Heart and Home

by Jennifer Melzer

  “Sounds good. I really appreciate you taking time out of contract to let me look around.”

  When she smiled at me, there was a moment that I actually felt guilty for all the negative thoughts I’d had about her since I came back to town. It was probably one of the only times I’d ever seen sincerity in her face. She only made it worse when she said, “It’d be really great to have someone who knows what they’re doing get that paper back up and running again. Who knows,” she shrugged, starting toward her car, “maybe you’ll give me a job someday. I always did like to write.”

  “Maybe,” I nodded, genuinely grinning after her.

  She waved one last time before getting into her car and starting up the engine. She’d been all business, not asking a single personal question or trying to goad me as she’d done the last time I saw her, but then maybe she’d felt like she had something to prove to me. Maybe that was how she’d always felt, and she’d just gone about proving herself in all the wrong ways. I still didn’t like how she’d treated Becky at my mom’s wake, but maybe there was something human inside her after all.

  I stood on the sidewalk for at least ten minutes after she’d pulled away from the curb, listening to the cars drive by and staring up at that building. Even as an intern, I’d never imagined that place would be my future, but now it seemed right, as if the Sonesville Standard was always where I’d end up. I smiled to myself upon realizing that, glanced over at the marquis as I walked to my car and saw once again someone changed the letters on the sign.

  This time they read: U CAN DO IT.

  I didn’t know who the smart aleck was changing that sign every few days, but I swore they had some kind of insight into the inner-workings of my mind ever since that day I’d come home to lay my mother to rest. It was probably just kids causing trouble, but I felt strangely comforted by the confidence those words instilled in me.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Frozen earth crunched beneath my bare feet, but I felt no cold as I treaded through the long scars of the harvested field. The snow was thick as a blizzard swarming in the wind all around, but purpose drove me onward, and I held my arm against my face to keep my vision clear. In the distance I could make out a shadow, long tendrils of auburn hair stark against the white wind.

  Like me she held up one arm against her face so she could see against the storm.

  “Janice?” Her voice was like a trumpet sounding over the howling storm.

  “Mom?” I waded through the snow, which soaked into and clung to my nightgown in icy clumps. I knew that logically I should have been freezing, but my entire body was warmed by the simple notion of her presence.

  “Here,” she called out. “I’m here.”

  It was like I stepped into a bubble once I drew near her. The snow raged on outside of us, and the wind was no more than a distant wail calling out to me. Her long hair hung loosely over her shoulders, and when she lifted her face to look at me it was as if all of her was aglow with golden light.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said, reaching out a hand to her.

  She lifted her fingers to mine, and for a long moment we stood there hand to hand as if an invisible wall stood between us. “I couldn’t leave,” she told me. “Not when there was so much uncertainty, when you had so much doubt.”

  “But I know now,” I assured her.

  Her face darkened with doubt as she asked, “And you’re sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

  She nodded then, and clamped her fingers down gently over mine so that we stood holding hands for a moment.

  “I’ll be with you always.”

  “I know,” I leaned in and touched my lips to her cheek. “But don’t worry. We’ll be okay.”

  Serenity brought light to her face, and as the light itself grew brighter against the blizzard of a world turned white, she began to fade until I stood there alone with the wind and snow swirling madly all around.

  I sat upright with a gasp, the bedroom grey with the coming dawn.

  I leaned over and pulled back the curtain to discover another storm swept in overnight and left the streets white in its wake. It was Christmas morning, the first Christmas of my entire life without my mother. That realization brought snippets of dream memory rushing into my consciousness, and while I should have felt sad at her absence from our lives a part of me was certain she was there with me.

  She would always be there with me.

  The day unfolded slowly, with Dad and me awkwardly exchanging gifts while Christmas music jingled from the speakers surrounding the television. My mother had done quite a bit of shopping in the months before she passed, and it felt strange opening her gifts without her there watching over me. She always put special thought and meaning into everything she did, and so my father, while glad to have passed on what she’d wanted me to have, wasn’t quite sure how to comment.

  Troy and Lottie arrived just after noon, bringing more gifts for everyone to open, and with the two of them there the awkward emptiness of the house didn’t feel so overpowering. I actually started to feel comfortable, less burdened by the absence of the only woman in the world I would have even considered coming home for just a few months ago.

  I slipped into the kitchen to check on the ham and Troy snuck in behind me. He wrapped me in his arms and drew my back against his chest, leaning down to whisper, “How are you holding out today?”

  “I’m doing okay.” I nodded, and as unexpected as that seemed, it was true. I wasn’t a blubbering wreck, which was more than I thought I’d be when I thought about Christmas two months earlier.

  “I have another gift for you, but it’s not here.”

  “You already gave me more than I ever could have asked for,” I insisted, turning into him and draping my arms around his neck. “You didn’t have to get me anything else.”

  “Well, this gift is a little different,” He said. “Maybe after dinner you can come out to the house with me.”

  “Okay,” I nodded.

