The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River)

by London, Julia

  “You don’t believe me,” he accused her.

  “I honestly don’t know what I believe.”

  Leo snorted. “Trust me, when you’re sitting in my chair, you’re desperate to believe anything. Solve the puzzle,” he said to the television. “Power broker!”

  “What about your lunch?”

  “It’ll still be there after Wheel. Come on, let’s watch.”

  Emma crawled onto the bed and lay on her side next to him, her head on his shoulder. She could hear his breath in his chest, but she could also hear a faint rattle she’d not heard before. Bob was right—Leo hadn’t been the same since that trip to Denver. How ironic was it that the thing he’d wanted the most had turned out to be so harmful for him? That was the deal with desire, wasn’t it? It didn’t hurt if you didn’t want it so.

  “Are you going to leave me in suspense all day? How was Denver?”

  Emma lifted her head to look at him. “How’d you know I went to Denver?”

  “Because, doofus, Cooper called Luke to get your number. He said he was flying through and needed you to bring him something. So when Dad said you called and said you wouldn’t make it in yesterday, I figured you’d gone up there. Okay, so?”

  She lowered her head to his knobby shoulder again. “It was okay.”

  He drew a breath. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine,” he said, trying to sound perturbed. “I guess I’ll have to resort to my superior fiction-writing skills when Dani comes.” He paused to catch his breath again. “Everyone wants you two to get together, you know.”

  “God,” Emma said with a moan. “Yes, I know, I know. It’s like a regular Peyton Place around here.”

  “Well, I hope you do, too. He’s a good guy, that Cooper. I’m hoping he comes around for Luke.”

  “For Luke?”

  “Yeah. Luke’s going to need someone to hang out with when I’m gone.” He drew another breath, as if he couldn’t quite catch it.

  “Leo—”

  “Come on, Emma, it’s obvious. I’m having trouble swallowing and breathing. I know I’m weaker. And you know, when I can’t swallow, the words will disappear. I’ve already compromised my standards to drink Aunt Patti’s brownies. But no talking? Unable to share my genius with the world? Forget it. I’m not sticking around for that.”

  Emma bit her lip. She wouldn’t cry—nothing made Leo as irritable as tears. She just clenched her jaw, using her own power of swallowing to choke them down while Leo tried to solve another puzzle.

  “Damn it. That dude should have bought an I,” he said. “So why can’t you be with him?”

  “Do we have to do this now?” Emma asked wearily. She was emotionally drained.

  “Yes, now. Marisol is bringing the stinker, and I only have so much time before she gets here.”

  Emma groaned and sat up. “Do you want the short version or the truth?”

  He smiled.

  “I mean, you’ve surely heard enough by now to know how screwed up I am, right?”

  “Sure,” he readily agreed. “Nutty as a fruitcake. Go on.”

  “Thanks,” she said wryly. “That’s it. I’m too weird. I would end up screwing it up, and while I don’t mind screwing guys up now and again, I really don’t want to do that to Cooper. Because I really like him. I like him so much.”

  Leo smiled and drew a shallow breath. “Did I ever tell you about the time Luke and I went white-water rafting after that big spring storm?”

  Emma frowned with confusion. “Huh?”

  “I think I was thirteen, which made Luke about sixteen. There’d been this huge storm and it dumped like six inches of rain on us. We decided that would be the best time to go rafting.”

  “I am so confused. What has that got to do with Cooper? And that sounds totally dangerous, by the way.”

  “It was! That’s why we wanted to go. Stay with me, here.” He drew a breath. “So, like a couple of idiots, we don’t tell anyone and we go and put our raft in the water. We start off, and we think it’s the best time we ever had, and we’re such studs, running the river on storm water. But then the water got really rough, and we lost control of the raft and slammed into an uprooted tree that had fallen over the river.”

  He paused, took a couple of breaths. But his eyes were bright with the eagerness of telling his story. “Em, I thought I was going to die,” he said. “Luke kept shouting at me to move my paddle here and there, stroke it backward, and I won’t lie, I was bawling like a baby, I was so sure I was going to die. But somehow, we got off that tree before getting sucked under, and the next thing you know, we’re floating down the river again.”

