by CD Reiss
I was free.
I’d said it before, but I felt it in my heart when the thorn bushes burned.
I was free.
Was I smiling?
Part of my yard was on fire, Damon was lighting a cigarette in it, and I was smiling as if I had any business doing anything but panicking.
“Stand back!”
The clap of the screen door and the voice behind me were muffled by the roar of the blaze.
Still in a calm, fixated state, I didn’t jump when a man in a jacket and slacks blew past me. He carried a fire extinguisher canister in one hand and held the hose in the other. I had no reason to recognize him. No one in town wore nice clothes to a barbecue, and the smoke and clouds from the fire extinguisher obscured his face.
I didn’t need to see it.
“Chris!”
As if woken by Chris’s command to stand back, Orrin jogged to the shed. Kyle ran for his truck. Taylor turned on the hose and soaked the porch. Four fire extinguishers on the blaze, my house wasn’t going to burn down, and I was free to go anywhere in the world I wanted.
The world had turned upside down. Everything had fallen out. I’d been ready to refill my life with new things.
Then he came back a day early and put out the fire in my house.
He turned to face me, dropping his fire extinguisher with a clonk.
Where was the rest of the world before the moment our eyes met again? Before I saw that boy inside the man? He barely had scruff on his cheek when he left, and now? He had little lines around his eyes and a searing intensity that a boy can emulate, but only a man can achieve.
Missing the muscle and lithe movements that defined the Chris I knew, he’d become something harder, more solid, shaping the space around him instead of bending with it.
And still, he filled me.
Everything clicked into place all over again. I only heard laughter around me, as if every tension in the universe snapped.
I was free of commitments and free of plans. Free of any kind of ambition or hope. He walked right into the space those tiny things had taken up.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t mad. I balled my fists up and got ready to give him hell, but he spoke first.
“I got your note.”
He came close to me. Close enough for me to smell him past the burning wood and spent lighter fluid. Close enough to see the sweat on his cheeks and the way his lashes were slightly darker than his hair.
“I told you I couldn’t see you.” I must have been out of my mind.
“You made a mistake.” He growled as if we hadn’t spent thirteen years apart. As if I’d just seen him yesterday and he was responding to a text I’d sent an hour ago. As if we even knew each other anymore.
And we didn’t.
But time had folded and bent around my feelings, coming to the other side and wrapping us together again like a twist-tie. It really did feel as though we hadn’t been apart at all. My experiences lied to me, and my feelings were deceptive. My senses fabricated rightness out of nothingness and what little sense I had was spun into a mess of conflicting information.
“Get out,” I said, pointing at the door he’d come through. “Go through the house and out the way you came. Go home.”
He tried to put his hands on me, but I curled inside myself and slunk away. If he touched me, I’d be lost.
“Catherine—”
“You can’t do this, Christopher. You can’t just storm in and act like you’ve been here for me the entire time.”
A waft of leftover smoke blew between us. I blinked hard to keep it out, and so I wouldn’t have to look into the eyes that felt like home.
“That’s the past,” he whispered.
No one came into our space, but I felt them watching. Listening. Making sure I was all right.
I wasn’t all right. I was confused. I had thirteen years of hurt and disappointment built up. Crying myself to sleep had been a completely inadequate valve for what had built inside me. And the sorrow was nothing compared to the love eating it alive.
He was a mistake wrapped in relief tied with a bow shaped like everything I found beautiful.
Calmly, I walked past him, through the house, to the front door, and out to the quiet front yard where he’d stood thirteen years before and thrown a tennis ball at the wall outside my bedroom. When I spun, he was right behind me, and when I opened my mouth to speak, he planted a kiss on it.
I felt a hardness of spirit, a stern resolve against obstacles. A forward motion that drove his lips into mine, and I felt—from instant to instant—a crumbling in that rigidity. His body curved where it had been angled, his mouth went soft where it had been firm. His fingertips brushed my neck as if asking for things he’d gotten accustomed to demanding.
He was falling apart right in front of me.
We split apart to breathe. I gasped.
“Chris.” I had so much to say, but only his name came out.
“I’m here now.”
“So?”
“It’s all over. I can fix this.”
“Fix…” My face tingled, and I had to hold my hand in front of my mouth. He rubbed my shoulders. It felt so good to be touched like that. I’d been crying alone for so long, I’d forgotten what tender company meant. I swallowed it back to speak. “Fix what?”
He threw his hand out to the dark night. “All of it. I made it, Rin! Do you know what this means? All this is over.”
My body was stiff and my mind stuttered. I didn’t know whether to thank him or slap him, so I did nothing.
“I can tell,” he said. “I can’t believe it, but I feel the same, exactly the same. It’s like a light went on.”
He seemed happy. Relieved even. With the moonlight on his cheek and the stars glinting off the whites of his eyes, cast in darkness, his voice carried happiness and relief. A car came down the driveway, casting his face in harsh, moving lights. He looked like a man coming home after a long journey, and I was locked down inside my new ambition to move along with a life I’d delayed too long.
