this woman's work (1/2)
Things with Danny ended badly.
Rachel can admit that she’s partly to blame; she hadn’t known what she was getting into when she’d married him, certainly, and she hadn’t tried as hard as she could have when she’d noticed that things were falling to pieces. Danny isn’t entirely blameless, either - he admitted to her once that he’d known she’d have trouble being married to a cop and hadn’t said anything, and while she’d been trying to patch things up he’d been spending more and more time in the precinct. The split had been bad because they’d tried to avoid it, she thinks now. If they’d just given in to the realization sooner and let things go - but that’s not in either of their natures.
It’s been better recently; they’ve been able to work through a few things now that they’ve been apart for a while, now that she has Stan and he has Commander McGarrett. She does wonder at times if Danny knows exactly how much his partner means to him, and she wants to shake him, point it out to him in the way only an ex-wife can: look, see what’s right in front of you, don’t mess things up for yourself again - but she doesn’t dare. Their peace is fragile and sharp, tenuous at best, and she doesn’t want to push him into something he’s not ready to see.
It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t see it herself, though. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t recognize things in their partnership from her relationship with Danny, from the better times, the times when it was still easy. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t hear the way he smiles underneath the words when Danny calls his partner lunatic in the same tone of voice he’d once used to call her British.
It makes Rachel smile, and when she realizes that, it startles her. Things have been better recently, there’s no denying that, but there’s a long way between things being better and her smiling for Danny again.
Things are better, though. She’s learned from the mistakes she made with Danny, and she’s worked things through with Stan. They’re on solid ground again, and what’s more, they’re happy.
-0-
Rachel’s phone rings as she’s walking out of the office.
“Hey, Rach,” Matt’s easy voice says, and Rachel cannot help how her mouth breaks into a smile. Matt had taken Danny’s side during the divorce; of course he had, and she’d never begrudged any of Danny’s family for doing so. They’ve managed to stay friends, though, she and Matt. She still sends him birthday cards, and he forwards her those ridiculous emails with pictures of cats. His phone call isn’t completely out of the blue, even if she hadn’t been expecting it.
“Matthew,” she replies warmly. “How have you been?”
They talk aimlessly for a while, catching up on each other’s lives; she tells him about reconciling with Stan, and he talks excitedly about a merger he’s expecting. She asks about the girl he’d been seeing and he laughs her off; he asks after Grace, and Rachel tells him everything, though she’s certain that Danny already relayed it all.
“So I think I’m heading your way,” Matt drops casually when the lull in the conversation gets a little too long. “Figured I’d hop on a flight, come on out and see my favorite ex-sister-in-law and my beautiful niece, how’s that sound?”
“And your brother,” Rachel reminds him, amused, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he heaves a put-upon sigh.
“Danny, too,” he agrees, and Rachel smiles and makes plans to meet him while he’s in town.
She doesn’t think anything of it, not a thing at all, until it’s too late to make a difference - until Danny’s telling her about what Matt has done, until she’s trying to help him make the right choice, until Danny shows up on her doorstep, desperate and reeling and in shock, and there’s nothing she can do but offer him comfort.
-0-
They didn’t divorce because they stopped loving each other. They divorced because they hated each other, too, and the line between the two is hard enough to find in the best of times. When things had gotten bad - worse than bad - they’d had to stop, or they’d have killed each other.
But it wasn’t because Rachel ever stopped loving him, and that’s what she tells herself when she pulls Danny into the house, leads him to the spare bedroom, and holds him wordlessly while he falls apart against her. It’s what she thinks when she kisses his forehead softly, when he lifts his face to hers and meshes their lips together with a frightening sort of desperation, when they peel the clothing from their bodies and move and tangle together. It’s what she clings to later, when Danny’s asleep with his arm curled around her waist and she thinks about how she’s just mended things with Stan, how he’ll be so hurt, how it feels like she’s finally saved something she’s already let go.
She doesn’t say anything, though. She just lies in Danny’s arms and presses a quiet kiss to his forehead again and hopes that she can straighten everything out.
-0-
“I should go,” Danny says when he wakes, five in the morning peeking in through the windows, and Rachel doesn’t argue as he finds his clothing and heads out of the house.
“I’m sorry,” he adds as he leaves, and she’s sorry, too, but it isn’t fair to tell him that, not now.
