by Rae Walsh
Inside the truck, Theresa felt every muscle in her body stiffen.
Chapter Four
From inside the van, Theresa could hear Sheldon greeting the others. She gradually relaxed her muscles and dropped her head to her chest. She could do this. Seeing Sheldon was a part of her life again. Theresa needed to adjust to her new reality.
She rubbed her sweaty hands on her pants, looking around at all the boxes stacked in the van. There were boxes of pottery tools and supplies, boxes of books, kitchen stuff. All her worldly possessions. Theresa was tired from the drive and overwhelmed by the thought of socializing and unloading all of it at the same time. Especially socializing with Sheldon. What kind of mood was he in? How had he decided to be with her?
Replace the old memories with new ones, her therapist had told her.
Theresa took a deep breath and left the van, jumping lightly down from the back bumper.
Sheldon stood at a little distance from the others, hands in his pockets. His curly black hair was as wild as usual, and he wore dark-rimmed glasses. He didn’t meet her eyes. His attire was more subdued today— ripped jeans and a pink velour shirt she remembered from long ago. It wasn’t Sheldon’s fault that the shirt had been one of her favorites, that she could remember exactly how it felt when he slung his arm around her, wearing that shirt. Theresa frowned. Maybe it was. Maybe he remembered. She took a breath.
“Hey Sheldon,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind getting dirty. We have a lot to do.”
He nodded, and she thought she saw a small smile creep over his face.
Carlo ceremoniously handed Theresa the keys, giving a short speech about ownership and wonderful first days. Theresa had absolutely no idea how to respond, so she took the keys and turned to look at her new home.
She sighed with happiness as she walked through the gate and under the adobe arbor with the fuchsia-colored bougainvillea cascading over it. Seeing the house was almost too much— Theresa had never lived in such a beautiful home. Carlo had warned her of things that needed to be fixed, telling her that the only heater was a wood stove in the living room. The winters could be damp, he said. Theresa shook off the warnings. After facing such intense fear about moving back to Aveline, she felt invincible, as though she could do anything, fix anything.
The gardens around the house were overgrown, but a riot of color, even now, in the fall. There was a Japanese maple in one corner, a row of spruce, a bay tree and an oak tree, more bougainvillea, and bushes full of tiny orange flowers.
Theresa gazed at it all, trying to take it in.
“This is wonderful,” her mother said from beside her, and Theresa nodded, not trusting that her voice wouldn’t break if she tried to speak.
After a moment, she unlocked the door and walked into the little villa. It sprawled around the property, one room leading to another, with long hallways—big enough to be rooms—connecting each space to the next.
Francisco, Carlo, and Sheldon hauled Theresa’s sofas and chairs into the house. The dining room table and chairs. Her kitchen boxes, filled with mismatched pottery she had collected over the years, a collection of cast-iron pans, and a lot of jars in different sizes.
Dorothy opened boxes and put things in cupboards. Theresa wondered whether she should tell her mother to stop, but decided that she could just rearrange things later.
They carried in her mattress. “Is this it?” asked Lucy. “No frame?”
“I prefer sleeping close to the floor,” Theresa told her. Lucy blinked at her. Dorothy wandered over to see what the fuss was. She shook her head at the mattress.
“She’s always been like that,” Theresa’s mother told Lucy. “I used to find her on the floor all the time until I learned better and just took away the bed frame.”
Theresa smiled at her mother, remembering.
“Yeah,” she said. “I remember that. I would make a nest under my bed, and you could never find me.”
The men carried in a lot of the heaviest stuff, but Theresa made sure she and Maddie worked as well, hauling boxes until their muscles shook.
“Where do these go?” Sheldon asked at the truck, pointing at the boxes that were labeled “Studio.”
Theresa looked at the one outbuilding on the property—a little shed-like house with glass windows in the front and a large room in the back. This building was the real reason Theresa had bought the house. In it, she could see the perfect studio and shop for her pottery.
“In that building,” she said, pointing. “Here, let me open it.”
Sheldon followed her as she waded through waist-high grass to the door of the little building.
“I would have imagined Carlo would take care of the yard work before you moved in,” he said.
“I told him not to touch a thing,” Theresa told him.
“Of course you did,” Sheldon said, as she finally got the door open and swung it out so he could carry the box inside.
She frowned at the back of his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means. You never let anyone help you.”
“I like things to be how I like them, Tazzy,” she told him. She felt an ache in her stomach. “I’m not going to let people make me feel bad about it.”
He straightened from placing the box carefully on the ground. The day was ending, and in the last streams of sunlight, dust motes danced in the air. Theresa looked around. There were a few places where boards had been used to replace broken panes of glass. Sheldon was lit from behind, his face furrowed as he looked at her. Theresa drew in a breath at the sight of him. She couldn’t tell what his look meant.
“Telling you I’ve noticed something doesn’t mean I want you to feel bad about it,” he said after a moment.
“In my experience, when people tell you things they’ve noticed about you, it means they want you to change,” Theresa said. She felt a twinge of pain as she said the words, just a ripple of memory at how many times it had happened to her.
