More Than Neighbors

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Bridget had changed. Not only recently, Ciara was disconcerted to realize, but over the years. She hadn’t let herself see how much. As a girl her sister had been closer to a wild animal than human; inconsolable when she sobbed or flailed her entire body in rage, unreachable when she drew into herself. Language had been slow to come, slower to develop.

  Maybe better verbal expression helped. Or Mom and Dad’s never-ending patience. Physical maturity probably hadn’t hurt. The teenage years had been awful.

  On this visit, Ciara was increasingly disconcerted to discover that she could actually enjoy Bridget’s company. She was reminded of times she had in the past. Bridget had definitely matured— And maybe, she thought, I’m more patient. She found she liked the idea of making something Bridget would keep with her, that would make her think of her sister.

  A connection, when she’d spent so long wishing she could deny the relationship.

  “Do you want me to make you a pillow like that one?” she asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Okay. I can work on it today,” she promised recklessly. Not like she didn’t have a backlog of orders, but she suspected those customers would handle waiting better than Bridget did. Besides...Bridget was here. She could watch the work in progress. That would reinforce the knowledge that this was something special from Ciara. She felt absurdly flattered at the covetous way Bridget still stared at the picture.

  “Mom!” Bridget bellowed, making Ciara wince. Fortunately, before she had to repeat it, their mother appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, my,” she said, closing in on the corkboard. “You have some new ones here I haven’t seen on your website.”

  “You keep an eye on the website?”

  Mom shot her a look. “Of course I do.”

  Of course. Who knew? she thought bemusedly. It seemed she’d misunderstood everyone, not only herself.

  She located the various fabrics she’d used in the pair of pillows, suspecting she shouldn’t deviate from what Bridget saw, at least not without asking permission. She hoped the customer wouldn’t mind her wedding dress being used to make someone else happy.

  In the next couple of hours, she worked steadily, measuring, cutting, sewing and pressing seams, starching the lace. She was grateful for something that required her focus, that didn’t let her think.

  If I hadn’t been around, would you have taken one single step since you arrived to give Mark a chance to meet other kids?

  Don’t think, remember? Not now.

  Bridget came and went, unable to settle, although she liked to touch. Ciara had to warn her away a couple of times when the sewing-machine needle was flashing up and down.

  Mom, too, watched for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Ciara hadn’t even noticed she was there when, at one point, she said, sounding bemused herself, “I admire your power of concentration. And you always loved textiles of any kind.”

  Ciara let her foot lift from the sewing-machine pedal and turned in her chair to see her mother standing in the open doorway. “Really? I don’t remember being that interested until I decided to make my own prom dress.”

  “Come on! You were already an expert seamstress. The only reason I sewed when you were younger was because you insisted I should. You’d march me into fabric stores and pick your own fabric. Remember that green dress with the velvet pinafore?”

  Ciara did. She’d worn it her first day of kindergarten. She’d wanted something special. She remembered begging. Mostly now what she envisioned was the photo of her in the dress that was part of a collage at home, but she had a wisp of memory of twirling and loving the way the skirt of the dress and pinafore both belled. She’d felt so pretty.

  Her mother laughed. “I think that was the one and only time you were entirely satisfied with my sewing efforts. By the time you were eight or ten, you’d decided you could do better.”

  “I didn’t do that much sewing.”

  “Only because you’d also become a tomboy. And when you were a teenager, well, you wanted to wear the same brands everyone else did.”

  Ciara found herself smiling, too. “Oh, God. I so did. Thank heavens I have a boy! I can’t imagine Mark ever caring what he wears.”

  “Nope.”

  “Bridget didn’t used to, either.”

  “Sure she did. Only her tastes were eccentric. She’d throw a fit because I suggested the blue-and-brown-plaid leggings didn’t look so hot with that petal-pink top with sequins.”

  Ciara suddenly remembered those battles. Maybe she’d blocked them out. Bridget always won, of course. No one could make her leave the house if she wasn’t wearing what she’d chosen. One more cause of humiliation for her sister.