-0-
“I slept with Danny,” Rachel blurts as soon as Stan walks back into the house. He looks exhausted; he doesn’t sleep well on flights, she knows, and he’s had several in the past week, with business meetings on top of that. It’s not fair to drop this on him as soon as he walks in the door, but she’s been thinking and crying and beating herself up for three days, and she knows that the only fair thing to do is to tell Stan.
“While I was gone?” Stan asks slowly, and his shoulders droop a little further. “You- Rachel, I thought we were-”
“I’m sorry,” she’s able to tell him, and the words don’t mean the same here as they would have if she’d spoken them to Danny, but she means them every bit as much. “Stan, I’m so sorry. I - his brother came into town, I told you about Matt, and-”
Rachel doesn’t want to cry any more. She doesn’t, but she’s had three days to tie herself up into knots over this. She’s planned out every reaction he could have, every reaction she could have; she’d called Danny over and had him take Grace for the night so she and Stan could have it out, however that ended up happening. She’s prepared for the yelling, the fighting, the breaking, but she’s not prepared for how Stan drops his bag in the foyer when the tears slip down her face again, for how he reaches out and tugs her in.
“Tell me what happened,” Stan says into her hair, and she owes him that and more, so she does.
-0-
The first envelope arrives on her desk the following Thursday.
It’s hand-addressed in a spidery sort of handwriting that she doesn’t recognize, but Rachel is always willing to accept new clients, so she sets the envelope aside to look at when she breaks for lunch and doesn’t think about it. The morning passes fairly easily; everything balances out for two accounts and the third has a few minor wrinkles, but they’re things she can track down easily enough, so she’s in a decent mood by the time she picks the envelope up and heads to the deli.
Rachel orders her pastrami and provolone on rye and sits at one of the tables by the window to wait while they make the sandwich. She’s thinking absentmindedly about Grace’s school play in two months’ time; Grace is quite excited by her part as a dancing vegetable. Stan has already had a tailor come in and fit her for a custom-made carrot costume, and Rachel doesn’t want to examine that too closely, how Stan is trying to show that he forgives her by lavishing gifts upon Grace. She shakes her head as the clerk sets a plate by her elbow and smiles as she tips him, reaching for the sandwich with one hand while opening the envelope with the other.
Several high-quality glossy photographs fall out when she shakes the envelope, and Rachel’s blood runs cold at the sight of the first.
It’s a good photo, by all standards; she and Grace had been at the park that day, and they’d taken turns telling each other silly jokes as Rachel pushed Grace on the swings. They both look happy and relaxed, smiling and laughing. The next four photos are of the same day; there are a few of Grace with Stan, as well, the two of them walking hand-in-hand down a street filled with shops that Rachel doesn’t quite recognize, and the last few are of Grace at school, one in her classroom and two on the playground with a boy Rachel distantly identifies as Tommy Makili.
The last thing in the envelope is a letter, typed and unsigned.
We have eyes on her. Do not go to the police. Do not go to your ex-husband.
Instructions will follow.
Rachel stares at the note, glances blankly at the photos, and shoves everything back into the envelope. She stands stiffly, walks to the bathroom in the back of the deli, and vomits, still clutching the envelope in her hands.
-0-
Rachel takes the rest of the day off. She’s caught up enough with the work she’s got that she can afford the time, and she rather doubts she’d get anything useful accomplished with her mind spinning as it is, anyway.
She heads home and locks herself in the library with the envelope. It’s no less of a shock to see the photographs this time, and she’s not quite sure what made her think that it would be; it’s still her daughter, still the same words on the same stark sheet of paper, and she still has no idea what to do.
She debates calling Danny anyway. There’s absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do to protect Grace; for all their failings as a couple, for everything they’ve hated about each other, she’ll never deny that he’s an excellent father. He’s an excellent police officer, as well, and the combination of the two is an almost unholy thing to contemplate. Her finger hovers over the buttons of her phone, but her eyes fall once again on the photo of Grace bent over some task at her desk at school, and she can’t help but think of the what if scenario. It’s entirely possible that she’s being watched at this very moment, or that whoever took these pictures of Grace is listening to her phone calls.
She can’t risk it.
Rachel jumps when the phone rings in her hand a moment later. The number is blocked, and she has a moment of panic, because she knows with complete and utter certainty that the caller is the same person who sent her the envelope. She grips the phone tightly and jabs at the screen before raising it to her ear. “Hello?”
“You made a wise decision, Mrs. Edwards,” the voice says, and Rachel closes her eyes and bites her lip to keep from letting anything out. “It must be difficult to be in your shoes. I can’t imagine the turmoil you must be going through right now.”