Sheldon looked at her. Theresa still couldn’t read his expression.
“What?” she asked, trying to keep her voice soft, and he opened his mouth to speak, but just then, Francisco, Lucy, and Maddie walked in carrying boxes of fragile pottery. Theresa was distracted by the need to show them where things went and caution them to be careful, so she didn’t hear what Sheldon would have said next.
Finally, after all the boxes were in and the house was closed up, Theresa was alone. They had finished unpacking just as the pizza delivery guy had shown up, and Theresa, who had ordered pizza for her helpers, had eaten three pieces. Now she felt like her stomach was full of rocks, but tomorrow would be a better day, she promised herself. No more driving, no more bad food, no more hotel rooms.
She walked from room to room, turning off lights and looking at the immense amount of work in front of her, strange happiness welling up in her heart at the thought. She lingered in Maddie’s doorway. How would it be for them, living together again?
Maddie seemed so changed, so content to be in Aveline. She still wore a lot of black, but her eyeliner wasn’t as thick, and she had lost the giant overcoat. She had zipped on a fitted down jacket before she left, and Theresa had exclaimed over how cute it was on her. It showed off her slight stature, rather than hiding her in meters of cloth.
“Katie helped me find winter clothes,” Maddie told her mom, and Theresa felt a swift stab of jealousy. She sighed it away. Of course, Theresa couldn’t be everything to Maddie. She hadn’t been here.
It was nothing but good for Maddie that she had a new aunt who could help her with things like clothing, but Theresa still found herself blinking back tears—a sure sign that she needed solitude and sleep. Theresa had hugged her daughter fiercely and said goodbye to the whole group.
Right before Sheldon left, he had turned to her and said, “Before, when we got interrupted...”
She crossed her arms over her stomach. Sheldon went on.
“I was going to say, ‘I don’t kno
w whether to feel sorry for you or be angry with you.’”
She blinked, the tears startled away.
“Blunt of you,” she said, smiling a little.
“You seem to appreciate bluntness,” he said, and he smiled the tiniest bit in return, the first time he had aimed a smile in her direction since she had seen him at the wedding. Her own smile grew wider.
“That’s true. Thank you.”
She thought of him now, of that tiny smile.
“Don’t go there, Reesey,” she told herself. “You know you can’t.”
But she still felt warmth all through her. She fell into her bed with her clothes on, closed her eyes, and was asleep immediately.
Chapter Five
Theresa dreamed of fear.
I will hurt him.
Please don’t.
Watch me.
When she woke, she could still taste and smell the terror that had been her close companion for so many years. Light streamed into her room, though, making delightful tree-shaped shadows on the walls, and she blinked away the haze. She was nothing if not used to nightmares. After a while, the fear began to fade, and her breath came more easily.
She stretched, willing the stiffness out of her muscles. Her stomach felt as though she had eaten socks for dinner, but look at this house! Everything about it was beautiful, even the way the light hit the walls.
Could it really be hers? Theresa thought about her house in Minnesota—austere and square, with long wallboards that joined in tight corners. It had sheltered her for many years, but it had not felt like home, even after a decade. This little villa, on the other hand, felt like home from the first day.
She got out of bed and walked from room to room, looking at the soft curves of the whitewashed adobe walls, and the large terracotta tiles on the kitchen floor, cook under her feet. Some of the windows were made of many tiny panes of glass. They were dirty now, but Theresa would clean them. She went to the front door and threw it open to the porch. She, Theresa Lily Grant, had a front porch!
The crisp fall air surrounded her. Theresa closed her eyes and breathed it in.
Then her stomach growled.
You can’t go around eating socks for dinner and air for breakfast, she told herself. She needed real food, right now, but she had nothing in her kitchen.
She went back to her room and dug through her suitcase. She pulled on striped leggings and a salmon-colored tunic, braided her hair over her shoulder, tied a scarf around it, and laced up her boots. She found her satchel and keys, and then paused, looking at the keys in her hands. Did she want to drive a moving van to the store? Nope. She’d walk. She got as far as the front door, then at another gust of wind, came back for a sweater—a soft ruby-colored thing she’d had for years.
The lock stuck, and Theresa sighed and simply closed the door gently behind her, leaving the house unlocked. Not wise, maybe, but moving back to Aveline hadn’t been wise either, and she had done that.
Surely no one would rob her.
The day was juicy with beauty. Theresa wanted to drink the sky right up as she walked. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was for this specific kind of loveliness. Autumn in California was glorious. Giant oaks stretched over the old street, bougainvillea cascaded over walls and roofs, and there were a hundred kinds of flowers along the way. Even some leaves changing colors. Theresa filled her eyes with it all and gave a little skip of delight. She couldn’t help herself.
At the corner, she saw the church where Sammy had been married, where Francisco was the reverend. The building was a humble little structure—stone and board in the shade of a massive redwood. Oh, there was the reverend now, standing on the steps with someone else. Theresa squinted. The man looked familiar.
Theresa hated bumping into people when she was on a mission. It distracted her, and sometimes she didn’t even get to her original errand. There was always so much derailing small talk. But this was part of life in the small town of Aveline, and Theresa knew she needed to get used to it. She gave a little wave, hoping they would let her pass, but Francisco’s face was open with a smile, and they both loped down to the sidewalk to greet her.