  “Where were your parents?” Emma demanded.

  Leo grinned. “Conspicuously absent. Anyway, we’re flying down the river again, and the next thing you know, we get shoved right up against a bunch of rocks. Here we go again—I thought I was going to die.” He paused to breathe. “The raft was banging up against those rocks, and one good puncture, that would be it for us. Luke was shouting that the rocks were going to sink us, and we were pushing and trying to get away, and this rope line got caught.”

  “Oh my God,” Emma said.

  “Right? I thought, that’s it, we’re done. I think I even pissed myself. But somehow, by some miracle, we got out of that and went crashing down the river again.”

  He paused for a moment to rest. “All we had to do was get past the worst of it, and find some calm water so we could get safely to shore. That was it. Just keep fighting and fighting downstream until we found calm water and could climb up on shore.”

  He stopped there and looked at the TV.

  Emma waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she touched his arm. “Hello? What happened?”

  “What, you don’t get it? We found calm water and got out.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Do I seriously have to spell everything out around here?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the river of life,” he said, and drew a breath.

  “The river of life is where you almost died more than once?” Emma asked skeptically.

  Leo drew another long breath. “Yep, now you’re getting it. You know, you’re floating along and you get hung up in these trees or on those rocks, and you think you’re going to die, and you fight and fight, and you get away, you get another chance, and you keep going downstream. And then you hit up against another snag that’s even worse, and you think you’re going to die again, but then you somehow manage to get out. And eventually, you move away from those things that seemed so life threatening and so important at the time, right? And the farther away you get from those trees and rocks, the less important they are. The only thing that’s important is what’s in front of you. That search for calm water so you can climb up to a safe shore. You have to have calm water to get out, Emma. You can’t get out when it’s churning around you. You have to forget what happened and get to safe shore to avoid more death traps downstream. Get it?”

  Emma could hardly speak. Her heart was aching, her thoughts whirling. “I get it,” she said solemnly.

  Leo smiled and turned his attention back to the TV.

  “I love you,” she said and kissed his cheek.

  “Yeah, I know,” Leo said matter-of-factly. “Look in my drawer in my nightstand, will you?”

  She leaned over and pulled the drawer open.

  “See a compass?”

  There was a small brass compass inside, one that might have been earned as part of a Boy Scout exercise, she thought. She picked it up and held it up for Leo. “This?”

  “Yep. It’s awesome. I won that at science camp in the sixth grade. I want you to have it.”

  “What? You want me to have your compass?”

  “Yes,” he said, and paused to catch his b
reath. “Take it and keep it with you at all times. You need a compass, Emma. You need a way to find your calm water and safe shore.”

  “Oh Leo,” she said, and tears began to quietly slide down her face. She clutched the compass to her chest and closed her eyes.

  “Stop that, stop that,” Leo chided her. “If Marisol sees you, she’ll think I asked you to marry me and kick my butt.”

  But Emma couldn’t stop crying. She lay down beside him, the compass in her hand, silently crying on his shoulder while he solved the Wheel of Fortune puzzle and pronounced himself the winner of the trip to the Bahamas.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Cooper flew into Dallas, rented a car, and drove west, past Abilene, to his mother’s house in Sweetwater. The little red brick house with blue-and-white striped window awnings was all decked out for Christmas, with a tree in the front window, and a mantel full of Christmas cards.

  His mother was in a jovial mood. She’d made fried chicken for him, which Cooper didn’t have the heart to tell her he hadn’t eaten in years, mashed potatoes and, of course, green beans that she’d poured out of a can and into a pan to warm. She bustled around her kitchen humming Christmas carols. “It’s the first Christmas I’ll have both my boys since your father died.”

  “You won’t exactly have Derek,” Cooper reminded her. “He’s going to be in a halfway house in Midland.”

