by Allison Rios
And that’s what she did. AJ watched as she reached forward and wrapped her own arms around the pair – one around Rose and the other across Robert. He let go of Rose with one arm just long enough to pull Addie into his body, his hand firmly behind her head as he pulled her into him. A surge warped through Robert’s body, rocking him off balance. None of this felt right and he attributed the feeling to the consuming knowledge that Addie had an opportunity here to have the family she wanted.
AJ didn’t like the feeling he got from Robert but then again, he thought to himself, he wouldn’t. The man was here to hold what he himself wanted to. The Healer watched, the hole in his heart growing even larger as the seconds ticked by slowly in what he was sure was his own personal hell. If he died and went to hell, he thought, this is what he’d have to watch on big screen televisions as he slaved away in the heat.
The trio swayed together, muffled sounds escaping all of their lips but remaining undecipherable to the broken-hearted Healer standing yards away. AJ was torn between not wanting to leave them alone with Robert and not wanting to witness the reunion. His brain outweighed his ego and he forced his way back to the B&B and up to his room. When he reached the window, the three were still entwined in the hug.
“Like a freakin’ train wreck,” he muttered, his brazen hands gripping his hips as he looked down from his perch.
“What is?” He heard Max’s voice from the doorway and without thinking waved him in.
“See for yourself.” He motioned down to the group.
“Who’s that?” Max asked, shoving a handful of peanuts into his mouth, blatantly unaware of the level of AJ’s hostility towards the fresh circumstances.
“Robert.”
“As in Robert-Robert?”
“The one and only.”
“And she didn’t hit him?”
“That’s exactly what I thought. It always seemed like she was pissed at him. He left her with a newborn – and he comes home how many years later to this?” AJ pointed in exasperation at the reunion below.
“I imagine she still is,” Max said, taking another handful of peanuts from the bag. “But having a child is a bond that can shelve a lot of other feelings. For a while at least.”
“Guess that’s my sign.”
“Your sign for what?”
“That’s it’s time to go. She doesn’t need me around if she has someone else to protect her.”
“You’re seriously going to leave?”
“Why not Max? Why stay here?”
“Because this is a home for you, kid! I don’t think you should. I know I don’t have my gift anymore, but something about this guy doesn’t feel right. And look around you – Helen, Matthew. Me. Even Rose and Addie – they have become your family.”
“And only a fraction of this so called family even remembers me. And this,” he said, waving his hand at the situation in front of them outside the window, “is a bit more than even I can handle. I’m not a glutton for punishment Max.”
“You don’t even know how it’s going to play out, so why the rush? He walked out on her, as you pointed out. Maybe when the shock of his arrival back to town wears off, she won’t be so apt to have him in her life.”
“Does it matter how it plays out, Max? Really? Because whether or not this jerk stays or leaves, whether or not she takes him back into her life or not, I can’t have her. I can’t be with her. And I guess I can thank you for that.”
The hurt smeared across Max’s face instantly and his head fell in shame of having let down his friend. He let the regret come forward full force and for the first time felt as if perhaps he had done the wrong thing by taking the fall and taking the route that pulled Addie away from AJ.
“Listen, Max, I’m sorry,” AJ said, his hands running forcefully through his hair as he tried to sort out the throng of emotions running through his veins. “It’s just a lot. I feel like I’ve lost everything. I want to be grateful that I’ve been chosen for this tremendous honor, chosen to serve the world with this gift. But looking at her,” he paused, looking out the window, “honestly, you understand what I’m feeling. You’ve been here before. You’ve felt what it was like to lose someone. Imagine… just imagine if instead of losing her to death, you’d lost her because you simply couldn’t have her. And then had to watch her every day for the rest of her life.”
Max placed his hand on AJ’s shoulder as the younger Healer attempted to hold back the tears.
“I know, son, I know … If I could take it all back, everything I said, I would. I would do it so you could have her. But I can’t my friend.”
They both turned their gaze out the window, staring at the group down below still completely wrapped around each other.
“I know you would Max. I know. I won’t leave tonight, I promise. I just can’t swear to you I’ll stay. What I feel for that girl is so strong. I knew I’d have a hard time watching her around anyone else. I figured months or a year down the road I might have to watch her date. But this guy showing up this quickly? It’s a bit much. I didn’t know it would be this hard for me. It feels as though there is actually a vice on my heart, squeezing it tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe.”
Max patted AJ’s shoulder a few times. He still wasn’t sure it was a good idea to hug his friend, considering all that had happened. A couple strong pats would be enough to show he was there. He left AJ still staring out the window and closed the door tightly behind him.
“Rose, why don’t you go get Robert … I mean, your Daddy, something to drink,” Addie stammered, prying Rose off of Robert’s body.
It took all of her strength, seeing as how the little girl wanted to make up for many years of lost time in one giant hug. Once on the ground, Rose bolted for the door to the house.
“Gram!” she screamed.
Addie looked long and hard at Robert, both housing an extremely uncomfortable stare on their faces.
