The Heart of the Matter

by Heather M Green

  “Now who’s the one being funny?” Trevor commented from the bathroom doorway then stood looking at us for a few minutes. “She’s probably worried that you can’t see well enough to drive.” My eyes were still puffy from the disastrous exchange with James yesterday and the resulting crying jag. I was so over it, but I admittedly hadn’t slept very well. I could see a Walmart parking lot in my near future. Great.

  “I’m fine,” I told them, smacking Trevor on the arm as I walked past him and down the stairs. Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe it. “I’ll call when I get home and I’ll see you guys again in a few months.”

  The doorbell interrupted our goodbyes. I dropped to my knees and pulled Jeran to me while Trevor went to get the door. “Aunt Soph, I can’t bweathe,” Jeran rasped.

  I lessened my grip a little and planted a kiss on his head. “Thanks for playing with me,” I told him. “You be a good big brother and help mom and dad with Dylan.”

  He wriggled out of my arms and shouted, “I will,” as he ran from the room.

  I stood as Trevor returned followed by...Andy? My brows pulled together. “Did we have plans?” I asked him.

  “No. I heard you’re skipping town and I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.” I swallowed the lump that appeared suddenly in my throat. How thoughtful. And... how unlike Andy. “I knew you wouldn’t survive life back in Texas unless you got one last hug from the Smarmy Man, so here I am,” Andy said, advancing on me with his arms outstretched. I laughed out loud at that ridiculous statement, but put my arms around him for a hug.

  “I‘m not sure I ever told you thanks for helping Adri feel so welcome when she visited. You are a good friend,” I told him.

  “That was definitely my pleasure,” he grinned. “Any other friends you’d like me to help?”

  “I know that was a rhetorical question,” I replied, and he laughed. “Hey, I made a mess of things between us in the beginning, and I’m sorry.” He tried to shrug the comment off, but I wouldn’t let him. “No, really. You are very forgiving and you didn’t have to be. I appreciate it. Don’t give up. The perfect girl is out there somewhere just waiting for you to thrust your over inflated ego on her.” I squeezed him one last time and stepped back.

  He gave me his signature smile. “Keep in touch,” he told me. Then he was gone.

  “Well that was...unexpected,” Stacy said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I responded. “Nice though.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to throw him over for the doc,” Trevor teased.

  “You could be right for the first time in your life,” I teased back.

  He hooked his arm around my neck and rubbed his knuckles on my head. “Hey, now…” I threatened a kidney punch and wriggled out of his clutches smoothing down my hair.

  “I was only trying to give you a hug goodbye,” he told me innocently.

  I leaned over Stacy to gently place a kiss on Dylan’s chubby cheek. “I could eat you,” I said, kissing him again and again while breathing in his fresh baby scent. He rewarded me with a toothless grin. “Ah. I will miss that,” I sighed.

  Next, I threw an arm around Stacy’s shoulders and hugged her to my side. “Thanks for everything,” I managed. I pulled away and watched her swipe quickly at a tear on her cheek. “Don’t start that,” I scolded with a chuckle. “I’ve cried enough the past twelve hours for all of us.”

  “Get over here and give me a real hug,” my brother said, pulling me into his chest.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him tight. “Thanks, Trev,” I whispered, swallowing back yet another wave of emotion.

  “Sure. Anytime I can uproot you, allow someone to break your heart, and then send you home without anything to go back to, let me know,” he joked.

  “No part of this is your fault. Well, except for uprooting me, but that was my choice. And I’d do it again in a second. Thank you for asking me to come. Everything else will work itself out in time.” And while it didn’t feel like that right now, I really believed it would eventually.

  I gave Dylan one more noisy smack on his cheek and headed for my car. I waved as I backed out of their driveway. Jeran dragged Stacy away, but Trevor stood at the open door. I watched him watch me through the rearview mirror until the bend in the road blocked him from sight, then the tears came. I would miss them.

