Coming Home

by Julie Sellers

  But if she were honest with herself, she would admit, in her heart, he still felt like her husband. She’d tried to walk away as casually as he had, but it hadn’t worked. Instead, she ignored it and hid behind her children. Just like Catherine accused her of. She wanted to put him and their life together, behind her, but she didn’t know how.

  The wind blew her hair in her eyes, and she ducked her head and shoved her hair behind her ear. The branches of the solemn oaks swayed and bent together as if carefully choreographed. She and Jonathan were like trees that grew too closely together. Even if separated later, they rarely are able to stand alone again. At best, each holds the shape of the other forever.

  Jonathan looked at her expectantly, and Lillie broke from her revere. “I’m sorry?”

  “Does he like baseball?” he gestured with a snapshot of Alex in full baseball regalia, each item emblazoned with the unmistakable Chicago Cubs logo.

  “He loves it.”

  “Just like his mom.”

  Lillie loved the sport and was a determined, tried and true blue fan of the lovable losers. During their marriage it was more likely Lillie, not he, who’d been found in front of the television with a beer and bowl of popcorn or spending an afternoon at Wrigley Field.

  Lillie loved anything to do with the Chicago Cubs, but Jonathan was never as enthused. He always cited bad childhood memories because his father had not been around to teach him and play catch. When he failed on the field from lack of practice, a young Jonathan was quick to blame his absent Dad.

  Jonathan studied the album a bit longer and then, with a sad shrug, said, “I always told you that you didn’t need me.”

  Lillie saw red.

  The carefully constructed composure, she’d worked so hard to maintain over the last hour, crumbled like the Acropolis atop Mount Olympus. It was all she could do not to reach out and slap his face like one of Catherine’s favorite soap opera divas. She gritted her teeth and with her hands clenched straight at their sides, she said quietly, but in a distinct voice, “It is a damn good thing.”

  She could tell her tone and language surprised Jonathan. The Lillie of yesterday never used a swear word. But that was before her husband had run off to parts unknown without a backward glance.

  “It is a good thing I didn’t need you. If I had, where would I have been?”

  Stricken, he only looked at her helplessly, unable to speak and certainly unable to console her.

  “I’d have been lost, Jonathan. And you know, I was for quite a while. But I got over it.” She clenched her fist against her chest as the tears ran down her face, unchecked.

  “I loved my husband. I loved the life we had, the house we were building and the babies we were trying for.” Her tears turned to sobs and blurred her vision as she whirled around and half ran, half walked down the path, unable to stop in the rush to expel the grief she had been holding in for years.

  “Why didn’t you love me like I loved you?” she half cried, half screamed. She stopped her furious pace and hunched over in the middle like an old woman. “Why couldn’t you have believed in me like I believed in you?” Lillie rocked back and forth on her heels as she keened.

  Jonathan stared after her, unmoving, as if he, too, were frozen with grief and trapped by memories of his own. Lillie whirled around and continued blindly down the path. Away from him and the source of her pain.

  Lillie flew towards the river, but he kept up. She could hear his footsteps keeping pace with hers, and his shadow played tag on the path in front of her. Her run slowed to a walk and finally, little more than a crawl. He stopped her by laying his hand on her arm.

  When she turned to face him, his lips were only a whisper away. He grasped her gently but firmly by the arms and leaned toward her even as she shrunk away. Her chest heaved, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Lillie wondered again if she would hyperventilate, as much from his touch as her run down the path. Their eyes locked for a moment, but she broke his gaze first and shut her eyes. She was afraid she’d swoon like one of the Victorian heroines in the romance novels she secretly devoured after the children were asleep.

  His lips touched hers, gentle as a butterfly wing against a petal. Her heart stopped, and her legs trembled. All of the feelings she’d spent the last seven years shoving away came back and swirled around her head. Her knees shook and she’d have melted to the ground, but Jonathan caught her around the waist and pressed her towards him.

  She reached for him then and wrapped her arms around his neck. He deepened the kiss, and she held on for the ride. When she could stand the swell of feeling no longer, she leaned away from him, breaking their connection. She didn’t open her eyes, but muttered softly, “You were right to leave me.” Her heart throbbed with fresh pain, and her hands fell to her sides.

  She exhaled her defeat and realized she would not find the absolution she sought by coming here today. Jonathan looked surprised, as if her remarks were the last thing he had expected.

  “You were right to leave me if you didn’t love me and didn’t want…” she raised her arm before letting it drop again at her side. Her eyes looked to the sky, searching for the words to encompass all they’d built together. All he’d walked away from. Everything living inside her still.

  She cleared her throat and began again. “I would have turned myself inside out for you. I’d have done anything. I loved you so much…too much.” Her volume escalated as she spoke, the calm vanishing into the wind. “I would have given you anything you would have asked for, and it would have been for nothing. Nothing!” she shouted as she turned and stalked back to her car.

