Carry Her Heart (12 page)

He waved at the single chair that was meant for students and visitors. “Sure, honey. You know you can ask me anything.”

The university had offered my father a bigger office a few times, but he’d always declined. I’d once asked him why and he said it was because he was lazy and didn’t want to move all his things, but I suspected it was more than that. He liked his cave.

“It’s about Aunt Bonnie,” I started. “I mean, I know she was your friend, and not mom’s. No, I mean, I know she was friendly with mom, but she was your friend.”

I sighed. This was not coming out the way I wanted it. “I know you and Aunt Bonnie had been friends for years and she became friends with Mom because of you. I know she was a good enough friend that you made her my godmother and she took me in all those years ago. You were never specific, and I wondered if the two of you . . .”

Some people have smiley expressions. It’s as if their faces’ default expression is a smile.

My father’s default expression was more serious. Contemplative. His natural look was one of deep thought. But when he smiled, it could light a room . . . even a cubbyhole office with weird green light.

He gave me one of those smiles now. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, then my answer is no. Bonnie and I were never together like that. We had friends who thought we would be that someday, some who even thought that we should be that, but no.”

He shook his head, as if he couldn’t fathom anyone thinking that. “We grew up together, you know. We built tree houses in the woods behind your grandparents’ place. We rode bikes together. When Bonnie had a breakup or a fight with someone, I was her shoulder. And she . . . I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that even then, I was more at home inside a book. I loved being surrounded by books. Bonnie was forever dragging me out into the world. She showed me the joy in things I’d never have noticed otherwise. She was the sister I never had. She was my best friend. She was family. Part of me has never recovered from losing her.”

When Amanda was five, Aunt Bonnie got sick with the flu. Dad had talked to her and threatened to drive to Ohio that afternoon if she didn’t go to her doctor.

She promised she would.

The next day he got the call from the hospital. She’d gone to the doctor’s and he’d immediately had her admitted to the hospital. They’d done everything they could, but she’d died that night.

I didn’t know that until later. What I remembered was Dad getting a phone call, then dropping the phone. Mom and I hurried to his side as he fell to the floor crying. Great heaving sobs.

My mother sank down next to him and simply held him as he cried out that Bonnie was dead, and Mom cried as well.

Afterward, I remember him raging, “Who dies from the flu?” almost as if he blamed Bonnie for dying. But in hindsight, maybe he simply blamed her for leaving him.

The rest of Aunt Bonnie’s family had passed, so my father was her executor. I remember driving to Ohio for her funeral. A few months later, we went back to see her headstone on her grave. My father hadn’t cried then, but it was almost worse. His pain rolled off him in waves.

Now, more than a decade later, I could still see that same pain. Maybe it had softened, but it was still there.

He looked at me and said, “I know that people say you can’t be just a friend with someone of the opposite sex, but I think they’re wrong. Bonnie was always my friend. And for a while, we thought, along with everyone else, that it might be more, but it never was.”

He was lost in thought for a moment, then said, “Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?”

I shook my head. My parents loved me, but they rarely shared any intimacy of their relationship with me.

“It was Bonnie. We both went to OSU and saw each other often. One day, she met me for coffee and had a girl in tow. The girl in question was your mom. Bonnie said,
This is Tricia. I think you two need to meet, so I’m going to leave you to it
.

“That was it. She left me sitting with a total stranger at a campus coffee shop. Your mom looked as uncomfortable as I felt. She looked at me and said, ‘She’s . . . an original.’” She inserted this pregnant pause that made those three words seem funnier than they should have been.

“I started laughing, and then so did she. We ordered coffee and . . . Bonnie introduced me to the love of my life, and I loved Bonnie all the more for it. Does that make sense?”

I found myself nodding because it did.

“When you asked us to go away and stay with Bonnie when you had the baby, not one of us in the room doubted that Bonnie would just say yes . . . that she’d welcome you with open arms.”

My question had started my father on a journey down memory lane. I sat on that couch and listened as he shared stories of my mom and Aunt Bonnie.

