Like Sweet Potato Pie (49 page)

I stood there with the towel in my hands, looking up into his blue eyes. A tenderness there, mingled with something almost like tears.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I’ll see you Tuesday.” And he waved good-bye, pulling out of the driveway in a thin cloud of gravel dust.

I didn’t see Adam all weekend. Not even Sunday, when I gathered after church with Becky and Tim to gush over Macy and gossip about Faye’s wedding. I barely slept Monday night, staring up at the dark ceiling and thinking of Adam. Of Osaka. And what in the world I was supposed to do now, with all this mess roiling around in my head.

Kevin gave me the whole day off Tuesday, but I couldn’t bring myself to pack any more boxes. Just sat at the table and flipped through my Bible, letting the Psalms soak into my heart, and then prayed until I slept, head right on top of the crisply folded letter from
Yomiuri Shimbun.

“You’re taking me to the same place we went the first time,” I said, peeking out the open truck window. “A year ago.” All the trees leafed out thinner than the thick summer foliage I remembered, like green lace, spring-delicate and spindly.

“Almost a year. Right.” Adam parked the truck on a wash of apple-green grass and got out then came around to let Christie down and grab her leash.

The wind still rippled with cold, so I shrugged on my jacket and scooted out, coming around to the back where Adam stored all his fishing rods and gear.

“Why did you want to come here today?” I asked, shielding my face as a cold breeze blew my hair all wild.

“Because I could talk to you here. And we need to talk.” He set a tackle box on the ground, and I started to pick it up.

Adam glanced up briefly. “That’s okay. I’ll get it.”

Southern male bravado. I rolled my eyes. Adam apparently saw it because he paused in midswing of his truck-bed door. “Because I’ve got something else for you to carry.” And he abruptly pulled an envelope from under his jacket and stuck it in my hands.

“For me? What’s this?” I turned it over. It stared back at me blank, unaddressed.

“Wait ‘til we sit down and you can open it.”

We hauled our stuff to one of the picnic tables where I’d first cried over pecan pie, down by the trees and near the lake. The water stretched smooth and silver against the green landscape, mirroring streaky clouds in its shining surface.

Adam put all his fishing gear on the table and sat down on the bench then started threading a lure on his line. Not looking up from his tackle box.

I hesitated a minute then sat down next to him on the wooden bench and slipped off my sandals, scrubbing my bare toes through the still-cold spring grass. Christie sprawled out beside us, soaking up the sun.

“So what is this? Can I open it?” I held up the envelope.

Adam’s hand—the one with the scar across his knuckles—wavered on the fishing pole, and he finally put it down and turned to face me. “Go ahead.”

I paused a minute at Adam’s expression, his eyes dancing like blue fire, bright and proud. And also … sad.

“What?” I started to put the envelope down. “Why are you looking like that?”

“Just read it.”

I slipped my finger under the envelope flap as he reached down to pet Christie then glanced up suddenly. “Oh. I forgot to tell you. Your E
DEN
L
ANDSCAPING
sticker came off your truck again.”

“Yeah.” Adam scratched his hair with his free hand and looked away. “I know.”

“You’ve really got to get that thing fixed, you know?” I pulled a folded paper from the envelope and opened it, swinging my legs around the end of the bench. “It’s your logo. Your—”

The words
Internal Revenue Service
stopped everything else that intended to flow from my tongue. I shut my mouth, eyes skimming the rows of black type.

“This is a fax.” I raised my head briefly at Adam. I leaned forward to read it again, perched on the edge of the bench.

“It is. Keep reading.”

And then I saw my name. Everything around me started to wobble. Adam reached for me, but he wasn’t fast enough. I found myself facedown on the grass, Christie frantically licking my cheek.

W
hat is this?” I croaked, pushing myself up with my arm and wiping dog slobber off my cheeks. Clawing for the paper, which had fallen out of my hand and scudded in the wind.

Adam grabbed for the fax and stuffed it back in my fingers. “It means what it says.” He swallowed hard. “Did you read … everything?”

“That my back taxes are paid off?” My voice wobbled. “I don’t understand, Adam. Did you borrow some money or something?”

He knelt down next to me, fending off Christie’s tongue with one arm and finally convincing her to lie down in the grass so he could rub her belly. “No. I didn’t borrow anything.”

“Well, what did you do? You don’t have stocks, do you? Bonds? Or some secret stash I don’t know about? Did you win the lottery?”

Adam, gambling? Of course not. But none of it made sense. I stared back down at the paper, straightening it in the breeze.

“I sold my business.”

“You WHAT?” I shrieked. So loud that Christie rolled over, ears pricked. “Adam, you didn’t!”

“Gabe’s wanted to buy it for a while, and with that top-dollar project I’m supposed to do in July, I put the price up.” He brushed a hand through my hair, not meeting my eyes. “I called the project manager and told him I’d still do the plans like I agreed, but that Gabe would take over Eden Landscaping and be doing the actual work.”

I sobbed. The long, loud kind where I could hardly breathe. Adam tucked me against his chest, and I stayed there, not hearing anything but the sound of my racking sobs.