  All through dinner my curiosity distracted me, which in the end was probably a good thing as it kept me from focusing on my mother. I had been flashing through that dream of her all day and remembering what Diana said about having to let her go. Had my telling her we would be okay in that dream signaled her release? Was she gone from us now, or would my calling out in fear draw her quickly back to my side?

  I couldn’t deny there was a selfish part of me that longed to test my theory, but I held back and focused on making my father smile as often as possible through dinner.

  As I was clearing the dishes away from the table, Troy took my hands and told me to let it be for a little while.

  “Janice and I are going for a ride,” he announced, drawing me by the hands into the living room where Dad and Lottie settled in to watch “The Bells of St. Mary’s” with Bing Crosby.

  “Be careful,” Dad called as Troy helped me into my coat. “You know with the holidays the road crews probably did a half-ass job cleaning up today.”

  “We’ll be fine, Dad,” I promised.

  Outside into the crisp afternoon, I followed Troy to his truck making deliberate puffs with my breath while he cleaned off the windshield from the last light layer of fresh snow that fell during dinner. Safely nestled into the cab of his truck, I drew my seatbelt across my lap and said, “Today has been the most bizarre day of my life.”

  “How come? I thought you said you were doing okay.”

  “No, I am doing okay.” I shook my head as he turned out of the alley. “I don’t know. I guess mostly it’s just weird, my mom not being here. It’s not bad, just different, you know?”

  “Holidays are tough,” he noted. “The first two Christmases after my dad died were just off, but these last couple years we’ve found the spirit again.”

  “That’s what it’s like,” I agreed. “Like it’s all off somehow. And I don’t think I noticed it so much at Thanksgiving because they didn’t make as big of deal out of it as t
hey did Christmas. Honestly the last two Thanksgivings I spent at my former boss’s house, but Christmas they came to see me every year. They’d drive all morning to get there before noon. Sometimes they would come the night before and my mom would cook.”

  “I bet it felt weird being back here for Christmas.”

  “For the first time in eight years,” I laughed. “Nothing felt real when I woke up this morning, and honestly, if you’d asked me last year if I’d ever come back here for Christmas, much less to live, my answer would have been only for her.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, now it’s all different, isn’t it?” I smirked across the truck playfully, and he grinned over at me.

  “Well, here’s hoping what I have to show you makes up for it a little.”

  “Are you going to let me in on this little secret of yours?” I asked, turning my gaze away from the grayed bank of snow lining the side of the road.

  “And give away the surprise?” Troy chuckled, turning to glance over at me with a sparkle in his eyes that made me want to crawl into his lap and nibble his lips.

  He didn’t say anything else to tempt me, not even when I asked him for a hint about what he’d kept at the house that he couldn’t bring with him. He only shook his head and said, “You’ll see.”

  It was a longer ride than usual to the Kepner farm, on account of the roads being a little slick, but when we finally arrived he hopped out of the truck with a spring in his step and led me toward the back door. I didn’t have to wait on the porch step while he unlocked. Nobody locked their doors in Sonesville, and while that thought should have disturbed me after eight years in the city, it was actually kind of refreshing to know there was no need. It was a place for families, where, if I actually had children, I would be happy to raise them.

  There weren’t too many places in the world like that anymore.

  I glanced up at Troy as he pushed through the door and reached back for my hand, tangling our fingers together before tugging me inside, and thought again about our future together. What our children might look like, what kind of parents we would be.

  “Where’s this surprise of yours?”

  “Follow me.”

  He started up the staircase, and I followed in his shadow, taking in parts of the house I’d never seen before. It was rustic, but comfortable, the kind of place I could easily see myself wandering through in slippers in the middle of the night. That realization gave me a moment’s pause, the tingling in my stomach growing tighter as I came to understand exactly what that meant. It could be years before we even got to that stage in our relationship, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be that long.

  I was committed to the idea of my future, not just with Troy, but in the town I’d spent so much of my life fighting to get away from. I didn’t know what I was going to do there, how I was going to make my way when opportunity felt millions of miles away, but it didn’t matter. I would make it work and I would be happy. That was all there was to it.

  Leading me back through the hallway, Troy ducked in through the master bedroom, which was littered with boxes as if it had been undergoing renovations. I stopped next to the bed, which showed clear signs of having been slept in, and crossed my arms as he paused in front of a door near the conjoined bathroom.

  “Did you move into the house?” I asked, squinting curiously around the mess.

  He shrugged noncommittally and grinned. “I’ve been slowly making the transition. Come on. Up here.”

  Opening the door and flipping on the light switch, I could see even from where I was standing that it wound upward into the attic. I hesitated for a moment, and then felt my feet began to move almost without my urging. I was soon standing on the bottom stair, breathing in the distinct scent of fresh paint. I felt my brow furrow, and began taking the steps one at a time, glancing up occasionally to see Troy already at the top of the stairs and grinning down at me.

