Return to Me (31 page)

“We’ve worked with a specialist before and are bringing him back in for this project.”

“Pete Nelson?”

Sybille cocked her head, eyebrows lifted as though she was impressed. When she nodded, I practically fell over. There was no way I could contain or secret away my enthusiasm. “I love Pete Nelson’s work! Especially his Trillium treehouse—it’s like a double-decker bus in the forest! What does the one you’re building look like? Do you have plans? Can I see?”

When Sybille stood, laughing, I followed her to her mammoth desk before the wall of windows. I knew it would seem odd, but I had to touch the desk, hewn from a single, massive plank of wood, its edges left raw and natural.

No sooner did Sybille take her seat than she asked, as though proctoring a test, “What do you like about this piece?”

I flushed, surprised I wasn’t all that abashed at being caught caressing the wood. Something told me that Sybille herself had done the same when she first met her desk. “I love that it looks real. Like you went to the forest and took a slice out of a fallen tree. Elm, right?”

Nodding, Sybille considered me for a long moment, then swiveled to grab a file from her drawers. As she set the file on the whorled desk, she said, “So, Peter tells me you have questions for your year off from school.”

After running through the list of options I’d come up with for my gap year, some with Peter, others with my family, the rest by myself, I admitted my fear: “What if I make a mistake and choose the wrong thing to do?”

“Personally, I’ve found that even the experiences where you wonder what the hell you’re doing eventually help. Actually, especially those hurt-like-hell experiences. You know, I started here as a secretary, but I decided to track down every single doorknob, every single door, every single window used in fifteen job sites. I saved the company a quarter million dollars, even though people thought I should have focused on serving them better coffee.”

“That would be challenging.”

“Do a job, and do it better than anyone expects: That’s my motto. So why choose?” Sybille gestured broadly, as though taking stock of her own life. “Do you have to choose?”

I frowned, blown away by this concept. Her question, simple as it was, opened a new, untraveled path I had never considered. Why choose? Wasn’t that what Grandpa had been saying all along—and look at the beautiful mosaic of a life he was crafting. Bits and pieces of experiences spanning construction to art had gone into creating his inn.

A solution began to materialize. I asked, “Do you think I could do a couple of two-month internships? My grandma asked me to help with her business. So I could do some research for her, work for a painter, write grants for Peter, and… maybe… possibly shadow you?”

“Let me give you some more unsolicited advice.” Sybille gave me a meaningful look. “Make it easy for me to hire you.”

I swallowed, feeling stupid for being so presumptuous. Why did I suggest working for her? A sheen of sweat began to form on my forehead, and I twisted my hands together. What would Mom do? Or my grandparents? Or Jackson? None of them would back down. Then, I knew. Like Sybille, they would never ask for permission. They would propose.

Refusing to give up what I dearly wanted because I was afraid of rejection or feeling silly, I straightened my back and declared, “I would love to work for you in whatever capacity you needed on a project or two. I work hard and learn fast. So if it’s the treehouse or the stone installation or anything else, I am game. My end goal is to learn as much as I can about construction so that I can be the kind of architect who designs the kinds of things you build.”

“You know, Peter told me that you’d remind me of myself,” Sybille said seriously, leaning back in her chair. “And I think we’ll be able to work something out.” Pulling open her desk drawer, Sybille grabbed a business card and handed it to me. “Make sure to e-mail me tomorrow first thing. Word to the wise: Do your homework. Tell me what project you want to work on and why.”

Grandma Stesha had assured me that opportunities would spring up almost magically when I was on the right track, that there would be an alignment of what I needed and what I was offered. That had sounded too New Age-y for a reformed skeptic like me. Until now. Suddenly, I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What?” Sybille asked, smiling as though she could read my thoughts.

“I would never have believed this would happen,” I said, holding her business card like a lottery ticket. In a way, it was: The riches I’d been given were incalculable. “That I’d be happy to have a gap year.”

“I’m one of those people who believe that everything happens for a reason. And that everything works out, but in ways you’d never predict.” Sybille leaned toward me. “Peter didn’t reveal much about your circumstances, but I can tell you that I couldn’t go to college right after high school, either. My family didn’t have the money.”

“And look at you.”

“Yeah,” Sybille said, and she scanned her office before resting her gaze on the expansive water view outside. “Life is good, and I would never have believed that I would be sitting here.” She smiled at me. “Something tells me that your treehouse sanctuary is going to be very special.”

The immensity of how far I’d come, too, struck me hard then. Here I was, stardusted with opportunities just weeks after despairing over my college-less future. Everything—every decision, every heartbreak, every action—had led me to this moment. Not only because of Dad and his affair but because I had listened to my grandparents, learned from my mother, and leaned into the future I wanted.

Laughing again, I shook my head. Even if I were given the chance for a complete redo of the last few weeks, I wouldn’t change a thing. The slightest smidge of hesitation, a single retracted choice—all of that would have altered this landscape of opportunities. The sun warmed my face as I stood to
shake Sybille’s hand, rough and strong. Outside, the sun greeted me even brighter when I pushed through the brushed-steel door of the construction company and strode to the street corner.

Not caring who was staring at me from their office windows, shrugging off the amused smirks of strangers in their cars, I twirled in the middle of the crossroads because here was the beauty of the moment: I got to choose the path I would take.

