by Rae Walsh
“What?” Sheldon asked, pulling back a little.
“Sam’s sister,”” Frankie said, his voice low and significant. “She’s the one you’ve been waiting for.”
“I wouldn’t say waiting for,” Sheldon protested.
“You said—and I quote—‘I’m waiting for a woman to come back. I will wait and wait, and I will wait until I am dead, and then I will wait some more.’”
“Did I say that? That doesn’t sound like something I would say. Well, yes, I have waited for her to come back. But I don’t think coming back for a wedding counts.”
Frankie continued to look at him, arms crossed over his chest. Sheldon squirmed. “Oh look!” he said, spotting George and Mercy coming up the steps behind him. “More guests to greet! See you!”
Francisco smiled an infuriating smile, and turned to the lawyer couple, complimenting Mercy on her hat.
“Maybe it will be you, next,” Sheldon heard Mercy say to Francisco, and he smirked, but his smile faded when he heard Francisco’s reply.
“I was actually thinking Sheldon might be a good bet for the next groom.”
Sheldon squared his shoulders and set off to find Sam.
The ceremony was everything a wedding ceremony should be. From his place beside the groom, Sheldon had an excellent view of the warm faces of the people sitting in the old pews. Lucy cried in the front row, her handkerchief soaked through within minutes, and others wiped away tears as well, including Juanita and Carlo, Aveline’s real estate agents. George beamed and held Mercy’s hand tight. Katie’s mom cried into her dad’s shoulder. Dorothy wept next to Theresa, but Sheldon couldn’t see her because he was focusing on keeping his eyes away from Theresa.
Katie was gloriously beautiful, her hair a riot of red-gold curls. Maddie, the maid of honor, was elfin and lovely in her dress, and Sam had a happier look on his face than Sheldon had ever seen on his oldest friend. He could almost forgive Sam for not keeping their monk life vow.
Francisco gave a short sermon on love, calling it enduring tenderness. Sheldon allowed his heart to open the tiniest bit, to wonder if what he felt for Theresa was love.
Enduring tenderness. That sounded right. Sheldon’s heart just about exploded with tenderness when he thought about her. Seeing her felt like catching sight of a rare bird. But Reesey hadn’t felt the same way about him, so how was his love helpful? If someone wouldn’t receive your tenderness, if someone didn’t answer your phone calls, returned your letters unopened? It was like the love hit a wall. What was she thinking about these words, out there, partially obscured by Mercy’s incredible hat? Sheldon craned his head, unable to stop himself from trying to see her. Sitting beside Mercy, Faith gave him a knowing look, her eyebrows raised. This whole town was the worst.
He kept his eyes on Sam and Katie for the rest of the service, forcing himself to be happy for them.
Much later, Sheldon finally talked to Theresa. The reception was held at the lakeside park, with tables and chairs set up under the trees. The guests ate, drank, and talked with the sun setting in the background. Sheldon’s nerves didn’t allow him to eat more than a bite or two, but the food was incredible. It could be no other way at Katie’s wedding, he heard people murmuring to one another.
He wondered if people of the town had taken to Katie so well because she fed them. It was possible. People in Aveline loved good food. It seemed as though everyone from the whole town was dancing under the trees, lit by fairy lights.
Sheldon wandered with a glass of wine, stopping to listen to his friends in the Aveline Swing Band. George on trumpet, Carlo the lead guitarist and vocalist, Francisco on the drum set, and Daniel on bass. Sheldon wanted to join the group on the dance floor. It would be a waste not to dance in this suit, but he spotted Theresa sitting by herself on the lakeshore, and he knew he couldn’t leave her there by herself.
Theresa wore a cranberry silk dress, and in the distance, she looked like a sculpture that an angel had dropped carefully onto the pebbles of the beach. A heavenly art installation. As Sheldon drew closer, though, the sounds of the band receding behind him, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Can I join you?” he asked.
