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It was Saturday afternoons and watching a movie on the floor and her mother’s lap that made her most content.
Feeling Momma’s nails sweep over her hairline, up and down her back. Playing with the intricate, unique rings on her fingers when she’d bring her hands down to rest in front of them both. Glancing up, every so often, to study her face, only to be rewarded with a kiss and a gentle remark: “the princess is on the screen, sweetie, not up here.”
Richard Madden’s Prince Charming character comes into view on the TV. Dani’s not-so-secretly in love with Richard Madden; it’s no surprise to Malcolm that their daughter’s being shown the 2015 remake of this movie, rather than the 1950 original.
“The Prince has eyes like Daddy,” Alea comments as the camera pans in on Richard’s heavenly blues.
“I know,” Dani whispers into her daughter’s hairline, “they’re my favorite.”
“Hmm,” They turn to see Malcolm shift in his seat on the couch behind them. He looks up from his laptop and assorted work papers, a playful eyebrow raised. “Is that the only reason you married me, Momma?”
“That, and for many reasons more,” she teases, but her eyes are so sincere that his breath catches in his throat for a moment.
AFIS trots over to Alea and Dani from her bed, folding up her body and collapsing her head into both the girls’ laps.
“Including the fact that you let me get a dog,” Dani remarks, smoothing a hand between the greyhound’s ears. “If the prince won’t get Cinderella a puppy, he’s good as gone in my book,” she bends down to tell Alea, smiling as she giggles.
__________________
Now in white instead of blue, Cinderella waves and the Prince wave at their overjoyed kingdom, and the movie comes to a close. Dani feels a familiar pair of eyes glancing up at the underside of her chin, and threads her fingers through her daughter’s summer-brown locks. “I sense a question coming from the Peanut Gallery. Go ahead.”
“Did you have a dress like that when you married Daddy?”
Dani’s quizzical brow answers her first. “Baby, you’ve seen pictures from our wedding. They’re all over the house. My dress looked nothing like that.”
“Momma still has her dress, Smalls,” Malcolm chimes in with one of the many nicknames he’s given their daughter. Dani meets his eyes cautiously, wondering what he’s plotting. “Maybe if you saw her in it in person you wouldn’t forget it.” He winks back at her. “I certainly haven’t.”
“Oh Momma, put it on!” Alea twists around to face her, taking fistfuls of Dani’s t-shirt in her hands. “Pleaaaaseee!” Even AFIS sits up and wags her tail in excitement.
Dani shoots daggers at Malcolm, mouthing “I could kill you” when he feigns innocence. She turns back to Alea and AFIS, eagerly awaiting her reply. “My body doesn’t look like that anymore, ‘Lea. Daddy’s got some crazy ideas in his head; sometimes you need to learn to ignore them.” She can tell without even facing him that he’s shaking his head, because Alea’s looking over her mother’s shoulder before grinning even wider.
“Momma, please! You have to now!” Her eyebrows bridge higher as Dani’s lips form a hard line. Alea sits up and brings her hands to either side of her mother’s face, pressing their noses together.
“Pleaaaassseee?” Alea begs with her voice and her father’s ocean eyes.
Damn Malcolm for teaching their daughter the one and only trick that worked.
Dani scrunches her nose, a smile of defeat pulling on her lips. “Only because you’re cute, and I love you unconditionally.” She sets her now gleefully screaming child aside, pats AFIS and rises to head for the stairs.
“You, though?” She snaps her fingers at Malcolm, whose shit-eating grin makes her stifle a laugh, “Mostly conditionally. Especially right now.”
“I’m A-Okay with that,” he calls over his shoulder as Alea slams into him. “I’ll be waiting exactly where I was the last time you had it on in the house.” Dani makes sure Alea isn’t looking her way before flipping him off.
When she’s made her way up the stairs, he extends a hand out to his daughter. “High-five, buddy. We did it.” She throws her weight into the slap against his hand, squealing and jumping in place. AFIS bounds over to join in on the excitement, meeting Malcolm’s other hand with her nose as he chuckles at both of them.
“Okay, we gotta go wait for Momma at the bottom of the stairs.” Malcolm sets his work notebook aside and ushers his girls to follow him.
__________________
“You waited for Momma right here, Daddy?”
Malcolm glances down to see Alea’s jittering frame, pulling on his hand with unbridled ecstasy. His other hand remains occupied scratching AFIS’s cheek as they all stand together at the bottom of the stairs.
“I did, kiddo, right here while Aunt Ainsley finished helping Momma get ready. Your Grampa Gil and Cici were waiting with me too, at the kitchen island.” He fought back laughter as he remembered Gil enjoying his coffee while his mother was growing more and more intoxicated by the moment with the mimosas she’d (initially) brought for everyone else.
______ -Saturday, March 20th, 2021: the Spring Equinox, and the Powell-Bright’s wedding day-
“Do you guys think you’ll still be done on time?” he remembers texting Ains. “Pretty sure the bride’s the one who’s supposed to be picked up and carried through thresholds, not the mother of the groom.”
