The Weight of Love (19 page)

42

ELDER WORTHEN

I’m not sure how late in the evening it is.
It’s hard to tell with the near perpetual light. We may stick around for another day or two, but there’s not a whole lot more we can do until more building supplies get boated in. I’ll be sad to leave.

Elder Hales and I walk up the hill, muddy and tired from our day. There’s a fire on the gravel area in front of the school like there always seems to be. Tanner runs from the school with a desperate tear-stained face.

I start running.

“Tanner!” his dad yells. “They’re getting help from Dillingham, we can do nothing! Not tonight!”

Tanner whirls around to where his dad is walking behind him. “I can’t just stand here, not knowing!”

“
It’s false light, son. It makes you think you can see, but you can’t see, not really. We can’t help. We’ll go tomorrow.”

Tears are streaming down Tanner’s face. “We can always help!” He’s shaking, desperate.
“
Please
.”

“What’s going on?” I ask a man sitting near me by the fire.

“Got a radio call from Alegnagik. There’s a fire. The wind spread it fast. We heard Dillingham come in on the line, but the winds are making it hard to get choppers. They’re doing what they can.”

Kat. I swear my heart drops, suddenly weighing a ton.

They can’t get through. She’s so close, thirty-some miles, and so far away because of the rough trails.

“I’ll go,”
I volunteer, and Elder Hales jumps up in surprise.

“I’ll go too,” he says.

The bishop sighs. “Guess a few of us will head on over then.”

I don’t look at the faces around the fire.
The men who have lived here for a long time all know better.

I don’t though, I don’t know better. If it were Jaycee, I’d start running.
I’d probably get eaten by a bear, but I’d be running.

My heart bangs against my ribs now that
the reality of what we’re doing sinks in. I find one of the small red gas cans, walk over the hill to the four-wheelers, and secure it to the back of the one Tanner rides most often. He and his dad emerge from the school with packs. Elder Hales and I both pack our sleeping bags. If we end up staying the night out there, we’ll need them.

When I step outside
a small group of three four-wheelers has formed. Tanner’s dad is right. In this light, there’s no depth perception. I trip twice on rocks.

“Your sure about this?” Tanner asks as he hits the seat behind him.

“I’m sure.” I’m not running for just Tanner, I’m doing it for me, too. For that part of me that should have said something more. Done something more. Now I haven’t written or gotten a letter from her in almost two weeks. It’s killing me.

“It’s dangerous,” he says. “Lots of bears, and there are some big mud pits out there.”

“But if it comes down to it, we can walk, right?” I ask.

Bishop shakes his
head as does Tanner’s dad.

“We can,” Tanner’s dad says,
“but it’s a long walk.”

“Right.”

“You wanna go?”

“I have to,” he says.

I start the machine, hit the gas and head northeast. We have well over thirty miles of terrain that these things don’t like much. The trail between here and there isn’t a good one, but there is a trail.

The problem with trails, I
’ve been warned, is that we’re not the only ones that use them. We’ll be sharing with the brown bears. Not the little cuddly black bears that are only a couple feet taller than me on their hind legs, but the browns. All I pray for now is that we won’t see them or that if we do, we’ll be left alone. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

The three wheelers
drive for about ten minutes, then I tap Tanner to stop.

“What’s up?” he asks
, his eyes still full of the panic I know I’d be having in his position. “We
need
to keep going.”

“
Really quick,” I say. “We need to pray.”

I expect Tanner to protest, or his father, but the six of us glance between each other for just a second before Tanner says,
“Okay.”

“Okay.” I get down on my knees in the dirt. It doesn’t much matter, there’s nothing clean about anything that I have out here anymore.

He watches me and then gets down on his as well. I fold my arms, he does the same. So does his dad. Now I have to really think about what to pray for and know that the guy with me thinks I’m crazy for doing it.

“Dear Father in heaven, we’re breaking a lot of rules tonight, but we’re blessed to be in the land of the midnight sun, let it guide us to where we need to go. Let Tanner remember the way, let us be safe, let the bears be full…”

Tanner snickers.

I smile.

“Please watch over us Father. We’re doing this for the girl he loves and I’m doing it for the girl I love. We pray in gratitude for the knowledge of prayer, for the knowledge of Thee and for Thy spirit to guide us, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

We stand up. He jumps on.

