Heart and Home (30 page)

Diana quickly cleared the
deck of cards away, shuffled them once, and then placed them on one of the
shelves behind her. “Make yourself comfortable,” she gestured toward the table
and I took the seat opposite her. For a moment she studied my face, then her
brow furrowed almost sadly and she leaned her elbows on the table. “Well,” she
laced her fingers together, “you’ve had a harrowing few weeks haven’t you?”

“Tell me about it,” a soft
laugh scuffed the back of my throat.

“Before we get started, let
me just say that the advice I have to offer is in no way, shape or form the end
all be all for you. It is simply guidance. You can do with it what you will,
either ignoring it completely, or drawing on it as you see fit. All too often
people come to see me expecting that I will have all of the answers, and when I
don’t tell them what they want to hear they’re disappointed. So, bear in mind
that what I say may not always be what you would like to hear. Despite that,
try to keep an open mind.”

I nodded eagerly, “Okay.”

“Well, for starters you’ve
ended several major cycles in your life recently,” she began, “starting with
the death of someone very important to you.”

A shiver of truth trickled
like a drop of ice down the back of my spine.

“Was it your mother?”

I nodded.

“The door on that part of
your life should be closing. It’s not an easy transition at all, and a little
resistance usually is normal, but she’s been holding it wide open and reaching
out to you.”

Emotion numbed me, and I
hadn’t even noticed my own tears until they’d dropped onto my cheeks. “Early on
it was really obvious. It’s not so bad now, sometimes just in dreams.”

Sympathy wrinkled the
corners of her eyes and Diana nodded. “All of that’s normal, but now it’s up to
you to tell her it’s okay to move on because she’s already given you everything
you need to carry out the tasks that lay ahead. She’s imparted her motherly
wisdom, or so to speak. But see,” she reached across the table then and took my
hand in hers, “every time she starts to move on, you call out to her again.
She’s afraid to let you go. Let her know you’ll be okay, and that she can
rest.”

I nodded an almost frantic
understanding, recalling my own image moving through the harvested darkness
calling out her name.
 

“Now,” she was still holding
my hand in hers when she went on. “The immediate tasks you face are all
intertwined, and while this would seem like a blessing, it can also act as a
burden as well. For example, you’ve recently hit a minor snag in your career,
but don’t fret. It’s only temporary. You are slowly crawling toward something
much more fulfilling, and you may have a little more success if you can manage
to focus your creative energy on what’s going on around you.”

I felt my whole body clench
like a fist with the fear that she might tell me to walk away from my heart,
that there was no future with Troy, and I was wasting my time. Obviously
sensing my fear, the left side of her face lifted first, then her whole face
seemed to light up.

“Relax, it isn’t so bad.” A
small laugh accompanied that small piece of insurance. “Though it isn’t going
to be easy, you have a bit of a journey ahead of you.”

Almost as if the echo of my
mother’s words rippled through me, Diana said, “It would seem that you have
been charged with the healing of a broken and weary heart. In fact it was the
very heart itself that sought you out for healing.”

I wondered how he knew, if
that morning I fainted at my mother’s funeral a small light went on inside him,
or he felt some unseen tie to me.

“It is not an easy charge,
Janice. The greatest part of him wants to heal and be whole again, but he will
resist your efforts all the way.”

“But is it my place though?
I am so afraid that if I push him too hard he’ll push me away.”

“He will push you away,” she
said. “But the connection between you is what drew him in. It was established
long before either of you noticed. In fact, you’ve felt rather swept away by
the whole affair, and how quickly it’s all fallen into place. It can be a
terrifying experience recognizing your kindred spirit, especially one you share
such a close bond with. That bond will prevail. As I said it isn’t going to be
easy, and there will be times when you will want to give up. Don’t.”

For the remainder of the
hour Diana provided me with advice on how best to prepare for what lie ahead of
me. Her greatest advice, she saved for last.

“I am surprised that of all
the things you have asked me, Janice, you haven’t asked about coming home.”

“I’ve sort of resolved
myself to the fact that I belong here.”

“You’re sort of right,” a
mysterious grin stole across her mouth. “Stay where you are until the coming
holidays. Continue to visit as you see fit, but do everything in your power to
draw him away from this place. Right now he’s using home as a safety net,
someplace he feels empowered and comfortable, and if you come back too soon
he’s going to take it for granted and never find the strength to heal. Make him
come to you, especially during the waning moon.”

“Why the waning moon?”

“The emotions that seem to
push him are stronger when the moon waxes to its full power, but as it wanes,
the closer and closer it gets to the dark moon, the less hold those emotions
have over him. That is the best time to try and reach him.”

“Okay.”

