The Family They've Longed For

by Robin Gianna

  He picked the child up and poked a pacifier into his mouth, gently rocking him back and forth. Then the doorbell chimed. He frowned, wondering who could be at his door. He hoped it wasn’t a medical emergency, because he felt pretty worn out and he had a feeling that it was due more to emotional stress than lack of sleep.

  When he opened the door his heart kicked in surprise. Rory stood there, wearing her puffy down coat and holding Mika’s hat.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding a little breathless. “You...we forgot about Mika’s hat. I thought he might need it.”

  She held it out and he took it, trying to decide if he should just thank her, say goodbye and shut the door, or if that would be too rude.

  “Thanks to Mom and her knitting he has more hats than one baby could ever need. But I appreciate it.”

  “Can I...can I come in?”

  He wanted to say no, but even as he was thinking that was the best response for both of them he found himself swinging the door open wider.

  “Sure. Your California blood is probably too thin for this weather.”

  “I think my blood is thickening a little, and I’m finally remembering what it’s like here in October. I wasn’t even tempted to put on long underwear today.”

  Lord. He was not...not...going to ask her what kind of underwear she did have on. Even though suddenly he desperately wanted to know.

  Time to cut to the chase—and if he had to be abrupt, like he’d been earlier, to protect himself, then so be it. “What can I do for you? Mika’s pretty cranky from all the outdoor activity and missing his nap. I need to get him down for the night.”

  “You can go ahead and do that. I’ll just...you know...wait down here in a chair.”

  “Rory. What’s this about?”

  “I realized there’s something I need to say to you. Something I need to ask you. If you’ll just give me five minutes of your time, I’d appreciate it.”

  He drew a deep breath, wondering what she could want to talk about. Hadn’t they covered all the bases in their prior conversations? Still, he’d needed to talk to her when she’d first shown up, to get some things off his chest even when she hadn’t wanted to go there. He owed her the same courtesy, whatever this was about.

  “All right. Take a seat and I’ll be back shortly.”

  The baby was nodding off as he carried him upstairs, and barely stirred when Jake slipped on his footie pajamas and held up some picture books.

  “What do you want to read?”

  Mika’s response was to droop his head against Jake’s shoulder and close his eyes, and he knew a book wasn’t happening tonight. Which was just as well, since Rory was waiting downstairs. He hoped whatever she wanted to talk about wouldn’t end in something uncomfortable or unpleasant. But he had a bad feeling that was exactly what it was going to do.

  Gently laying Mika in his crib, he tucked in his blanket and kissed his soft cheek. “Sweet dreams.”

  The words had him thinking of his own dreams. They had altered some when Rory had left, but the fundamentals of what he wanted were the same: to live and work and grow old in Eudemonia, and raise a family here with the woman he loved. He knew that wasn’t asking too much.

  But Rory wasn’t that woman, and he found himself dreading whatever she’d come here to say to him tonight.

  * * *

  Rory watched Jake come down the stairs and her heart jerked hard in her chest. Now that she was here, all her carefully rehearsed words seemed to dry up and choke her. But it was too late to run, and she had to tell him how she felt.

  He came to within a couple yards of her, which made her feel even more nervous. Gone was the Jake who’d been angry, talking with her in that store parking lot, crowding her and grasping her arms as he spoke. Gone was the Jake who’d kissed her in his kitchen and made love with her in the cabin. Gone was the Jake who’d teased her at her mother’s house, who’d touched her and kissed her.

  No, this was the Jake who’d told her earlier that he had plans, then walked away. His expression was cool and unreadable and she stood up—because she couldn’t keep sitting in that chair for another second, trying to act like this was some normal, relaxed conversation between the two of them.

  Too much of her future happiness was riding on this.

  “Jake?”

  “Yes?”

  “I...um...”

  He took a few steps closer and a sigh left his chest. “What is it, Rory? What is it you need to talk with me about? I’m listening.”

  She stared into the familiar face she’d loved for so long and gulped, before blurting out the first thing she needed an answer to. “How would you feel about me living here again? Permanently? In Eudemonia?”

  He went still and stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot.” She nervously licked her lips but forged on because his reaction, his words, were so important she could barely breathe. “I miss my mother, and the older she gets the more she’s going to need me. I... I didn’t admit to myself that I missed this town until I came back. And I definitely didn’t admit to myself how much I missed you, until this time we’ve spent together forced me to see it. But I did, Jake. I missed you so much. Every day of these past nine years I’ve missed the man I fell in love with in the fourth grade.”

  He didn’t respond, and her knees began to shake.

  “I love you,” she whispered, laying her heart on the line. “I’ve realized I never stopped loving you. And already I love little Mika. The more time I spend here, the more distant LA feels. The more I ask myself if I really want that job, want to live alone like I have for nine years. I’ve wondered if it would make me happier to come back here to work instead. To be with you and Mika instead. And now I know the answer. You’re my happiness, Jake. You and Mika.”

