Hold Her Heart (Words of the Heart) (4 page)

There was a fence that separated Piper’s yard from Ned’s, but the entire center section of the fence was missing. I could catch the edge of more fall-fading greenery spilling into the yard behind this house.

Logan answered my unasked question about it. “When Ms. Pip and Ned got married and decided to keep this place, she started expanding her garden into his yard.” He pointed toward the back corner. “You should hear them every spring. She goes to the nursery, and he tells her she can’t possibly fit one more plant in either yard. She ignores him, and when they get home, he’s right there, helping her squeeze them in.”

He pointed to a tree in Ned’s back corner. “I helped plant that chestnut tree. It’s a Chinese chestnut. The American ones got some disease and died off so most, if not all, that are left here aren’t the native ones.”

It was a fair-sized little tree, so I asked, “You’ve known them a long time?”

I was more anxious to hear about Ned and Piper than chestnuts.

“I’ve known them since I was a kid,” he said.

“How did you meet them?” I asked.

Logan looked at me and said, “I’ll tell you how I met Ms. Pip if you’re really interested. But at this moment, I don’t think you really want to hear my story.”

“I don’t?” I found it cheeky that this man presumed to know me well enough to know what I wanted or didn’t want.

“You’re stalling,” he said simply.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked sharply.

Rather than look rueful, he laughed. He stopped short as he looked at me. I figured my frown was daunting, but he ruined that assumption when he grinned and said, “You sounded like my grandmother
. I beg your pardon?
” He laughed again.

“I . . .” I didn’t know what to say to that, and that one syllable was as far as I went.

“I’m not sure why Ned brought you here without Ms. Pip knowing, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to hear about how I met them. You’re wound up tight over it, though. If you really need to stall, I’ll tell you how I met her now, or we can do it later. Or you can tell me why you’re meeting her.”

“Why would I tell that to a stranger?”

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone who doesn’t know you.” He shrugged. “Either way, I’ll be around.”

He led me back down the stairs and walked me to the front door.

I don’t want to say that Logan pushed me out, but he made it apparent that he wasn’t going to aid my stalling.

“Don’t forget, you’re welcome to stay. There are extra bedrooms, and Ms. Pip will vouch for my character,” were his parting words before he shut the door on me.

I looked across the driveway at Piper’s porch.

Then slowly, I walked across the drive and to the porch. On one side of the door were comfortable-looking wicker chairs. They had red-and-blue plaid cushions and a small table sat between them. A plant and a teacup with small purple flowers sat on it. On the other side of the porch was a swing. It faced Ned’s old house.

The only thing that separated me from the house proper was a screen door. Just one thin bit of screening between me and the woman who’d given birth to me and then had given me to my parents.

I stood absorbing the fact that Piper George lived here, in this very normal-looking house in the middle of a normal middle class neighborhood, only three hours away from where I lived.

I raised my hand to knock, but then I let it fall back to my side. I wasn’t ready. Though I wasn’t sure how anyone could be ready for a situation like this. Maybe I’d just go back next door and get Logan to tell me how he’d met Piper and Ned.

Maybe I’d just get back in my car and—

A woman with a robin’s-egg blue scarf tied over her hair came to the door. She looked pale and thin. Unnaturally thin. It was the type of thinness that didn’t speak of diets or nature, but rather it spoke of illness.

No, not spoke—shouted.

I’d looked up Piper George’s picture on the Internet. This was not how she’d looked. She’d had red hair, like mine. And she’d had an inviting smile. The type of smile that said, you can tell me your secrets and your hopes. You can tell me your dreams and your goals.

She smiled now, and despite the difference between that photo and the woman standing in front of me, that smile was still the same.

“Hi. Can I help you?” she asked.

“I—” That’s all the further I got before I saw the first hint of recognition in her face. I answered her unasked question. “I’m Amanda.”

I should have introduced myself as Siobhan Ahearn. But I knew that for her—for Piper—I’d always been Amanda. That one snippet from her journal and Ned’s letter said as much. But even without that, I’d have known as I read her dedications in book after book.