“What do you want?” she lashes out, angry and terrified and helpless, and the man on the other end of the line laughs.
“In time, Mrs. Edwards,” he says, and damn it all, it sounds like he’s actually enjoying himself. “For now, I simply want you to keep going as you always have. Go to work in the morning, go home to your family when the day is done, sleep beside your husband at night.” He pauses. “Or your ex-husband; the choice is in your hands, really.” There’s another light laugh, and Rachel panics a little more, because she’s in this madman’s hands - Grace is in this madman’s hands - and there’s apparently nothing she can do at this point to change it.
“Is it money?” she asks desperately. “I can get you whatever you might need-”
“Your instructions will follow,” the man interrupts. “For now, just remember that I have your lovely little daughter in my sights, and that I have asked you not to contact the authorities, or to tell Detective Williams about our little arrangement. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” Rachel whispers. “I understand.”
“Good,” the man tells her, and then the line goes dead.
-0-
“You seem tense,” Stan says after supper. “Rough day at the office?”
“Terribly,” Rachel agrees, hating herself for the lie. “I dealt with a few ongoing accounts, and my schedule for tomorrow looks to be the same.”
“You should hire an assistant,” he says, the beginnings of an age-old argument, and she’s just not in the mood for it again. He insists that he doesn’t mind paying for it; she insists that she can handle it on her own, and that if she needed an assistant, she’d hire one for herself. It’s been one hell of a day, though, and Rachel doesn’t have it in her to defend her position again.
“Perhaps I will,” she says instead of the immediate disagreement she’s certain her husband was expecting, and she can feel his surprise as she leans against him on the sofa. He slips an arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head.
“It must have been a really bad day if you’re not even going to argue me on that,” he murmurs, squeezing her arm briefly. “Why don’t you take the day off tomorrow? I can swing it, and we’ll keep Grace out of school - make a day out of it, go to the zoo, something like that.”
There’s something in her chest that’s hard to name - it’s a twisting mess of things, she knows, love and anger and fear all meshed together. She’d like nothing more than to spend the day with her family, but it goes directly against the order she’d been given to keep up her normal activities.
“I’ll be fine,” she replies after a beat too long. “I think I just need a good night’s sleep, and I’ll be good as new in the morning.”
“If you’re sure,” Stan says, looking doubtful.
“And if my husband cared to fix me a nice cup of tea, it might also help,” Rachel continues, smiling up at Stan as he laughs gently. He kisses the end of her nose and stands from the couch, pausing in the doorway.
“Earl Grey or chamomile?” he asks, smiling back at her.
“What kind of self-respecting English lady doesn’t want a nice cup of Earl Grey?” she asks with a light frown, but it’s only a few seconds before her smile breaks through. “Chamomile, darling, thank you.”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promises, walking towards the kitchen.
Rachel lets the smile linger for a little while longer, but it slips from her face when she hears Stan bustling around in the kitchen. She’d been able to fool him this time, but she knows she’s going to have to get a better grip on things. He won’t be so easily dissuaded next time.
-0-
“There’s a guy here to see, you,” Tiffany says cheerily, bustling into Rachel’s office and dumping a few things from the post office onto her desk. Rachel flicks through them quickly - three from clients she knows, one from a woman she’d talked to last week about setting up an account, nothing she isn’t expecting, and her stomach untwists a fraction - and nods at her secretary.
“Is it Mr. Branford?” she asks absently. “His account will not balance until he brings in those travel receipts. There’s simply nothing more I can do for him until he gets them in.”
“No,” Tiffany assures her. “I have the speech memorized by now, and I’ve had to give it twice already. No, this is someone I don’t know.” She shrugs. “He said he doesn’t have an appointment scheduled, and I told him I’d see if you had some free time to meet with him.”
Rachel stands and smoothes the front of her skirt. “I can always make time to meet with a new client,” she reminds Tiffany as she walks into the reception area, a smile fixed on her face.
The man in the lobby is probably around her own age; he’s a bit taller than she is, neatly trimmed, in a smart suit that’s sloppily worn. It’s a calculated look, she knows, and figures he’s probably a small-business owner looking for someone to keep his books for him. She smiles as she extends a hand. That’s certainly something she can manage.
“Michael Baring,” he says, shaking her hand firmly.
“Rachel Edwards,” she replies crisply. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Baring.”
