All in One Place

by Carolyne Aarsen

  I was nursing the remnants of my third beer, wishing I'd quit before I'd started, wishing I had the nerve to get up and walk through the smoke-filled room, out the door, and down to my sister's place.

  But the longer I sat, the less inclined I felt to drop back into my sister's life. What if Eric had followed me? What if I brought disaster down on my sister and her family just by showing up?

  Maybe it would be better if I faded out of Leslie's life. Let my little sister forget she ever had a loser sister like me.

  I glanced behind me. Amelia was leaving, lugging Madison and her car seat with her. Initially she was going to leave the baby in the car, but I convinced her that taking the baby into the bar was a smarter option.

  The jukebox started playing “Bed of Roses.” distracting me from Amelia's departure, the music teasing out pictures from the past. Leslie and I taped that song from the radio years ago, playing it until the tape wore out, staring soulfully into the eyes of Jon Bon Jovi as we sang along. I felt the subtle undertow of memories pulling me back. I needed Leslie right now. Needed her badly.

  “You seem sad,” Ralph was saying. “A drink could chase your blues away.”

  Or turn me a beguiling shade of green. “No. Thank you.” Ralph was quickly losing what little charm he might have had two beers ago.

  “Then how about a ride home?”

  Home. There was a word guaranteed to make me feel maudlin. All I had with Eric was a fancy condo, a platinum credit card, and too much fear. No home there.

  “Just leave me alone,” I said.

  “C'mon. I bought you two beers…”

  “And here I thought you were a generous, selfless type.” I pushed away the half-full glass of beer that I should have known would have strings attached. I didn't like the smirk on the bartender's face as he took the glass away, nor did I appreciate the wink he gave Ralph.

  Ralph slipped his arm around my shoulder. “C'mon. We could have some fun.”

  Maybe Ralph understood body language better than English, so I pushed at him. “Leave me alone.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he quickly put his arm back, only this time he squeezed just a little harder. I pushed back. A little harder.

  When he tried to kiss me, I elbowed him.

  His eyes narrowed and fear slithered through me. “Why, you—” His open hand swung toward me. I ducked, pushed, but as I tried to get away, he caught my arm.

  The same arm Eric had grabbed too hard when I told him I wasn't going to stay with him anymore.

  And my anger blossomed.

  I reached behind me, connected with the solid neck of a beer bottle. When I lifted the beer bottle, it was as if I were watching someone else—simply a spectator trying to warn this wayward hand that if it completed the arc, it would be in deep trouble.

  Then the bottle connected with Ralph's head, right over his eye, and I felt one with my arm again. The bottle splintered. Ralph roared and punched my shoulder. Blood poured out of his head as he rained down curses on me and my mother.

  I yelled back, still holding the remnant of the bottle.

  Ralph grabbed for my arm. I swung and hit him again. Arms grabbed at me from behind. I kicked and stomped, using my heels against shins just like my self-defense instructor taught me.

  In spite of my flailing and spinning, I suddenly found my arms pinned behind my back. Ralph held his forehead, blood pouring into his eye, screaming that he was going to press charges.

  And when I saw the flashing lights driving up outside, I had this sinking feeling that I hadn't outrun my troubles at all.

  Without his sunglasses, Jack DeWindt looked to be on the young side of thirty, until you saw the fan of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the faint lines around his mouth. His hazel eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes, were deep-set, drooping a bit, which gave him a deceptively gentle look. The last time I saw him, he was smiling, but now his mouth had a hard, narrow look of authority.

  “You're free to go,” he said as the door to my cell slid open. “Your sister came up with the rest of the bail money.”

  When I was told that using a bail bondsman meant I forfeited my deposit, I went with posting bail myself. Trouble was, I didn't have enough money. Consequently, my first connection with my dear sister was a call from the sheriff's office asking her to literally bail me out.

  “And then what?” I asked, stifling a new rush of nerves at the thought of facing my sister. Asking her to get me out of jail after many months and fewer e-mails was more humiliating than having Ralph hit on me and charge me with assault.

