CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
A Letter From Farther North
The phone lines came back thoroughly two days after the roads cleared, and it was Maggie's voice, when it at last crackled through on our old kitchen line one quiet evening, that made me set down the dish I was drying and sit straight down at the table, my entire chest gone suddenly, gladly tight.
"Josie," she said, and I could hear, even through the imperfect connection, that she was smiling.
"I've been trying you for a week. I heard about the storm on the radio up here and about lost my mind with worry, not knowing if the lines were down because of weather or because some part of it worse had happened. "
"Just weather," I told her, laughing despite the tears that had come rushing up unexpectedly at the mere sound of her. "The very worst kind, honestly, but just weather. How's Juno? How are you?"
There was a small pause, the certain thoughtful pause I remembered from every letter she'd sent since leaving, and then her voice came back, steadier and warmer than I remembered it sounding in a long while.
"We're good, Josie. Really good, actually.
Better than I think either of us expected to be, this many months in.
" Another pause, softer this time. "Juno wrote me something last week.
A real letter, longer than she's managed since everything happened, about missing the lake, missing Pepper, even missing Theo's endless detective questions, if you can believe that.
I think, whatever's still healing between us, it's healing properly, slow as it's going.
I think we're actually going to be all right, eventually. "
"I never doubted it," I told her, meaning it totally. "Not for a single minute."
"You always were the stubborn optimist of this family," Maggie said, fond, and I heard something loosen in her voice that hadn't been there in a very long while.
"Tell Theo I got his last letter, the one all about his detective notebook and everything he's helped solve.
Tell him I'm awfully proud of him, and that I mean to write him back fully, soon as I've got the words sorted out right. "
"I'll tell him," I promised. "He'll be thrilled. He still asks after you both, you know. Regular as clockwork."
"I know," Maggie said, hushed. "I think that's part of what's helping, honestly. Knowing there's still a whole family back there, holding a place open for us, however slow we're taking getting back to it properly."
We talked a while longer, about small, ordinary things mostly, the particular gentle catching up of two people who loved each other across a distance neither had chosen but both were learning, slowly, to bridge truly, and when we finally said our goodbyes, promising letters soon and a visit once the weather allowed it, I sat a long while at the kitchen table afterward, the receiver still warm in my hand, feeling a piece of it quiet and hopeful settle through me.
Theo, it turned out, had been listening from the hallway the entire time, and came skidding into the kitchen the moment I hung up, breathless with hope.
"Was that Aunt Maggie? Is Juno all right?
Did you tell them about the raccoon eating the cinnamon roll?
That's the best part, they should definitely know about that part. "
"I didn't quite get to the raccoon," I admitted, laughing, pulling him into a hug he only halfheartedly resisted. "But I'll make sure it's in the next letter, first thing, I promise. Your aunt sends her love, and says she's proud of your detective notebook."
"She always says that," Theo said, pleased despite trying to sound unimpressed by it. "I'm going to write her back tonight. I have a lot to tell her. The full case, probably, if she wants all of it."
"I imagine she'll want all of it," I told him, smiling. "She always has."
"Good call?" Sam asked, coming in from checking the woodpile, snow still dusting his shoulders.
"A good call," I confirmed, smiling despite the tears still standing in my eyes. "They're healing, Sam. Slow, same as always, but properly, this time. Juno wrote her a real letter. I think that means more than either of them are probably letting themselves admit yet."
"Healing usually does happen slow," Sam said, settling beside me, pulling me gently against his side. "The real kind, anyway. I've never known it to happen any other way, not with anything that matters."
"I keep wanting to fix it faster," I admitted. "The way I wanted to fix Idella's case faster, honestly, before I understood some things simply take the time they take, and rushing them mostly just breaks something that was already trying its best to mend thoroughly."
"You're learning patience," Sam said, dry, though I heard the fondness underneath it. "Slowly. I'd call that real progress, Josie, for a woman who once tried to solve an entire murder investigation in about a week and a half out of sheer stubborn impatience."
"I resent that entirely," I said, laughing properly now, "even though it's completely accurate."
I told Theo the news the next morning, and watched his whole face light up with the specific unguarded joy only a child managed fully, already planning, out loud and at considerable length, everything he meant to write Juno back about, and I thought, watching him, that whatever slow, cautious healing still lay ahead for Maggie and Juno both, they had, at minimum, a complete found family waiting patiently on this end of the letters, ready and glad to keep the place open for however long the mending actually took.
Walt asked after them too, that same evening, settling into his usual chair near the stove with the particular careful casualness I'd learned meant he cared a great deal more than he wanted to let on.
"She sound steady?" he asked. "Maggie, I mean.
Really steady, or just steady enough to get through one phone call without worrying her old mother sick. "
"Really steady, I think," I told him. "As steady as anybody gets, this early into mending something that broke as badly as it did. She laughed a few times, Dad. Real laughing, not the deliberate kind she used to do for our benefit those first months."
"That's some part of it," Walt said, still, nodding slow.
"That's a real something, Josie. I've worried over that girl every single night since she left, and I don't imagine I'll fully stop worrying till she's standing back in this kitchen proper.
But real laughing's a fine place for the worrying to eventually ease up some. "
Marion, passing through with a fresh pot of coffee, paused long enough to add her own two cents, gentle as always.
"Healing rarely announces itself all at once," she said.
"It usually just shows up quiet, in the small things.
A letter that runs a little longer than the last one.
A laugh that comes easier than it used to.
You did right, being glad of the small thing instead of holding out for the whole thing all at once. "
I thought about that a good while after everyone had gone to bed, sitting alone a moment by the dying fire with Pepper's head heavy and warm against my knee, and found myself hoping, fiercely and without much logic behind it, that wherever Maggie and Juno were tonight, up in whatever soft northern town they'd settled into for the winter, they were sitting by some fire of their own, finding, in their own slow, certain way, precisely the same small, real thing I'd been so glad to hear in her voice that afternoon.
A letter arrived from Juno herself a week later, addressed to Theo directly in careful, looping handwriting he'd insisted on opening privately, in his own room, and had come out afterward looking so pleased with himself that I hadn't the heart to press him about its contents beyond what he offered freely.
He read us the last line at supper anyway, unable to hold it in a full evening.
Tell your mom I still think about Wren Lake most days, it said, and tell Pepper I miss her worst of all, which is probably not something a person's supposed to admit about a dog over their own family, but there it is.
"She misses Pepper worst of all," Theo reported, delighted, scratching behind the dog's ears with renewed enthusiasm. "I think that's a very good sign, Mom. People don't miss dogs unless they're getting better."
"I think that might be exactly right," I told him, smiling, and thought that whatever slow, uncertain shape Maggie and Juno's healing was still taking, up there in the quiet north, a letter that could hold both real grief and a small, ordinary joke about a beloved dog seemed, to me, like about as hopeful a sign as any of us had any right to ask for.