“It’s not that bad, Shiloh,” said Adam, his cheerfulness sounding forced. “The name still fits. Gabriel. The Garden of Eden had an angel, too, remember?” I felt his shoulders shrug. “True, maybe he was driving Adam and Eve out with a fiery sword, but it still fits. It’s not like his name is Nash … or … or Tyler. Then he’d have to change it completely.”

I couldn’t even reply. Just thinking of those beautiful truck decals on somebody else’s dusty SUV made me feel like heaving.

He played with a blade of grass, rolling it between his fingers. “That’s why I needed until this afternoon—a business day—to arrange everything. Oh, and there’s one more thing. I got a job.”

“A job?” I bawled, face running. “What job?”

“At UPS. You know. With the ugly brown shorts.” He laughed, and it sounded a little forced. “Some day work, but mostly evening duty, delivering packages and stuff. Who knows? Maybe I’ll show up here to deliver something from Japan.”

I froze, hand sponging my wet face. “What did you just say?”

“About Japan? I just mean that if—”

“No. About evening duty. You’re going to school, Adam! You got accepted! You told me …” I backed away from him in horror, fresh tears forming in my eyes. “Please don’t tell me you …”

Adam didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. I saw it pass swiftly through his eyes like a kid with his leg gashed open, laughing over the pain that it doesn’t hurt a bit.

While I still sat there bawling into my hands, Adam began fashioning his blade of grass into something. A deer, like those guys carved out of wood on hunting trips? Tim always drew bull’s-eyes on his. I called him sick.

“Shiloh,” said Adam in a voice that sounded strained.

I looked up, eyes streaming.

The grass formed an
O
shape, a neat circle.

“I know this isn’t what you deserve, but …”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. It wasn’t a circle. It was a
ring.
There in his palm, green, smelling of fresh afternoons and sunlight and all the moments two people could share in a lifetime.

My old days in Japan swirled like a kaleidoscope, flashing colors and memories like ripples on the lake. Circles spreading out and out, like a word that, once said, can never be taken back.

Instead of steak and wine like my first proposal, I stared down at a feathered orange lure sticking out of the tackle box. And a rumpled, tear-stained fax.

“Shiloh?” Adam held out the ring. “Would you maybe consider … well, me?”

“You mean it?”

“Marry me. Please.”

Down in the ripples I saw our reflection: two faces together, shimmering against the sky as if we formed one single person.

“I don’t know, Adam.” I gulped, tears stinging my eyes. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“No, I mean … I’ve been engaged before, and had too many boyfriends, and …” I broke off, wiping my eyes. “I’m not like you, all clean and pure, waiting for the right person since I was a child. I’m afraid you’ll … I don’t know. Regret it.”

Adam didn’t look away. “None of us are all clean and pure, Shiloh. And I didn’t ask you to be me. I’m asking you to be you and marry me. Regret it? No way.” He brushed his fingers through my windblown bangs. “Besides, what if you’re embarrassed to be with me? I’m young and poor. I don’t even have a college degree, and you’re halfway through your master’s. Didn’t you interview the prime minister of Japan? Your Cornell friends would eat me alive.”

“Who cares about them?” I leaned into the curve of his neck and shoulder as he turned my head gently to brush his lips against my hair.

“Then marry me.”

As I murmured my yes and Adam leaned forward to slip the ring on my finger, the acceptance letter from
Yomiuri Shimbun
crackled under my jacket, in the pocket.

“What’s that?” He wiped my moist cheek with his thumb.

“Nothing,” I said, stuffing it back in my pocket. “Nothing that matters anymore.”

I watched a leaf that had shimmered on the surface of the lake slip beneath the water, twinkling like my old dreams of Japan and fame, down … down … down … until I lost it beneath a shaft of sunlight.

“Go forward,”
Beulah had told me.
“Don’t look back to Egypt.”

And for the first time in my life, looking into the face of Adam J. Carter, I realized that I had finally found home.

T
im and Becky threw such a commotion that I’m surprised someone didn’t call the police. Screeching into my driveway at breakneck speed, honking and hollering all the way. Lights flew on up and down the street, and a couple of people yelled back congratulations. Stella put on her Elvis records as loud as they would go, dancing on her front porch in her flowered nightgown until two a.m.

When the commotion died down, I called Faye on her honeymoon, against protocol. Called Kyoko, who yelled at me for forty-five solid minutes.

“Fishing?” she roared. “He asked you while you went fishing?”

Fishing. Fish. Jesus and the miraculous catch. I slapped my forehead, staring at the Greek fish tile Adam had given me.

“I love him, Kyoko,” I said. “I just … do.”

And Kyoko promptly burst into tears.

I even e-mailed Ashley, of all people, and she called me immediately—up with a late-night feeding. Giving me bleary, if not tepid, congratulations.

“Have you called Dad?” she asked in her bossy tone of voice. “He misses you, you know. You ought to call him. It’s earlier in Cabo San Lucas. He’s on vacation. You could still catch him awake.”