Carry Her Heart

by Holly Jacobs

  I added pawpaw trees to a blankish space along Ned’s side of the yard. I’d never had a pawpaw and knew it would be a few years before they produced fruit, but I was willing to wait.

  I loved the sense of new beginnings that permeated everything in the spring.

  I also loved that some of the year’s anticipated blockbusters came out. This year, the newest installation of the Star Trek reboot was hitting the theaters. I couldn’t wait. My inner geek flag was flying as I tried to contain my excitement.

  If Anthony was not a fan of Broadway shows or opera, he was even less excited by science fiction.

  As someone who grew up reading Heinlein’s young adult fiction, the genre was my particular delight. And a few months after Ned moved in, I learned it was his, too. Since Cooper and Mela both disliked the genre almost as much as Anthony, Ned and I went to the midnight opening.

  It was almost three in the morning when Ned pulled into his driveway and we were still in the thick of our movie critique. “. . . and I love how Abram’s . . .” My comment faded when I noticed Mela’s car was parked on the street in front of Ned’s house.

  At that moment, Ned’s front door opened and Mela stepped out onto his porch. She did not look happy.

  Not happy at all.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and hightailed it into my house.

  Yes, I’ll admit, it was cowardly, but sometimes the greater part of valor was knowing when to retreat.

  I’d planned to go straight to bed to gear up for the next day. This was my Saturday for Amanda’s Pantry and I’d promised to go in and help at the health clinic Friday afternoon. Since it was after midnight, Friday was today.

  Man, I needed to get some sleep.

  But I couldn’t manage it.

  I’d doze off, then I’d wake up with a start and worry about Ned.

  I gave up on the idea of sleep at five. While the water in my teakettle heated, I checked and Mela’s car was still out front.

  Still in my pajamas, which were a pair of old yoga pants and a tank top, I put on an oversize sweater and I took my favorite forget-me-not teacup into the backyard. I sat on the bench in the back corner of the yard and, though I tried not to, I worried some more about Ned.

  Mela didn’t like that Ned and I had been friendly neighbors since the day he moved in, and over time, we’d become more than simply friendly . . . we were friends.

  I’d hoped that the fact I was with Anthony—that Ned had introduced me to Anthony, for Pete’s sake—would assuage Mela’s concerns, but if her expression last night was any indication, it hadn’t.

  Normally, I found peace in my backyard, but just as I’d found no sleep last night, I found no peace this morning.

  My tea grew cold in my cup. I was just thinking about making another one when the gate on Ned’s side of my fence flew open.

  For a moment, I thought it was him, coming to tell me not to worry, that everything was okay between him and Mela.

  But it wasn’t Ned. It was her.

  “Hi, Mela,” I said, trying to pretend I didn’t notice that she was glaring at me.

  She ignored my attempt at pleasantries and simply said, “I came to tell you that you won.”

  “Won?” I asked, sounding as genuinely confused as I was.

  She stood in front of me, hands planted on her hips, and glared. “I’ve broken up with Ned.”

  “How does that make me a winner? I never wanted—”

  She interrupted me. “I can’t compete with you. Saint Pip who writes stories for kids. Saint Pip who donates her time to feeding the hungry and nursing the sick. Saint freaking Pip. Well, you’ve won.”

  “I’m no saint, Mela,” I said softly. “And I have never been your competition.”

  She stared at me for a moment that felt like a slice of forever, then slowly she said, “You really believe that, don’t you? You really believe that you and Ned are just friends.”

  “Of course I do, and of course we are. I’m dating Anthony. Ned and I are neighbors and friends. Just friends.”

  Mela snorted. “I think it makes it worse that you don’t know.” She paused a moment, as if weighing the notion, then nodded. “Yes, yes, it makes it worse.”

  She didn’t say anything more, just turned around and walked toward her car. Her shoulders were slumped in defeat and I felt like I should apologize to her.

  I heard her car start and after a moment, I couldn’t hear it anymore. She was gone and I was torn. I wasn’t sure if I should go over to Ned’s or simply leave him alone.

  I decided to give him some space.

  Still, Mela’s words haunted me. I tried to take a true measure of my feelings for Ned. I’ll admit, the day he’d moved in, I had felt a bit of a . . . no, I wouldn’t say spark, but I did notice him. Maybe it would have developed into something more than noticing, but I’d found out he was seeing Mela and that was that. Now, I did feel a warm rush of friendship whenever I thought about him. And that was better than some fly-by-night spark that faded almost as soon as it started, as far as I was concerned.

  Lovers came and went, but friends would always be there.

  At that thought, I knew I couldn’t wait for Ned to come to me. A friend didn’t wait to be needed.

  I knocked on his door.

  I didn’t hear anything inside and was about to go back home and call and leave a message, when the door finally opened.

  Neither of us bantered or teased, or even smiled. I just asked, “Are you okay?”

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I will be. How did you know?”

  “Mela came over to tell me that I won. That she’d finally broken up with you because of me. Ned, I need you to know, I value your friendship, but I never would have wanted to come between you and Mela.”

