A piece of the past...

"I saw Jesus in my sleep last night," Tessa told her.

She didn't know what to say other than, "Really?"

Her sister nodded with a faint smile on her lips. "He said he's going to take me to a great place."

Dannie felt the tears coming. She wanted to tell Tessa the truth but she couldn't bring herself to do it. "Everything's going to be great from today onwards," she promised her sister.

The very next day, Dannie and her mother packed Tessa's belongings and left the hospital for good.

The ache she felt in her heart couldn't be compared to anything she had been through. What she lost during her hotel visits couldn't be compared to that day.

The question of whether she could have done more would forever be a shadow in her life.

PRESENT DAY

The smile on her face was enlightening. It was like I was on my dying moment and I was seeing an illusion of something peaceful—something promising.

I couldn't help it, but that was what I felt while Dannie baby took the final steps toward me. Her gentle hands planted themselves on my hood and I was suddenly energized, ready to know more—to find out more—about the reasons of this sudden change in her aura.

My headlights went over to where Troy was standing and I almost snorted. It couldn't be entirely because of him, right? That would be horrendous! Huh! No way! That guy may have played a part, but not that much, right?

"Don't look so happy seeing that old thing," Troy said as he walked toward us.

OLD?! Who's OLD?!

"I'm just glad he's still intact," Dannie uttered with a chuckle, giving me a pat before she turned to face Troy. "Shall we go home now?"

Troy took a deep breath and sighed. "Danica, I'm beat. Seriously beat. Can't we just spend at least a day here before we head back home?"

To my uttermost surprise, to Troy's, Dannie baby just shrugged and said, "Okay. That's fine with me. What are we having for lunch?"

She walked away from us and to the house, her steps light and...happy?

Troy scratched his head with an amused look on his face. And then he turned to me and said, "We should carnap you more often, buddy."

SHUT UP, BRADY!

He followed her to the house and I wondered about what would happen next. I was not against staying overnight any more than I was yesterday because at that very moment, I wanted to see something unfurl.

*****

Dannie ordered Troy to call the bride and to tell her Toto was safe and would be delivered the following day. After learning that she and Troy would be spending the night at the farm, her friends demanded to talk to her.

"Yes, it's true," Dannie said, looking over at Troy who was trying to find something inside the fridge. "No, he did not force me." At that, Troy jumped to his feet and rushed to her side.

"Tell them you readily said yes," he urged.

She brushed him aside and listened to what Jackie was saying. "Yeah, we'll go back home tomorrow. Yes, I won't let him take me anywhere."

"Why do you guys always have to do this?" Jackie demanded.

"What does Brady feed you, huh? You're suddenly always with him," George added.

"Goodbye, guys. Toto is fine and we're fine and we're going home tomorrow," Dannie said with feigned annoyance.

"As promised," Troy iterated with his mouth near the phone. "I'll get her home as promised!" he shouted before Dannie ended the call.

"Let's eat," she said, stepping away from Troy. "You cook while I go around outside."

"You're going around?" he asked as if he didn't understand what he heard.

"Yes. And I am going to take my time." She lifted her head and smiled at him before walking away. She knew she seemed weird to him, but she couldn't help it.

After that visit in the swamp, she thought she had finally found what she was looking for. Not entirely, of course, but she was getting there and it was exciting. Who would have thought that of all things, a swamp would clear things up for her?

As she walked out of the house, she was suddenly greeted with the strong wind. The sun was bright today and the wind was quite strong, considering the farm was surrounded by trees. Troy and his parents owned hectares of sugarcane land. The said grasses were almost ready for harvest. Dannie could hear their leaves rustle with the trees and she marveled at the natural sound around her. She let her feet guide her to nowhere in particular as her thoughts drifted back and forth to her past and the present.

She could no longer change what had happened to her before, nor could she change the people who had hurt her the most. But she could change the now. She could change where she'd go from her and it would be entirely up to her. No one would force her into doing something she didn't want to. No one would be there to order her to give up anything she held dear. The now was all hers.

It was something she never really thought of or embraced because it scared her. As much as she hated how her parents had controlled her life in the past, she couldn't help but think that she had also let them control most of her life after everything was over—after Tessa left. The scars they left had been guiding her life, keeping her away from something that could be promising.

Sister Odette was right. There was something more to the life outside that she hadn't experienced before.

And Dannie thought she wanted to experience them. It would start now, today, at this very moment.

*****

They decided to have a beer outside where the sky was clear and the stars were visible, where the air was cool and the trees gentle. Troy opened Tata's back and they both sat on my pick-up friend's rear, their legs dangling and dancing with the tall grasses underneath.

Tata and I were silent as the two of them talked about anything under the...uh, well, moon. It was night time, anyway. They had gathered a lot of fun stories together that I almost felt a bit envious that I was not a witness to most of them.

