“Home…” I echoed, taking the plate from her.
She nodded, thumbing my chin. “Home.”
Then, she left me, joining her husband and our parents and grandmother in the kitchen. I watched them from where I sat — their smiles and laughter, my dad’s arm around Mom’s shoulders and Robert’s hand interlaced tightly with Beth’s.
And I felt it again, the same thing I’d felt coursing through me in the cabin with River.
Home.
It’d taken me too long to realize it. It’d caused pain to so many people I loved just for me to pull my head out of my ass and realize that what mattered most to me in my life wasn’t what museums I’d been to or what continents I’d set foot on.
It was these people, right here in this tiny little map dot town that had a thousand others just like it sprawling across the United States, across the world.
I didn’t need another plane, or boat, or train. I didn’t need another beach, or city, or mountaintop.
What I needed was River.
I just hoped he needed me, too.
Knock-knock-knock.
My hands were shaking inside my gloves as I waited on River’s doorstep, Moose barking like crazy on the other side. There was a warm glow coming from the windows, smoke from the chimney, and looking now at the cabin from the outside in only made me long for what I’d had inside it even more.
There was a low, grumbly command for Moose to be quiet, and then the door swung open, and River stood there on the other side of it.
It wasn’t surprise or joy that passed over his face at the sight of me. Instead, it was a sort of indifference that made my heart sink. His jaw ticked, eyes taking me in before he swallowed. Moose was jumping around behind him, wagging his tail and trying not to bolt between his legs and the door to get to me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
He didn’t say a word, just watched me with those furrowed brows, his jaw set.
“Mind if I come in?” I asked, holding up the box in my hand. It was wrapped in a metallic green paper Mom had left over and topped with a simple red bow. “It’s kinda cold out here.”
River stood there a moment longer before he moved aside, allowing enough space for me to step through. As soon as I did, Moose was jumping on me, and I held the present out of the way just in time to save it from being mauled by his paws.
I chuckled, patting his paws where they landed on my chest before I kissed his wet nose. “Hey, boy. Missed you, too.”
Moose was still whining softly when River finally got him down off me, and then we stood there in the entryway, me still wrapped in my coat and hat and gloves and scarf because the way River was watching me, I wasn’t sure if I was invited to take them off and stay a while.
Well, here goes nothing…
“Merry Christmas,” I said sheepishly, holding the box in my hand toward him.
River looked at it, looked at me, back at the box like it was a trap, and then back at me. “What are you doing here, Eliza?”
“Please,” I begged, pushing the box closer to him. “Just open it.”
He sighed, unfolding his arms where they were crossed over his chest and taking the box from my hands. He tore the paper open unceremoniously, ripping the ribbon off and letting it all fall to the ground. Then, he popped the lid on the small, rectangular box.
When it was open, he stilled.
For a long time, he just stared at that notebook, the one I’d carried with me all these years. It was thick and hardback, with a beautiful, matte black-and-white photograph of a rushing river winding between thick forests of trees, snow-topped mountains waiting, stretching up into the overcast sky in the background.
River swallowed, touching the cover before his eyes flicked to mine.
“Open it,” I whispered.
He pulled it out of the box slowly, carefully, letting the box drop to the floor where the wrapping paper waited for it. Then, he balanced the book carefully in his hands and opened it to the first entry.
I watched his eyes scan the page, left to right over each sentence until he turned the page to the next one. He frowned more and more as he read, and my heart thumped loud and heavy in my ears.
“It’s a journal,” I explained. “Or a love letter. Maybe a cross between the two.” I folded my hands together in front of me to keep myself from fidgeting. “I picked it up at the airport the day I left Vermont. And I’ve been writing in it every week since I left.” I swallowed. “I’ve been writing it to you. For you.”
River’s eyes bounced over the pages as he turned them, and then they found mine, confusion written within the green depths.
That journal was one I’d written in religiously, and every entry started with My Dearest River.
I wrote to him about my travels, about the places I saw, the people I met. I shared the worst of weeks and the best of ones, too. I tried to explain the way I’d felt when I walked the streets of London, and the color of the sky as the sun set over Tuscany. I tried to imagine what he would have thought or felt if he were there with me.
I tried to write him into the story.
River turned another page, fingers tracing over the ink inside.
“I never stopped thinking of you,” I said softly. “I always wished you were with me, and all along, I knew that something was missing.”
River swallowed, nose flaring as he turned another page.
“I think I went looking for adventure, but what I didn’t realize was that I left the best one behind.”
At that, he stopped turning the pages, holding the book open in his hands and looking at me, instead. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine, and when a sheen of gloss covered them, emotion stole my next breath, tears building in my own eyes.
“You are my adventure, River,” I whispered helplessly, two tears streaming simultaneously down each of my cheeks at the admission. “Just as much as you are my home.”
I didn’t miss the quiver of his bottom lip where he kept it buckled, or the way his next breath shuddered a bit with the effort to bring new oxygen into his lungs.
And I just shrugged, knowing there was no other way to put it. “I am lost without you.”
As soon as the words left my lips, River blindly placed the journal on the kitchen counter behind him. Then, he swooped me into his arms, and I lost it.
I clung to him like life itself, wrapping my arms around his neck as his wound around my waist. He crushed me to him, and I tried to pull him closer still, sobbing into his shoulder.
“I don’t care if it’s in a big city or in another country or right here in this town we grew up in,” I said through my tears. “I want this. I want you. I’ll go wherever you want or stay right here in this tiny little cabin, as long as I can have you.”
River framed my face, shaking his head before he kissed me hard and promising. Both of our faces were bent in agony, like that kiss killed us as much as it brought back every ounce of life we’d been missing.
“I thought I lost you again,” he said, his words shaky and strained.
I clung to him tighter. “Oh, baby. You never lost me at all.”
He shook his head, like he still couldn’t believe I was there in his arms, before he met me with another long, deep kiss. Then, he was helping me strip out of my coat, my scarf, my hat and gloves and boots. He took me in his arms as soon as I was rid of my outerwear, and then he pulled me into his lap on the couch, surrounding me with his arms, his kisses, his love.