  He stared for a long moment, shock etched on his face. When he still didn’t speak, she forged on with the biggest question of all.

  “I love you. And I’m ready to lean on you, now, in a way I wouldn’t let myself before. For us to lean on each other, like you talked about.” She drew a shaky breath and finally asked the question. “So I want to know... Do you still love me, too?”

  He stood still as a stone for ten long seconds before he spun around, his back to her, his hands locked behind his head. Her heart beat so hard against her ribs she thought they might break, because while she hadn’t known what to expect, his reaction—this silence—couldn’t possibly be good.

  Finally he turned, and she clutched her throat at the sight of his grim expression. This was not the look of a man about to declare that he loved her in return, and she started to shake from the inside out.

  “I will always care about you,” he said, obviously choosing his words carefully.

  Oh, God. The brush-off. The I like you as a friend speech. His kisses, his touch, the sex—none of it had been about love. Obviously for him they’d been about the past and lust and long-lost memories. Not even close to what she’d been feeling.

  “But I can’t risk loving you again, Rory. You have to understand that. I can’t trust you to stay, because I know how bad it felt when you betrayed that trust before. And I have Mika now. My son is a huge part of my world, and I can’t risk having you become a big part of my life again—a big part of his life—knowing all that could blow up in our faces. Do you understand?”

  “I wouldn’t leave again. I’ve grown. Learned. Put the past behind me. Surely you see that?”

  He slowly shook his head, and as he did so she could practically feel her heart breaking into a million tiny pieces.

  “I’m sorry, Rory. I just can’t. It was too hard the first time. It’s better for both of us not to go there again.”

  She wanted to argue. Wanted to convince him she meant every word. Wanted to hang on to him, beg and plead with him to love her and be with her.


  Somehow she managed to cling to the thin, frayed edges of what pride she had left, and stayed silent. She nodded, turned and walked out the door.

  Somehow she made it home, with tears coursing down her cheeks and dripping onto her coat.

  Home. No, it wasn’t home. Eudemonia wouldn’t ever be her home again.

  * * *

  Jake had thought that once Rory had left for LA, life would smooth out and become normal again. That her being back was what had tipped his world sideways and messed with his equilibrium. The past showing up in the form of Aurora Anderson had left him frustrated and confused, his feelings for her something he just couldn’t figure out.

  But she’d been gone for almost a month and everything still felt off-kilter. Her shocking declaration of love and her insistence that she wanted to move back here, try to find again what they’d lost, had knocked him utterly sideways.

  He’d made the right decision, telling her it couldn’t work. That he couldn’t risk it. There was no way he could be sure she wouldn’t take off a second time, crushing him all over again—and maybe Mika, too.

  But that conviction—his certainty about that—hadn’t kept her from his dreams. Every night in his sleep he was thinking of her, laughing with her, making love with her. Tasting her mouth, feeling her soft skin against his. Then he’d wake with a smile, and the feeling that he was holding her sweet body in his arms, except when he’d look they were empty.

  He shook his head, irritated with himself. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been gone. Lord knew it had taken years for him to get over her before. He just needed a little more time to forget her—which would be a whole lot easier than letting her back into his life only to have her take off again, leaving him even more devastated than last time.

  He moved from the exam room to ask Ellie about his next patient—then stopped dead when he saw that both his mother and Wendy Anderson were standing in the clinic foyer, staring at him with very strange expressions on their faces.

  Something about the way they were looking at him made him oddly uncomfortable, and he frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes. Can we talk to you privately?” his mother said.

  His mother and Wendy wanted to talk to him privately? What the hell could this be about?

  “Uh...sure. Come to my office.”

  The two women sat in the chairs in front of his desk and for some reason he went to sit behind it, instead of in a chair next to them. He felt the need for an inanimate object to be between him and the stern disapproval he could clearly see on their faces.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Wendy recently heard from Rory that she was offered the job she wanted in LA,” his mother said.

  He had no idea why his stomach pitched and tightened at that news, because it was hardly a surprise. “That’s what she’d worked for—what she wanted—so good for her.”

  “Wendy has also learned that it’s actually not what she wanted. That she’d decided to move back home, work here or in Fairbanks, and try to have the kind of relationship with you that you had before. Except you told her you had no interest in that.”

  Well, hell. The fact that Rory had told her mother surprised him, but it didn’t change anything. Didn’t change that her thinking she wanted to move back might last all of a nanosecond. Didn’t change that she could crush him to pieces all over again. “I will always care about Rory. But I’m sure you can both understand why I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

  “Why not?” his mother demanded. “She’s had a long time to grapple with the past. With the decisions she made. You’ve had time, too. And I know you still love her.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, trying not to let them see what he was feeling. What he’d felt since the second Rory had come back.

  Did he still love her? The way his heart still ached and his stomach churned proved that was a no-brainer. If there was one thing he’d learned for certain during those few weeks she’d come back was that he’d always loved her. That he’d never stopped loving her.

  Never would.

  But that had nothing to do with reality. With trusting her to be there for him and for Mika no matter what.

