Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  “Zipper!” Eli cried. “I remember Zipper.” He crouched, and the dog stopped barking and started to wag his tail furiously. He crawled into Eli’s arms, and the boy was rubbing his big head and laughing.

  The door banged, and Kayla looked up. Into Don’s weathered face, which looked more than three years older. There were new lines there, carved by grief and pain, but that wasn’t what was showing now. Now, that face was creased into a smile that lit every corner of it, a smile that brought Kurt back to her in a rush of longing and loss that nearly knocked her down.

  “Hi,” she said. She was moving toward him without realizing it as he made his way down the stairs, the bad leg from the long-ago accident at the mill slowing his progress. “Hi. We came.”

  He didn’t answer, but his arms had gone around her, and just like that, she was crying. Sobbing into his wool shirt while his thin, muscular arms enfolded her, and it was Kurt again. She was dimly aware that Eli was there beside her, that she should be paying attention to him, but she couldn’t.

  “Kayla,” Don said. “I can’t believe it. Kayla and Eli.” And that made her cry harder.

  She finally pulled back, grabbed some tissues from her purse, wiped her eyes and nose, and tried to laugh. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  “Yep,” he said. His blue eyes were fairly shiny themselves. “I know just what you mean. And here’s my boy. My buckaroo.” He shook his head in wonder. “What do you know about that.”

  That almost started Kayla off again, but Eli was standing there, looking shy, and Kayla managed to say, “Do you remember your grandpa, sweetie? Your Grandpa Don?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said.

  Don put his arm around him and said, “Well, look at you. Just about grown now, aren’t you? You all come in the house, now. Your Grandma Sally will be finishing up her shift out at Walmart, be home any time. She’ll have some surprise, huh? But come on in. You had lunch? I was about to fix some soup and sandwiches, get something ready for when she’s back.”

  They went inside, and Kayla and Don got to work, and she was settling down some, and seeing Eli settling, too, sitting on the floor, petting Zipper. When they heard the door open, Kayla was at the counter, slicing tomatoes for ham sandwiches.

  “Don? Who’s here?” And then Sally walked into the kitchen, Kayla turned, and Sally’s purse fell from her hand.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she whispered. “Oh, my Lord.”

  After a while, they did finish getting lunch ready, and when they were eating it, Sally asked, “Where have you all been living? When we didn’t hear from you for so long—we were just about worried sick. And then—” She exchanged a look with her husband that Kayla couldn’t interpret, then went on to say, “But anyway. How’re you doing? You all right?”

  These were the questions Kayla had been dreading, but they weren’t being asked out of accusation. They came from love, and she knew it. Still, she hesitated, and took another spoonful of vegetable soup before she answered. “We’re in Paradise now, and we’re doing real well. I’ve got a good job as a waitress, and Eli’s in fourth grade. We’ve got our own place, too. I’m sorry about—about dropping out of sight there. Things . . . happened, and I couldn’t call, and then I didn’t have the number, and we were getting back on our feet, and we couldn’t come. But we’re all right now,” she repeated.

  “That your truck out there?” Don asked.

  “No. A friend’s. He loaned it to us today. That was the other reason. No car, and no way to get up here. And I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “Oh, honey, you don’t have to be sorry,” Sally said. “You’re here now. You’re all right now, and that’s what matters. So tell me about Paradise, Eli. Tell me about what’s fun.”

  Eli began to describe his bike, and the moment passed. After they’d washed the lunch dishes, Sally said, “Eli, why don’t you come on into the back room with me? I’ve got your dad’s trophies in there, scrapbooks—oh, all sorts of things.” She looked at Kayla. “We’ll just take a few minutes here.”

  “Come have a seat and a cup of coffee,” Don said, and Kayla sat at the battered old kitchen table, her heart hammering. There was a reason for this. Some reason.

  “Maybe you can tell me the rest now,” Don said when they were sitting together with coffee in front of them. “What happened after you dropped out of touch. The things you wouldn’t want to say in front of Eli. I think you might be in a little trouble. That you might need a little help.”

