Coming Home (14 page)

When they came upon a photo of her father, Jessie cringed. Frank Lehman was leaning against the refrigerator, a stark, almost vacant, look in his eyes.

“That’s Dad, all right,” Jessie whispered.

“He was working,” Mrs. Robinette countered gently.

“He was
always
working.”

They found another photo of him in his shop with the same vacant stare. “Didn’t he know it’s customary to smile for pictures?” Jessie asked, feeling the old bitterness that seemed to bite at her ankles whenever she thought of her father.

“He wasn’t himself, Jess. Not those final years.”

“How
could
he be? He drank from the moment he got up to the moment he went to bed. Nobody knew but me, because he hid it so well.”

Betty sighed softly. “Well, I suspected …”

A clang sounded from the kitchen, where Andy was still working under the sink. Jessie continued, “Dad put me in charge, you know. Wasn’t just my idea. Sometimes he slept on the couch when he couldn’t even bear to be in the same bed with Mom. She cried herself to sleep a lot. I could hear her. And it wasn’t just the illness. She was lonely.”

Betty nodded slowly, her eyes sympathetic, understanding. “Losing her was the worst possible thing that could have happened to him,” she supplied as if she had some kind of information Jessie wasn’t privy to. “Grief overwhelmed your dad—wasn’t an easy time for any of us.”

Jessie felt she might lose her composure.
Drop it,
she thought.

Let her think of him however she wants
. But she couldn’t.
I was there, too
.

“He abandoned my mother and then he left me. It doesn’t get any plainer than that. He took the easiest route possible.”

“What do you mean?” Betty seemed genuinely confused. “Do you mean … he killed himself? Oh, honey, that wasn’t your father. I remember a different man. He wouldn’t have …” She paused, unable to say the words again. “I can’t imagine that he would have …”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

Betty shook her head sadly. “It just doesn’t seem—”

“But he did. He
did
. It’s not your fault and it’s not mine. Just when we needed him the most, he checked out.”

Betty’s eyes filled with tears, and Jessie felt sorry for being so determined to force her opinion. Betty touched her hand. “Well … if he did such a thing, could you forgive him, Jessica?”

No fair,
Jessie thought. Forgiving or not forgiving was her prerogative, wasn’t it? If she decided
never
to forgive him that didn’t make her a terrible person, did it? She looked down at her hands, shaking her head. “Maybe for me, yes. But not for Mom.”

Betty had obviously engaged in tremendous personal historical revisionism. She simply didn’t, or couldn’t, or
refused,
to remember how things had truly been.

Betty appeared to be collecting her thoughts, seemingly unable to conjure something safe to say. She lapsed into more recollections, and slowly her conversation became more religious in tone.

“The church in Monument hasn’t changed much. Pastor Tom retired a few years ago, but we have a wonderful new man of God. My, oh my, he can preach the Word.”

Betty continued on about church folk Jessie scarcely remembered, and it reminded her of how Darlene, too, had sprinkled her faith into every conversation. Annoying at best, but Jessie had grown accustomed to it. It occurred to her now that the specter of what comes after death must be especially troubling for an older person. Betty’s religion was the simplifying filter through which all of life’s complicated events could be reduced into manageable bits and pieces.
I wish it was that easy,
Jessie thought.

“I’ve never stopped missing your mother,” Betty sighed, shaking her head. “But I praise God she’s with Him now.”

Jessie cringed inwardly.

Betty sighed again. “It all happened so quickly. But before I knew it, your mother, your father, and then you …
gone,
just like that!”

Like a story without an ending,
Jessie thought lamely. Hadn’t she tried to end it for years? Mostly, it was memories of the last days she’d tried to bury within the darkest corner of her mind.

They never buried your mother, did they?
The same strange thought—out of nowhere again. Jessie hugged herself, shivering.

“Are you okay, honey?” Betty asked.

Jessie forced a smile, taking another sip of iced tea. “I’m fine.” Betty leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. Her face suddenly seemed serene. “Your mother and I would talk about our Savior for hours. She had such faith. I still remember the day when she found out about you.” She nodded proudly. “I was the first one she told. You were their miracle child, you know. Your mother was only twenty-nine, but they’d all but given up.”

“So what a cruel joke, then,” Jessie replied.

Betty looked confused.

