I sat back in my chair, realizing that this was the first specific piece of information Jess had ever volunteered about herself or her background. I glanced at Mom, who gathered up the pieces to set up for a new game, chattering with Jess about nothing in particular. There was a lot about all this that I didn’t understand, but I knew Mom did, and I was happy to lean on her to run the show. I was more than happy. I was relieved. By taking care of Jess, she was taking care of me, too, and it was a wonderful feeling to relax knowing that she had my back.
We played a game and ate soup and Jess smiled twice before being sent upstairs to shower, change into fresh clothes, and go to sleep. She hugged us both before she left, and when she walked away, she looked stronger already. I put my arm around Mom’s shoulder and leaned my head against hers.
“You done good, lady,” I said. “For such a tiny little thing, you’re pretty amazing, you know that?”
She reached up to her shoulder and patted my hand.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”
This letter doesn’t have a joke. I’m sorry. I can’t tell one now. I’m too depressed. I’m in Utah, and I’ve been crying so long I’m bone dry. I’m still huffing and sobbing but nothing’s coming out, which is just as well. I’m out of tissues.
It’s now ten months since I left, and it’s too late to go back, and I miss you. I miss you so bad my eyelashes hurt, and I can’t move my toes. I used to think that I’d get over this, that eventually I’d be better, and it would all be all right. But it’s never going to be better, is it? At least not for me. Hopefully for you. It’s hoping things are better for you that’s keeping me from going back right now. Well, that and the guy in the lot next to mine. He’s playing guitar, really badly. And singing. And he has no idea how bad he is, and it’s so scary. I’m listening to him and I’m thinking, That’s how bad I was. I was that bad. But I loved you as much as that guy loves his guitar. More, actually. If he loved that guitar as much as I love you, he’d put it away, because he’s just making the poor thing suffer.
—Emmy James, in a letter to Luke Greene, undated
Twenty
Jess and I spent most of that week just padding around the house, eating chocolate and watching old movies and sitting on the back deck talking. She talked a lot about her life, about her husband and son, and while she still got that distant look on her face when she did, she got through it. She didn’t cry nearly as much as I would have expected; it was more like she was just sweeping her head clean of things that had been locked in a sunless room for too long.
“Digs feels really bad,” I said the following Sunday night as Jess and I had our usual after-dinner tea on the back deck. “He thinks he did something wrong.”
Despite having been invited back to see Jess a number of times by my mother, Digs hadn’t stepped foot in the house. I think he was waiting for Jess to tell him it was okay first, which was unusually sensitive for Digs. When the whole week had gone by without Jess mentioning Digs, I thought it was time to say something. I didn’t want to pry, but it had been not prying that had allowed things to get as bad as they had, so I went for it.
“Oh, no,” Jess said, her eyes widening as she looked at me. “It’s just...” She shook her head and stared out into the horizon. “When Tim and Matty died, I didn’t want to live, you know? But I’m Catholic. Suicide has never been an option for me. So I prayed to God every night to take me in my sleep, but He didn’t. Which kind of irritated me.”
“Oh, I totally get that,” I said, chuckling.
She smiled a bright, full smile. “Thought you would. So I thought, Fine, God, if you won’t kill me, I’ll just stop living. I’ll give myself to other people, to their problems, their lives. And for a long time, that worked out really well. But everything here... spending time with you and your family...” She paused, blinking rapidly. “I started to love you guys, you know? I mean, who wouldn’t, right? I’m telling you, the second Lilly grabbed that chef’s knife and hacked off that chunk of cheese, I was hers forever.”
We cracked up at this, but then the laughter subsided, and she went on. “And I started to really like Digs. He’s just so funny, you know? And smart. So when he kissed me, and I was really happy for that moment”—she took a moment, her lips trembling—“I was happy for myself. I was happy in a world that didn’t have Tim and Matty in it, and I wasn’t prepared for that. It had never occurred to me that something like that could happen. It was like all the pain I’d been pushing aside for all this time just whooshed down over me, and I shut down.” She swiped at her face, went quiet for a moment, then looked at me. “Can you tell him that for me? That it wasn’t his fault? That I’m sorry?”