Back at home, Reid was sprawled on our borrowed couch, writing in his journal as usual. From the kitchen, Ginny’s mom exclaimed, “Dis-gust-ing!” Whatever commentary she was providing about my dad—what else would provoke that gut-deep response?—her obvious repulsion was fueling Reid’s frenzied writing. He frowned, hunched over his journal, writing in all caps. He wasn’t just telling himself a story, I realized. He was escaping our reality. At eleven, where else could he go but in his imagination?

“Reid,” I said, but his fingers tightened painfully around his pen, and he refused to look up from his page to acknowledge me.

Our furniture was once again in transit, being trucked back from New Jersey, since Dad had decided to stay in the Manhattan apartment rather than the house. The deep indentations in our carpet here could have been made from the weight of invisible memories pressing down on us. Why was Reid here among the ghost images of our living room instead of upstairs in his bedroom? But then, had I spent much time in my own bedroom
since our homecoming? Hadn’t I felt shrouded with our old life there? Instead, I found peace in my sanctuary—my treehouse.

A clean start—that’s what I wished for Reid and Mom, for all of us. So I marched across the living room, flung the bay windows open, and invited the early-autumn wind inside to cleanse our home. As I gazed out at the unobstructed view of the Puget Sound, I noticed for the first time a birch tree, limbed back brutally. Two years ago, Dad had groused about losing the view because of that damned tree, and on a weekend when Mom was out of town, he had hired an arborist to prune it.

“Hey, Reidster,” I said now, shaking his feet lightly. He refused to respond. So, bad big sister, I tickled his soles. He growled. I said, “Come on, let’s go to my treehouse.”

That unprecedented invitation got his attention. “Really?” He leaped off the couch in his excitement, and guiltily I knew that I could count the number of times he had been inside my treehouse. Reid had been a toddler, barely walking, when my parents remodeled the house. Carving out a private space for him hadn’t even been a consideration back then.

We raced down the path to the treehouse, Reid reaching its spiral staircase first. He looked over his shoulder for my permission to continue. When I grinned at him, he walked carefully up the treads, as though I’d retract my invitation, and paused for me at the locked door. I dug the key out of my pocket and handed it to him. His look of pleasure was my reward.

Because I had left the windows cracked open overnight, the treehouse smelled like the surrounding forest, mysterious and verdant. Though empty of furnishings or decorations, my treehouse
felt so welcoming, Reid settled himself on the hardwood floor with his journal. He was that eager to escape into the world he was creating. I hurt for him because I didn’t want him to flee his life, to write himself into a happier ending. I wanted him to embrace his new life and the promise of all the good things to come. What he needed was the same reassurance Mom had given once upon a time to an insecure boy who grew into his name: Cameron.

“Wait,” I said.

Once, a few weeks ago, my brother had nearly begged me to reassure him that everything would be all right. I couldn’t provide that comfort to him then, too afraid to tap into my sixth sense, too afraid to step out of the circle of our dad’s approval.

For the first time I could remember, I openly courted a vision. Sitting cross-legged with my eyes shut, I slowed my breathing. It felt odd, disconcerting, doing this when I had forcibly and physically stopped myself from seeing anything for a decade. Instead of the aching sensation that hurt me whenever I halted any dreaming, my body lightened and floated.

My breathing eased, and I relaxed even further.

I saw: a young man, his eyes hidden behind highly reflective sunglasses. Gregorian chanting, deep and pensive, gives way to wild cheering. Then, a voice: “In the midnight still, the Oracle of Delphi has been stolen….”

“Sunglasses onstage. Not a good look,” I told Reid, who listened to my every word with rapt attention.

“Comic-Con,” he whispered, eyes shining. “It’s got to be.”

“Comic-Con?”

Reid frowned as though I were the biggest idiot on earth. Um, excuse me, who just read one potential future for him? But I kept my mouth shut so that he could enjoy his superior knowledge this once.

“Only the biggest comic-book convention of all time,” he said. “Was it a novel I was launching? Or a game?” His eyes widened. “Or a movie?”

“I don’t know. It was more of a feeling and just that one image of you.”

“Well, look again!”

“I’m not a Magic Eight Ball that you can shake on command.”

“Oh,” Reid said as his eyes unfocused and he stared off into the space of his vast imagination. I could tell he was writing in his head, spinning some new idea that my vision might have uncorked in him.

For the first time, I could understand why Grandma Stesha’s tours to sacred spaces were so oversubscribed that some people waited more than a year to snag a spot. Who wouldn’t want a little comfort when every decision we make, every friendship we foster, the relationship we commit to alters our life in some unforeseen way? Even the colleges we choose—and don’t choose—change our fate.

The knowledge that I had helped Reid felt more than good, but powerful. No wonder Grandma Stesha said her calling was to heal people. How could I ever question my calling to create sanctuaries for people when I got so much joy from watching
Reid jot a note as though whatever unformed idea he had was so good, so luscious, he had to plant its kernel before he forgot?

That space to create—Virginia Woolf had written about how women needed a room of their own. Grandpa George had created an entire retreat for Grandma Stesha. In the same way, Reid needed a greenhouse for his ideas. He deserved much more than the tiny hobbit house we had left behind, unfinished, in New Jersey. I glanced around this life-size treehouse and knew I could provide a true nesting place for my brother. Now.