“Relax and let yourself be guided, Tanner.”

“Sounds like a bunch of mystical crap to me.” He laughs.

“Tell me that again when we make it there in one piece, and Kat’s waiting for you.” I feel good now, confident. We’re going to be okay.

T
he going is slower than any of us would like. The bushes that look ankle height from the air and cover the ground in a blanket of their small, stiff branches are actually about five feet high. We can’t see far in front of us and the trail is rough. I wade through three, deep muddy creeks, pushing the four-wheeler ahead of me in the first hour. I’m wet, freezing and feel even more desperate than when we left. Even though there’s still some sun light, our headlight is dim compared to what we need it to do for us.

I feel safe, though. Okay. Like we’re going to make it.

The light is beginning to brighten, and our visibility will continue to get better. I never thought it would take so long to go thirty miles. Hours. We’ve been out here driving for hours.

“I can see it, the s
moke, ahead,” he says. I can tell he’s choking on his words. It’s probably near three a.m. at this point, but it’s hard to tell with the sky still reflecting the light from the sun, which is barely hidden by the horizon.

There’s a
group of three of the same small, white houses like Manokotak, but the rest are blackened and several burned to the ground. He slams our machine to a stop, kills the engine and leaps off.

“Kat!” Tanner’s voice is near hysterical. “Kat!”
He leaps off the machine and starts running. The five us are stopped in the clearing, waiting, hoping...

I can’t breathe.
Please let her be okay, please let her be okay…

A door from one of the houses opens. She comes running down the steps, her eyes full of tears and her face streaked with dirt.
She throws her arms around him. We did it. We actually made it here in one piece and by the looks of things, Tanner gets his girl.

I can hear them murmuring to one another, but it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. His arms are tight around her and her arms are tight around him and neither of them looks like they’ll ever want to move.

I swing my leg over the machine and sit sideways, squinting in the first peek of the sun coming back up after barely going down.

One more week.
One more week and I’ll be on a plane home, and hopefully wrapping my arms around Jaycee just like them.

43

JAYCEE

Today is Matt’s birthday.

May
third.

I don’t want this day to be here. Matt is not a year older than he was last year, or the year befo
re that. I wonder if he’ll be twenty-three forever. If that’s the age he’s stuck at. What age will I be stuck at? Eighty-five? Younger? Older? Though, that doesn’t really seem right either.

I fumble through my morning routine and get Bridger to school. I step onto Lynn’s patio and lie in the morning sun.
Bridger has two more weeks of school and I want to take full advantage of them.

My phone rings, pulling me out of my daydream.

Donna Layton
.

I have no idea if I’m ready for this
.

“Hello?”

“I miss him so much…” Donna’s sobbing into the telephone. Why did I answer? She has a husband for this. Sons for this. Daughters-in-law. Is that what I still am to her?

“Me, too.” I lie back on the chair and pull my knees up.

“He was the best of my four sons, did you know that?”

“I married him,
” I try to tease, but I’m sure it comes out all wrong. And he wasn’t the best, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. He now seems like the best because he isn’t around to compare the rest of them to. That’s all.

“He was.
So, good… so sweet…. He shouldn’t have died, Jaycee. It shouldn’t have been him.”

“I know.” I don’t want to talk to this woman, not right now. I feel tears slide down my
cheeks.
I don’t want this today
. My phone beeps. Running out of battery.

She starts to talk again, but
sobs come out instead.

“My phone’s going to run out of battery, Donna. Go find Ben, okay
?” Do I sound mean? Do I sound okay?

“Okay…” T
he word comes out in a high-pitched whine.

And then my phone dies.

I slump back, drop the phone to the porch and let my tears come. I don’t even know what I’m crying for. Is it Matt? Is it my frustration? Not knowing what to do?

“Oh, Jaycee…” Lynn sits in the chair next to me and puts a hand on my arm.

It only makes things worse. It adds guilt to the pile of other things. Guilt because part of me knows she’s taking care of me, maybe partially for her son, and right now I’m crying over someone else’s. She doesn’t say anything. Just sits.

