Sweet Reunion

by Melanie Shawn

She stepped up onto the small porch of the bunkhouse and knocked on the door. Nothing. No answer.

  She took a deep breath and knocked again. Still no answer.

  She felt the first fluttering of panic in her belly. I've never gotten over the trauma of coming down here on the morning after my birthday and finding the place empty, so of course I would feel nervous to knock and not get an answer, she comforted herself. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean he's really gone.

  However, as her nerves quickly built, completely against her logic and will, she started to understand why she needed to guard her heart against the assault of Justin this time around. Two unanswered knocks and her heart was beating in her chest as furiously as if she were in mortal danger.

  In spite of everything her conscious mind was telling her was logical and made sense, her subconscious was screaming a refrain that her body was responding to: HE'S GONE! HE'S GONE FOR GOOD THIS TIME!

  She felt herself start to breathe harder, and began to walk behind the small cabin to dip her feet in the cold stream. She thought the sensory shock might bring her back down to reality.

  As she rounded the side of the bunkhouse, though, she heard Justin's voice, murmuring in low tones. Damn him for scaring me, she thought angrily, and then almost immediately afterward – oh my God, is he with a girl?? Is he with that bitch Kelly?

  She peeked around the side of the building and shocked herself by going weak-kneed with relief.

  It wasn't a girl that he was murmuring sweet nothings to. It was Teddy! The two of them sat on the large, flat top of the boulder that stood behind the bunkhouse, watching the stream run by. Justin was petting the dog's head and murmuring to him.

  “...such a good boy. That's right. Did anyone ever tell you you're the best puppy in the whole world? It's true...”

  Teddy gazed up at Justin adoringly, and Amanda felt a catch in her throat. She was overcome with a deep sense of belonging, of protectiveness, of affection. The phrase that was running on a loop through her brain, of its own volition, was, “My Boys.”

  Overwhelmed with a sudden urge to break the spell she was under and feeling much too vulnerable to talk to Justin at that moment, she turned and tried to creep back around the side of the building with as much stealth as humanly possible.

  Still, it wasn't stealthy enough to escape the notice of Teddy, who either sniffed Amanda or heard her, with his hyper-sensitive canine senses. Ecstatic at the idea of having both of his favorite people together at the same time, Teddy jumped to his feet atop the boulder and began to bark at the top of his considerable lungs, wagging his tail frantically.

  Justin turned and called, “Amanda? Where are you going?”

  Amanda turned, embarrassed, and continued walking backwards as she mumbled, “Um...I just...you know....”

  And at that moment, so intent was she on trying to pull an explanation out of the air at the same time as she was beating a hasty backwards retreat, that she didn't feel the root under her heel until she had tripped over it and felt herself falling backwards, windmilling her arms, and landing squarely on her ass with a sound like, “hmph!”

  Justin and Teddy scrambled down from the boulder and came rushing towards her. “Are you OK?” Justin asked, with genuine concern, and only a hint of laughter peeking through in his voice.

  Teddy barreled into her with all the force of a furry canine steam engine, knocking her backwards again, leaving her flat on her back in the dirt, having her face enthusiastically licked by an over-excited canine.

  As moments of subtle femininity go, she admitted to herself, it was not her finest hour.

  She struggled back up to a sitting position, fighting a joyful Teddy the entire way.

  Justin had dropped all pretense of not finding the situation funny, and was sitting on the ground next to her, laughing his head off.

  He pulled Teddy over toward him to give her some space, and put his palm flat against her back to help leverage her up into a sitting position. By this time, she was hindered in her efforts by her own furious laughter.

  As the hilarity died down, Justin shook his head. “Well, whatever you came down here for, I certainly hope it was worth the sore tailbone you're gonna have tomorrow. What was it, anyway?”

  Amanda tried to look casual as she brushed her hair back from her forehead with dusty fingers, and struggled to sound nonchalant as she said, “Oh, that, sure. I was just wondering if you were free to go scatter my Dad's ashes tomorrow. No pressure.”