She tied up a few loose strings,
things she thought I might need, and gave me a small red tiger’s eye gemstone
meant to empower me through the journey. In the end she was sober when she
admitted that it was all up to me, and there were no guarantees. She could
easily look upon me and see both destinies fulfilled. Which one was true would
only be determined by my own successes and failures along the way.

Diana gave me her card and
assured me that over the next few weeks I was welcome to call on her if I had
any need. She also encouraged me to come back in a couple of months, and having
thoroughly enjoyed my first experience with the unknown, I promised her that I
would.

Lydia and I parted ways, and
though with my newfound insight into the future a huge part of me wanted to run
back to Troy’s and spend just one more night in the calm before the inevitable
storm. The morning’s argument was lost, but the emotional charge of fear that
came with it gripped me as I realized many more arguments lay ahead if I were
really meant to help him.

With Sonesville behind me,
backtracking was out of the question, but even still I argued with myself
against the notion that it took less than ten minutes to get there from
Montoursville. As if he sensed my struggle down the interstate, my cell phone
rang and I plugged into the headset.

“Are you on the road yet?”
He asked.

I glanced at the Milton exit
as it zipped by. “I’m on my way.” The clock on the dashboard read 1:45, and
it’d be at least three and a half hours until I poured into the city and that
was only if traffic was kind. “How was church?”

“Like you even have to ask,”
he said. “Pastor Crane’s sermon was all about the sacred institution of
marriage being a contract with God. You know, according to Crane, we’re going
to hell.”

“Hell?” I laughed.

“Oh yeah,” he paused, “every
time we go to bed it’s a sin or whatever, but I feel content knowing half the
town will be there with us.”

“Wait a minute, if we’re
going to hell, the last thing I want to do is spend my time there with the town
of Sonesville,” I pointed out.

“That is your hell, Janice.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Sonesville is your eternal punishment and
damnation.”

“Hmm, maybe we should stop
sleeping together,” I reasoned.

“You’re kidding right?” He
almost sounded as if he were seriously concerned.

“Of course I am.”

A relieved sound escaped
him. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

“Yeah well, I’m about as
scared of hell as you are,” I admitted.

“Good.” Silence followed for
a moment, and then he asked, “So, when can we look forward to eternal damnation
again? Are you too far on the road that you can’t turn back now and come sin
with me tonight?”

Temptation curled inside me
like a delicious curse, but I stood my ground. “I’m pretty far.”

“Ah well,” he said. “I guess
it’s still a sin if I think about it long and hard.”

“Yeah, I believe the whole
act of considering sin is just as bad as sinning itself.”

“Nice.” He seemed to
hesitate before switching gears, asking, “So, what did your psychic friend
say?”

“All kinds of stuff.” I
admitted.

“Anything about me?”

“Plenty about you,” I
admitted warily.

“Like what?”

“Like how you should come
and spend the week with me next week.”

“Hmm,” he contemplated. “Did
she say why?”

“Only that it would be
beneficial to your plans for sin.”

That kept the conversation
playful, which was the tone I needed to keep me focused on the distance I was
putting between us.

I checked the calendar in
Diana’s office before leaving, and there were five more days before the next
full moon. The further away I was from him during that time, the more he was
going to feel that need for me. My only hope was that it was strong enough in
the end to convince him that a week in the city was exactly what he needed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The resistance with Troy
seemed to begin before it really began, and I blamed the draw of the full moon
now that Diana explained it to me.
 
His admission before my leaving about wanting me near him made him even
more stubborn than he was before, and while a great part of me loved the idea
of being wanted more than anything in the world, there was a sense of
possessiveness about his want that intimidated me whenever I recognized it.

In the days following my
departure, the city itself became our darkest point of conversation.

More and more often I found
him asking, “Do you think you’ll be ready soon to come back home to stay?”

“Troy, you were the one who
told me I should take my time,” I reminded him.

His groaning sigh crawled
across the miles like a powerful assault. “Yeah, but things are different now,
aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, but I’m still
not ready. As much as I love my dad, I’m not sure I want to move back into his
house after having spent so many years on my own.”

“You could stay here,” he
tempted me. “This place is big enough for two.” He knew as well as I did that
it was barely big enough for him, and the idea of the two of us cramped into
that tiny apartment indefinitely made my heart flutter claustrophobically.

“Even you are outgrowing
that apartment,” I pointed out.

“We could move into the house.”
Desperation dripped from his every word. “Mom would be thrilled to have us.”

“I have no doubt in my mind
that she would.”

In fact, I knew in my heart
that Lottie would gladly step out of her position as feminine head of the
household and allow me into it, but giving in so easily would allow a routine
to develop. Routines were hard to break, and often became habits, habits like
the ones destroying Troy’s good nature minute by minute.

