Heart and Home, Page 4

  I didn’t want it to be comfortable, not that I could imagine it would ever be a comfortable place without my mother, but all of those people sparked nostalgia and that familiar longing passed through me like a nauseous cloud.

  I must have looked frantic from afar, that seemed the only explanation for his presence when I turned back toward the fire hall without the slightest clue how to get away from it all. Troy’s hand steadied my shoulder as I spun into him.

  “Whoa there.”

  I swallowed hard against the defiant confusion rushing through me. “I’ve got to do something or go somewhere, I just can’t … this isn’t who I am, and I don’t know any of them anymore, but it’s like they all know me, everything about me, and I don’t know what to say. They keep looking to me for an answer, but I don’t know what they want to hear.”

  His hand smoothed down my arm, pausing just above my elbow. “Shh—it’ll be all right.”

  “No, it won’t be all right,” I cried, boldly avoiding his intense stare. “Don’t you get it? It’s never been right, it’ll never be right. I don’t belong here with all of these people who must have known and loved her better than I ever could.”

  “Now hey, that’s just crazy,” he insisted. He reached forward and lifted my chin so that I had no choice but to look at him. “How can any of them love your mother more than you? Don’t you hear how crazy that sounds?”

  Crazy! Great, I was some crazy out-of-town fainter! God, I’d be lucky if I didn’t make the front page of the Sonesville Standard.

  The droplets of rain grew heavier and fell in a steady rhythm that began to soak into my clothing. I could smell the clean scent of his skin, or maybe it was fabric softener. His hand lingered under my chin, and for the moment it was like he was the only solid thing with the power to hold me in place.

  “I don’t think I can keep this up,” I finally tugged my face from his grasp. “I am not a part of this place.”

  I’m not sure what he found so funny about that, but the scuff of his laughter accompanied a half-cocked smile.

  “Like it or not, we’re all a part of this place, Janice McCarty. You can go away for six months or eight years, but all it takes is for you to come back once, and it reclaims you as its own.”

  I did everything in my power to disguise my horrified reaction to that statement; my best maneuver managed to be keeping my eyes from meeting with his. My heart pounded though, and my stomach had that crazy feeling that happens when your body thinks the bottom has dropped out from under it. It surprised me how well I’d suppressed the instinctual “no” of horror that caught in the back of my throat.

  “Thanks for the reality check,” I tugged out of his light grasp on my shirtsleeve and did my best to fake a grin.

  “It does no good to fight it,” he said.

  I drew in a breath through my nose and held my chest out for a moment. As I released it, the high school girl inside of me reared her ugly head.

  “So, can I expect to find you behind me now every time I feel like the world’s falling out from under me, Prince Charming?”

  He cocked his head to the left in response and admitted, “Hey, I just thought you might be feeling a little lightheaded again. Didn’t want you to crack your head on the concrete if you passed out.”

  “Look, I’m fine,” I crossed my arms against the rain chill sinking into my bones. Halloween was just two weeks away, and now that it was raining the pungent smell of rotting leaves and earth seemed to hang heavy around us. “Really, I’m fine, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe I’m not fine.”

  “I don’t think anyone expects you to be fine, Janice.”

  “No?” I slowly lifted my eyes to meet his.

  He shook his head, his lips turning slightly upward with reassurance. “No.”

  “I just feel like I’m letting her down,” I managed. “And my dad too. All those people in there, they just want to talk about her, and I …” I looked away from him again. “I just can’t. I mean, I knew her. She was my mom, but now I don’t feel like I knew her half as well as this town did. That’s so sick! She must be so disappointed. Her own daughter…”

  It seemed he started to shake his head, and his brow wrinkled with sorrow. I was surprised that he said nothing, but equally grateful.

  I sighed and dropped the back of my head against my shoulders. I tried to squeeze my eyes against the oncoming tears, but I soon felt their warmth slipping down my cheeks in contrast to the drops of rain that washed them away.