“Our mother has a liver of steel,” she’d responded. “She’ll live. Tbh she’s probably feeling a lot since her son’s getting married. Maybe you should say something?”
Malcolm had locked his phone as his eyelids fluttered in annoyance. Ainsley was right.
“Mom?” he’d turned to her as she worked on her third serving. She perked in response, nearly tipping her glass over before Gil caught it.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Malcolm had breathed out a shaky laugh, suddenly realizing that he was nervous, too.
“Oh, honey,” his mother’s hand flew up to her face to hold back a sob. She’d rounded the island and stumbled over to grip him in a dramatic embrace as she cried. “My baby,” she had sobbed, “my little boy, is getting married...”
“Mom... Mom. Mother. Just... Okay, stop, please stop...” Malcolm had tried running a comforting hand over the back of her midnight blue silk gown, but her sobs only grew more erratic by the second. His gaze then met Gil’s steady, reassuring smile.
“You gonna cry too?” Malcolm had teased.
“Nah... Not yet.” Gil’s laugh lines crinkled, and he raised his coffee cup to Malcolm’s worried face.
______
“Hey Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dog... Are you guys ready?” Malcolm is pulled from his reverie by Dani’s voice, echoing from the master suite upstairs.
“Am I Tweedle-dog?” He calls back.
“You’re 'Tweedle-on-thin-ice' now.”
Alea hides her giggling lips against her father’s hand.
“Ooh! I play that character a lot!” Malcolm grins; he can hear Dani’s eyes rolling. “Yes, sweetheart. We’re all here, ready for you.”
“Okay,” Dani replies from the floor above. “One condition: Daddy, close your eyes.”
“I didn’t have to do this the first-”
“Yeah. That’s because I actually fit into my dress then.”
“Danielle, I will always- ”
He hears her growl at the mention of her full name. “I’ll take this dress off-”
“Okay, okay.” Alea watched her father swipe a hand over his eyes, closing them. “Eyes wide shut. Come on down.”
__________________
Dani lingers in the master suite a few minutes longer than anticipated. Alea prances in place while still clutching her father’s hand, trying to use whatever willpower she has to be patient. AFIS has already laid down on the floor, her muzzle atop Malcolm’s slipper.
And then, descending foot falls. Toe-heel, toe-heel, soft and hesitant against the mahogany steps. The sound grows steadily in intensity; Malcolm knows she’s getting close.
He doesn’t hear a peep from her, but he feels Alea let go of his hand. Feels AFIS pull her chin off of his big toe, detects the dog’s soft yawn before she leaves his side.
Silence as he hears Dani hit the bottom step.
He smiles. He remembers being completely silent at this moment years ago, too.
Malcolm leans against the railing, participating vicariously through what he can hear.
His girls’ quiet conversations. Alea’s hushed giggles as Dani covers their daughter in kisses. AFIS furiously sniffing what Malcolm assumes must be every inch of that gown.
All three padding over to him.
Alea’s hand grabs his left index finger, pulling it until his hand is intertwined with Dani’s. She takes the other before he can even attempt to find where she was.
She’s brought his hands to her face; he can tell from the butterfly kisses his thumbs get from her eyelashes. His fingers roam her curls; his right hand finds the diamond barrette she’d worn to pin that side of her hair back that day.
“Dani, wow,” he breathes. His pinky fingers catch the smile that touches her eyes.
Her hands bring him down over the sapphire earrings that had been in her mother’s family for years, down to the slope of her gentle shoulders where he makes contact with the lace flowers on her dress. Malcolm’s eyes nearly pop open as the memories from the last time he embraced these lace shoulders flood the forefront of his mind.
______
Taking her in for the first time when she finally did come down those stairs, his hands on his shoulders and hers on his, neither of them standing steady or without a tear in their eye. Both of them having to be scolded by Ainsley: “don’t you dare kiss each other yet, it’s bad luck!”
Sitting in the back of the car with her on the way to the City Clerk’s office to get their marriage certificate, his head pressed into her hair, thumb tracing circles over her arm.
Wrapping his arms around her upper back to bend her into the deepest kiss of their lives when Gil pronounced them husband and wife at City Hall.
Dani complaining about how cold his newly-placed gold wedding band was where he’d cupped her shoulder as he hoisted her into their apartment.
Her reminding him that their honeymoon flight was at 7am as he’d molded himself around her, fingertips tracing her neck muscles, the first night of many that they’d sleep together knowing he was officially hers and she was officially his.
______
“Malcolm, honey,” Dani brings him back to the present. He feels their daughter’s grip around his pant leg and AFIS’s wet nose sniffing his opposite thigh.
And he feels the tears now spilling down his cheeks, and the pads of Dani’s thumbs halting them in their path.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Dani coos, her throat getting thick from the same memories. “Just open your eyes.”
The woman before him has traces of purple underneath her eyes from a wild week of cases they’d worked together recently, and a few curls that are stretched out from their daughter playing with them. Her shoulders and arms slightly more built from the boxing she does upstairs on the third floor, if not from carrying their 30 pound child from here to the edge of the earth, if Alea asked her to.
