Back To Us

by Rachel Hanna

“Nothing.”

  “So, you’re new here…” I say, trying to change the subject. Where is Tabitha when I need her? She always knows how to move a conversation right along.

  “Yeah. We just moved in a couple of days ago.”

  “What do your mom and dad do?” I’m not sure why I’m asking. Making small talk sucks.

  He clears his throat. “My mom works at the cafe on Maplewood. And she just left my latest dad,” he says, using air quotes around the last word.

  I pluck a stray, dead leaf from between the bricks outlining his window and nervously break it apart with my fingers. “Latest dad?” My parents have always told me I ask too many questions, but my curiosity is getting the best of me.

  “Yep. He was number four, if you don’t include my real dad.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who knows? Left when I was a baby. I don’t remember him at all, but I’m told that I have his stubborn streak and his ability to lie easily, so that’s nice…” I like his sarcasm, and for a moment I wonder if he might be lying to me.

  “Well, I better get home. Almost dinner time.”

  “Yeah,” he says as I start walking away. “Will you be dancing tonight?”

  I stop dead in my tracks. “Excuse me?” I say, turning around dramatically.

  “I like to watch you dance. It’s funny.”

  Oh. My. God. He’s been watching me dance in my room at night. Nothing raunchy. I’m not even thirteen years old yet. But my Mom bought me this cool strobe light for my last birthday, and I create my own dance party in my room at night. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to go to one of those cool dance clubs with my friends.

  Every night, while my Dad is still working and my mother is smoking cigarettes on the back patio, I dance. Up until now, I thought no one could see me. After all, the rental house had been empty for months and the old people next door go to sleep early and seem to be somewhat deaf.

  “Do you know how creepy that is? For you to watch me?”

  “Do you know how impossible it is to ignore when your neighbor’s window is open and it looks like a lightning storm in there?”

  I purse my lips for a moment before huffing and turning around. But I can’t stop myself from smiling as I walk home.

  When the agent finally returns to finish showing me the house, I’m filled with a mixture of longing to relive some of my childhood memories and running as far from Peach Valley as I can get.

  Yes, there were good memories. But there were some bad ones too. I tell my counseling clients that those tough times turn us into warriors. They give us stories that we can use to help others who are one step behind us.

  Right now, it all feels so trite. Too easy. Not nearly complicated enough.

  “And this is the kitchen, of course,” the agent says. What did she think I thought it was? Did I appear to be confused about what an oven and refrigerator do? “The previous owner upgraded the appliances about three years ago…” Her words are going over my head as I look around the room.

  There’s the place where our kitchen table sat and we ate dinners as a complete family. And then not as a complete family.

  There’s the phone jack on the wall where I chatted with my girlfriends and where I answered the phone when my father called to say he wasn’t coming home anymore. That my mother wanted a divorce. That my siblings were the only ones who got the complete family package, and I got the broken home downgrade.

  Looking back now, as an adult, I understand. But as a child I didn’t. My parents seemed happy. I loved my father like every girl should. But it just didn’t work for them.

  Even now, when I counsel a married couple looking at divorce, I want to plead with them to keep it together. But I know that isn’t logical or even a good plan if they have kids. But the kid in me - the 12-year old little girl whose world was rocked just after August that year - wants to tell them that divorce changes the lives of everyone involved.

  The separate birthday parties.

  The separate Christmases.

  The weekend drop offs and pickups.

  “Did you have any questions about the kitchen?” she asks.

  “No. I think I’ve seen everything I need to see in here. Do you mind if I take a quick walk around the backyard?”

  “Of course. Take your time. I just need to make a quick phone call,” she says.

  I walk back into the living room and turn right to go out the door onto the covered patio. I stop for a moment to remember when my father and his friend put that metal roof over the small concrete patio.

  The yard looks much the same, boxy and plain with a chain link fence around it. But it’s not the grass I’m looking at. It’s the place between two large oak trees where the wooden swing sat. There’s a metal one there now, with one of those fancy cloth awnings covering it. It’s just not the same.

  Still, I walk over there as if drawn by some magnetic field, and sit down. As I start to swing, I close my eyes, blocking out the sound of the cars behind my old house, and I summon back memories that should be long forgotten.

  June 1987

  “So did you see me dancing last night?” I ask Dawson, as I do almost everyday that we hang out.

  “Of course I did. You called me, remember?”

  That’s our thing. I play my songs and dance with my strobe light, and he listens to the music from the other end of the phone while watching me. I’ve invited him over a million times, but his mother is a strange mixture of not trusting anyone and bringing random men home to live with her young son and daughter.

  We sit at the edge of the creek behind our neighborhood, a favorite place to look for tadpoles and eat muscadine berries.

  “I think my mom is going to get married again soon,” he says softly.

  “Why do you think that? Didn’t she just get a divorce from that Larry guy?”

  “Yeah,” he says, skipping a rock across the short expanse of water. “I’m never getting married.”

  “I’m definitely getting married.”

