He waves his hand, groaning softly as he drops into a chair across from me. “You mind if I join you? Those beasts I raised down there wore me out.”
“Be my guest,” I tell him.
“Thank you.”
I smile, watching all five of the Bergman brothers volleying a soccer ball, trying to keep it in the air. Viggo chests it, then cracks a shot into the nearby net, before the only brother I don’t recognize and by process of elimination is Oliver, jogs off to scoop it up. My gaze sweeps past the lawn beyond us, sprawling and flat, nestled among blossoms and a grove of trees a way off. Dusk is my favorite time of day, when the sky glows peach and violet, and the air turns cool.
When I glance back over, I freeze. Dr. B’s pant leg has lifted enough to reveal a titanium rod in place of an ankle. I stare in complete shock.
On a quiet groan, he massages the muscles right above his knee, staring out into the yard at his sons, a soft smile warming his face. When he glances my way, he pauses. His gaze travels my expression. “He didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head.
“My military souvenir,” he says while patting his thigh. “Gets sore after a long day and trying to keep up with them. I’m sorry if it upset—”
“No,” I blurt.
My heart’s pounding. Why wouldn’t Ren tell me? All my hemming and hawing about my challenges’ potential pitfalls in a relationship and he never thought it would help for me to know he grew up seeing that kind of love firsthand?
See? Fulfilling interabled coupledom is possible, the little Lorena on my shoulder gloats. I’m tempted to flick her off her perch, if she weren’t a figment of my imagination and it wouldn’t completely disconcert Ren’s dad.
“Please don’t apologize,” I finally manage hoarsely, bringing a hand to my throat and rubbing uneasily.
Dr. B grins at me, and it’s another dead ringer for Ren. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the first person I’ve surprised. I think sometimes my kids forget it’s not normal to everyone else. It’s all they’ve ever known.”
“How was that? Being in a rigorous profession, married, having kids, with…”
“With a physical limitation?” He glances out to the field and sighs. “Hard sometimes. Discouraging others. Always healing.”
“Why? Why ‘healing’?”
Dr. B drums his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Well…when it happened, Freya was a toddler, Elin was pregnant with Axel. I was devastated. I thought I’d never be able to give my wife and children what they needed. Not as I’d envisioned, at least. I’d never be able to practice medicine again how I’d hoped. I felt like my life was over.
“But then Axel was born, and I held him, those eyes just like mine staring up at me, and something clicked. I realized he loved me. Already, he loved me, just how I was. I’d made him with his mother, and he was my flesh and blood and not having most of my leg didn’t change that. Finally, I understood my life wasn’t over, only my idea of my life was.
“That’s when I fully released my old expectations, how I thought my life should be, and instead loved my life for what it was: a gift. A heart beating in my chest. Breath in my lungs. A wife and children who loved me as I was.”
My eyes blur with tears. I dab my face as they spill down my cheeks. “That’s very…encouraging,” I whisper. “Thank you for telling me.”
He nods, holding my eyes for a long moment, before our gazes shift together, toward the field again. Dabbing my eyes, I search the grass until I see Ren’s in goal. Right as Oliver takes a penalty shot, he dives, completely missing. All five brothers fall into various postures and volumes of hilarity, and Dr. B laughs, watching them. As if he knows I’m watching him, Ren glances up as he stands and catches my eye. His laugh dies away as our eyes lock. My heart skips inside my chest.
Suddenly, the door slides open again, and Ziggy bounds out, practically throwing herself at her dad and landing in his lap. He catches her with an oof, before she kisses his cheek and wraps her arms around his neck. I’m relieved to see their easy affection. It means that her parents have stopped keeping so much distance between them and Ziggy, that she feels more comfortable with physical closeness again.
“Hi, Ziggy Stardust,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around her.
“Hi, Daddy.” Ziggy glances over at me and repositions herself on his lap, like it isn’t comical someone so grown and long-limbed is draped over her dad. It’s sweet and innocent and entirely Ziggy. She’s still a girl in a lot of ways. Very much how I was as a teen.
Dr. B rests his cheek on her head and sighs, his eyes crinkling happily. “You know who Ren’s named after?” he asks me.
I nod. “Kierkegaard.”
“That’s right. I was reading his Works of Love toward the end of Elin’s pregnancy with him. I’d read aloud to her while she soaked in the tub, after I’d put Freya and Axel to bed. It just fit. The name, his philosophy…”
“I’m not familiar with Kierkegaard in any detail,” I tell him honestly.
Dr. B glances up at the fading daylight and smiles. “‘To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.’”
“The other one, Daddy,” Ziggy say quietly.
He kisses her forehead. “‘The most common form of despair is not being who you are.’”
Ziggy smiles. “That’s my favorite.”
“And my favorite,” Dr. B says, as he shifts Ziggy on his lap, “is—”
A new voice breaks in. I glance over my shoulder to see Ren smiling down at me, hands in his pockets. “‘To cheat oneself out of love,’” he says, “‘is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation.’”
My throat’s dry as a desert. I lick my lips and feel myself melting in the heat of his stare. “That’s a good one.”
Ren nods. “Yes, it is.”
“Frankie!” a voice yells from below.
I turn and lean against the deck rail, squinting to find who said it. “Yes?”
Viggo waves. “Come down here. I need a partner.”
I glance across the field. They’re setting up…badminton? Oliver and Axel stretch the net with Ryder’s help. I don’t see Freya’s husband, Aiden, anywhere. When I glance up at Ren, I see he’s glaring down at Viggo, his jaw tight.
As I stand, I shuffle out from between the table and chair and salute Dr. B and Ziggy both. “It was good talking to you. But now, it’s time to go get my ass handed to me at badminton.”
Dr. B grins and pats Ziggy’s back, his eyes holding mine. “Go on and show ’em how it’s done.”
Peering up at Ren, I smile. Hands on his hips. A flush in his cheeks. Angry Big Red stance. I thread my arm around his waist and smile up at him.
Ren frowns as I hold on to him while we walk down the deck stairs to the back lawn. “I told Viggo croquet would be better,” he grumbles.
“Maybe. But I think I can hold my own in a corner of the net. We’ll divvy up the area, and I’ll stick to mine.” I pat his cheek. “Remember. Give me a chance. Don’t assume I can’t.”