Heart and Home

by Jennifer Melzer

  “I’d pay for her services,” I chimed in, and the three of us held up the playful banter all the way back to their house.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After tucking her boys into bed, Becky sauntered back into the den and sighed, flopping into the seat at the computer beside me. She leaned over my shoulder and surveyed the website I was browsing over, “Any luck?”

  “Not really,” I took my hand off the mouse and leaned back until the chair squeaked. “There was this one thing I was reading, about spirits emitting these high electromagnetic frequencies and people who are sensitive to that sort of thing experiencing dizziness and even fainting.”

  “That’s right,” she stopped herself, brow furrowed. “I forgot about you fainting that day. Do you think she was there that day? At the cemetery, I mean.”

  The thought sent chills down the backs of my arms, “I don’t know. One minute I was standing there and Dad went to throw dirt on the casket. After that I don’t know, I just couldn’t deal with it. My face felt numb and my knees started shaking and next thing I know, I was on the ground looking up at Troy.”

  “That’s right,” Becky nodded. “Troy to the rescue. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”

  “Weird how?” I shrugged my shoulder. “Lottie Kepner and my mom were friends. Her chair was right beside Dad, and Troy was one of the pallbearers.”

  “Well, maybe your mom is trying to tell you that you and Troy are meant to be together.”

  I rolled my head along my shoulders, laughing all the way, “Becky, not everything is about Troy and me.”

  She nudged me with her elbow, “Hey, look at this.”

  I lowered my gaze back to the computer screen and scanned the headline of the page she was on. “When a Spirit Lingers,” I said out loud.

  “It says here that sometimes the soul lingers if there is unfinished business or they have a message they weren’t able to deliver while they were still alive,” Becky traced her finger across the screen as she read over the words. “So you were probably right about her trying to tell you something.”

  “But what is she trying to tell me?”

  Becky shrugged her shoulders and then leaned in to read the remainder of the passage. “You said she was mouthing something to you the night you saw her at the top of the stairs, but you couldn’t make out the words, right?”

  “Exactly, and that morning I woke up and felt like she was there with me, she was talking to me,” I remembered. “It was this thing she used to do when I was a little girl, come in and sit beside my bed while I was asleep. A couple of times she caught me still awake, but I pretended to be asleep anyway.”

  “Think hard, Janice,” she urged me. “Think hard and try to remember what she said to you just before you woke up.”

  I closed my eyes, all the while shaking my head, “Something about it being painful,” I remembered. “That even though it was painful, it was my path.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh?” I looked toward her for some kind hint. “Does that mean something to you?”

  “No, you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Becky’s hopeless breath matched my own, and for a long moment neither of us knew what more there was to say. The sound of the television filtered out from the other room as the furnace kicked on. Marty started to snore and the two of us just looked at each other before bursting into giggles, covering our mouths with our hands to keep from disturbing her sleeping husband.

  “I swear, sometimes you’d think I was married to a lumberjack,” she snorted, drawing her hand away.

  “How do you sleep at night?”

  “It’s not as bad as when he falls asleep on the couch sitting up,” she said. “Mostly it’s just a low rumble.”

  “Obviously it’s bed time,” I glanced behind us for a clock. “What time is it anyway?”

  She zoomed in on the computer, “It’s quarter ‘til ten.”

  “I should probably get going,” I noted. “Get there a little early…”

  “So what could the two of you possibly have planned for so late on a Friday night?” She wagged her eyebrows at me.

  I could feel my face warming with the prospective night ahead, “No plans.”

  “No plans,” she offered a smug grin. “Now aren’t you glad I made you come out with me and the girls Tuesday night?”

  “I was glad before he showed up,” I told her. “And besides, I still owe you for that whole thing. Don’t think for a minute I’ve forgotten about it.”

  “I’m still hoping you remember me when you’re planning your wedding,” she stuck out her tongue and ducked away as I raised my hand to playfully slap her. “I’m sorry we didn’t find anything else about this stuff with your mom. Maybe it really would be a good idea to go see a psychic or a medium or something. I can talk to Lydia.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I nodded. “But like I said the before, don’t mention the situation. I feel crazy enough as it is just talking to you about it, especially after my dad gave me the nuthouse treatment. The last thing I want is for some perfectly nice woman I barely know to think I’m a loony.”

  “You’re not a loony, Janice,” Becky pushed her chair away from the computer. “Things like this happen all the time. Look, the subject alone produced over a million results on Google. Apparently, a lot of people go through this.”

  “I guess,” I shrugged. “I just wish someone else would see or hear something. I mean, I don’t want my dad all freaked out, but it’d be nice to know I’m not alone.”

  “Maybe you are alone in it because you’re the reason she’s still here.”

  “Maybe.”

  It gave me a lot to think about, and with a little more than half an hour to kill before I was supposed to meet Troy, I decided to take a drive to think things over and maybe clear my head. The streets of Sonesville, which had once been as mundane and familiar as dragging a tin cup along my own prison bars, seemed different somehow. The houses themselves were more personal, almost refreshing compared to the sterile high-rise and cramped city housing I had grown accustomed to in Pittsburgh. There were no gates closed over the shops at five o’clock, and the huddled shadows walking down the sidewalk on Main Street weren’t some violent gang set out to highjack or rob, but a group of teenagers walking home from the Friday night dance at the high school.