  He laughs, but it’s not the laugh of someone who heard something funny. It’s a sad laugh. “Adults never stay together forever. That’s a fairy tale. I heard Larry say that to my mother when she threw his clothes out on the lawn of our old house after he cheated with the neighbor lady.”

  “I don’t believe that. My parents have been married over twenty years, so Larry was wrong. True love lasts forever, but you have to find your one true love. Nobody else will do.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m still not getting married.”

  “Okay! No one’s asking you!” I say with a force that surprises even me.

  Dawson looks at me, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I say. Maybe I like him more than I thought I did.

  The agent walks toward me. “Ms. Sanders? Are you alright?”

  I stand up quickly, almost losing my balance in the process. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’ve been sitting out here… sort of staring… for about half an hour…”

  My face flushes with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Eileen. I guess time got away from me.”

  She smiles. “Should I assume you have fallen so in love that you want to make an offer on this place?”

  I force a smile in return. “I’ll certainly give it some thought. How about I call you tomorrow?”

  Her smile fades, and she nods before I follow her back into the house and out the front door.

  Chapter 2

  A lot has changed about Peach Valley, but much has also stayed the same. The old town area still looks like it did when I was a kid, complete with the old drug store and bookstore. I walk past it, peering into the big window out front, wondering if it still smells of mold and old books. I also wonder how it has survived the invention of ebook readers and the proliferation of giant, impersonal bookstores.

  I make my way down the sidewalk with big sunglasses covering my face, hoping that no one recognizes me. I haven’t been
back here in many years; not since I moved my mother to the assisted living center when she got early onset dementia so many years ago. Even then, I rarely came home after leaving for college.

  But now I have no choice.

  I glance up and finally see the whole reason I’m here. Although I’m an unwilling participant in this thing, one can’t ignore legal documents.

  “Evans, Clarke and Peenee,” the woman behind the desk says into the phone in a thick Southern accent. First, I want to bust out laughing at the last name “Peenee”, but then I imagine what the man behind that name went through growing up with that kind of name. She waves at me to sit down as she finishes up the call.

  I find a seat in the small, old waiting area. It looks like time stood still ‘round about 1975 in this place, the cheap wood paneling still adorning the walls. Being an attorney’s office, I’d expected a little nicer place, but this is Peach Valley after all. Being in Charleston for so many years has spoiled me on historic buildings and beautiful features.

  “Can I help you, hon?” the woman asks.

  I stand back up. “I’m here to see Ethan Clarke. He’ll be expecting me.”

  Ethan went to high school with me and took over the family legal business when his father retired. I haven’t seen him since graduation day, so I was surprised to get the call from him a few days ago that he needed to see me ASAP about an urgent legal matter. I offered to pay for his trip up to Charleston, but he declined saying that he needed me to come “home”.

  My mother’s estate - what little it was - was settled months ago, so I have no idea what he wants with me. Maybe she had an old bank account or insurance policy I don’t know about, but Ethan wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone. Small town folk can be odd that way.

  “Mr. Clarke will see you now,” the woman says, and I instantly smile at the thought of calling Ethan “mister” anything. I follow her through the ugly brown door and down a small hallway that leads to Ethan’s office. He’s smiling before I even make it past the entryway.

  “Well, I’ll be! Indy Stone in the flesh,” he says, walking around his desk and hugging me tightly. I stiffen for a moment and then return the hug.

  “Sanders, actually,” I say, correcting him.

  “Didn’t you get divorced?” he asks, pointing to a fake leather covered chair with big metal rivets attaching it to the thick wood frame. I take a seat and place my purse in my lap, almost like a shield from the question.

  “Yes, but I kept my married name,” I say. I don’t know why I kept it. One would think getting rid of the husband would mean getting rid of the last name. But as a fairly popular therapist in Charleston, I didn’t want to lose my branding.

  “Hm. I always thought Indy Stone sounded like a superhero. If you decide to change it back, let me know. I can handle the paperwork,” he says with a wink. I notice he’s a grown man now with pearly white teeth and thinning hair - a far cry from the star of the football team he once was. There’s a gold band on his left hand, and pictures of a blond woman and three adorable kids on his desk. Ethan is a grown up. It’s weird.

  “Ethan, why am I here? I had to change my whole schedule around for my counseling clients, so I hope there’s a really good reason for all the mystery.”

  “Indy, your brother passed away a few weeks ago.”

  I feel the air leave my lungs, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it show on my face. I let go of my brother years ago when it became apparent that he would never change; he’d always be the self-centered person he had been since the day I was born… and probably before.

  Danny was five years older than me, and his drug problems tore our family apart all those years ago. My parents divorced, my mother battled ulcers for years and he never seemed to take any responsibility for it. The moment I hit adulthood and could make the decision, I cut him from my life. Slowly, the whole family did.

  First it was Amy, but she had basically cut me out too. That sisterly bond just wasn’t there. When she moved across the country and got married, that pretty much sealed our fate.

  And then my father cut him out, but that was easy since he wasn’t blood related anyway. Although he’d adopted my brother so many years before, the drug addiction and rage issues my brother had destroyed the possibility of a reconciliation.