  Missing her might pass. His heart being broken a second time never would.

  He decided not to go into that whole conversation and cut straight to the point. “Why are you two here?”

  “Jacob.” Wendy leaned forward, and the sweet smile she always had on her face had flattened into an expression of such seriousness he couldn’t quite believe it was her. “My Aurora loves you—has always loved you. I know this. When the bad things happened it messed everything up, which broke her heart and your heart and my heart. And Beth’s, and your dad’s, and my Walter’s heart, too. So many broken hearts... But now she wants to fix things. Don’t you want to fix things? Don’t you want both your hearts...all of our hearts...to be whole again?”

  “It’s too late.” Apparently, not sharing his feelings wasn’t an option, and he drew a deep breath before he forced himself to go on. “When I thought about her coming back home, making a life here, it also made me think about how bad it would feel for her to leave again, and I knew I couldn’t go through that one more time. It was...” He had to stop and swallow down the surprising emotion that thickened his throat. “I just don’t want to do it. She could be here for a few months, or a few years, then change her mind. What would that do to me and Mika?”

  “Jake.” His mother’s voice was soft now, caring. “I know how bad it was for you. I also know how bad it was for her. But don’t you think it says something that even after all these years she still loves you and you still love her?”

  “Love isn’t everything. Her leaving nine years ago proved that, didn’t it? I loved her more than anything, and she supposedly loved me. But she left anyway. Surely you know that trust is just as important as love. Maybe more important.”

  “Jake. You know as well as anyone that there are no guarantees in life. People get sick, people die, people hurt one another.” His mother pressed her hand to the top of his. “If you live your life looking for a guarantee that nothing will ever happen to hurt you, if you won’t let yourself be vulnerable to that hurt, you’ll end up missing out on the best things in life. Don’t you see that Rory coming to you and letting herself be vulnerable that way proves she’s learned that hard lesson? You need to trust that she has.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face. It sounded so logical, so easy to do—just trust her again, let himself be vulnerable to the kind of pain that had twisted him in knots for years. But the way the knots had tightened all over again told him it sure as hell wasn’t something he could risk.

  “If she comes back to Eudemonia and then leaves again the place I belong...the place I’ve made my life...will never feel the same. I’d finally gotten past thinking of her during everything I did here. Missing her everywhere I went. Missing her every damn day. I don’t want to be messed up like that again. I don’t want Mika messed up like that.”

  There. He’d laid his bashed and bloodied heart on the table for both women to see. Surely they understood what he was talking about? They loved this place as much as he did, and had painful memories of their own. No guarantees—he understood that. But to ask for that pain by letting Rory back into his heart and his life...?

  “Well, I have a solution that will give you a chance to be with Rory again, see how it would be for the two of you, without the risk to your life in Eudemonia that you’re so worried about,” Wendy said.

  “What?”

  “You and Mika move to LA. Simple. You take on one of those temporary doctor jobs, live with Aurora and see what happens. If in six months or a year you still don’t trust her, believe in her, love her enough, you come back home and your life here will be waiting for you. Just like you’d never left. And Mika will still be litt
le enough that he’ll soon settle right back in to his life here, with you and everyone who loves him.”

  He stared at her, absolutely incredulous. “Twinkie. You love Eudemonia as much as anyone I know. You hardly even wanted to visit Rory in LA—you didn’t even want to go for the winter. You of all people should understand why that’s a terrible suggestion. All I’ve ever wanted was to live and work here.”

  She stood and leaned across the desk in a distinctly un-Wendy-like move that surprised him all over again.

  “I loved my Walter. If he hadn’t been by my side all those years my life would never have been as happy, even after he got sick. Did I always love Eudemonia, too? Yes. But if my husband—the only man I ever loved—had wanted to move somewhere else, and wanted me to go with him, I would have. Because a place is just a place. But the person you love is everything.”

  Wendy’s words seemed to echo in his chest, demanding that he listen. He absorbed them, let himself really feel what she was saying, finally realizing she was one hundred percent right. He still loved Rory, had never stopped loving her, and since she’d been gone he’d missed her all over again anyway—just like before.

  Could going to LA be the perfect solution to his fears and doubts? Give him the possibility of finding the kind of life with Rory he’d always wanted, always thought they’d have? If it didn’t work out, the bad memories would be in LA, not here. Being in Eudemonia without her wouldn’t feel as bad as if she came back for a while, then left. And it wasn’t as though he wasn’t missing her here anyway.

  But, God, he couldn’t deny that the thought of putting his heart and body and soul in her hands again scared him to death.

  His gaze moved to his mother, who sat there nodding in firm agreement.

  “You’ve got nothing to lose, Jake, except a little time. But what might you have to gain? I don’t think I have to tell you that being with Rory the way you used to be just might be the key to real happiness for you. Happiness to last the rest of your life. Living with less risk might be safer. But also sadder and more lonely. Isn’t the kind of love and happiness you used to have with Rory worth a little risk?”