  I don’t know what I expected of an old attic, or why he was taking me up there. Truth be told I hadn’t thought much about it at all since he’d mentioned renovating the attic and turning it into an office for me before the move home. I suppose I thought it would be dark and cramped, stuffy and smelling like moth balls and old things taken up there and forgotten about by Troy’s grandparents almost a century earlier.

  I hadn’t noticed walking up the stairs, but my heart was in my throat, pulsing and aching with unexpected emotion. The attic was bright and spacious, the pale yellow walls bare and waiting for someone to come along and fill them with inspirational posters and a corkboard filled with ideas. There were half a dozen bookshelves lining the west wall and a counter space hovering over a dorm-sized refrigerator. A coffee pot was already plugged into the wall on that counter, just begging to be filled up and turned on.

  “You…” My gaze landed on the bare desk, lining the far wall beside a window overlooking the snow-laden fields. Inspiration simply longing to be put on the page seemed to linger in the air, making it feel even more impossible than before to breathe. “You did this for me?”

  “I know we haven’t made the decision to actually move in together yet, and I don’t want to rush you into anything, but once I got the bug to do this, I don’t know… I couldn’t stop myself. It felt like the right thing to do. I wanted you to have a place in this house that felt like home to you.”

  “Troy…” I faltered, shaking my head in awe. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.” He was still smiling, a gesture that promised there really was no pressure for us to move in together. “I just thought… I don’t know, even if you don’t want to move in for a few months, it’d be nice for you to have someplace you to get away from it all and do what it is you want. Your own office, or whatever you want to make of it. Who knows, maybe you’ll even write a novel up here one day, or something.”

  “This… this is so sweet, I don’t even know what to say.” I took a step toward him, feeling a little flustered, but not so much that I wasn’t able to put my arms around him and squeeze. “Thank you.”

  His chin brushed against my face, the delicate scruff of facial hair tickling and sending shivers rippling through me. “There’s something else too.”

  “More than this?” I balked in disbelief, withdrawing from his arms to look up at him.

  “It’s not much, and I guess it’s not really for you, but you were the first person I wanted to share it with. I didn’t even tell my mom yet.”

  I felt my stomach tighten and clench with anticipation, not sure what to expect from a statement like that. “Wh—what is it?”

  “Well,” he began slowly, reaching between us and taking my hands in his again. “I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to spend much time together for the next few months.”

  Confusion furrowed my brow and my heard sped up a little, fluttering almost nervously in response to that admission. “Okay,” I nodded, not sure what else to say.

  “Aren’t you even going to ask me why?” He was grinning almost devilishly, a sparkle in his eye that made me question what was going to come next.

  “Why won’t be able to spend much time together?”

  He reached back onto the desk behind him and grabbed a schedule, which he then pushed into my hands. “I’ll be busy a little busy doing homework, that’s why.”

  “What? You’re going back to school?”

  “Night classes at Penn Tech,” he confessed excitedly. “I talked to my old advisor at Penn State and she pulled a few strings for me. I’ll be starting in a couple of weeks. It might take a little longer to get my degree only doing night classes, but…”

  “But nothing, that’s… that’s wonderful, Troy! Wow! This so exciting.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I kept thinking about what you said before, when I came to see you in the beginning of the month and… It feels silly, not finishing what
I started. For so long I thought taking over the farm meant giving up every part of myself that defined who I was, but I see now there’s no reason I can’t do it on my own terms.”

  “So it’s not because you’re worried I think you’re some uneducated hick?” I tilted my head, knowing that was a possible sore subject.

  “Nope, I’m doing it for me.”

  “Wow,” I marveled, silently thanking the power of that waning moon Lydia’s psychic steered me toward. “It looks like both of us are going to be pretty busy. We’ll barely even see each other once you start classes and I get approval from the bank and make an offer on the Standard building.”

  “Well, we could see each other plenty if you took me up on my offer to move in here,” he pointed out, raising his brow with a tempting grin. “No pressure,” he added when I didn’t say anything at first. “I’ll wait forever if that’s what you want me to do.”

  “I won’t make you wait forever,” I shook my head and stepped up to him, slinking my arms around his waist. “Just a couple months while I get all this career stuff sorted out.”

  I could almost hear Becky humming about how nice a spring wedding would be and how great she’d look in pastels. I wanted to call her right away and tell her everything that happened to me that day, including the liberating feeling I’d woke with after telling my mother’s spirit I’d be okay if she let go, but it would have to wait until morning when I had a moment to myself.

  Still, as soon as she heard Troy turned his attic into an office space for me to use, she was never going to let it go. She’d probably follow me around chiming wedding bells everywhere we went.

  “I guess I can live with that now that we’re both in the same zip code. It’d be easier to settle on if I could at least tempt you into spending the night every once in a while. Like say, tonight, maybe?” He gestured over his shoulder, toward the bedroom at the bottom of the stairs. “That bed’s bigger than the one in the apartment, and it’s been pretty lonely without you.”