I reached out and patted her hand. “Let me tell you something about being sorry,” I said. “It’s always better coming directly from the source.” I glanced at my watch. “Which gives you about twelve hours to make a very important phone call.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll call him in a little bit.”
We sat there in silence for a while, then I said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come to Colorado Springs with me?”
“I have to pick up my car in New Jersey,” she said.
“Well, it’ll still be there in a week,” I said. “We can pick up the Airstream and you can kidnap me again. It’ll be fun. Like old times.”
“That would be fun. But, no. My flight takes off so soon after your parents’ flight to Italy. You can just drop us all off at the airport tomorrow and then...” She angled her head and looked at me. “Then I guess you’ll be going?”
“Probably about noon tomorrow,” I said.
“What about Luke?”
I shrugged. “He knows I’m going. He knows all he has to do is say the word, and he hasn’t. So, I’m going to accept that. The important thing was that I did it, right? I told him how I felt. It may be over, but at least it’s over the right way this time, and that matters, right?”
She smiled. “Right.” She pushed up from the chair. “I’m gonna go call Digs. Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” I said. She walked off, leaving me staring at the Oregon horizon, wondering why, if I’d done the right thing, I felt like such total crap.
It still wasn’t technically stalking. After Jess got off the phone with Digs, she mentioned that he and Luke had gone out to shoot some pool—which made me happy, shooting pool is an Old Luke activity—and then she went upstairs to finish packing. I sat on the back deck for a while, and once the sun started to go down, I had a flash of inspiration and knew exactly what I needed to do. So I got in my truck and drove.
I parked down the street a bit, in a place where I could see Luke’s house and not be immediately detected by Mrs. Pope. I sat in the truck for probably an hour. his car wasn’t there—no doubt Digs needed a designated driver after the week he’d been through—so I felt safe just sitting there, staring at our dream home.
His home, I corrected internally. His home.
I reached underneath the passenger seat and pulled out the box of stationery. I flipped open the top, lifted the drawer, and riffled through the fifty-odd letters I’d written over the six years we’d been apart. As best I could recall, there were one or two direct ones in there, but most of them were jokes, all of which had meaning that Luke might or might not get. Hell, if I’d opened and read them right then, I might not have gotten them all, either. When I wrote them, I’d intended for Luke never to see them, but it had been important to write them anyway, just as it was important for me to write this last one. I pulled out a sheet of paper and an envelope, closed the box, and began to scribble.
Dear Luke,
The letters in this box belong to you, so I thought I would finally make sure you got them. I want you to know that it’s all okay. I’m okay. I’m not upset with you for making the choice you had to make. I respect it, and I understand, and it’s okay. I already said that, didn’t I? I’ve been repeating myself a lot lately. Sorry.
Anyway, I’ll be back
for Thanksgiving, if Lilly lets me disappear that long, and I hope to find you happy when I return. Just do me a favor. Stop it with the neat hair and the Sunday business meetings. You’re too young for that shit. For my part, I will consider living in something that doesn’t have wheels, but I can’t make any promises. Baby steps and all that.
I want you to know that I genuinely wish you well. Oh, and, if you are dating a non-octogenarian when I come back, I promise to handle it with all my usual grace and decorum. I realize that’s probably not comforting, but it’s all I’ve got, and I give it to you.
I want you to be happy, Luke. That sounds like typical end-of-the-relationship bullshit, but it’s really true. Giving you this box helps me with that, you know? I guess it’s my way of saying good-bye, to all of it. Finally. Aren’t you proud of how grown-up I am? Well, you should be, damn it. I’m giving up my hook hand. That’s gotta count for something, right? But if you can do nothing else for me, do this—find what makes you happy and make it yours. For my part, I’m going to try to do the same.