He smiles but doesn’t offer anything further - no company name, nothing about the reason for his visit. It’s a little unusual, but she’s had clients who were picky about their business being made public before, so it’s not completely out of the ordinary. Rachel gestures towards her office. “Shall we?”
They settle into the chairs as the door closes, and Rachel pulls out a legal notepad and a pen. “All right, Mr. Baring, what kind of business are you in?”
“Oh, I’m not in any kind of business,” he replies mildly, and that’s when the muscles in Rachel’s stomach start to twist again. She tries not to let anything show as she lays the pen on her desk.
“I’m not sure what you need from me, then,” she returns, and he smiles.
“The man I work for sent me as a messenger of sorts,” Baring says cryptically, and he reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a manila envelope. Rachel’s name is on it in the same spidery scrawl with which the envelope yesterday had been labeled. Baring hands the envelope over and Rachel takes it quickly, opening it up and sliding out another glossy photograph of Grace. This one had been taken this morning as Grace was leaving for school; Rachel can make herself out in the doorway, wearing the same outfit she’s in now, watching as Grace runs across the driveway to the car.
Rachel checks inside the envelope with shaking hands, but there’s nothing else inside. She takes a moment to try to compose herself before looking back up at Baring, who mostly looks bored. “What’s going on here?”
“It doesn’t concern you,” Baring says, leaning back in his chair. He smirks at the incredulous noise she makes. “I’m not lying to you, Mrs. Edwards. This isn’t about you or your husband. You’re just… convenient, is all.”
“Danny,” Rachel whispers, because it’s clearly about Grace, and if it’s not about her or Stan that doesn’t leave much in the way of options. “He’s made your employer angry and you’re using Grace to get back at Danny.”
Baring makes a teetering motion with his hand. “He’s just inconvenient,” he says, and Rachel’s really starting to hate how he’s talking about the lives of her family as if they’re trifling matters, obstacles to circumvent like the zoning issues Stan confronts when he builds something new downtown. “Here’s the short version, Mrs. Edwards. Detective Williams is making it very difficult for my employer to get what he wants, and taking him out at this point isn’t an option he’d like to pursue. He needs you to distract your ex-husband, keep his mind from staying completely in the game.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” she asks desperately. “Distracting Danny - that’s not - I’m married to another man,” she points out. “It’s not as if I can seduce him into staying home from work.”
Baring looks her up and down rather blatantly and smirks again. “Didn’t seem like you had such a big moral issue with it when his brother skipped town.”
“That was-” Rachel feels a flush spread scarlet up her neck, across her cheeks. “You are being perfectly crass.”
“And you seem to be forgetting that my employer will have no problem putting a bullet through your daughter’s head,” he returns calmly. “It’s your choice, Mrs. Edwards, but I really wouldn’t want to get on my employer’s bad side. He’s got a bit of a temper when things don’t go his way.”
Rachel swallows heavily and looks down at the photograph on her desk. Grace is smiling brightly, pigtails flying out behind her as she skips towards the car, one hand on the strap of her knapsack. “When?” she chokes out. “When do you need me to - distract him-”
“Start soon,” Baring advises as he stands. “Keep it going. The less involved he can be at work, the better your daughter’s chances of seeing her next birthday become.”
Rachel nods dimly, struggling to keep her breathing even.
“Oh,” Baring says, hand on the door, “don’t tell anyone, don’t call the cops, and don’t spill this to Detective Williams in the heat of the moment. I’m sure you figured all that out already, but just so we’re clear.” He flashes a smile. “It’ll be our little secret.”
“Bastard,” Rachel hisses out, but Baring is already gone.
-0-
“Hey, Rach, I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Danny says over the phone, and she can hear tires squealing and a dull popping sound that she chooses to believe isn’t gunfire. “Can this wait?”
“I - Danny, we have to talk,” she says. It sounds weak, Rachel knows, and she has to be careful with how she approaches every little bit of this. If she missteps, drives Danny further into his job, the consequences are simply unthinkable.
There’s more popping, and Rachel can hear the low tone of Steve McGarrett’s voice in the background. “Yes dear, I’m well aware,” he says sarcastically, and she’s ready to snipe at him when he sighs. “Not you, Rach. Steve’s being an asshole, don’t mind him. And yeah I agree, but really-”
The sound this time is screeching tires, followed by a few dull thumps and a roaring kind of sound.
“Well, fuck,” Danny says succinctly. “I’ll call you later, okay, we’ve got a situation. Sorry,” he adds, and then he’s hanging up on her.