  I wasn’t naive. Danger in places like Sonesville was often far more devastating than city tragedies. People in small towns were more relaxed, so when disasters hit, they hit hard and the whole community took the blow. Like when that little girl was snatched right out of her bed the summer I worked at the Sonesville Standard, the entire town spent days searching the surrounding fields and woods for her body. In Pittsburgh it seemed like those sort of things happened every day and people were just accustomed to it.

  At eighteen, city life after spending my whole life as a country mouse was like living on the edge. Every walk to the bus stop, every sound in the night was a thrill, but over time the thrill faded and paranoia started to set in. I reached the terrifying stage that required a can of pepper spray and a stun gun for me to feel safe leaving my apartment.

  And driving, well that was a luxury I hardly got to enjoy. Despite the fact that I had a perfectly good car, I had very little time to drive into Butler County or any of the other neighboring towns with a homier atmosphere. All that time. All those refusals to ever set foot in Sonesville again. Had it just been pride holding me back? Now that I’d returned I couldn’t even remember the sole force driving me out all those years ago.

  Sure, everyone was in your business. It got under my skin to hear that Troy and I going to the movies was the water cooler topic at my father’s place of employment. And Troy’s story about his father’s backward notion that a farmer’s son didn’t need an education just so long as both of his hands worked burned me up inside. Church on Sundays and pot luck socials were a nightmare growing up, but on the other hand the very same community that liked to gather w
ere there one hundred percent to celebrate my mother’s life after she’d passed.

  If I died in the city, would anyone even care?

  I could almost hear my dad’s voice stirring in the back of my mind, “You think too much, Jannie.”

  Maybe he was right, but if I didn’t think about any of it, would I just keep going through the motions over and over again? Then I had to ask myself whether or not Troy was right, and my whole change of heart about Sonesville was a false spark of confused emotion surrounding my mother’s death? What if I did decide to move back and it turned out that it was no better than living in the city?

  I crawled through Sonesville street by street, passing the Five and Dime, Walters Auto Supplies, the feed store, the abandoned Standard building, feeling nostalgic and even a little homesick until I finally came out onto the country stretch of interstate that led to the Kepner farm. There was a surge of traffic that passed me by that must have come from the hayride, and when I was two miles out the road I slammed on the breaks to avoid a troupe of deer taking their time crossing. While my heart drummed wildly with the adrenaline of near accident, I weighed the odds of nearly trampling a herd of deer in the city and chalked one mark into Pittsburgh’s corner.

  Chapter Twenty

  I finally pulled into the field across from the hayride and parked beside Troy’s pick-up truck. I walked across the road, into the other field as a dwindling crowd crossed the road to their cars. The grind of tractor engine sputtered up ahead, and as I approached the waiting area one of the ticket takers announced, “I’m sorry, ma’am. The tractor’s on its last run tonight.”

  The guy beside her added, “They left about five minutes ago.”

  “That’s okay,” I crossed my arms and drew my sweater tight against the frigid wind that picked up since I’d left Becky’s. It whistled through the dry stalks of corn, which swayed and danced as if under some spell. “I’m waiting for Troy.”

  “Oh, hi there. I’m Ernie,” the guy nodded. “You must be Janice.” He extended a hand to me. “Troy said you were coming.”

  “Hi,” I took his hand. “You must be Troy’s cousin.”

  “Yeah,” he tilted his head and grinned as he pumped my hand. “Ernie Kepner. It’s real nice to meet you finally. As much as he’s talked about you this last week or so, it’s like I already know you.”

  “Wow,” heat rushed into my face. “He talks about me that much?”

  “Don’t tell him I said so,” Ernie let go of my hand and stepped back. He and Troy couldn’t have been any more different if they were day and night. Where Troy was tall, blonde and built like a linebacker, Ernie was medium height and stocky with brown hair and grey eyes. When he grinned, however, I saw the relation immediately. “God, he’ll kick my ass if he finds out I told you that.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” I laughed.

  “Janice? Janice McCarty?” Another man pushed through from the back of the small group. “I heard you were back in town. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but we went to school together.”

  I studied him briefly, but nothing came to mind, “I’m sorry.”

  “Mrs. Herman’s biology class.” He said. “Dan Banister. I used to sit behind you.”

  “Oh yeah,” I hoped the vacancy in my eyes wasn’t as obvious as it felt. “How are you?”

  Dan started to fill me in on his life since high school and the others in the group stood around us, shuffling restlessly while we talked. Maybe I was paranoid, but some of the girls, who looked like they were fresh out of high school, shot daggers at me. I wondered how many of them had some kind of crush on Troy and were jealous that I came to meet him, and then thought about how conceited that sounded inside my own head. It was funny just how quickly the jealousy set in, and though I’d never really considered myself a possessive person, there was something different about Troy that made me want to make him all my own.

