Chapter 29
T he following few weeks were peaceful, gentle, healing , and not merely for Celeste. Sam was changing, too. For a few days after Esther and Leo left, he had slept. And slept. And slept. It was as if now that he’d finally found a place to rest, all the years of running finally caught up. No more subterfuge, no more pretending to be the bad guy when what he secretly wanted was to be good.
Celeste had already passed through the sleeping phase. While Sam napped, she organized the kitchen, arranging things where she could find them and writing them down when she had no idea what they were. Those items she began stacking in a corner of the kitchen. By the time she was finished arranging, the stack was massive. She brought her laptop to the kitchen and looked up each item, labeling it with its proper name and what it was used for as she went along—sifter, egg beater, egg separator, strawberry huller. The items had clearly been purchased before modern technology, but Celeste kept them regardless. She liked that they were old fashioned.
On one of her organizing forays, she found a stack of yellowed cookbooks, decades old. Some of them were too outdated to be of use—what was aspic, and why had people ever thought it was a good idea to eat it? Three of the cookbooks proved both promising and timeless. She spent the next few days poring over Betty Crocker, Fanny Farmer, and The Joy of Cooking, once again pausing to write down and lookup terms she didn’t know. It was laborious and she was putting in more effort than she’d ever given schoolwork. But in the end she had earmarked a stack of basic recipes to try.
This time she approached the process differently, or at least with a different attitude. It didn’t have to be perfect and probably wouldn’t be, given her lack of experience. She only had to try, and if she failed she would try again. Somehow giving herself permission to fail made her succeed, or perhaps it was because she changed her definition of success. Maybe having the courage to try counted as success.
In any case, she and Sam dined on beef stew, chicken kiev, and salmon chowder that were at the very least edible and, some lesser critics might say, almost good.
The parts for Celeste’s equipment came in and Jack spent a few days working in the barn, getting everything in working order. Celeste paced outside the barn on those days, feeling like a 1950’s father-to-be in a hospital waiting room. What if he couldn’t get them working? Worse, what if he could ? Then what? What about the trees?
That answer began to sort itself, too, when Esther forwarded her father’s contact information, along with the number for the local state extension agent. With shaking hands, Celeste emailed Esther’s father and called the extension agent. He contacted an arborist and they set up an appointment to inspect her trees.
I might actually be doing this, Celeste thought, staring dazedly into space.
Sam walked by the room, caught sight of her zombielike visage, picked her up, and sat down with her in his lap. “Why are you in a panic spiral?”
“I’m just sitting here. How can you tell I’m in a panic spiral?” she asked.
“Because you’re just sitting here. You’re almost never not doing something. You only freeze when you’re too stressed to function.”
“Huh,” she said, regarding him. She hadn’t realized that about herself until he said so, but now she saw it. She functioned well under physical pressure, but too much emotional stress and she shut down. “I guess I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the orchard.”
“Why? It seems like things are going well. Jack has almost all the equipment up, the tree guys are coming, and Esther’s dad sent you that list of recommended reading,” he said.
“It’s a lot of things,” she said.
“But you’re Celeste. You can do anything,” he said with so much confidence she might have believed him, minus all the hidden things she knew that he wasn’t privy to.
“I can’t, though,” she said. She could feel herself curling inward, gripping his shirt in both hands like a lifeline as she shrank.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Things don’t work out. A lot. Most of the time, actually.”
“How so?” he asked with forced casualness. He had been trying not to pressure her to tell him things, personal things about her life. But it was always there between them, a gnawing tension and awareness that she only allowed him to know the most surface information. Adding to Celeste’s growing guilt and discomfort was the fact that some of the things he thought he knew weren’t even true.
“Nothing. I’m rambling.”
“Celeste,” he said, making her name a tired sigh.
She froze. She knew that tone, understood the exasperation and pending end of his patience. Here it comes. “What?”
He didn’t respond for several agonizing beats. “Nothing. Is it all right if I take the car to town? I’m expecting a few things.”
“Yes, of course,” Celeste said. She started to ease away, but he held her firm, giving her a squeeze.
“I want to love you. I wish you would let me.” He kissed her forehead, grabbed the keys by the door, and then he was gone.
Celeste meandered to the bookshelf, pulled out her journal, and flipped through it. She felt a sense of urgency, mingled with a large dash of helplessness. She so badly wanted to unburden herself, to write down everything that had gone wrong in her life and find a way to fix it. She felt desperate for a rescue from the quagmire she’d created, the secretive cage of self-protection. The only way that made sense was to write it all down, fix it, and then emerge into the world healed and whole. But what if that was wrong? Or, worse, what if it was right and it didn’t work? What if she wrote her entire life story and she was still as broken as before she started?
