My Heart for Yours

by Jolene Perry

  My Heart for Yours

  By

  Stephanie Campbell

  &

  Jolene Perry

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  Published by

  Stephanie Campbell & Jolene Perry

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Dedication

  To the doctors and nurses of the CICU at Children’s Hospital, New Orleans,

  who fix hearts far more broken than Tobin & Delia’s every single day.

  -Steph

  To my best friend from middle school – I wish this had been your happy ending.

  -Jo

  I should have started writing a long time ago. But everything got mixed up. Confused.

  I think I heard this somewhere so it feels like a safe thing to write for my first real page.

  I’m still not sure if I’ll have the guts to continue, but maybe I want to, and maybe that’s all that counts.

  The sea between opposite shores

  Does not know

  The sides are opposite

  Only that the sides are sides.

  The shores know

  The sea separates them

  When really,

  It’s the body that binds them.

  One

  Tobin

  “Tobin, how are you feeling son?” I flinch as Pastor Mike claps me on the back.

  I force a small smile and a nod. I can’t manage much else.

  Numb.

  Well, numb alternating with feeling like my insides are being shredded. But who wants to hear that? No one. Not even Pastor Mike. People don’t want the truth when they ask how you’re doing after you lost your brother.

  Shit.

  How do you lose your brother? You lose your grandfather, your distant uncle, your dog for Christ’s sake. Not your brother. Especially brothers like mine.

  I want to hate him for what he did. Leaving us. It’s not right. He’s gone and I’m stuck here in this fucking funeral home, staring at his casket. There’s no way out. Not for me, and certainly not for him. The casket is closed. Bolted shut for eternity. No one forced him to be a Jackass wannabe, though.

  I try to avoid eye contact as I make my way through the foyer. Most of these people are strangers, but I know that they know who I am. When I pass the casket display room, I fight the small twitch of an inappropriate smile. Eamon once hooked up with a girl in there. Classy, right? That was Eamon, though. He could score anywhere and anytime. He was wild, for sure. He’d stay at Carl’s playing pool all night and somehow, make it in to work every morning at the oil refinery by five AM, without fail. Never late. Never sick. Work hard and play hard was his motto.

  We had some crazy times, he and I, but it wasn’t all like that. He taught me how to fish when I was a kid at Coulee de Salle. It would later become our meeting place when shit hit the fan when we got older. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to go back there. He taught me about women. Well, he’d like to think he did at least. I figured out a few things on my own. He taught me to fight, to defend myself, to stand up for what I believe in, and protect the people that I love. I thanked him for that lesson after that weekend in New Orleans when some guy put his hands on Delia and I had to tear him apart.

  He slipped me my first beer and always covered for me when I’d had one too many, or when I’d snuck out to meet up with Delia at the boat launch. Shit, I’d gotten to a point where I’d managed to stop thinking about her everyday. I wish she’d stop invading my thoughts right now. I can’t handle that on top of everything else.

  Eamon had a completely different side to him too. He showed up for church every Sunday morning, ate supper with us every night and would protect my Mama to the death. It’s just that he had that other motto. “I’m not getting old!” he’d say and I’d always laugh it off. He was my older brother. Untouchable. I never imagined he actually meant it.

  I swear I passed a small kitchen or something earlier. I’m not hungry, but hopefully I’ll find some peace and quiet. It takes an immeasurable amount of effort to make it down the dark hallway. I run my fingers along the thick, fabric wallpaper to steady myself. Putting one foot in front of another feels like learning to walk all over again. My body’s still working. Heart’s still beating. Lungs still moving. But not because I want them to. They do those things on their own, without me even asking. So why didn’t they do it for Eamon? How could his body just give up on him like that? Fall apart. It made him seem so fragile, and I don’t want to remember him that way. He was the strongest guy I knew. How could he break so easily? It seems like our bodies would be built better. It just doesn’t fucking seem real.

  I push through the double swinging doors into the kitchenette and immediately regret it. Huddled in the corner, Dad and Mom glance up at me but don’t say anything. I contemplate backing out of the room. I guess that’d make me look like a total asshole, though.

  My mom’s in a wheelchair, not because she’s injured, but she’s been hooked up to a constant sedative drip since it happened. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the doctors take her off of that thing. Will the grief hit her all at once? Flood over her like she’s drowning? Or will she feel numb like I do now? Is she just prolonging the misery of feeling like the rest of us do?

  “Hey, Pops, Mom,” I say. I kiss her on top of the head before taking a seat at the retro looking laminate table.

  “Tell me again, Tobin,” Mom says.

