No Place Like Home (29 page)

Which was exactly the reason I had to make him go. He would try to take care of me and fret about my well-being when he needed to be thinking of his own life. I also knew that he’d be grieving over Michael badly for months, and being busy with his own life and goals would be the best way to offset that. “I appreciate that, but I’m hardly alone. In case you haven’t noticed, I have about ten thousand relatives in this town.”

Betraying hope flared. “Jimmy’s leaving tomorrow, though.”

“Better get cracking, then, huh?”

There was an admirable-size crowd assembled at the airport in Colorado Springs for his send-off, even if it was the crack of dawn. My mother and father, Jordan and Jasmine and Jasmine’s kids, even Nana Lucy, who didn’t like being left out of anything.

Shane was a little embarrassed, wanting to be cool in front of Jimmy and the other guys, but he was also glad. Nana put a Saint Christopher medal around his neck and told him to keep it on. He promised he would. My mother gave him a basket of food from the restaurant, which would be very welcome on the long flight, and hugged him tightly, tears in her eyes. Jordan and Jasmine each gave him a little something—a gift-wrapped box from Jordan that I knew held condoms and that she told him to open on the plane, and a fat envelope with money from Jasmine. “Open a savings account,” she said. “If you ever need
anything
, you call me, you hear?”

He bent down to hug her, his face showing his fondness. “I promise, Auntie.”

Eight-year-old Danny cried on his shoulder, even though he wanted, really bad, to be a tough guy.

My father took my son aside, but not so far away I couldn’t hear him. “You can be anythin’ you want, Shane, but remember you’re a Sabatino, and be an honor to my name.”

Shane nodded soberly. “I would never do anything to hurt you, Papa.”

“I know,” my father said, and kissed him hard on the cheek, his hand tight around his head. He used it to pat his face after, a gesture that somehow pierced me. “Call me when you can, huh? Tell me how things are going.”

Shane nodded, nearly in tears, then hugged him hard. “I’ll miss you.”

“You’ll be fine,” Romeo said, and went over to join the others, jingling his keys in his pocket to cover his strong emotion.

I just stood next to him, my kid, until they called the flight. I memorized the feeling of his tall, ropy body next to mine, inhaled the soap and man smell of him, remembering a thousand other notes he’d once carried—baby powder and Diaparene, sand and sun, Play-Doh and brownies and Kool-Aid. He didn’t say anything. We’d talked so much the past twenty-four hours about what he could do and what he couldn’t do and how to behave and everything else that there wasn’t much else to say. I trusted Jimmy to look out for him, and trusted his wife to give Shane the mothering he might need. The Jersey neighborhood he’d be living in was pleasantly upscale, and my gut said he’d be okay, that this was the right thing to do.

When the flight was called, the other guys picked up their packs and shuffled off to the gate, a familiar game for most of them.

Then it was just me and Shane. He glanced over his shoulder. “I gotta go.”

I’d told myself I wouldn’t cry in front of him, and although I had to blink very hard to actually avoid spilling tears, I stuck to it. “I know.” I gave him a brave smile. “Be careful. Be good. Don’t hold back on your dream.”

But he was the one who cried, and not even blinking could hold it back. I felt the hot tears splash on my neck as he hugged me hard. “I love you, Mom. I’ll call you every Sunday, no matter what, no matter where I am.”

“That’s great.”

The last call came and he straightened. “It’s time.”

“Yeah. Bye, babe. See you soon.”

And he turned, all six foot two of beautiful young hopeful male, his pack slung over his back with everything he needed in it, and I would have done every single minute of my whole life over again, every miserable moment, every sorrow, every joy, every everything to come back here and see him off to the life he was meant to live. I felt myself grow smaller and larger at once, aligned with everything in the world, all of history and all of the future. Everything that had happened had resulted in this moment, with Shane prepared, as nothing else could have prepared him, to live a long, healthy life making art for the rest of us.

“Hey, Shane,” I said, remembering at the last minute.

He turned, but kept walking backward.

“I’ll put a candle in the window.”

He grinned at the old code phrase between me and Billy, and lifted a hand and dipped out of sight.

To fly.

FROM A POSTCARD SHOWING SEVEN FALLS, COLORADO SPRINGS,

COLORADO

8/18

Hey sugar—

Didn’t get far my first night somehow. It’s real pretty here. I dreamed about Michael last night, just sitting on the foot of my bed. Think about the Alps, huh? Or maybe the Nile.

Love, M

FROM A POSTCARD SHOWING NATIVE AMERICAN DANCERS,

NORMAN, OKLAHOMA

8/20

Hey babe—

These guys made me think about Billy. Think he’d have done better if he’d taken up drums? Dreamed about Michael again. Just sitting there on my bed. Weird. Should be home in a couple days and will head out shortly thereafter. I’ll send you a postcard from Africa, maybe.

