Return to Me (29 page)

Only then did I hold out my hand to him. When his fingers twined with mine, relief and pleasure mingled inside me. Together, we walked down the familiar stone-studded footpath in silence, as though we both knew that our discussion could wait.

Every step toward my treehouse reminded me of the girl I had been, and the woman I wanted to be. It wasn’t so much that I threw Mom’s caution about the tender age of my heart to the wind. Rather, I leaned into that wind, and trusted what I felt, and relished this second chance. I knew love for what it was: a miracle.

“We’re back,” I whispered, almost in disbelief, when I pushed the door to my treehouse open and inhaled the scent of fir.

“You doing okay?” Jackson asked as he brushed my hair gently off my face. He hadn’t yet kissed me, but now he pulled me into a tight embrace, our bodies touching, chest, hips, thighs. Over his shoulder I noticed my clock, the one that had broken in transit from Lewis Island to New Jersey. Its hands now ticked a steady heartbeat as familiar and comforting as Jackson’s voice. The last numbed particle of me melted.

I tilted my face up to his. There, in our kiss, I arrived home.

“We should talk,” I said when we finally untangled from each other. Where before those three words felt like the ominous
prologue to ending a relationship, now I knew they were precious seeds for a relationship transforming. What better way to deepen love than by talking through molten issues and scorching doubts?

I cleared my throat and kept my preamble short, because the truth never needs embellishment: “So I was thinking…”

“Yeah?” Jackson said, his voice such a deep timbre, I could practically feel the reverberations, reminding me of how much I loved that voice. For my next birthday, I made a mental note to ask him to read my favorite children’s book,
The Phantom Tollbooth
, aloud to me.

“You, Jackson,” I said, “are one good guy.”

“Now, that’s what I like to hear.”

“I think I totally misjudged you.”

“Well, I could have told you that.”

“It’s so nice to hear that you haven’t changed,” I said, smirking, before continuing: “Whether I want to admit it or not, you have cracked my heart open.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s good in all the right ways, and don’t you get all he-man proud about it. Because I’ll tell you…” My voice lowered to a whisper, and I pressed closer to him as I stared up, up, up into his rain-forest eyes. “I’m scared that you’re going to break my heart.”

“You could break mine.”

“That’s another thing I’m worried about! Everybody says we’re too young to know.”

Jackson tightened his arms around me as though he were
preventing my free fall into despair. In my mind, I could hear my friends, horrified that I would reveal my heart to a guy in such an open way, make myself this vulnerable. Ginny would say, “You’re going to scare him off. Guys can’t take depth. You have to keep it light.” But Ginny was so afraid that a guy would abandon her unexpectedly, the way her father died without warning, she didn’t let a single boy get close. And then there was Shana, who’d already become so jaded from guy after guy collecting her as a blonde trophy that she’d become a player herself, churning through boyfriends the way fashionistas cycled through trends. As much as I loved my friends, it was time to dam their voices and listen to mine.

If I wanted a relationship—a real relationship anchored in knowing each other—then I needed Jackson to understand the entire inventory of my fears. So I forged forward: “And besides, this whole thing with my dad… If he can do this—my dad!—it’s just hard to put myself out there. I feel like an archery target: Hit me here.”

The remarkable thing is, Jackson met me more than halfway. What he said was this: “You hurt me. You didn’t even give me a chance. You just ran. And I felt completely powerless. Can I tell you how much I hate that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s the truth. Everyone hurts each other. Even unintentionally.”

Ignoring nagging questions only made them fester. Look at Dad and his secret misery. So I found myself asking, “Who did you watch the Pleiades with?”

“A buddy of mine from Iowa. Grant.” Silence before Jackson surmised: “Is that what it was about? Did you think I was cheating on you?”

No longer did I hedge or prevaricate. I simply admitted, “Yes.”

“I wouldn’t be with you unless I wanted to be.”

