A Little Ray of Sunshine (22 page)

“Jess?” I said, my voice wavering. “Jess, honey, I need you to wake up now. You need to eat something, okay? Just a few sips of broth, that’s all, and then you can sleep again. Can you do that?”

She didn’t respond. I stared at her waist, looking for the movement of breath, and it was a while before I saw it. It was so shallow, as if at any minute, it would be time to just stop. I glanced up to see Danny, Mom, Digs and Luke standing in a line, looking at me. I had to do something, I just didn’t know what. And if I didn’t figure it out soon, she would die.

“What do I do?” I asked. My eyes locked with my mother’s. “I don’t know what to do. She has no one but me, and I don’t know what to do. She always knows what to do, and I...”

It was then that my mother stepped forward, her movements forceful and confident. She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me up, walking me over to stand with Danny, who put his arm around me. I leaned my head on his shoulder and watched as my mother crawled into bed with Jess. She snuck one arm under Jess’s head, and nudged her up until her face was resting on Mom’s shoulder. The dirty satin of Jess’s dress shifted on the bed as my mother pulled her into her arms like a life-size rag doll.

“Mom...” I said, but I trailed off when I saw Jess’s eyes open suddenly, as if she’d been slapped awake. She howled as though my mother had lit her on fire, but Mom didn’t move, just tightened her hold. Jess kicked and struggled, but was so weakened by the days of not eating that ninety-eight pounds of determined Lilly Lorraine were just too much for her. As suddenly as she’d come to, she just went slack.

For a second, I thought maybe she’d passed out or died, and I stopped breathing myself. Then a sound came from her throat, a hard knot of a sob, the kind of sound you expect to hear when someone’s been punched in the gut. I took in a breath and Danny tightened his hold on me. Then Jess began to wail like nothing I’d ever heard. She wept with long, racking sobs that shook her body, my mother, the bed. My mother smoothed her hands over Jess’s ratty hair and made comforting mom noises, but still Jess cried and writhed like she’d been cracked wide open. I cried with her, and Danny held on to me, stroking my back and my hair, telling me it would be okay. He motioned for Luke and Digs to go, and they silently did as instructed.

Mom cuddled Jess as though she were a small child, holding on to her, whispering words of encouragement and pride into her ear, selflessly giving every bit of strength she had to this motherless girl. She didn’t cry a single tear, just held on to Jess and was a mom. The mom I never had. But still, there she was, fixing the unfixable, saving Jess’s life, saving me. I leaned against Danny, felt him strong and solid next to me, and a bone-deep relief flowed through me. This was what it was like, I marveled, to have parents who would catch you, no matter what. This was what it was like to be loved so powerfully that it even transferred to the stray little angels you brought home with you.

This is what it was like.

After a while, Jess’s wails quieted into soft weeping, and still my mother held on to her. A little while later, Jess fell asleep again, but her breathing wasn’t as shallow as before. Her chest rose and fell like someone who had a hold on life, and I felt hopeful again. Mom extricated herself from under Jess, wrapping the blankets around her. Jess took a deep, grief-stuttered breath, and then sighed and rolled over, still passed out. Danny and I stepped into the hallway and waited. A few seconds later, Mom clicked the door gently shut behind her and led us all downstairs to the kitchen, where she started to toss out orders like a drill sergeant.

“Danny, I want you to gather some fresh queen-sized bedding from the linen closet. Digs, I need you to go out and get chocolate—ice cream, cookies, truffles, whatever you can find.”

Digs opened his mouth to protest but she held up her hand.

“Don’t argue. You want to help Jess, you’ll get ice cream.” She turned to Luke. “Luke, we need something clean and fresh for her to wear. She’s a size six petite. Go out and get some basic t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans. Shop for comfort, not fashion.”

Luke shot me a look.
Fashion
? I offered him my strongest smile, which was still pretty weak.

“You can go to the Target in Troutdale,” Mom said, misinterpreting Luke’s look of puzzled amusement as not knowing where to shop.

“Mom,” I said, “she has clean laundry here.”

“Clean, yes,” Mom said. “But not new. She needs things that are new, fresh. When she comes out of this, she’s going to need to start over again.”

