June, Reimagined (62)

“Just tell me it has a happy ending.”

“That, darling, is entirely up to you.”





TWENTY-FIVE


To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: don’t be mad

okkkkkaaayyyyyy, don’t be mad . . . i kind of gave all ur stuff to goodwill. but it wasn’t my fault! it was a total accident! i didn’t have enough room in my closet for all my clothes and since u r gone, i figured u wouldn’t mind if i used ur closet, so i boxed up all ur stuff and put it in the basement with all the rush shit and old date party tshirts and junk we never use and then marcy told the pledges they had to clean out that entire room and donate the stuff for their community service project. i went to goodwill (which smells like ass by the way) and tried to find all ur clothes but either they were gone (a total compliment if u ask me) or they were so pathetically homeless-looking i didn’t recognize them among the pit-stained tshirts and polyester pants (and u shouldn’t want that stuff back anyway).

please say u forgive me, sister!

—Al

June stood at Lennox’s front door, out of breath. She knocked and waited. She knocked again. No answer.

She crept around to the back of the house and peered in the kitchen window. Max was lying on the floor, but Lennox was nowhere in sight. She tapped on the glass. Max lifted his head. She tried to open the back door, but it was locked. Max barked.

Lennox was probably at work, but June needed him. All the energy storming around her body for the past day was finally moving. And it felt right. She couldn’t go back to her claustrophobic room. If left to marinate, she might find a reason not to tell Lennox how she felt, what a fool she’d been, how she had pushed him away to protect herself, because being alone meant not getting hurt and, more importantly, not hurting others. But that was all she had done since her brother died, when she pulled the drawstrings down on her hooded sweatshirt and tried to disappear from life.

June had made a complete mess of everything, but she was determined to fix it. She went back to the inn and grabbed her key to Lennox’s house. Max was waiting patiently at the door when June walked inside.

“Hi, buddy.” She scratched behind the dog’s ears. “I’ve missed you.”

God, she loved the smell of Lennox’s house. She loved his tea-stained mugs, the rubber boots at the back door, the dog bowls and dishes stacked neatly in the drying rack next to the sink. She loved the mismatched towels in the bathroom and the clothesline hanging in the backyard.

She even loved his flannel shirts. June had grown an affection for the plaid that hung so deliciously on Lennox’s body. It held scents well, and June knew that if she went up to Lennox’s bedroom, she would open his closet and be greeted by cedar and mint.

Max looked at her. “Don’t say a word, Max.”

June crept upstairs. Lennox’s bed was neatly made. God, how she loved his bed, how her body felt in it, the smell of his sheets, the space Lennox inhabited, his feet dangling off the end. She was tempted to crawl into it now but resisted. Instead, she went to the closet and flung open the door. She stepped in and pressed her nose into a shirt. A tiny moan escaped her lips. She slipped the shirt off the hanger and put it on, hugging it around herself.

June knelt down and sat on the closet floor, tired from all that had happened with Matt, tired of resisting how much she felt for Lennox. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin there, more relaxed than she had felt in days, rooted to the floor, grounded.

There were few shoes in the closet: old hiking boots, sneakers, a pair of black dress shoes that appeared new. June picked up the boots and put them on, giggling at their sheer size. Then she noticed a box, tucked in the back of the closet. She reached for it. Opened it.

She was surprised to find pictures. Tons and tons of pictures. At the very top of the stack was a photo of the family—Amelia, Lennox, and their parents—standing in front of the Nestled Inn, the building in better shape back then. Lennox was young, maybe ten or eleven, and dressed in a kilt that matched his father’s. Amelia, all legs even as a child, had short hair. Mother and daughter wore floral dresses and hats. The men had serious faces, but it was as if Lennox and his father were forcing their seriousness, pressing their lips when they really wanted to bust up laughing. June flipped the photo over: 7/15/88 Hamish’s Wedding Day.

June began frantically flipping through the photos. Lennox playing rugby, and Amelia in a school uniform, looking disgruntled as ever; their parents kissing while the kids looked on, horrified. Family vacations to the beach; Christmases in matching pajamas. Lennox and his dad fishing, hiking, and skiing, the father’s arm lovingly wrapped around his son in each. Amelia up to her elbows in flour, baking with her mother; the two of them at a Madonna concert dressed like the singer, in lace and leather. The whole family at a soccer game, decked head to toe in Scotland gear. Lennox’s father asleep on the couch, with his newborn son resting on his chest. Their mother pushing Amelia in a stroller, with Lennox alongside on a bike. Both kids hanging off their father as if he were a jungle gym. Baby pictures. It was a reel of the Gordons’ life together. So many beautiful shots, so many beautiful memories, all tucked in the back of a closet, like they had never existed.

A noise downstairs startled June from her snooping. She dropped the pictures into the box and shoved it back into the shadows of the closet. Then she stood, listening to footsteps downstairs.