Home Again

by Shirlee McCoy

“You and Matt were in an accident,” he responded, touching the back of her cold hand and looking into her eyes.

  “Mr. Bradshaw,” the nurse snapped. “You should speak with the doctor first. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Matt didn’t survive,” he continued, ignoring the warning, because speaking the truth felt right. Because before the accident, Sunday had been one of the strongest women he’d known. When her father had died of a heart attack, she’d planned the funeral and stood by her mother’s side. When her mother had died of cancer six months later, Sunday hadn’t crumbled. She’d cried, she’d mourned, and she’d continued on.

  “What about Moisey?” she asked, her voice breaking, her eyes dry.

  “Moisey’s fine,” Clementine said, reaching out to hold Sunday’s other hand. “Still getting into all kinds of mischief. Just like she always has.”

  “You know her?” Sunday asked, her brow furrowed. “I don’t remember you being at the house. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to remember,” Clementine reassured her. “I’ll remember for you.”

  “But you’ve seen Moisey, right? She really is okay?”

  “She’s great. The boys are great. Twila is awesome. And Heavenly is doing a wonderful job caring for the baby.”

  “Heavenly?”

  “She’s your oldest. You adopted her six months ago,” Porter reminded her, glad the teenager hadn’t been around to realize she was the child who’d been forgotten.

  “And the baby?”

  “Oya,” Clementine said. “She and Heavenly are half-siblings.”

  “Okay,” Sunday said. “I’ll try to remember them.”

  “If you don’t, it’s okay,” the nurse assured her, glaring at Porter reproachfully. “You had a serious head injury. Getting all your memories will take time.”

  “If I don’t, it’s not okay. They’re my daughters. My soul should remember that, even if my mind doesn’t.”

  “You’re tired. Why don’t you lie down for a while and close your eyes, rest until the kids arrive?” Clementine stood and tugged Porter to his feet.

  “I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep and Moisey will visit me in my dreams again,” she responded, but she settled back against the pillows, closed her eyes. “Even when I’m sleeping, that little girl knows how to talk my ears off.”

  “What did she say to you?” Clementine asked, pulling the covers up around her, tucking them in the way she would for a child.

  “That I had to come home,” she murmured, her eyes closing, her face relaxing.

  Porter resisted the urge to shake her shoulder, remind her that she had to stay awake until the kids arrived.

  “She had pink fingers,” Sunday continued, as if she were trying to hold on to the memory.

  “Pink?” Clementine stiffened, her gaze shooting to Porter.

  He knew what she was thinking, but there was no way on God’s green earth Moisey had somehow really slipped into Sunday’s dreams.

  “She was talking about pink bandages the last time she was here,” he explained. “Sunday must have heard and stored it away in her memories.”

  “Right. Sure,” Clementine said. “That makes sense.”

  “What else could it be?” he asked, pulling her away from the bed, afraid Sunday would hear and worry.

  “It could be that Moisey really found a way into the shadow world of dreams. It could be she really did put her hands on her mother and heal her. It could even be that she really did tell her that she had to come home.” She grinned.

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. All that matters is what happened.” She cocked her head to the side and pointed at the door. “I hear the kids. Better brace yourself.”

  Seconds later, the group marched in. Single file. Quiet. Solemn. Like they’d been during every visit for as long as Sunday had been in rehab.

  Sullivan stepped into the room behind them, his hands shoved in his pockets, his gaze on the bed. “How are things going?”

  “Better than I’d hoped they would,” Porter replied, and Sunday shifted in the bed, lifted her head, saw her children standing awkwardly near the door.

  “You’re here,” she said softly.

  And all six kids turned in her direction. Eyes wide. Mouths open.

  Twila broke rank first, darting across the room, hands reaching for a hug before she even got to the bed.

  “Mommy,” she cried. “Mommy!”

  The rest of her siblings followed.

  Except for Moisey.

  She was standing in the doorway, faux diamonds sprinkled in her curly hair, both hands held out, every finger wrapped in bright pink duct tape.

  “It worked,” she breathed. “It did! You were right, Uncle Sullivan. Duct tape is just as effective as Band-Aids when it comes to healing moms.”

  Chapter Nine

  There were a lot of things that felt like joy.

  Rays of sunshine after a storm.

  Hints of spring at the end of winter.

  Kittens. Puppies. Dandelions. Summer rain on tender shoots.

  And children. Wrapped in their mother’s arms.

  Clementine watched the reunion for just long enough to see that Sunday remembered Heavenly’s name and that she hugged her just as tightly as she did the other children. She watched just long enough to know that a white-coated doctor slipped into the room, shooed out most of the rehab staff, and pulled a chair over to the bed. She watched just long enough to notice Porter and Sullivan, heads bent together, speaking quietly to one another. She watched, but this scene?

  This feeling of joy?

  It was for family.

  So she stayed just long enough to see that everything was exactly as it should be, and then she walked into the hall, jogging down the stairs and out into the quiet night.

