Chapter 39 #2
Once home and armed with flashlights to navigate around the debris, we head inside, where it’s as cold as the fall-chilled night and as dark as a starless sky.
There is no digital clock to serve as a night-light and no flashes emanating from electronics.
But as Caleb escorts Abby and Houdini to bed and inspects her room to ensure everything is secure, I notice one lone bar on my cell, and I step onto the porch to call home.
“Service is still spotty, but I wanted you to know I made it. Everyone’s safe. And I’m helping with the emergency response. But I’ll hurry home as soon as I can.”
Dad clears his throat, and there’s a long stretch of silence.
I’m unsure whether it’s the service or hesitation.
“No, you won’t.” His voice crackles through the line, but I fill in the blanks with context clues, straining to hear.
“If it’s safe, you stay there as long as you need or want.
Neither your mother nor I want you to sacrifice for us. That’s our job, not yours.”
“Dad, I’m not abandoning you guys. I’ll figure out how to juggle and visit here more often—”
“We’ll talk about this more later. But your mother and I spoke, and we’ve decided that I should be her primary caretaker.”
I’m too tired for this conversation—too bone tired—or maybe I’m just tired enough, because I don’t have it in me to argue before he continues, “I made a promise to her in sickness and in health. Just because that promise was interrupted doesn’t mean I don’t want to hold up my end of the bargain.
I never stopped loving her, Edie. Never.
And maybe that makes me a fool. But I missed twenty years. I don’t want to miss any more.”
His offer is tempting, but I can’t leave Mom, not full-time anyway. Perhaps Dad and I can share the responsibility, allowing me to start the future I put on hold months ago.
“Eden?” Caleb pokes his head out of the house.
“Dad, I love you. I’ll try you tomorrow if service—” But the line is dead, or maybe it’s my battery. Either way, I tuck my phone in my pocket, accept Caleb’s outstretched hand, and follow him inside.
We clear a path to the bedroom, where we take turns getting ready in the blinding beams of a flashlight.
When we crawl under the covers in the pitch black, my body is still clinging to the cold, and Caleb wraps his limbs around me until I succumb in one last full-body shudder.
The relief of him—his existence, his safety, his forgiveness—floods my bloodstream as its own heat source, and I melt against the mattress and his body.
“I’m not dreaming, am I?” Caleb yawns. “I’ve dreamed you here every night since you left.”
“Only if I’m dreaming, too.” I sigh against his neck and tug him closer as gratitude and guilt compete for resonance as I hold him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
“You’re here now.”
“And I’m not going anywhere.”
“When you said you felt the earthquake, you meant you heard about it and felt it, like, metaphorically, right?”
“Sure.” When you encounter something that you can’t explain, there’s no use trying.
“Eden,” he admonishes. Even a drained and weary Caleb won’t let me get away with anything.
“I can’t explain it, Caleb. I received the alert on my phone, but I could have sworn the earthquake was happening in San Francisco.
It woke me from a dead sleep, and I ran to check on my mom and called my dad.
He was the one who told me it happened here, and I didn’t believe him until I saw it online. ”
Caleb is quiet for a long time, and I wonder if he’s finally given in to the forces of exhaustion before he tries, “Maybe you heard the alert and dreamed the earthquake before you were fully conscious?”
“Sure,” I say again. “Or maybe Sonny was right: Grand Trees is magic and stays with you after you leave.”
He chuckles.
“What?” I ask, shifting to catch his form in shadow. Even in darkness, his is my favorite face.
“That night—at your place? When I was about to leave? Cassie whispered something in my ear. It felt threatening at the time, but now seems prophetic.”
That sounds like Cassie. Sometimes terrifying, but always right.
“What did she say?”
He leans in and catches my bottom lip between his, and I’m careful not to bump his injured nose, but even this tentative kiss ignites sparks as our mouths connect. “She said, ‘Don’t give up on her. It may take an act of God to change her mind if you leave without a fight.’”
I release a surprised laugh. “Wow. That girl does have a flair for the dramatic.”
“She wasn’t wrong, though.” Caleb deepens the kiss. It’s easy to forget everything when his mouth is on mine. But I need him to know I’m not here by happenstance. I would have come to him even if our world hadn’t tipped like a snow globe.
“Maybe it sped up my choice,” I say when he pulls back enough for my brain to restart.
I slide my hand to his jaw and still him.
“But it didn’t make it for me. I was figuring it out and coming to my senses anyway.
I chose you, Caleb, and I’ll keep choosing you.
Maybe the conditions don’t have to be perfect for us to be perfect.
If we have each other, that’s more than enough luck for one lifetime. ”
He hums, and I feel the vibration in my core. “You and me,” he says. “That’s the easy part. But what about everything else? What happens next?”
I find his hand in the dark and lace my fingers in his. “I guess we’ll have to improvise.”