I guess that’s it, although I do have one last thought for you.
A priest, a rabbi, and a duck are building a time machine...
The next morning, I took Mom and Danny and Jess to the airport in Danny’s Explorer. Danny drove for the ride over, while Mom angled herself to face me and Jess in the backseat and elicited multiple promises from Jess to write and call frequently, and visit for every major holiday or have a damn good reason why not.
“And the only acceptable reasons are hospitalization or traveling out of the country,” she said. “No other excuse will do, do you hear me, young lady?”
“I hear you,” Jess said, and she and I exchanged a cheerful eye-roll, then Mom pointed a finger at me.
“The same goes for you, too,” she said. “I will hunt you down again if I have to.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered, and Jess and I giggled like teenagers.
I drove slowly on the way back to Danny’s, alone with my thoughts. I wasn’t particularly excited about Colorado Springs, but wasn’t sure where else I would go. I had the whole country open to me, but there was nowhere else I’d rather be than here in Fletcher. Of course, that was impossible. I hadn’t left that box of letters on Luke’s porch for nothing. I was grown up, and I was moving on, damn it. Even if it killed me. But it would take a day or so to get to Colorado Springs, and when I did, I could always throw the dart again, and let the Universe guide me where She wanted me to go. Maybe I’d hunt down Jess and we could angel together. It didn’t seem like such a crazy idea to me now.
I was halfway down the driveway when I realized I’d left my cell phone inside. I hopped out of the truck, leaving it running in the driveway while I rushed to the house and snatched my cell phone off the half-moon table, being careful to lock the door behind me. I had just stepped out of the house when my peripheral vision registered a figure standing next to my truck. I gasped, froze where I was, and stared, not believing my eyes.
He was wearing a dark green flannel shirt, jeans and workboots. His hair was messy, curling at the ends, and beautiful. He had his hands tucked in his front pockets, and he wasn’t moving. For my part, I didn’t move, either. I was afraid if I did, the mirage would vanish, and I wanted to hold onto it as long as I could.
“Hey,” I said finally.
He nodded. “Hey.”
There was another long moment of awkward silence, then he started toward me. My heart beat faster with each step he took, until finally he was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch, and I felt kinda dizzy.
“I was just on my way,” I said lamely, motioning toward the truck.
He glanced at it, then back at me. “Yeah. I guessed.”
I motioned behind me toward the house. “Um, Danny and Mom are already gone, if you were coming by to say good-bye to them.”
He shook his head. “No. That’s not why I’m here. I actually, um... I got the box.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, wringing my fingers in my hands. “I figured leaving it on your porch was a good way to get it to you.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Another long, awkward silence, and I felt as if my heart were being ripped out of my chest. Why the hell was he doing this to me? Didn’t he know that I had said my good-bye last night? What did he want, for me to break down weeping in the driveway? Which, I realized, was exactly what was going to happen if I didn’t get out of there immediately.
“Well,” I said. “I have to go.”
He looked surprised, but then nodded and stepped back out of my way. My heart sank as I realized that he wasn’t there to stop me from going. God only know why he was there, but if it wasn’t to stop me, then I didn’t care. I turned around and started toward the truck, my eyes welling as I did. Which was okay. Once I was in the truck, he wouldn’t see—
“Eejie.”
I stopped where I was, my back to him. “Luke. Just let me go. Please. My ass has been kicked enough, trust me, you don’t need to add your footprint to the—”
“Two guys walk into a bar.”
I twirled around to face him. “What?”
He started toward me, his gait strong and determined. “Two guys walk into a bar...”
“Goddamnit, Luke. Don’t mess with me. Not today. It’s just mean.”