  “I know, but I have plans for that day. We can take him out for three hours. That’s plenty of time to take him to church and get him a decent meal,” she said. “That’s just what we’d do here, so essentially, it’s the same thing as having him home.”

  It wasn’t essentially the same, no matter how badly his mother wanted to believe it was.

  Cooper spent the night on his childhood twin bed, the light of his mother’s computer modem blinking at him all night. The next morning, they left very early for the six-hour drive down to the Texas town of Huntsville to pick up Derek.

  It was two days before Christmas.

  Derek walked out of the gloomy monolith that was the correctional facility with a sack in one hand. The clothes he’d been provided for the occasion were ill fitting. Derek was hard and lean now, his neck and arms painted with prison tattoos. He was missing a tooth, too, and Cooper wondered how and when that had happened.

  “I’ve got some clothes for you at home,” his mother said once they were on the road. As they drove away from the place he’d called home, Derek was antsy, jumpy.

  Cooper drove so that his mother could pamper his brother. Derek was quiet at first. He sat behind Cooper’s mother and stared out the window. “A lot’s changed since I went down,” he said. “I can’t believe how big Austin is now.”

  “Just wait till you see Sweetwater,” his mother said proudly.

  “How about a beer, Mom?” Derek asked, his head suddenly appearing over the console between Cooper and his mother. “It’s been a long time.”

  “No, sir,” Mom said firmly. “I’m not buying you a beer. You haven’t had any all these years, so why would you want to start up now?”

  “You can get booze on the inside, you know,” Derek said absently, and turned his head to look at Cooper. “So what’s up with you, Coop? Married yet? Got a girl?” he asked, and playfully tapped Cooper on the back of the head.

  “Not married. I’m still in LA. We’re still training stunt performers and thrill seeking—”

  “First thing I’m going to do is get a job,” Derek interrupted. Cooper didn’t know if it was because he truly hadn’t been listening, or he didn’t want to hear about Cooper’s prison-free life. “One of the guards told me that oil fields are hot again. That true?”

  “Oh yes,” his mother said. “And they pay good money, too. Nicole Fruehauf’s son got a job there, and he just bought himself a new truck.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do, Mom,” Derek said. “I’m not afraid of hard work, you know.”

  Cooper glanced out the window at cactus thick as weeds. If Derek was truly okay with hard work, maybe he wouldn’t have held up the convenience store with a gun. Maybe he would have gone to school and found a job like everyone else.

  “I’m going to make some money and get a little house and maybe a girl. I miss women.”

  “Derek,” his mother said. But she was smiling.

  “Worst thing I ever did was break up with Tammy,” Derek continued.

  “I always liked her,” Cooper’s mother said cheerfully. “She married a boy from Anson and they moved to Fort Worth.”

  “You remember her, Coop?” Derek asked, shoving at the back of Cooper’s seat.

  “Of course,” Cooper said. “I had a huge crush on her.” He glanced over his shoulder at Derek and smiled.

  “You were a squirt,” Derek said, and laughed. “Tammy was hot, man. I’m telling you, letting that one go was a mistake. If I’d been the kind of man Tammy wanted me to be, I would never have gone down. Never.”

  No one argued that.

  Derek grew quiet again and sank back into his seat.

  They stopped at a steakhouse in Abilene and watched Derek eat two steaks, then drove on, to Midland. When Derek was checked in, Cooper waited for his mother at the car so she could make sure Derek would be okay inside. The plan was to return on Christmas day for what Cooper’s mother said was “Christmas with presents.”

  On Christmas Eve, Cooper rattled around his boyhood home, fixing things for his mom. But they were little jobs, and there was not enough to occupy his thoughts. While his mother kept up a steady stream of Derek talk—where he could get a job, how he could meet some girls, her sincere hope that he wouldn’t keep smoking, etc.—Cooper thought about Emma. He thought about the first time he’d met her, and the day she’d stood on the Kendricks’ porch looking so beautiful. About their lovemaking and how forlorn she’d looked when she told him she’d disappoint him, so certain of it.