  The moon hadn’t risen, but stars were sprinkled across the evening sky, sparkling against the backdrop of the endless universe. In a place like this—a place where light, billions of miles away, could travel to a viewer on a little planet called earth—nothing seemed impossible.

  Little girls could wrap their fingers in pink duct tape and channel the healing energy of the Creator. They could wander through the land of dreams to save their mother’s lives. Women could wake from comas. Dying farms could be brought back to life.

  And people like Clementine?

  They could discover that ever-after existed, that love could last forever, and that the thread that bound lives together could never truly unwind.

  In a world like this one, dreams could be changed. Paths could be altered. And things that had seemed so necessary could become what didn’t matter anymore.

  She walked around the side of the building, in no hurry to leave. The rancher was empty, no drama waiting to pounce when she returned. She had her spinning wheel there. Her carded wool. She had boxes of alpaca fleece and skeins of beautifully colored yarn. She had, if she allowed herself to admit it, everything she needed to be happy. Even without a full-time professorship or a cute little house in Seattle, life felt good. Right even.

  But that didn’t mean she should give up on what she’d worked so hard for. She’d spent years studying. Years taking tests. Years working to establish herself in academia.

  She had a chance, finally, to go back to the dreams she’d given up for Sim. Without him in her life, she was free to do what she wanted, to go where she felt led.

  She was free.

  Just to be herself.

  If only she knew what that meant.

  She crossed the center’s yard, grass tickling her ankles as she walked and, then, she crouched to run her palms over the sweet-smelling blades.

  Years ago, she’d spent every summer evening lying on the ground, staring up at the stars. After her father died and she moved to the city, she’d forgotten the pleasure of lying in silence, of staring up at the infinite expanse of space, of wondering at the extraordinary mystery of life existing right there where she was. />
  She dropped to the ground, lying on her back just the way she used to. The sky was just as beautiful, the stars just as bright. She didn’t feel lonely here. She didn’t feel small. She felt like part of something big and bold and wonderful.

  “Can I join you?” Porter asked, his voice breaking the silence and interrupting her solitude.

  She could have sent him away.

  An hour ago, she probably would have.

  But there was room beside her, and a deep ache in her soul that yearned for him.

  “Sure,” she said. “If you don’t mind grass-stained clothes.”

  “What’s life without them?” he asked, and she smiled.

  “Cleaner?”

  He chuckled, stretching out beside her, shoulders touching. Pinkies touching. The sky above and the earth below, and Clementine could think of a dozen stories that began this way.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.

  “You’re beautiful,” he responded.

  “We’re looking at the sky, Porter. Not each other.”

  “I didn’t realize there were rules to the game.”

  “It’s not a game. It’s a memory.”

  “That you’re trying to relive?”

  “That I’m trying to create,” she responded.

  “So, a new memory?”

  “Making new ones is better than holding on to the old, don’t you think? Besides”—she reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his—“I want this one to be with you.”

  “Be careful, Clementine,” he said, levering up so that he could look into her face. “One memory with you won’t ever be enough.”

  “Okay.” She turned onto her side, trailing her fingers along his jaw.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just . . . okay. Let’s make more than one.”

  “You’re going back to Seattle, remember?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Soon.”

  “Does that matter to you?” she asked, studying his face, looking for some hint that they really could last forever.

  “Of course it matters. You’ll be there. I’ll be here.”

  “It’s not that far.”

  “Only as far as the east is from the west.”

  “What does that mean?” It was her turn to ask.

  “Long distance relationships seldom work.”

  “So you’re telling me that if I go, we can’t try?”

  “I’m telling you that if you go, it’s because there’s something better for you there than there is here.” He smoothed his hand over her hair, smiling gently into her eyes. His tone, his gaze, his tender touch, falling like fragrant raindrops on her heart.

  “It doesn’t have to be better to be important,” she said, her throat tightening on the words, because she wanted him to understand. If she went to Seattle, she wasn’t choosing her old dreams over him. She was choosing both of them. The dream. The relationship. It shouldn’t ever have to be one instead of the other.

  “No?” He kissed her gently, tenderly, as if she were the most beautiful jewel in the queen’s tiara, the most brilliant star in the night sky. As if everything he’d ever wanted could be found in her.

  And, God. She’d never felt like that before. Never felt so completely certain of the look in someone’s eyes.

  “You’re better than Seattle,” she murmured against his lips. “Better than teaching. Better than anything I could find in any dream I’ve ever had. But I can’t live with regrets. Not the way I did for so many years. I can’t look back and wonder if I compromised me to be with you.”

  “I would never ask you to do that, Clementine.”

  “You wouldn’t have to ask. It would just happen. Like the sun rising. The rain falling. Like a million other things that are set in motion by one slow spin of the earth.”

  “Nothing is inevitable,” he said.

  “What about death and taxes?” she joked. Because this was too much. The sky. The stars. His steady gaze. And she didn’t want to make a mistake. Not with him. And not with herself.

