Authors: Carolyne Aarsen
“Will you be coming to the farm to work with your horse?” Leslie asked Jack. I did a double take at the 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.”
The frown made another brief appearance.
“It's not a ‘thing,’ as you so blandly put it.” Underneath Leslie's quiet voice I caught a hint of firm resolve. “I've seen
and experienced a lot lately with Nicholas…”
The hurt in her voice hit me as hard as her words. I had been a lousy sister and a poor aunt. But I didn't have space in my
mind to dwell on that.
“How far do you live from town?” I asked, striking out blindly into the foreign territory that had become conversation with
my sister.
“Half an hour. Unless I'm stuck behind some slowpoke driver whose mission in life is to be Keeper of the Speed.”
I hadn't heard that term since Leslie and I were young, and I clung to the narrow opening. “Like that lady who used to drive
us to school when we lived in that apartment in Pittsburgh? What was her name again?”
“I'm sure her name wasn't Sally Slowpoke, like we christened her.” Leslie's smile enlarged the opening.
“I used to be able to finish half my homework on the way to school when she drove” I added.
“I still don't know how Mom conned her into doing that for the six months we lived there.”
“Mom had her ways.” I had never told her that I was the one conning Sally Slowpoke by promising we would keep Mom's behavior
acceptable in return for the ride.
“Have you heard from Mom in the past year?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither.”
Our silence made us allies in our disappointment.
“Do you have any idea where she might be?” Leslie asked. “I thought she might want to at least make some kind of connection
with her grandchildren.”
“I don't know. I was actually hoping we could try to find her.”
Leslie tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I'm not really interested in trying, Terra.”
“Don't you ever wonder if she has any regrets?”
“I would hope so.” Leslie shot me a quick, jabbing look. “Why do you ask?”
“I just think she could be pretty lonely.”
“That's her choice. And since when have you started sticking up for her?”
I had been critical of our mother in the past. But now? Condemnation didn't come as easily as it used to. My life's choices
gave me no ground from which to throw stones.
“I hope she doesn't decide to suddenly show up here as well,” Leslie said.
The “as well” tacked onto her complaint piled guilt upon guilt.
Moving right along…
“And what about you, Terra? What have you been doing? Anything come of that guy you told me about in your e-mail? Eric something
or other?”
“No. Nothing. Nothing at all. I moved out after—”
“Please don't tell me you were living with him?” Leslie's question was like a shot to the heart.
“Okay. I won't.” If you wanted to call what we did
living.
“Terra—”
I held up a hand, forestalling the lecture that I should have known would be coming. As young girls we'd always laid out the
order of our relationships. Boyfriend. Marriage. Sex. Babies. No deviation.
My sister, Miss Leslie, had managed to follow the formula to a T. Then there was me. The only T in my life's formula was the
initial of my first name.
“Okay. I don't want to lecture you…”
“Thank you.”
“But I do worry about you and your lifestyle. Didn't we always say we weren't going to turn out like Mom?”
“I give up. Did we?” I added a forced laugh.
Leslie's poke reassured me that she understood the old joke. “Terra, you know I love you.”
Her words dove deep into my heart and dislodged the doubts I'd had about coming here. “I love you, too, Leslie.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I am, now that I'm here.”
“I'm happy you're here, too. And now, my dear sister, if you look to the left…”