She looked up, startled, but seemed glad to see it was him.
“Of course,” she said. “The shore belongs to everyone.” She blinked, and the tears that had been gathering spilled over. She swiped at them with the backs of her hands.
He didn’t know what to say, so he simply sat down beside her, making sure to leave some room between them. They were silent for a long moment. Sheldon didn’t know what to talk about, after so many years.
“So…” he began, reaching for something, anything. “How has life been treating you?”
She turned to look at him. A smile crept over her face. “You always were so kind,” she said.
“Kind?”
“You haven’t brought up the unanswered letters,” she said.
He felt a twinge of pain. “Oh, well,” he said. “We don’t need to talk about the past.”
She turned to look out at the lake, leaving him gazing at her perfect profile. “I remember swimming here every day of every summer,” she said. “This town used to feel like it was mine.”
“What changed?” he asked. He couldn’t keep his voice steady.
She only shook her head. Then she answered his first question.
“Life is going well. Did Maddie tell you that I’m a potter now?”
“She did. I’ve read a bit about you… over the years. I can’t think of anything more perfect.”
She smiled at him, and his heart thudded. He swallowed.
She went on. “Maddie asked me to move here, you know.”
If Sheldon’s heart had been acting up before, now it felt as though he had fallen down a set of stairs.
“What?”
“She doesn’t want to leave Aveline, but we need to be together. It makes sense for her. I want her to have this place to hold her, the way I did. I haven’t seen her this happy in a very long time.”
Sheldon just stared at her. Hope bloomed inside him, and there wasn’t much space for it. It pushed against his rib cage painfully. Theresa’s eyes skittered down and away, out toward the calm waters of the lake.
Sheldon tried to breathe.
“You’re saying you might move to Aveline.”
“What do you think? Do you think it would be good for Maddie?” she asked, and he could hear what she needed him to say.
Reesey needed him to tell her she was forgiven, that he would start over and they could be friends or neighbors or something. She wanted him to tell her that he wouldn’t hold onto anger about all that had come before. It was ridiculous. How could that ever happen? He had been waiting for so long for her to come back, but now that it was happening, Sheldon thought maybe he didn’t want it. How could he be near her and not with her?
“Maddie asked you, didn’t she?” It was mean of him to hold back, not to give her the assurance she needed, but he did it anyway. “Obviously it would be good for Maddie.”
She frowned at the pebbles by her feet, picking up a handful of the small smooth stones. She poured them into the lap of her cranberry silk dress, then chose one stone and brought it up to her lips, smoothing it over them. It was a very Theresa thing to do, as familiar to him after ten years as it had been in the days they walked these beaches together. Its familiarity made Sheldon angry.
“I told you when I left that there was absolutely no hope for us. That is still true, Sheldon. We can never be together. But I know you mean a lot to Maddie, and you have always been a good friend to me.” She turned her gaze on him, her hand closed around the stone now. “Can you work with that?” She managed to hold his gaze for the space of a few seconds, then dropped her eyes, turning her attention back to the stone in her hand.
Her bluntness, as always, came as a shock. Theresa had always been deficient in the art of gentle conversation.
I told you when I left�
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He could remember it well. Her face, pale as a sheet of paper as she stood before him with her arms twisted behind her. Her hair had been short back then. She looked like Amélie or Audrey Hepburn, but with more anguish.
I can’t tell you why. Just trust me.
There is nothing that could be bad enough that you need to do this. Just tell me what it is.
I can’t tell you. I’m leaving, Sheldon. Maddie and I are moving far, far away.
Did you cheat on me? I would forgive you…
No, of course not, no never. I’m sorry. I’m going now, we’re all packed up. Don’t try to contact me.
And then she was gone. Sheldon hadn’t really believed that Theresa would pull herself away so completely, but she had. She hadn’t turned back, hadn’t contacted him, had ignored all his calls and letters, and had never returned. Until now.
“Does Maddie know that you’re likely to leave without saying why?” he asked.