“Where? How? I have a thousand questions and don’t know which one to pull out of the air first! Where the hell have you been?” Addie said, the anger now surging past the want, need, and surprise she had been feeling for the last twenty minutes. “Better yet, where the hell did you go?”
“Addie.”
“Don’t Addie me! Where the hell did you go when you decided to walk out on your family, Robert? You owe me that! You owe me an explanation of where you’ve been all this time, what you’ve been doing.”
“I do, I know that. I just … I can’t do it with Rose around. I can’t talk about it now. Can we talk about it later?”
“Talk about it later? You come back from vacation or the dead or wherever you’ve been hiding over the years and you want me to just accept that you’re here? Smile and pretend, even for Rose’s sake, that all is forgiven and we’re one big, happy family? Let you be around my daughter.”
“Our daughter,” he corrected, unable to stop the words.
“My daughter,” she countered back, getting up in his face as closely as she could. “My daughter. You might be a biological counterpart of hers, but you gave up the right to call her yours when you looked at her elegant, perfect little face and still drove away from us. You walked away from us. No, you raced away from us and didn’t even try and explain before you went. You had nine months to run and you wait until you actually see her to go. And all these years, I’ve still been making you out to be a hero, Robert, so that little girl in there doesn’t ever have to feel like her daddy didn’t want her.”
“Is that guy what this is about? The one who was eavesdropping over there and is now watching us from the window like I can’t feel his eyes boring holes into me? Did he adopt her or something? Is he playing Daddy to her?”
Addie’s eyes shot up to AJ’s window and for a moment, she felt like begging him to come down and rescue her. She stepped forward, the smell of pure hatred glowing on her skin and palpable enough to force Robert back a few steps and into the warm metal side of his truck. Addie found a slight bit of comfort knowing
AJ was watching her.
“That man has nothing to do with anything,” she growled, raising a finger to his chest and pushing. “The only thing I care about in this whole world is that four-and-a-half feet of perfect up there in that house. She has spent her entire life asking me where her Daddy was as I made up excuse after excuse, telling her how much you loved her, but how you just had to be away. She’s kissed your picture goodnight every single night after she’s said her prayers – prayers I know were asking for you to come home.”
She stepped back so that he could take in her full face, see every inch of protection and fury written across it.
“Now you listen here, stranger, and you listen close,” she growled. “I can’t deny that every inch of me wants to wrap itself in your arms and pretend that you never, ever left because all I’ve dreamt about for years is you coming home to me and telling me it was all some big mistake and that you love me. But I’ll be damned if I will let anyone hurt that little girl, so if you don’t plan on staying around and helping to raise her – if you plan on hightailing it out of town in a couple days – then I suggest you just get going now and save us the time and trouble. I will not let you do to her what you did to me – especially not when it can become an actual memory for her now. I’d sooner kill you.”
Somehow, he didn’t think she was kidding.
“Addie, I swear to you, I’m not here to hurt anyone. Especially not her. I will explain where I’ve been. I promise. I just can’t do it in front of her. Give me some time. You might not forgive me, but I owe it to you all to make something better out of my life and something better for her. To give her a better life.”
“Her life is just fine,” Addie snarled at him. “I’ve done one hell of a job raising her on my own with a little help from Gram, who I’m sure will be oh-so-thrilled that her almost grandson-in-law is back from his years of abandonment.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, I didn’t,” the faltering of his voice giving a sense of satisfaction to Addie. She liked seeing him uncomfortable and even more so, she enjoyed being able to cause that discomfort. “I can see you’ve done a great job raising her. She’s the spitting image of you. I only meant that I should be a part of her life, too. I should give her a father. I know what it was like for you growing up. I can’t do that to her.”
“And that’s all?”
“And I owe you. You might not be able to forgive me, but hopefully you can allow me to just be a part of your life in whatever way you deem okay. That’s all I want.”
“A small piece is all you’re gonna get,” she fired back, heading into the house with the virtual stranger following not far behind.
On the stairs, she glanced back up at AJ’s window and saw him staring down at her. He didn’t care if she saw him. It was his way of letting her know he had her back. And he had thoroughly enjoyed seeing her verbally attacking Robert.
15 NEW LIFE
“AJ!” the high-pitched scream came from across the yard. “AJ! I need your help!”
The shovel dropped from his dirty hands – or more accurately, he threw it – as he leapt in the direction of Rose’s voice. He dropped to his knees as she approached with her tiny hands shielding something within their grip. Neither noticed the dirt covering his fingers from a long day’s work tilling soil as he gently placed his hands under hers to capture whatever she held. Glimpses of the little girl had been few and far between in the last couple days as she whittled away the time catching up with her father. AJ relished in her petite request for help.
“I found him lying out near the fields,” she whispered, sadness and worry evident in her voice. “He’s barely moving. Do you think he’s going to die?”
“Shhhhh,” he whispered back as their eyes locked.
He’d never had this type of conversation with a child; a conversation about death. At least not a child who didn’t already know who he was or what their own future held. Looking at the injured bird, he assessed the situation.