  The tears were pricking behind her eyelids again. “No,” she said, and wrapped her hands around the mug for warmth, and comfort. “Not now. I’m good, like I said. But I—we—yes. We were in trouble.”

  “Trouble can happen,” he said. “Even to the best of folks.” And then he sat and waited.

  She explained, haltingly. The restaurant in Sheridan going out of business, and not being able to find another job, no matter how hard she’d looked. The eviction notice, and heading back to Idaho, hoping for better luck in the big city. And then the car throwing a tie rod. Disaster.

  “It got better,” she said. “I found a job at a restaurant, and a waitress there—a friend—let us move in for a while, sleep on her couch until I could save enough. But you know—first and last month’s rent, it takes a while.”

  “Could’ve told us. Could’ve asked.”

  “I knew you didn’t have it, either. I know how hard it’s been.”

  “We’d have got you up here. Whatever we had to do. Family’s family.”

  “I wasn’t sure I was . . . your family anymore,” she said, her voice low. “After Kurt died because . . . because of us. And then after I couldn’t . . . couldn’t take care of Eli well enough. I was so afraid I’d lose him. And I thought, if you knew . . .” The final words were whispered, but he heard them.

  “Oh, little girl,” Don said. “No.” His arms were around her again, and it seemed she had more tears to shed. When she’d calmed again, was wiping her eyes on a napkin, he said, “Kurt didn’t die because of you. He died taking care of his family. He died doing right. It was a bad blow. A bad blow for all of us. But he died being a stand-up man, and a man can’t ask for much more than that, in the end. I was proud of my boy. Always. And I was glad he found you. Anytime you thought different—well, you just wipe that right out. Because it isn’t true.”

  She nodded, blew her nose again.

  “But then,” Don said, “it got worse. How?”

  She made a helpless gesture with one hand. “I . . . I looked for a shortcut, I guess. Met somebody who seemed like he’d rescue us. Both of us. And he turned out to be . . . something so different. I got Eli into that mess, and I’m so ashamed. But that’s why I couldn’t call. That’s when I lost you. It was six months before we got away, and it’s been four since we escaped to Paradise. But that’s all over,” she said, sitting up straighter again, reminding herself as much as she was reminding Don. “We’re back on track now.”

  “I think,” Don said, “that it might not be over. I don’t want to scare you, honey. But somebody’s been here looking for you.”

  The ice was in her veins, freezing her where she sat. “Who?” she whispered.

  He got up, went to the bowl on the old dresser in the corner, and came back with a folded scrap of paper. She opened it, stared at it. The number was familiar. The name was wrong.

  “Slick city fella,” Don said. “Bad eyes. Said he was a prosecutor.”

  “Bad eyes?” Alan’s vision had been perfect.

  “Eyes stayed cold, no matter what his mouth was doing. A dog with eyes like that—that’s a bad dog.”

  “Handsome?” Kayla managed to ask over the panic trying to close her throat. “Tall? Dark hair?”

  “Handsome—I guess. Tall and dark, yeah.”

  “You didn’t . . . tell him anything, did you?”


  “Nothing to tell. Wouldn’t have if I’d known. Like I said. Bad eyes.”

  Kayla got out of him what Alan had said. “Do you think it’s true?” she asked. “About the . . . charges?”

  “You think it could be true?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no reason, but he wouldn’t need a reason. He could make it up. He could make it happen.”

  Don took the paper from her, went into the kitchen, opened the door under the sink, and tossed it into the trash. “Not going to make it happen here. If he comes back, we don’t know a damn thing. And we won’t take you to town, either, not this time. Just in case. Town’s too small.”

  “Well, hey.” That was Sally, coming back into the kitchen with Eli behind her. “Look what we found!”

  It took Kayla a minute to refocus, but Eli was standing there, beaming, so she did her best. Finally, he sighed, stuck his foot out in front of him, and said, “Mom. Feet?”

  “Oh,” Kayla managed to say. “Oh.”

  “They were my dad’s,” Eli said. “They’re only a little big. I just need to wear two pairs of socks.”