Reesey looked at him, startled. She looked so different with her hair long, caught today in a braid that fell over one shoulder. The lines of her face were firmer, stronger with age. She was one of those people who was more beautiful in her thirties than she had been in her twenties, which was unfair and impossible. She had a tattoo of a fir tree that stretched from her elbow upward, disappearing into the folds of her dress.
“I suppose I deserve that,” she said. She stood, and the stones dropped out of her dress and clattered on the shore. Sheldon flinched at the sound. “I hope you change your mind, Tazzy. You were the best friend I’ve ever had.”
She was gone. Again, she was gone. Worse, she’d used Sheldon’s nickname, the name only she called him. How could she not understand how painful this was? He shook his head, staring out at the lake. A bit of mist hovered over it. The stars were very bright. He didn’t think he even had the power to change his mind. His mind wasn’t really involved at all.
Chapter Three
On the morning that Theresa arrived back in Aveline to live, she woke up in a soulless hotel, the very last place that anyone should ever have to wake up.
Looking at the terrible striped wallpaper in her cheap motel, Theresa felt like a shell of a person. Ugly things made her despair. She had been driving for days, going from stale room to stale room, but the end was nigh. Tonight she would be in Aveline, the town that still had her heart, even after all these years.
She stood and stretched, unzipping her overnight bag and pulling out her last clean clothes. She pulled a soft T-shirt over her head and buttoned up a pair of baggy corduroys, heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She could hardly believe she was moving back to Aveline. It felt like a decade’s worth of longing had been fulfilled. A day hadn’t gone by that she hadn’t longed for the lake, for the lacy edges of the trees against the dusk sky, and the stars coming out one by one. She wasn’t sure that she could trust it, and in a way, she couldn’t. The danger—everything she had fled—was still there. She stared at her pale face in the mirror before braiding her hair and splashing her face with cold water. The dangerous element in Aveline had lain dormant a long time. Surely it would allow her this much grace. Surely.
She ordered coffee for her thermos at a nearby coffee shop and slipped out once she got her order, ignoring the barista’s attempt to chat. She climbed into the moving truck and started it up. She had wanted to make this journey on her own, though Maddie had asked to skip school and come help, and Sam had even volunteered to cut his honeymoon short, which was ridiculous. No, Theresa had told them both.
She needed this long solitary drive. She needed to find new ways to think about Aveline, her birthplace and her only real home.
Therapy over the last weeks had helped. Theresa had packed her house so quickly, leaving time only for eating and sleeping and going to see her therapist. In the last months, she had learned a lot about her own mind. Theresa’s therapist had given her ideas for working with her mind, approaching simple things that had always evaded her, and not disparaging her brain for what it was. Theresa had always loathed her differences and had put herself down her whole life. She had hated herself for so long, but she was learning a different way—acceptance and love of herself, her brain and its unique characteristics. Loving herself felt like the relief of a cooling swim in the lake on a scorching day. She couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to find this relief, the sweet symmetry of it as it lit her up from the inside.
She steered the heavy truck through forests that were as familiar as recurring dreams. The last golden light of a day in late fall fell on her in flashes. A golden light. She was warm inside the cab of the truck, listening to Joni Mitchell, occasionally singing along. Bunches of sage and pinion that Theresa had picked up in the deserts of Nevada hung from the rearview mirror, along with a few feathers she had found on the side of the road.
She drove and drove.
A yellow diamond sign. Curvy road ahead. 15 miles to go.
Was she going to be able to use her new skills in a place that carried as many traumas as it did jewels? She felt a flash of self-loathing and pushed it away. Not here, she told it. You’re not allowed in my heart. She felt real fear for a moment, terrified of going back to the past, but then she remembered that she didn’t need to figure out the future or all the plans or relationships. She only needed to do the next thing— get to her new house.