  I'd tried to claim self-defense, but I was the visiting “lush,” and Ralph was the homegrown good ol' boy with friends in low places only too willing to testify on his behalf. So Ralph pressed charges, and though I tried to countercharge, I ended up being fingerprinted, photographed, booked, and now bailed.

  “We'll notify you when your court date is set.” Jack followed me down the hall.

  “Do you have any idea when that will be?” I pushed down a wave of panic. The longer I stayed in one place, the better the odds of Eric finding me.

  “Depends on the judge and how booked up she is.”

  She.

  I wondered if Ms. Judge had ever been hit on by a redneck loser. Of course, Ms. Judge probably knew better than to accept drinks from strangers—one of the first few rules my mother tried to impart to Leslie and me.

  A final set of doors swung open into freedom… and there was Leslie.

  She stood behind the plate-glass window separating the receptionist from the public. All I could see of her was a denim jacket, a T-shirt, and her bent head as she signed a paper. Her hair was shorter than I remembered, and streaked. A sudden yearning pulled at me with almost tangible force. My sister.

  In spite of my roadside grooming, I knew my hair was a dried-out snarl and my eyes were probably red. My fingers were still black from the fingerprinting ink that simply wouldn't wash off. Add a request for bail money, and I was off to a running start with my dear sister.

  I ran my hands down the legs of my pants. Then again…

  Jack frowned at me. “You okay?”

  “I'll be fine.”

  He lifted one eyebrow as if he didn't believe me, but I didn't have time to be concerned about him anymore.

  Leslie looked up as I came closer.

  “Hey, Leslie,” I said, projecting breezy and carefree. “Good to see you.”

  “Terra.” The word piggybacked a sigh, mom-style.

  I'd have to search a long time before I found a sentiment in the card section of the local drugstore to thank her for posting bail. So I decided to keep it simple and real. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I'm guessing the bar was a detour on your way to see me?” The hurt in her voice twisted through the casual facade I struggled to maintain.

  “Of course it was,” I said. “Nicholas was just a fuzzy baby bundle the last time I saw him.”

  “He's walking now.”

  “I'm sorry, Leslie.” What I lacked in originality, I tried to make up for in conviction. “I'm really sorry.”

  Leslie's smile wobbled. I wanted to grab her and hold on. But I couldn't in this public place and definitely not with Cop Jack watching us.

  So I reached over and made do with a quick squeeze of her shoulder. Somewhere in the transition between adolescence and adulthood, she had not only gotten taller—she had also kept her feet planted firmly on the ground.

  Leslie turned to Jack. “Can she leave now?”

  Jack nodded, standing arrow-straight, hands on hips. “We'll notify you when the court date is set. In the meantime, as a condition of bail, she has to stick around.”

  How long would it take Eric to track me down? Could he? Had I ever mentioned where Leslie lived? I'd been careful. I had never used his computer to send e-mails to Leslie, had never used the home phone to call…

  “Will you be coming to the farm to work with your horse?” Leslie asked Jack. I did a double take at th
e question. Did everyone know everyone else in this town?

  “Next time I have some time off.”

  “We'll see you then.”

  “Looking forward to it.” Jack glanced at me and smiled. His eyes crinkled up, and the tough exterior I'd had the privilege of looking at for the past half hour melted away like frost in the morning sun. He actually looked human.

  He actually looked pretty good.

  And down that path lies trouble and more trouble.

  “So that means we can go?” I asked Leslie. “Like right now?”

  Leslie nodded.

  “Good.” I turned to Jack, staring somewhere over his left shoulder. “I'd like my backpack, please.”

  “Claim it at the front desk.”

  Leslie was about to follow me, but Jack beckoned her over with a lift of his finger. “I need to talk to you a minute, Leslie.”

  She glanced at me as if she wasn't sure she should leave me unsupervised.

  “I'll just wait outside then,” I said, annoyed at how easily he'd dragged my sister's attention away from me.