She can tell he’s studying her. “It looks like I’m wearing a push-up bra now, doesn’t it? And my hips... I know everyone says they change after you have a baby but I- They’re so noticeable now against the dress-”
Not only did he disagree with her comments-this dress (ITAL) still draped gently over her frame like it did all those years ago- but he disagreed with any nitpicking she had to give herself today.
“Dani.” He gives her hands a squeeze, and she draws her attention back up to him. “Hi,” he jokes. She playfully narrows her eyes at him as he grins. Alea giggles from below. AFIS’s tail hits the stairs as it wags.
“I don’t see what you’re seeing,” he promises. “But what do I know about looks? I just fell in love with you all over again with my eyes closed.”
Her kiss catches him by surprise initially, but then again, so did the kiss she initiated on their wedding day, her lips crashing against his with torpedo-like intensity. He responded in kind, just as he’d done before, bending her down while Alea cheered and AFIS began zipping around their living space.
They break apart, gasping for air.
“Look at the mess we’ve created since that day,” Malcolm remarks, eyeing their leaping child and her equally-ecstatic fur sister.
“My kind of fairytale,” Dani concedes, bringing her lips to his once more.
Their follow-up kiss is interrupted by the sound of AFIS’s ball bouncing off of the coffee table; both their eyes zero in on the giggling five year old perpetrator and her furry accomplice.
“Hey! Mischief and Mayhem, do you have a permit to wreck this place?”
She’s still partially reclined in Malcolm’s arms but two snaps of her fingers and both troublemakers halt in place, eyes wide and obedient at their (currently dressed-up) rule-enforcer.
“Hands where I can see them. Now.”
Malcolm snorts a laugh; Dani’s always found the “law and order” aspect of parenting a little too easy given her occupation.
He watches her survey them: AFIS’s ball in Alea’s hand, the TV remote in AFIS’s jaws.
Her gaze is serious on them both. “Drop it.”
They comply in unison.
He loves how a wedding dress and motherhood haven’t changed her from doing what she does best.
“Thank you,” Dani’s voice is softer now. She straightens up, and her gaze shifts between everyone. “Alea, did you know Daddy still has his tux from when we got married? Should we have him to put it on?”
“Um, no thanks,” Alea shrugs, absentmindedly scratching along AFIS’s back.
Dani nods her head to keep her laughter from escaping, a battle that Malcolm loses.
“Call her my kid when she’s sassy all you want, but that was you,” he teases. Dani buries her head in his shoulder to stifle her giggling.
“Why’re you guys laughing?” They hear their daughter say from wherever she’s settled now in the living room.
“Alea, sweetie,” Malcolm calls. “Why shouldn’t I put the tux on? I’ve only ever worn it once, just like Momma’s wedding dress.”
“You wear those all the time, Daddy,” Alea retorts. “It’s gettin’ kinda boring.”
Dani grips his t-shirt, whispering between giggles “that is me, that is me.” Malcolm rolls his eyes as she wheezes. “I created a monster, and I love it.”
__________________
They’re back on the floor again, doing a puzzle instead of watching a movie. Alea’s 2 feet from her mother in her pajamas, while Dani remains in her wedding dress, and AFIS is still intently sniffing every stitch of the back of this strange white garment that smells like the closet.
Malcolm pens the zip code of the crime lab in Port Crane he needs to send a fax to when those three catch his eye again. He angles his phone into a subtle position and snaps a few photos. He’ll share them with the team on Monday, but sends them to the mother and sister he may not see for another week with the caption “the past meets the present.”
His mind returns to Dani’s comment from earlier: “my kind of fairytale.” And it hits him suddenly, the weight of her words based on a memory from that mild March morning they spent together at the City Clerk’s office.
______
“I’ve never seen you blush this much,” he remembers whispering to her, which only made her face turn a deeper crimson.
“Just feels a bit awkward, standing in line all dressed up like this,” she replies, leaning closer into him. He envelopes her further against his side, smiling. She might feel a bit self-conscious, but he, with all his anxiety and hesitation and overthinking patterns, feels none of that today. He’d found his reason for being, his safe harbor in uncharted seas. The person who set his soul on fire. Once they get around to it, she’ll be the mother of his children, and if this line will ever start moving again, soon she’ll be his wife.
There’s not an inch of unease in him today. Only hope.
She blushes again as a passerby scoots around them.
“What?” He laughs, rubbing her arm.
She brings her head back from under his chin to look at him. “They’re all looking at you.”
“Believe me,” he whispers in her ear, “they’re all looking at you. ”
______
Malcolm curses himself. The exact same exchange occurred in the film and Dani clearly had her eyes on him at that moment, seeing if he’d remember, but he was too focused on looking up specifics on heroin for their case.
“Dani,” he calls to her.
She’s stroking AFIS’s head in her lap, and Alea is slowly drifting off to sleep against her opposite shoulder, the puzzle piece in her hand slowly slipping out of her grasp. Dani’s also tired, and certainly has her hands full, but she’s never looked more beautiful, in every sense of the word.
She looks over at him. “Yep?”
He sighs. “They were all looking at you, you know.”
Her cheeks burn as red as they had back then.