  Ciara dipped her head so her mother, shoulder propped against the doorjamb, couldn’t see her expression. She had been so shallow. Had she really believed she’d be shunned if people saw her with a sister who marched to a different drummer?

  “I always knew it was hard for you,” her mother said softly.

  “Did you?” Ciara frowned, tilting her head on a sudden, unrelated awareness. Automatic parental instinct. “Why’s it so quiet?”

  “Mark, your dad and Bridget went to Gabe’s to pet horses.”

  “Really? Did they ask Gabe first?”

  Her mother smiled. “Mark called.”

  “You didn’t want to go?”

  “A little peace and quiet sounded nice.”

  “I wonder how it’s going.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We might be able to see from the front porch.” Ciara bounced to her feet, her focus broken. Of course she hadn’t been invited, not by Gabe. But...if someone had asked, would she have gone? No. She wasn’t ready to face him. Didn’t know if she ever would be.

  Her mother raised her eyebrows, but followed her downstairs and out the front door. There, Mom gasped.

  “Bridget is on a horse.”

  She was. “Aurora,” Ciara said softly. Gabe led her, and she could just see her father’s head on the other side of the quarter horse. He must be walking right at her side. Mark sat on the fence watching. Hoodoo was nowhere in sight, which probably meant Gabe had shut him into the barn.

  “I never thought she’d do anything like that.” Mom had lifted a hand to shade her eyes, but what astonished Ciara was that tears ran down her mother’s face.

  “Oh, Mom.” She wrapped an arm around her mother.

  “I think your Gabe must be an amazing man,” she said shakily.

  “I...think so, too,” Ciara whispered, but it was grief that seized her, because he hadn’t so much as called since she’d asked him to go, the day before yesterday. To say...what? That he loved her? If he did, how could he have looked with such laser clarity at behavior even she hadn’t understood?

  She had to accept that this family visit had done exactly what she’d been afraid it would—she’d convinced him she wasn’t good enough for him.

  * * *

  THE TRIO WENT back down to Gabe’s the next day for a second ride. Before they departed this time, Mark called up the stairs, “Mom, you want to come? I’m going to ride, too, and show Aunt Bridget how to canter.”

  “No,” she called back. “I want to finish her pillow. She was proud of how much like usual she sounded. “Take Grandma.”

  “Grandma says she wants to stay home if you do. Bye,” he added, and she heard the slam of the door.

  A moment later, it was her mother who called up the stairs. “I just made some lemonade. Why don’t we sit out on the porch and watch the lesson?”

  Because I don’t want to see Gabe, even across the distance of a large pasture? Not something she could admit to her mother.

  And—she’d lied. She was done with the pillow, which was just as overblown as the one it was modeled after. And yes, she wanted to see Gabe, too.

  She laughed...and then her laugh broke. She swiped angrily beneath each eye and then went downstairs.

  She could tell from Mom’s glance that she hadn’t hidden a
thing, but her mother didn’t say anything. They went outside, to see that the distant figure of Ciara’s son was saddling Aurora while Gabe led a prancing Hoodoo into the barn. Dad and Bridget waited on the other side of the fence.

  “I hope it wasn’t us you were trying to get away from when you moved so far away,” her mother said out of the blue.

  “Of course not!” She started thinking this was a lie, too, but knew suddenly it was the truth. She really had missed seeing her family. Maybe not Bridget...but, these past few days, she had realized she didn’t feel the same discomfort she had in recent years. One more painful thing to admit—Gabe had been right about this, too. She’d clung to her self-centered, teenage misery long past it having any reality.

  I looked at Bridget. Then I looked at Mark.

  So much happening in subterranean depths, unknown to her conscious mind, swimming on the surface.

  “Then why?” her mother persisted, dragging her attention back to the here and now.

  “You don’t like it here,” she accused.