Love, M

FROM A POSTCARD SHOWING MAGNOLIAS IN FULL BLOOM, BILOXI,

MISSISSIPPI

9/10

Hey darlin’—

Still dreaming about Michael every night. EVERY night. Never says a word, just sits there at the foot of my bed, looking at me. I almost called today, but realized you’d probably be out delivering pies. Wanted to know if you’re dreaming about him, too. Getting things together for a quick river raft trip in CA. You’d like it. Come if you want.

Love, M

FROM A POSTCARD SHOWING A WHITEWATER RAFT TRIP

Thinking you’d like this river. La Llorona doesn’t walk here, though. Michael went away. Doesn’t sit on my bed anymore. Don’t know whether to be sad or glad.

Love, M

Chapter 21

I went to the fair alone in the end. And didn’t last an hour. It was too sad. Too many ghosts walking around there for me—ghosts of myself and Michael and Billy. Ghosts of time past. I ate a funnel cake and called it a night. By next year, I’ll probably be more in the mood.

I did a lot of things alone over those last weeks of summer. Slept alone, ate alone, cooked alone. It was amazing how lonely that big old house was without any voices but my own in it. I spent a lot of time visiting with my sisters, and my mother started having me over for dinner a couple of times a week. I went. Love has no pride, as Bonnie Raitt says, and I needed them in a big way.

There was a blessed conspiracy afoot to keep me busy, everyone taking turns needing me for something or another—Jane and her house and shopping, then the baby shopping, because of course she came home pregnant; Jordan dragging me out to her house for breakfasts and a few therapeutic margarita nights; Nana and her trips to the doctors; my father and his wish for advice on the menu of Falconi’s. Advice, by the way, that he actually listened to. Shane had told him a lot about the Music Box, Michael and Andre’s restaurant, and he’d been impressed by some of the meal choices. Time, Romeo said, overriding even Nana, to bring Falconi’s into the twenty-first century.

Shane called every Sunday afternoon, and a lot more besides. He was pretty lonely and lost the first couple of weeks, but once school started he cheered up. Girls always make the world look better. Jimmy had hooked him up with two other young musicians, and they landed a gig in a nearby hamlet within a month. The club was small, but prestigious—agents and music-label folk were known to scope it out for new talent.

I spent whatever extra time I found on my hands working in the garden or walking by the river. It seemed maudlin at first, but somehow the sound of the water, the flow of those ions in the air maybe, comforted me. I felt close to Michael there, and Malachi, and myself. Berlin and I walked a lot through those months, and I even lost a little weight.

Every night, I lit that red pillar candle.

The one thing no one did for me was introduce me to anyone. No aunties with some suitable older fellow who’d lost his wife. No dashing divorced guy with a couple of kids who needed a mother—which I wouldn’t have minded, by the way. No coworkers who might drink a bit much from Henry’s construction sites, no doctors or technicians or cheery male nurses from Jordan, or mortgage loan officers from Jasmine. No teachers, no joggers, no cooks or bartenders. No one. From anyone.

I thought at first that they were being respectful, you know—so much had happened and they were giving me time to grieve. So, by the middle of October, I let it drop, here and there, that I wouldn’t mind the idea of getting on with my life.

Still nothing.

Which left me lonely, sitting on my steps as I had that summer, looking down the years of my life that were going to be every bit as dry as I’d feared. I’d wither out here with the goatheads and the orchard, forgotten like an apple fallen overripe to the ground.

I was lonely. Lonelier than I’d ever been in my life. All the work, all the family, all the new acceptance I felt about myself and my choices didn’t do a damned bit of good when the moon rose, heavy and yellow, over the river that October night. A harvest moon, as big around as the earth itself. It painted its cool light over my arms and face, cast a magical glow over the fields and trees, making me think of Michael. “You could come to my dreams,” I said aloud. “I’m kind of jealous that you showed up to Malachi and not to me.”

The light just glowed, endless and eternal, from the disc of the harvest moon. I went upstairs, alone, and got ready for bed. In the window of the bedroom, the red candle had nearly burned to the very end, and standing there in my sweats and T-shirt, my hair tied back in a sensible braid, I looked at it, so small against the hugeness of that moon, and thought how foolish I’d been to believe that Malachi would return. Everything had pointed against it. Every bit of logic, everything I knew about men, everything.

And yet, somehow, that last night, I’d discovered faith in him—my faith in that light that burned between us, that peaceful warmth that had felt so steady.

Even a woman who knows better can sometimes fall prey to foolish fantasies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Malachi wasn’t coming back and it was time for me to make a new life on all levels. I bent over the flame, taking in a deep breath to blow it out. Headlights flashed against my eyes and I stopped. Watching those lights on the road below.