  “You didn’t,” he assured me. “And that’s not how it went. She didn’t break up with me; I broke up with her.”

  With some men, I might have questioned whether or not they were being totally accurate about who did the breaking, but I knew Ned wasn’t like that. I’d never seen him pretend to be anything other than what he was . . . a very nice guy. “Why did you break up with her?”

  “It’s been coming for a long time,” he admitted. “When I was out of town on that case last week, I realized that I didn’t miss her. There was no sense of anticipation when we talked at night, no longing for her. And I thought of your parents.”

  “My parents?”

  He nodded. “When I see them together, I can’t imagine one without the other. You said when your dad went to that conference a few months ago your mom was over every night because she couldn’t stand the empty house.”

  When Dad had left, Mom said she was excited to spend time with me. She was over every night. She “helped” me clean out my closet, then took me shopping for new clothes to replenish it. We went out to eat and saw two movies. We talked and laughed a lot. I really think she enjoyed the extra time with me, but I also think my mom wasn’t sure how to be her without my dad around. “You’re right; I think all our girl time was more about her missing him.”

  “They reminded me of my parents,” he said.

  His parents lived in Seattle. They were getting on in years and didn’t travel much, but he visited them as often as he could.

  “My parents are like that . . . incomplete without the other. And my bosses,” he continued. “Josiah and Muriel are like that, too. Your parents are quiet and strike me as people who rarely fight, but you know Josiah and Muriel always fight. They fight about cases, about the firm. I think they’re both attorneys because they like to fight. That comes through in their relationship. But even with that, I can’t imagine them apart.”

  I’d met Josiah and Muriel more than once, but had only heard about their legendary arguments secondhand from Ned and Anthony. But Ned was right, they fit . . . they f
unctioned as two parts of a whole.

  Quietly he admitted, “I realized that I could imagine myself apart from Mela. And I finally admitted that wasn’t fair to her, or to me.”

  “Still, if I had anything to do with it—”

  He cut me off. “You didn’t. The fact that she distrusted you so much only illustrates my point. If we were truly meant to be together, she’d have known that I could never, would never, cheat.”

  Even though he was saying it wasn’t me, I still felt guilty. “Can I do anything?”

  He started to shake his head, but then nodded. “Yes. Let’s go sit in your backyard and watch the stars give way to the sunrise.”

  “It’ll be freezing,” I warned him.

  “When has that ever stopped you?”

  I smiled at him. “Never. Come on then.” I took his hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. “You’ll find someone else someday.”

  He didn’t say anything; he just squeezed my hand back.

  And we went and sat on the bench in my jungle-ish backyard and watched the stars in silence for a very long time. Slowly, they all gave way to the orange-pink sunrise.

  And it wasn’t until he spoke a long time later that I realized we still held hands. “Thank you,” he said.

  “That’s what friends are for,” I assured him.

  And I realized that’s what we were. Friends.

  Not just neighbors. Not just friendly neighbors. Not even just friends.

  He was the type of friend that, if I called and needed him, would drop everything to help me.

  We were the type of friends that if one of us moved from here, we’d still be connected. Our friendship began because of proximity, but it had grown beyond that.

  I would have sat on that cold bench, not saying anything, and held his hand all day if he needed me to.

  That’s the kind of friends we were.

  Dear Amanda,

  Ned broke up with his girlfriend. I realized he was the type of friend I could call in the middle of the night to come bail me out of jail. Or jump my car. Or . . . The point is, I could call him whenever and for whatever I needed.

  It made me think of Aunt Bonnie. I know I mentioned her to you before. She’s the one I stayed with through the last few months of my pregnancy.

  When I told my parents I’d decided to give you up for adoption, my mother started to cry and my father said, “Piper, I wish we could make this decision for you. It’s probably the most difficult decision you’re ever going to have to make. You’re turning sixteen in a week—that’s so young to be carrying a burden like this. But there’s nothing to do for it. This has to be your decision, and your mother and I will support you no matter what you decide.”

  “I’m going to go stay with Aunt Bonnie and find this baby’s real parents. I know it’s not me, so they have to be out there somewhere, waiting for me to find them and let them know I have their child.”

  My mother was still crying, but my father nodded. “I’m sure Bonnie will help.”

  He was right, of course, because Bonnie Masters was his friend, in the same way Ned was mine.

  Dad and Aunt Bonnie had grown up next door to each other. They’d gone to school together, even college together. Aunt Bonnie was my godmother. And she became one of my mother’s best friends, too.

  She was family.

  Not one of us doubted that she’d say yes and welcome me with open arms.

  Which is exactly what she did.

  As I sat with Ned, I realized he was my Aunt Bonnie. He was more than a friend . . . he was family.

  I hope your life is full of friends like that.

  Love,

  Piper

  Chapter Eight

  In June, I was offered a contract for a short story that would be part of an anthology my publisher was putting together for the following summer. I was thrilled that they’d asked me to be a part of Summer Nights. So many authors I loved and admired were contributing.