“It’s just not time yet,
Troy.”

“Before you start to lecture
me about good things coming to those who wait, I’m gonna take off and go watch
the game at Marty and Becky’s.”

“Well, while you’re there,
think about it.”

“About what?”

“That good things come to
those…”

“I’m hanging up now,” he
interrupted. “I love you.”

I stopped myself from
reminding him that if he did really love me, he’d want to wait until I felt
right and ready.

“I love you too, and Troy…
think about coming down here next week. Just think about it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I didn’t tell anyone what I
was up to, but I’d been secretly browsing the real-estate section of the
Williamsport Sun Gazette, trying to find out who to get in touch with about the
old
Standard
building. Not that I’d
made up my mind about the whole thing, but it was starting to make more and
more sense than I thought it would. Unfortunately, I discovered the realtor
showing the property was none other than Amber Williams-Baker, and that put a
huge dent in my willingness to schedule an appointment.

I put off contacting her on
Tuesday, convinced that everyone in town would know I’d expressed an interest,
but Wednesday morning I decided I didn’t care who knew what I was up to. I
didn’t even know what I was up to, so it’d be interesting to hear what my dad
heard around the water cooler Wednesday afternoon at work.

I got her voicemail when I
called, and left a message for her to call me back, briefly explaining I was
interested in the
Standard
building,
and then headed out to the Carnegie Library to do some research. Amber didn’t
call me back until Thursday, and while I wasn’t sure what to expect when she
finally did return my call, she was pleasant and professional and promised to
take me in to show me the property the next time I was in town.

She surprised me even more
when she said just before hanging up, “It’d be really great if you did start
that paper back up, Janice. I think everyone in town would be real pleased.”

By that evening conversation
between Troy and me was easily agitated. My insistence that he come and stay
with me for the week inspired some strange remarks, including a series of
questions about who I met up with at the library when I went in to do some
research.

“This isn’t Sonesville,
Troy,” I pointed. “You don’t know every single person you run into. In fact, I
know surprisingly few people here considering how long I’ve lived here.”

“I know you dated while you
were there. You have friends there.”

“Dated, Troy. That doesn’t
mean I had tons of intimate relationships with half the men in the city, and
yeah, I have friends, but most of the people I talked to regularly seemed to
disappear once I left my job.” I pointed out. “Look, I understand that you miss
me, but I don’t like that you don’t trust me. It makes everything you say to me
when we’re together feel like a lie.”

It was like the darkness I
felt coming on possessed him in some way, and the distance made it impossible
to make sense of.

“I just don’t understand why
you don’t want to come home this weekend. It makes me think there’s something
else holding you there.”

“And I don’t understand why
you won’t come and stay with me for a week,” I urged. “It’s one week, Troy.”

“You already know I can’t
leave everything here for a whole week.” He had been using the same excuses
since his last visit, that there was work to be done and he couldn’t very well
just leave it.

“Why not?”

“Because I have
responsibilities here,” he droned over the same excuse. “There are people who
depend on me, so I can’t just up and quit on them.”

“Up and quit on them? What
is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can’t just
leave.”

“But why did you say it like
that, you can’t just up and quit… is that some kind of reference to me quitting
my job? Like I’m out here just living it up while you’re stuck in your mire of
responsibility?”

“Yes, Janice, because
everything is about you.”

“You know what…” The anger
burned under the surface, raging even more powerfully than it had during our
first argument because I couldn’t just reach out and hold him in place when he
started to pull away. “I’m not gonna do this, Troy. I’m hanging up now. When
you’re ready to be the man you are when we’re standing face to face, call me
back.”

“Janice,” there was a very
real sense of fear in his voice, as though my hanging up would destroy him. “I
am the same man.”

“No you’re not.” I was
shocked by the strength of my own resolve. “I swear all you’ve done is argue
with me since I came back here.”

“Because I can’t stand to be
away from you like this. It’s killing me, Janice.”

“Then come and stay with me
for a week.” Before he could start to make all the regular excuses, I said,
“Becky already promised she’d stop in and check on Lottie twice a day and take
her anywhere she needed to go.”

“Is Becky gonna come and
make sure all the animals are fed and cleaned up after too?”

“No, but Ernie will,” I
reminded him. I knew he hated the idea of leaving the farm in the hands of his
cousin for more than a day or two, but his greatest reservation generally
centered on his mother. “You need this, Troy. We need this.”

There was hesitation and
defeat in the sigh that followed my little piece of truth. “I’ll see what Ernie
says, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Ernie will do it,” I
assured him.

“We’ll see.”

I wondered if it was the
hold of the moon that made him say he’d see, because I was hoping inside that
by morning, as the moon began to wane again, he’d come to his senses and
realize I was right. We needed that time to really find out who we were
together without the backdrop of that town in all of our affairs.