  “Why am I telling you all of this?”

  He shrugged his left shoulder toward his ear, “Because I’m listening.”

  The stubborn part of me wanted to push him, to ask him why he was listening, why he even cared, but I didn’t. Instead I lifted my head with a sigh and nodded. “Well, thank you for that.”

  Over his shoulder I noticed a few curious pairs of eyes peering from between the fire hall doors. I nodded toward the doors, and Troy glanced behind him. Head shaking, his grin was peculiar, but appreciative. “Come on,” he started with a playful shrug. “Don’t tell me it’s not a small bit of comfort knowing some things never change.”

  “That’s for sure,” I agreed. “Some things never do change.”

  “So, you think you’re ready to go back inside yet?”

  “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

  “Not if you want to avoid gossip, which almost always leads to scandal around here.”

  “Ooh, scandal,” the light reaction of my laughter seemed to inspire his grin even further. “My dad is probably wondering where I took off to.”

  We started back toward the fire hall doors, which closed mysteriously during the last leg of our conversation. I was sure whoever had been spying on us was sore at having to give up that last few minutes.

  Just before we reached the concrete patio in front of the doors, I stopped and turned sideways to touch Troy’s forearm. “Thanks, Troy, you know, for everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” he nodded once, the corner of his mouth catching in a grin. “And welcome home, Janice.”

  Chapter Five

  A steady stream of visits saw out the remainder of the wake. It was just going on five-thirty when Dad and I arrived home, but the rain coupled with the change in season, made it seem much later. The events of the last few days had been exhausting, but the day itself felt as if it would never end. All those people, all of their stories and memories—it was like living through my childhood again.

  As we clamored through the back door weighted down with trays of leftover food, I stifled a yawn and thought seriously about crawling into bed and calling it a day.

  Dad turned on the overhead light with his elbow, but the bulb blew with the surge of electricity. “Damn it!”

  “Here, let me turn on the stove light.”

  I shuffled past him and laid the trays down on the kitchen table. I pressed the button and the dull hood-light illuminated the darkness enough for us to see our way around the room. I opened the refrigerator and began shuffling around the week’s contribution of Tupperware containers and baking dishes. Dad shifted through the mail behind me. He plunked it down on the table with a sigh before he left the kitchen. Moments later distinctive news reporter voices joined the static presence of television, and I thought I heard something about suspected arson in Stroudsburg.

  I rearranged half of the contents of the fridge to fit everything in, and then started toward the living room to make sure my father didn’t need anything. He hadn’t said much since we’d left the fire hall, but after an entire day of nothing but talk, I couldn’t imagine he had much left to say. Dad had never been much for talk, and he’d certainly said more than his share for the day.

  Pausing at the table, I looked down at the letter on top of the pile. Her subscription to Better Homes and Gardens was going to expire, and fanned out behind was a letter from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation requesting her continued support. I moved it aside and there was a postcard invitation to
Helen Jackson’s Princess House party on the second of November.

  I closed my eyes and tried not to echo my father’s sigh. I understood it in a way no one else possibly could. It was like our whole world stopped, but the rest of it all out there, the magazine subscriptions and the charities she supported, the parties, committees and scrapbooking groups—it all went on without her, like she’d never been a part of it.

  The town spent the day remembering Chandra McCarty, but come morning they would all go on without her, and they’d expect us too as well. I spoke to my boss only twice throughout the week, who still expected me to return to work on Monday morning, fresh and ready to put my nose back to the grindstone. The few acquaintances I called friends in the city would be waiting to hear from me, but somehow all of that seemed so mundane.

  “Bring me in a beer, Jannie, would you?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  I dug a beer out from behind the stack of foil trays and walked it out to him. I sat down on the arm of his chair and followed his gaze to the television set. It was all color and movement, but nothing worth focusing on. As if he understood the swirling vacancy that took over my life, he lifted a hand and patted my back, but there were no words.