  The day my editor called, I started work on my story for the anthology. A young girl named Letha meets a boy at her parents’ annual summer solstice bonfire.

  I dreamed about it that night.

  I could smell the smoke from the bonfire and hear the wood crackle. In my dream, it was in my backyard, which was much bigger than it really was.

  Letha was watching the flames when the boy sat down next to her. He said, “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  She said, “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to see me.”

  Most of the time, when I dream about a book I’m working on, I wake up feeling invigorated and ready to try to capture the scene. It’s as if when my conscious mind is turned off, my unconscious mind gets a chance to play and thoroughly enjoys it.

  But the next day, rather than invigorated, that dream left me feeling . . . unsettled. All day long, the feeling hovered over me, even as the story flew from my fingers to the laptop screen.

  I tried to push the feeling aside as I finished getting dressed for my date with Anthony. I’d wanted to stay in and order pizza, but he’d already made arrangements to have dinner at the Johnsons’, his partners and Ned’s bosses.

  It grated a bit that he hadn’t bothered to ask me. I was unaccustomed to someone making plans for me without at least checking with me beforehand.

  It seemed . . . cheeky.

  I’d said as much to Anthony. He’d been thoroughly mystified about why I’d been annoyed that he’d just assumed I’d be thrilled. I agreed to go, but I wasn’t happy about it.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the Johnsons. I did.

  And, as I suspect, it was a nice dinner. Josiah and Muriel were a great couple. But Ned had been right. They didn’t actually fight, but they squabbled . . . a lot. They squabbled about weird legal facts that I didn’t even begin to understand.

  They squabbled about the proper way to prepare a steak.

  They squabbled about who came up with some new strategy for a case and then spent a great deal of time discussing it with Anthony.

  Some people might have been upset to have people conversing about topics that they couldn’t contribute to, but frankly, I enjoyed watching the two of them. I’ll confess, I blatantly studied how they interacted with each other.

  Josiah and Muriel were each absolutely convinced that his or her opinion was the correct one. They lived in this black-and-white world. Right and wrong. Their way or the highway.

  I’d spent my life living in a gray realm, where the only absolute was there was no absolute. Every rule had an exception. Every situation had multiple outcomes.

  Anthony joined in the fracas on occasion.

  I was a bystander, but I liked watching how all three of them thought. Anthony was a step-one-then-step-two sort of thinker. He seemed to get thrown if someone interrupted that process.

  Muriel was a jackrabbit, hopping from one tangent to another, then hopping back again.

  And Josiah was . . . a quoter. He cited books and articles to back up his points.

  To be honest, I had no idea what points they were each making most of the time, but it was fascinating listening to them all. Stepping, quoting, and hopping around a case.

  “We’re being rude,” Muriel finally said. Both men stopped talking and she continued, “I’m sorry, Piper. If you put a bunch of lawyers together, this is what happens.”

  I shook my head. “Really, I was enjoying the conversation. Watching how you all thought and formulated your arguments was fascinating.”

  “Uh-oh,” Anthony teased. “We’ve been together long enough for me to know that means we’re all about to become fodder for Piper’s next book.”

  “No. Not any of you in specific. But watching your thought processes—how different they all were—might inspire something in the future. Now, if I were John Grisham,
your actual arguments might have been of more use, since he writes so much legal fiction. When you’re writing about teens, legal facts aren’t normally required.”

  “If Grisham had been here, he’d have joined in the debates,” Muriel assured me. “Most attorneys can’t resist a good fight.”

  The rest of the evening the topics were ones I could contribute to, though their lawyerly love of arguments continued to show through as we all debated Star Trek versus Star Wars. I loved both, Anthony loved neither, Muriel was Star Trek, and Josiah was Star Wars.

  The lines were fairly well drawn.

  I was still laughing about it when Anthony pulled his car into my drive. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been involved in such a fierce fight,” I said.

  “I didn’t realize they were both such fans of the genre.” He added, “I’m sorry for springing the dinner on you.”

  “I don’t do springing very well,” I told him. “Next time ask first?”

  He nodded. “I’ve never been involved with someone for this long. I obviously don’t have much experience in what’s appropriate.”

  “Even if we’re together thirty years from now, asking first would be the way to go.”

  “Wow, our first fight,” he said with a chuckle. “I think we weathered it fairly well.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure the Star Wars, Star Trek debate has to count as our first fight. Even if it doesn’t, let’s say it was because it will make a more interesting story in the future.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said with a hint of laughter in his voice. “Two fights in one night and we survived.”

  “We did.”

  He leaned over and kissed me. When he drew back he said, “I’d ask to come in, but I’ve got to be at court first thing in the morning.”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to you soon.” That was the nice thing about dating Anthony. We both respected each other’s schedules.

  I opened my door but Ned called out, “Hey,” before I went in.

  “Hey, yourself,” I called back and let the door slam shut. I waited and Ned came over and joined me on the porch. “How was your date?”