“How was your first night?” Francisco asked after he had given her one of his big hugs.
“I slept like a rock,” Theresa told him.
He smiled his kind smile, and then gestured to the man beside him.
“Do you know Daniel?” he asked.
Theresa felt shock turn her face hot. “Yes, of course, I know Daniel,” she said, “Daniel, you look so different!”
The man standing before her was a little shorter than Francisco, with sandy hair and brown eyes. When Theresa had known him, he’d had long hair and a massive beard covering his face, neck, and upper chest. Now his face was clean-shaven. It was not a bad change. He looked ten years younger than the last time she’d seen him, which was no small thing since he was actually ten years older. He grinned at her. He had dimples.
She spoke without thinking. “Daniel, you have dimples! I mean, you have a face!” She felt a plummeting in her belly. Oh, that probably wasn’t the right thing to say. It was odd to tell an old friend that he had a face.
He smiled, though. “Decided it was time to show it,” he responded gently.
Theresa had always liked Daniel. He was a master bass player who worked at the post office because he was too shy to live a musician’s life, even though several bands had approached him in the past. He had been a friend to her and Sheldon when...well, no use thinking about that.
People in town had been suspicious of Daniel back then. He was too quiet, had too many tattoos, and was socially awkward. But Theresa had always known she could trust him. She wondered how things were for him now.
“Do you still work at the post office?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Francisco said, “We’re the luckiest people in the world, to have our postmaster Daniel. What other branch has posters of the universe plastered to every wall?”
“Shhhh,” Daniel said. “We don’t want management to demand that I rip them off. So far I’ve been squeaking by, unnoticed. But speaking of the job, I’d better get myself over there. People have letters to send.”
“And I need to go buy some groceries,” Theresa said. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Do you want to have breakfast with my family?” Francisco asked.
Theresa stared at him. “Wow,” she said. “That’s a very kind offer. But I need to get settled and have real food in my own house. Not that you don’t eat real food. I’m just eager to get going with my new life.”
She flushed, feeling like she had messed that up. Francisco smiled at her.
“I totally understand,” he said. “Next time.”
A cool wind blew down the street, rustling in the tops of the tall oaks, and Theresa shivered, remembering the fear from her dream. She shook it off. There was no reason to be afraid, she told herself. Not anymore.
Chapter Six
Sheldon strode around the front of his grocery store, Green’s, barking orders at his employees. He had not slept well, and no one seemed to be listening to him at all. Finally, Lucy came to stand directly in front of him, putting her hands on her hips and glaring up at him.
“These kids are not going to tell you to stop being a jerk, but I will, Sheldon Green. What under the purple sky has come over you? I haven’t heard you grump around the store like this since you were worried that Sam was going to get married and leave you...oh! Is this because Sam is on his honeymoon?”
“No,” Sheldon muttered. He massaged his temples and wished himself far, far away, deep in the forest, maybe, with a pair of binoculars, spotting a rare bird for the first time…or at an antique show...Lucy elbowed him. He pulled himself back to the present. The young cashiers were motionless, watching Lucy and Sheldon with open mouths.
The store actually did look clean and ready for the day. Just a moment ago, Sheldon would have sworn it was a hovel with dirt everywhere and empty boxes
cascading at the ends of the aisles. He blinked. The windows shone, the displays were overflowing with color, and the store smelled like the orange oil in the natural floor cleaner. He sighed.
“No,” he said again. “I’m happy for Sam.” Sheldon knew precisely why he was falling apart, and it wasn’t because of Sam. To be honest, he was surprised Lucy hadn’t figured it out. He looked at her now, standing there with short, black, spiky hair and a look part of outrage, part concern.
Theresa was the one making him crazy, of course. Theresa lived in Aveline. How could anyone do anything when Theresa lived in Aveline? An otherworldly being had come to live among them, and everyone was acting as though life was normal.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said, and then raised his voice so everyone could hear. “I’m sorry, everyone. I shouldn’t take my mood out on you. I’m a bit worn out.” He tried to smile. “Back to work! I’ll do the outside displays, as penance.”
Lucy patted his arm and smiled, but her eyes were still narrowed, and she muttered under her breath, “How is that a penance?”
She was right to question him, Sheldon thought as he hauled the crates of oranges outside. The autumn air was gorgeous. Working outside wasn’t a penance. But it let Sheldon keep an eye out for Theresa. And just like that, as though he had called her by thinking her name—there she was. She was down the street, walking under the oaks. She was with someone. Who was it? Oh! She was walking with Daniel, looking up at him as she walked.
Sheldon smiled, faintly, memories coming to him.
“He’s definitely odd,” Theresa had said, “but I see so much in him. Let’s adopt him.”
“Are you sure he wants to be adopted?” Sheldon asked, kissing the top of her head. She snuggled against him, leaning back against his chest as though he was a chair just for her. The lake glimmered before them. Theresa smelled of lavender and cinnamon. “And who are you to call anyone odd?” Theresa laughed.