Theresa drove slowly through the streets of Aveline, heading for the house she had bought. The last months had been a blur of change. Buying a house based on pictures that Carlo had sent to her. She needed a place with a studio, and Carlo had found the perfect place. She bought it without even walking through it, while doing ten million other things, closing up life in Minnesota to come back to California. There! She read the address on the fence post. Her new home.
It was beautiful—a one-story Spanish villa that sprawled over the property like a giant jungle flower. Theresa loved it. She had loved it from the moment she saw the photos, partly because it was so different from the wooden craftsman-style house she had grown up in, and it felt like a place to grow new memories. The house had rounded walls and doorways, with no sharp edges. A hug of a house.
She parked and turned to open her passenger door, just then seeing her welcome crew. Maddie stood under the oaks that spread over the sidewalk, with Severus—Sam and Katie’s dog, Theresa’s mother, Francisco, Carlo the burly real estate agent, and Lucy. No Tazzy.
She supposed she understood why Tazzy hadn’t come. He had loved her once, but maybe he didn’t want to be her friend anymore. Too much time had passed.
Theresa took a deep breath and remembered to smile as she fell out the door into Maddie’s arms.
After she squeezed Maddie for at least five minutes, she stepped back to look at her daughter. “You must be exhausted,” Maddie said.
“A little. Mostly hungry. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the weird hotel breakfast,” Theresa said, “I’ve mostly been eating apples and sunflower seeds today.”
“Oh, Mom. You know I’ve told you that you can eat weird food once in a while if you have to.”
“I can’t,” Theresa said.
“What will happen if you’re trapped in a small town in the Midwest one day and you’ve never built the skills to eat weird food?”
Theresa shrugged and grabbed her daughter to hug her tight again. “I guess I’ll starve. Stop trying to take care of me. We’ve talked about this. I’m the mom, remember? Are you all moved in?”
“Not yet. I’m waiting until Sam and Katie get back because I have to take care of Severus.”
Theresa tried to register that. Her vision of arriving hadn’t included moving in alone.
She turned and hugged her mother. Dorothy smelled like perfume and laundry soap, the familiar smells of Theresa’s childhood home. Dorothy pulled back to look at her.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. Theresa could see tears standing in her eyes. She squeezed her mother’s upper arms and let go.
Maddie spoke again. “Mom, do you know Reverend Francisco? His church and house are just a block away from here, so he’s kind of your new neighbor.”
Theresa looked up at the tall reverend. He had brown skin, rumpled hair, a young face, and a wide smile.
“I don’t know him,” she said. “But I have met him. At the wedding. Hi.” She moved forward to shake hands, but he said, “Actually, I’m a hugger,” and caught her in a hug. She stiffened, but relaxed after a moment. He was a safe person, and she had had a long day. To her surprise, she felt tears rise to the surface. She backed away quickly, trying to maintain control.
“I do know Lucy,” she said, and she hid her weakness in a hug with Lucy.
“It’s good to have you back,” Lucy said. “It’s not right for you to be away. But I did think Sheldon would be here to meet you.”
Theresa let Lucy go and smiled at her. “No matchmaking,” she said. “That ship has sailed. That’s what people say, right?” she looked around at Maddie and Francisco for confirmation. Maddie was glaring at Lucy, and Francisco was grinning.
“If you say so,” Carlo said, putting his hands in his pockets, his long beard tapping at his chest with his words. Beside him, Dorothy was grinning.
Theresa narrowed her eyes at them. Then she let her breath out in a huff.
“Okay,” she said. “We’d better get this truck unloaded before I collapse. I’m assuming you’re all here to help.”
Maddie sighed and tucked her hair behind her ears. “What she means to say is “Will you please help?””
Francisco and Carlo chuckled as Theresa opened the back of the truck and climbed in.
“I understood,” Francisco said. He paused. “Ah, just in time!” he exclaimed after a moment.
Lucy made an explosive sound with her teeth. “Sheldon, you are in so much trouble,” she called.