  When he finally did come back around and they let the last load of guests unload, it was chaos. I stood along the sidelines hugging my sweater tighter while the wind whipped my hair against my face. I watched Troy turn the tractor around and park it while the others finished last minute clean-up.

  Troy glanced over at me and held his hand up to let me know he was on his way as he stopped to talk to Ernie. They laughed and then Ernie nodded, to which Troy clapped him on the back and then started toward me again. He only paused to call back over his shoulder, laughing again as he approached and held his hands out to take mine. He drew me in close, pausing in mid-sway to lean in and taste my waiting kiss.

  “Mm,” he sighed against my kiss, and then drew back. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Ready when you are.”

  We walked hand-in-hand across the street, and then I followed him more than a half-mile up the road before we actually turned into the long, winding driveway. We both parked in front of the garage, which sat adjacent to the gray farmhouse with a beautiful wraparound porch. The house itself was dark, save for the motion-censor activated porch light that kicked on as Troy pulled in, and though he had his own apartment, I still wondered what his mother might think if she knew I was there. Would she stop trying to fatten me up, think less of me for not playing the game the old fashioned way? Or what if she was accustomed to him bringing women home? Slow tendrils of jealousy snaked around my curiosity, stifling the eagerness of my mood. Surely he’d dated since high school, but how often, and how many of them did I know?

  I drew in a deep breath as we walked around to the staircase, which was located on the furthest side from the house. Troy flipped on an outdoor light switch before we climbed toward the landing. The breath relaxed the tension, and I let any thoughts about his life before me slip away as I watched the snug fit of his jeans hike the staircase. I waited while he unlocked the door, holding my sweater tighter around me as the wind whipped through us. I glanced out into the woods behind us, the depth of the forest even right outside his backdoor completely amazing after all that time in the city.

  He led me inside and turned off the outside light behind us, switching on the kitchen light before ushering me into the small room. Despite its size, it was fully equipped with stainless steel appliances and handcrafted cabinetry. I paused at the small dining table, which also appeared to be handcrafted. There were neat stacks of paperwork and a face down copy of a John Saul book he’d obviously taken out of the local library.

  “Don’t mind the mess,” he begged, and when he meant mess, really it was the occasional evidence that when he was not working himself to death out in the field, he liked to sleep, occasionally read and keep his apartment clean.

  “Mess?”

  I followed him through to the living room, where instead of finding the bachelor signature mismatched furniture that looked more comfortable than it did pretty, I discovered the room was very modern in that it took its shape and size into accord. The furniture set seemed boxy and stout, shapes designed to fit together comfortably while utilizing the minimal space. The end tables were glass and the lamps on them stout and boxy. There were several framed black and white photographs of eccentric building designs displayed on the walls.

  “That is the temple at Ronchamp,” he said when I paused and tilted my head to study the first photo. “And that one is the Villa Savoye.”

  “Oh,” I nodded, still completely unfamiliar.

  “Both designed by Le Corbusier, a modern architect.” He went on to add, “The furniture is actually based on his design too, though I slightly altered it myself to slim it down.”

  “You designed your own furniture?”

  “Yeah,” he offered a modest shrug. “Do you want a drink or something? A beer, some iced-tea?”

  I shook my head, the fluttering parade of wings a-flight once more in my stomach. “No thanks.”

  I drew in and pretended to look over his extensive collection of DVDs while he disappeared back into the short hallway and turned on a light. There were horror movies mixed in with action, de
finitely a guy’s collection, I thought.

  “This is a pretty nice place,” I called over my shoulder.

  “My dad used to rent it out to the farmhands when I was a kid,” he called from the other room. “I think Mom made me move out here so I didn’t feel so stuck after I came back. Plus it kept me from tearing her house apart and putting it back together piece by piece.”

  “It doesn’t feel small,” I admitted. “It’s kind of cozy, actually.”

  “It’s pretty small,” he came out of the room wearing a clean blue t-shirt. “You’ve pretty much already had the grand tour, and I’ll bet you didn’t even know it.”

  “Do you think your mom will mind? You know,” I paused and pretended to scan the back of a DVD I’d picked up, “that I’m here, I mean?”

  “I am a grown man,” he crossed his arms, accentuating the broadness of his shoulders.

  I put the DVD back on the shelf and started toward him, reaching out to snag his shirt and draw him into me. “There’s no debate there,” I purred, lifting my gaze to meet with his. “I guess I just don’t want her to think… well I don’t know what I don’t want her to think, never mind.”

  “That really gets to you, doesn’t it?” He leaned back to get a good look at my face. “What other people think?”

  “No,” I insisted.

  “Yes, it does,” his mouth twitched into a playful grin. “That’s why you ran away to the big city, isn’t it? So people couldn’t talk about you?”

  “No, I ran off to the big city because I thought there was opportunity there,” I answered truthfully. “And so people couldn’t talk about me.”

  He curled his fingers through the front belt loops on my jeans and swayed my hips into his, “And now you make a living talking about other people,” he noted, his lips hovering over mine.

  “That’s different,” I braced his arms with my hands for fear of losing my balance and then lifted my arms around his neck. “I don’t gossip about people, I report on major events.”