Home Again

by Shirlee McCoy

  “I don’t think anyone has ever said more beautiful words to me.” And she wanted desperately to be as brave as he was. To be as honest and forthcoming and authentic.

  “They’re not just words, Clementine. They’re my heart. I have something for you. Come inside. I’ll get it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just something I bought at auction.”

  “Porter, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” She could think of plenty of reasons, but none of them mattered when she was walking by his side.

  “Exactly. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. Friends do these kinds of things for each other all the time. They buy things at auction. They search for missing relatives. They plow fields and barter skeins of wool yarn for old tires so they can do the work that needs to be done.”

  “It was alpaca yarn,” she said, her eyes burning and her throat tight. Not because he’d bought her something, but because with every word he said, he was giving her a piece of his heart. “And how did you know about that?”

  “Half the town was here tonight. You’ve bartered with a lot of them.”

  “Bartering should be like going to confession. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

  He laughed, opening the door and ushering her in. They walked through the kitchen where the caterers were cleaning and getting ready to leave, and into the music room.

  A piano sat in the center of the room, a man dressed in a tux playing quietly. Long tables filled the room, each one displaying items that had been up for auction.

  “Wow,” she said, impressed by the sheer volume of auction items.

  “It really is astounding. We had so many people gifting items because they love Sunday and her kids that we almost didn’t have the space to display everything. As a matter of fact, the item I purchased for you isn’t down here.” He walked her into the hall, where old photos lined the walls and high-backed chairs took stately residence in the corners. “We’ve got some of the less popular or more delicate offerings up on the second-story landing.”

  “You got me something no one else wanted?” she asked with a laugh.

  “I got you something that reminded me of you.”

  “Let me guess: a box of black lamb’s wool that looks like my crazy hair?”

  He smiled, reaching for the pins that secured her hair and pulling them out so that it tumbled down her back.

  “Hey!” She swatted his hand away. “Why’d you do that? Do you know how hard it is to tame this mane?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind learning. I love your hair,” he said. “It’s like you: both wild and tame and fantastically unique.”

  “You make me sound like a wild mustang fresh off the range and in need of breaking.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve never called myself a poet. I don’t think anyone else has, either.”

  “So, is the gift a bridle? A brush, maybe? Or a gift card to get my hair cut?”

  “If I tell you, it’ll ruin the surprise.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, and he gestured to dozens of framed pictures and gift cards and certificates hanging there.

  “See if you can guess,” he said, and he gave her a gentle nudge toward the display.

  * * *

  God, he was nervous.

  There’d been hundreds of things he could have chosen. Beautiful things. Expensive ones. There’d been trips and bags and clothes and even a few pair of brand-new shoes. Jewelry. Sparkly, shiny, showy stuff that he’d heard lots of people oohing and ahhhing over.

  But nothing had said her name like what he’d chosen. Nothing had reminded him more of the person she was.

  He didn’t know if she’d see that. He didn’t know if she’d understand. He didn’t think she’d find it, though, hidden there in plain view. Something only Porter had bid on.

  She moved forward, her hips swaying beneath soft knit, her hair spilling down her back. Each time she moved, a tiny flash of porcelain skin danced between her slim-fitting sweater and her curve-hugging skirt.

  His hands ached to touch her again, to slide his palms across her silky skin. He fisted his hands to keep from reaching out to her, but his feet refused to stay still.

  He walked across the landing, standing next to her as she studied the display.

  “There are a lot of choices, Porter. They all look wonderful.”

  “Even the stuffed fish head?” he asked, pointing to the offending item.

  “It will be perfect for someone’s house, but if you bought it for me, I may have to hang it on an outhouse door.” She moved to the right and stopped in front of his donations. The ones he’d decided last minute to include.

  “Porter . . .” She touched the frame, leaning close to study the pages set beneath it. The mother cat. The kittens. Their journey to find the way home. “This is your mom’s book!”

  “A copy of it. I couldn’t make myself auction the original.”

  “If I’d known it was for sale, I’d have made a bid. I love this story.”

  “So did Twila. She was here earlier, and I showed it to her. She paid twenty-two dollars of her hard-earned money to buy it.”

  “She’s a doll.”

  “She is. Now, keep looking, because you still haven’t found your gift.”

  “I don’t really think this is fair. I’ve never been good at games like this. You know the ones. Where you search for words in a hodgepodge of letters or try to find the hidden images in a picture. I like things straightforward and in my face. Not disguised by a bunch of useless details. Besides, you could have chosen anything for me. Half these things probably remind you of me. Rusty shotgun. Frilly apron. Wading boots.” She stopped, and he knew she’d seen it. She was staring hard, leaning in, eyeing the thing that no other person had.

  “It’s this, isn’t it?” She lifted the framed photo of the item that had been too big to bring in the house—the green tractor with its giant tires and gleaming chrome sitting in the middle of a field of cut hay.

  “Yes. Doug Minton got a new tractor last week and wanted to get rid of this one. I went over this afternoon and . . .”