  The woman at the front desk handed me my backpack with the contents neatly packaged in what I guessed was an evidence bag. Nice souvenir, I thought as I dumped the whole bag into my backpack, which I heaved over my shoulder.

  The door of the cop shop drifted shut behind me with a pneumatic wheeze. A fly buzzed lazily past my head. A couple of cars sighed past. Across the street an elderly couple shuffled out of the diner, and I heard the thin, reedy voice of the woman complaining about the slow service.

  Leslie was still occupied. She and Jack had stepped outside and were frowning, intent on their conversation.

  Finally, Leslie nodded a couple of times as if agreeing with what Jack said, and then, thank goodness, we were finally alone.

  “You look good,” I said quietly, reminding myself that I needed to go slow, make gentle overtures.

  The last time I saw her, her face was pale and drawn in spite of the makeup she'd troweled on. Now her short hair framed a naturally tanned face. No makeup. Plump cheeks.

  I caught a hint of vulnerability on her face. Her eyes held a brightness that could have been good health or the beginning of tears.

  “Terra, why did you… Why didn't you…” As her hurt-edged words tumbled between us, I caught a note of haunted pain.

  We made tentative steps, and then our arms were wound around each other, shutting out the street, the curious passersby, and the rest of the world.

  She smelled like fresh air and clean clothes and home. And for the first time since I left the hospital, the knot inside me loosened. Just a bit.

  “I missed you,” she whispered, squeezing me hard. Then I heard a telltale sniff in my ear. “I missed you so much.”

  An answering sob trembled deep within me, and for a moment, I wanted to release it. To let her hold me up. But I didn't have a right to her support.

  “Hey, what's with the tears?” I drew away with a light laugh, trying to shift the emotional atmosphere back to ordinary. Back to the Terra she knew and had put up with over the years.

  Leslie gave me a shaky smile and swiped at a lone tear tracking down her cheeks. “Just being sentimental, that's all.”

  “Can we go?” I said.

  “My car is parked around the corner,” Leslie said as she dug through her oversized purse.

  As we rounded the corner, I spied a familiar little Honda. “You're still driving that old grocery-getter?”

  “Don't laugh. It's paid for,” Leslie said, sniffing again. “I notice you didn't exactly sail into town in a Jag.”

  “Actually, it was a Malibu.”

  Leslie frowned and I held up my thumb.

  This netted me another sigh. “I thought you had a car.”

  “Emphasis on had. I sold the car when I moved to Seattle.”

  Leslie walked over to the car and I waited for her to unlock my door.

  “It's not locked,” her muffled voice called out. “Harland is not a high crime area. Especially this close to the sheriff's office.”

  I caught a hint of anger on the last two words. “I'm sorry you had to pick me up here and about that whole bar thing. Some guy was hitting on me. It wasn't my fault.”

  Leslie fiddled with the ring of keys in her hand. “Is it ever?”

  I read disbelief mixed with shame in her expression.

  “Were you busy when the sheriff called?”

  “I was entertaining Wilma's cousins from Holland. They wanted to stay on the farm. Neither Judy nor Wilma has the room, and Gloria's dealing with her own crisis, so I have them for a few days.”

  “To sleep?”

  “Not many hotels where we live.” She clamped her lips down, and I guessed “picking sister up from jail” wasn't going to make a great impression on the relatives.

  Apologizing again wouldn't change much, so I ventured into other territory. “How are the kids?”

  Leslie shot me a flare of irritation at the abrupt change in topic. Then she sighed and came along. “Anneke is getting even wiser beyond her years. And she's formed an attachment to a red polka-dotted skirt that used to belong to Gloria. Nicholas is growing like crazy. He can say cow, kitty, Sasha, and mama.” As Leslie spoke, her expression softened, and I could see that she had changed more than just her hairstyle. I knew she loved her kids, but I had never heard her voice go low and gentle when she talked about them. “Wilma says he's just like Dan was when he was younger.”

