Dreaming August Read Online Free PDF Page A

pitched the tent she and Henny bought for the big camping trip they never took, and slept at his graveside, waiting. If she believed hard enough, he’d find a way to her. And Benny believed. She felt whole worlds just beyond her fingertips when she stretched her arms out wide. It was there. She simply could not reach it. Yet.
    August.
    The word bounced about Benny’s head, clear as it did three days ago. August was the month Henny died. Was it connected in any way? Or did it mean whatever it was trying to reach her would do so in August? Tossing and turning through the night, Benny tried to make herself believe it was, after all, Henny trying to contact her, and that on the anniversary of his death, something would happen. But there had been no squeeze when she asked. In her heart, she knew it wasn’t him. She never felt Henny in the cemetery, despite her almost-daily visits, only an empty space he used to fill up.
    Flopped on the ground beside his tombstone, arms behind her head, gazing at the clouds, Benny let go a long sigh. “Sorry I haven’t been here. I got totally freaked out the other day.” She rolled onto her side. Flowers needed dead-heading. She plucked at a few. “That’s not quite right. I didn’t get freaked out. I got hopeful. But it’s not you trying to get my attention. You have it already, don’t you, Henny. All of it. Almost. This is just so weird. All the years I did séances with my friends and dabbled in Wicca even though it made Ma’s head explode, I wished so hard to see something otherworldly, and now this…whatever it is. Part of me says it’s bullshit. Part of me says finally! But I want it to be you, Henny. I just want it to be you.”
    Habit rolled Benny onto her belly and she instantly felt the pressure across her swelling abdomen. Burying her face into her folded arms, she inhaled the earthy scent. In. Out. The grass, newly cut. The dirt still damp from its daily watering. Intoxicating in its way. And the pressure across her abdomen a real and unavoidable reminder of the child she carried. Not Henny’s. Dan’s. A man she had known all her life, yet barely knew at all.
    “I was lonely,” she told the grass and earth. “And he is…he’s Dan. He did that stupid, does-this-smell-funny thing one day at CC’s and I fell for it. He wiped the cream from my nose so tenderly, you know? And when he said I needed to get out of the house, and who better than a harmless old bachelor friend, I said yes before I even thought about it.” Another deep breath in, out. “I didn’t realize how much I missed laughing. We had fun. When he asked if I wanted to go to the movies, I said yes. Another dinner? Yes. He showed up at the house with that horse and carriage of his on Valentine’s Day and took me for a ride. That was the night, Henny. It was the only time we—well, you know how babies are made.”
    She sniffed back tears.
    “He told me he was falling in love with me. Why did he have to say those words and ruin it all? I’ve been avoiding him all these months, knowing I couldn’t forever. Knowing it was wrong. This is his baby too, right? When I saw him at CC’s the other day, I didn’t know how to act, what to say. I—I think I miss him. There. I said it out loud. I miss Dan. I miss the way he made me laugh and how he made me feel. And now you know. But you have all along, haven’t you? You saw me with him, didn’t you?”
    Tears spilled into sobbing. She had put it out of her mind, the notion Henny had watched his wife, the woman who promised him forever, make love to another man. It didn’t matter it was Dan. Good guy Dan. Funny guy Dan. Old high school buddy Daniel-freaking-Greene. It would have been better if he’d been a stranger, or some asshole she wouldn’t think a second thought about. Sex was biology. Making love was an entirely different thing.
    A touch, first cold, then spreading warmth through her body. Benny stiffened, but she didn’t bolt upright. Keeping her