What on earth was he going to do now that they had discovered where he had been hiding out? Well, the gig is up, Danny thought. I’m going to have to tell them the truth. Danny felt sick and he went into the bathroom to splash water on his face. He took deep breaths, water dripping from his face and beard into the sink, then dried his face with a towel. He looked at himself in the mirror, then looked away, disappointed.
Danny walked out into the main room of the little cabin. His wife, Shannon, and their two teenage daughters, Cybil and Siobhan, were sitting stiffly on the old furniture. Danny looked briefly at the quilt his grandmother had made that was thrown over the back of the couch, bringing on a memory of his grandmother Bell standing right there, smiling and holding out her arms to him. The memory vanished when Shannon cleared her throat.
“Daniel, I think its time you told us what is going on here,” Shannon said. The girls stared at him with accusatory looks, but underneath he could see they were hurt. “I came home from work and the girls from camp, and you were gone. Just gone. No explanations, you didn’t leave a note. Then you call a week later, won’t tell me where you are, just that you needed to ‘sort some things out.’ And you just left everything to me! I had to deal with everything while you were gone. Did you know the refrigerator died? No, of course not. I had to pick out a new one by myself. And the girls, well…how do you suppose they felt? But never mind. I guess you don’t want to hear all this. If you cared, you would have called, you would have come home. But I deserve an explanation, Daniel.” Shannon looked up at him and he could feel the anger radiating off her. He pulled a kitchen chair over to where she sat.
“I am sorry I left you to deal with everything. I am sorry I didn’t tell you what is going on with me or where I went. I realize that was hard on you. But I needed some time away, to think.” Danny wondered if he could articulate all that was swirling around in his head. He couldn’t explain it to himself, couldn’t understand what was happening to him, so how could he explain it to Shannon?
It started when the girls began high school. They started talking about moving out, going to college, growing up. The idea of such a big change in their home forced him to examine his life. He was a high school history teacher, and he loved his job but he made an embarrassingly low salary. Shannon was an administrative assistant and made even less. How would he pay for college for the girls? They were only a year apart, so he would have to pay tuition for both of them at the same time for three of four years. They had saved, but not enough. Nowhere near enough, actually, He was forty-five, and would probably live to be eighty, and if the girls went away to college, that meant he would be living thirty or more years with his wife, just the two of them. What would they talk about? What would they do? The only thing they ever talked about now was the girls, bills, chores, nothing important, nothing with substance. He wasn’t sure if he still loved Shannon and that scared him the most. He had the summer off, and had retreated to his grandparent’s cabin three weeks ago. Had he missed Shannon? Yes, he had missed her at times. He had missed her company and he had missed the sex. But not enough to send him packing to return home.
Danny took a deep breath and went on, “And now I think I am ready to come home, if you’ll have me.” His voice trembled just a bit and he looked at his feet. So much for telling the truth. What was the truth, anyway?
Cybil said, “How could you just leave us? Don’t you love us?”
“Yeah, Dad, how do you think we felt? We didn’t know if you were alive or dead!” Siobhan said and brushed away an angry tear, “What have you been doing all this time?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Danny said, “I can’t explain it. I just thought about you girls leaving and all the changes that are going to come, and I guess I got a little scared.”
Cybil rolled her eyes, “Geez, Dad, we aren’t leaving for literally years. Why would you worry about that now?”
“We’ve always managed to get through changes, Daniel,” Shannon said quietly, “together. We can do anything together.”
“Right, of course,” Danny said and stood. “I’m going to get my things packed and we can caravan home.” The girls stood and hugged him, one at a time.
“Good,” whispered Siobhan, her head on his shoulder, “We need you, Dad. It’s going to be okay.”
Danny turned the water off to the cabin and locked the door. As he pulled his car behind Shannon’s and they started down the road, he could feel a tremor begin in his chest, flowing down his arms to his hands. Removing one hand from the steering wheel, he held it up and stared at it. It was shaking like a leaf.
©Lisa Paul 2019-2025
All text, prose, and images presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
A Little Bit of Everything, With Love 