  “I always knew it was a little silly, saving his cowboy boots,” Sally said. “But I did it anyway. Got a whole box of them. And I’ll admit that I take them out sometimes, these days, and look at them. Think about when he was four, six, eight. How much he liked wearing his cowboy boots and camo pants, just like his dad. And seeing them on Eli . . .” She patted her chest and laughed a little, then wiped away a tear. “Well, it’s a reminder, isn’t it? That my boy isn’t so gone after all, because here Eli is, growing up so fine and strong. The image of his daddy.”

  “Yep, buckaroo,” Don said. “You can wear those boots and know you’re walking in your dad’s shoes. You do that, and you won’t ever go too far wrong.”

  “I wanted to ask something,” Kayla asked when she was able to talk again. “If we can go see . . .” She had to swallow again. “Kurt’s grave. If that would make you too sad, I’ll just take Eli. But I’d like to see it.”

  “No, hon,” Sally said. “We’ll all go. We’ll just find you a couple raincoats first, because it’s coming down out there.”

  They took Luke’s pickup, since it had the crew cab, and Eli sat in the back. Into town, down the main street, past the café and the thrift stores. Up to the east, then. A winding road that led into the wooded foothills, and up onto the ridge. Through black iron gates, past hillsides lined with markers and stones, the occasional bouquet of flowers, mostly plastic now, in November. Beyond a disturbance in the ground that was a new grave, the square-cut slabs of sod as fresh and raw as grief, and up to a spot near the top.

  “Go on and pull over here,” Sally said.

  Kayla held Eli’s hand on the way, and he didn’t object. His cowboy boots hit the asphalt with a sharp sound that Kayla remembered, and she had to shut her eyes for a second against the memory.

  Sally stopped in front of an unremarkable patch of green, a small, simple slab of granite at its head. The name, and the dates. A slab and a grave that had represented so much of his parents’ savings, used to bury their only son.

  It hadn’t been raining that day. It had been snowing, the air as cold as Kayla’s soul. And she’d held Eli’s hand then, too, and felt nothing but desolation. Like she would never be warm again.

  “Always been glad he was here,” Don said. “Looking over the mountains and the river. Running free.”

  The tears were there on Kayla’s face. Nothing in the world could have stopped them.

  “It’s a good place,” Sally agreed. “And good that he’s got his wife and boy here to see him today. I think we’ll just take a quiet second here and thank God for that. For giving the two of you back to us.”

  They stood, and the rain dripped down, and the tears mingled with it on Kayla’s cheeks. Then Sally said, “You know, Eli, I think your mom might need a minute. Let’s head on back to the truck and give that to her.”

  The sound of their footsteps retreated, and Kayla stood there, looked out, and remembered him. The laughter when he’d come home from a rodeo where he’d won. The shining look on his face when Eli had been born, like he’d just won the biggest prize there could ever be. The tender way he’d kissed her, the last time he’d left.

  “I’ll be home for Christmas, babe,” he’d told her. “It’s going to be a good one. I can feel it in my bones.”

  No, it hadn’t been. But she’d had him for all those years, and that was in her bones. And in Eli’s.

  Now, she crouched down, heedless of the rain, and touched the green grass that grew over his body. Even though she knew he wasn’t here. He was the wind that pushed her up the hill on her new bike. He was the smile on Eli’s face when he played with Daisy. He was the hope that had dared to spring up again in her heart.

  “Did you see your boy?” she asked him, even though he couldn’t hear. “Did you see how good he is? How kind and strong? That’s you, babe. That’s all you. And I miss you,” she whispered. “I miss you so much. But I’m going on. I’m going to raise Eli to be a man you can be proud of. I promise.”

  She had to stop for a moment, then. “And I’ve met somebody,” she told him. “I think you’d like him. He’s a good man, a patient man, just like you. But he’s different from you, too. He’s his own man. He’s so good for Eli. And he’s good for me. He’s helped me feel again. He’s helped me live again. And I have to go on and live.”