  Chapter 18

  Amanda sat in the rocking chair on her back porch early the next morning holding the carved wooden box which contained her father's ashes and waited for Justin to emerge from the bunkhouse, barely visible through the trees further into the property. How many nights had she sat at her bedroom window as a teenager, gazing at that same bunkhouse door, just reveling in the knowledge that within it lay Justin, her precious Justin. She sighed. Had so much really changed?

  Today, they were going to hike together up to her father's favorite spot, to the base of Hope Falls, to scatter his ashes. The last step left to be performed in the ritual surrounding her father's death. After today, it was really over. All except for the long, arduous task of living without him for the rest of her life. Today should be one of the worst days of her life, but instead, all she felt was comforted that Justin was the one performing this task with her. It felt right. God help her, it felt good, even.

  She saw the door to the bunkhouse open and Justin stepped out, looking impossibly handsome. The air left her lungs in a rush. How was it possible that every single time she saw him, she was all but bowled over by his pure physical beauty, as if she had never laid eyes on him before? She had seen him thousands of individual times in her life – thousands of times that he had walked into a room she was in, or she had walked into a room where he was, or they had happened upon each other unexpectedly. And every single time, it was the exact same thing. He knocked the air right out of her.

  She shook her head to clear it, and stood up to give herself a few seconds to steady her shaking knees before he arrived on her back porch.

  As he climbed the steps, he gave her a dazzling smile, one of those damned brilliant smiles he liked to flash, the ones that always set her heart beating fast and turned her insides to jelly. This one was #615, the I’m-Ready-For-Anything smile.

  “Ready to go?” she asked, praying that he couldn't hear the tremor in her voice, or – if he could – that he would put it down to emotion over the task they were about to perform.

  He nodded, looking solemn. “I'm honored that you asked me to do this with you, Amanda.”

  Amanda smiled sadly, “It just seemed right, you know? Everything about my dad's will seemed to point to wanting to draw you back into our lives. I know he'd want you to be a part of this.”

  Justin smiled and squeezed her hand. Oh, God! He needed to stop all of this smiling, and hand-squeezing, and...just being gorgeous...or she was never going to survive the day!

  As they strolled companionably along the flatter parts of the path to Hope Falls, and climbed over the more challenging parts, Amanda was hyper-aware of Justin's nearness to her, and his hands on various parts of her body as he helped her over boulders and up steep inclines. She had to continually remind herself to focus, or she would be in real danger of falling off of a cliff!

  Something else besides just Amanda's libido was developing as they walked along, she realized. She was witnessing the solidification of their old rapport, their old camaraderie, their old easy way of being with each other. They were definitely back in sync with one another, finishing each other's sentences, sharing the same comfortable silences, laughing at the same silly jokes. Before Justin returned, it had been so long since she had felt this kind of one-ness with someone. Actually, if she were to take a hard look at all of her relationships, she realized that she had actually never felt this in tune with another human being. She really felt a connection with Justin, a bond so great that it felt almost
tangible.

  She knew he felt it, as well, knew it from the way that his eyes looked into hers, directly into her soul. He read her thoughts so easily. Invariably, the next words out of his mouth after one of those soul-baring glances would reveal her precise thoughts. She had no secrets from him. Where Justin Barnes was concerned, Amanda Jacobs was an open book. She should feel frightened by this, by how vulnerable it made her, but instead she felt special, valuable. She knew that Justin would never use the truths that he read in her eyes to harm her. No. Justin hurt her by his absence, not his actions.

  “So, tell me more about Alaska,” Amanda said, curious. Now that she was feeling the full force of their old connection, it suddenly felt nothing short of bizarre that there was a huge chunk of his life that she knew almost nothing about.

  “Alaska,” Justin replied thoughtfully, “Let's see. It's easy to get lost up there. Nobody asks too many questions.”