If I could have called Ernie
myself, I would have done so, and told him to call Troy and offer to help out,
but Troy actually surprised me with an early phone call that prodded me from
sleep the next morning around seven-thirty.

“You win,” he said just
after I mumbled hello into the receiver.

“Hmm? What did I win?”

“Against my better judgment,
I am going to leave Ernie to tend to things here for a week, and Mom told me
herself that if I didn’t go she wasn’t gonna talk to me for a month.”

“Bless the waning moon,” I
sunk back into my pillow and sighed relief.

“What?”

“Never mind,” I could feel
the joy of a minor victory crawling across my lips. “When are you coming?”

“I’ll be there Sunday.”

“Good, I can’t wait.”
  

An entire week together. The
prospect was both exciting and daunting when I thought about the unraveling
task I seemingly undertaken. With the waning moon on my side, I hoped I
couldn’t lose, that on my terms and my turf, I’d be able to turn the tide of
pain that held him back from embracing who he truly wanted to be. I had no
strategy, no plans, only the notion that I had nothing more than myself without
conditions or limitations to offer. If that wasn’t enough, I wasn’t sure what
more I could do.

Sunday afternoon arrived,
bringing Troy with it, and after his long drive we decided to order take out
and stay in to watch the Steelers game on television. Shortly after the game
ended, a storm hit the city and we lay snuggled up in bed together watching the
snow fall like little shadows against the streetlight just outside my bedroom
window.

“I’m so glad you came.” I
lowered my cheek onto his shoulder and drew the quilt up around us for warmth.
“Especially now that the snow is here. It has this calming effect on the
monotony of the city that really gives you a picture of its beauty.”

He said nothing, but tightened
his arm across my back and rested his chin atop my head.

“I love it when it snows at
night,” I admitted. “The whole world seems to hold its breath after a while.”

“I love to walk out in the
early hours just before the sun comes up and find it still snowing after a long
night,” his voice was thoughtful. “Just to stand there with the world so quiet
you can almost hear the snow fall.”

“Mm,” I drew in a breath and
closed my eyes, the image he painted fresh in my mind. “You feel like you’re
the only soul in the world in moments like that.”

“I wonder what it’d be like
to share that kind of moment with someone else,” he said.

“We could set the alarm for
four o’clock and go see.”

“I don’t think it’d be the
same here,” he admitted.

“You’d be surprised how amazing
and beautiful this city is sometimes,” I told him, propping up beside him on my
elbow to look down at his shadow in the dark. “On the nights when it snows it’s
so quiet it feels like the city itself has fallen asleep. You walk along the
sidewalk and it feels like you’re sneaking through the hallways of a sleeping
giant.”
 

“But what happens if you
wake the giant?”

“I don’t know,” a sound
half-laughter and half-sigh escaped me as I drifted back into the pillow. “I’ve
never woken it. It’d probably eat me alive.”

In the quiet darkness he was
silent for so long that I actually started to drift away. I could feel myself
falling, slow at first, and then speeding toward the earth like a snowflake
when he broke the silence with his voice.

“I love it when it’s
undisturbed and secret, like a blanket over the sleeping world. There’s a part
of me that regrets having to walk through it and break the endless cover, but
you know what’s even better?”

“Hmm?” I lifted my head to
keep from drifting any further while he talked.

“Being in the woods when it
snows, it’s like you’re in this whole other world.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever
been in the woods while it was snowing,” I admitted. “Not even as a kid.”

“I’ll take you there,” he
said. “There’s this spot by the creek I like to hunt. It’s the most peaceful
place in the world, and when the snow comes sometimes I just sit there for
hours and watch it fall.”

I stared out at the shadow
snow, no longer ambling in its pace, but fat, speeding flakes tumbling heavily
toward the ground. “There is so much more to you than you let the world see,
Troy. I feel like you hide this part of you away sometimes.”

“Maybe I don’t want the
world to see this side of me,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s a side I’ve been saving
just for you.”

“But how did you know it was
me you wanted to share it with?”

I listened as he exhaled.

“Because I’ve been back in
that town for five years,” he started, “and even after five years’ time you
were the only one who didn’t hesitate to look me in the eye. Even when we were
at the fire hall after your mom’s funeral, when I looked up and caught your
eye, you didn’t look away like you were ashamed or felt sorry for me. There
wasn’t that same sense of pity I see in everyone else because you knew, you
were going through it too.” For a moment he was quiet, putting his thoughts
together, and then he added, “It was like you looked up and you just saw me.
Not my failure to get out of that town, not the shackles that tie me to it,
just me. Which is weird because of them all, you actually got away.”