  I didn’t know what I’d do once I got home. My life lay stretched out in front of me like miles and miles of empty road. At what point would I have it all together like I’d planned? I felt like I was starting from scratch. Well, I had nothing but time to consider the possibilities.

  One thing I did know- I couldn’t wait to get back here with my parents to show off my nephews. They wouldn’t even recognize Jeran. Thank heaven we’d be flying though.

  My phone rang somewhere in the middle of Idaho. I turned down the radio and fumbled for my phone before it switched to voice mail. I smiled while simultaneously groaning when I saw who it was.

  “Kaley. What’s up?” I asked brightly. I hadn’t spoken to her for a couple of days. Which meant she didn’t know about the catastrophe that was my final conversation with James. Unless he called her up right after. And I was pretty sure that hadn’t happened.

  “Where are you?” she demanded, her irritated voice on speaker phone echoing through the car.

  “Uh, somewhere in Idaho,” I replied, looking around for a road sign to tell me what city I just blew past.

  “Idaho!?” she exclaimed in a voice that bordered on a shriek. I cringed even as she continued. “I’m mad at you. You didn’t even tell me goodbye.” I closed my eyes briefly at the hurt in her voice.

  “Um, goodbye,” I said sheepishly. When she didn’t reply, I repented. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.” I really did feel bad about not calling her, but I wouldn’t have been able to even talk to her through all the blubbering. It would have been a pretty one sided conversation with some sniffles thrown in for good measure. Plus, talking to someone so close to James so soon after his rejection would have felt like rejection all over again. I couldn’t do that right now.

  “Why didn’t you say goodbye?” she asked quietly.

  “I got busy packing and…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence because of how lame the explanation sounded in my own ears. Kaley deserved better than that.

  And she called me on it. “Terrible excuse,” she replied. “Ridiculous even.” I rolled my eyes in agreement even though she couldn’t see me. “Now tell me what really happened.”

  “He didn’t want me,” I choked out. The tears flooded from my eyes. I reached to turn on the windshield wipers to clear my vision and realized what I was doing. A pathetic laugh escaped me and I looked for an exit to pull off. I obviously shouldn’t be driving right now. I didn’t need a highway patrolman calling Trevor and Stacy to come identify my mangled body because I went off the road crying over some guy.

  I maneuvered my car into a gas station parking lot and pulled a Kleenex from the middle console. “Just a minute,” I told her. I blew my nose and got a hold on my emotions then took the phone off speaker and lifted it to my ear. “Sorry,” I apologized. “I’m good now.”

  “What did my idiot of a brother do now?”

  “It’s more what he didn’t do,” I sniffed. “I stood there practically begging him to tell me to stay, and he didn’t say anything.”

  “Maybe you just misunderstood,” she soothed.

  “How can you misunderstand nothing? He didn’t say one word. Well, except the part where he’d been lying to me for months and everything between us had only been a summer fling. He just looked at me with this panicked look on his face and watched me walk away.”

  “What I wouldn’t give to have him in front of me right now so I could slap him,” she spit out.

  That almost got a chuckle out of me. “I’ve wished that a few times since yesterday myself,” I admitted. “But I’m afraid instead of smacking him, I’d fall all over
him, pleading and crying. It would be pathetic and I’m pathetic enough as it is.”

  “No you aren’t,” she snapped defensively. “He is. And he needs to get a life. I thought that’s what he was doing with you. I knew I shouldn’t have left it up to him. He ruins everything.”

  This time I did chuckle. How James had survived growing up with two mothers- Caroline and Kaley- I’d never know. Then I sobered. “There’s nothing you could have done. It needed to be his decision. He made his choice.”

  It wasn’t me.

  James

  “Hello, Kaley,” I muttered. My instincts told me to not answer her call, but she’d hound me until she’d said her piece. Might as well get it over with.

  “You are an idiot,” she responded. “And I’m not talking to you.”

  “You’re calling me to tell me you aren’t talking to me? How does that make sense?”

  “Don’t mess with me right now, James. I’m so mad at you I could spit.”