  His voice trailed off, because she was crying, huge tears slipping down her cheeks and splattering onto the glass.

  “Clementine, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her into his arms, the tractor between them, the frame poking at his gut, taunting him with the foolishness of his gift.

  “I should have bought one of those sparkly rings.”

  She shook with the force of her tears, her hands still clutching the photo.

  “Or a purse. Twila told me to buy a purse, but I thought I knew more than a ten-year-old about what you’d want.”

  “You do,” she murmured against his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt. “This is the best gift I’ve ever received.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because . . . it’s the best gift I’ve ever received,” she replied, lifting her head and looking into his eyes. “And I can’t understand why it took me so long to find you, why I had to spend ten years doing things wrong before I could get them right.”

  “You didn’t do things wrong. Sim did.”

  “I did, too, because I didn’t believe in people like you. I didn’t believe in an easy, beautiful, breathless kind of love. The kind where you can look at thousands of things that anyone could love and buy the thing that only I would choose.” She was looking at the photo again, wiping the drops of tears away. “It’s that thread that I’ve felt from the first day I met you, the one that keeps bringing me back to your arms. It’s connected us in a way I didn’t think was possible, and there’s a part of me that is terrified that it’s too good to be true. That somewhere out there, the great Creator is holding thread clippers and is about to snap them closed on us.”

  “It’s good that you’re so optimistic, about our long-term chances of survival,” he said dryly, and she laughed.

  “I ca
n’t help it. I was raised on stories about star-struck lovers. Terrible things generally happen to all of them.”

  “I was raised to never be star-struck. So I think we’re going to be okay.”

  “You always know the right thing to say,” she said.

  “Try to remember that in a few years, when I’ve said so many stupid things, you’re buying me handkerchiefs for Christmas just so you have something you can tie around my mouth to keep me quiet.” He took the photo from her hand and hung it back on the wall.

  “How did you know, Porter?” she asked. “Out of all those things, how did you choose?”

  “When I looked at the photo, it felt like home. And that’s how I feel when I’m with you. I’ve never had that, Clementine. I’ve never stood in a spot and known that it was my space in the universe. And then you walked into my life, and every time I was with you, I knew where I belonged. That’s what that photo reminded me of. When I realized that, I knew the tractor would be the perfect gift for you.”

  “You were right about the tractor, but feelings change. Life happens and sometimes the world is so dark, it’s hard to find our way,” she said.

  “Maybe, but friends stick together. Even in the darkness. Even in the toughest times. If everything else changes, that will be the same.” He kissed her then, with all the passion that she deserved, with all the love that he felt, and when he broke away, her cheeks were pink, her lips rosy, and she was smiling.

  “You know what I was thinking?” she asked.

  “Does it have anything to do with plowing fields at some god-awful hour of the morning, because I bought you a new toy and you can’t wait to play with it?”

  “No,” she said, then shook her head and laughed. “Actually, I was thinking about that. But the other thing is more important.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What were you thinking?”

  “That I can still hear piano music, that the fairy lights are still out in the garden, and that there is nothing I’d rather be doing than dancing in the moonlight with you. I love you, Porter. I may be afraid to be hurt again, but I’m not going to be afraid to try.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, kissing her one more time, because she was everything he hadn’t known he needed, and he wouldn’t ever let her forget just how much she meant to him.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” she said with a smile. “Before the sun comes up and the kids are awake, and one of them decides they need to come to town to find us.”

  “It could happen,” he said. “It has happened.”

  She laughed, taking his hand and leading him across the landing.

  It felt right to walk down the stairs beside her. It felt good to step out into the early morning air, to cross the yard and walk into the garden where the first sweet buds of spring were nestled in tender green leaves.

  And, when he took her in his arms, when he swayed with her beneath the silvery moon and the glittering stars, when he looked into her eyes and kissed her lips, it felt like finally coming home.

  Epilogue

  Midsummer

  The heat was getting to her. She’d admit that, but Clementine had never been a quitter, and she wasn’t going to start now. She’d sent the kids home an hour ago, right around the time the sun had reached its brutal zenith. It hung there now, lazy in the clear blue sky, blazing down on her as she pounded another nail into the last shingle.

  The very last one.

  She slammed the hammer down again, sweat beading her brow, her brain fuzzy from too much sun and heat. But she was done. They were done. Finally.

  God! It was hot. Putrid. Horrible. But she was sitting on the roof of the little chapel she and the kids had built, and she could see the fields stretching out around her, the cemetery below, the river spilling languidly across the landscape.

  And it was all more beautiful than she’d imagined it would be. Sunday would love it.

  If Clementine could convince her to come out and take a look. Mostly, Sunday spent her time inside, sitting in the easy chair by the front living room window, staring out into the yard.

  Watching the world pass by.

  Maybe this would free her from whatever held her there. A nearly exact replica of the chapel her family had built over a hundred years ago. Clementine had found photos at the town historical society, and she’d worked with a local architect to make sure she got things right.

