All Roads Lead Home (Bellingwood) (46 page)

They said their goodnights and drove away. Polly shut
the front door and walked around, turning lights off. She and Obiwan walked up the
stairs and into her apartment.

"This has been a
wild
few weeks, little guy. What
say we have a nice, calm day
tomorrow?
Would that be alright?"

He licked her face in affirmation.

“Yes! Yes! I’m up!” Polly felt a cold tongue on her
face and opened her eyes. Obiwan was lying beside her in the bed.

"How did? Oh, I forgot!
Oh dear!"
She sat straight up and looked around the room. Nothing
was out of place and the door was shut. The dog tucked himself in beside her
and looked up expectantly. "You slept here all night, didn't
you?
" He
stood up in the bed and she ran her hand down his back several times,
then
pulled his bottom close to hers so he was sitting
beside her. "Well, as long as you can be good, I guess there's no reason
for you to sleep in the kennel."

By now both of them were fully awake and
she stood up. "
It's supposed to be a beautiful day. Let's take a long walk this
morning by the creek, okay?"

He wagged his tail and she picked him up and set him
on the floor as she pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. She put a flannel shirt on
over that and then tugged a sweatshirt over her head. Thick socks and her
hiking boots went on and Polly snagged ear muffs and a pair of gloves out of a
box on her floor. "I'm ready now and I think you have everything you need.
Let's go."

They went downstairs and out the back door of the kitchen
and headed for the copse of trees that led to the creek. Polly's eyes were
caught by the bark on the trees that was pulling away in the late fall air and
showing the mottled wood of the tree itself. "Sycamore," she thought.
Then she realized and said, "OH! That's why it's called Sycamore
Creek." It was only a trickle, there hadn't been a lot of rain this year,
so
she and Obiwan crawled down over the bank and walked
the creek. She let him off the leash and he ran ahead of her and then back to see
if she was going to catch up. The creek ran under the highway, but she crawled
back up and walked around, continuing to follow it. The trees had been losing
leaves for quite some time and she picked up some of the prettier ones as
s
he walked,
looking at their veins and appreciating the peace of early morning in a small
town in Iowa.

This was the right decision. Sometimes she felt as if
she'd fallen into everything, but it seemed like every step she'd taken had
been the right one, even if
strange
things had happened along the way.

Polly thought about her new friends. They were so
different from the girls she knew in Boston. Their careers had been
all-encompassing, and while Beryl's art was nearly an obsession for her, she
was still pretty laid back. Polly knew she would miss her life in Boston with
all of the excitement of the city and the easy access to activities on the East
Coast, but this slower life
was nice
. She would enjoy this.

She picked up a few more leaves and looked at the
symmetry. The sycamore trees lining the creek covered everything in falling
leaves.

Polly's mind took her back to her elementary Sunday
School
class. "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a
wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted
to see. And when the Lord came passing by, he looked up in the tree. And he
said, 'Zacchaeus! You come down!
For I'm going to your house today.
I'm going to your house today.'"

A few of the
trees were huge and through the
fog of
her memory she saw
an immense tree spread
out in a field, with soldiers and horses standing under it for shelter. "Hmmm,"
she thought.

She turned the sycamore leaf over and over in her hand
while she and Obiwan walked home. They'd been out for forty-five minutes and
she was getting hungry. She also wanted to spend a few minutes doing research
on the internet. It took nearly as long for them to walk back to the school. Obiwan
had to cover all of the territory he'd already marked, to ensure nothing had
interfered with his efforts,
and
then explore new territory as well. They walked back
in through the kitchen
door
and she snagged her laptop before heading upstairs. Dropping
it on her coffee table, she poured food into Obiwan's bowl,
then
stripped her sweatshirt and boots off.

"
Whaddya
think,
Obiwan?" she asked. He looked up from his food dish and wagged, "I
think it will work quite well."

Flipping her
computer’s
lid up
, she
sat down,
pulled it on to her
lap and began to search.

"Exactly!" she shouted. Obiwan stopped
eating and turned his head to look at her. "Oh, sorry, little guy. Go
ahead. I'll try to be more respectful."

