m not use to this…. I don’t even know what to say but I have to start saying something.” Hope blushed again and turned away.

“Listen, okay? It’s not like we’re strangers, and it’s not like we don’t care for each other.”

“After how I treated Susan, I don’t know why you would…care for me.”

“That was someone else talking, Hope.”

“No it wasn’t, Danny. I treated your sister like….I used her to protect myself…to deny everything to keep myself safe.

“It’s not like you had a choice….what your father was doing to you.” Hope’s eyes widened in confused fear.

“How…I never said…who told you?”

“You think I never saw….” Danny bit his lip. Now it was his turn to be confused. It was one thing to feel protective of a young woman, but an entirely different thing, he thought, to feel protective about another boy. He paused and cleared his throat nervously.

“When…. The first time we got together, I saw the marks on your neck…. The red marks on the back of your legs…oh fuck.” Danny did something he normally reserved, however unintentionally, for private moments. He began to cry; only a bit, but markedly different than anything Hope had seen. Danny swallowed hard and stared at the girl. His eyes widened in recognition as he saw Hope and Tim as one person for the first time; the entire being he had not-so-secretly loved since they were eleven years old.

“I’m so sorry….” He apologized, as if as a young adult he bore responsibility for the inaction of a pre-teen boy who felt helpless and confused. The confusion was never about loving a boy but rather loving that boy. He continued.

“I should have told my Dad,” he shook his head. Hope shook hers in answer.

“It’s okay, Danny. Really,” Hope said in a completely unconvincing manner. Not about his inaction, but still about how things were and had to be when they were both in places as children of inflexible fathers. Danny’s mom would have done something; she was keen enough to have seen what was going on if she had lived. And Liz McKenna was paralyzed with her own fears enough to fail her child miserably.

“No, it’s not. I guess …. I….” he stammered. Part of him realized that he had no real choices when they were young even as the other part of him felt needless shame. He sighed deeply and resumed crying; some for himself but so much more for the friend he had loved and had grown to love again. A moment or two passed.

“I know…. Oh, dammit, Danny….why did God make me so fucked up?” The cadence of the words seemed unchanged from when Danny knew her as Tim, but the demeanor was entirely sad and hopeless; more an expression of how things had always been rather than a new if expected way of showing herself.

“Oh, no! You’re not ….” He found himself accommodating her sensitivities, so to speak, even as she violated them herself with old, ineffective ways. He stood up and walked over and sat down next to her.

“You’re not…this is….it’s as new for you as anyone else….” Danny found himself staring at her face. He struggled with feelings that rose up in the midst of wanting to accommodate her need for the moment; leaving him feeling shallow and selfish. Her frown did little to help him move away from that guilt even as he found himself wrestling with competing priorities.

“I’m a freak….My Dad says so, so it must be true.” Hope shook her head again; not in denial of the statement but rather in the hopeless feeling that she indeed would never fit in. The old lies uttered by her father and the mute responses by her mother pulled her back into inadequacy and shame. Danny tried to resist, but found his hands acting entirely on their own as he grabbed her hands in his.

“No…not a freak…no…” Danny’s emotions seemed to all come to the surface at once. Frustration over Hope’s shame. Feelings of confusion still buffeted him even as clarity seemed to poke through the haze. His thumb brushed lightly over a scar on the back of her left hand. He raised his head slightly and noticed sadness in her eyes that had never really felt safe enough to come out. And then it happened. Or rather; then he acted. Placing his hand on her face, he caressed her cheek softly. She hadn’t meant to as well, but she closed her eyes. And he meant it entirely and he leaned closer and kissed her.

“No….stop…no, Danny….no….this is wrong.” An odd thing to say, since it wasn’t the first kiss the two had exchanged. Boys together in the back of the church van after everyone had been picked up after a picnic. Strangely appealing and sadly shameful at the same time, but they kissed and would kiss more than several times as kids.

But now, when things should have been clearer and safer and ‘acceptable,’ in a way, Hope felt ashamed and entirely unworthy of the love of a young man she had always loved and had never stopped loving even if that love was buried like some old sweater in a drawer in a seldom used room. But Danny felt she was worthy, or would at least have said so had she continued to speak. But he kissed her anyway and she failed to resist; finally feeling at least that it wasn’t a bad thing even if she couldn’t convince herself that it was a good thing that she deserved.

“I…I’m sorry,” Danny spoke even as he continued to cry. The strong, loving young man being emotional and the only recently emerged retiring girl being almost stoic until he began kissing her cheek. A respite for her lips became emotionally charged several moments as Danny continued to apologize. That idea that he might take advantage of her was pushed aside as she gasped before falling into his arms; her body wracked with sobs so strong that it shook Danny.

“I’m so sorry,” Danny went on, but she put her arms around him and nestled into his comfort as she continued to cry; her sobs softening to relieved weeping as the love she should have had all along from her own father was bestowed upon her like a gift from heaven. Danny’s crying a counterpoint to hers like a strong baritone compliments a lovely soprano or better still, a sweet alto.

Lina stood on the threshold of the front door and watched the two; lost in the act of restoration that only two souls in harmony can experience. She wiped away the tears that fell from her own eyes and looked upward; beyond the doorway to a less-solid if entirely tangible place as she mouthed two words.

“Thank you!”

Pat walked into the kitchen; looking around in confusion. No aroma of dinner or even leftover smells of the day. Everything was in its place and spotless. The kitchen table was unadorned save for an envelope resting on the napkin holder in the center, unmarked. He grabbed the envelope and read it slowly as the color quickly drained from his face only to be replaced with a glowing heat red, angry heat.

Dear Pat. I love you. But I don’t like you. I’m sorry it took so long to do this. Maybe if I had, things would be different in our family. But to my own sad cowardly failure, I never said a word as you casually threw away all the love you had from us. You dismissed the memory of our girl and you pushed me away with your mean-spirited insistence on always being right. Funny – ‘spirited.’ You don’t know how much you’ve hurt us, but mostly you hurt your child.

You know she was never what you wanted her to be, much less what you insisted God wanted. Do you really presume to know so much? I haven’t grown to hate you, Pat. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over you, but I can’t remain in a loveless marriage in a loveless family when my daughter languishes on the vine while you tend to the vineyard of your congregation.

The sad thing is all she’s ever wanted to do was to make you happy. She did everything you asked and even more, to her sorrow. Her name is Hope, Pat, if that matters to you. I sincerely hope it will come to mean something, since she still loves you despite all the hurt you gave her. Funny thing about love; it always hopes. I’m going to my cousins for a few days and maybe we can talk after that. Don’t call; I need time to think and figure out how to fix my part in this, and yes, Pat, time to pray. With hope, Liz

As Pat read the last few words he shook his head and sat down. It would have been nice to note that he cried from remorse, but he didn’t. Thankfully, however, he was no longer angry, but instead felt hurt and sad. Entirely understandable if equally selfish on his part with no accepting of responsibility either. Still, it was better than blaming everyone else. And as they say,two out of three ain’t bad. It would be the addition of the final third of the equation that would mean the difference for Pat McKenna and his family, but it was destined to become addition by subtraction….

Next: Love Never Fails