Her eyes locked with Danny’s, and I could see by his face that he’d been through this before, with Mom. About five years ago, I guessed. She clapped her hands.

“Hop to it, boys,” she said. “The Queen has spoken. Shuffle off.”

They dispersed, and Mom headed to the pantry. “I don’t have any homemade stock on hand, so we’ll have to use store-bought, but I’ve got everything we need for a hearty vegetable soup. Let’s see. Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes... Good. Good. We’ll need some protein, though.” She came back from the pantry, arms full and dropped her cache on the counter, then opened the freezer. “Oooh, roast chicken. By the time this is thawed and cooked, she’ll be ready for it. Perfect.”

She pulled out a big frozen bird and moved it to the refrigerator to thaw. She grabbed two aprons off the hooks on the wall and handed me one.

“You can start with the carrots. Wash ‘em, peel ‘em and chop ‘em, and then I’ll tell you what you can do next.”

I grabbed the bag of carrots. “Mom, how do you know she’ll come out of it? I mean, I think maybe she’s better, but how do you know.”

“I’m a mom,” she said, smiling. “We know these things.” She grabbed a peeler from the counter and plunked it into my hand. “Now get to work. She’ll be down soon.”

***

Luke and Digs returned with the goods, and Mom immediately sent them away.

“Too many people are going to overwhelm her,” she said. “When she wakes up, it should be just me and EJ.” She squeezed Digs’s hand. “I’ll have Danny call you with updates, and we’ll let you know as soon as you can come back and see her. Okay?”

Digs nodded, then pulled Lilly in for a hug. I leaned against the wall in the hallway and watched, amazed at how small Digs seemed in that moment. It was funny; I’d always been conscious of being a fatherless girl, but I’d never thought much about what it had been like for the boys to grow up without a mother. I’d had Danny at least, but as Digs held onto my tiny mother for strength, I realized how much she had to offer them, even as adults.

I glanced at Luke to find him watching me as intently as I’d been watching Digs and Mom. I smiled lightly and he smiled back and gave a little wave. Then Mom hustled them both out the door and we went back into the kitchen, where we played Scrabble at the table with Danny, pausing the game only to fold Jess’s new laundry. At nine o’clock I was just about ready to throw in the towel and head to bed when I heard a small voice from the hall behind us.

“Hi.”

I turned and there was Jess, a total mess in her bridesmaid’s dress, but walking and focusing on her own power. Mom hopped up off from the kitchen table and wordlessly pulled out a chair at for Jess. Danny smiled, but didn’t say anything, then beelined for the linens that were laying in wait on the couch in the den, quietly doing as he’d been told by the Queen. He disappeared upstairs to clean out Jess’s room, and Jess dutifully sat where instructed. Mom put a small bowl of soup in front of her with a handful of saltines and a glass of water.

“Eat slowly, sweetheart,” she said as she sat down next to her. “But eat.”

Jess allowed a small smile, then dipped her spoon into the broth and sipped delicately, staring down at the Scrabble board.

“Who played ‘qaid’ on the triple word score?” she asked.

Mom huffed. “That was Danny. I didn’t think it was a real word, either.”

“No, it’s a word,” Jess said, clearing her throat. “I, um... I used to work at a library, and we would play when it got slow. That was one of my standby words.”

I sat back in my chair, realizing that this was the first specific piece of information Jess had ever volunteered about herself or her background. I glanced at Mom, who gathered up the pieces to set up for a new game, chattering with Jess about nothing in particular. There was a lot about all this that I didn’t understand, but I knew Mom did, and I was happy to lean on her to run the show. I was more than happy. I was relieved. By taking care of Jess, she was taking care of me, too, and it was a wonderful feeling to relax knowing that she had my back.

We played a game and ate soup and Jess smiled twice before being sent upstairs to shower, change into fresh clothes, and go to sleep. She hugged us both before she left, and when she walked away, she looked stronger already. I put my arm around Mom’s shoulder and leaned my head against hers.