  He didn’t laugh. Didn’t speak. He just watched her the way she’d often watched the sun set. Waiting for that moment between day and night, that perfect time when they were almost the same.

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, Porter,” she found herself saying. “I don’t want to leave if you really want me to stay.”

  “Then go,” he responded, kissing her again. “Because I want you to be the person who makes you happiest. And I’ll be here whenever you come to find me. No matter how long I have to wait.”

  “Porter,” she began again, but he got to his feet and held out his hand, pulling her upright.

  “I need to get back inside before Moisey convinces Dr. Anderson that she really does have special powers.”

  “Is that what she’s trying to do?”

  “She’s trying to drive us all to the edge of sanity. I think she’s succeeding.”

  “You love her,” she said, holding his hand as they walked back to the parking lot.

  “I love them all. And that’s as surprising to me as it probably is to anyone.”

  “You didn’t think you would love them?”

  “I didn’t think I could. I thought love was a learned behavior. Like manners. Kindness. Self-control. And I didn’t have a very good teacher.”

  “No one needs to be taught to love. We’re born doing it. It’s hate that gets passed on from one generation to another.”

  “In that case, I had an excellent coach.”

  “What was your mother like?” she asked as they reached her car. Because she wanted to know. She wanted to understand how someone who’d grown up with fists and hatred could be so capable of love.

  “You saw her books. Those are her.”

  “But . . . what was she like? To you. To your brothers. Did she give lots of hugs? Did she bake special treats? Did she wake you up in the morning by singing songs about the new day?”

  “She tiptoed through my life. And she tiptoed through her own. Every gift she gave, she gave in secret, but every dream she had was for her sons. She used to tell us that we were going to grow up and break free and have wonderful lives.”

  “She was right.”

  “Yes, she was. It’s a shame she didn’t live long enough to do the same. Get in your car, Clementine, because I have to go, and I don’t want to leave you out here alone.”

  “I’m not alone. There are a million insects zipping through the sky, and probably a million bats trying to eat them.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said, taking the car keys from her hand and unlocking the door.

  “I know that you worry too much. It’s safer here than it is in the city, and it’s safer there than swimming in the depth of the ocean without an oxygen tank, so I think I’m going to be just fine.”

  “You have an interesting way of looking at life.”

  “I had an excellent coach. Two of them. Maybe you’ll get to meet my mother one of these days. She’ll probably want to clear your chakra.”

  “I think having six kids around has already done that.”

  “Doubtful. Even if it has, my mother will want to work her magic on you.”

  “There’s only one person whose magic I’m interested in,” he said, running a finger from the edge of her jaw to the hollow of her throat.

  “I’ve got no magic, Porter. Not like Moisey. I can’t put pink tape on my fingers and heal the world.”

  “Maybe not, but you’ve helped to heal my family. You pushed us together when it felt like we were falling apart, and I’ll never forget that. Or the way it feels to be in your arms.”

  “That really is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me,” she whispered.

  He kissed her, his hands slipping beneath her sweater, his fingers trailing along her spine. Everywhere he touched was fire, every caress a kiss by candlelight.

  She thought that if she were standing in that perfect moment between night and
day, this would be it. He would be it. That dip of light falling into darkness, waiting for the sky to explode with stars.

  He stepped back, his eyes blazing, his chest heaving.

  And she wanted to reach for him again, pull him back into her arms.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he muttered, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “And I’d spend forever out here with you, but Sullivan is probably wondering where I’ve gone. Either that, or he’s been overcome by the six hellions we’ve inherited.”

  “They’re not that bad.” She laughed.

  “They’re worse, but they’re still angels compared to me and my brothers at that age. Get in the car. You need to go home before I abandon good intentions and leave my brother to fend for himself.”

  She smiled, sliding behind the driver’s seat and shoving the key in the ignition.

  “Drive carefully, Clementine,” he said, closing the door.

  She waved, pulling through the parking space and out onto the road, thinking about his words. What he’d said about wanting her to be her happiest self.

  Did she even know what that was? Who it was?

  She didn’t think so. She thought that in all those years of dating Sim, of being married to him, she’d lost the barometer that measured joy.

  Maybe she could find it again.

  Maybe she’d found it.

  Because when she was with Porter, all she felt was happiness.

  * * *

  The problem with Porter’s life was that he had too much to do. Not just helping the city council get the house ready for the silent auction. Supervising kids. Correcting kids. Buying concert dresses for kids. Going to parent-teacher conferences for kids. Even with the kid-related chores split between four capable adults, it felt like more than anyone could handle.

  He didn’t know how Sunday had ever managed it.

  She sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do it now.

  Even after her sudden improvement, she was struggling to accomplish simple tasks. Tying shoes. Brushing hair. Walking. Climbing stairs. He’d visited her twice this week, and each time she’d looked more tired and less capable of ever going home.

  He’d tried to encourage her, to tell her that she was doing fine, but she was grimly determined to return home. To her, every setback felt like a colossal failure. Every clumsy effort felt like a reminder that she wasn’t where she wanted to be.