"Do you remember that time in science class when we were asked to dissect a frog?" Troy asked, already laughing at the thought.

Dannie vigorously nodded her head and bent over in soundless laughter at the thought.

"I've never seen you guys run that fast ever," Dannie uttered in between laughter. Her eyes were almost watery and I was about to tear up with gas with the fact that they were happy tears, not I-cry-because-of-my-past kind of tears.

"Hey, in my defense, I did not run."

"Oh, you didn't jump on that table when your frog suddenly unpinned itself from the pan and jumped off the tray?" Dannie asked.

"Hey, anyone would gross out seeing that frog jumping all over the place with its innards out in the open!" Troy cried out, the horrible memory clearly painted on his face.

Dannie laughed again. "Good thing we had George."

Troy nodded and tipped his bottle toward Dannie's. "To George who caught the frog."

"And to Lee who patted Miguel while he vomited outside the laboratory door."

Troy broke into a fit of laughter as he remembered that scene. "And to our teacher who ordered you and Jackie to take him to the clinic."

They let their laughter die down before they opened up another topic. "And there was also that time when you guys used to call us Mudbloods."

"Ahh...yes," Troy said, his eyes glinting with the memory. "Because we were the pure bloods."

"Harry Potter was such a big thing back then, wasn't it?"

"It still is," he said. "And so were those Taiwanese dramas."

"Oh gosh, yes. Meteor Garden."

Troy shivered at the thought. "I can't believe those outfits and hairstyles were so in back then."

Dannie laughed. "You copied the main guy's hair! Don't deny it!"

"Only for a week! Come on, I was wise enough to realize early that I looked stupid as hell!"

I had never seen Dannie baby laugh that hard before. "And did you remember that time when we all had to do the flag ceremony every day for a week in front of all the students?" Dannie asked.

"It wasn't my fault," Troy said.

"It was your fault! If you did not throw that thing toward our teacher, it would not have happened!"

"That thing was just this small," he said, his fingers forming an invisible ball the size of a pea.

"You threw it anyway," Dannie said.

"I threw it to the direction of the blackboard. Who would have thought she'd turn around just in time for that thing to land right into—"

"Her bust," Dannie finished for him with another round of laughter. "You were so lucky she did not see you."

"I was so lucky you did not tell her," he said with a wink.

"And because of that, we all had to suffer for a week."

"And made great memories."

"Yeah, we did. Some of them are even forever printed on our yearbook."

"What do you mean?" Troy asked.

"Don't act as if you don't know," Dannie shot at him. "If you open our yearbook, you, Miguel and Lee are in almost all of the photos of everyone. You're hiding and poking your heads behind the background trees of students' individual photos! You were even in mine and nobody realized it until the yearbook was out!"

Troy was no longer listening because he was bent over his knees in laughter, his shoulders shaking. He was trying hard to catch his breath.

"The three of you were hiding behind a statue on my individual shot," Dannie accused.

"The photographer became my mentor, you know that?" Troy asked when he finally caught his breath.

"Of course he would be! He knew all along and didn't say a word!"

They talked a lot about almost everything else during their student days. College wasn't missed either and everything would have been very happy if they didn't talk about it.

It actually started as an innocent question, you know. I wouldn't blame Troy and I wouldn't blame Dannie baby either. It was just really an honest question.

"Do you miss her a lot?" asked Troy, his smile was still there but it didn't reach his eyes.

By look on Dannie baby's face, she knew what he was talking about. I thought she'd freak out or something, but she didn't do that. She just took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Yeah, every minute whenever I am alone."

"Does it still hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I just want to believe that she's in a much better place."

Troy turned to her and grabbed her hand in his. He gave it a squeeze. "I am sure she is."

A different kind of tension suddenly developed. Not the sexual kind, if that was what you were thinking. It was the bad one that I didn't even want to think about. And I was sure Troy didn't either. But it was Dannie who opened it up.

"Troy, I want to tell you something," she said.

"No," Troy said even before she finished her statement. "No, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. You don't have to feel obliged to tell me something I don't know just because you feel you have to."

Dannie baby was shaking her head. This time, it was her who gave his hand a squeeze. "No. I want to tell you because I want you to know everything about me. Just like how you know everything about the good times we had, I want you to know the dark ones as well."

Troy suddenly looked worried. "You're not going to tell me because you wish it will make me love you less, are you?"

Dannie chuckled. "A part of me wishes that to happen but that's not it. I just want to tell you."

"I don't think I want to know, Danica."

"Because you don't think you can handle my dark past?"

He shook his head. "No. Because I don't think I can learn how to forgive whoever caused it."

Dannie baby squeezed Troy's hand again. "You don't have to judge anyone. Let me just tell you because it will help me heal."

Troy did not say anything. I was not sure I wanted Dannie baby to tell him because I was not sure what Troy was capable of doing after he learned about her past.

But she told him anyway.