At the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania during
the Revolutionary War, both Lafayette’s and Washington's armies took shelter
under the tree.

Polly did a little more research and choked up when
she read
that
it was a seventy year old sycamore tree which saved
St. Paul's Chapel across the street from the Twin Towers after the tree fell
and its branches protected the chapel from falling debris.

In America, the sycamore tree stood as a symbol of
strength and protection
… exactly
what Polly hoped f
or the future of this
building.

Her mind began racing as she pictured big sycamore
trees lining the driveway and the sidewalk along the highways. More trees would
fill the yard and over the years as they grew,
would offer incredible shade.

People would stop calling it the old school when she
put the si
gn out front: Sycamore House.

That was perfect.

Obiwan jumped up on the couch beside her and she
hugged him close. "Sycamore House," she whispered to him.
"Sycamore House."

I hope you have had a wonderful time visiting
Bellingwood and getting to know some of Polly’s new friends.

Check out
Polly’s
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pollygiller
for news of upcoming
novels. Tell me
about your favorite characters and what you remember collecting when you were
in high school. Would Doug Leon have found some of your things lying around?

Diane Greenwood Muir’s website,
http://nammynools.com might be under construction for
a while, but will also be home to more news from Bellingwood. Come back often.

The next book featuring Polly and all her friends will
be published in April 2013, but never fear, there’s more
before you go.
Turn
the page and find a short Christmas story.

Polly’s

First Christmas

At
Sycamore
House

A Bellingwood Short Story

Standing still was not an option, so Polly paced back
and forth across the hallway. This was the first time she had ever done
anything like this and she was absolutely terrified. She smoothed her sweater
once more, and then checked her hair again in the reflection of the window to
the office. Obiwan sat against the wall of the auditorium watching her. She
paced around twice more, then stopped beside the dog and bent over to scratch
his ears. In the month they'd been together, he'd grown quickly and she didn't
have to bend over quite so far.

She walked away, then went back to the office, stepped
in and turned the light on. She walked through the other two offices, checking
to ensure everything was neat and tidy, turned the light off, thought about it
and turned all of them back on. She stopped at the conference room table,
straightened a folder at the end, nudged the chair in closer to the table,
then
nudged it a little to the left.

"Breathe, Giller," she said out loud.
"You can do this. You're in charge. This is your place. You'll be
fine." After her personal pep talk, she took two deep breaths and walked
back out into the hallway. "Benches would be great out here," she
thought to herself. "I should talk to Henry about that." Before she
could pull out her phone to send herself a note, the front door opened and a
young man walked in. He was over six foot tall, with dark, curly hair and was
dressed in a well-cut charcoal suit, with a burgundy shirt. His tie was
conservative, but Polly caught a glimpse of color in his socks as he walked. She
pushed her phone back into the pocket of her jeans and strode over to greet him.

"Welcome to Sycamore House," she said.
"I'm Polly Giller."

He met her and they shook hands. "It's nice to
meet you, Miss Giller," he paused. "It is
Miss
Giller, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's Miss. Actually, I prefer Polly." She
took her hand back. He had a nice, firm, confident grip. "And you’re Jeff
Lyndsay?"

"Yes I am!" He glanced at the dog. "Is
he yours?"

Polly couldn't help herself and giggled. Why else
would there be a dog patiently sitting here watching, but she said. "Yes,
that's Obiwan. He's my shadow."

She gestured to the office and said, "Shall we go
on in and get started?"

He followed her through the outer office into the
conference room and took a seat. She sat down at the end of the table and
pushed away the folder she'd left there. Polly hoped this worked out. She'd
talked to eight different people and none of them had seemed to have the right
mix of personality and
creativity, business
acumen and excitement about her dream. If she was going to hire a full time
coordinator, she wanted someone who would fall in love with Sycamore House as
much as she had and after talking on the phone several times to him, she really
wanted it to be Jeff. He had flown in this morning from Columbus, Ohio so they
could finally meet and do a live interview and seemed like the perfect person
to get Sycamore House going.