Coming Home

by Julie Sellers

  He adjusted the Chicago Cubs baseball cap he’d worn for years in silent tribute to Lillie and lowered the sunglasses that sat on the bill, to the bridge of his nose.

  He remembered a phrase the senior band students used to use at the end of the year as he positioned his Oakley’s. “The future’s so bright; you’ve got to wear shades.” He felt as hopeful as a new grad, and he steered the canoe towards shore and their campsite for the night.

  * * *

  Jon started a fire, and it was roaring when Lillie exited the tent with her towel, fresh clothes, a small bottle of shampoo and her toiletry kit. She made her way to the supplies, grabbed the collapsible bucket and started for the nearby shore of the small island Jon had chosen for them for the night.

  “Lillian, I’ll get the water.” Jon started forward with his hand out, reaching for the bucket.

  “It’s okay.” She waved him off, made her way lakeside, and filled the bucket. She paused for a moment when she reached the shore and breathed deeply of the pine-scented air. While she filled the bucket, she listened to the loons soulfully calling to their mates and watched an eagle circling the water, waiting to spy a fish. In that instant, the brown eagle looked as if it was falling from the sky. It touched down into the water and swooped back up an instant later, a trout or bass clutched in its talons.

  She returned to camp and filled their kettle and coffee pot with part of the water and set it atop the fire grate to heat before filling the solar shower with the remaining water. Usually, she would have filled the large black rubber pouch with water and placed it in the sun for a few hours to warm. Because they were making camp so late in the afternoon, Lillie was cheating and heated water on the fire that she would then add to the cool lake water already in the shower.

  When the water was at a near boil, she removed the pots from the heat and added it to the shower. Shouldering the large bladder of water and gathering her shower ensemble, she walked into the woods seeking both cover from the wind and Jon in the underbrush near the other facilities.

  There were over five hundred marked campsites in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Each boasted a fire pit and a pit toilet somewhat removed from the tenting area, but not at all enclosed. Lillie always found it hysterical whenever she saw one of these toilets, just sticking out of the ground with absolutely no enclosure.

  Lillie flung the rope affixed to the top of the bag over a tree branch and pulled it above her head. She quickly disrobed and sprayed herself with the nozzle end of the contraption.

  Lillie stifled a shriek as the cool evening air hit her wet skin. She lathered her body quickly, rinsed, toweled dry in a flash and leapt back into her clothes. She left the shower hanging by its branch and made her way back to the fire.

  All she had to do was follow her nose. A fabulous scent wafted toward her on the breeze through the forest. When she arrived back in the clearing, Jon was crouched near the fire tossing something in a sauté pan with a flick of his wrist while stirring something else in the tiny kettle.

  “That smells wonderful,” Lillie exclaimed. “No wonder your tours are such a success, if you feed them whatever is in that pan.”

  Jon laughed at Lillie as she licked her lips. “The curry will be done in five minutes. Do you mind keeping an eye on it while I clean up?”

  “Of course not,” she answered. “The shower is about twenty paces out, in a pine behind a bush.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lillie was impressed. When they were married, Jon’s culinary skills were limited to scrambled eggs, canned soup and calling for takeout.

  While she waited, Lillie busied herself setting out plates and silverware on a blanket. The sun was nearly set. Lillie located the lantern and set it on a stump. She struck a match and touched it to the mantle and it flared to life. She lowered the flame and checked on the rice. Since it was perfectly cooked, she divided it between the two plates. She topped them both with the pungent curry mixture, just as Jonathan returned from the bushes.

  “I’m starved,” he said as he reached for his tin enameled plate. Lillie handed him a set of silverware, the knife, spoon and fork connected on their ends by a ring to keep them together.

  They sat in companionable silence on the blanket, backs propped against a fallen log some other camper had hauled near the fire ring, nearly shoulder to shoulder on the small mat.

  “I’m so relieved to see Donna looking so rested.” Lillie turned to look at Jon. “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”

  “I think so. Being with Molly is going to make her feel even better. Mom loves her so much. She’s not rested well one night without her nearby.”

  “They share a love that’s so huge, and she is so patient,” Lillie said. “Your mom is my inspiration.”

  “And you are mine.”

  Lillie’s fork froze half way to her lips. “Jon…”

  “No, Lillie. I mean it.” He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Your dream was to have a child, and you made that dream come true. You found your own way, and you never lost sight of that.”

  “I’m not special, Jon.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re amazing.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not special. If I had realized what a miracle adoption could be sooner…” The words hung between them, unsaid.

  “Or if I had trusted you more, trusted us more.” Jonathan did not speak for a bit, but in a few moments, he continued, changing the subject. “Tell me about your children, Lillie, and tell me about Russia.”

  Lillie, too, was silent for a moment, but finally she said, “It was just precious.”

