“We made a deal, him and I. I’ll be his and give him Jacob’s brother’s information at the dockyard so he can do more business through the Vancouver Port, and he’ll keep me in comfort.” She paused because I’d learned how to be dramatic from her. “And he’ll have one of his brothers kill that slut and her babies. Maybe then Zeus will understand what it’s like to have your children taken away from you.”
2011.
Harleigh Rose is eleven. Danner is twenty.
I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch before school on a Tuesday, alone in the Danner’s big, farm-style kitchen when the music started. It was “Real Wild Child” by Iggy Pop, a song I’d only recently discovered while exploring records with Old Sam and Danner at Mega Music a few weeks ago. It was a great song, but I wasn’t sure why Danner was playing it as he got ready for a Tuesday morning.
I turned back to my cereal, slurping up the spicy, sugary milk at the bottom of the bowl, thinking that King better get his butt out of bed or we were going to be late for school.
The music got closer and in it, I heard the familiar twang of a blue guitar and the throaty drawl of my favourite singing voice in the world.
A moment later, Danner came down the stairs into the kitchen, his blue guitar strapped over his chest, thrumming under his fingers, his mouth smiling around the words as he sang. Behind him was Susan Danner holding a tall cake covered in pink frosted roses, the top popping with sparklers and her sweet face alive with happiness. They filtered into the room and stood by either side of the door so that when King came down the stairs, he could do it with flare, jumping into the kitchen and sliding across the linoleum on his knees until he was right beside my chair, his fingers playing air guitar, his lanky back bent in back like some kind of rock star.
I sat there, my spoon frozen mid-air, milk dripping to the table, my mouth open and slack with shock.
The song ended and in unison, they cried out, “Happy eleventh birthday, Harleigh Rose!”
I blinked at them and the spoon dropped from my hand into the bowl with a clatter.
King got up off the ground, frowning and moving to my side as Susan walked forward to place the cake in front of me.
“Blow out the candles, love,” she encouraged me with her wide, sincere smile.
I looked up at King, swallowing hard past the lump in my throat, trying to shove it back down into the dark pit of my belly where it’d lain dormant since my Dad went to jail so I could speak, but I couldn’t seem to move it.
King put a comforting hand on my shoulder. He was thirteen, tall and so gangly that only his extreme handsomeness made him look anything other than silly. He had to bend to get close to my ear, but when he did, he whispered, “It’s okay, H.R., I mentioned it was your birthday an’ they wanted to celebrate. This isn’t even the end’a it. You get to skip school and Danner’s gonna spend the day with you. Then tonight we’re gonna go to fuckin’ Donovan’s for a steak!”
“King,” Susan reprimanded softly, trying to break him of his nearly lifelong swearing habit even though we all knew it was hopeless.
My brother grinned unabashedly at her. “If Donovan’s famous steaks aren’t worth cursin’ over, I don’t know what is.”
Danner laughed with his mother, but his eyes were on me, gentle and assessing. He went to a crouch in front of me, forearms on his thighs, his face a little lower than my seated one but close enough to count the short, spiky lashes around his eyes.
His eyes were my favourite bit about his face, even though it made me blush to think about it.
“It’s your birthday, rebel Rose,” he said in his honey rich, molasses smooth voice. “We’ve got to celebrate.”
I chewed on my lip. “It’s just, well, we don’t really celebrate anymore.”
Anger flashed across his face like a lightning strike before he could clench his jaw and pretend he was unaffected. It warmed me to see that in his face, to know that he cared enough about me and King to be angry for us.
“Well, in the Danner house, we celebrate. Harold’s already at work so he can get off early and take us to the steakhouse. Mum’s going to work, King’s going to school, but you, Rosie, get to spend the day doing whatever you want with me until dinner. How does that sound?”
It sounded like the best present anyone had ever given me, and when I was five, Dad gave me my first pair of real biker chick boots that were the bomb so that was saying something.
“Really?” I asked, staring at Danner, trying to make sure he wasn’t joking even though he never joked. “Anything I want?”
“You got it,” he said with a grin. “Now, first you’ve got to make a wish, blow out the candles and all of us are going to eat cake for breakfast.”
I looked over my shoulder at King and grabbed his hand even though I knew it made me look like a baby. “Will you blow them out with me? I don’t want to make a wish without you.”
King’s face, always so open and expressive, broke into my favourite of his smiles, lopsided and goofy with indulgent love. “Sure, H.R., let’s do it.”
Susan walked around the table to take a photo of us as we bent our heads close together to blow. I sucked in a deep breath, thought of my wish then panicked and blindly reached out with my spare hand to fumble for Danner’s. He caught my questing fingers and held them tight.
A second later, King and I made our wish.
Old Sam and his wife Millie were waiting for us when we showed up after cake at Mega Music. As soon as we opened the door, Old Sam started playing the “happy birthday” song on his old, shiny saxophone and his wife started singing. Millie had been a backup vocalist for stars like Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston so I told myself it was only natural that the beauty of her voice singing that song to me made my nose itch with tears.
We spent four hours there.
Old Sam closed the shop and put on record after record for us to dance to in a little section at the back of the shop by the record player I always used. Millie and Old Sam loved to swing dance and they taught Danner and me some of their coolest moves. I remembered swinging over Danner’s forearms, my hair a stream of gold as I spun full circle then landed with his arms around me. When we were too breathless to keep going, Old Sam put on some slow records, some Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, songs you could tip your head back, close your eyes at and really listen to. Finally, just before lunch, we left them, but not without a stack of gifted records under my arm.
“Having fun?” Danner asked with a bright smile as he held the door to his winter ride, a huge, new white Dodge RAM 1500 truck that I basically had to climb up to get into.
“Um, yeah,” I said, with a happy roll of my eyes. “This is the best day ever.”
I said it without thinking about it, but as Danner rounded the car to get into the driver’s seat, the betrayal of my words hit me like a bullet through the heart.
It wasn’t the best day ever. It couldn’t be. Not with my dad in prison, not when I wouldn’t be able to see him.
He’d write me a letter. I knew it would be at the Danner’s when I got home from my adventures, a thick envelope filled with thin paper weighted with heavy, precious words. He wrote King and me a lot. A few times a week at least, and they never got old even though I knew there wasn’t that much to do in prison. His letters were always filled with questions about our lives, with stories he shared of the family before he’d been locked, of the wild things we would do when he got out.