  Her mother’s eyes met hers. “I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t want to live in a place this rural, but it’s beautiful, and it looks to me like you and Mark are both thriving since the move.”

  “Mark is.” I was. “It was because of him. To give him a new start. To put some distance between us and Jeff,” she confessed.

  “Well, that makes sense,” her mother said practically. “I’m glad I don’t have to see the jerk anymore. I don’t think I could keep myself from smacking him.”

  Ciara gaped at her. “Mom!”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I’d like to do more than that when I see Mark’s face after he gets off the phone with his dad or comes back from a visit. I want to put on heavy-duty work boots and stomp on him. How could I ever have thought I loved him?”

  “Well, I did wonder.” Her mother laughed at the expression on her face. “I knew better than to say so. And...I’d hoped I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t,” Ciara said, voice stifled.

  “No.” Her mother’s hand closed over hers and squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was stupid.”

  “Just young. And he’s handsome and smart and ambitious. He just lacks...”

  “Heart.” The word came instantly. Jeff didn’t deserve to walk on the same planet as a man like Gabe Tennert.

  “I suppose that is it,” Mom said.

  Across the pasture, Mark had mounted Aurora, swinging himself onto her back as naturally as if he’d done it a thousand times. Gabe seemed to be leaning on the fence talking to Ciara’s dad. Bridget...well, who knew? From this distance, Ciara couldn’t make out expressions.

  She sipped her lemonade, and her mother did the same.

  “We hoped you’d invite us for a visit.”

  “Well, of course I planned to!” Not for anything would she admit how reluctant she’d been to issue that invitation, or why. Oh, Gabe. “I’d love it if you come any time. You don’t have to wait for invitations.”

  “I know you thought we didn’t understand how hard it was for you to grow up with a sister like Bridget, but we did.”

  Ciara turned slowly to face her mother, who seemed very determined to talk about a subject they had always avoided before. Old hurt rose to choke her. “Did you?” she said, a bite in her voice. “It never felt that way to me.”

  “I know. And I know that’s our fault. My fault,” she amended, more softly. “Your father used to argue that we shouldn’t force your sister on you the way we did. I’m the one who was determined to give her the chance to be fully part of our family. I always thought you’d see—” Her voice shattered.

  Nothing existed but the two of them, and memories. So many memories: an entire school assembly stopped, everyone in the auditorium staring, until a screaming Bridget could be carried out, or the open house where she’d started ripping student work from the walls, making Ciara’s classmates cry and their parents stare in shock. All the times Ciara had tried to curl into herself and become invisible, praying no one knew that was her sister.

  “Do you know how much I wished she didn’t exist?” she heard herself say. “Not always. I mean, she was my sister. Sometimes we played together and...I loved her.” The tightness in her throat eased. “I did. But I hated her, too.”

  Compassion altered the lines in her mother’s face. “Do you think I haven’t sometimes? That your father hasn’t? When you’re carrying a baby, you dream about everything he or she will become. It’s not easy, when one day you realize she will forever be a difficult child in some respects, and too often unhappy. I saw her taking over all our lives, and I resented it. Oh, I resented it,” she said with quiet force.

  “I never knew.”

  “No.” Mom’s smile twisted. “Nobody except Ben did. I was such a model of serenity. And sometimes such a hypocrite.”

  “Mom.” Ciara was so stunned, she couldn’t think what to say.

  “Your father was freer in some ways, because at least he left the house to work. But even he had his moments.”

  Had. Ciara noticed the past tense.

  “Are you...excited about having her move out?”

  “Yes.” There was another laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. “And no. I know it’s right for her, but I’ll miss her terribly, too. Maybe you don’t understand that—”

  “Of course I do. She’s been the center of your life.”

  “Too much so,” her mother said sadly. “You suffered for that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t send her to an institution. I just couldn’t.”

  “No.” That shocked Ciara. She hadn’t known her parents had ever talked about anything like that. “I never would have wanted that.” She was glad to realize that much, at least, was true.