  But she and the kids and the Bradshaw men had done most of the work, building up over the old foundation and recreating a beautiful little building that Clementine hoped Sunday would be pleased with.

  If she could ever get Sunday out of the house.

  Clementine frowned, wiping sweat from her eyes and grabbing the hammer, heat seeping through her cotton T-shirt, the sun baking her exposed arms. She needed to climb down the ladder and grab a water bottle from the cooler she and the kids had carted across the bridge that morning. Then she’d go home.

  Maybe Porter would be there. Finished with a meeting he’d had with local merchants who wanted to sell products at the country store that would soon be opening on the farm.

  That was another thing Clementine had hoped would pull Sunday out of her lethargy.

  Thus far, she’d only shown mild interest in the project.

  “Tomorrow is another day, though,” Clementine murmured to the pristine sky and blazing sun.

  She crawled to the ladder, lowering herself over the edge of the roof. A little dizzy. A little light-headed. Obviously overheated, but she couldn’t stay there forever, fifteen feet above the ground, hands on the roof, feet on the ladder.

  She stepped down, blood whooshing in her ears, took another step down and wondered if the ladder was moving or if she were.

  “This is not good,” she mumbled, her mouth cottony, her mind fuzzy.

  “That just now occurred to you?” Porter said, his voice so unexpected she nearly lost her grip on the ladder. “The kids said you sent them home an hour ago. Didn’t it occur to you that if it was too hot for them, it was too hot for you?”

  “It occurred to me that I wanted to finish this project before the cows came home.”

  “We aren’t getting cows this year.” His hand settled on her hips, and he guided her down the next few steps.

  Thank God.

  She wasn’t sure she could have made it on her own.

  “Figure of speech,” she replied, finally reaching the ground and turning toward him.

  The world turned with her.

  Actually, it spun. Quickly. Blues and yellows and bright greens, all the colors of midsummer flying across her field of vision.

  She grabbed Porter’s arms, holding on because she was afraid if she didn’t, she’d fall over.

  “I do know a figure of speech when I hear one,” Porter said, frowning as he stared into her face. “I just thought you might need a reminder that there’s no rush on any of this. Creating a successful working farm takes years. As you keep reminding me.”

  “This isn’t about the farm.”

  “No?” He kept his hand on her waist and guided her to a shady spot beneath an old spruce. “Sit.”

  She did, because her legs felt weak, and because he was heading for the cooler, grabbing a water bottle out and carrying it back to her.

  “Of course not. The chapel really isn’t part of the working farm. It’s just part of its history. This”—she waved at the building—“is about Sunday. She’s just . . . not herself. I was hoping this might cheer her up a little.”

  “That’s a nice thought, Clementine, but you dying of heat stroke wouldn’t be anything but devastating to all of us.” He opened the bottle and handed it to her. Then grabbed another one, wet his hands with it and ran them along her nape.

  She shivered, closing her eyes as she took several large gulps of water. It tasted like a little piece of heaven, and having Porter so close felt like it.

  “You okay?” he asked, and she nodded.

  “Just enjoying the moment.”

  He c
huckled, kissing the spot where his hands had been. “How about next time, when we enjoy a moment, it doesn’t come right after you nearly die?”

  “I wasn’t near death. I was just overheated.”

  “You almost fell off that ladder.”

  She wasn’t going to argue. Not when she was so happy, so content to be sitting there with him, the finally finished chapel just a few feet away.

  “I can’t believe it’s done,” she said.

  “It looks fantastic, Clementine. You did good.”

  She smiled, opening her eyes and looking into his face. “I didn’t do anything. Just bossed around five kids and asked you and your brothers to do the heavy lifting.”

  “You did way more work than any of us,” he said seriously, turning her hand so he could run his finger over the calluses on her palm. “So, like I said, you did good.”

  Her smile broadened, and she leaned in for a quick kiss that turned into a longer one. One that stole her breath and made her feel dizzy all over again.

  “Wow,” she murmured, shifting away, looking into his gorgeous eyes.

  “I agree,” he responded, his lips following the column of her neck and blazing a trail to the hollow of her throat.

  And, God! It felt good.

  He felt good.

  The sound of a car engine broke the afternoon quiet and drifted through the haze of longing that had stolen every thought from her head.

  She pulled away, breathless and wanting nothing more than to throw herself in his arms again.

  “Someone’s coming,” she managed to say.

  He nodded, his gaze hot, his hands resting on her waist. “The kids told us the chapel was nearly complete. They were begging us to come out and see it. They’ve been shouting about it for an hour. Sullivan and Flynn are driving everyone over here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? This is a family thing, Porter. It’s for everyone. Do you think Sunday is coming, too?”

  “Yes. My brothers and I agreed that a little fresh air would do her good, so we’ve enlisted the kids and managed to talk her into coming.” He pulled Clementine to her feet, held her hand as they walked to the chapel. The wooden door was open, the interior shadowy and cool-looking.