  “Why were you trying to avoid being asked questions?” Amanda inquired, “It's not as if you were running from the law.”

  Justin considered, and then responded, “That might have been easier. More clear cut. Reason for running: broke the law. Objective: stay free. As it was, I had no easy answers about why I was there, so it was better to not be asked the questions in the first place.

  “Also, not having to come up with an answer for someone else meant that I never had to put too much thought into untangling my motivations in my own mind, either – and believe me, it was a mess in there.”

  Amanda walked on in silence for awhile, absorbing this. It was the first time that she had ever considered that Justin may have been suffering, as well, in their years apart. Somehow she had always envisaged him carefree, dancing through life without her, possibly having completely forgotten that they ever knew each other. That was a masochistic way to multiply her own pain, and she shamelessly indulged in it.

  But, now, faced with direct evidence that contradicted her many-times-replayed fantasy of all the good times Justin must be having without her, she found that she didn't revel in his misery. No. It made her sad. She would rather him have spent ten happy, contented years than ten confused and miserable ones, even if those years were spent without her.

  The remainder of the trek to the Falls was made in contemplative silence. Amanda was doing a reset of her conceptions of Justin's state of mind, both in the past and the present, and she wondered if he was doing something similar. It was amazing to her how two people could be so simpatico, and yet on some issues, have absolutely no idea whatsoever what was going through the other person's mind.

  She was still somewhat in a state of mental flux when they rounded the last corner and the majestic sight of Hope Falls opened up before them. Amanda had been here many times, but never failed to be struck by the beauty of the waterfall from which the town of Hope Falls had taken its name. Intertwining ropes of water rushed around boulders and down the side of a lush green slope, coming together finally into one single vertical stream, which emptied straight down into the furthermost corner of Hope Pond.

  This spot had been a favorite of her father's, in fact, Amanda couldn't count the amount of times that they had picnicked here. Some of their best talks had been here.

  Especially in the painful weeks and months after losing her mother, this place had been a healing balm to Amanda. Amanda was not the kind of person who opened up easily about her feelings as a child, even to her father. She still found talking about painful emotions to be uncomfortable, but as a kid that quality was even more pronounced. When she felt hurt or threatened, she would retreat inside of herself, like a turtle, protected by her hard shell.

  However, Parker, in his wisdom, knew how dangerous it would be to let her keep her grief bottled up inside, how poisonous it would be to her if she continued to only internalize it. So he had gently prodded, had kept up the campaign for months, never pressuring her, but continuing to nudge at the door that she kept firmly shut on her emotions, little by little, prodding it open.

  The hikes to Hope Falls had been an important tool in his ongoing attempts to get little Amanda to talk to him about what she was going through. Because of the fact that it was a more than a two hour hike each way, plus the time that it took them to set up the picnic lunch that Parker would have packed with all of Amanda's favorite things, and to enjoy it thoroughly, it gave them plenty of time to talk. Time that was uninterrupted, and where Amanda could not retreat into her room, or into a book. It was what finally let Parker wear her down enough to open up to him, and in truth, it was the beginning of what became one of the hallmarks of their relationship – the fact that she could say anything to him, and never feel judged, only supported.

  Now, as an adult Amanda made this trek in the wake of her father's death, she was struck by something that had never occurred to her before. Her father must have been grieving horribly for her mother in those early days following her death – but his focus had been on Amanda, on her feelings. Judging by how difficult the past week and a half had been for her, she didn't know how she could have been nearly as strong as he was, given the same circumstances.

  Justin and Amanda stepped to the edge of the pond, on the opposite shore from where the falls emptied into the serene body of water. She held the carved wooden box out in front of her, and she and Justin looked at it, and then each other. They seemed to understand instinctively that there was nothing that could be said which would enhance the solemnity or import of the occasion, but rather, trying to capture the significance of the moment in anything as limiting as mere words would only cheapen it. This was a moment meant to be felt, not spoken.