  It was frustrating enough to make a man want to put a fist through a wall.

  But then Cooper would tune in to what his mother was saying, all the hopes she still held for Derek, and Cooper knew that Emma could never disappoint him as she believed she could. That was impossible; Cooper had scraped the bottom of his trough of disappointment with Derek.

  On Christmas Day, Derek appeared at the door of the halfway house dressed in the Dockers and button-down plaid shirt their mother had bought him. She was very happy with his appearance and gushed over him, telling him how handsome he was. Derek smiled thinly at her.

  He sat through church with one leg bouncing, glancing around. Cooper couldn’t help but notice he was checking out the women at the service. Their mother, seated on the other side of Derek, smiled and sang the hymns louder than anyone.

  She was so happy, truly happy, and Cooper’s heart bled for her.

  He didn’t know when exactly they had ceased to be a family, or the precise moment their choices in life—Derek’s crimes, Cooper’s leaving Texas—had splintered them apart. His mother desperately wanted to put them back together again, but Cooper knew it would never happen, not in the way she dreamed. He knew even before Derek coaxed him outside of the Chinese restaurant after church what he would say.

  Derek dragged on a smoke and said, “Listen. You’re going to have to watch after Mom. I’m not sticking around.”

  Cooper bristled. Like he hadn’t been looking after their mother all the years Derek had been running from the law or was incarcerated. Like he hadn’t been the one who was there when their father had died of lung cancer.

  “You don’t look surprised,” Derek said, eyeing him.

  “Nope.”

  Derek laughed. “You could always read me pretty well. But I can read you, too, Coop, and you know what? I can see you’re relieved I’m moving on. I think you’re glad you don’t have to deal with it.”

  Cooper was mildly surprised. “I guess you do read m
e pretty well,” he said. “Okay, I’ll own it. I just don’t want you to drag Mom through the wringer.”

  “It’s bound to happen if I stick around,” Derek agreed, and drew on the cigarette.

  “I didn’t say that,” Cooper said. “I don’t believe that. You could choose to make it the right way, you know. You could choose to get a job in the oil fields and a girl, like you said. You could choose to make up all these years to Mom.”

  Derek laughed at him. “When did you get so soft? I can’t change, Cooper. Anyone who says I can hasn’t walked in my shoes. I’m forty-two years old. I’ve been in and out of the system since I was fourteen. I ain’t changing, bro, and if I stick around, I’m just going to disappoint her. I don’t want to do that. Mom’s been through enough. So, best that I move on.” He tossed down the smoke and ground it out with his heel.

  Any other time, Cooper might have tried to talk him out of that belief, but Derek’s words struck too close to what Emma had said to him, and it made Cooper angry. “Just curious . . . do you still have the St. Christopher medal Grandpa gave us?”

  “Huh? No, man,” Derek said, and laughed. He suddenly threw his arms around Cooper, giving him a big hug. “You be good, bro,” he said, and patted Cooper’s cheek before strolling back inside, beneath the green tinsel, to the table where their mother was sitting, waiting on their meal to be served.

  Cooper would later think about how angry he’d been that day. How frustrated he was with the excuses Derek had been using for years, but mostly, how angry he’d been with Emma. She was using the same excuse as Derek and was going to rely on it—just like Derek. She was going to let her life spiral out into loneliness and isolation because, like Derek, she was too afraid to try something different.

  Perhaps most frustrating of all was that Cooper had never been able to convince Derek to try for something greater. Did he honestly think he could convince Emma?

  Inside the restaurant, Mrs. Jessup handed out Christmas presents to her boys. Sweaters and socks for both, a new watch for Derek, and a belt for Cooper. Derek had a gift for her, too. Somewhere, he’d picked up a figurine of an angel and had put it in a bag. It looked like something one could get at a convenience store. Cooper had given his mother some perfume and earrings. On that Christmas afternoon, his mother was so happy, she practically oozed it. All those years of worry were gone and she kept saying, over and over, “I have my boys, that’s Christmas enough for me.”