He kept coming. “... and the first guy says, ‘Hey bartender, a round for the house. I just asked the woman I love to marry me and she said yes.’” He stopped about a foot away from me, his eyes dark and earnest. “And then the second guy says, ‘I want to buy a round, too. The woman I love left in the middle of the night and disappeared for six years.’ And the bartender says, ‘What are you buying a round for? That’s not good news.’ And the guy says, ‘Yeah, it is.’” Luke smiled and reached up to touch my face. “‘Because she came back.’”
I stared at him for a long time, pretty sure I understood what he was saying, but unable to fully trust it.
“Really?” I asked, my voice shaking.
He smiled. “Really.”
A tear tracked down my cheek and he wiped it away with his thumb, then leaned in and kissed me. I put both hands on his face and kissed him back, then threw my arms around his neck. He laughed and lifted me off my feet in a happy hug. when he set me down again, I grabbed both of his hands in mine.
“Well, crap,” I said. “I have to go get my stupid trailer now.”
“Okay.” He put his arm around my waist and walked me to the truck. “Let’s go.”
“Um, all right,” I said, then noticed when we got to the truck that a familiar beat-up army-navy duffel was sitting in the bed with all my stuff. I glanced over at him. “I see we’re pretty sure of ourselves, aren’t we?”
“So, this Airstream of yours,” he said as he pulled the driver’s-side door open for me, “is it gonna fit in my driveway?”
“No,” I said, “but it’ll fit in this driveway.”
Luke laughed. “Oh, Lilly’s gonna love that.”
I put my arms around his waist and pulled him to me. “Yeah, I know. Is it bad that driving her nuts still kinda makes me happy inside?”
He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. “I’ll cut you slack on that one. Some habits are tough to kick.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Thank God.”
Continue reading for an excerpt from A Little Night Magic, Lani’s new title written as Lucy March, coming from St. Martin’s Press in January, 2012!
Hello, Reader!
First, I’d like to thank you for buying this copy of A Little Ray of Sunshine. I know we’re not supposed to pick favorites, but this book has always been a special one for me. The romance between Luke and EJ was wonderful to write, and I laughed and cried more writing this book than any other. Re-reading it now, I realize how much I miss writing Lilly Lorraine. I think I need to do a second book with that woman. I just love her!
As a special bonus, I’m including here a special preview excerpt of my new
book, A Little Night Magic, written as Lucy March, coming from St. Martin’s Press in January 2012. It’s the story of a waffle house waitress in upstate New York who discovers one day that she has rare magical powers… and now she has to learn how to use them, or her cozy hometown will suffer the consequences.
Please visit LaniDianeRich.com or LucyMarch.com to find the most up to date information about what I’m working on next. And thanks again!
Always,
Lani
A Little Night Magic
by Lucy March
ONE
There's magic linoleum at Crazy Cousin Betty's Waffle House.
Okay, maybe it's not magic, exactly. It's this one weird sparkly blue square, in the midst of all the solid, checker-boarded blue and whites. I first noticed it when I was six, and I remember tugging on Betty’s periwinkle blue skirt and pointing down at the floor. Betty, who’d seemed ancient to me even then, knelt down to level her wrinkled eyes with mine.
“Oh, that? It’s a magic square,” she'd said. “Step on it. Make a wish. It'll come true.”
“Really?”
She winked. “You bet. But don’t go just stepping on it every time you want a new doll, or a motorcycle. Magic’s not to be messed with, Olivia.” And then she stood up, mussed my hair, and moved on.
I didn’t believe her. Even at that tender age, I could tell bullcrap when I heard it.
But then, right after I’d started working at CCB’s, I desperately wanted Robbie Pecorino to ask me to prom. On a whim, I stepped on the square late one night, and boom - two days later, he asked me. So, that was cool. But then there was the time I wished my college boyfriend, Charlie, would give me a little more space, and he ended up dumping me to date his roommate, Neil. Finally, six years ago, when I was twenty-two, I used it to wish my mother didn’t have cancer anymore.
A Little Ray Of Sunshine Page 21
