Retreat to Love (26 page)

I smiled. “And yourself as well. Safe home. And my best to your folks.”

“My folks! What a Texan. Only call me when you’re drunk, right? No point hearing your voice unless I get the drawl as well.”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

She nodded. “Right, then.” And boarded the bus.

The driver was definitely ready to go, then. Margie came down two of the porch steps, pointedly glancing between Caleb and the bus door.

He led me around the back side of the bus, out of sight of both Margie and, hopefully, most of the inhabitants.

“So.”

“Hmm?” he breathed, more a vibration from his voice box to my skull than an audible reply.

“Okay, let’s not make it too long. You have a good flight, call me tonight sometime, and kiss me goodbye now.”

The crinkly eyes. “Now who’s getting all dictatorial?”

“I learn from the best, my love.”

One more time, my hands on his shoulders. One more time, his palms on my back. A kiss, then another. Then another. Longer, longing.

Together we clung on, and together we broke apart.

“See you soon.”

I nodded. “See you real soon.”

“Why? Because I like you.”

“You goof.”

“You first.”

“You more.”

“One more.”

“Yes, please.” I kissed him. He agreed. And then the bus started up, baleful exhaust sending smoke signals our direction.

I sighed. “Subtle.” Which got a laugh, the last laugh I’d see from him for a while, so I locked it in my heart and walked him to the door.

“Bye, Ash, I love you.”

“I love you too. Tonight?”

He nodded. “Tonight.” And with that promise and with one last kiss to brand my cheek, he was on board, and the bus was gone.

Zach arrived; we left FireWind. The hills and streams had given way to foothills that were threatening to give way to the flat plains of I-10 before I roused myself for conversation.

“So, you okay? You all sad and stuff?”

I shrugged defensively. “It’s only two weeks.”

“Which seems like an eternity?”

“Ha ha. No, the only eternity is the future in the desert. He’d better test out the a/c real good before he signs a lease.”

“You’re really going, then?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I dunno. I just have trouble picturing you living so far away.”

“It’s not as far as Berkeley.”

“I know, but that wasn’t far for me. It was barely far enough.”

“The young runaway. They roped you back in the end though, didn’t they?”

“Shuddup. I’m not here for them, it just worked out that way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shuddup.” He tried to clean the windshield with the spray, but it just streaked bug innards across the field of vision. “Besides, who’s running from who now?”

“I’m not running, we just picked a place that doesn’t happen to be in Texas.”

“Uh-huh, and have you told Frank and Bernadette about this plan?”

“What am I, twelve? I don’t need their approval.”

No answer.

“Shuddup. I don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I think after a quarter-century I’ve come to accept their disapproval.”

“God, Ash, not your self-pitying bullshit again.”

“What?”

“The whole mom and dad don’t love me thing, I mean, haven’t we done it to death already?”

Where was all the anger coming from? “Well, excuse me, it’s not like you know where I’m coming from here, is it?”

“Oh, right, I forget, they never criticize me. They wholeheartedly refute everything I do as an adult, but they don’t criticize.”

“I never said they criticize me, I said they don’t approve of me.”

“Well they don’t send you articles about the ways the computerization of our world is destroying the environment, do they? They don’t treat every girlfriend you’ve ever introduced them to like a no-good Martian, do they?”

“They like Rebecca.”

“They treated her well at the funeral. And then they sent me another clipping with a note that said, ‘give our best to Roxana.’ I mean, Roxana? That’s a stretch even for them.”

From somewhere in the part of my psyche not overcome with offense at him and worry about my own life, it occurred to me I’d never heard him rant so much about Frank and Bernadette. I’d heard some snide comments, and we had plenty of anecdotes for the party crowd, but never this wholesale bitterness. “My goodness, Zachary May, you are truly in love!”

He glanced at me. “Come again?”

“You. You’re in love, you’re happy, you’re secure and content.” I slid across the seat to kiss his cheek. “Way to go!”

He shook his head. “Do I even ask where this came from all the sudden?”

“Nah.”

“Right.” Again, he tried the wipers. “Well, anyway, you’re right about the love thing. But don’t tell Frank and Bernadette.”

I grinned, happier than I’d been all day, but it didn’t take. “Yeah, I’ll be too busy convincing Frank I can drive a thousand miles safely and Caleb won’t axe me once I get there. And Bernadette that we won’t starve to death with only our ‘little quilts and snapshots’ for an income.”