She sank to the floor, book in hand, and began reading, page by page, line by line.
S am drove to town distracted and miserable. There was a not so small part of him that was annoyed with himself more than with Celeste. Why couldn’t he be happy with things the way they were? Why couldn’t he settle for the status quo? He and Celeste had fallen into a happy routine. He was certain he loved her, and he thought maybe she loved him, too. Why couldn’t what they already had be enough?
Because it isn’t, that annoyingly insistent little voice reminded him. He didn’t want part of Celeste; he wanted all of her, even the ugly inaccessible parts she tried to keep hidden. It was growing harder not to be hurt by her refusal to tell him, especially when he saw her writing in her journal night after night. He had started to become jealous of a notebook, but how could he help it? The book got all her secrets while Sam sat by and tried to pretend the continued rejection didn’t sting.
He pushed aside his sadness in favor of being social. Paradise had come to mean a great deal to him, along with its inhabitants. He felt well on the way to being friends with several of them, felt an unexpected sense of belonging in the last place he would have imagined. He was half Jordanian, half Saudi, an American citizen turned double agent, former arms dealer, reformed terrorist, and yet he felt like a local. People were excited to see him whenever he arrived in town. They treated him like a celebrity, more so because he was part of Celeste’s orchard. It became clear to him very quickly that the town wanted her to succeed in remaking it.
He paused to have four conversations before he could reach the door of the post office. Once inside, he paused and sniffed. Smells like maple, he thought. Jody, the postmaster, hastily shoved something back inside a box and closed it before brushing her hands together and smiling at Sam.
“You got some boxes.”
“Excellent,” he replied.
“From big cities. New York, Washington, Boston,” she continued, probing in her not-so-subtle way.
“Yes, I needed some things. Clothes and such.” He’d been slowly restocking his life, first with toiletries, underwear and socks, then with actual clothing, a laptop, and phone. He was beginning to feel not only normal, but settled , another unexpected development. As a double agent, he imagined a time when he would have to flee for his life. He pictured himself wandering for years, possibly for the rest of his life, never feeling at peace, never feeling at home. But Celeste was right, this was his home. More than that, he was beginning to realize she was his home. If he had to leave Paradise and start over somewhere else, he would be okay, as long as she went with him. She had a way of curling into him, balancing his weaknesses, easing into his soft spots with tender comfort. He was finding healing through her gentle attention and affection. She gave him space, let him be, offered silent support, didn’t judge his past, in short acted like a true friend. His only regret was that she wouldn’t open up and let him do the same for her.
Jody nodded. “Right. I keep searching for a little box. Ring size, you know? We’re all hoping.” She held both hands up to show him both sets of crossed fingers.
Sam laughed. This was his first full conversation with the woman, and yet she felt comfortable probing into his marriage plans with Celeste. But that was the way in Paradise, he was learning. Each person’s life wasn’t solely his own. The town viewed itself as a collective, but not in a communist way. More like a family. It was mind boggling, but also sort of wonderful, especially for someone like him who had been so long without family.
“You’ll be the first to know.” He said it in a joking way, but she responded with a sincere nod.
“You bet I will,” she said, tapping the mail slot behind her.
Mental note, never order jewelry through the mail here.
He thanked Jody, headed back to his truck, and was waylaid by Fletcher Reed. Unlike Celeste, who thought the man was always two seconds away from donning feathers and declaring himself a chicken or something similarly insane, Sam found him amusing. So he fancied himself famous. What was the harm? He seemed nice enough.
“How’s it going?” Fletcher asked.
“It’s…” Sam began and then somehow ran out of steam before he could finish the lie. “Okay,” he said at last.
Fletcher glanced at his watch. “Wanna grab a coffee?”
“Yes,” Sam said because the alternative was going back home and he hadn’t worked through enough of his feelings to face Celeste yet.
“So what’s up?” Fletcher asked as soon as they were seated in the diner. Avery brought coffee, followed by pie delivered with a breathless smile by her three year old son.
Sam appreciated that they were cutting to the chase, but he wasn’t sure where to begin. Without a doubt he knew Celeste wouldn’t want him to spill any of her information or their private issues. On the other hand, how was he ever supposed to fix what he couldn’t figure out?
“How did you and Chloe meet?” Chloe was quiet, a bit shy, sharp contrast to her gregarious and outgoing husband.
Fletcher gave him a wry smile and shook his head. “You really don’t know. Amazing. You and Celeste are meant to be. To answer your question, we met as kids and grew up together. It was not love at first sight. We’re opposites in almost every way. It took a while for that to actually attract. We reconnected after she came to Paradise. I fell in love, both with her and the town.”
