by Gerri Hill
Erin pushed the images away and turned back to the office once again. “Sarah came to see me.”
“What? When?”
“I don’t know. Last week, I guess. She still had a key to the house. She was inside when I got home. Guess I forgot to change the alarm code.”
“What the hell did she want?”
“Said she still loved me. Said she missed me.”
“Oh, good Lord. Erin—”
“I finally saw it, Joyce. I finally saw it—in her eyes—that she’d been lying to me all along. It was right in front of me, her pretending. It was like before. Like when we first met. I heard the words and I didn’t look deeper. I heard the words this time, but her eyes were saying something completely different. They always had probably…I just never saw it before. I never looked for it.”
Joyce touched her arm. “She wanted to come back?”
“Yeah. I guess she thought she could simply waltz back in like nothing ever happened. I think she wanted to pick up where we left off.” She shook her head. “I felt nothing for her. Nothing. No anger, no apathy. Certainly no love. Nothing. What I did feel was a sickness inside me. Felt sick that I let her leaving affect me like it did. Like I was the first person in the world to ever have a broken heart. Damn stupid of me, Joyce.”
“Is that what it was all about? A broken heart? Or maybe you thought you needed to continue on like you were, be the person she wanted you to be, so that you could attract someone else like her. Or maybe you were holding out hope that she’d come back.”
“I don’t know anymore. It scares me to think that if this was five months ago—would I have let her back in?”
Joyce met her gaze. “Yes, I hate to say it, but I think you would have. You were in a very bad place, Erin. I don’t think there’s any question that you would have let her back in.”
She let out a breath. “I don’t know. I’d like to think that I would have been smarter than that.”
“Smart like you are now?”
Erin smiled. “Yeah. I’ve seen the light and I know it’s not her.”
Joyce raised her eyebrows. “So who is Melanie?”
Erin looked away. She didn’t know how to tell Joyce about Mel. For that matter, she didn’t think she wanted to tell her. Not yet. “Nobody, really. Someone I made friends with.” She looked at her then. “As you know, all of the ones here kinda disappeared on me.”
“You kinda disappeared on them. You should give them a call.”
“Yeah. I should.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to Joyce’s house. Years. Sarah hadn’t liked Joyce and her sister certainly hadn’t liked Sarah. Joyce had always voiced her opinion of Sarah to her, but as far as she knew, Joyce had never said anything to Sarah directly. In fact, whenever they’d gotten together—birthdays, backyard barbeques, Christmas—Joyce was always cordial to Sarah. A little cool, maybe, but pleasant. She wondered if Sarah hadn’t felt the underlying tension. Or maybe Sarah could tell that Joyce had seen through her deception, could see that Sarah was nothing but a fraud. Regardless, it had gotten to the point where Sarah had refused to attend family gatherings and Erin had gone along with it, distancing herself even further from them. Their only interaction was at the office, and even then, it was downright frosty.
After Sarah left, nothing changed. It got worse, if anything. Admittedly, it was her fault. She withdrew even more, so much so that her relationship with Joyce was hanging by a tattered thread. Joyce apparently still cared enough about her to finally intervene when she was near rock bottom. She smiled at that. Near? Oh, she had hit the rocky slopes, all right. Flat on her face, she’d landed.
She rang the doorbell. She knew now that it was Joyce who had put things in motion, not her father. He’d simply wielded the iron fist, forcing her to leave. But it was all Joyce’s doing. For that she would be eternally grateful.
Carl opened the door and the surprise was evident on his face. “Erin? Everything okay?”
She smiled at her brother-in-law. “Fine, Carl. How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks.” He stepped back, allowing her to enter. “It’s been a while.”
She nodded. “Too long. Joyce around?”
“Yes, sure. Come on back. We just finished dinner.” Joyce was in the kitchen, rinsing a dish at the sink. “Honey, your sister is here.”
Joyce spun around, her wet hands dripping water onto the floor. “Erin!” Then she frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to talk if you’ve got a few minutes.”
“Of course.” She looked at Carl. “Can you finish loading the dishwasher?”
Joyce poured them each a glass of iced tea and they went outside to the back deck, sitting down at the patio table.
“It’s still so warm, isn’t it? It’s nearly Halloween. We should at least have a hint of fall in the air by now.”
She nodded. “I miss the cooler nights, for sure. And no humidity. That was great.”
“You’re talking about New Mexico, I’m assuming. You haven’t said much about it, you know.”
She nodded. “I miss it.” She smiled at Joyce. “Considering how much I was dreading it, I loved it there. It was a farm. Where I lived. A cabin. She had chickens and goats. Two cute little twins. And a huge garden. Practically everything we ate came out of the garden.”
“She who?”
“Melanie. The way the place is set up, Stella is…the matriarch, really. It’s her land, she started it. The ladies who live there, most are on the other side of sixty. Most in their seventies, actually. And Rachel,” she said with a smile. “Rachel is eighty-two. They take turns hosting guests. That’s what they call women like me. Guests. It was Rachel’s turn. I lasted one day with her. So Stella moved me to Melanie’s.”
