Homecoming

by Lacey Baker

  They’d had dinner that night at the restaurant, just the two of them. She’d smiled across the table at him and he’d taken her hands in his.

  “You’re a real fine woman, Mary Janet Cantrell,” he told her, searching deep within himself for the courage to continue.

  “And you’ve turned out to be a fine man, Sylvester. I would have never guessed what type of man you really were five months ago when you appeared on my doorstep.”

  It had been raining that day and he was cold and his feet hurt. She’d let him come inside and get dry before asking him what he wanted. Anyone other than Janet might have handled that situation differently.

  “I am what I am because of you.”

  “Nonsense. You’ve always been a good man. You just needed to be reminded. I suspect the Reverend Ellersby’s sermon did all the reminding you needed.”

  “It was eye opening,” he admitted. “But there’s something that I didn’t need my eyes opened about. I just needed the courage to tell you.”

  “To tell me what?”

  He took a deep steadying breath, letting the feel of her soft hands in his calm him. “I love you, Janet. I think I fell in love with you on that rainy day when you let me come inside and sit by your fireplace to get warm. I know I’ve loved you every Sunday morning when you come knocking on my door reminding me to get ready for church. Then as we sit on that pew clapping and singing and rejoicing each Sunday I feel like I love you even more. Especially today, Janet. Especially today when I’ve done had my eyes opened about so much stuff, I just feel so full of love for you because if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be at this place in my life.”

  She’d been quiet for a few seconds, blinking and then lowering her head so he couldn’t see what she was doing. He would have thought she was praying but hoped she wasn’t choosing this moment to have her own come-to-Jesus moment. A few seconds later she looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

  “Nobody’s talked to me like that since my Jacob passed on,” she said, then had to clear her throat. “I don’t know how to respond.”

  Sylvester had rubbed the backs of her hands, giving her an assuring smile. “You don’t have to say or do anything. I’m happy just being here with you. That’s just fine with me,” he’d told her. Then Michelle had brought out her beef stew and they’d shared a meal.

  Janet didn’t tell him she loved him until more than two years later, the day she’d come from seeing Dr. Stallings. He remembered that morning like it was yesterday. He’d been sitting on the porch playing cards when he noticed that old cab pulling up in front of the house. When Janet stepped out of the backseat, Sylvester had stood. Janet walked everywhere in Sweetland, prided herself on being healthy enough to still use her feet to get her around. Why was Mr. King driving her home?

  About an hour later as they still sat on the porch where Janet had come up and taken a seat beside him, she’d said simply, “I’ve got the cancer, Sylvester. Doc Stallings said I won’t be here much longer.”

  Sylvester’s heart had ached and cracked right in half at her words. “Then we’ll take you to see somebody else,” he told her hopefully. “Didn’t you say your grandson was a doctor and he took care of people with cancer? We can call him up right now, tell him to get down here and fix you up.”

  Janet was already shaking her head. “Ain’t no fixing Quinton can do. It’s already done and once the good Lord has His final word, won’t be nothing for nobody else to say.”

  Sylvester had wanted to say more, had plenty of words stored up in his mind, but he knew from the tone of her voice Janet wouldn’t listen to any of them. Her mind was made up. Later that night she’d asked him if he would help her take care of things. “I’ll do anything you ask, Janet, honey. I love you too much not to.”

  She’d nodded and held his hands tightly. “I love you, too, Sylvester.”

  Sylvester could still hear her saying those words right here today. His shoulders shook as tears spilled from his eyes. She’d lived exactly six months from the day Doc Stallings had told her she had cancer. And then she’d died and Sylvester thought a part of him had died right along with her. He would have packed up and left had one of her last requests not been to look out for her grandchildren.

  “Mr. Sylvester.” He heard the male voice from behind him and thought to himself how this moment must be what some called fate.

  Pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket, Sylvester mopped the tears from his face before placing his hands on the headstone to help him stand. When he was upright he turned to face Quinn Cantrell. The good doctor had found out what Janet had vowed to tell no one other than Sylvester. He could see it in his eyes.

  “How long did you know my grandmother was sick? And why didn’t you tell anyone?” Quinn asked, his hands slipping in the pockets of his pants, the early-evening breeze blowing his loose-fitting shirt.

  A storm was coming, Sylvester thought as he looked at the young man. A storm that would hopefully wash away old hurts and bring joy in the morning.

  “She told me when she came back from Doc Stallings’s office. Said he told her she was dying,” Sylvester reported to him evenly. He hadn’t agreed with Janet keeping the secret from her family but had vowed not to betray her wishes.

  “Why didn’t you tell Michelle? Or call one of us? Why didn’t you call me?”

  This one of Janet’s grandchildren had looked tortured from the first moment he had stepped into that house. There was much on his mind, even more weighing down heavily on his shoulders. And it wasn’t all about his grandmother, Sylvester suspected.

  “Janet asked me not to. She was happy with the life she’d led, son. You should know that. And she was proud of all of you grandchildren.”