  Around six-thirty, I sauntered upstairs to take a bath and try to put the day behind me. After I gathered my pajamas and robe I paused at my laptop computer and considered logging in to check my email. I hadn’t touched it since I’d arrived, but the prospect of facing five days of email seemed daunting. I ignored the vague calling and headed into the bathroom instead.

  The strong fragrance of lavender rushed out to meet me before I even turned on the light, and I breathed it in. Immediately I felt the tension begin to release from my neck and shoulders as I dropped my night clothes into a pile beside the door. My mother loved lavender, and not the cheap imitation stuff either, only the real deal. She ordered a special blend of bath salts from a local business woman for a couple of years, and when the woman went of business she sold what was left of her stock to Mom. She stacked it neatly into the bathroom closet and cherished each sacred jar with her own special ritual involving a candle and a book.

  Ever after, the smell of lavender came to signify my mother and home to me. There was a jar of the salts on the back of the tub, which I reached for and lifted for a quick sniff. The pungent, but fresh aroma filled me with comfort and longing. I turned on the water and poured the Himalayan crystals into the water jetting from the faucet so that with the rising steam the aroma of lavender would quickly pervade the air around me.

  I turned toward the mirror while the tub filled and began to untwist the knot of my hair so that within a matter of seconds a cascade of copper waves fell in around my face. I ran my fingers through it, tugged it back again and turned my face from side to side in search of the resemblance I heard about all week.

  Of course I looked like her; she was my mother. I garnered my red hair from her, but where genetics somehow provided her with enough melatonin to actually tan, I inherited my father’s fair skin and a host of freckles. With age the freckles faded just enough that up close they were visible, but not a dominating feature, though along my shoulders and chest it was often another matter. I wrinkled my nose and leaned inward to inspect my eyes. Bloodshot and tired, the green overpowered the brown, making my hazel eyes seem lighter than they normally were.

  Her eyes had been a warm shade of amber, and in the right light they shone like molten honey. Mine were just hazel. A shade of hazel I was sure the military would love to integrate into the patterns of their next line in innovative camouflage gear. I already tested their elusive color on the dating battlefield and could report that about eighty-five percent of all men seemed to look everywhere but my eyes while talking to me, suggesting their effectiveness.

  I let the hair fall into my face again and turned away from the mirror. I hadn’t realized what a mess my head was until I sunk down into the deliciously hot water and listened to the sound of it rushing into the tub. The heat drew awareness to every knot and ache in my body, including the few bruises I obviously acquired when I fainted. My bones were cold, and not just my bones, but beyond, deeper into the marrow, like my actual soul shivered. Each time I breathed in that lavender bouquet the tensioned lessened and warmth increased. It was only a matter of moments before I lowered my head back against the bath pillow and closed my eyes. I reached out with my foot and turned off the water, and allowed my thoughts to just flow.

  I wasn’t surprised at how scattered they all felt. My first bout with madness was scrapbooking. I couldn’t believe that of all the things my mother never told me; she’d never mentioned scrapbooking with Becky Raynard. And what was I thinking telling Becky I’d come to her next party if I was still in town? There was no way I’d still be in town. I was leaving town the very next afternoon and never looking back again if I could help it. On the other hand a part of me had been sincere in the promise. I’d never disliked Becky, though we hadn’t really hung out a whole lot once we made it into high school. She’d been awkward at school, and a lot of kids, Amber Williams especially, picked on her because it made them feel superior.

  And Amber… Well I didn’t even want to think about her. She’d never quite forgiven me for getting that internship at the Sonesville Standard the summer before we were seniors. Of course she’d been sugary sweet to my face, but I knew it burned her up inside to think her father’s check book and influence weren’t enough to compete with my drive to acquire the job I had been preparing for my entire adolescence.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her still treating Becky so badly, but then Amber Williams was the type of person who made me hate living in Sonesville in the first place.