“All she wanted was a child,” Jessie said. “I was her entire life. What kind of miracle was that? God pulls the football out like Lucy always did to Charlie Brown. ‘Oops! I was just kidding! I only meant to torture you!”’

Betty’s expression spelled sorrow again.

“I’m sorry,” Jessie said immediately. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You just get it out, sweetie,” Betty insisted. “God isn’t scared of your anger.”

Well, He should be,
she thought angrily.

Mrs. Robinette leaned forward, and her eyes took on a curious expression. “Jessie, how could God make it up to you?”

Jessie frowned, then answered petulantly, without thinking. “God isn’t in the making-it-up-to-us business, is He?”

“Just humor me.” Her eyes were serious.

“I can’t answer that,” Jessie finally replied.

“Will you think about it?”

“Oh, Mrs. Robinette …” Jessie smiled. “It’s not even worth thinking about.”

“Really?” Betty was suddenly sitting at the edge of the couch, perched like a bird, her eyes intense.

Jessie changed the subject. “Where was my mother buried?”

Betty’s eyebrows rose. She cleared her throat. “Let’s see … I think the urn was placed in a gravesite … in Colorado Springs.”

Of course,
Jessie thought, wondering how she could have forgotten. “You know, I don’t even remember the service. It’s all so blurry.”

“Yes, very quick. Terribly short,” Betty said, shaking her head. She looked down at her arthritic fingers, laced together.

Andy came in, wiping his hands on a towel triumphantly. “Finished.”

Betty rose stiffly from the couch, a sudden smile lighting her face. “Oh, let me get a photo of the two of you together! A new one for the wall!” In a moment she was back, camera in hand, and in cheerful awkwardness, Andy and Jessie posed for a few pictures.

Afterward Andy turned to Jessie and said, “I know you’ve already driven past your old house, but I’d like to see mine again. Are you up for a short drive?”

Betty grasped Jessie’s arm. “What did Doris
say
about the house?”

“I haven’t asked yet,” Jessie said.

“So … what do you think?” Andy asked again.

Jessie shrugged, then recalled the mysterious key. When she mentioned it, Andy’s eyes lit up. “You still have it? Does it work?”

“I didn’t try it,” she said without revealing that the whole idea of walking through her house actually freaked her out. Especially in the dark.

Andy said, “I’m sure it’s been re-keyed by now.”

Jessie hadn’t considered that. She sighed softly. In spite of the tense discussion with Betty, she felt warm inside just thinking about tomorrow.
Now … aren’t you glad you stayed?

“Betty, do you have a flashlight?” Andy asked.

“Well, I’m sure I do,” Betty said.

“Andy, what do you have in mind?” Jessie whispered, her heart suddenly racing.

Chapter Sixteen

ANDY WROTE his cell phone number on a business card, and they made arrangements to meet tomorrow at Betty’s. When Andy and Jessie kissed her on the cheek, Betty clucked like a chicken. Meanwhile, dusk had turned to night.

Walking to the Rock House, where their cars were parked, Jessie was preoccupied with her conversation with Betty.
We’re all growing old,
she thought.
It’s not her fault… .

“Up for this?” Andy asked.

She shrugged, giving him a nervous smile.

Andy poked her elbow playfully. “I thought you liked mysteries and being scared and all that.”

This is different,
she thought.

When they reached his Toyota, he opened the passenger door for her but didn’t move aside. “We don’t have to do this, Jessie.”

“I’m nervous,” Jessie admitted. “But curious, too.”

“Would your grandmother mind?”

“I don’t care,” Jessie said softly as she got in. “It wasn’t her house.”

Settled into his car, Andy pulled away from the curb. The interior smelled of McDonald’s and coffee, but the leather seat seemed to hug her. Four blocks later, Andy killed the lights and handed her the flashlight. “Maybe we should have brought two flashlights.”

“Why?”

“I’m a little afraid of the dark.”

“Huh?”

Andy was grinning at her.

“You’re so bad,” she whispered.

Together they walked to her old house. Moonlight shimmered off the old roof. Andy’s former house next door was fully lit, which made her own seem even darker, almost
too
dark, as if absorbing the light of the entire neighborhood, swallowing it whole.

They walked up the steps, and the porch creaked beneath their weight.

“Oh boy,” Andy said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Andy, stop it!” Jessie whispered, slapping his arm playfully. He looked at her expectantly. She sighed and pulled her keys out of her pocket, noticing the ruby-red-slipper key chain. She felt a twitch of embarrassment, wondering if Andy would notice. She’d left the Toto key chain in her purse. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to give it to him, and perhaps she wouldn’t.