  “I don’t give a damn about her being happy or proud! She’s not here anymore and I could have prevented that. I could have saved her!” Quinn yelled.

  “No,” Sylvester said, shaking his head. “Only the good Lord could work that miracle.”

  “I’m a doctor. An accomplished oncologist. I heal cancer patients for a living.”

  “You use the tools God gave you to take care of those patients. If it’s in His will that they live they do, if it’s not, they don’t. Believing you are more powerful than Him is a slap in the face of all your grandmother tried to teach you.”

  “There are medications and new studies that could have helped her. I could have tried,” he said stubbornly.

  “No.” Sylvester sighed. “That’s not what she wanted.”

  “What about what I wanted?” he yelled once more, finally lifting his hands to cover his face.

  Sylvester took the couple of steps to close the gap between them. He reached out, touched Quinn’s arm.

  “Let it go, son. You’ll feel so much better when you understand that you’re not in control of everything. Don’t hold on to guilt that isn’t yours. You got to let that stuff go.”

  Quinn didn’t want to hear a word this man was saying. He’d known Quinn’s grandmother was dying and he hadn’t said a word. Every day he’d watched her die and Quinn wanted to punch him for that, yell, curse him out, scream to the top of his lungs how unfair and cruel that was. But he didn’t.

  Tears burned the backs of his eyes, his hands clenching at his sides. He didn’t do any of those things because deep down he knew Sylvester was right. His grandmother had asked this man to keep her secret and he’d loved her enough to do as she’d asked. Quinn remembered so many occasions when his grandmother had asked him to come back to Sweetland, if even just for a visit. And he hadn’t loved her enough to do either.

  “Mr. Creed said she changed her will two months prior to her death,” he said because the memory had just come over him. “She changed it after she found out, leaving us those puppies because she knew she wouldn’t be here to take care of them.”

  Sylvester scratched his head. “She loved those dogs and she loved you children. I guess she just wanted all of you to be together.”

  “She wanted u
s to have a reason to stay here in Sweetland. Is that why she didn’t pay those taxes?”

  “Janet wanted you all back here, that’s the truth. She wanted that more than she wanted to live. I don’t know much about the taxes. Just that she said she would pay only what she owed. Don’t know why she didn’t do that in the end,” Sylvester told him.

  Quinn had a suspicion why she hadn’t paid and vowed to visit the town council very soon.

  “But we can take the dogs back to where we live. We can let the house go. We don’t have to stay here,” he told Sylvester.

  He shook his head. “You can do what you wanna do. You always have. But at least now you know.”

  Yeah, now he knew. He knew that his grandmother loved them fiercely, knew that she’d given everything she had to them and when she realized she would no longer be here to give, she left them what she cherished the most. How could he not keep Dixi now? How could he not do whatever was necessary to keep the inn open and thriving? How could he go against her wishes now after she’d given him so much and asked so little?

  As Quinn left the cemetery he wondered how he would wake up the next morning. Would the pain that squeezed his entire being so tightly he thought he would crumble to pieces at any moment ever cease?

  And through all those dark thoughts there was one shining light. He went to her without hesitation, went to her and prayed she could save him.

  Chapter 21

  Nikki hadn’t heard from Quinn all afternoon and she was more than a little worried. Not so much that he hadn’t been around the inn or that he hadn’t called her personally, but because things between them had been a little off the last couple of days.

  “He’s a guy, Nik,” Cordy had told her earlier on the phone when she’d been complaining to her about it. “And besides that, it hasn’t really been that long since you two got involved. It’s way too soon to think it’ll be smooth sailing.”

  “No. I think it’s way too early for it not to be smooth sailing,” she’d replied, a bit on the hostile side. She let out a deep breath then and stared out her office window to the lovely old-fashioned gazebo draped in ivy. It was one of her favorite places in all of Sweetland.

  “Well, tell me what you think the problem is,” Cordy said in her best try-to-be-patient-with-my-little-sister-who-doesn’t-know-squat voice.

  “I think he’s backing off, like he thinks he made a mistake,” Nikki admitted, the sting of finally saying it aloud vibrating through her body.

  “Hmmm,” was Cordy’s instant reply. “Have you asked him about it?”

  “No.”

  “Then ask him,” she said simply.

  “Thanks, Cordy,” Nikki replied with a roll of her eyes.

  “I’m serious,” Cordy continued. “Communication is key in any relationship, Nikki. And so is teamwork. Both of you have to work at making a successful go of this. If you feel like he’s not doing that, then say something. Why wait until it goes south? By then it’s too late to salvage anything.”

  “That’s just my point. I don’t even know what his permanent plans are—if he’s going to stay here or if one day I’ll wake up and he’ll be on the other side of the country.”

  “No, honey, that’s just my point. Call him up, tell him to get his butt over to your place, and ask him.”

