“It looks great,” she replied, turning away from me at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was too perceptive for comfort. “Well, I was just coming back to tell you I’m closing up. You ready to go?”
“Oh, wow, is it closing already?”
She laughed at me, walking back out front to finish her shut down. “I know this place isn’t that exciting.”
“Don’t discount it,” I said. I slid my phone into my back pocket and grabbed my jacket before flipping the light switch and closing the door to the storage room behind me. “What can I do?”
“Just flip the sign on the window and we’re good to go.”
I did as she requested and waited until we could leave together to walk around the building to a small lot in the back. We had done so every day that I’d worked this past week, because downtown, despite how cute and clean it was, was not that safe for a woman by herself. Maggie’s words. “Good first week, Birdie,” Maggie said, surprising me with a quick squeeze. “Enjoy your weekend and I’ll see you Monday.”
We parted ways, taking different routes to our destinations. I drove on autopilot, my thoughts still busy with my mother’s phone call and everything I needed to do. Packing. I was going to have to start that. I was going to need to get another car, sooner rather than later. Mom would be taking hers; I was sure. I needed to ask Maggie about the possibility of insurance, although I didn’t expect her to offer it, being a small shop owner. If she didn’t, I supposed I’d have to look into something private, although the cost was sure to be prohibitive.
The landscape around me suddenly came into focus and I realized I hadn’t been making my way home. Where the hell was I? The road I was on was a narrow rural one lined with stretches of field and pockets of forest. The faintest suggestion of deja vu told me that I’d been here before, although nothing looked familiar. I stifled a brief flare of panic. This was the twenty-first century. A person couldn’t hardly get lost any more, even if they wanted to.
I drove on, looking for a landmark that made sense. My subconscious was leading me here for a reason. I guessed I needed to heed it.
After a few miles, a driveway appeared on the left. I slowed, trying to see the name on the mailbox. Maybe I knew someone out here.
The mailbox was marked with reflective numbers only. I pulled into the driveway and sat, tapping the wheel as I considered. I couldn’t see the house from here, but something about this driveway was nudging me. With a sigh I started driving down the length of gravel, muttering a prayer under my breath that I wasn’t making my way to a serial killer’s lair.
The driveway was several tenths of a mile long, long enough that I thought about turning around. Then the house appeared before me, several outbuildings off to the side behind it, and I caught my breath.
Home.
That was the word that popped immediately into my head. I shook my head, confused, and sat for a moment, just studying it. The house was obviously old, a farmhouse with white clapboard siding and windows framed in black. It had a porch that looked to wrap all the way around the exterior, wrapping gracefully around a room jutting off the side that was round and swept up into a turreted roof. There were two red rocking chairs on the porch, separated by a small table upon which sat a pot of winter cabbage.
As if pulling back a curtain and peering through a window, I saw myself planting that cabbage, my fingers tamping damp black soil down around the roots and then placing the pot on the table. A memory? My mouth went dry, and I only vaguely recognized that a vehicle was pulling up behind me.
The knock on my window made me jump, and I turned to see Hayes standing beside the car, his features pinched with concern. “Birdie? Are you okay?”
Slowly I opened the door and stepped out. “I…I don’t know where I am. I was just driving, and I ended up here.” I looked from the porch to Hayes. He was regarding me soberly, that hint of humor that usually lurked around his eyes and mouth notably absent.
“This is where I live, Birdie. Where you lived, until the accident.” My hand flew to my throat. Hayes tugged it gently down, engulfing it in his own. “Come with me.”
He led me up the steps to the porch, pointing with his free hand to several new, raw wood planks interspersed with aging ones with peeling black. “We were working on the porch. I haven’t had time to do more with it.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I released his hand and turned to look at the land around us, taking in the dull greenish-brown fields lying fallow and bisected by wire fencing, the hint of barn just past the corner of the house, the gravel drive that formed a circle to the right of the house, a bare-limbed tree in its center. To my left was a small grove of trees in neat rows. Apple? “We bought all of this?”
Hayes pushed his hands in his pockets. “You fell in love with it,” he answered, like that was reason enough.
I nodded and taking in a deep breath, followed him into the house.
“I am so tired of waking to the blank canvas of morning and realizing it won't be painted with you.”
Tyler Knott Gregson
December 5 │Hayes
SHE WAS HOME.
She didn’t realize it, but something — some lizard sense, perhaps — had led Birdie home. I stuffed my hands in my pockets to hide their shaking. Now I just had to get her to stay.
Turning, I opened the front door and walked into the foyer, restraining the impulse to look back and check that she was following. A second later, I heard her footsteps and the soft snick as the front door closed. In the door to the kitchen, I watched as she took it in with wide eyes: the scuffed hardwood floors, the staircase that curved up to the second floor, the window high on the ceiling that she’d hung a piece of reclaimed stained glass over after we’d first moved in. The early evening light slanting through it cast jewel-toned squares of color on the opposite wall, and it was there her gaze fixed and held.
“Make yourself at home,” I told her, gesturing toward the family room on the opposite side of the hall. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
“No — it’s fine. You don’t have to entertain me, I just barged in here uninvited —”
“Birdie.” My voice stopped her. “I was coming home to have dinner, anyway. I’m glad you’re here.”
A hint of red flushed her cheeks. “I wouldn’t have come if I had known,” she confessed.
The thought sent a pang through me, but I managed to keep it light when I responded. “Then I’m glad you didn’t know.”
She looked away, glance landing on the antique chest of drawers beneath a mirror, the coat tree beside it, and then beyond, into the family room. “I guess I had a thing for antiques?”
“You loved anything fixer upper,” I told her. “You always had around a half dozen projects going at the same time.” I inclined my head. “Go ahead and look around while I make something. Just don’t leave?”
She hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod.
Releasing the breath I’d been holding, I walked into the kitchen and began grabbing things — tomatoes, ground beef, an onion. Spaghetti. I’d make spaghetti.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Birdie stepped into the kitchen and filled it immediately with her presence. I flicked a glance over my shoulder as I turned the ground beef into the skillet. Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable looking around on her own?