Andy pulled on the scratchy-sounding screen door and propped it open with his foot. Jessie wouldn’t have done this alone—not in a month of Sundays. Andy watched as she inserted the key and twisted it. It didn’t budge. Andy was right—the lock had been rekeyed.

“It was worth a try,” Andy said, letting the screen close shut. They sat down at the edge of the porch, looking out at the silent residential street, some homes brightly lit, others nearly as dark as this one. Jessie felt a little relieved, but Andy was obviously disappointed.
It’s the little boy in him,
she thought.

“I remember this,” Andy said nostalgically. “Sitting here after school.”

“Never at night, though,” Jessie added.

Andy chuckled. “No. Never. My mother would have thought we were kissing or something. I remember Bobby Harrington riding by on his bike on the way to—”

Jessie groaned. “Horrible Harrington!”

Andy began his rendition of Harrington’s taunt: “Andy and Jessie, sitting in a tree …”

“He was so annoying.” Jessie shook her head. “I remember once when you were sick, he offered to walk me home.”

“That little sneak …”

“Yeah, I said, ‘Dry up and blow away,’ or something pleasant like that. And then I ran home, but he followed me and kept teasing me, and I couldn’t go inside because I didn’t want him to see where—” Jessie stopped.

“What?”

“I didn’t want him to see where I hid the key!” Jessie exclaimed, staring at her key again.

“There’s another key?”

Jessie rose, slapping dust from her jeans. She reached up above the doorframe, into a little carved-out pocket, hidden from eye level.

“It can’t still be here,” she whispered.

But it was. Jessie shook her head. “Surely, it couldn’t work.”

“Not if your other key didn’t work,” Andy said.

“Maybe the other key isn’t right. Maybe it’s from one of my other apartments or something.”

Andy opened the screen door again. She slipped the key in and twisted. This time it met with little resistance as she turned the doorknob and the door retreated an inch. Jessie sucked in her breath.

“Well … our first mystery is solved,” Andy said, peering into the darkness. “No one changed the locks.” He looked back at her.

“Still up for this?”

“No more jokes, okay?”

“Promise,” he agreed.

Jessie followed him into the gloomy darkness. Straight ahead, she recognized the stairway leading to the second floor. On the right was the small family room, to the left, the living room, which led back to the dining room. All were completely empty, void of any furnishings. At the very back, she knew, was the kitchen, accessible through the dining room or the hallway bordering the family room. The entire house had a circular flow, and she remembered her father playfully chasing her around the house when she was little.

Weird,
she thought at the sudden memory, remembering what Betty had said earlier, that her father had been “different” once. Round and round they had gone, her father chasing her through the rooms, both of them giggling. Hard to imagine now.

Andy closed the door behind them. “Just in case,” he told her.

“Someone might wonder.”

“I’m wondering myself,” Jessie replied softly. They were now entombed in darkness, and it had a strange effect on her. She felt her eyes tearing up at the familiar scent of the house. Maybe nothing had ever changed. Maybe she was picking up where she’d left off.
My mother could be waiting for me just upstairs,
she thought.

“Are you ready?” He was pointing at the stairs.

“Oh, Andy, I don’t know—”

“C’mon, scaredy pants.” He grabbed her hand, and she allowed herself to be gently led up the stairs, one creaking step at a time. She counted them, just like she used to … one, two, three … all the way to twelve. When they reached the hallway, Andy paused. “You want to go first?”

“In your dreams.”

“Okay, me first.”

Slowly, with Mrs. Robinette’s flashlight beam shining forward into the inky darkness, they inched down the hallway. When they reached Jessie’s old room, Andy pushed open the door and whistled. “You need to see this.”

“Andy, so help me …”

“I’m serious.”

She moved forward and peeked around the doorway. Andy’s single beam of light illuminated the wall, revealing the warped and peeling wallpaper of Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin, and dancing jars of honey.

She looked at Andy, and he shook his head slightly as though to say,
Unbelievable
. There was no question now. No one had lived in this house, or surely the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper would have been the first to go.