  And then there was my mother. She took the longest, but she finally realized that she couldn’t save him. Her life had been put on hold for so many years, through his multiple rehab attempts and stints in jail. She finally gave up. And then shortly afterward, her memory started to fade. Sometimes I think that might have been a godsend for her because who wants to remember the son that let them down?

  There were a few times I tried to mend fences, tried to accept him for who he was, tried to be his sister. Every single time, he showed me his true colors. He’d constantly been in trouble with the law, and when he needed money he came calling. Finally, I decided to save myself and I cut all ties. Honestly, it had been a very relaxing decade or so since his last contact with me, and that made me feel very guilty to even think.

  This basically made me an only child.

  When I fell for my brother’s sob story the last time, he took me for thousands of dollars, and I decided to let that part of my life go. I excised my brother from my heart and put the idea of him in a tiny mental box that I never opened.

  Until today.

  “Okay… And what does that have to do with me? I’m sure you know we had no relationship, Ethan. If this is about some bill he owes…”

  “It’s not about bills, Indy,” he says, taking a deep breath before continuing. “It’s about his daughter.”

  I stare at him like he’s speaking another language. And now I hear a roaring sound inside my head that I assume to be blood pumping way too hard around my body.

  “Daughter? What daughter?”

  Ethan sucks both of his lips in then smiles at me sympathetically. “Your brother had a ten-year old daughter, Indy. Her name is Harper.”

  “I can’t believe this…” I stammer, unsure of what to say.

  “And he named you as her guardian.”

  He says it softly and quickly, as if that will keep me from noticing the weight of the words he just uttered.

  “What? Where is her mother?”

  “Her mother died of a drug overdose right after she was born. Your brother cleaned up his act, Indy. He had a job and built a life for himself and Harper. But then there was an accident at work…”

  I can’t hear him now. What kind of person just randomly leaves their kid to someone they don’t even really know? He hasn’t known me since I was a teenager myself, and even then he was so stoned he probably wouldn’t have known me if I’d passed him on the street.

  Yet a part of me grieves. He was my brother. There had been good times. A part of me loves him, and I am very angry at that part of myself right now. It’s a strange feeling really. I grieved the relationship with him - and what I wanted him to be as my brother - long ago.

  But now I grieve for the loss of hope that we can ever be real siblings. I grieve over the knowledge that there will never be a day that I can say, “This is my brother Danny. We had a rough road, but we’re closer now than we’ve ever been because he cared enough to get clean for his little sister.” Somewhere, deep down, in the recesses of my heart and mind, I’ve apparently been hoping and dreaming that all things could be made right.

  “Ethan, I can’t do this. I have a life in Charleston. I’m not equipped to take care of a ten-year old kid, and certainly not one that belonged to my brother.”

  He looks at me as if he can’t believe what I’m saying, yet doesn’t judge me.

  “She’s had a tough time, Indy. Harper has been with her father for her whole life, and he had some issues here and there. But he’s all she ever knew. She’s been stuck in a foster home since he died…”

  “Don’t you do that! Don’t you guilt trip me, Ethan Clarke!” I say, standing up and being a lot louder than
is appropriate in the small office.

  “I’m not trying to guilt you. I’m being honest with you.”

  “There has to be someone else.”

  “There’s no one else, Indy. Trust me. I’ve scoured both family trees, and you’re it. If you don’t take Harper, she will get lost in a system that is already overflowing with kids who need homes.”

  “What about Amy?” I say, knowing full well that my sister would never take on a task like this.

  “It’s Amy. You know better than that. Besides, she lives in Seattle with Ben and her own three kids.”

  Kids I’ve only seen on Skype and the occasional Facebook post. Yeah, we just aren’t all that close.

  He stands and walks to where I’m staring out the window, watching people mill about in front of the sandwich shop.

  “Look, Indy, I know this is hard. Danny was not an easy guy. I remember.”

  “How did you know?” I ask softly, thinking that our family did a pretty good job of hiding our skeletons.

  “My uncle was a cop. He arrested Danny several times.”

  “Lovely.”

  “And the truth is, if Harper ends up as a foster kid, the chances that she’ll ever have a family are slim. She’ll likely just be sent from foster home to foster home, and who knows what could happen to her. I’m just being honest, Indy. Maybe this is your chance to change someone’s life.”

  I like to think I change lives everyday, with every counseling session. But in reality I don’t. I just let people talk about their problems. I nod along. I give ideas on what they can try. But taking in an orphan, well that’s a whole other level of changing lives.

  “I need some time,” I say, because it really seems like the only thing I can say.

  “There’s one other thing.” Again, he’s speaking fast so I don’t flip out.

  “What?”

  He walks back behind his desk and retrieves a paper. “Danny stipulated that he wanted Harper to stay in Peach Valley so she could finish school here. He wrote this will a couple of years ago right after Harper made the honor roll…”

  “You can’t be serious, Ethan. My whole business and life is in Charleston. I cannot… I will not… move back to Peach Valley.”