by Ike Hamill
“I know,” she said.
He smiled.
“It was considered the age of majority—when people transitioned to adulthood and could make their own decisions. For some, it was the age that they left the house and went out on their own. I’m hoping that you’re in no rush to do that.”
She nodded and closed her eyes.
“What do you want to do for your eighteenth birthday?”
“Sleep.”
Her father laughed. She felt his weight leave the bed and then heard her window shut.
“Your sister had to explore,” he said. She was glad when she felt him sit on the bed again. Sometimes, she wanted nothing more than to feel his presence near so she could really be comfortable. “I don’t think you’re the exploring type.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I could be.”
“Certainly, you could be. You can do anything you want. I’m not trying to talk you into or out of anything. When you have kids of your own, should you decide that’s your course, make sure that they understand that indecision can be a virtue.”
Thinking about that for a second, Janelle finally opened her eyes to look at her father.
“What does that mean?”
He laughed again and squeezed her foot through the blankets.
“When you were a little, little kid, you could never make up your mind about anything. Picking our your clothes, deciding what dessert to choose, or whether or not to jump into the water one more time. You considered everything so carefully and you would be paralyzed by doubt.”
“I was being careful.”
“Yes, very, very careful. We all talked so much about the importance of making a decision and sticking to it, that you really swerved in the other direction.”
Janelle rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.
“Dad, you’re not going to talk me out of it.”
His smile faded.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Then trust me when I tell you that I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I just want you to know that nobody will judge you poorly if your decision changes on its own.”
He was wrong about that. In her head, she could already hear the tone that Romie’s voice would have. Praise always meant the most when it came from Aunt Romie, but that mocking tone cut more deeply. Most of the time, Janelle respected her. Sometimes, she hated her a little too.
Janelle flipped her covers down and pushed herself up to a sitting position.
“How old were you when you met mom?” she asked.
He blinked slowly, probably already guessing where she was going.
“Almost seventeen.”
“Sixteen, then. And, when Mom died, how old were you?”
He sighed as he said, “Thirty.”
“You had fourteen years together,” she said.
“Not quite.”
“If you could change things, would you want more or less?”
“A million years more,” he said. There was such sadness in his voice that, just for a second, Janelle felt bad for the way that she was getting to her point.
“Noland and I want that too,” she said.
“Your black haired boy with dark eyes.”
“It’s not always wrong to be sure of something, Dad.”
“Of course,” he said. After a long pause, he said, “I came up to wish you a happy birthday. I didn’t mean for it to turn into a fight.”
“I’m not fighting. I mean, not really.”
She couldn’t figure out how to say what she really felt. In her mind, everything was perfectly clear. Sometimes, really lucky things happened. People who experienced nothing but bad luck wanted to color those things as untrue, but sometimes they were perfectly true.
The frustrating thing was that her father should have been the one person to understand.
“Get dressed,” he said, getting up again. “We have surprises for you.”
Aside from her father, she was the only one dressed. Romie, Lisa, and Brad were up, but they were all still in pajamas and robes. Lisa and Brad were in their favorite chairs and Romie was on her loveseat. Her father was squatting in front of the stove, shoving more wood into it.
“Good morning, birthday girl,” Lisa said. She got up and gave Janelle a squeeze and a kiss on her cheek.
“Your brother and sister should…” her father began to say. He was interrupted by the sound of the patio door sliding.
“Happy birthday!” Jim shouted as they entered.
They were both carrying big blue bags with ribbons on them.
Even if the shape hadn’t given it away, Janelle knew what one of them was. The bow’s grip and size had been carefully chosen with her input. But Janelle didn’t have any idea what was in the bag that Ashley was carrying.
“It’s four thousand degrees in here,” Jim said as he laid the bow on the coffee table.
“Heaven forbid you ever grow old and experience bad circulation,” Romie said.
“But it’s August,” Jim said, smiling. He went and sat next to Romie, putting his arm around her.
“It was fifty this morning,” Ashley said. “I believe that the shift in the jet stream that’s driving…”
“Birthday time,” Janelle said, reaching for the bag on the coffee table. The last thing she wanted to hear was a lecture from her sister about how the weather was going to change everything and they would soon have to move south.
“That’s from me and Ashley,” Jim said.
Janelle pulled at the ribbon that tied the bag closed. She made the appropriate sounds of appreciation as she pulled the shiny bow from the bag. She knew how hard her siblings had worked to get the thing in perfect working order. Janelle was still on the fence about archery, but it was a necessary skill. One of these days, she had to get better at it.
“That’s perfect,” she said. “Thank you, so much.”
“We set up a range on Hudson Street,” Ashley said. “You can practice there without worrying about killing anyone.”
“Leave the dogs at home,” Lisa said. “When you practice.”