  Join the club. I suppressed a sigh and asked, “What did I do this time?” I shouldn’t even have asked because I knew what I had done. But maybe, just maybe, there was some other sin she called to ream me over. I seemed to be racking them up these days.

  “What do you think you did?” She was using her ‘mom’ voice on me. It was becoming shrill and it was scaring me a little. Not to mention how tiresome her mothering me was getting. I was thirty-two years old for crying out loud. I suddenly had a greater empathy for my nephews.

  “Why don’t you tell me. You called me, remember?”

  Her low growl told me I was pushing it. I didn’t care. It felt good to get angry. At least the anger took my mind off the numbness in my chest.

  A pause, then, “Why, James? We talked about this. Why didn’t you stop her?” she asked softly. Her anger I could handle, but her sadness I could not. “Oh, yeah. Summer fling. I forgot.” The sarcasm ran thick.

  “Why is it any of your business, Kaley?” I bit out. “What makes any of this your business? I don’t know when you decided I should try to stop her, but you decided. Not me. I can’t be what she wants me to be. I did what I had to do.” There was that line again.

  “More lies. You’ve told yourself so many lies, you don’t know the truth anymore. What does she want you to be? Did she give you a list of unrealistic demands? Did she tell you that you had to join the circus with her? Sell your apartment and give up your career to go on a cattle drive in Texas with her?”

  “Funny, Kaley. You think you have everyone’s life all figured out, don’t you? Must be nice.”

  When she didn’t reply, I said, “You don’t want to talk to me? Then don’t. I can tell you I’m not thrilled to be talking to you right now either.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me, James!” she yelled into the phone as my thumb hovered over the end button.

  “James!”

  Click.

  "What do you hear from Ms. Sophie?" Ms. Gina asked when I walked into the office a few days later. "I suppose she made it back to Texas safe and sound. I sure miss that girl."

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose between two fingers. I figured she ought to be home by now. Which made her hundreds of miles from here. I did what I had to do. For the best. For the best. I repeated it daily, hourly.

  Ms. Gina continued talking, apparently not requiring any response from me. "If you ask me, Doctor, she was one to hold onto. Never met anyone quite like her before. But then, you didn't ask me, did ya? Well..." Her voice faded as she walked down the hall, still talking.

  I looked at my watch. Five o'clock. She'd be walking through the door any minute now for our run. I heaved a sigh as reality and Ms. Gina's voice echoed in my head, "Never met anyone like her before. Never met anyone like her before."

  Yeah? Well, neither had I.

  "Uncle James," Kaley's boys screeched as they ran to meet me at the front door. I lifted them both in the air, one in each arm, and dropped them on the couch.

  "Hey," Kaley greeted me with a hug. "Glad you came."

  I looked at her in surprise. I didn’t expect her kind words much less a hug. “I don't pass up free meals," I told her, returning her hug. "Even if I have to face the firing squad to get them. Where's Mark?"

  "He's still at the church. He should be here soon. And I’m sorry about the phone call the other day," she sighed. “I don’t agree with what you did or didn’t do, but you are always welcome here.”

  Probably more than I deserved. Especially since I hung up on her. Before I could apologize, however, Landon jumped on my back and wrapped his arms and legs around me.

  "Where's Sophie?" he wanted to know.

  "Yeah,” Eli piped up. “I like her."

  "That seems to be the general consensus," I muttered.

  "Boys," Kaley intervened, "Go wash up for dinner. Dad should be home any minute and then we will eat." She swatted playfully at their behinds as they ran past.

  "Sorry about that," she apologized. "I didn't think I needed to prep them."

  "They pay better attention to things than I gave them credit for."

  "How are you?" Kaley asked hesitantly.

  "Couldn't be better." I assured her. “I was in a dark place for a while there, but I’m recommitted to my calling as a doctor and moving on with my life.”

  “Good,” she said with a decided nod of her head.

  "And no, I don't want to talk about the other. There's nothing to say."

  "Okay. Just know that I'm here. She was my friend, too-"

  "Something smells good," Mark called above the slamming of the front door.