Rachel closes her eyes and leans her head against her hands. All the reasons not to get involved with Danny come crashing down again - there were reasons they hadn’t worked out the first time, she’s still with Stan, she doesn’t want to start anything that’s going to ultimately end with Danny hating her again, she’s not sure she can live with herself for doing this to Danny or to Stan - but louder than all of that is the sound of Grace’s laughter echoing in her head, and she knows that she doesn’t really have a choice.
-0-
“Mommy,” Grace chirps as soon as Rachel gets home. “Leilani is having a sleepover for her birthday, and she really wants me to go, and I really want to go. Can I go?”
Rachel’s heart jumps into her throat. The thought of letting Grace out of her care is absolutely unbearable; who knows what the man pulling the strings would do if Grace was out of Rachel’s immediate vicinity for too long?
Grace is pulling something large and glittery from her schoolbag, and Rachel takes the handmade invitation from her gingerly as she tries to pull in a calming breath. Leilani Siloman only lives three houses away. This isn’t a big deal, and if Rachel wasn’t in her current situation, she would already have said yes.
She wars with herself for a moment - saying yes goes against every instinct she has, but saying no will raise suspicions that she can’t afford. She plays for time, instead. “It’s on your father’s weekend, Grace. You’ll have to check with him.”
Grace’s face falls, and Rachel can see the struggle in her features. It makes her chest pull tighter for a different reason - she spends so little time with Danny anyway, and she hates to lose even a second of it. Grace bites her lip and nods.
“Maybe I can just go for part of it,” she says slowly. “Maybe Daddy can pick me up early and I can go with him and we can still spend some time together.”
“Or,” Rachel says thoughtfully, “perhaps your father and I can work something out.” The idea forms, shifts, half-there in her mind, and she grabs onto it and doesn’t let go. “Grace, may I keep this invitation?”
“Okay,” Grace replies happily. Rachel distracts her by asking about her day, what she’d done and how she’d aced a math quiz, and she lets her daughter’s chatter soothe her as she moves around in the kitchen, preparing supper for her family.
-0-
“Sorry about before,” Danny apologizes when Rachel answers the phone. “We, ah, there was this car chase, and Steve’s kind of a maniac, and the other guy ended up flipping kind of spectacularly across three lanes of traffic, so I was a little occupied.” He waits a beat, and when she doesn’t say anything, he goes on. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“I did,” Rachel replies, trying not to wrinkle the sparkling invitation she has in her hand. “I - not over the phone, though. I wanted to-”
Her voice catches in her throat, but she’s saved by Danny’s voice, cutting in gently. “You want me to come over, sweetheart?”
“No,” she says quickly. “No, not here. I was thinking we could meet someplace. Or…” She lets her voice trail off and hopes he makes the leap on his own.
It doesn’t take him long at all. “Why don’t you come over to my place? We can talk about whatever you need.” His voice is strange, soft, like she hasn’t heard in years, and she hates herself for realizing that this is going to be easier than she thought it would be. “I’ve got some of that terrible English breakfast tea that you love,” he adds, and she can almost see the gentle smile on his face.
“Put the kettle on,” Rachel tries to laugh, and it’s a wonder it doesn’t come out as a sob with how she’s feeling. “I’ll be along shortly.”
“I’ll be here,” Danny says, and when she hears the phone click off, she lets herself exhale, closing her eyes against everything she doesn’t want to see. She stays that way for a moment before shaking her head and climbing to her feet. She’s set herself on the path; all she has to do now is walk it.
Danny opens the door to his apartment and smiles, and Rachel does her best to smile back. She knows it’s weak, but Danny doesn’t call her on it. He just steps back from the door and pulls it open a little wider, gesturing inside with a hand. “It’s not fancy, but it’s home,” he says, and her eyes sweep over the inside of the apartment as she steps inside. It hits her like a punch to the gut, that he lives like this; they certainly hadn’t lived like royalty back in New Jersey, but Rachel knows full well that it’s only because of the cost of the divorce and her decision to move that Danny can’t afford anything more than a tiny apartment that’s not in the best part of town.
“It’s nice,” she says as he shuts the door behind her, and he laughs as he moves into the kitchen and grabs something from the counter.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that,” he tells her, offering the hot mug of tea with a grin. She takes it gratefully and sinks down onto the sofa that probably doubles as a pullout bed and tries not to grimace. “So what’s up?”
