A Second Chance
Nicole stopped in the moonlight, just a few steps beyond the front gate. It had been years, but the old house looked better than she'd expected. She had spent her whole childhood in that three-story tall mansion, the paint looking fresher, the windows fixed from all of the rocks that had been tossed by children, and the yard around it nicely cut. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of gardenias, roses, and sweet olive, all swirling through the humid, Louisiana night air. So familiar, yet almost forgotten. The aroma seemed to pull her along, around to the back yard. Nicole followed a row of gardenia bushes toward the back porch. In a daze of memories from the past, she climbed the cement steps and took a seat on the old porch swing. It creaked and groaned as she began to push it back and forth. She had spent so many hours on this porch swing, reading and sipping iced tea, listening to the radio with friends, or planning her future. Suddenly, the back door opened at the same second in which the light bulb overhead flashed on. Nicole had to blink a few times before the face slowly came into focus. Daniel's face, his blue eyes widening in surprise.
"You came."
"I live here," she said in a "matter-of-fact" tone. "Dad called me back home."
Daniel looked down, this time.
"What did you expect," Nicole muttered. "It's over between us. Nothing to go back to. Just dad."
She couldn't believe she was back here, either. She had sworn she would never come back.
They had said she couldn't go home, yet here she was. For her dad. Her sick father who would die soon with a rapidly spreading cancer.
It wasn't a surprise to her that Daniel was still here, too. She had asked enough questions over the phone to know that much. He was here and it wouldn't have been for her. Nicole was never good at things like this. Her and Danielle had been childhood sweethearts that would have married right out of high school if it hadn't been for his act of unfaithfulness with other girls behind her back. She couldn't remember ever asking any other man to be with her forever. Just Danielle, who was with someone else. Her friend. Bestest friend since kindergarten. However, Nicole had been gone for three years now; it was time she got back to living her life now. She had to forget about Danielle. Had to leave as soon as her father was dead.
"Nicole-"
"Is he inside?" Nicole asked suddenly, getting up from the swing. " I want to see him."
"Right." Daniel stepped back inside, giving her space to walk inside.
The place was marvelous. All around her, there were antiques and fancy, furnished furniture from all over the world. Animals hung from the walls, some with flashlights in their mouths. Nicole had remembered one day when her father went out for a hunt, bringing home dinner. She smiled at the idea before being brought upstairs to the third room on the right, a door peeked open with a view of a man on a white sheeted bed, watching the ceiling as though something interesting was there. Nicole walked inside and said, "Hello daddy."
The man had turned towards her, happily.
"Nicole," he exclaimed, smiling back, obviously glad to see his little princess again.
"How have you been?" she asked, looking around the blank walls.
Normally he would have posted pictures up including the people he'd known. This time, it was just empty, just as if nobody was even alive. There was only him...a body in bed, dying through a disease. Him, hairless and pale with dark circles around his baggy eyes. She already knew the answer before he could respond. Simply bad; but because of his caring nature, his smile grew wider and he laughed a little, trying to make the surrounding happier.
"I have been great, Nikki," her father said, "how about you? Have you gotten a husband yet?"
Nicole blinked at this. Daniel stood by the doorway now, watching her, wanting to know the answer, not daring to take a step back. It had gotten his attention.
"No, Daddy," she said, "I haven't."
By the look of things, she could see Daniel sighing in relief through the corner of her eyes before she could look back at her father. The important one that she was suppose to be with until death, separated them. For things to end this way, she wished that her father had never had cancer. He was the only living relative she had. At her young age of twelve, both her mother and little sister had died in a car accident when they went out to buy groceries, leaving her and her somber father alone in a mansion full of old memories.
"Good, very good," she heard her father say. Not to her, of course.
What was with everyone being happy? If she had married, would it have made a difference? Daniel probably had kids, now. Nicole was twenty-nine years old and Danielle was thirty-one, two years older than her. When she was the goofy and the pretty, he was the wise and the handsome. Indeed...he was everything she wasn't. Maybe this had been the reason for her to believe with her soul that he was the one. Her other half. The chance she never got to take.
"Have you ever given a thought to second chances?" her father asked, staring straight through her as if it was directed to both her and Daniel.
"Yes," he replied.
"No," Nicole contrasted.
She looked back at Daniel. He was grinning sadly at her as if he'd had an urge to explain everything; as if her father had just given him a spot...something she never knew her father would allow. Maybe this was the real reason her father had called? To set things up? Knowing he was going to die, he at least wanted to patch things up... To bring it back together like their old home. The mansion she hadn't seen in years.
"I don't believe in second chances," she repeated, watching Daniel.
Cold and hard.
" Well, I do," he said. " Even if it killed me."
THE END FOR NAO