  "Time to eat," Kaley told me unnecessarily and turned to hug Mark. I watched as he kissed her and felt a knot form in my chest. Relationships are highly overrated, I repeated to myself yet again. I walked past them into the kitchen wishing I had made up some kind of excuse to skip dinner today. Relationships are as overrated as free meals.

  Chapter 7

  Sophie

  "Thanks for giving up part of your room so I could have a place to sleep," I told Adri as I flopped onto my bed, exhausted. I’d been home two weeks and I already hated being back. I never thought I'd be waitressing again after all my schooling. It was definitely a gigantic step backward. I sat up to rub my aching feet. “Maybe I should have stayed at my parent’s. I’d be able to afford a more expensive office building without a rent payment. But I want them to have the place to themselves to readjust after being gone so long. They don’t need me hanging around.”

  "I can't believe they wouldn't hire you back at the therapy office."

  "No openings. But one of the assistants is going on maternity leave in a couple months. I may check back. But it would be silly to get on anywhere long term when I’m looking to open up my own. Besides, I’m hoping I’ll have a place before then."

  "How goes the office search? I was driving past that new strip mall with the gym going in. You should look into one of those spots."

  "I already did. Too expensive." I switched to massaging the other foot.

  "Have you heard from James?" Adri tried for nonchalance.

  I snorted. "Why would I? I was just a summer fling, remember?"

  She rolled her eyes and then shrugged. "Maybe he checked to make sure you made it home okay."

  "And maybe an affordable office building fell from the sky into my lap with patients and equipment already waiting for me to work my magic."

  "I'm sorry. I know this wasn't anywhere near what you had planned."

  "That's the problem. I planned. It seems to go better for me when I fly by the seat of my pants. Or give up on relationships with members of the opposite sex altogether."

  "That's not true. But speaking of pants, do you want to go shopping with me tomorrow?"

  "Thanks, but I'd better not. I need to save all my tips. Opening a big therapy clinic soon..." I said with an overly cheesy grin.

  "Way to be positive. Are you really that tired or do you want to watch a movie with me?"
<
br />   I slowly stood from the bed and slipped my arm through hers. "As long as it's not a chick flick and you massage my feet, I'm game."

  I paced the San Antonio International Airport in eager anticipation. It had been eighteen months since I’d seen my parents and so much had happened in my life, as well as Trevor and Stacy’s. From their weekly emails, I knew of the life changing experiences they’d had with the people of Accra, Ghana, as they worked and lived side by side them, but I wondered how changed they’d be. Would the changes be readily apparent or would I notice subtle changes that manifested themselves slowly as we spent time together again?

  I wondered if the changes in me would present themselves in the same way...slowly, over time. Because I had changed. I had laughed, loved, and lost. Then lost some more. But I had gained also. Almost enough to cancel out the losses. Almost. But with the tremendous loss had come wisdom and experience. My parents would also be wiser. What a funny thought. They were already the wisest people I knew. How could they add to that?

  And then, there they were. I took advantage of the moment I had to study them unnoticed. They had lost weight, aged, but they looked healthy and...happy. No-- content. Contentment surrounded them-- contentment that wisdom, time, and peace with one’s self and life’s choices brings. They’d see right through me.

  “Dad, Mom,” I called, waving my arms. They turned at the sound of my voice and smiles lit their faces. I wondered if a parent would recognize a child’s voice even twenty years in the future. Was the bond between parent and child so strong that the voice, the cough, the laugh was imprinted on the heart and mind?

  “Welcome home,” I cried as Dad pulled me into his arms. And then the tears came. I was helpless to stop them. You know that time when you were in elementary school and you got knocked down and your head got split open? Kids gathered around to see the blood until a friend or teacher walked you to the office. You sat in the uncomfortable chair with a paper towel against your head and you were brave. You didn’t shed one tear. And then your mom came. You fell apart at the sight of her. She brought the infinite love that broke you down and lifted you at the same time. She was the safety, peace, and ‘everything will be alright.’