“You done good, lady,” I said. “For such a tiny little thing, you’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

She reached up to her shoulder and patted my hand.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”

***

This letter doesn’t have a joke. I’m sorry. I can’t tell one now. I’m too depressed. I’m in Utah, and I’ve been crying so long I’m bone dry. I’m still huffing and sobbing but nothing’s coming out, which is just as well. I’m out of tissues.

It’s now ten months since I left, and it’s too late to go back, and I miss you. I miss you so bad my eyelashes hurt, and I can’t move my toes. I used to think that I’d get over this, that eventually I’d be better, and it would all be all right. But it’s never going to be better, is it? At least not for me. Hopefully for you. It’s hoping things are better for you that’s keeping me from going back right now. Well, that and the guy in the lot next to mine. He’s playing guitar, really badly. And singing. And he has no idea how bad he is, and it’s so scary. I’m listening to him and I’m thinking. That’s how bad I was. I was that bad. But I loved you as much as that guy loves his guitar. More, actually. If he loved that guitar as much as I love you, he’d put it away, because he’s just making the poor thing suffer.

—Emmy James, in a letter to Luke Greene, undated

Twenty

Jess and I spent most of that week just padding around the house, eating chocolate and watching old movies and sitting on the back deck talking. She talked a lot about her life, about her husband and son, and while she still got that distant look on her face when she did, she got through it. She didn’t cry nearly as much as I would have expected; it was more like she was just sweeping her head clean of things that had been locked in a sunless room for too long.

“Digs feels really bad,” I said the following Sunday night as Jess and I had our usual after-dinner tea on the back deck. “He thinks he did something wrong.”

Despite having been invited back to see Jess a number of times by my mother, Digs hadn’t stepped foot in the house. I think he was waiting for Jess to tell him it was okay first, which was unusually sensitive for Digs. When the whole week had gone by without Jess mentioning Digs, I thought it was time to say something. I didn’t want to pry, but it had been not prying that had allowed things to get as bad as they had, so I went for it.

“Oh, no,” Jess said, her eyes widening as she looked at me. “It’s just...” She shook her head and stared out into the horizon. “When Tim and Matty died, I didn’t want to live, you know? But I’m Catholic. Suicide has never been an option for me. So I prayed to God every night to take me in my sleep, but He didn’t. Which kind of irritated me.”

“Oh, I totally get that,” I said, chuckling.

She smiled a bright, full smile. “Thought you would. So I thought, Fine, God, if you won’t kill me, I’ll just stop living. I’ll give myself to other people, to their problems, their lives. And for a long time, that worked out really well. But everything here... spending time with you and your family...” She paused, blinking rapidly. “I started to love you guys, you know? I mean, who wouldn’t, right? I’m telling you, the second Lilly grabbed that chef’s knife and hacked off that chunk of cheese, I was hers forever.”

We cracked up at this, but then the laughter subsided, and she went on. “And I started to really like Digs. He’s just so funny, you know? And smart. So when he kissed me, and I was really happy for that moment”—she took a moment, her lips trembling—”I was happy for myself. I was happy in a world that didn’t have Tim and Matty in it, and I wasn’t prepared for that. It had never occurred to me that something like that could happen. It was like all the pain I’d been pushing aside for all this time just whooshed down over me, and I shut down.” She swiped at her face, went quiet for a moment, then looked at me. “Can you tell him that for me? That it wasn’t his fault? That I’m sorry?”

I reached out and patted her hand. “Let me tell you something about being sorry,” I said. “It’s always better coming directly from the source.” I glanced at my watch. “Which gives you about twelve hours to make a very important phone call.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll call him in a little bit.”

We sat there in silence for a while, then I said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come to Colorado Springs with me?”

“I have to pick up my car in New Jersey,” she said.

“Well, it’ll still be there in a week,” I said. “We can pick up the Airstream and you can kidnap me again. It’ll be fun. Like old times.”

“That would be fun. But, no. My flight takes off so soon after your parents’ flight to Italy. You can just drop us all off at the airport tomorrow and then...” She angled her head and looked at me. “Then I guess you’ll be going?”

“Probably about noon tomorrow,” I said.

“What about Luke?”

I shrugged. “He knows I’m going. He knows all he has to do is say the word, and he hasn’t. So, I’m going to accept that. The important thing was that I did it, right? I told him how I felt. It may be over, but at least it’s over the right way this time, and that matters, right?”