I wait until I think I can speak in something that sounds like a normal voice. “I was fine. I mean, totally fine, but then his mom called.”

She sighs.

“Matt’s birthday. I really thought I’d be okay this year.”
I’m still wiping my cheeks.

“And if she hadn’t called, and if your life didn’t feel upside down, it might have been.”

I love her voice of simple reason. “I think so. I just… I just wonder if it’ll ever stop hurting like this.”

“Of course it will. There’s probably some guilt mixed in there
as well. You’re moving forward. You’re doing good things, Jaycee.” She sits back. “As much as I hate admitting it, my husband walked out of this house on March thirteenth, and I remember every year. I’ll never forget that, and it’s okay that I’ll never forget that.”

“How is it fair for
… I mean if I ever…”

“For
whoever you choose to be with?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“It’s part of you. You need someone who will want all of you, Jaycee. We all carry things with us. Things that have changed us, shaped us. Embrace that. Don’t try to run from it. It won’t work. The weight of loving someone the way you must have loved Matt is a good thing.”

Someone who will want a
ll of me. What if what’s left is still such a mess that it’s not worth having?

- - - - -

This time out with Luke feels different. Bridger isn’t with us, and Luke’s taking me out for Matt’s birthday. Neither of us said it because we both know. It doesn’t need to be explained. It doesn’t need to be said out loud. It just is. He gets it. I get it. We’re one another’s distraction today.

He’s touching me more than he needs to and it doesn’t take a genius to guess he wants more.
What am doing out with him? Why am I here like this? Why haven’t I worked harder to make him not feel any of these things for me?

Because I’m lonely and selfish.
Because he’s comfortable. Because part of him feels like family.
The list is actually pretty long.

Now we’re at the end of our date, and even though I’ve been a bit distracted, I know we talked as easily as we always do.
We’re in the park near Lynn’s house. It’s quiet, warm outside, and dark. Pretty ideal.

H
e stops walking, turns and his forehead leans down to mine. The edges of his fingers touch me, but it’s not the friendly way he held my hand before, it’s something different.

He’d mourn with me on Matt’s birthday and the day we learned he died. We share that.
It wouldn’t be something I drag with me as part of the burden of being with me. He’d carry me through days like today. Days when I feel like I’m once again being split apart. It might not be unfair to him like it might be to someone else.

Luke
likes me now. He has liked me. We’d have fun together. We’d play basketball. His brothers would harass us. But it’s like I’m trying to convince myself. Luke’s the known. Mitchell’s the unknown. Am I really so afraid that I’d settle like this? For less than the
everything
I want?

But I don’t want Luke. I want
Mitchell. And I knew last time we went out that my future wasn’t with him. I don’t know why I let myself get distracted again.

“I can’t.” I shake my head.

His fingers reach toward my cheek, running along my jaw line. “What’s going on, Jaycee?”

The air leaves my lungs. “You first.”

He feels too good for me to answer. He’s a good choice. I know he’s a good choice. Am I making the wrong decision? Is there even a decision to be made?

“I like you.” His eyes don’t waver, his fingers clasp more tightly with mine.

“I like y
ou, too. But not like that.” I squeeze his hand briefly and then let it go.

“Did you know that from the first day he brought you to my parent’s house, I had a crush on you?”

I shake my head.

“I did.
” His smile is slight, most people wouldn’t notice, but I see it all. He’s too much like his brother for me not to. “And then you two got married, and I was thrilled for him, but also felt jealous.”

“I didn’t know.” I need to sit.

He joins me on the bench. “Bridger is part of my family. You’re a part of my family. I want to take care of you two and it just felt like…”

“Like you already liked me and it would be easy.”
I know, because part of me felt the same.

“We could be happy together, Jaycee. Things between us would be fun.”
His voice doesn’t have a pleading edge to it, but it’s intense. He needs me to hear him.

I nod. “But it’s not enough. Not for me.”

“Am I too much like my brother?” His fingers won’t stop moving, caressing, squeezing my hand in his, but I pull away. Again. I’ve been stupid in not telling him no from the beginning.

“That’s not it.” I shake my head. “But you are a lot like him. There have been a few times when you’ve said something or moved a certain way and it’s all him.” I’m glad I can smile about those things. A year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to.