  I inhale deeply and hold it. Every time I do this lately, I feel like I need to see how long I can hold it. See if I can understand how Eamon must have felt. But I know nothing would make me understand that kind of agony. The fear. Did he know he was taking his last breath when he gasped that last time?

  “Tell me, Tobin,” Mom repeats. I know what she’s asking, and it’s exactly why I don’t want to answer. She wants me to repeat the story of how I found Eamon. I’ve been forced to relieve this shit for a week now. I don’t know why she wants to hear it again. Maybe because she has the luxury of drugs to keep her from feeling, but it’s not fair to me.

  “Tobin,” Dad says. I glance up and he nods at me, encouraging me on. I can’t believe this. He was my brother! I want to scream.

  I finally let the breath out and feel the relief course through me. Eamon never felt that relief. Maybe I deserve to have to retell this story. At least I get to be alive, right?

  “I don’t know how it happened, Ma. I only know how I found him. He was out there with Traive and Leslie.” I don’t tell her that what they were really doing. How stupid he had been. “They said he had his back turned. He must’ve not heard it somehow. When I got there, the medics were already working on him, Ma. They did everything they could. I’m sorry.” This is a lie. There was nothing left to work on. There’s a reason for the closed casket.

  Mom doesn’t respond. She never does. I don’t know which is sadder. Mom’s emotionless glare or Dad’s constant reassurance—like he’s doing it for her sake, not to keep himself together. I don’t think I’ve seen either one of them cry yet. I wonder when that will come.

  “I need to get some air,” I say. No one acknowledges me.

  I make my way toward the entrance, weaving through a thick sea of black clothing. It’s even more crowded in here than just a few minutes ago. I know for a fact no
t all of these people knew Eamon. But small towns like Crawford, Louisiana are like that. Even if you didn’t know someone personally, you knew someone who did. You served their coffee on Saturday mornings, or they take the offering at Church on Sundays. When your hometown’s main claim to fame is being the “Rice Capital of the World,” everyone knows everyone. So that’s who is here—everyone.

  A thin, polished woman walks in. She sticks out immediately in her expensive looking navy dress, shiny bag and shoes that probably cost more than I make in a month. My breath leaves me when I see that her arm is draped around a younger version of herself. That hair, it’s pulled back way too tight now, but I’d run my hands through it a thousand times before. That face, now in a layer of makeup that makes her look older than I remember, I’d held it in my calloused hands and kissed those lips goodbye over a year ago. She said she’d never see me again and I’d learned to accept that. She destroyed me, and I’d moved on.

  No. Not her. She’s not from here anymore. I don’t know who that person is anymore.

  Two

  Delia

  His light blue eyes hit me just like they always have. They go through me, strip me bare, and form a knot in my stomach that’s impossible to ignore. How can just being in the room with someone do this to me? He’s just a guy. But as I take in his face, a year older, strained with sadness, he’s so much more. I was right to be terrified on the long drive.

  What can I possibly do here? It’s like seeing his grief over Eamon makes mine pathetic. No one will feel the loss of his brother more than him. Not his parents, not his brother’s friends. Not me. No one. Me being here will probably just make things worse, not better. Or maybe that’s just my arrogance in thinking I might still have the same kind of effect on him that he has on me.

  His hair is the same blond mess that I remember, and his suit cuts perfectly over strong shoulders. I wonder if he tied his own tie tonight. It used to be me that helped him; tried different knots until the frustration wore on his face. Always with a hint of tease, though. Because that was Tobin. I wonder if it still is.

  “You okay?” Mom’s arm wraps over my shoulder making me jump. She’s had her two bloody mary’s this morning, a couple of glasses of wine with lunch, so that should last her a while. At least long enough to get her home for her nightcap. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much she needs just to function.

  “Delia?” she asks again.

  “I…” have no words. Now that my eye contact with Tobin is broken, I feel stupid for the thoughts that took me over. Tobin’s just a guy—like a ton of guys. Even as I run those words through my head, trying to convince myself, I know it’s a lie. Tobin will never be just a guy. Not to me. And he shouldn’t be just a guy to anyone who meets him or to anyone else that’s lucky enough to love him.

  My heart’s cracking apart all over again because of the way I’ve missed him. I brush a loose strand of chocolate brown hair off my face, trying to blend it into the rest of my up-do. Forcing my head to not turn back his direction is nearly impossible, but I manage. Being hit with him again might ruin my ability to keep my composure here. Instead my gaze ends up on the casket, reminding me of why I’m here.

  Eamon was the wildest, coolest, funnest, most full of life guy I knew. Tobin followed his older brother everywhere, but Tobin’s wild stunts didn’t hold up the recklessness of his brother. Eamon was truly an adrenaline junkie. We always teased him he’d die young—but I don’t think any one of us believed that anything was strong enough to actually kill Eamon.