  * * *

  Jonathan froze for a moment before he reached out toward her, but she was gone. He couldn’t do this. He shouldn’t do this. He’d known it way back then and he knew it now. It was at the root of why he’d made the decision to leave. She would have given up everything she ever wanted for him, and he couldn’t live like that. It would have eaten away at their marriage until there would have been nothing worth saving.

  He wanted her to have it all. Everything she wanted. The great guy and the half a dozen kids she dreamed about. She should have waited in expectation for their birth and nursed them in her grandmother’s rocker, watched them grow—all with a new husband at her side. The man who could give her what he couldn’t.

  And in the end, he’d been half right. She’d made a family without him, not because it had been the greater plan as he’d wanted to believe, but because he’d been a coward. He told himself he was being noble when he left her, but he had been wrong. It had been Lillie who’d paid the price for the decision he had made in fear.

  He ran his hand through his hair and suppressed an urge to growl like one of the bears he constantly had to be on the lookout for in Minnesota. He kept his head down as he followed her down the path.

  He’d wanted to help his mother without breaking Lillian’s heart all over again. He realized now, that wasn’t possible.

  Didn’t she realize he had no choice? Once again, it was up to him to fix everything and once again he failed.

  Why did he have to go and kiss her? He should know better than to open that old kettle. But she was here, in the flesh and not just his dreams and for a moment he forgot all of those reasons and just took. Tasted. But he’d had no right and he knew it.

  He barely noticed Lillie reach her car and pull out of the parking place. He caught her eye by waving the small photo album of her children at the last moment, before the car turned towards the exit of the cemetery. She stopped and waited as he jogged toward her and rolled down the window just far enough to snatch it from his hand.

  He thought she would peal out of the drive but she opened the book and stared down at their cherubic faces and said, “Jonathan, I don’t hate you, believe it or not. I’m just,” she paused, “angry…I didn’t realize how angry, until today.” Lillie shook her head as if remembering her outburst, but not apologizing for it.

  “You know, when I first brou
ght Hope home, I would go into her room at night and just stare at her. I would pick her up and carry her back to the rocker for hours. While I was rocking I would think that if just one thing would have been different—one day, one action, one mistake—if anything, either good or bad, happy or sad had been changed in my entire life, I would not have this exact child.”

  Gesturing with the photo, she looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. “If things had been different between you and I…well…then…” Lillie’s voice trailed off for a moment and the silence hung between them like the storm clouds gathering above their heads, but neither of them looked away.

  “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I never meant—“

  Lillie cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t, Jonathan.” Lillie took a deep breath and then exhaled. She squared her shoulders and gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, just like he’d taught the kids when he’d moonlighted as a summer driver’s education teacher so long ago.

  Finally, she continued. "I thought for years, until this moment, actually, that if I ever had the chance to find out what happened—what I’d done to make you go like that—then could I move on with my life. But, I guess life moved on and drug me along with it because now…” Lillie shrugged as if her load eased by a brick or two. “I don’t need to know anymore.”

  “Lillie—’’

  “Really. It’s okay. Tell Donna not to worry. Molly will be in good hands, and she just needs to concentrate on getting well.”

  “Thank you,” he blinked rapidly as her words sank in. He couldn’t believe she’d agreed to do this for him. Well, not for him probably, more likely, in spite of him. He should have known Lillie would never hold their past against Donna.

  “I’ll phone her tonight to work out the details.” She pressed a button, and her window began to roll up. Jonathan didn’t know how long he actually stood there, but it was long enough for Lillie to pause the window and ask again, “Okay?”

  “Lillie, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing, Jonathan. There’s nothing to say anymore.” With the slightest hint of a woebegone smile, she slowly coasted down the gravel road. This time, she’d been the one to leave him behind.

  It began to rain as he bent to tie the lace of the expensive hiking boot he’d never been able to afford when he’d lived in LaSalle.

  As he walked, head down, back towards town, he wasn’t even surprised when it started to rain. It should rain today, he thought. He finally understood what he’d done to Lillie so long ago. He believed he was being selfless, but he had really been scared. He’d taken the easy way out.

  He couldn’t change the past, but he could run from it. Again. The clear waters and rugged terrain of Northern Minnesota beckoned him to return to a place where he wasn’t haunted by photos of smiling children and no one knew Lillian Harper’s name.

  Chapter Four

  The phone rang once, twice and three times as she juggled three bags of groceries and the car door. “Hello,” she answered as she finally managed to bring the phone to her ear before it transferred the call to voice mail.

  “May I speak to Lillian Oleson please?”

  “This is Lillian Harper.”

  There was a clatter on the other end of the phone and a moment of silence followed by the sound of a couple of the keys being pressed.

  “Oh…Lillie, I’m sorry.”

  “Jonathan?”

  “I’m sorry. I dropped the phone and I—oh, damn it—that’s a four way stop?”

  “Do you want to call back later?” Lillie asked, her voice even and calm, hoping to regain a little of her self-respect.

  “No, no. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get through down town in one piece. I can’t believe how much more traffic there is than there used to be.”