“I miss him so much.” Luke sighs.

“So do I.” I pull my knees up.
“I don’t think I’ve been fair to you.”

“Will you ever…
move on?”

“For a while I didn’t think so. It felt like I’d be broken forever. But not anymore.”
I smile when I think about Mitchell’s blue eyes, seeing right through me. How could there have ever been a moment of doubt? I don’t care about his car or Caroline, or anything. I care about him, his eyes, what I see in them. Missing him pulls and tugs at my chest. He’s home so soon.

“What happened?”
Luke asks.

“I saw someone else, and felt a way that I hadn’t in a long time. He’s… not available, but it still allowed me to hope.”
I wonder if what I’m feeling is all over my face.

“Oh my gosh.” He sits up straight. “The missionary, of the family you’re with. I’m such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. I have no idea how he feels. I’ve never had a normal conversation with him. It doesn’t affect you and I, Luke. We might be happy, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not after what I had with Matt. I want it all, everything, and you should, too.”

He rests his head in his hands, refusing to look at me.
“I don’t know what everything is, Jaycee.”

“Y
ou will when you get it.” I squeeze his hand again.

“M
aybe.”

“I’
d start with looking at Lizzy through different eyes.”

“What?” His you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me face is all Matt. I love it.

“Just… just try it out.” Because she’s already there. “Because whatever’s between us is friends. Nothing more. And I knew it from the beginning, and shouldn’t have taken advantage of your niceness.”

“I wanted you to.”
His face falls again. “Being around you makes me feel closer to him.”

“Me, too.”
It’s something I both love and hate about Luke. I rest my head on his shoulder. Am I completely using him? Are we completely using each other?

“Is that good?”
he asks.

“It’
s been long enough now, that yes, it’s good. And I’d be sad if we didn’t see one another. If it’s not too weird for you.” Now I’m desperately worried that this one conversation will change things between us. I want us to be close, just not…
close
, close.

“It’s not.”

“Thanks for making this so easy on me.”

“I love you, Jaycee. I guess I just need to sort out what kind.” He puts his arms around me
and pulls us tightly together.

“I love you, too, Luke.” I know what kind
of love I feel for him. The kind that makes us family. Seeing him with Lizzy would make me happy, not jealous. Just the
thought
of Caroline… Well, that makes me a little crazy. And right now, I think that’s a good thing.

- - - - -

Morning comes too fast.

Bridger’s still asleep, but I can’t stay in bed. This house is so quiet. Gage works on his own things, Lynn’s always up to somethin
g, but never makes any noise.

I wander upstairs, not bo
thering to take off the T-shirt I’ve slept in every night.

The dining room is nearly always empty and the large window looks out onto the street. I step inside to see Lynn at the table with a bowl of cereal. I freeze.

“How was your date?” she asks.

“Oh.” My cheeks immediately redden.
It’s weird to be staying in the house of the man I think I might be in love with, even though we haven’t spoken about it, and have his mom asking me about dating other men.

“That good?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Luke and I aren’t… I mean. It’s not at all like that with him.”

“Does he know that?”
She smiles knowingly and takes another bite.

I cringe. “He does now.”

She nods once.

It’s things like this. The way she seems to feel like it’s no big deal that I’m dating. Does that mean something? Not mean something?

I sit at the table.

“Do you still feel good about what you’re doing here?” she asks.
“In Utah?”

“Yes, but it
still
doesn’t make any sense.” Outside of Worthen that is. And probably that’s enough. Or should be.

“Why not?”

“Because I have a very finite amount of money, and Bridger is in this expensive school. It’s all stuff you already know—like I’m purposefully sinking myself into a hole and the entire practical side of my brain is screaming at me.”

“And how’s your heart?”

“I still feel like I’m doing the right thing. It’s hard.” It’s been the same since I got here. Nothing’s different. Nothing’s changed. Well, I’m at Lynn’s house and Bridger’s in a school, but nothing has changed for
me
.

“I know. I’ve had to do that, too.”

“When?”

“When Henry W
orthen walked out on his family, married another woman the day after he was legally able, and never looked back.” She takes another bite of cereal and glances out the window.

“Oh.” Dying, that involuntary act is one thing. Choosing to leave is another. I can’t imagine.