  On the other hand, people like Amber prepared me for the dog-eat-dog world that was journalism, teaching me that I would never get ahead if I let the Ambers of the world walk all over me. Small towns didn’t deserve people like Amber though. They needed more people like Becky Raynard and Troy Kepner.

  Thoughts of Troy made me sink a little deeper into the water to try and cool the embarrassment of my fainting. Funny how fainting suddenly become synonymous with Troy and eyes like acid-washed denim. Of course I knew those things really had no business in the same sentence, much less in comparison to each other, but just closing my eyes brought back the memory of opening them to find his face, his concerned, electric stare staring down at me.

  A droplet plunked into the tub and distracted me from the memory. The emptiness of the house carried the sound of the television up through the floor. Wheel-of-Fortune. Ever since I was little, Wheel-of-Fortune had been a nightly routine for Dad. If mom wasn’t off to some meeting or plotting around the garden, she would sit beside him on the couch and they’d battle each other to see who could solve the puzzles first. Jeopardy was an even bigger riot, the two of them shouting out their answers in the form of a question as if their lives depended on it.

  I couldn’t even begin to imagine how losing her was going to affect him. So far he had been quieter than usual, but that seemed to be the only indication of the major change he was going through. I tried to talk to him twice, mostly to ease my own troubled mind, but he just listened and offered the appropriate pat on the shoulder when necessary.

  He and Mom weren’t exactly old, and I wondered if that ate away at him. Fifty-six was nothing. Dad was only fifty-eight. Sure, it was twice my lifetime, but a lot of people’s parents were much older. I always expected Mom to outlive him considering how hard he’d worked all his life, and maybe that was why he was so quiet. Maybe a part of him felt like it should have been him.

  I blinked away my tears and shifted my thoughts toward Aaron Kepner, of all people. I never really knew the man, and could barely even remember him. He’d been as tall as Troy, well over six feet, and what my mom always called proud. I wondered how old he’d been when he’d died, leaving Troy to care for his mother and a farm that had been in their family for generations. I couldn’t even really begin to gu
ess how old Lottie Kepner was, as her illness always made her seem fragile. Troy was an only child, like me, and I remembered Dad’s lament about all he’d sacrificed when his father died.

  My mind was obviously preoccupied with Troy, and with good reason. Out of all the people in the entire town, other than my own father, he’d been the only one who hadn’t gone out of his way to make me feel like some kind of freak. He hadn’t embarrassed me with old stories about my mother, or tried to compare all of my facial features to hers. He’d just been there at all the right times, and though it felt ungainly and weird at the time, I realized he knew exactly what to say.

  His soft laugh and clever grin played over and over in my mind every time I closed my eyes. It felt frustrating spilling so much honesty out in front of him, but when he said he was listening it brought the first inklings of comfort I’d felt in the days since her death. It was like he knew somehow I needed someone to catch me, someone to help make sense of the tangle of emotion and heartache that was my world.

  Gorgeous, sensitive and intuitive. He had to be taken.

  It would just be unnatural for a guy like that to be single, and besides it didn’t really matter anyway. I would be going back to Pittsburgh in less than twenty-four hours, and I would do everything I could to begin the process of convincing Dad to move with me.

  While I could hardly imagine taking care of him the rest of his life the way my mother did, I certainly couldn’t leave him alone in Sonesville to fend for himself in that great big house. It would only be a matter of time before its emptiness swallowed him whole. There were plenty of jobs in the city he’d be suitable for, or better yet he could retire and take up golf or something.

  Yes, I would start to drop subtle hints in the morning, maybe I’d take him to breakfast before I left.

  Like a baseball exploded through one of the upstairs windows, the force of shattered glass ripped me from the comfort of my meditation. I shot up from the tub like a wave, splashing water all over the floor as I groped for and tried to untangle the wadded fabric of my bathrobe.