Revisiting The Past
Parts 3-4
By Kellie
Dropping the bag she held in her hand on the floor beside her, Michelle stood perfectly still and swallowed hard. She heard Rick's footsteps as he walked up behind her and came to a stop beside her. "Michelle, it's time to do this," he whispered before adding a with a normal voice, "I'll put your bag in Dad's room. Good night."
Michelle watched as Rick grabbed her bag and headed up the steps. Trying to will herself to turn around, she started to bite her bottom lip. She heard Danny close the door and walk up behind her. She could sense that he was only inches from her. The silence enveloped the room, neither one of them wanting to be the first to speak. Not able to stand it any longer, Michelle turned and looked up at the brown eyes that always made her heart melt. The sadness and pain they reflected brought tears to her eyes. He reached up and wiped the tears from her face as he spoke, "Why, Michelle? Why did you leave?"
She backed away from him before heading across the room to the window. "I don't know where to start. I'm not really sure how to explain something I still don't understand myself."
"What does that mean?" he asked. Michelle heard him pull the chair away from the table. She turned to see him sitting at the table, arms resting on the table as he tapped the wooden surface with his fingers.
"Danny, I've tried to make sense out of the way I took off since the day I left. I still don't understand why I took off. At the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. Now, I'm not so sure."
"Michelle, I need you to make the hell I went through when you took off make sense for me. I need to know why – what were you thinking when you decided to leave and why you came back now?" he said a little too calmly for her comfort.
Michelle looked across the room at him and saw the steely determination in his face. She knew that when he was that calm and controlled, that he was struggling to reign in his anger. "I can't do this right now," she said as she darted towards the stairs.
He was on his feet in an instant. Michelle felt his hand grip her arm and pull her around to face him. "Damn it, Michelle! You're not avoiding this any longer. I'm getting the explanation I need tonight!" he shouted.
Michelle's mind flashed back to the night she pulled a knife on him in this very kitchen. Her mind was spinning out of control. Closing her eyes tightly, Michelle struggled to contain her spiraling emotions. She heard him much more calmly say, "Michelle, you're going to sit down at this table with me and explain everything. I'm not letting you leave this room until you do."
She opened her eyes and watched as he let go of her arm and walk to the end of the table and pull out a chair. He looked across at her; "Have a seat."
Michelle walked over and sat in the chair. She watched as he returned to his own seat. She started wringing her hands as she tried to figure out what to say. "I'm not sure where to begin," she finally said.
"How about starting with what happened after I left for Millennium that day? When I left, I thought everything was fine. What happened before you went out that door?"
Michelle looked across the table at him and began. "After you left that day, I sat down on the bench and started reading. I dozed off and I had another one of those dreams."
"Michelle, you were having lots of those dreams before you left. What do they have to do with your vanishing act?"
Swallowing hard, she began, "I lied to you all those times I said I didn't remember what happened in those dreams."
"Michelle, I was going nuts in the weeks before you left. After the miscarriage, I watched you withdraw more and more. Those dreams were part of it. That week before you left, you didn't have any of those dreams. You started talking to me again. I thought we were finally putting the pain behind us and moving forward."
She nodded before going on. "Danny, I thought that telling you about those nightmares would be too painful for you."
"Why?"
"They were about Carmen."
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Michelle rose from the table and started to walk across the room. "Where are you going? You can't take off after dropping a bombshell like that," Danny remarked.
"I'm just going to make some coffee. It's nearly 4 am and I went on duty at the hospital at 6 AM yesterday. I wasn't planning on pulling an all- nighter tonight, so I need some caffeine to keep going."
Danny nodded as Michelle went over to counter and started going through the cabinets looking for coffee. "Where did you guys move the coffee to?" she asked with an exasperated sigh.
"I think Aunt Meta started keeping it in the freezer. She said something about reading somewhere that it stays fresh longer," he replied.
"Michelle, I just don't get why you didn't think you could tell me about those dreams."
As she put the coffee back in the freezer, Michelle answered, "Think about that time in our lives, your mother had just been murdered. Your mother and I mutually disliked each other." Looking at his face, she changed her statement, "Okay, we hated each other. It was difficult to talk to you about your mother – you always felt the need to defend her or justify her actions to me."
"Michelle, I hated the things my mother did to you."
"I know that, but she was still your mother and you loved her despite the things that she did," Michelle said as she came back and took her seat at the table. "Face it, the topic of your mother led to most of the disagreements we had."
Danny sat in silence for a few minutes. He looked up at her, "What happened in those dreams?"
"Your mother would walk into the room and come up to me. She was holding a baby wrapped in a pink blanket. Carmen would look at me and say something about she was taking care of my baby now," Michelle recalled as a lone tear ran down her face.
He reached up and wiped the tear off her face. "Well, that explains the dreams and why you weren't sleeping in those last weeks and I knew that the dreams had something to do with the depression you seemed to sink into; but that still doesn't explain your leaving."
"It's hard to explain something that I'm still trying to explain to myself," Michelle quietly said as she rose and went over and fixed herself a cup of coffee. "Do you want a cup?" she asked as she studied the back of Danny's head.
He nodded yes as he sat silently contemplating her words. "Michelle, that day – what happened after you woke up from that dream to make it different than the others?"
"Well, with all the others, you had been here when I woke up."
"Was anyone here that day?"
"Yeah, Claire came in while I was still shaking and crying from the dream."