  Jon sat his plate aside and focused exclusively on Lillie as she continued. “The call to come meet her came so quickly. They said it would be months before I was matched with a child. My paperwork went in on a Tuesday, and I got ‘the call’ the next Wednesday. I was to leave on Saturday. Rand and Cat were in Tibet. We needed their passports to have visa’s issued, but since they were out of the country and there wasn’t enough time for them to get back, I went alone.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Weren’t you scared? “

  “Unbelievably, no. I was resolved. I was also at peace. She was my child, and I had to go. I knew nothing about her except that she was an eleven-month-old girl in an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia.”

  “And you went? Just like that?”

  “It was all so surreal. I thought I would be afraid, but from the moment I touched down on Russian soil I felt nothing but peace.”

  “Really? The long flight alone would have done me in, or at least required medication.” Jonathan said.

  “It was a long one. I was a bit apprehensive about what I would do if there was no one at the airport to meet me, but there was. They were my own personal angels, a wonderful caring woman named Tatiana who took perfect care of me. Her husband, Sasha, was my driver. They made me feel a part of their family immediately.”

  Lillie stood and made her way to her pack to fetch her water bottle. “It was like coming home, only to no home I’d ever been. Russia is bright and bold and fearless. Everything I wasn’t, but I learned.”

  Lillie took a drink from her water bottle, and Jon said, “It must have been thrilling to see Russia.”

  “It was. I walked through Red Square when it was below zero. My face was frozen in the same expression for days.” Lillie made a goofy, frozen looking face, and Jon laughed.

  “But it was worth it?”

  “Of course. But I have to tell you, Red Square is neither red, nor square.”

  “I don’t think that was exactly what they meant.” He laughed again.

  “It was beautiful though. Moscow as well as St. Petersburg is lovely. The buildings are yellow for the most part, except for St. Basils. It’s every color.”

  “The one with the onion domes? I’ve seen pictures,” he added.

  “Yes, that’s the one. It is unbelievable. The tsar, Ivan the Terrible, commissioned it. He certainly lived
up to his name. Legend has it he asked the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, if he could build him another like it. Wanting to please the Tsar, he answered that he could. Ivan the Terrible then ordered he be blinded to prevent him from ever creating anything to rival its beauty again.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It is, but that’s Russia. She has an eighteen hundred year history of great beauty but that comes along with the same amount of cruelty and pain. Pretty much like life, now that I come to think about it. At least that is what your mom says.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The good with the bad, the happy with the sad. As much as we would like otherwise, they each seem to happen in equal measure.”

  “I wish I would have been there,” he said, as he turned to catch her eye.

  She turned as well, to stare directly into his eyes. She took his hand and held it in both of hers. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles as if to remember their feel, “You were.”

  Jonathan’s breath caught in his throat, and he raised his hand to her cheek. He cradled her face in his palms gently, almost reverently, as if he was holding a crown of jewels or a great masterpiece. He bent his head and kissed each cheek as he traced the tracks her tears made down her face. He kissed her eyes and her temples, savoring the tears as a man dying of thirst savors a rain shower.

  His lips traced her jaw and finally captured her mouth. The kiss began as gentle as a spring breeze but a sob choked from Lillie’s throat, and she threw herself into the kiss full force.

  Jon groaned as she wrapped her arms around his neck and plunged her tongue into his mouth. He shifted his head to allow himself greater access to hers and then her throat as she let her head fall back in surrender, his arms cradling her to his body.

  They remained that way for a moment, both breathing heavily. Jon rested his forehead on the sensitive space between Lillie’s collarbone and neck, his unsteady breathing tickling her throat.

  Boneless, she began to slide away from him. He tightened his grip to keep her close, but Lillie brought her hands to his shoulders and applied light pressure.

  He released her, and raised his eyes to hers. “I can’t,” was all she said, but she did not turn away from him.

  “I know,” he answered. All he could do was watch as she stood and made her way to her tent. When she turned to zip her door closed, she saw Jon had remained where he was, staring into the remnants of the fire.

  She raised her hand in silent goodnight, but he was lost in a world of his own and didn’t respond. Thinking twice about calling out to him, she remained silent and closed the flap of her tent.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jon, up with the sun, scrubbed a green hickory branch and laid it across the fire. Along the branch, he laid strips of raw bacon to sizzle just above the flames. In their one small frying pan he scrambled eggs and added salt, pepper and a dash of dill. Two more branches served to hold English muffins above the hot coals to toast.

  Lillie, he remembered, generally rose early, but he’d not heard any sound, as of yet, from her tent. The eggs finished cooking, and he moved them off the direct heat but near enough to keep them warm. He added the bacon to the pan, now perfectly crispy.

  Jonathan poured the water he’d boiled over the fire into a French coffee press and wrapped it in a towel to steep. He then set about adding powdered creamer to their enameled tin mugs. As the aroma of the expensive Kona blend filled their campsite, he heard a rustle of tent fabric.

  In another minute, Lillie unzipped her tent and stretched, still in her pajamas, having added just her hiking boots and a baseball cap. She’d bundled her hair in a ponytail, and it peeked from the hole in the back of the hat. She yawned and stretched her arms to the sky, her sleeping ensemble, silk long underwear, left little to the imagination.