Janelle nodded.
“That’s from us,” Brad said, pointing at the bag that Ashley had carried in. “We hid it at Ashley’s house so you wouldn’t sneak around and find it.”
“And ‘us’ means Brad, me, and Lisa,” Romie said.
“Thank you,” Janelle said as she took the bag.
The thing was much heavier than it looked. Janelle didn’t know what it was until she opened the bag and the rich smell of tanned leather reached her.
“Is this…”
Her hand found the smooth shape inside. It almost felt warm. She pulled the bag off and revealed the hand-worked leather of the saddle.
“It’s beautiful,” Janelle said. She rode bareback when she took short trips, but on the longer trips a saddle was a necessity. The one she used was so worn out that it was practically disintegrating. “Where did you get it?”
“Cost us six months of vegetables,” Romie said.
“Amy Lynne made it for you. We traded vegetables for it,” Lisa said, “but, honestly, it’s worth so much more than we traded for it.”
“I love it,” Janelle whispered, running her hand over the design carved into the back.
“Victor likes it too,” Ashley said. “We already test-fitted it on him, just to make sure. Amy Lynne was nervous about the fit.”
Janelle knew that it was true. She could see Victor’s gray hair on the underside of the saddle.
“Wow. These are both amazing. Thank you guys so much.”
She started to get up, not sure of which thing she wanted to do first. It would be fun to go out on a morning ride on Victor to try out the saddle, but she really had to start a routine of archery every day—she thought that maybe she should go out and do that first.
“One more thing,” her father said.
“This is already so much,” Janelle
said.
“You’re going to want to see this,” Ashley said.
Janelle glanced over at her sister and then had to look back. There were tears welling up in Ashley’s eyes. Her sister was never all that sentimental. Janelle couldn’t imagine what had pulled on her emotions like that.
Janelle watched as her father stood up and went to the closet near the door. They kept all their winter gear in that closet—people hardly opened it in the summer time, regardless of whether or not it was fifty degrees overnight.
The thing he pulled out was a big rectangle, wrapped in thin brown paper.
Janelle tilted her head as he brought it to her.
“What is it?” she asked.
Everyone else had a great big smile. Even Ashley, who wiped a tear from her eye before it could fall, was smiling. Her father’s face was almost sad. His eyebrows were raised.
“What?”
“Open it,” he said, holding it out.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to take it. The way he was holding it, the thin rectangle looked like it weighed a thousand pounds. When she did finally take it from his hands, it barely weighed anything.
Janell sat on the edge of the coffee table, sliding the bow out of the way, so she could unwrap it. It was an ornate frame—her fingers told her that before the paper was even removed.
“Brad fired up an old computer recently to dig up some electronic encyclopedia,” her father said. “He found an old photo library that we had forgotten about.”
“I forgot about it,” Brad said. “Your father never really knew about it.”
“From that, I painted this,” her father said.
Janelle knew about her father’s attempts at painting. He was terrible at making up his own stuff, but he had worked out a good method to copy photos. Using mirrors and lights, he would match the colors he saw and carefully stroke them onto the canvas.
It was Ashley’s eyes that she saw looking back from the painting. Then, blinking, she realized that it was her own eyes. The third time, she finally figured it out.
“Mom?”
“You’ve only opened half of it,” her brother said. He reached forward and tore more of the paper.
When Jim peeled away more of the brown paper, Janelle realized that her mother was holding something in her arms. It was a baby. Janelle felt weak when she realized that the baby was herself.
Her father whispered, “Brad took the photo and forgot about it. I never even saw it until last fall.”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Ashley asked.
Janelle couldn’t answer her sister. The woman’s face was both familiar and foreign. The smile and the look in her eyes mirrored precisely the way that Janelle felt in her happiest moments. Janelle felt like she was seeing her mother’s thoughts directly, and those thoughts were filled with love for her.
She felt herself sway and realized that she needed to sit down. When her brother’s hand steadied her, Janelle remembered that she was already sitting down.
“This is the best present ever,” Janelle said. When her tears spilled, she put her arm up to her face to make sure they didn’t fall on the painting.
Janelle slipped from the saddle and landed softly on the turf beside Victor. He was a good horse, but he always wanted to rush into the barn when she visited Noland. Janelle didn’t want to be on his back when he tried to rush through the door.
This day, her horse had other ideas. Instead of pulling her down the fence toward the barn, he wanted to go left, down the path toward the creek. Janelle was confused until she heard the chuff of another horse down that way. She turned and took the lead, making him stay behind her.
Through the trees, she saw the brown shape of Dee, one of Noland’s horses. She was eating grass in the small paddock on the other side of the creek. Janelle moved that way to figure out why.
Before she could cross the creek, Noland stepped out from behind a tree.