  Amanda opened the box and held it out to the wind. Parker's ashes billowed out over the pond, some of them being folded up by the rushing falls on the far side of the water, and some floating up into the sky and being carried away by the breeze. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Amanda felt a cry tear from her throat. Pain stabbed her, so intense that she involuntarily doubled over, sobs wracking her shoulders. In one part of her mind, she understood that the loud cries and weeping she heard were coming from her, but she felt like it was happening entirely outside of herself, outside of her own control. She felt Justin's hand rubbing her back and heard him say, “I'm sorry, Amanda, I'm so sorry...”

  This brought her back to her feet, and she turned to him and started pounding on his chest. “Are you sorry?” she cried, “Are you really sorry? How can you be? You left, and now he left! Everyone leaves! How could you abandon me like that? How could you? How could you!”

  Justin held her upper arms while she punched him again and again, until finally her anger burned itself out, leaving only bitter tears which she continued to cry. Justin folded her into his arms, resting his chin on the top of her golden head. She fit as perfectly with him as she remembered, their bodies like two flawlessly interlocking puzzle pieces. She nestled her forehead into the spot on Justin's neck, that spot she loved, where his neck and his chest and his shoulder met, forming the perfect niche. Countless times, she had stared at that spot and dreamed of snuggling into his embrace and fitting her head into it. Every time he had given her a platonic hug, she had fantasized about it turning into a passionate embrace, and of kissing that spot.

  And now, he was holding her as she had always dreamed of, and she felt not ecstasy, not joy, and not love, but rather anger and betrayal. Those emotions, so long buried, had rushed to the surface when the finality of her father's passing had penetrated her consciousness, carried by the billowing ashes.

  “I loved you so much,” she gasped through her tears, “how could you just leave me, without saying goodbye? How could you abandon me like that? Didn't you care about me at all?”

  Justin barked out a laugh, “Care about you? Are you kidding me? You were the single most important person in the world to me! You and your father – you were literally the only two people in the world I cared about at all, or that cared about me. I've thought about you every single day since I left. I've missed you so much
that sometimes I thought it would make me crazy.”

  Amanda drew back in surprise, “Well, why did you leave, then? If I was so important to you...how could you do that to me?”

  Justin looked squarely into her eyes, “Your father told me to.”

  --- ~ ---

  Amanda stared at Justin in stunned, uncomprehending silence for a few beats. She had heard the words he had spoken, yes. It was the meaning behind them that she was having a difficult time connecting to. Her father had told Justin to leave? Her father had been the cause of the single most painful event in her life? Her beloved father had caused this agony? Unthinkable.

  “What do you mean, my father told you to?” Amanda asked suspiciously. Perhaps she had misunderstood.

  Now it was Justin's turn to look puzzled. “He never told you this?”

  Amanda shook her head, “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

  Justin said slowly, “Well...about two minutes after you left me that last night, Parker walked into the bunkhouse. He couldn't look me in the eye. He took my duffel bag down from the wall peg where it hung and threw it on the bed. He stared at it for a few seconds and then turned to leave. As he walked out, he said, 'Son, pack your things. Be gone by morning.' Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.” Amanda heard his voice get thick with emotion as he uttered the last sentence.

  Amanda, shocked, countered with, “And you just did it? You didn't ask him why?”

  Justin shook his head, “I had a pretty good idea why.”

  “You still could have said goodbye to me!”

  Justin looked her full in the face as he said, slowly and with great consideration, “I've always assumed that you asked him to come tell me to leave.”

  This statement hit Amanda like a punch in the gut. The idea that Justin could be under the impression, no matter what had transpired between them, that she could ever want him out of her life was unthinkable. “Why would you jump to that conclusion?”

  “Well, how else would he have even known that anything had happened between us, that there was even a reason to ask me to leave? It's pretty convenient timing otherwise.”