Coming Home(191)

“You’re welcome.”

They finished their meal, and as they hugged their good-byes in the parking lot of the restaurant, Leah had never felt closer to her.

As soon as she was inside her car, she rummaged through her purse and pulled out her phone before hitting the speed dial for Catherine.

After a few rings, her soft, raspy voice came through the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me,” Leah said as she started the car.

“Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing today?”

“I’m good. About a six today. You?”

“Hmm,” she hummed. “Maybe a five.”

“You should have a few glasses of wine,” Leah suggested. “That’s always good to add a point or two.”

Catherine chuckled.

They spoke on the phone two or three times a week, and early on they’d come up with the number system to let each other know what kind of day they were having. Ten meant they were feeling great, and one was total meltdown.

“What time will you be here on Saturday?” Catherine asked.

“Probably around four or five? Depends on if they’re running things on time over there,” she said, pulling out of her parking space. It had become an unspoken tradition that after visiting Danny on her Saturdays, Leah would stop off at Catherine’s on the way home and have dinner with her.

“Okay. How does eggplant rollantini sound for dinner?”

“Delicious,” she said, “but you know you don’t have to cook for me.”

“Leah, old Italian ladies live to feed people. Don’t take that away from me.”

She laughed as she merged onto the highway. “Okay, you win.”

“Alright sweetheart. I don’t want you to get a ticket for being on the phone with me while you’re driving. Thank you for checking in, and I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Okay. Call me before then if you drop below a five.”

“I will. Bye now.”

“Bye,” Leah said before she cleared the screen, tossing the phone onto her passenger seat.

And then she reached to turn the radio off, allowing the silence to fill the car.

For whatever reason she just felt like thinking today.

She spent so much of her time avoiding it; her life had become heavily rooted in routine over the last few months, and she rarely allowed herself a reprieve from that. Consistency was comforting these days; she needed it like she needed air.

But even the routines that she took solace in were carried out with an air of detachment. It was like when she used to run on the treadmill for conditioning during field hockey season; whenever Leah would look down at the display and realize she still had a ways to go, she would try to separate her mind from her body, pretending it wasn’t her feeling the pain in her legs, the ache in her side, the burning in her throat. And that’s what most of her days were like now: disengaging herself from really feeling anything until the clock on the display ticked down to zero.

Until he was next to her again.

One thing she had going for her was her profession. There was no way she could mope or succumb to any kind of sadness when she had one hundred different personalities in and out of her room all day, with a hundred different questions and a hundred different needs. She had always loved her job, but now she let teaching absolutely consume her. She had to.

Robyn and Holly had been wonderful, of course. Always finding a way to check in or include her, always acting like everything was normal around her, just like she’d asked them to.