She smiled. “Right.” She pushed up from the chair. “I’m gonna go call Digs. Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” I said. She walked off, leaving me staring at the Oregon horizon, wondering why, if I’d done the right thing, I felt like such total crap.

***

It still wasn’t technically stalking. After Jess got off the phone with Digs, she mentioned that he and Luke had gone out to shoot some pool—which made me happy, shooting pool is an Old Luke activity—and then she went upstairs to finish packing. I sat on the back deck for a while, and once the sun started to go down, I had a flash of inspiration and knew exactly what I needed to do. So I got in my truck and drove.

I parked down the street a bit, in a place where I could see Luke’s house and not be immediately detected by Mrs. Pope. I sat in the truck for probably an hour. His car wasn’t there—no doubt Digs needed a designated driver after the week he’d been through—so I felt safe just sitting there, staring at our dream home.

His home
, I corrected internally.
His home.

I reached underneath the passenger seat and pulled out the box of stationery. I flipped open the top, lifted the drawer, and riffled through the fifty-odd letters I’d written over the six years we’d been apart. As best I could recall, there were one or two direct ones in there, but most of them were jokes, all of which had meaning that Luke might or might not get. Hell, if I’d opened and read them right then, I might not have gotten them all, either. When I wrote them, I’d intended for Luke never to see them, but it had been important to write them anyway, just as it was important for me to write this last one. I pulled out a sheet of paper and an envelope, closed the box, and began to scribble.

Dear Luke,

The letters in this box belong to you, so I thought I would finally make sure you got them. I want you to know that it’s all okay. I’m okay. I’m not upset with you for making the choice you had to make. I respect it, and I understand, and it’s okay. I already said that, didn’t I? I’ve been repeating myself a lot lately. Sorry.

Anyway, I’ll be back for Thanksgiving, if Lilly lets me disappear that long, and I hope to find you happy when I return. Just do me a favor. Stop it with the neat hair and the Sunday business meetings. You’re too young for that shit. For my part, I will consider living in something that doesn’t have wheels, but I can’t make any promises. Baby steps and all that.

I want you to know that I genuinely wish you well. Oh, and, if you are dating a non-octogenarian when I come back, I promise to handle it with all my usual grace and decorum. I realize that’s probably not comforting, but it’s all I’ve got, and I give it to you.

I want you to be happy, Luke. That sounds like typical end-of-the-relationship bullshit, but it’s really true. Giving you this box helps me with that, you know? I guess it’s my way of saying
goodbye, to all of it. Finally. Aren’t you proud of how grown-up I am? Well, you should be, damn it. I’m giving up my hook hand. That’s gotta count for something, right? But if you can do nothing else for me, do this—find what makes you happy and make it yours. For my part, I’m going to try to do the same.

I guess that’s it, although I do have one last thought for you.

A priest, a rabbi, and a duck are building a time machine...

The next morning, I took Mom and Danny and Jess to the airport in Danny’s Explorer. Danny drove for the ride over, while Mom angled herself to face me and Jess in the backseat and elicited multiple promises from Jess to write and call frequently, and visit for every major holiday or have a damn good reason why not.

“And the only acceptable reasons are hospitalization or traveling out of the country,” she said. “No other excuse will do, do you hear me, young lady?”

“I hear you,” Jess said, and she and I exchanged a cheerful eye-roll, then Mom pointed a finger at me.

“The same goes for you, too,” she said. “I will hunt you down again if I have to.”

“Don’t I know it,” I muttered, and Jess and I giggled like teenagers.

I drove slowly on the way back to Danny’s, alone with my thoughts. I wasn’t particularly excited about Colorado Springs, but wasn’t sure where else I would go. I had the whole country open to me, but there was nowhere else I’d rather be than here in Fletcher. Of course, that was impossible. I hadn’t left that box of letters on Luke’s porch for nothing. I was grown up, and I was moving on, damn it. Even if it killed me. But it would take a day or so to get to Colorado Springs, and when I did, I could always throw the dart again, and let the Universe guide me where She wanted me to go. Maybe I’d hunt down Jess and we could angel together. It didn’t seem like such a crazy idea to me now.