“You know, if you need some cash to get you settled ....”

“No, big spender, the point is, I don’t. We don’t. We’ll be fine, we’ll be okay. Two starving artists are easier to keep alive than one starving artist.” I backed off some. “But it’s totally sweet of you to offer, thanks.”

“Sure. And I mean it, so call anytime.”

A half-laugh. “Well, I’m more likely to call you than Bernadette.”

“She really does like your art, you know.”

“Uh-huh. She raves about it.”

“No, seriously, Ash, she told me
Chains of Love
one was your best yet, it brought tears to her eyes.”

“Beg pardon?”

“God’s honest truth.”

“When?”

“I dunno. Like, two-three days after the party.”

“You never told me.”

He shrugged. “Other stuff happened. I forgot.”

Other stuff. Stuff like, Gran dying. That kind of thing. And then it mattered not how many bugs were smeared on the windshield, ‘cause I couldn’t see a thing.

“Oh, man, Ash, I’m sorry.”

I shook my head, sniffled, “It’s not your fault. It’s just,” a couple of minutes to find a way to phrase it, “how, I mean, what am I going to do? Who do I talk to about stuff? Where do I go at Christmas? I need her. I need my Gran, Zach, and she’s gone.”

He was rubbing my shoulder with his free hand. “Come on, Ash, come on. You’ll be okay.” I found a tissue in his glove box. “You got me, ya know. And Caleb.” I nodded with my face buried. “And Bernadette, and Frank, too. No, you do. You gotta grow up out of this self-pity thing, cause you gotta see you do have them, okay? I don’t want to get harsh on you right now, but it’s important. You need to know it, all right?” I nodded, to shut him up, which worked. Most of the rest of the drive was quiet. I didn’t want to retreat back into my cocoon, but just for a couple of hours, I needed it. Quiet. Bless him, Zach gave it to me. That Rebecca was a lucky woman.

They’d neglected her bushes. In the late spring like this it got dry and if the azaleas were going to bloom they needed to be watered regularly. I turned on the sprinklers on the way in.

It was the first time Zach had been there since the funeral, too. It wasn’t quite ransacked and wasn’t quite tidied up. The dining room was almost empty, just the sideboard left to be taken out. The pictures were, by and large, off the walls. But the hall table was piled high with envelopes and stacks of paper, and the kitchen hadn’t been touched. The beds were stripped and her clothes had been packed up. Only our quilts remained in the linen closet. I turned away from it and closed the door.

“You sure you’re okay to stay here?”

I nodded.

“I’ll stay tonight too if you want.”

“Nah. I think it’s better if I do it on my own. Besides, you have to get back.”

“Not really.”

“Well, if you stay, we’re gonna have to have dinner with Frank and Bernadette, and I’m gonna tell them Rebecca moved in.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“I’ll tell them you’re off to some strange city with a man you hardly know.”

“I’ve known him longer than you have her, plus you can vouch for him. For all we know, this Roxanna of yours is a high-tech bank robber who runs her CPU all night regardless of the energy waste.”

“You are such a brat.”

“Just trying to make sure you won’t miss me too much when I’ve gone.”

“I won’t miss hauling your stuff all over creation, that’s for sure.”

“Okay, special treat. This time I’ll unload the trunk, and you make up my bed for me. Deal?”

“Somehow your deal still has me doing chores.”

“And look how sympathetic I am. Give me your keys.”

I stacked most of my stuff in the dining room, not anticipating I’d use any of it until I got re-settled with Caleb. It was strange to think of not sewing for weeks. Even when my art hadn’t been going well, I still did a few basic stitches every day, piecing, or even turning somebody’s great-grandmother’s antique quilt tops into finished products for a few extra spending dollars. Practically no one realized the tops their bygone ancestors hadn’t bothered to quilt were the ones deemed unworthy. But value is a relative thing; few people today could piece a top half as well as the less adept quilters of a hundred and fifty years ago. Hell, even I didn’t have the patience to work on a patterned quilt by hand unless it was my own pattern, not the way Gran did.

Past tense did.