There are several ways to approach this, Rachel knows, and she’s not sure which is the best option, the way that will eat at her conscience the least when this is all over. She settles for pulling the invitation from her purse and handing it to Danny. She watches as he reads it over and frowns. “You wanted to come over and, what, ask me if Grace can go to a thing on my weekend?”
“I wanted to offer to trade weekends with you,” she replies, and Danny’s eyes snap to hers, surprised. It just adds another layer of guilt to everything that she’s already feeling, that she’s treated him badly enough that he’s shocked at her willingness to negotiate. “I know you don’t see Grace often enough for either of your liking, and I figured that it might be a gesture of goodwill on my part to ease that somewhat.”
“That’s great, Rach,” Danny says slowly, a smile blooming on his face. “I - thank you.”
“You’re certainly welcome,” she returns, smiling over her mug. “I wanted to apologize, as well.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ve treated you rather unfairly since - well, since well before the divorce, actually. I’ve realized recently that it would probably benefit us both if I didn’t act as if I hated you all the time.”
If Danny had looked surprised before, he looks stunned now. “I don’t think you hate me, not any more,” he says quietly. “I know I fucked up, okay, and I never blamed you for moving on.”
Rachel raises an eyebrow at him, and he has the decency to blush and duck his head, a little half-grin on his face. “Okay, so maybe I blamed you a little.”
“You threatened to cut Stan’s testicles off and staple them to his forehead,” Rachel reminds him mildly, but Danny laughs and tilts his head to the side.
“I haven’t thought you hated me in a while, though,” he continues. “And hey, if we’re apologizing, then I’m sorry too, okay? I know it was never easy on you, and those last few months before we called it quits were-” Danny shakes his head. “I don’t know how you kept yourself from slugging me.”
“It was a close call some days,” she responds. “I was a little afraid that I’d be arrested, though. You knew several police officers who weren’t terribly fond of me.”
“God, we were so bad for each other,” Danny says wistfully, a little smile on his face. “It’s a miracle we were together long enough for Grace to happen.”
“She is a miracle,” Rachel agrees softly, tracing the edges of the invitation. “And it wasn’t all bad. Most of it,” she says, hesitating, “most of it was quite wonderful, actually.”
“Rachel,” he says, and he’s back to looking startled.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” she hurries, standing from the sofa. “I’ll keep Grace this weekend, and you’ll have her the next two, and that’s that, right?” Rachel forces a smile onto her face that she doesn’t feel and takes a step towards the door. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“Hey,” he says, standing and walking to the door with her - it isn’t hard; the inside of his apartment isn’t exactly spacious - and taking her hand in one of his. “Thanks again,” he says, tugging gently until she stumbles into him, and then he’s wrapping his arms around her, tucking her head down into his shoulder, and Rachel just wants to cry.
“You’re welcome,” she whispers instead, and tries not to hate herself as she leaves his apartment and drives back home.
-0-
“Let’s go away for a night,” Stan suggests. He’s brushing his fingers almost absently through her hair as she lies on his chest. “Grace is going to that sleepover, and I feel like we haven’t done anything, just the two of us, in a long time.”
“Hmm,” Rachel replies, trying to think quickly and not give anything away. Her plans for this weekend don’t involve going away with her husband, and there’s really only a dull echo of an ache in her stomach at the thought of it. “What about next weekend instead? Then Grace will be with Danny, and we can go the whole time instead of just the night.”
“I love a woman with a plan,” Stan says with a smile, turning his head to kiss her hair. “Do you have somewhere in mind?”
“Nowhere too far,” she replies, settling against him. It reminds her of the early days of their marriage, when they’d steal a few days here or there and hop a flight somewhere. It was fun, getting on a plane and just going, spending time with a man she loved in a place that didn’t know them.
“We live in Hawaii, Rachel,” Stan reminds her, clearly amused. “Everything’s too far from here.”
“What if we just went to one of the other islands?” she suggests. “Maui, or maybe that getaway you found on Kaua’i.”
“That sounds promising,” he murmurs. “You, me, a beach, and not much else. I’ll have to switch a meeting on the Big Island from next weekend to this, but other than that, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Rachel smiles. “Call Moani in the morning and book us,” she says. Stan’s arm wraps around her waist, and he presses another kiss into her hair.
“We’ll make this work,” he tells her, and it sounds like a promise but feels like a weight on her shoulders, pulling her down too far to get out.
Part Two