I saw the tears form in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she shot me a smile and said, “Of course you are.”

She opened the screen door and stepped out onto the porch next to me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said softly.

“I know,” I told her.

She reached out and touched my cheek as if she needed to be sure I was real. “
We’ve
been waiting for you.”

I knew she meant her and Ned.

“Come in,” she said.

I suddenly felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid it would be worse inside, so I asked, “Could we go sit in your garden?”

I’m not sure why I wanted to go there so badly, but Piper didn’t seem to mind.

“Of course.”

She led me off the porch and along the side of the house to a gate that opened into the garden. It had looked amazing from the window of Ned’s house, but that hadn’t come close to doing it justice.

Patches of fall flowers dotted the ground. Some I recognized. Mums and some sort of daisy. But some I didn’t. There was a low plant covered in purple flowers and some tiny white flowers. A bush with bright red berries. And surrounding those islands of color, it was green. Green leaves on the trees and the bushes as well as the ground cover. It was a tired green that spoke of the end of the season. Some of it had already morphed into browns, oranges, and reds. Some would never change color but would simply give up and fall to the already leaf-ridden ground.

“It’s like the fairy garden in
Jenny Jangle and the Frisco Kid
,” I whispered. “It looked amazing from upstairs, but up close—”

Piper interrupted. “Upstairs?”

I realized I’d thrown Ned under the proverbial bus.

“When were you in my house?” she asked.

“Never,” I confessed. “I saw the garden from Ned’s house.”

“Ned’s house?” she repeated, though she punctuated those two words with a question mark that said Ned was definitely going to hear about this.

I pointed to the back window. “I’m staying there. Well, I was, but your friend Logan’s there, so I don’t know where I’m staying. He said we’d figure it out after I came to meet you.”

“I’m confused,” she said. More than confused, she looked as if a stiff breeze would topple her over.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” I asked. “I’m so nervous I can’t believe my knees aren’t knocking.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Of course.”

She led me to an iron bench at the back of the garden. There was a patch of spikes with large leaves that had tumbled to the ground and what looked to be drying seedpods next to it.

“What’s that?” I asked, not because of any driving need to know what that patch of plants was, but more because I wasn’t sure what to say to this woman who was a stranger and yet was so much more.

“Milkweed. Monarch caterpillars eat it.” She looked at me for a long minute, studying me. “So, you’ve met Ned and Logan?”

I ignored the Ned part because I wasn’t sure what to say. Instead I zeroed in on the Logan part. “I’m pretty sure meeting Logan counts as a memorable meeting. I walked in on him, half-naked and asleep. Did you know he wears smiley face boxers?”

She laughed. “Yes, that’s memorable. And no I didn’t. But how did you come to be at Ned’s?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. Ned must have known she’d find out he’d found me, but I still felt as if I were betraying a confidence. In the end, I didn’t need to say anything.

“He came and told you?” she asked, but we both knew it was more of a statement.

I nodded. “Yes. But to be fair, I could have been tested at home and simply let you think I was an anonymous donor if I were a match,” I said. “I wanted to meet you.”

I could see the doubt in her eyes. “You’ve had years and never made the move.”

“It’s complicated.” As I said the words, I suddenly realized the source of my conflict, because even now, sitting with Piper, I felt guilty. Even with my father’s blessing I felt as if I were somehow betraying my mother.

I’m not sure exactly when I’d realized that was a big part of the reason I hadn’t gone looking for my birth mother, but it was a big part of it.

The biggest part of it.

I knew it wasn’t rational. Before she’d died, Mom and I had talked about my adoption. My hand touched my collarbone and felt the locket that I wore. My mother had given it to me along with the letter from my birth mother—from Piper. Mom had encouraged me to find her. Despite knowing all that, there it was. Guilt.

Piper didn’t press. She simply nodded. “This isn’t how I dreamed we’d meet.”

“How did you dream it?” I asked. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, and I was sure she had things she wanted to ask me. But here we sat on a garden bench, two strangers looking for something benign to talk about because the heavier topics might crush us under their weight of emotion.