  “LaSalle is growing—rapidly. It’s good for my business, but our sleepy little town sure is changing. There are over three hundred kids in Hope’s grade. I worry about her attending such a big school.”

  “Parent involvement is what's important. It goes without saying that she has that. She will be fine.”

  Lillie rolled her eyes while she bit her tongue. Idle chitchat and sharing parenting tips with her ex-husband. What a difference a day makes. But Lillie was determined to handle the uncomfortable situation they found themselves in as an adult.

  “I was calling to let you know our travel plans. I wanted to leave tomorrow, but we can’t get a flight.”

  “Wait—you’re flying?”

  “Yes, it’s easier on Mom.”

  “But you hate to fly.”

  “I had to negotiate.”

  “Negotiate?”

  “Driving would add a day on each end to the trip, and Mom is adamant. She won’t be away from Molly for more than five days.”

  “So to make the most of the time you are going to fly into Rochester. When are you leaving?”

  “I am hoping we will fly out of South Bend on Sunday afternoon, change planes in Chicago and then on to Rochester that evening. Cynthia is filming a bit part in Chicago this weekend, and she’d like to say hi to mom before we go.” Cynthia was Donna’s daughter and Molly’s mother. They had a complex relationship. Lillie could never quite understand how Cynthia could leave her child in the care of her mother full time.

  “I already knew when you were leaving, although I didn’t ask about how you were getting there. I called your mother and told her I would check on Molly every morning on my way to work and the children and I will come by after dinner and make sure she is well tucked in for the night.

  “I don’t know what to say, Lil. I know you’re the reason she succumbed to my plan so easily.”

  “No resistance?” Lillie laughed.

  “Token, at best.” Then Jon’s voice turned serious. “Truly Lillie. Thank you. It means a lot to Mom that you’re here for her and Molly.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Lillie cut in. “I just want Donna to concentrate on getting well.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if they can’t help her…” His voice broke.

  “Don’t think that way. I know it would be difficult…if…what I mean is, Molly is really special…”

  “You’re right. Mom is going to be fine. She can’t afford to think negatively and neither can we,” he said, almost sharply.

  “I know, Jon. I just meant you may have some difficult choices to make at some point,” Lillie said carefully.

  “I understand what you meant. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m so grateful to you for convincing her it was okay to go.”

  “No apology necessary,” Lillie managed magnanimously, although truth be told, she was a bit irritated by his snappish tone. “I know you are under a lot of pressure.”

  “I owe you, Lil—allies are few and far between these days.”

  Lillie considered his words; she hadn’t considered what it must be like for him to return. He had been LaSalle’s golden boy. He’d deserted more than Lillie when he left so abruptly.

  Without Jonathan, the music program had lost much of its shine and pizzazz. Last year the marching band failed to even clear the district competition to participate in the state championships. Jon had taken them to the finals every year, garnered the support of the community and the trust of the students. His sudden departure had left a lot of hard feelings around the town.

  “I’d like to come over to the house on Sunday to see Donna off, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course,” Jon said. “We need to pull out around one o’clock. Will you bring the children?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I guess I’ll need to. Or maybe Cat and Rand can take them after church.”

  “No, bring them. Mom’s said how much she’s missed them this week, and I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

  “Oh. Well, okay. I guess…”

  “Lil—thank you. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “It’s only a week, Jon. Everything will be all right.”


  “Not just this week—’’ Static on the line covered his words.

  “What? I think I lost you, Jon.” The connection severed.

  * * *

  “Nope,” Jon said to himself as he pulled into the parking lot of the high school. “And maybe you never will.” The words rang in the empty car and surprised him. Both because he’d said them aloud and because he realized, they were true. He was no more over Lillie than his mother was over the cancer invading her body. It was just easier to push her from his mind in Minnesota.

  He attached his mobile phone to the hook on his belt loop and got out of the car. He took a deep breath and walked slowly towards the open gate of the football stadium. On his way, he passed the practice field. The grass had gone to seed and the irregular tufts swayed in the light breeze.

  Jonathan walked down the track and up the ramp of the main grandstand. When he reached the fifty-yard line, he started up. He climbed mid-way and then stopped and looked behind him as if judging the distance he’d traveled. He turned around and went up two more rows before walking to the left a few feet and sitting down.

  He had spent thousands of hours in this stadium putting the band through their paces, entertaining the folks at half time or waiting through district competitions. They were all good memories, but the best by far, was the night he’d proposed to Lillie.

  From the press box, he’d seen Lillie take the turn into the high school parking lot, practically on two wheels. She was late, and he’d been worried she’d miss the weekly run through performance.

  The band marched on the field, and the four drum majors took their positions. The theme of the show that year was nineteen sixties rock. The first song was a Stevie Wonder classic, “Sunny,” and the band began their first maneuver with the opening bars. The words scrolled under the scoreboard, turning the stadium into a gigantic karaoke party. Soon everyone was singing along, but instead of singing the normal lyrics, they replaced the name “Sonny” with “Lillie.”