I put the suitcase and duffle in the utility room. Zach found me there, folding Gran’s clothes from the dryer. Smoothing wrinkles from the apple green housecoat.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“As sure as I am about anything. Will you be okay driving back?”

He shrugged. “I’m always okay to drive. Unlike some people. Hey, can I ask a favor?”

“You know it.”

“Not now, but someday? Can you … make me something with that?”

I was still holding the half-folded robe. I tucked it into quarters and set it squarely on top of the pile. After a bit, I managed, “I can. Thanks for asking.”

He got me in a bear hug. “You be strong, Ashlyn, and call me whenever you need, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Of course you do. You’re an anchor.”

I was almost overloaded on leave-takings for the day, but managed the one more. By the time he left, it was getting on towards dinner, but I couldn’t be moved to go in search of food, so I scrounged. There were rolls in the freezer and cans of soup in the pantry. It lacked panache, but it filled my stomach.

My heart was a different matter. Even curled up in bed talking to Caleb, my heart refused to fill. I gave him credit for enforcing a limit to my time at Gran’s house; the morass was threatening to claim me permanently after only a few hours.

But in the morning, after she’d had time to open the store and see to the early customers and paperwork, Bernadette came by. We took a slow tour of the house together.

The three siblings had divided up the furniture according to their wants and some basic feeling of fairness. Matthew had taken some smaller mementos back to California. Dermot had arranged for his selections—the dining set, the large carpet from the living room, an armoire—to go on a truck headed his way later in the month. Together they’d packed up the clothes and towels to donate to Gran’s parish, and had taken most of the books to the library. The only real sorting jobs for Bernadette and I to finish up were the sewing things, which she left entirely to my discretion, and the paperwork. Her plan for the kitchen was for me to take whatever I needed or wanted, pack up the china for Zach and the crystal to save for me, and donate the rest.

We didn’t do much work before she had to get back to the store for the lunch crowd, and head to my rental to clear all traces of myself from it. I had left most things packed away so the sub-leaser could use the space, but still needed to move it all out and clean it up. The job took a couple of days of solid hauling. Very little of the furniture was mine, but I still didn’t see how I would get everything to Prescott without a trailer. Caleb was looking for an unfurnished house, so I needed whatever I could bring. That meant my bed from Gran’s house, the sideboard Uncle Dermot didn’t have room for, and the dinette set.

On Wednesday I got a trailer hitch installed on my little car. It would have to be a very lightweight trailer, but it should do the trick. We’d talked about renting a van Caleb could drive in convoy to Arizona, but apparently no one wanted me driving long distances on my own, even with Caleb there to honk if he thought I was falling asleep at the wheel. So we’d take only what would fit on the largest trailer my car could manage. Wednesday night Caleb called from Los Angeles, where he was crashing for the night at another of the Zeke’s pads.

“And how are you?”

“Not thinking about anything, and staying sane that way.”

“Are you taking care of yourself? Are you eating?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t tease me, I’m worrying about you. I’m not used to worrying about someone so much.”

“Sweet man, you don’t need to worry, okay? I’m fine. For now. I miss you, that’s a given, but I’m fine.”

“Only ten more days.”

“Wow.”

“Will you be ready? Is that okay?”

“I think so. I’m finally out of the rental. From now on, I’ll be concentrating on this house.”

“Is it going okay with your parents?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen much of them yet. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen Frank at all. I’m supposed to have dinner there tomorrow. I’ll tell them about Arizona then.”

“I’ll call you late tomorrow then. I’ll call you from bed.”

Caleb kept my heart open just thinking about him. I smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Not as much as I’m planning on liking it.”

I laughed. “Dirty. Hey. Caleb.”

“Hey, Ash?”

“I wanted a future with you, you know? Before Gran, I mean. Just so you know, this isn’t escapism on my part.”

“Ash.” He cleared his throat. “Me, too.”

“Thanks. Thanks for running away with me.”

“Running towards you.”

“Towards you, too. Towards each other.”

I could hear his smile. “Yeah. Good-night, Ash, love.”

“Sweet dreams, Caleb. I love you.”

“Good-night.”

I learned to sew on Gran’s Singer. The summer before I turned fourteen, Pappa took me on a ‘secret mission’ to the sewing machine shop, to help him pick out a new multi-purpose machine for their anniversary. Then, even though it was months early, they gave it to me for my birthday.