“I’ve dreamed meeting you so many times. I’d be sitting on the porch with Ned. We’d be talking about our day and then a car would pull up in front of the house. You’d get out, and I’d recognize you immediately. We wouldn’t say anything because we couldn’t. We’d be crying too hard for words. But we’d hug each other. I’d finally hold you again after so many years apart. The missing piece of my heart would finally be back where it belonged.”

And that’s all it took.

I was crying, and she was crying. And we hugged. We hugged for the longest time, this mother I’d never met but who’d loved me every minute of my entire life.

“Amanda,” she whispered.

And she was right, some missing piece—a piece I’d never known was missing—was back where it belonged.

When the tears slowed, we both reluctantly let the other go. “It wasn’t your front porch, but I hope it came close.”

She took my hand in hers and patted it. “You’re here just as I always dreamed.”

“I have questions. So many questions that I don’t know where to start.”

She smiled. “Me, too. I guess the one that has haunted me the most is are you happy? Did you have a good childhood? Are you happy now?”

“My childhood—that one’s easy. Yes. My parents were the best.” I realized that might hurt her and started to look for something else to say. She must have sensed it, because she reached out and placed her hand on mine.

“That was my biggest dream for you. If you had a happy childhood, then, at least for me, most of the rest is secondary. Are you happy now? I—”

Piper was interrupted by someone hollering from the back door of the house. “Where are you?”

“Back here, Fi,” she called.

Moments later, someone crashed into view. The someone in question was a young girl with a long braid that she flipped over her shoulder as she reached us.

A long red braid.

“Mom.” She started and then noticed me.

She screeched and threw herself at me. I had no choice but to open my arms and catch her. “You’re here, Amanda,” she said as she hugged me.

“Her name’s Siobhan,” Piper said.

The girl released me and grinned at me. “Yeah, I know you’re really Siobhan. I’ve seen the video about a thousand times. We watch it every year on your birthday. I can recite your whole speech by heart, you know.”

She stood in front of me and recited:

There are so many choices. And each one we make will have a lifelong impact. I know about that kind of life-changing decision. You see, today I need to thank both of my mothers for the choices they made. I thank the mother who raised me. She opened her heart and her home to a child she didn’t give birth to. That decision—made before I was born—set my life on a path. Never has any child been so loved.

But I also need to thank the mother who gave birth to me. Most of you don’t know I’m adopted. Why would you? But before I was my parents’ daughter, there was another woman who carried me for nine months.

“Fiona,” Piper said sharply, warning in her voice.

It took me a moment, but I recognized the speech from my high school graduation. I’d been valedictorian. My parents had given me the letter from my birth mother and the locket. I reached up and touched it as if it were a talisman that might calm me.

“Video?” I asked. I was struck by the enormity of this girl’s appearance. I had a sister. A sister who knew my entire valedictorian speech from high school.

“Oh, sorry, Mom.” She turned back to me. “I’m Fiona. Mom and Dad loved your name so much—Siobhan,” she added, as if I might not be sure what name she was talking about. “So when I came along, they decided on an Irish name for me, too. Of course, they didn’t really think too much about the impact of a name like Fiona. Some of the bullies at school tried to taunt me by calling me Shrek, but then I said if I were an ogre, they must be the donkey, only I called them another word that means donkey and the teacher overheard. She called Mom and Dad in along with Dillan’s parents. We had to apologize to each other. He tried calling me Shrek again, but I just brayed at him like a donkey, and then I said I couldn’t understand donkey. He gave up.”

“Fi—” Piper said.

“That’s Mom’s way of saying I talk too much, and I do. But I’ve got a lot to say to you. I’m nine, and I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. You can’t imagine how hard it was to be patient. Mom says that patience isn’t one of my virtues.”

“Neither is silence,” Piper said, dire warning in her voice.

If my mother had spoken to me in that tone, I’d have been cowed. My little sister was either made of sterner stuff, or Piper was less than intimidating because Fiona simply grinned and said, “Yeah, silence isn’t one, either.”