“But there’s your whole ‘Ask for forgiveness, not permission.’ ”

“Yeah, but I also have a code. And that’s to live by my word, which is something my dad doesn’t do. And I gave you my word. I want to be with you.”

“Oh.”

“And only if you want to be with me.”

We were quiet then, our silence bridging us rather than distancing us. I swear, I could feel Jackson’s explanation nestle in my heart, his words soothing my emotion-raw skin. He pulled me into his arms. I shut my eyes, and there was only Jackson.

“So we’ll screw up, and we’ll learn,” I said softly into his chest.

“That’s all we can do, right?” he reminded me.

Even my grandmother would never say that she could predict the future with one hundred percent accuracy. She could only see what might be if we were brave enough to correct our course.

“True.” For too long, everyone’s voice—Mom’s, Ginny’s, Shana’s, Grandma’s, Grandpa’s, Dad’s, and even Jackson’s—had been a roaring current of
Stop dreaming and start believing
, of
Break up because you’re too young
, and
Work at a relationship because
it’s worth it
. However well-intentioned everyone had been, I was drowning in their expectations.

When I focused on what I wanted in my life, it was this: I wanted to build both a treehouse sanctuary and a relationship. Just as much as I wanted a career that could bring to life what I envisioned, I also wanted a guy who treasured who I was, and celebrated what I wanted to do in life, and was proud of what I was capable of doing. And I would commit to the same for him. I wanted both of us to be fully known, wholly accepted, and completely loved.

Despite my nervousness, I told Jackson: “You know, I had a feeling that something awful was going to happen when we moved.” Then, staring him in the eye, I told him the entire truth: “I kept hearing crying in my head. Sobbing like you never want to hear in your life.”

In the pause that followed, I waited for Jackson’s scoff, waited to hear the skeptical
hmmm
. But as he had reminded me, he wasn’t my father. Instead, Jackson simply asked, “When did it start?”

So I told him about the moving day from Lewis Island and how a primal weeping had frightened me. But in an odd, indefinable way, I felt I had heard the wailing before, it was that familiar.

“It’s so weird,” I mulled over with Jackson. “It was kind of like remembering a tune but not the lyrics. But then…” I hesitated, uncertain whether he needed to know that it was me who was weeping. But I forced myself to reveal even this because, as
Grandma said, only when we share ourselves, especially at our most vulnerable, can we be fully known: “I broke down on the Big Island, thinking about Mom and Dad. And Grandma and Grandpa, who lost more than twenty years together. Twenty! And us… So my vision was about me. Isn’t that totally weird?”

There wasn’t even a moment of silence before Jackson said, “I believe you.”

“Doesn’t it creep you out?”

“Nah. Didn’t I ever tell you about when I was a baby? How Mom found me in my nursery with a blanket tucked around me, the cradle rocking by itself?”

“By itself? Really?”

“Mom thinks that house was haunted by the world’s most protective ghost: Uncle Henry. But she had a little talk with Uncle Henry and told him it was our house. So he left.”

“And you believe that? Really believe that?” I asked.

“Why not?”

I had to laugh because my intuition was a secret I had clasped to myself, hiding it as though it were shameful. And here he was, Jackson, with his own ghost story.

“Let’s just say, I don’t
not
believe it,” said Jackson. “What’ll creep me out is if you don’t tell me where we stand. So, you re-upping for season two, or what?”

Again, I laughed at his apt choice of words. A second chance, another season in this show called Life. I was no prisoner breaking out of jail, no girl imprisoned by a family curse, but a woman who was opening her heart. Warmth filled me, and I felt the
final vestige of my armor hit the ground. Jackson knew me. And he wasn’t sprinting from me but staying at my side.

“The contract’s already in the mail,” I told him.

By the time we stopped kissing, the stars glittered high above. They were brighter here, I swore, even than in Volcano, Big Island, population: not many. Perhaps it was
this
island air, perfumed with fresh evergreen trees, that made the stars sparkle with breath-catching exuberance. Or perhaps it was simply the alchemy of a miracle called joy.

