Preston's Honor(88)

It didn’t heal the loss I’d always carry inside. But it shed some light—some healing—where none had been before, and for that I was grateful. I spent a quiet hour talking to my brother in my head as I worked and somehow felt certain he heard me. It felt as though there was forgiveness between us. A restoration of sorts.

I went in around noon, and Lia and I spent a laughter-filled hour watching Hudson walk from one of us to the other, clapping for himself and squealing over his new accomplishment. By the time we went into the kitchen to eat, the kid was a pro. When he took to something, he really took to it.

Over lunch, as Lia fed Hudson, I asked, “Are you free tonight?”

“What do you have in mind?” Lia brought her hair over her shoulder as she began braiding it quickly. My eyes were glued to the feminine movements, the way her slim, delicate fingers moved deftly through her hair, and the way she arched her neck to accomplish the task. How was it women just seemed to naturally know how to do those types of things? And did they realize how much watching it affected a man? My mouth felt suddenly dry. I took a sip of iced tea as I tried to remember what she’d asked me. What do you have in mind?

“Dinner,” I said distractedly. “At Dairy Queen. And then maybe we could drive to the top of Heron’s Park.”

She raised one brow, studying me. “Isn’t that where teens go to make out?”

“Yeah,” I said, and my voice sounded slightly lazy, even in my own ears.

She laughed. “Is this all part of going back to the beginning?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right.” She looked at Hudson. “Your mom and dad are going to pretend they’re teenagers tonight. What do you think about that, little walker?” Hudson laughed, smooshing a handful of blueberries into his cheek. “That’s what I think, too,” Lia said, but the smile on her face was bright and happy.

**********

The park was dark and slightly foggy as my truck crept slowly up the mild incline of the road that wound through the trees and dead-ended at the top of a low cliff overlooking the town of Linmoor.

I’d never been up here when I was a teenager—but Cole had and from what I knew, kids still used it as a place to park and make out. But when we crested the hill, there weren’t any other cars parked anywhere. We had the entire place to ourselves, whether that was because it wasn’t as popular a place to hang out as it once had been, or because it was a Thursday night, I didn’t know. Didn’t care, either.

I pulled into a spot right at the guardrail and turned off the ignition, looking out at the lights of Linmoor. From up here it looked like such a dinky town, dwarfed by the acres and acres of the sprawling farmland that surrounded it, farmland that was now merely dark emptiness from where we sat.

“We’re not very high, but the town looks so small from here,” Lia said, voicing the thought I’d just had.

I looked over at her, barely able to make out her profile in the darkness where the moonlight shining into my truck was the only illumination. “Do you still wish you’d left?” I asked softly. It was a fear inside me—not that she’d leave again without telling me, I was determined to let go of that fear after our talk—but that someday she might regret staying in this small town all her life after she’d once dreamed of leaving forever.

She looked over at me and seemed to study me a moment though she couldn’t have seen much more than I could in the low light. “It’s not really that I wanted to leave. That was just a game Cole and I would play. It engaged my imagination.” She looked back out the front window. “I just wanted out of the . . . the smallness of my life, I guess. I wanted to break free of the parameters I thought had boxed me in so tightly. That smallness was inside of me, too, though. And I’m the one who created so many of the painful parameters, and I’m coming to see that. I’m coming to see that sometimes the most damaging borders are inside us. I’ve always tried to, I don’t know, diminish myself, fade into the background, keep quiet, and not make a fuss.” I knew exactly what she meant. I had built my own walls, too.

She suddenly smiled over at me, and it startled me momentarily at how beautiful she was even though I couldn’t make out the details of her features. It was her words, my own deep understanding of exactly what had kept us divided—separate—for so long; it was the feel of the moment, as if we’d suddenly come full circle and it was important. It was the sudden stillness I felt inside. The rightness.

“I love you,” I whispered, because I did and I felt it so strongly right then that I could hardly breathe. I scooted closer to her on the seat and she moved toward me, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her right up against my body.

“I love you, too.”

“When Cole and I left for college, it was the first time either of us had been on a plane. We’d gone on family vacations but we’d always driven, so that was a first for us. I didn’t like it.”

She laughed so softly it was just the bare whoosh of breath and the tipping up of her lips. She moved a lock of hair off my forehead. “No, farm boy?”

I chuckled. “No. Cole loved it, and I hated it. Go figure. To me it felt . . . wrong to be up in the sky like that. I especially hated being in the middle of the clouds where it was bumpy and I couldn’t see anything. I lost all perspective of where I was.” I paused, remembering back to that moment, the way I’d clenched my fists on my thighs, just needing to grab on to something solid, wanting to fall to my knees and find the sturdy ground beneath me, to breathe in the clean smell of the earth—that anchoring richness. “But then, suddenly, we broke through the clouds into the blueness of that summer sky, and I suddenly had my bearings again. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I could see it, and I knew I’d be there again.” I brushed my lips over hers, just a whisper of touch before I pulled away. “Seeing you smile just now, that’s how I felt. Like breaking through the clouds.”