Andy directed the flashlight beam across the floor, and Jessie recognized the wool area rug covering the hardwood floor. “I always envied kids who had carpet,” she whispered. “I slept here, but”—she turned and pointed across the hall to her mother’s room—“I basically lived over there. Did my homework in a chair while Mom slept or rested. She’s—” Jessie took a breath to gather herself—“she … was alone all day long as it was.” She swallowed hard, glad that Andy couldn’t see her in the shadows.

He touched her wrist. “It’s okay.”

She resisted. “I don’t want to cry.”

“Should we leave?”

“No,” she whispered, looking across the hall again.

By now their eyes were adjusting to the dark. Andy wandered over and looked in the doorway. Jessie took another deep breath and joined him at the threshold, looking into the now empty room.

“I’m glad you aren’t alone,” Andy whispered softly.

I was their miracle child,
she thought, remembering her conversation with Betty. Had Andy ever heard the story? Probably not.

She wandered to the window, touched the blind, and felt the dust on her fingertips. She turned to appraise the dark room again, and for a moment things were clear again. The room was fully furnished: her mother’s bed against the wall, nightstands on either side of the bed, the dresser on the opposite wall, the connecting bathroom door next to the dresser. And just as quickly the room was empty again. Jessie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

“I was their miracle child, you know.” When she finally whispered the words, it sounded hopelessly childish. Brandon would have laughed.
Snap out of it!

In the dimness, Andy sat down on the dusty floor, leaning against the wall. He patted the floor next to him. “Talk to me.”

She hesitated. She hadn’t planned to tell anyone
anything
. His flashlight cast a flattened gleam across the floor.
I know you, Jessie,
he’d said to her earlier.

When she finally wandered over, his outstretched hand guided her down. He made a whistling sound. “I used to wish—” He stopped. “I think it would break my mother’s heart if she heard this, but I was always a little jealous of you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Mom’s great, but she’s kinda … I don’t know … edgy, maybe. As a kid, I compared her to your mom, and sometimes I would pretend that your mom was mine, too.” He sighed into the darkness.

“So we were brother and sister?”

Andy chuckled. “My imagination never got that far.”

Jessie leaned her head back against the wall, wondering if Andy had developed some kind of mistaken notion of what her life had been like. Obviously, he was referring to her mother’s personality—the way people felt when they were with her. “It’s weird, but I can’t even remember Mom getting angry. I’m sure she did, but I can’t remember it. Maybe I’ve just forgotten all the bad stuff.”

“No,” Andy said, “your mom was special. Do you remember the day you fell off the monkey bars? You were only—” he thought a second—“seven or eight, I think.”

She did remember it, and her mother must have been in the early stages. Even at that point they were spending most of the day together as if they knew their time together was short. Sometimes, her mother kicked Jessie out of the house in order to spend time with her persistent next-door neighbor who couldn’t get enough of the wind in his hair.

“I remember you were staring down at me after I fell.” She chuckled. “You looked scared to death.”

“The playground monitor came over and told me to run and tell the principal.”

“They told me not to move an inch.”

“I came out with the principal,” Andy continued, “along with a bunch of other teachers. They hustled all the kids inside. You were just lying there, and I started crying because they wouldn’t let me stay. I put up a big fuss until they finally gave in.”

“I remember hearing the ambulance and I freaked out.”

Andy nodded. “You started calling my name and Mrs. Bieber grabbed me and told me to stop crying because you needed me to be strong. So I pulled myself together and said you were going to be okay and that nothing was going to happen to you because I needed someone to ride bikes with. Then you giggled… .”

Jessie sighed. “I remember now. It sounded so weird. There I was dying, and all you cared about was a bike-riding partner.”

He laughed. “Then your mom showed up. Just like that.”

“Someone must have called her.”

Andy was silent for a moment. “No, I don’t think so, Jess.”

“But somebody had to—”

“No one called your mother,” Andy repeated. “I was standing there beside the principal when she turned and asked Mrs. Bieber if anyone had called her. Mrs. Bieber only shrugged. She didn’t know, either. If anyone would have called your mother, it would have been one of them.”

“I never heard that part.”

“I never thought about it until later, but I think your mother just knew, Jess. It’s like you two were communicating on a deeper level than the rest of us.”

Jessie felt the tears come again.

“It’s okay, Jess.”

“I do remember sometimes we finished each other’s sentences, but I always thought that was typical for two people who were together so much.”

“It happened all the time. Do you remember that day when we were grading our math papers in Mr. Thompson’s math class?”

Jessie shook her head, then wondered if he’d seen her gesture in the dark.