O
kay, Jackson, time to share Reb!”

As embarrassing as it is to admit, more than Ginny’s voice pulled me off Jackson the next morning in the treehouse, where we had been hanging out again. The scent of her baked goods worked its magnetic attraction: Smell brownie, eat brownie.

“Ginny!” I squealed as she swept into the treehouse, decked out in a frilly pink apron and hefting a platter of golden-brown croissants, at least three types of cookies (all appealingly plump), a half dozen brownies, and a miniature red velvet cake. Time apart hadn’t diminished the measure of Ginny’s love, which came in heaping cups and generous tablespoons in all things delicious. “What are you doing here? I thought school started!”

“Surprise! It starts in two days. Mom changed the flight. We’ll leave tomorrow.” She set the tray on my window seat and
thrust two cookies like olive branches at Jackson before announcing, “But now it’s girlfriend time. No boys allowed.”

“Ginny!” I protested, but Jackson squeezed my shoulder before he fortified himself with an additional croissant and jogged down the treehouse steps.

“Yo, Reidster!” I heard him call. From my window seat, I made out Reid, scribbling in his journal by himself on the patio. Jackson held a Frisbee overhead, struck a Greek god pose, one hand behind his head, the other outstretched toward the blinding sun.

Without a word, Reid jumped to his feet and assumed the exact same pose. Boys.

“Oh yeah?” Jackson threw the Frisbee lightly at Reid so that it landed on top of his journal.

“Hey, how’d you do that?” Reid demanded.

Ginny drew back from the window and said thoughtfully, “Shana’s parents had an emergency. So she had to hold down the office for them; otherwise she’d be here. But she gave me a message.”

I had kept both my besties apprised about Jackson and how he had stuck by me all this time. Exasperated, I wondered what Shana might possibly object to now. “What?”

Tossing her hair and jutting one hip out, Ginny mimicked Shana: “Okay, okay, I might have been a little wrong about Jackson.”

We laughed at that even as I lingered on the window seat, staring out to the welcoming waters of the Puget Sound. I thought now of Mom’s unbridled laughter, her freed curls, her
relaxation. If I had been wrong about Mom, did Dad even have an inkling about who Mom really was? Outside, Reid’s loud cackle of satisfaction made me smile again. Our father had given up on more than his marriage. He was missing out on this moment, and Mom was right. Life is made of these small moments of togetherness. My anger at my father, to my surprise, had mellowed into pity. I felt sorry for him.

“All I have to say is this: I better get extra credit at school for this spread,” said Ginny as she fanned cookies over the hole left by Jackson’s excavation of croissants.

“Who do you think is going to eat all this?” I asked.

“Sheesh, with everyone dropping by in the next couple of days, you’re going to wish I’d baked even more.”

“Like a wake?” I asked sharply, wondering whether moving back home was the wisest decision. After all, Mom and I cherished our privacy. Case in point: treehouse hideaway. “No one died.”

“Like a welcoming.”

My eyes teared up. Did it really matter whether neighbors and strangers would gossip about us, when the ones who loved us knew the truth?

Ginny plucked a dark-chocolate chunk cookie from the platter and handed it to me. “Try. I added crystallized ginger.” Then, like my personal shopper of desserts, she also selected a lemon bar for me. “Or here. Because when life hands you lemons, you make lemon bars. Honestly! As if lemonade is soul food.”

“I wish I could cook like you,” I said.

“It’s just practice.”

“Um… no. I could practice eight hours every day and never bake like this.”

“But you don’t want to be a pastry chef.” Preparing for a long girl talk, Ginny plunked down on the hardwood floor and patted the spot beside her. “What did your mom say when you told her you aren’t going to school this year?”

Before answering, I took a delicate nibble. The sweet heat of the candied ginger enhanced the bittersweet dark chocolate. “Ginny! This is beyond wow! Mom was pretty supportive once she got used to the idea.”