His hands softly held the immobile red-winged blackbird, a bird fiercely protective of its nest. The left wing was obviously broken, the upper half bending at a ninety degree angle. If a bird could recover from such an injury, he wasn’t sure. He briefly wished that his gift extended past humans and onto animals.
“Do you know what feathers represent?” he asked her in an attempt to distract from the situation at hand.
“Feathers? I don’t know. Flying?”
He smiled. “Much more than flying, Rose. Max taught me that feathers symbolize trust, honor, strength, wisdom, power, and freedom.”
“What’s symbolize?” she asked with total seriousness. He sometimes forgot how young she was because she possessed such an old soul.
“It means, what people think of when they see one. Max spent a lot of time with his Native American ancestors, learning about their customs and rituals. He learned a lot about their beliefs, too. I’ve been lucky enough to learn some of that from him.”
“So the feathers mean something important?”
“To Native Americans they do. When someone gave a Native American a feather, it was to be worn and shown as a symbol of pride.”
“Does that mean this bird is strong?”
“And free and wise. Birds are beautiful animals, don’t you think?”
“I do!” she smiled, looking down again into his hands. “I’m going to call him Benjamin. Do you think he’ll survive?”
“I can’t promise you that, Rose, but we can try and do everything we can to make him comfortable. Why don’t you hold him a second while I run into the house and see if there’s anything we can put him in so he can rest?”
She cupped her hands with the innocence of a hopeful child and AJ slid the injured bird carefully into her palms before heading up towards the house. Benjamin. Odd that she had pulled that name out of nowhere.
Rose examined the animal, calmly whispering a song to the disheveled being in order to bring some comfort his way. AJ watched from the doorway after finding an old shoe box, observing the little girl he wanted to protect as she tried to wish the bird better again.
“I found this,” he called, bounding down the stairs and over to the grass where Rose had situated herself.
He set the box on the ground and arranged the washcloth Helen had given him inside of it, creating a soft bed for the robin. As he reached his hands out and placed them gently under Rose’s to let her slide the bird back over for placement in the new, temporary home, AJ jumped as the robin took off from his embrace into the sky at a steady pace, gaining momentum and height with each stroke of the wings. Maybe, he thought, his newfound strength did indeed extend to places it hadn’t before.
Rose smiled ear to ear, giddy at the sudden recovery of the bird. She clasped her hands together and looked from the bird to AJ and back again as though she’d just been handed a dozen pink cupcakes.
“I guess feathers do mean strength,” she laughed, completely forgetting the fear she’d had only moments ago when she thought her new friend wouldn’t survive. “Does this mean Benjamin will be okay?”
“I guess it does.” AJ sat in stunned silence as he watched the perfectly straight wing move up and down, carrying the bird further and further away. “Why did you name him that? Benjamin?”
“I don’t know. I like that name.”
“Where have you heard it before?” AJ kept his eyes on her, curious as to how she would remember the Healer’s name. No one else in town had the name Benjamin.
“When Benjamin was there with you and Mom, the day Gram and I came home.”
“You remember him?”
“Yeah,” she said in a know-it-all tone. “He was funny.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah. He sounded funny. The way he talks. It doesn’t sound like how we talk. He said he’d see me again soon.”
“What else did he say?” AJ said while sitting up a bit straighter, his senses suddenly on high alert.
The thought of Benjamin returning fr
ightened him since there would only be one reason for the Healer to return – to strip Addie’s memory again or to remove AJ’s power.
“Nothing.”
Rose didn’t even notice the change in AJ, her attention focused only on the bird’s flight across the sky. The sun was beginning to set on the horizon and the bird’s dark outline stood in stark contrast to the pink and purple hues painted across the skyline.
“What else do you remember?” AJ continued. She wasn’t supposed to remember anything.
“Everything.”
“Does your mom know?”
“No,” Rose replied, turning her gaze back to his.
“Why haven’t you told her?”
“She’s so sad about not being able to remember things. I didn’t want to make her feel bad.”
Her eyes suddenly grew larger and she bit her lower lip; a spitting image of her mother when there was something on her mind.
“Is that lying?”
He knew the thought of lying to her mom upset her and obviously hadn’t occurred to her before.
“No Rose, that’s not lying. That’s being kind,” he said, soothing out the concern from his face to ease her mind. “So you remember me? You remember when I came to town?”
“Yes,” she smiled as she stood up. “I remember everything since you came. Mom will, too.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” AJ stood up as well, wiping his hands on his shorts and resting them on his hips as he smiled at the miniature replica of the woman he loved and knew he’d never be able to call his.
“She will,” Rose replied. She started to run back to the house. “Just like the bird remembered how to fly. She just needs some time and some help. She needs some feathers in her life!”
A girl that young should not have that wisdom he thought, watching her dance across the lush green grass and up onto her porch.
And anyone that Benjamin had touched shouldn’t remember anything at all.
16 PLAYING HOUSE