I know romance is the stuff that books and legends are built on, but so many of my books were built around friendship. I’d never really looked at it that way before, but as I listened to my father, the thought crystalized. Somehow, without ever really thinking about it, I’d come to believe in the power of friendship.

Friendships that were blind to gender. Friendships that were blind to age.

Friendship was as lasting as true love . . . sometimes more lasting.

My father and Aunt Bonnie had had that kind of friendship.

I’m not sure why, but I left his office feeling better.

The next day, Anthony called and told me he’d be moving to Harrisburg, the state capital, after the new year. He was going to work in the attorney general’s office.

Two days before Christmas I met him for coffee across from the firm’s downtown office. I’d bought him a desk plaque that read, “Anthony Long, Esquire.”

“I thought about going with Anthony Long, Kick-Butt Attorney,” I said, “but thought this was probably a better idea.”

He’d bought me a beautifully illustrated book on urban gardens. “I thought of this gift all on my own,” he assured me.

We left the coffeehouse and both went our separate ways.

I’d been wrong.

I did miss him sometimes.

Chapter Ten

Dear Amanda,

I haven’t picked your journal up since I broke up with Anthony. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you; it’s that if—when—you get this journal, I don’t want it to be full of minutia. I want to tell you the things that really matter. If I never meet you in person—if the only time we have together is that one hour—I want this to be a way to connect with you. More than that, I want it to be a way for you to feel my love.

But even though I have nothing big to say, no revelation to share, I’m bursting to the point of overflowing today. Not because of anything big. No new contract, new boyfriend . . . nothing life altering. It’s mid-March here in Erie. Because the city sits on the southern edge of Lake Erie, our winters can be long, cold, and snowy. This particular winter was all those things. But today, before it’s even officially spring, it’s in the sixties and the snow is melting. I can see the tops of crocuses (croci?) popping through patches of dirt and snow.

The sun is out and the kids will be getting out of class soon. I’ll wave to them. I have a great group of kindergarteners I read to every week, and I’m still working with Coop’s class. There are some very good stories.

I guess I’m writing because I want to say that sometimes it’s the very small things that matter. Ned and I walk the dogs every evening when he gets home from work. My parents are in Florida, so I haven’t been going there for dinners, but most weekends I go out with Cooper or Ned.

I learned to make bread this winter.

See? Nothing big. And yet, today, sitting on my porch after a long winter, I am bursting with happiness.

I guess that’s what I wanted to say . . . take time to look around your life for those small things that can mean so much.

I—

I stopped writing because Jim, my mailman, was walking toward me.

“You’re out on the porch finally,” he said, grinning.

“I am. It was too nice to stay inside.”

He handed me a giant envelope from my publisher. I couldn’t tell by the size and heft of it what was in it. I knew it wasn’t books.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

“If it’s as nice as this, you bet.”

When he left, I sat on my chair and opened the envelope. There had to be a dozen other envelopes in it. I’d had a post office box for years, but eventually got rid of it because most of my readers contacted me online. But on occasion, some still wrote to me through my publisher.

One had a local postmark. I picked that one up first.

Dear Ms. Pip,

My mother insists that I send real thank-you notes for gifts. Not email like so many of my friends, but real letters. She says if someone goes to the trouble of getting you a gift, you can go to the trouble of writing a real letter and mailing it. And since I’m sure that you worked hard to write
B Is for Bully,
I thought I’d send you a real letter. So this is a thank-you note.

We have a girl in our school who is big and kind of mean. I’m not big and I don’t think I’m mean. In our school, you get stuck with some definition. Jocks. Druggies. I’m a Brain. That’s not how I think of myself, but I take advanced classes and I’m planning on going to college, and at my school, that makes me a brain. Winnie is a jock and she has picked on me all year. So the other day, I saw her heading toward me and I turned on the camera on my phone and hit record. She knocked me hard into my locker. All my books went flying, but I held onto my camera. She said, “Hey, genius, why don’t you climb in that locker, and I’ll shut the door and we’ll see if you can get out?”

I picked up my phone so she was in the frame and said, “Hey, Winnie, why don’t you smile for the camera?”