“Why one day?”
“I was having caffeine withdrawals big time. She served diluted decaf with cream.” She made a face. “Then there was her unseasoned beans. At every meal, including breakfast.” She laughed. “She wanted to teach me to knit.”
Joyce laughed. “Oh, I would have paid to see that.”
“Yeah…I wasn’t very nice to her.” She looked out into the backyard, seeing the water in their pool glistening from the lights. “Melanie is…thirty-seven. Stella put me with her. We got off to a rocky start.” She glanced at Joyce. “My fault. I was a total bitch.” She stood up and walked to the edge of the deck. “I miss her.”
Joyce came up beside her. “What’s going on, Erin?”
She took a deep breath. “I guess…I guess I fell in love with her.”
“What?”
It felt good to say it out loud, she noted. She turned, smiling at Joyce. “You heard me.”
“So you were…involved with her?”
“Involved? Yeah. We became friends. Good friends. And then…We became lovers.”
“With the woman you were staying with?”
“The woman I was living with,” she corrected. “It changed somewhere along the way. And somewhere along the way, I fell in love with her.”
“Is that why you sent Sarah away?”
Erin shook her head. “No. Mel and I…Well, we knew it was only temporary. We both knew I was leaving. Something she said to me, though. She said I shouldn’t have to change for someone to love me. She said if they didn’t love the real me, they weren’t worth my time.”
“That’s true, of course.”
“Sarah never loved me. It didn’t take her coming back for me to see that. Seeing her, hearing her words…That only reinforced it. I was simply her meal ticket.” She walked off the deck toward the pool and Joyce followed. “Being with Melanie, the way we interacted, the way we were together, the way we lived together…Well, it’s made me question everything about my life, not only my relationship with Sarah, but everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was never really happy with Sarah.”<
br />
“I could have told you that. It’s like you quit having fun. You quit laughing, quit smiling.”
“I know that now. I didn’t see it then.” She sat down in one of the pool chairs that surrounded a small, round table. “Being out there—away from here—opened my eyes to a lot of things. One of which is my happiness. Or lack thereof. What makes me happy? I thought the job made me happy. I was devoted to it, as you know. Being away, though, then coming back…” She shook her head. “I’m not happy, Joyce.”
“Oh, my God. What are you saying? You want to quit?”
“I’m saying I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”
“Here Houston? Here the office? What?”
“Yes. Both.” She met her gaze. “I think I want to go back.”
“Back? To New Mexico? A place you said was in the middle of nowhere? No cell service? No nothing?”
“Yes.”
Joyce sat down beside her. “And do what?”
“Live. Love.”
“Oh, Erin. Did they…did they brainwash you or something? Were they a cult? I knew it! I had a feeling—”
Erin laughed. “They’re not a cult, Joyce. They’re a group of women who wanted to escape society for various reasons. The older ones all moved out there thirty and forty years ago, when being gay wasn’t acceptable in society and they wanted to live someplace where they could be open. They created their own little community. And they welcomed me like one of their own.”
“But why would you go back? You don’t want to escape society.”
“I feel kinda lost now. Like I have no purpose.”
“You have a purpose. What are you talking about? You have a job. The company depends on you. You’re like…what drives it.”
“No. You made out just fine when I was gone.”
“Fine? Dad was frazzled. I thought he was going to have to go on blood pressure medication,” she said with a laugh. “We weren’t fine. I was worried sick about you.”
“I think you were feeling guilty. Not worried.”
“Okay, yeah. I did feel a little guilty. I mean, we forced you. It was underhanded what we did. Dad threatening to fire you and all.” She leaned closer. “You know he never would have gone through with his threat if you’d called his hand.”
“Doesn’t matter. It was the right thing to do.”
Joyce sighed. “Are you serious, Erin? I mean, about wanting to go back? Is it because of this woman or…”
“Melanie. Yes.”
“How does she feel about it? About you going back?”
Erin smiled. “I haven’t talked to her. As you know, there’s no cell service.”
“So what if she doesn’t feel the same way? I mean, you were there for only three months. That’s hardly enough time to forge a deep, lasting relationship. What if you go back and you find that…Well, that you rushed into things? Then what? And I don’t mean ‘then what’ the job. You know you’d always have a place here. I mean—‘then what’ you? After Sarah…”
She hadn’t really thought about “then what” or whether or not Melanie would want her to come back. She didn’t need to. They hadn’t talked about it. They hadn’t talked about anything regarding their future. Because there had been no future to talk about.
She could close her eyes, however, and still see Melanie out in the rain, crying. She knew then what her tears meant. Melanie’s heart was breaking right there in front of her. She’d known it that night when they’d made love, the way Mel had clung to her, the way she’d tried to hide her tears.
And the next day, when Mel had driven away—wanting to be the first to leave—she’d felt her own heart break as she watched Mel’s truck disappear from view. Watched Mel disappear from her life.
“She does feel the same way.” She smiled a little, knowing it was the truth. “I want to go back. I need to go back.”