“I’m still in the dark, Chris. You left me. You left and you never came back.”
“I’m back now. Do you remember? Right here in this front yard? The last time I saw you? It’s like yesterday.”
I was shocked back to life. “It wasn’t.”
His mood came down a notch. “It was the best time of my life.”
“That’s nostalgia. It’s too late. You forgot me.”
“I never—”
My hand shot up and covered his mouth. His face was rough with stubble and his lips were wet from our kiss. He felt more real and concrete than anything I’d ever touched, but he was a fleeting memory, a distraction. He’d hurt me badly enough to make me disavow the reality at my fingertips.
He kissed my palm, and taking my wrist in his hand, he kissed the tender skin inside it.
“Catherine?” Reggie called from the porch. “You all right?”
“I’ll be in in a minute,” I called to him, then faced Chris. “It’s too late to ride in and rescue me. I don’t need a knight in shining armor anymore.”
“Maybe I’m the one who needs to be rescued,” he whispered.
“I can’t do that.” I pulled my arm down, and he let go. “I’m sorry. I can barely save myself.”
“Tell me you don’t feel anything. Just say it.”
I licked my lips, looking at the shadow of his, remembering the kiss. I felt something. I felt as if a long tether between us had been stretched to the limit and was suddenly pulled back. I felt a tight shell around us, woven in the hum of destiny.
“Say it,” he repeated.
If I told him what I felt, what I knew to be true, my life would click into place like the last piece of a puzzle. Everyone wanted that. Everyone wanted to find their destiny and live it—except me.
I wanted to live a life I’d chosen.
I wanted to make my own mistakes.
I wanted my own suffering. My own joy.
“Say it,” he whispered again, putting his face closer to mine. The porch light flicked on, and I could see the face that was so hard to resist. “Say what you feel.”
I swallowed the truth and said what needed to be said. “I don’t feel anything.”
Chris’s reaction was subtle but unmistakable. He blinked twice, flinching slightly as if slapped. I heard the wood planks on the porch creak. Reggie had stepped forward. He’d get between Chris and me if he had an inkling that I wanted him to.
I didn’t want him to.
This, I needed to do for myself. Only I could break from my past, and staying in the front yard with the man who had left me all those years ago wasn’t helping. I needed to rip off the Band-Aid.
“I’m sorry about Lance,” I said. “I have to go.”
I brushed past Reggie to go back into the house.
Chapter 20
catherine
Sadness and I were well-acquainted. It was a thickening cloud in the soul dispelled only by deep, genuine tears. It was a drop of oil in a glass of water that could only be thinned into tiny bubbles and, if left unchecked, would coalesce again into a slick ball of contamination.
Sadness felt like me, but a little heavier, a little thicker, a swarm of gnats I could dispel with a wave of my hand, only to find them massing around me again.
After everyone went home, leaving the house spotless and the thorn bushes charred and wet, I went to the suite and sat on my bed, waiting to feel the weight on my heart.
I didn’t feel sad. Not in the same way I always had, diluting something that would concentrate again. The hopelessness was missing.
Chris had come, and I’d sent him away.
I wasn’t angry at myself or him. I wasn’t disappointed or let down.
Instead, I was confused. Seeing him had thrown me, not because it felt uplifting or high, but because I was suddenly grounded.
A knock at my bedroom door was followed by Harper’s voice.
“Cath? You in there?”
“Come in.”
She came in and landed next to me, arms around me, crying uncontrollably.
“Harper! What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s Taylor? What did he do?”
“Shut up, okay? Just shut up.”
She cried in my lap with her face buried in my thighs as I stroked her hair. I told her it would be all right, but I wasn’t sure if it would be anything close to all right. Were we both going to be stuck here? Were we just looking for men to rescue us from ourselves?
I missed him. Chris Carmichael. I’d missed him and I’d continue to miss him the same way I missed who I’d been. I was too familiar with loss.
“You know what?” I said. “I was thinking of going to Europe. London, Paris.”
“What happened to Chris?”
I sighed. “I chased him away.”
A snap of a laugh escaped her as if she had a lot to say on the matter but didn’t. “Why?” She sniffled. “Because you don’t even know the guy?”
“Oh, I know him.”
My sister didn’t respond from my lap. She just folded her bottom lip until it creased.
“The minute I saw him, I knew him. I can’t explain the connection, but my soul says he’s as much mine as my own body. It’s not sensible or practical, but in a way, it is. Gravity pulls down. Fire is hot. Chris and I are meant to be. It’s almost boring.”
She sat up. “Then why did you kick him out?”
Why had I? Because I had pride. I was a grown woman with my own heart’s desire and even if he was that heart’s desire, I was in control of my actions.
“Wrong question,” I said. “He left. He never picked up the phone. He never wrote me. The question is, why would I take him back?”