  There was no answer. Of course there wasn’t, because Kurt was dead. He was gone, and he’d never come back. And still, she thought, somehow, that he was there, and he understood. That from somewhere, his hand was touching her face. She cried a little more, and the tears and the rain dripped onto his grave together. And she said good-bye.

  FIRST AND LAST

  She drove back to Paradise, most of the three and a half hours in the dark. She and Eli ate the sandwiches Sally had packed for them “for the road,” and she thought about how comforting it was to be with people who understood that you packed sandwiches, because stopping at McDonald’s wasn’t an option.

  By the time they got home, it was eight thirty, and Eli had fallen asleep, his head against the hard window, worn out from the drive and the day. Exactly the same way she felt.

  “Hey, baby,” she told him. “We’re here.” She went with him into the apartment, then said, “I’m just going to take Luke’s truck back to him. You go on to bed. You all right for a little while?”

  “Sure, Mom,” he said, pulling the boots off his feet and setting them carefully beside his bed. “I’m really tired.”

  “I know, sweetie.” She smoothed his hair, then sat down beside him and gave him a hug. “In case I don’t tell you enough—you make me so proud. You’re what your grandpa said, the same thing as your dad. A stand-up man. You just remember that.”

  He hugged her back, unembarrassed for once. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you too, baby.” She got up and went to the door, making sure to lock it behind her. Alan. So much good today, and so much bad, it was hard to take in.

  She drove the truck around the three turns that took her onto D and parked it in Luke’s driveway. The rain had stopped, or maybe had never hit here with the force it had up north, but the night was cold. Winter was coming, for sure.

  “Hey.” The voice stopped her halfway up the sidewalk. For a second, the panic leaped, and then she realized. Luke.

  “Hey.” She saw him, then. Sitting on the porch swing in the dark. “What are you up to?”

  He laughed, low and soft. “Looks like I’m waiting for you.” He lifted one edge of something, and said, “Come sit with me a second, if you like.”

  She slid in next to him, and the chain creaked as the swing moved, and Luke shifted and wrapped her in downy folds.

  “What is this?” she asked, snuggling down next to him. His body was warm, as usual, a
nd so reassuringly solid.

  “Sleeping bag.” He took the wool cap off his head and tugged it down onto hers. “Here you go. Ready for our polar expedition.”

  “Mm.” They were rocking a bit, and she tucked her legs up under herself and settled more comfortably against him. His arm came around her, and her head was against his shoulder.

  “So how’d it go?” he asked quietly, pushing off with his foot so they were rocking together.

  “Sad. Sweet. Hard, but good.”

  “They good folks?”

  “The best. Eli got cowboy boots.”

  “Ah. That’s good.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “His dad’s old ones.”

  Stillness for a moment, then, “Well, that would be even better than new.”

  “Yep. It made him pretty happy, and his grandma, too.”

  They rocked another moment without speaking, until she said, “I did a lot of thinking, coming home.”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t say anything else, just waited.

  “About love.”

  “Ah. Love.”

  She sighed. “You know, for a long time after Kurt died, I thought, what’s the point? Everything ends. Even something beautiful—it’s just going to end, because life happens, and life . . . life sucks sometimes.”

  “Yep.” He gave the swing another push. “Sure does.”

  “And then I thought, driving home in the dark, when Eli was asleep . . . I thought, ‘no, it doesn’t. Not really. In a way, nothing ever ends.’ ”

  “Ah.”

  “I thought, am I ever going to stop loving Eli? No matter what he does? Will Kurt’s folks ever stop loving him? No. They won’t. Never. And as much as it hurts to lose somebody they loved that much . . .” Her voice was trembling, now, but she didn’t let that stop her, because she needed to get this out. “If you asked them, would you want to lose your memories, if it meant losing the pain? Or even more than that. If you’d known how much it would hurt to lose him, that he would go so young, would you have chosen not to have him? And I know what the answer would be, too. In a heartbeat, because it is a heartbeat. It’s the beat of their heart. The answer would be no. Because love’s worth it. And love’s forever.”