  Mom grabbed her hand again, her grip almost painful. “I wanted to say how sorry I am that her struggles impacted you so profoundly.” Her eyes bored into Ciara’s. “But I also need you to know that I believe I’m a better person because of Bridget. I think maybe we all are.”

  Ciara’s lips parted, but no words came. She could see that it might be true for both her parents. She both loved and admired them. Her father’s quiet sense of humor never seemed to fail him. Mom had achieved a serenity that awed Ciara.

  But...me? At first sight, she rejected the idea. She’d been ashamed to introduce her sister to Gabe. Ashamed by the comparisons she’d drawn between Mark and Bridget. What kind of person did that make her?

  She was shaking her head even as she thought, But maybe I am a better mother because I knew Bridget. More...accepting. More willing to fight to protect Mark, to give him everything he needs.

  Like Mom had done for Bridget. As long as I can also learn to open my hands and let him fly free.

  Now the lump in her throat reached gargantuan proportions. She quit shaking her head. “I’m...going to have to think about that.”

  “Good.” Her mother’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “That’s all I can ask.” She turned her head and said, “Oh, my. Look at her.”

  Ciara looked, and found herself smiling in astonishment. Bridget was on Aurora’s back again, but this time she sat up straight, looking, from a distance, almost...queenly. And then she laughed, her head thrown back.

  Oh, my said it all.

  * * *

  WHEN MARK HAD called earlier, it was Gabe who said, “Why don’t you ask your mom to come along?”

  “Mom?” Typical, unthinking kid, he sounded surprised. “Oh. Sure. I guess.”

  But only Mark, Ben and Bridget emerged from the Toyota ten minutes later. Gabe strode to meet them, hiding his dismay. What was going through Ciara’s head? Did she hate him? Plan to move again, and not make the mistake of getting too friendly with a neighbor? Let him have access to Mark, but only in a controlled way? He wished he had a clue.

  He wished even more that he could go back and recast the whole talk. What he should be wondering was what he’d been thinking. Had he real
ly been stupid enough to imagine she’d gasp with excitement and say, Oh, Gabe! Of course you’re right!

  Hell, no. Trying to make himself understood, he’d trampled all over her feelings. He had said what he meant, but not the way he’d meant. He should have started by saying You’re a gentle, smart, amazing woman, and Mark’s lucky to have you for his mother. But him, he wasn’t so good with the compliments. After Ginny and Abby died, he’d spent countless hours remembering everything he’d thought but not said. He’d too often kissed his wife but not said You’re beautiful. He hadn’t told her anywhere near often enough that he loved her. Or said to his small daughter You’re the sunshine of my life.

  And look at how little he’d learned! His idea of a high compliment was He’s a good kid.

  Even so, he’d come to realize that his wife and daughter both had felt loved. He could close his eyes and see Ginny’s smile when he walked in the door, or the way his little girl had run to him with complete faith that his arms would open. They’d known.

  So how could Ciara not know how he felt about her, how much he admired her strength and fierce defense of her boy?

  But he knew the answer. He’d always been aware she was protecting not only Mark, but some deep wound. And then, in opening his damn mouth, he’d done the same thing her SOB of an ex had: he’d dumped a load of blame on her.

  I have to fix this, he thought desperately, but didn’t know when or how he could. He couldn’t even blame her for avoiding him.

  He tried to ignore the niggling little voice in his head suggesting that she had invited him that first evening to meet her parents only because she knew they’d been curious after hearing Mark talk about him. Didn’t mean she’d admitted to them that he and she had a relationship beyond neighborly. He couldn’t possibly be the kind of man she’d proudly bring home to Mom and Dad.

  And yeah, he knew it was his own insecurities talking. It was hard to get past the fact that he’d spent his whole life in this rural corner of the state. He still didn’t read very well. He’d barely graduated from high school. His computer skills were limited, which left him unable to speak the same language as most of his contemporaries. He was a craftsman, not a professional like her father and her ex-husband.