“Because you guys were meant to be?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m my own woman now.”
She shook her head so hard her hair flew around her face. She looked as if she’d eaten a lemon and been attacked by a hornet at the same time. “What? You mean you weren’t before? All this wasn’t your choice? You didn’t de-furnish the house and drain the bank account because it was your choice?”
“It was but—”
“But nothing.” She stood, freeing me to get up as well.
“Harper—”
“You.” She poked my shoulder, backing me toward the door. It kind of hurt. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m confused, all right? I’m confused!” I choked back a sob. No. No more crying. “I don’t know where I fit in. I don’t know what I want. No one needs me anymore. The factory’s coming back. You’re leaving—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not stupid. I know Taylor’s going to take you away.”
She deflated.
“What?” I said.
Her face collapsed like a window breaking. Her expression dropped and curled into an uncomfortable, red-skinned blubber. Tears came so hard they cleared her cheeks and landed on her chin.
“Harper? What?”
She tried to speak, but just made spit.
“Did he leave you?”
My confusion was replaced with purpose, and it felt good. My blood flowed with it. As if my sister could see the chemical change in me, she shook her head violently but was lost to sobs before she could get a word out. Her pain felt like a compressed version of the months I’d waited to hear from Chris.
I was angry. Very angry.
“I’m going to kill him. Nobody hurts Harper Barrington. Nobody. Do you hear? And not just me. Oh, no. You mark my words, every man in this town is going to make it their business to find Chris and—”
Her face knotted even tighter and I shook the bees out of my head.
“Taylor,” I corrected quickly. “Find Taylor. Whatever. They’re going to find him, and if I have to use every last dollar to send them to California, I swear to God—”
She grabbed me by the shoulders, still sobbing too hard to speak, and held me tight.
“I’m sorry, Catherine,” she choked out. “No one’s coming to buy the factory. It’s done. We lost.”
I stroked her hair. I didn’t ask her how she knew. Harper knew things. The end.
We lay on my bed together under the mural of roses as she cried herself to sleep.
I was still needed. I should have been both sad and worried.
Instead, knowing I was needed and nothing had to change, I felt an immediate, guilty wave of relief. I shoved it under anger, covered it with disappointment, and hid it under a mask of resolve.
But the desire to maintain the status quo was there. Always there.
Chapter 21
CATHERINE
Johnny’s blue truck pulled into the driveway. He waved and got out wearing his yellow polo shirt. Redox slid out and came right up to the porch. The bruiser of a Rottweiler poked his nose between my legs one time to make sure it was me, then flopped onto the floor.
“Did you come for the grill?” I asked as Kyle got out of the passenger side.
“Yep.” Johnny lowered the gate on the back of the bed. “Meat was pretty good last night. We nailed the timing on the evaporative cooling effect.”
“Sure did,” Kyle said.
My guess was that Johnny had worked out the equations to the half degree and Kyle had agreed to drink beer by the fire.
“You got coffee made?” Johnny asked me. “Been a long morning already and we have to bury Lance.”
The funeral. Today. I’d told him I couldn’t go and that was that.
“In the kitchen.”
“Funny thing, Carmichael showing up last night.”
Johnny stayed on the porch. Did he need an answer? Did he need me to say that I was skipping the funeral because I didn’t want to see Chris or because I had a ton of chores to do? That I’d sent Chris away because I was confused or because I was empty? Because I was protecting myself from getting hurt again or from being happy?
“Ther
e’s half and half in the fridge,” I said.
He nodded and went into the house. I fell onto the porch swing, wishing this damn day would be over so I could think. Wishing Chris would disappear so I could decide if I’d made the biggest mistake of my life or dodged a bullet.
Harper was staying, at least for a while. I still didn’t know the details of what had happened with Taylor, but he wasn’t taking her away. At least not now. But she had to go. His presence had gotten me used to the idea that she should leave. I had time to convince her to go to college. Then once she got in, school wouldn’t start until September. I could stay in Barrington a little longer.
If I wanted to.
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
Johnny and Kyle came out with their travel cups and headed for the back. My eyes fell on the four mildewed boxes Taylor had left on the porch. I’d never bothered to take them inside. The crawlspace had not been kind to them. Maybe Johnny could haul them away on his way out.
I bent over the top box and used my fingernail to bend the flaps. Something shone from inside.
I decided to go all in. Sinks and soap were invented for curious hands. I opened the box all the way. The shine was from a glass doorknob that was probably one of the few made in the factory, along with a broken glass towel rack, a blue glass soap dish. Fancy hinges. A sconce. A door baseplate and a kitchen faucet.
I could sell some of it to the antique fixture place in Springfield. Some looked worthless. All of it was interesting. I didn’t recognize any of it. It must have been Grandma’s stuff from before the eighties, when Mom redid the house. Johnny would have things to say about what was in there; what had been made in the factory and what was worthless. He and Kyle were halfway down the driveway with the grill. I could ask when he was finished loading it.