***

I was halfway down the driveway when I realized I’d left my cell phone inside. I hopped out of the truck, leaving it running in the driveway while I rushed to the house and snatched my cell phone off the half-moon table, being careful to lock the door behind me. I had just stepped out of the house when my peripheral vision registered a figure standing next to my truck. I gasped, froze where I was, and stared, not believing my eyes.

He was wearing a dark green flannel shirt, jeans and workboots. His hair was messy, curling at the ends, and beautiful. He had his hands tucked in his front pockets, and he wasn’t moving. For my part, I didn’t move, either. I was afraid if I did, the mirage would vanish, and I wanted to hold onto it as long as I could.

“Hey,” I said finally.

He nodded. “Hey.”

There was another long moment of awkward silence, then he started toward me. My heart beat faster with each step he took, until finally he was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch, and I felt kinda dizzy.

“I was just on my way,” I said lamely, motioning toward the truck.

He glanced at it, then back at me. “Yeah. I guessed.”

I motioned behind me toward the house. “Um, Danny and Mom are already gone, if you were coming by to say goodbye to them.”

He shook his head. “No. That’s not why I’m here. I actually, um... I got the box.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, wringing my fingers in my hands. “I figured leaving it on your porch was a good way to get it to you.”

“Yeah. It was.”

Another long, awkward silence, and I felt as if my heart were being ripped out of my chest. Why the hell was he doing this to me? Didn’t he know that I had said my goodbye last night? What did he want, for me to break down weeping in the driveway? Which, I realized, was exactly what was going to happen if I didn’t get out of there immediately.

“Well,” I said. “I have to go.”

He looked surprised, but then nodded and stepped back out of my way. My heart sank as I realized that he wasn’t there to stop me from going. God only know why he was there, but if it wasn’t to stop me, then I didn’t care. I turned around and started toward the truck, my eyes welling as I did. Which was okay. Once I was in the truck, he wouldn’t see—

“Eejie.”

I stopped where I was, my back to him. “Luke. Just let me go. Please. My ass has been kicked enough, trust me, you don’t need to add your footprint to the—”

“Two guys walk into a bar.”

I twirled around to face him. “
What
?”

He started toward me, his gait strong and determined. “Two guys walk into a bar...”

“Goddamnit, Luke. Don’t mess with me. Not today. It’s just mean.”

He kept coming. “... and the first guy says, ‘Hey bartender, a round for the house. I just asked the woman I love to marry me and she said yes.’” He stopped about a foot away from me, his eyes dark and earnest. “And then the second guy says, ‘I want to buy a round, too. The woman I love left in the middle of the night and disappeared for six years.’ And the bartender says, ‘What are you buying a round for? That’s not good news.’ And the guy says, ‘Yeah, it is.’” Luke smiled and reached up to touch my face. “‘Because she came back.’”

I stared at him for a long time, pretty sure I understood what he was saying, but unable to fully trust it.

“Really?” I asked, my voice shaking.

He smiled. “Really.”

A tear tracked down my cheek and he wiped it away with his thumb, then leaned in and kissed me. I put both hands on his face and kissed him back, then threw my arms around his neck. He laughed and lifted me off my feet in a happy hug. when he set me down again, I grabbed both of his hands in mine.

“Well, crap,” I said. “I have to go get my stupid trailer now.”

“Okay.” He put his arm around my waist and walked me to the truck. “Let’s go.”

“Um, all right,” I said, then noticed when we got to the truck that a familiar beat-up army-navy duffel was sitting in the bed with all my stuff. I glanced over at him. “I see we’re pretty sure of ourselves, aren’t we?”

“So, this Airstream of yours,” he said as he pulled the driver’s-side door open for me, “is it gonna fit in my driveway?”

“No,” I said, “but it’ll fit in this driveway.”

Luke laughed. “Oh, Lilly’s gonna love that.”

I put my arms around his waist and pulled him to me. “Yeah, I know. Is it bad that driving her nuts still kinda makes me happy inside?”

He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. “I’ll cut you slack on that one. Some habits are tough to kick.”