  “Delia?”

  Mom’s hand drops off me as I spin around to see Kelly, a friend from school. How did I let myself lose contact with these people? We’d been close. Really close. But I can’t even remember the last time I talked to her.

  Our arms are around each other, and I hold onto her like my life depends on it. Mom doesn’t know how to hold people like this. She knows how to smile, and pat. Not hold. Loss sweeps through me. Loss of friends, loss of Eamon, and loss of Tobin.

  “I know. It’s awful, isn’t it?” Her arms squeeze even tighter.

  “I’m still in shock.” And the shock of being home, and the shock that Eamon’s gone, and Tobin’s here—it all floats around inside me.

  She steps back and pulls me away to sit against the wall. The flowers have laid a heavy perfume in the air, but everything else in here is weighted with grief.

  “How have you been?” She raises an eyebrow, runs a hair through her thick blond, and takes in my outfit. For the first time in a long time, I feel totally self-conscious about what I’m wearing. It wasn’t overdone before we got here. But now that I’m back in town, I realize that a Gucci dress and heels is probably a little much for Crawford. Standards in Washington D.C. are a bit different than they are here. It’s amazing how fast I got used to it. Just over a year. It might as well have been a lifetime for how strange it feels to be here. To be home.

  “I…” How have I been? How do I answer? Just driving back into this small town snagged something in me that I thought I’d left behind. That I thought I wanted to leave behind.

  We drove past Fishers Lake earlier and all I could think of was how much I used to love to swim in that lake. How many times did I jump in, fully clothed, not caring that I’d be soaked until I got home. I can’t remember the last time I swam in a lake, or waded in a stream. Not since I left him. Or…here. I meant here. Not since I left here.

  “You still with me?” Kelly chuckles.

  “Barely.” I lean back. Or maybe part of me never left.

  “I hear ya there.”

  We sit next to one another, shoulders touching, in silence. People are slowly filing in. The air is still thick, heavy, and hard to breathe.

  “Your shoes are outrageous,” she whispers.

  I glance down at my simple black platform heels. “Thanks.” And I tried to dress down for this. My eyes float to Kelly’s worn black ballet flats. How did a simple move change so much?

  “He’s so hot, isn’t he?” Kelly gestures with her chin to Tobin who’s talking to a friend of his brother. Some guy with a weird name that I can’t remember. I haven’t been gone that long, and I can’t remember.

  “Yeah.” The word breathes out of me before I can contain it.

  “If nothing else, I bet you miss that part of Crawford.” She grins.

  And there’s really no way for me to argue about that. I have missed Tobin. It’s just that I didn’t realize how much until I got here.

  I make my way to the bathroom as Mom smiles sympathetically and pats arms; playing catch-up with all the women she hasn’t seen in a while. I wonder if she cares, or if she’s just so used to being polite that it simply happens. My legs aren’t working right, they’re shaking with nerves, but I still manage in my heels. If I could have seen a year ahead, would I love the girl I am now or hate her? I pull open the bathroom door knowing I would have hated any version of me that wasn’t with Tobin.

  My phone beeps in a message. Holy Hell, it’s been almost non-stop since I left. I pull it out. Mercedes. Of course. She’s almost as politically driven as my dad, but graduated with me less than a month ago.

  MERC: I know you’re busy Delia, but I need the signature page you got in support taking down that awful healthcare bill. I also need your numbers for the picnic next week. The caterer is making me crazy.

  There are several problems with this. I never went and got signatures because I don’t subscribe to my dad’s brand of politics. I have zero signatures, but I can’t tell Mercedes that. I’ll have to come up with some really creative lie.

  I’m on it. I text back, even though that’s the last thing I am.

  Mercedes was queen at the private school Dad enrolled me in last year, and it took me a while, and a lot of work, but now we’re friends. Well. Not friends like Kelly and I were—hangout friends. Mercedes was more like—friends by association. Our fathers were in the same Senate committee. She’s the southern girl that helped me shed my acc
ent, or most of it.

  I still get a look of disapproval from her when I let something cliché like y’all slip out.

  “It’s not cute, Delia,” she says all the time. “It makes you sound like a country hick.”

  I nod, smile, and play it off, but it stings. Every time. To be honest, I can’t even remember what this picnic is for, but her dad forgets she has a spending limit on her credit card when she takes to planning charities or benefits or picnics for young republicans. They’re small scale, nothing like what my mom’s in the middle of at the children’s hospital. “But it’s all practice,” Mercedes reminds me, “for later.”