Janelle stopped fast and Victor pawed at the ground.
“You surprised me,” she said.
“Happy birthday.”
His hand came from behind his back and revealed a secret. He was holding a little cake with a burning candle.
“Wow,” she said. “Where did you get that?”
“I made it,” he said, holding it out. “Here—you take this and I’ll put him away.”
Noland traded her the cake for the reins and she made a wish before she blew out the candle. At the sound, Noland turned to smile at her. He ran a hand over his black hair and blushed as she put a finger in the frosting. It was greasy, but delicious.
When she told him so, he laughed.
“Be right back.”
He hopped across the creek and Victor followed. She leaned against a tree and watched Noland take the birthday saddle from Victor’s back before he turned him loose in the paddock. Her horse postured and pranced for Dee before the two horses chased each other around for a bit. Noland came back carrying the saddle carefully to set it on a rock.
“This is beautiful. This is the saddle that Amy Lynne made?”
“Did everyone know about that but me?”
“That’s how surprises work,” he said.
He came and put his hands on her hips. She raised the cake and touched frosting to his nose.
“Greasy and delicious,” he said. “Just like you.”
She wanted to press it into his face, but didn’t want to waste it.
“You made this all by yourself?”
“I didn’t say that,” Noland said with a smile. “I traded for the flour. My sister made the butter.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Maybe you won’t be as impressed when you actually taste it.”
She laughed. They moved over to the big rock and sat next to the saddle. Delicately, she broke off a piece of the cake and tried it. The consistency wasn’t perfect, but it tasted wonderful. She only told him the second part.
Noland let her feed him a little of it, but insisted that the rest was for her.
Between bites, she asked what she had come to ask.
“Did you think about my idea?”
Noland nodded. “I have.”
She heard his answer in the way he said the two words—he was going to turn her down. It didn’t mean failure, it just meant that she was going to have to spend longer convincing him. There was no doubt that she eventually could convince him. It was just a matter of time and effort.
“Okay, before you say anything else, you have to…”
“Wait,” Noland said. “Please.”
His dark eyes were impossible to resist. Instead of pressing on with her case, she took another bite of cake and forced herself to eat it while he continued on.
“You promised your father that you would wait until you were twenty-one,” Noland said.
“But,” she started to say. A bit of cake flew from between her lips.
“I’m not saying that a promise made years ago is forever binding, and I’m not saying that your father is right and you’re wrong. I just think that three more years is not too long to wait.”
“Three more years? Do you know how long that is?”
He started to laugh and then covered his mouth. He knew how much she hated it when people laughed at her.
“You said the same thing about Victor,” he said.
She shook her head, but he was right. When Victor had been born, she had waited impatiently for him to turn one, thinking that she would be able to ride him. When Jim had said that they had to wait for him to turn three, Janelle had nearly lost her mind. It was an impossibly long time to wait. Janelle hadn’t given in until Jim showed her the book that Donald had given him.
“This is different,” Janelle said.
“I agree, but I still vote for waiting.”
“And I vote that we move tomorrow.”
Noland shrugged. “The decision is yours. I’ve always said that.”
He was a few months older than her, but he always deferred to her decis
ions. She set down the cake and he took her hand in his. Janelle looked at the scars on the back of his hands and thought about how lucky it was that he was there at all. She had barely known him before those scars. He had grown up in Donnelly and hadn’t moved down until after the stay in the bunker. If it hadn’t been for the fire, his mother would have probably never moved them at all.
She ran her thumb over the smooth skin of one of the scars.
“We don’t know how much time we’ll have together,” she said, looking up into his eyes.
“The rest of our lives.”
“But that could only be years. We don’t know what’s going to happen. What if we miss the opportunity to live on our own together and have kids?”
“That would be terrible.”
She nodded. He didn’t say what he had said before—there were no guarantees. It didn’t need to be repeated. The evidence was all around them. Her mother was gone. His father was too. Everyone had lost people, and they still couldn’t find any guarantees.
“Not tomorrow, but I’m not waiting three more years.”
He smiled.
She leaned her head down on his shoulder. Across the creek and through the trees, she saw Victor prance around Dee with his tail raised high. He was showing off. The horses moved through life one moment at a time. The future was of no more concern than the past.
Janelle sighed and Noland put his arm around her.
Ike Hamill
Summer 2019
Topsham, Maine
About Succinct
I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I did. This book took the characters much farther than I originally imagined. I wanted to try to see their world from many different perspectives, even when the observations and ideas didn’t quite mesh. Maybe that allowed you to experience things from your own point of view. That was my intention.
For the past ten years, much of my time has been spent with these characters. It may sound strange, but they really have taken on lives of their own. I’m sad to see some of them grow old and pleased to meet the new ones. I hope you felt the same way.
