But marriage did not happen.
Years passed.
His friends began raising families.
Daniel attended weddings and birthday parties.
He became the reliable mechanic everybody called when a car broke down.
And he told himself that a peaceful life alone was better than a chaotic life with the wrong person.
Then, in his mid-forties, he met Elise Cole.
Arthur's niece had come to Bellweather to care for her aging uncle after a minor stroke. She worked as a school librarian and had a dry sense of humor that Daniel appreciated immediately.
Elise was warm, intelligent, and entirely unimpressed by his reputation for fixing things.
The first time he offered to repair a loose shelf in her apartment, she handed him a screwdriver.
"Good," she said. "I was going to do it myself, but since you're here, you can hold the ladder."
Daniel laughed.
She laughed too.
They began having coffee after work.
Then dinner.
Then weekend walks beside the lake.
She was not Nora.
She never tried to be.
Daniel loved Elise for herself.
For the way she treated shy children at the library.
For her patience with Arthur.
For the photographs she took of ordinary things.
For the fact that she could disagree with Daniel without making him feel that love was about to disappear.
They married when Daniel was forty-six.
Two years later, their daughter Lucy was born.
Daniel became a father at forty-eight, older than most men attending the same school events.
He did not mind.
When he first held his daughter, he understood something he had never been able to explain about his childhood.
He wanted to give this little girl the home he had spent years imagining.
A place where mistakes were corrected without humiliation.
Where doors could close softly.
Where nobody had to listen for the sound of a parent's anger.
He promised himself that Lucy would never be afraid to come home.
For several years, the promise seemed easy to keep.
Then Elise became ill.
At first, everyone believed she would recover.
She underwent treatment.
There were hopeful months.
Then difficult ones.
Eventually, the doctors explained that they had exhausted the treatments likely to help.
Daniel listened.
Elise held his hand.
Neither could speak.
She died when Lucy was five.
Daniel was fifty-three.
And the house he had built around love became painfully quiet.
He never forgot the morning after Elise's funeral.
Lucy stood in the kitchen wearing yellow pajamas and holding a stuffed rabbit.
Daniel was trying to make breakfast.
He had burned the toast.
Then spilled orange juice across the counter.
Finally, he sat down because he could not remember what he was supposed to do next.
Lucy approached.
"Daddy?"
He looked up.
She held out the rabbit.
"You can have Bunny for a little while."
Daniel stared.
His daughter climbed into his lap.
She pressed the stuffed animal against his chest.
"Mommy used him when she was sad."
Daniel wrapped his arms around her.
Then began crying.
Lucy held him.
Neither understood how to live without Elise.
But they had each other.
And slowly, through ordinary days, they learned.
Daniel packed school lunches.
Learned to braid hair badly.
Attended parent meetings.
Read bedtime stories.
Helped with homework.
And learned that a little girl sometimes needed him to listen rather than immediately solve a problem.
He continued running the garage, which he had taken over after Arthur retired.
The sign still read COLE AUTO REPAIR.
Daniel never changed it.
Arthur had given him a profession.
Elise had given him a family.