“Can you believe that, Jed? Another Jennings.” I pick up the weight in my other hand and begin reps.
A little voice inside my head taunts me, You could have had that if you hadn’t broken her heart.
Only if I wanted to ruin her life the way mine was.
Feeling the darkness settle over me, I finish my reps and put away the weights. Slipping on gloves, I move over to the heavyweight bag and begin taking out my frustrations—past and present—on it. Punch after punch, I land with lethal force at my intended target.
Myself.
Maris
“If there was a price to be paid for love, I’d do anything, sell anything, be anything to set that emotion free in my baby sister again. But day after day, year after year, I know it will take a man with a will of steel to breach the barriers around her heart. I pray for them both.” - From the journals of Jedidiah Smith.
Sixteen years. It took sixteen years, but I’m finally fulfilling my brother’s wish for me.
I found a love that makes me happy.
Tenderly, I reach out and cup his chin. His long-lashed dark eyes hold mine captive before a wary smile flashes briefly. It’s gone quickly but not before his cherubic cheeks flash dimples that likely have broken the hearts of everyone he’s ever met in his path.
And he’s only nine.
Sarah said to talk with him. “All of them are quick as a whip, Maris. The love you show them means so much.”
“David, you are such a special little boy.” Even though it’s not my decision, my heart is already his. He just has to ask for it. If it were up to me, he’d be coming home today. After all, just like Nick was given, the little boy Sarah’s been fostering deserves a chance when life has given him so few at such a young age.
“Are you going to be here for always?” he asks.
My heart melts at the way he phrases it. “Well, I do have my own home. But if Sarah says it’s okay, you could come to visit. All of you could,” I amend quickly.
“I mean, will you never leave?” In his question, I hear his hopes and fears of being let down rolled into one. The black spot that’s been plaguing my life since I got the call about my brother’s death three years ago is dimming, and it’s because I found his soul again here on earth.
No longer feeling like I’m counting days until I can join Jed, I stand, holding my hand out. David’s muddy one clasps it trustingly. “I’ll do whatever I can not to,” I vow.
“I trust you, Maris.” His soulful brown eyes smile up into mine.
And another bond of love snaps into place. First came knowledge, then came trust. Now come the promises.
And this time it’s up to me to keep them.
After I leave David at his foster parents’ home, I call Kara.
She answers on the first ring. “How did it go?”
I immediately burst into tears.
Her reaction is exactly what I expect from the woman who’s been my best friend for twenty years. She lets out a war whoop that might be able to be heard by every person across the four thousand miles that separates us. “We’re having a baby!” she shouts.
“David’s not a baby,” I remind her for the hundredth time.
“You want him to be your first child; that makes him your first baby. Trust me, even when they stand over a foot taller than you, they’re still your babies.” Since Kara’s youngest child is seventeen, and as tall as his father, Jennings, I decide to take her word for it.
Then I voice my biggest fear. “God, I hope nothing goes wrong.”
Immediately, Kara’s jubilance is tempered. “Why would it?”
“Because I’ve learned that something always goes wrong, Kara. God, it’s like someone has a cosmic shit hammer ready to swing. Remember? Jed lived his life for far too many years wondering if he’d ever find love. He finds it with Dean, and look what happens to them.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t tell you I’ve been clearing out Jed’s old room.”
“What kind of things have you found?”
“Other than the fact my brother was a damn pack rat?”
“A trait he shared with Dean.” We let out watery giggles. “What else?”
“Bits and pieces of old letters, stuff from the Jacks. Memories I’m cataloging that I’ll be giving them on birthdays and shit.”
“That’s incredibly sweet.”
“That’s not the only thing I found.”
“What else?
“I found old journals.”
“Oh, Maris. How incredible. What did you find?” There’s a rustle of material as Kara gets settled in for a long talk.
“So much.” My throat gets tight as I remember words of a man’s frustrated words about the way he devised plans only to have them foiled by the actions or inertia of others. His empathy was both more and less than I ever imagined. And I still don’t know what to do about this side of my brother that I can’t share because to do so would wreck the image of Jed everyone has. “God, I’d give anything to be able to share what I’m feeling with Jed and Dean.” Or to hand them back over. Unread.
“So would I.” Kara’s voice is husky. Even now, though it’s been three years since Jed and Dean died in a car wreck that took them from our lives way too soon, part of me is still floored by the fact our brothers fell in love with one another with one look. Then again, as I admire one of the black-and-white photos Kara’s wedding photographer, Holly Freeman, took of the two of us while Kara was preparing to walk down the aisle, I’m really not. It only took that amount of time for Kara’s and my hearts to connect when we met in Juneau after she answered my family’s ad for a room.
So many years and—for me, at least—so little has changed.
I drag myself back to our conversation. “There are days when I come flying down the stairs and I feel like I’m going to see them.”
“I know you would never sell the house.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Never,” I confirm. “I can’t imagine it.”
“What other things did you find in the journals? Stuff about Jennings?” I hear both amusement and curiosity in her voice.
My hand presses against my stomach, and I try to control my heartbeat. My mind drifts back to curling up next to my brother for both warmth and safety, both of us ignoring the stench of our skin as the days passed by when all I could do was cry silent tears. As clearly as I remember hearing Kevin’s first baby cries, I forgot Jed’s being there during the darkest days of my life.
And then I read one of his journals.
Kara believes Jed didn’t know about her having Kevin until that fateful day in Florida. Admitting he knew everything from the very beginning, every secret, I don’t understand how she could forgive me for lying to her. I truly never meant for my brother to find out about her son—Jennings’s son—but I didn’t remember. I was so strung out on drugs, recovering from one of the most painful procedures of my life, that getting up to the bathroom by myself hurt. I didn’t realize what I was saying awake. The answer is obviously too much after I heard Kevin cry as it triggered my own tears.