  Jon’s first instinct was to move to her side, pull her into his arms and run his hands down the lovely length of her before kissing her senseless. He was tempted…sorely tempted…but he knew Lillie was as skittish as a bear surprised while feeding. He looked away, but kept watch out of the corner of his eye.

  Lillie shivered as she made her way to the fire. He handed her a cup filled with the rich brew. The back of his hand touched the side of her breast, and she shivered once again, this time, he was not so sure it was from the cool of the morning.

  “Decaf?” she asked.

  “Not on your life,” Jon asked.

  “Sorry, Cat,” she mumbled and nearly drained the entire cup in one swallow.

  Pretending he didn’t notice her attire, he busied himself preparing her a plate of the steaming food. He held it out to her as she settled herself on the blanket near the fire.

  He shrugged out of his flannel shirt and wrapped it around her shoulders. Between bites of bacon, eggs and muffin, she pushed her arms through the sleeves and knotted the shirttails at her waist.

  She finished off her coffee in a gulp and extended her arm for more. As his eyes met hers under the brim of her cap, she gave him a brilliant smile and said finally, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, yourself,” Jon said, returning her smile and giving the bill of her hat at tap. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. Did you sleep well?”

  Lillie raised her head to look upward at the light shining through the trees and answered, “Well enough.”

  “The owls didn’t keep you awake, did they?” Jon heard them hunting well into the night. The moon was nearly full and gave them plenty of light to feed.

  “No, not the owls,” she said sheepishly.

  Jonathan was glad he’d not been the only one to lose sleep last night.

  “Shall we break camp or stay put?”

  “This spot is lovely, and I always feel better on one of the islands.”

  “Are you still afraid of bears? They can swim, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. But yes, I’ll never forget that time we forgot to secure the food and we awoke to the three bears having a picnic.”

  “Momma bear, Papa bear and wee little baby bear were more afraid of us than we were of them.”

  “Maybe more afraid than you were, but I was pretty darned scared.”

  “You didn’t trust me to protect you?”

  “I trusted you; I just didn’t trust that your friends didn’t consider our food for the week just an appetizer.”

  They both laughed remembering, and Jon realized again, how good it felt to laugh with Lillie and talk about their past. When he’d left her, a huge part of his life just vanished. He’d had no one he could talk about her with in Minnesota—no who knew her at all. That was precisely why he had come here to settle, but he found it lonely as well.

  Even though he had many guides now in his employ he still went out every chance he got. He saw her face in every sunrise and heard her voice in the wind moving through the pines. He felt closer to her on the water in her canoe than anywhere else and so he went, week after week, tour after tour.

  It felt right, even after all of this time, to be here with her. She was all he had ever wanted and his heart’s true home. He knew at that moment, he couldn’t let her go again. He had to convince her. They needed to be together.

  Lillie finished her breakfast, stood and began tossing pans and plates into the collapsible bucket. He made a move to stop her, but she protested. “You cooked, I’ll clean up.” In the old days, Lillie cooked most of the meals, and Jon cheerfully cleaned up after. “It’s only fair,” she added.

  “Finish telling me about Russia. We got a little sidetracked last night.” He grinned sheepishly.

  Lillie added the rest of the warm water from the kettle and a bit of the biodegradable dish washing liquid she found in the kitchen pack. While she scrubbed the dishes, Jonathan treated himself to a second cup of coffee and sat down on the log, facing the flames. “What do you want to know?

  “What it was like…what made you decide to adopt…everything, anything?”

  “Just because you changed your mind does
n’t mean that I did,” Lillie answered, not bothering to hide the sarcasm from her voice.

  “Changed my mind?” he asked.

  “About children?” she wanted to add, “About me?” but she resisted.

  “I didn’t--what I meant was, I thought that giving birth was important to you. You made it pretty clear how you felt about having a biological connection to your children. It just surprised me that you chose to adopt.”

  “I wanted a lot of things, but they were just dreams, mostly silly ones. When it came down to it, I could live without them all. I could give up everything but being a mother. Russia gave me my chance when no one else would, so I took it.”

  Lillie told him of how afraid she had been at the beginning. How she had cringed each time there was a change in plans on the trip. Each time she thought they were going to send her home. “Catherine always told me to have faith, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have any left, until I saw Hope.”

  “Really?”

  “Until they brought Hope to me and put her into my arms. Then I knew.”

  “You knew?”

  “Everything good, everything bad in my life, every mistake and every joy had happened for a reason and was right there in my arms. It was so that I’d be in Russia that exact day and that same hour to find Hope and bring her home.” She paused, emotion heavy in her voice, but continued. “For the first time in my life, I wasn’t alone.”

  Lillie knew how that must sound. She’d lived with him for almost seven years and dated him for years before that, but it was true. She knew she’d kept herself separate from Jonathan. Had she known deep inside what would eventually happen or did her husband leave her because she refused to share that part of her life?

  Just like the age-old argument of which came first, the chicken or the egg, there would never be an answer.

  Jon looked stricken when he said, “I think I always knew you felt that way. I couldn’t reach you on some level.”

  “I know that now. I didn’t then. But if you are honest, you would admit you held back too.”