  Nikki had contemplated that idea for the better part of the afternoon. Around five o’clock, just before she was about to leave the inn for the day and she still hadn’t seen him around, she gave in. His cell phone went straight to voice mail.

  It was now almost eight o’clock and she still hadn’t heard from him. She’d left the inn with an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude knowing full well that it was just a front. The problem was she did care, way too much.

  * * *

  At nine forty-five there was a soft knock at Nikki’s door. She almost didn’t hear it, but the television had picked that moment to perform one of those national broadcasting tests that made it super-quiet in her room. The knock startled her but she figured the issues with Randall were behind her so she shouldn’t be afraid that behind the door would be cops with handcuffs designed to fit her especially.

  Her usual night attire was old gym shorts and tank tops, which at this hour of the night anyone coming to her home unannounced deserved to see her in. Her hair was a wild mess, left out to air-dry after her early-evening shower. When she finally made it to the door and pulled it open she wished she’d had the good sense to get herself together first.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice low, his shoulders almost slumped even lower. Instinctively she knew that something was wrong.

  “Hey. Come on in,” Nikki told Quinn without hesitation. “Is everything okay?”

  He rubbed his hands over his face, taking a deep breath before turning to her. “No. It’s not,” was his slow reply.

  Okay, just brace yourself. You can do this. If he doesn’t want you that’s fine, you’ve gone years without him, you can go the rest of your life. You can, she thought, trying desperately to convince herself.

  “Tell me,” she said simply because a long drawn-out performance wasn’t going to work for her.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “Come sit down.”

  And just like that he turned and walked toward the couch where he sat first, falling back to let his head rest on the edge.

  Nikki followed him, dropping her hands into her lap. He reached for her hand and she was almost hesitant to give it to him. In the end she did and felt warmth spread through her body as his fingers threaded through hers.

  “My grandmother had cancer,” he said quietly. “She found out she had lung cancer six months before she died. No treatment. No announcement. Nothing. She just came home to die.”

  Nikki couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t even blink. She’d heard the words but they seemed to be rolling around in her mind in a mix that wasn’t coherent. She wanted to ask him to repeat it, to say it all over again just so she could assure herself that what she thought he saw wasn’t right. All she ended up doing was remaining quiet.

  “Preston is devastated. I called him first since he’s the only one of us not here. He’s pretty pissed off at Michelle for not noticing something was wrong. But it wasn’t her fault.”

  The more Quinn talked, the more Nikki’s eyes watered. It was like being told of Mrs. Cantrell’s death all over again.

  “Michelle’s holding some guilt, though, even without me letting Preston talk to her. Parker just stormed out of the house. He didn’t say where he was going and I hope to God it’s not to get drunk. He’s been spending way too much time down at Charlie’s with a drink in his hand.”

  Quinn took a deep breath, gripped her fingers a little tighter. “Raine and Savannah are just as upset, as they were at the funeral. Raine says she understands why Gramma didn’t tell us. Savannah,” he added with an eerie chuckle that didn’t reflect an ounce of happiness on his face. “She’s accusing Gramma of being selfish and inconsiderate. Can you believe that?”

  Tears had been slowly slipping down her face, dropping off her chin to land on the gray shorts she wore, leaving big dark stains. When Quinn’s finger touched one, wiped it away, she sighed, breath just coming from her in a whoosh. She’d almost certainly been breathing the entire time, but her mind hadn’t registered that function. She wasn’t registering anything now but her loss.

  “Lung cancer,” he said. “Just like my dad.”

  Nikki nodded, but couldn’t look at him. If she did she would break down, she knew it. “How did you find out?”

  “I met with Dr. Stallings today. He’s got a pretty good setup over there. A little outdated but still functional.”

  “His parents used to live there. When they died they left him the house,” she said, sniffling. Talking about this was better than the other. It didn’t stop the tears, but it was better. “Ethel, his assistant, is his girlfriend. They’ve been together for years but refuse to get married.”

  “I thought the name S
tallings sounded familiar.”

  Then they were quiet again. Grief filled the room as if it were air. Nikki tried to stop crying, she really did. But it was useless.

  “I would have tried to help her,” Quinn said quietly. “But she wouldn’t have wanted that, huh.”

  “No,” Nikki replied. “She wouldn’t have. If she did she would have called you first. And that’s what you need to understand about all this.” She turned to the side so she could face him. Quinn had only stated that Michelle felt guilty but Nikki knew he did, too.

  “By the time Stallings found it, the cancer had spread to her brain. She was already dying.”

  “And so you couldn’t have saved her if you wanted to.”

  “No. But I could have come home sooner. I would have come home sooner,” he said adamantly.

  Nikki didn’t reply. Quinn was determined to have a battle with himself, to grapple with things he couldn’t control and to push away the guilt of not doing the one thing he could have. He could have come home sooner because Mrs. Cantrell had asked him to on numerous occasions. But he’d chosen not to. All of them had. She figured this would be something they’d struggle with for years to come.