  “And how are things going with you and Wilma VandeKeere?” Wilma, Leslie's mother-in-law, hadn't approved of Leslie, who didn't go to church like the VandeKeeres did and who had pulled her beloved son Dan out of Wilma's sphere of controlling influence. Wilma didn't approve of me either, so Leslie and I had that in common.

  She twisted the key in the ignition. “I can't imagine what she's going to think about my family now.”

  Each syllable of her last words hit me like a little slap, hurting worse than what Ralph had dished out earlier.

  Leslie rested her hands on the steering wheel and pulled in a couple of quick breaths. I hoped her attempt at relaxation proved effective. I clung to self-control with a wavering fist and needed a sister who had it together.

  “What were you thinking going into a bar this time of day? It's not even noon!” The words spilled out in a rush of anger.

  “I wanted to pay Amelia back. For giving me a ride.”

  “Did she have her baby with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was at the bar, and here we had an appointment set up for her baby…” With a light shake of her head, she flipped further questions away.

  Though I was curious about her comment concerning Amelia, I wanted to explain my side of my unfair entanglement with the long arm of the law, but I sensed Leslie was still trying to get her head around the fact that her sister was now a registered felon who had decked a man with a beer bottle. Not the kind of thing you put in the annual Christmas letter. I figured I'd better keep a low profile and wait for the sisterly connection to reappear. Though I didn't come often, up until the past nine months, I'd e-mailed frequently, phoned periodically. We were sisters. I loved her. She loved me. We just needed some time together. And from the way Lieutenant Jack was talking, I was going to be here longer than I had anticipated.

  It will be fine. Relax. Don't worry.

  I slouched down in my seat, maintaining a low profile.

  Leslie said nothing more as she drove through town. The little frown wrinkling her forehead told me we weren't going to get to the laughing and squealing part of our reunion for a few miles yet. I wondered if we'd hit the sharing stories part at all.

  So I kept quiet as we went through the third stoplight in town, headed south up over a range of hills, and then broke out into another large valley sheltered by yet more mountains reaching up into an endless sky.

  A deep sigh drifted out of Leslie, and I finally saw a smile on her face.

  “Isn't this beautiful?”
she said, an unfamiliar reverence in her voice.

  The view from the hill above Harland was impressive, but this surpassed it by the country miles spread out in front of us. The folded rock of the mountains capped by snow was awe-inspiring, and just behind that I could see the vague outline of even higher mountains standing guard.

  The peaks of Yellowstone Park, I guessed, letting the view wash over me.

  “You don't see it, do you?” she asked, misinterpreting my silence.

  “I see… lots of country…” Eloquence was not my first language, and the sentence fell as flat as the prairies I had seen in some of my travels. Words were the wrong medium to describe the feeling the sheer scope of the space encompassed by mountains created in me. I became smaller and more insignificant the longer I looked.

  Leslie smiled at my feeble response. “When we first moved here, I felt lost. Disoriented. But now, it's home.”

  The wistful tone on the word home hearkened back to another time in our lives. Two girls sitting huddled on a bed under a blanket, making plans for their future while their mother slept in front of the television.

  We had each drawn up house plans, envisioned our neighborhoods, and decided how many children we were going to have. Our houses were supposed to be situated in cozy, well-treed suburbs of a nameless city. But, more important, on the same street so we could pop into each other's homes, borrow sugar, and exchange recipes.

  Now Leslie lived in the wilds of Montana, and I… well, I just lived wild.

  It seemed that my dreams had been discarded somewhere along the way, while Leslie's had morphed into the life of a farm wife.

  “I understood from your e-mails that you had a hard time adjusting,” I said. “I'm just surprised Harland's become your Mayberry.”

  “It took me some time to get used to living here,” Leslie agreed as her car began the long descent into the valley. “I resented being so far from town, and I resented Dan's family and all the connections he had to this community.” She laughed lightly. “With God's help and prayer, I know I've changed.”

  Unease squirmed through me at her casual mention of God. “So what's with you and this church thing? I didn't think you'd go all kumbayah on me.”