Sam remained quietly thoughtful, breaking off little pieces of his pie without actually eating them.
“Was there a reason you asked? Is everything okay with you and Celeste?”
“I wish I knew,” Sam said, tossing aside his fork. “Celeste is the most incredible person I have ever met. She works harder than anyone I’ve ever known. The woman never stops. It’s as if retirement gave her a blank slate she feels she has to fill with a list of accomplishments.” He thought of yesterday, when Celeste went to her first story time at the library, nervous and excited and trying not to be. When she saw Celeste checking out so many picture books, the librarian suggested she join the weekly kids’ circle. Celeste had been willing to undergo the humiliation of being the only non-parent there, merely because she wanted to begin again, to learn to appreciate books from the ground up, starting with children’s stories. Some days Sam loved her so much he felt like his heart couldn’t take any more.
“Does that bother you?” Fletcher asked. “Her attempts to accomplish things?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. They felt gritty, despite the fact that he finally felt caught up on sleep for the first time in a decade. That was another great thing about Celeste: she had let him sleep, hadn’t bugged him or badgered him or guilted him for being so unproductive. She was so caring, so kind, and she didn’t even realize. “I guess I want to know why she’s a blank slate. I want to know everything, and she won’t let me in. I don’t know how to show her that she can trust me, that all I want is to love her.”
Now it was Fletcher’s turn to be thoughtfully silent as he stared at his pie. “Maybe you can’t.”
Sam blinked at him. “You mean give up?”
“In a manner of speaking. Give up trying to fix her. Give her space and time to come to her own realizations. If you manhandle her into opening up before she’s ready, it will make things worse. You might damage her further; she might not forgive you.”
Sam felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and suddenly regretted the pie. “I don’t want to hurt her, to damage her,” he exclaimed, then lowered his voice when a few people darted him looks.
“Do you want to fix her?” Fletcher asked.
“Of course I do,” Sam said, tossing his arms wide in frustration.
Fletcher shook his head. “You can’t.”
They stared at each other. Sam’s frustration was palpable. Fletcher seemed to be letting the words sit for a while so Sam could soak them in before he continued. “You can’t fix another human being. You can only love them. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you’re willing to love her as she is, secretive and closed off, or if you can’t. If you need her to open up and let you in or it’s a deal breaker, so be it. There’s no shame in having boundaries and declaring them, as long as you do it with integrity. If you’re willing to take her as is, then you work on yourself, on your own longsuffering patience.”
“Are you some kind of counselor or psychiatrist?” Sam asked.
“Nope. I’m a messed up guy who’s trying to do better for his family. And I learned a lot of things the hard way, this lesson specifically. Chloe had some issues, stemming from our childhood. I had to give her time and space, had to let her come to me in her own way.”
“It sounds easy in theory, but we live in the same house, see each other all day every day. I tell myself I’m going to let it go, and then I’m confronted with the reality of how little she lets me in, and I get frustrated.”
“Maybe you need some actual physical space,” Fletcher suggested.
Sam sighed and rested his fist in his hand. He didn’t want to leave Celeste, not even for a moment. The thought of being apart hurt so deeply it erased all doubt about his feelings for her. Also, “I have nowhere else to go.”
Fletcher leaned forward with a calculating smile. “I can fix that.”
C eleste felt like she hadn’t made any headway whatsoever. By the time Sam returned several hours later, she still sat on the floor clutching her journal. And she still didn’t know how to be what he wanted her to be, to do what he wanted her to do.
He entered quietly and sat silently beside her, reaching out a hand to touch her temple. “Hi.”
“Hello,” she said.
“I was thinking maybe I would go away for a while,” he said.
“Oh. Where?”
“Fletcher invited me to stay at his guest house for a while.”
“Fletcher has a guest house?” she asked.
“Apparently.”
“You’re not afraid it might be a secret lair or dungeon where he’s going to make crazy person paraphernalia from your hair and teeth?” she said.
He laughed and shook his head. “No. Whatever he is, I think he’s harmless.”
“Oh.”
They sat in heavy silence a while. Celeste’s nose felt hot. At first she thought maybe she was getting sick, and then she realized the truth was worse: she was about to cry. She hadn’t cried since…she couldn’t remember the last time she cried. She sucked a shaky breath, trying to press back the pain, press back everything.
“Celeste,” Sam said, making her name a question.
She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to block him out, trying to block out everything.
“Your phone is ringing,” Sam said gently, breaching her apparent breakdown.
Her eyes flapped open. She reached for her phone and held it to her ear. “We have a problem,” The Colonel said, and then a gunshot rang out