Joyce shook her head. “Erin, no. You can’t just rush into something like that. You’ve got to—”
“It’s not rushing, Joyce. I’ve been thinking about it since the day I left.” She leaned forward, tapping the tabletop with her index finger, trying to make her understand. “I was happy there. I felt like I was a part of something. Like I belonged. It felt right being there.”
“For God’s sake, you don’t even know if she wants you back.”
“Her tears told me she didn’t want me to leave in the first place. I should have listened to my heart. Instead, I did what I was supposed to do. I packed up my things and left. Came back here.” She shook her head. “I didn’t pack everything, though. I left something behind.” She touched her chest. “I left something behind.”
Joyce smiled at her. “My God…You’re getting all sappy and romantic on me. Whatever in the world has happened to you?”
She smiled too. “I found my home. I found the person I’m supposed to be with. And it may sound corny and—and sappy, as you called it—but I think everything that happened before…it was supposed to happen that way. Everything. And it led me to her.” She spread her hands out. “Think about it. What are the chances that you’d stumble upon their little obscure website? I did a search and it was like on the third page, buried. And once you open it, it’s so ambiguous even I didn’t know what they were offering and I’d been there! Yet you found it, you called them, and you booked a stay for me.”
“Are you saying that there was some higher power guiding me?” Joyce laughed. “You don’t even believe in that sort of thing.”
“I don’t. Or I didn’t. I never believed in fate or the old ‘everything happens for a reason’ saying.” She shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“You’d really leave here? Your home, your family, your job? You’d leave all that to go back?”
“My house doesn’t feel like a home. My family is what? I see you and Dad at the office, that’s it. I think Brent and I have had all of two conversations since I’ve been back. My life here is the job, nothing more.”
“We used to do things as a family. We used to—”
“I know. It was my fault. I won’t even blame Sarah. I let her put a wedge between us. It doesn’t change things, though.”
“You’re right. We stopped getting together for birthdays, holidays. That doesn’t mean that we can’t pick it up again.”
She shook her head. “My heart’s not here anymore, Joyce. And most of the time, my mind isn’t here either.”
“So you’ve already made the decision, huh?”
She took a deep breath. She had, hadn’t she? She wanted to be back on Mel’s little farm, nestled in the foothills between the mountains and the desert, a long hour’s drive to the nearest town of any size. She looked out into the night, past the pool, past the privacy fence, past the neighbor’s house and the one beyond that. Looked up into the city sky where not a single star was visible. She wanted to go back, where she could see a million stars. As much as she’d felt like an alien in foreign territory when she’d first landed at Eagle Bluff Ranch, she knew now, in her heart, that it was home.
If she closed her eyes—like she was doing now—she could hear Melanie calling out for her, calling her to come back home. She could hear Melanie’s soul calling to her. A bit fanciful to think that, yes. To an outsider—Joyce even—that notion would be mind-boggling and totally unthinkable. It would have been to her too. Before. But now? Now she could hear someone calling to her. As crazy as that sounded, when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t crazy at all.
She opened her eyes then, finding Joyce watching her curiously. She smiled and nodded.
“Yeah. It’s where I belong. It’s where I want to be.”
Joyce stared at her. “That’s it? There’s nothing I can say to—”
“No.” She stood up quickly, thinking of all the things she needed to do. “Realtors? You know any?”
Joyce’s eyes widened as she stood too. “So you’re going to sell your house? Without even talking to her first? Erin, you’re rushing things.”
“I don�
�t think so, but even if I am, that house isn’t where I want to be.” She pointed back toward the deck and house. “Listen, I’m going to take off. Thanks for listening.” She surprised herself—and most likely Joyce—by hugging her tightly. “Thank you for everything. I hate to think of where my life would be right now if you hadn’t intervened.”
Then Joyce surprised her by kissing her cheek. “I do love you, sis. When you get settled—if you get settled—I expect an invite.”
“If?”
“You were born and raised here in the city. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around you out there,” she motioned. “On a farm, of all places.”
Erin laughed. “I know.” Her smile lingered. “It’s so peaceful, Joyce. I hope you will come visit me.”
Joyce nodded. “You’ll be at the office tomorrow? Gonna tell Dad?”
“Yeah. Gonna tell Dad.”
As she drove back to her house, she so wished she could pick up her phone and call Mel. It was going on two months. She’d be lying if some of Joyce’s warnings weren’t nagging at her. Two months? For her, it had been an eternity. What about Mel? She’d had to get back to her life, thinking they’d never see each other again. How had she managed? Was Melanie feeling as lost as she was?
Probably.
Lost and alone both. Mel knew all about being alone, didn’t she? So did she, for that matter. Even when Sarah was around, she’d spent most of her time working alone. But no more. Life was more than long hours at the office, big houses, and expensive vacations. Life wasn’t supposed to be fast. It was supposed to be slow. Slow and enjoyable. So she was going to go back. Back to Mel. Back to where things were slow and easy. Where sunshine on her face could make her smile, where the antics of twin goats could make her laugh, and where a long, drawn-out kiss could make her heart race. Back to Mel. Back to where she belonged.
