Beyond These Walls (The Walls Duet #2) (35 page)

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Authors: J. L. Berg

BOOK: Beyond These Walls (The Walls Duet #2)

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“I couldn’t let us leave,” he finally said, turning toward me, as we stood together in what would be our family room.

“But what about the company? Your job?”

He smiled. “Part two of our stops for the day. We’re opening a West Coast division. Expansion seemed like a good move, and several of the New Yorkers were looking for a change of scenery. When I suggested it to the board, they wholeheartedly agreed. Roman about croaked, but he’ll get over it. He once told me he could be a grown up when he wanted to, so now he’ll just have to make good on that promise—permanently.” He shrugged. “So, here we are.” He opened his arms out wide.

“We don’t have to move?”

He laughed, pulling me close. “Well, we do but not cross-country. And not away from that,” he said, pointing toward the ocean.

I looked around at this amazing house he’d built and then back to him. “It’s breathtaking.”

“And so are you.”

There were still a hundred boxes scattered everywhere, but we were finally here, in our very own house.

Home
—it had a nice ring to it.

Over the last year, I’d become quite attached to the house we rented on the beach, but there was always a part of me that knew it wasn’t permanent. It wasn’t ours. It had been a temporary solution, and I’d thought, eventually, we’d move away, back to New York, so I’d never allowed myself to get too attached to it.

But here, within these walls, I could finally find peace.

As I settled into the glider with Meara that night, taking a deep breath as she nuzzled up to my breast, I knew I was home.

Feeding an infant gave me a lot of quiet downtime.

I couldn’t recall a time in my life, except for maybe long silent hours spent in the hospital, when I’d just simply sat and thought. These special moments with Meara had given me much needed time to process everything that had happened over the last year . . . and even beyond that.

I’d thought the moment I’d met Jude, I’d begun maturing, growing from the small naive girl I had been into the woman I was meant to become. By the time I’d followed him to New York, I had truly believed the process was nearly complete. It was a bold move after all.

But really, I’d been blossoming into myself every day since then. Maybe I always would be.

As my hand gently stroked the tiny hairs on Meara’s head, I smiled, remembering how boring I’d thought life was within that drab hospital room.

Little had I known what was waiting for me beyond it.

When my mom and I had driven by people standing on the street corner, holding their coffees and bagels, I’d thought about how glamorous their lives looked, how normal it must feel to be late to work or to cross a street. I had envied them, envied the normal.

When I’d finally gotten the opportunity to do the same, those little things in life did feel glamorous to me because nothing about this life of mine would ever feel normal.

No matter how many lines I crossed off that Someday List, I would never feel like everyone else.

And I no longer wanted to.

Life was extraordinary, and there was nothing normal about that.

Eighteen Years Later
. . .

“MEARA! GRANDPA IS here with his truck ready to load up!” Mom hollered from downstairs.

“Okay. Just give me a minute, and I’ll be right down!”

Rising from my bed, I took a look around, realizing how empty everything appeared. It was the little things really—the missing slippers at the end of the bed, the random collection of makeup that used to reside on my dresser, and the ever present laundry basket of clothes I never managed to put away.

All of it was gone, reminding me of one very obvious fact.

I was going away to college today.

Granted, UCLA was barely considered going away, but a dorm room wasn’t down the hall from my parents, and I’d be sharing a bathroom with an entire floor—including boys.

I tried not to think about that vital piece of information more than I had to.

I could have gone nearly anywhere. With stellar grades and amazing SAT scores, I had my pick of some of the top schools—Stanford, NYU, even Chicago—but when it had all come down to that final decision, I’d known I couldn’t tread too far away from home.

I was, and forever would be, a homebody.

When raised on the beautiful coast of California, who could really blame me?

And with parents like mine, it wasn’t hard to want to stay as close to home as possible. Some of my friends had helicopters for parents—who hovered and overreacted over everything. Others wondered if their mom and dad even knew they existed. Mine—well, they were a perfect blend of awesome—always there when I needed them, but yet always aware of when I needed space to grow and develop on my own.

Shifting around the room, I looked at the various pictures on the walls. From my first birthday to my graduation, this room held so many memories. There was a framed picture on my dresser from the day we met my adopted brother Ian. I’d been so excited to finally have a baby brother. I’d skipped down the halls, singing and clapping my hands—I was two, but when I got there I realized he wasn’t as little as I expected. I guess my toddler mind expected a cabbage patch doll I could play dress up with—not a six month old baby who cried and pooped. I was not impressed. I got used to him though, and eventually I grew to like him. Okay, I loved him. He was a great brother and really completed our family. Who knew the little poop factory could be such a blessing.

As my eyes roamed further down the line of photos, I glimpsed a picture of Ian and me, wrapped around our Uncle Roman and his wife—taken several years ago during one of our yearly trips back east. We were on a boat after spending the day out in the sun and we all looked happy and carefree.

I had so many treasured memories.

“Are you hiding in here?” Dad asked, peeking his head into my room.

“No, just saying good-bye,” I said sadly.

“Not good-bye. Just—”

I smiled, shaking my head. “See you later?”

“I’ve said that one before?”

“A few times, Dad.”

“I need better lines.” He laughed. He came up to me, his arm wrapping around my shoulder. “We’re only a short drive away. Besides, you’ll need someplace to do your laundry, I’m sure.”

“I’ll come home for more than just laundry,” I assured him.

“My charming wit?” he guessed.

“Definitely.”

“I knew it. Now, come on. Save the waterworks for later. We’ve got a truck to load, and if we don’t hurry, Grandpa’s going to throw his back out from trying to do it all himself. Ian and I keep trying to help, but you know your Grandpa . . .”

“Okay. One more minute?” I asked.

He nodded, placing a soft kiss on my forehead. “Okay.”

I heard his footfalls trail down the hallway as I took one last look around the room. My eyes settled on a tattered old journal of my mom’s. It was something I’d found the other day while going through her nightstand in search of a bottle of lotion.

She’d told me stories of her Someday List over the years, and she’d even shown it to me when I was younger. It had been years since I last saw it, and when I’d found it again, I’d secretly taken it from its spot and brought it back to my room to look at it.

Opening it once more, I looked through the pages of wishes and dreams she’d once had, all crossed out throughout the years. Some remained—“
A life still being lived,
” she’d once explained—but it amazed me how many she and my father had managed to make come true since her years in the hospital.

As my eyes settled on one left untouched, I thought about my birth story—how I’d come to be, how they’d risked everything to make sure I had my place in this world. She should have put herself first, after everything she’d gone through in life. She’d deserved it after all. But my mother had never taken the easy way and because of this . . . here I stood.

With a shaky hand, I grabbed a pen off my clean desk and crossed off one of the last remaining wishes on my mother’s Someday List.

SAVE SOMEONE’S LIFE.

A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I quietly placed the journal back in the drawer. With one last glance toward the bedroom that had kept me safe for the last eighteen years, I took the first step into my future.

My parents had always taught me life is what you make of it—you just have to be brave enough to spread your wings and fly.

So here goes nothing.

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