A hard, sharp, painful hope twisted in my breast, and my heart started to pound. I waited, watching those lights come fast down the road, bumping in the potholes—a truck, I gauged. A million trucks came down that road every year.

I don’t know how I knew. There was a part of me, the logical part, the grounded part, that was bracing for disappointment even as I turned and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. As I hit the ground floor, the lights swung into my driveway, flashing across the big panes in the front windows that I’d washed three days ago. I was thinking there was some leftover lasagna and some pumpkin pie in the cooler and I could make some coffee, because he’d be hungry, even as I was thinking it might just be an emergency, that someone needed me for something.

I was waiting on the porch when he opened the truck door and stepped out, a puppy scrambling out behind him, a little German shephard with clumsy paws and a black nose. It whimpered a little but raced toward me when I came down the steps and whistled softly, scrambling into my arms, a big ball of clumsy fur that offered a shield as I looked up at Malachi.

He lifted a shoulder. “He adopted me. I wasn’t really thinking about getting a dog, but he wouldn’t leave me alone.”

The puppy licked my chin happily, and I smiled, bending my face into his still-soft fur. “How could you resist?”

“Obviously I couldn’t.”

I put the puppy down and went forward. “You look like hell,” I said. And it was true. Hair mussed and too long, hollows under his eyes, a three-day growth of beard on his jaw. He closed his eyes for a minute, his hands loose at his sides, then opened them.

“Oh, my God,” he said heavily, and embraced me.

Not a little, loose hug, either—both long arms all the way around me, pulling me into his body tight, his face against my hair. “Jewel,” he said, a sigh of relief. His arms were squeezing the breath out of me, but I didn’t mind it. I clung to him just as hard, breathing in that scent of line-dried clothes, that homey smell that was his and should have been a clue to me all this time.

He smelled like Sylvia’s yard. The yard that was his, that was mine. I thought I could hear my auntie chuckling in great good humor.

“Oh, God, Jewel,” he said again, “I missed you like a leg.” He kissed me hard, and I tasted all those days he’d missed me, all the days I’d missed him, and then fought my way free of him, stepping back to get some sanity.

“Are you here to stay, Malachi? Or to try to convince me to wander the world?”

From a pocket on the front of his shirt, he took a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. I opened it, perplexed, and read, “Arkansas River Whitewater Rafting.” It appeared to be some official something, but I couldn’t really tell what. “So?”

He held the top of the paper and pointed to the very bottom, where there were two signatures. Malachi’s and one I didn’t recognize. It was a deed of sale.

I swallowed. “You bought it?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not asking you to just take me on faith, Jewel. I know my history won’t make it easy to trust me, trust that I mean what I say. You don’t have to live with me or anything—I got an apartment in town and we can . . . court like normal people. Whatever you want to do, I’ll do it.” He swallowed, lifted a hand to my hair, dropped it. “I never loved a woman before. I didn’t know how bad it would feel to be without you, and I’m willing to do whatever it is you need until you can see your way to letting me be your man.”

“My man?”

And those dark eyes lifted to mine without a wince or a pain and said, “Your husband. If that’s not too corny.” He twisted a piece of my hair around his finger.

“That was the right answer,” I said, and burst into tears, right there. And like any man, he was bewildered about what to do about that, so I picked up his big arms and put them around my shoulders and put my face against his chest and cried. “I was so afraid to believe in you. I gambled my whole heart that you would figure it out in time.”

Now he started to get it, and rocked me back and forth. “I never felt like anyplace was home until now. I was afraid of how badly I wanted it.” He kissed my head. “I love you.”

Dizzy over faith rewarded, over the promise of the future, I pressed my face into his shirt. “I know,” I said, and smiled when he laughed.

Wrapped in Malachi’s long, warm body, I slept.

And dreamed that Michael came and sat on the bed next to me. He was himself again, his hair gleaming and long and almost gilded with light, his shoulders broad and full, his laughter bright and rich. “I was here all the time,” he said, putting his hand on my leg. “But now I know you’ll be okay, and I’m going on.” In the distance, smiling gently, was Andre, or maybe not Andre but just another angel.

Michael kissed my forehead and started to go, but then he put his hand on my belly. “Name her Michaela, will you?”

I protested that I didn’t want a baby, but Michael only laughed.

I woke up and Malachi was waking up, too. “I dreamed about him again,” he said, pulling me tighter, that giant hand going protectively over my belly, which wasn’t young but probably wasn’t so old it couldn’t carry a baby for Malachi at least once. “He talked this time.”

I put my hand over his. “I know.”

It’s all good, as they say.