She went to grab it, but I said, “Go ahead; it’s already gone to the cloud. You know what the cloud is, right? Since I’m a genius, I’ll explain. It means that you can’t get rid of it now. And I’ll be posting it on YouTube and sending the link to the principal and your parents if you mess with me or anyone else in the school the rest of the year.”

Anyway, she’s left me alone ever since. You taught me to stand up for myself. Maybe I am a brain, but I’ve also got heart. And maybe now, I have some strength, too.

But your books have taught me something else, too. Kindness and forgiveness. Yesterday, Winnie was in the library working on math. I could tell she was really having trouble with it. So I walked over and said, “Just remember, whatever you do on one side of the equation, you have to do on the other.” For a minute, she just looked at me and then she said, “Could you show me?”

I did.

And I thought of your book again, and wondered why she was a bully to start with. I’m meeting her tomorrow in the library to work on math again. Maybe I’ll find out.

So I not only learned to save myself, but maybe I’m also learning to have empathy, too.

I read an article where you said every girl you write for is Amanda. So I’m going to say thank-you and sign this,

Amanda . . . Jo Larson

Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I finished the letter.

I didn’t want to sit on my front porch and cry, so I decided to go out back and lose myself in my garden. As I rose, I knocked against my table in the process. The rest of the letters and my teacup went flying.

My favorite teacup with the forget-me-nots on it.

It hit the porch and shattered.

I didn’t pause to pick up the pieces. I scooped up the letters and ran into the house, shut the door, and dumped the letters on the table. I didn’t stop. I walked through the house to the back door and into the garden. I made my way back to Ned’s bench, still crying.

It felt like Amanda, my Amanda, had sent the letter and approved of what I tried to do in my stories.

I know it didn’t make sense. I’d heard from readers in the past, but this one touched me even before I got to her signature.

My emotions were a jumble.

I’m not sure how long I sat there, but suddenly Ned was at the gate, calling my name. “Pip. Pip.”

“I’m back here,” I called. I straightened out the slightly crumpled letter.

He thundered through the garden, straight back to the bench. “I knocked on the front door and you didn’t answer. I was scared to death when you didn’t answer. What the hell happened?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” I knew even as I said the words, trying to claim I was fine was ridiculous. I was an ugly crier.

Coop once came over to cry on my shoulder after a breakup. And I mean that literally. She looked just as pretty crying as she normally did.

Actually, maybe even better.

There was a certain vulnerability in her tears that was missing from her regular life.

I didn’t look pretty or vulnerable. I looked snotty and bloated.

“Really, despite how I look, I’m fine,” I said.

Ned didn’t say anything. He held my broken teacup in his hand and quirked his eyebrow.

I knew he was waiting for a better explanation. “I got a letter from a reader that struck a chord.”

“Not a good chord,” he said and without my asking, he sat down next to me and wrapped his arms around me.

“I’m not sure what she said, and I’m not asking.” He hugged me. It was something my mom might have done if she found me crying, but there was nothing parental in Ned’s embrace.

And there was nothing sexual either.

His hug had friendship and empathy wrapped in it.

I could have called Cooper or my mom. Even my dad. But I was glad it was Ned who’d found me.

I thought of my dad and Aunt Bonnie and knew that Ned was family to me, the same way Aunt Bonnie had been for my dad.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice muffled against his chest.

His words rumbled as he said, “You’re welcome.”

Later that night, I went back to the journal.

And picked up where I left off.

—I got a letter today as I was writing to you. It was from a reader. Her story touched me. She said my book had touched her.

There is a chest that’s full of letters like that waiting for you to read someday. I’ve answered them all. But this one letter I’m enclosing in your notebook. I’ve said for years that every girl I write for, every girl that Amanda’s Pantry feeds, or Amanda’s Closet gives a coat to, is you. And part of me always believed that. But this one letter, I felt it to the core of my being.

I’ll be writing Jo back. And while I’ve always written fiction, I’m thinking about writing some nonfiction, and I think I want to start with Jo’s story.

Love,

Piper