Chapter 27
On the last morning of their vacation, or respite, or interlude—whatever they were calling this two-week marvel—Harrison was acutely aware that neither one of them mentioned the inevitable parting.
He believed that they were so compatible that they both knew, instinctively, that the other would not appreciate a tearful goodbye.
Eight days to Christmas. He was planning on flying to Scotland a couple of days before. What else was he going to do? He had no family to go to. No place he needed to be. If he thought about it, he could get maudlin. And at the very least, Clay and his girlfriend would be there.
Amy was folding up her easel and had a roll of wrap for her paintings.
They were lined up against the wall, one after the other, as if she’d stood back to admire them at some point.
Harrison certainly admired them—the free-spirited Bossy Posse quintet, and of course the first one, the painting of the lake.
He unthinkingly reached out to touch it.
“That one doesn’t quite go with the rest of them, does it?” Amy asked, cocking her head to one side as she studied it.
“I suppose you could paint the Posse onto the distant shore.”
She laughed. “This painting should be a lesson to me—I should not paint what I think others want me to paint. I should only paint what is authentic to me.”
“Who wanted you to paint this?”
“No one said it explicitly, but that was my interpretation after my visit to the gallery. Something Christmas-y. Something a tourist would want. Something commercial, et cetera.”
“Well, I love it,” he said. “I loved it the first moment I saw it.”
Amy smiled up at him. “Really? Do you want it?”
He looked at her. “Seriously?”
“Of course. I’ll ship it to you.”
“I want it.” Harrison looked at the painting again. “It reminds me of these two weeks.”
She was silent for a moment. She slipped her hand around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. She dug her phone out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Type in your address, will you? I’ll send it home to you.”
He took the phone, but he hesitated. All he had was the condo. That lonely box, identical to hundreds of other boxes in that building. Hardly a home. But he added his address to her phone.
They didn’t say more about the two weeks—or the end of them—as they prepared to vacate the cabin.
Harrison loaded her minivan with the things they’d managed to drag along with them.
The day was gray and cold, and another, stronger cold front was coming through next week, according to the guy at Bellah’s.
“Haven’t had two big snows in December since the twenties,” he’d informed Harrison.
“Might bring ice, too,” he’d said as he’d sipped from a banged-up tumbler of coffee.
“Might stick through Christmas. Now’s a good time to get out. ”
Was it? Harrison still felt at odds with his decision to go back on tour.
Clay had become a nuisance, and he’d finally had to give him an answer or risk losing all his endorsements and his manager.
His decision seemed the least bad of his options.
The least risky. For now. But he felt good, he was hitting the ball well.
The only thing missing was that fire in his belly.
He felt confident he would get it back the first time he stepped up to the number one tee in a tournament.
Amy came outside with Duchess’s dog bed tucked up under her arm. “Have you seen my blind dog? Should I be worried she dove off a cliff?”
“We both know the old girl is not inclined to walk that far. She’s right over there.” He pointed to a grassy patch just below the porch. Duchess was stretched out on her side. “We should all be more like Duchess and take each day as it comes.”
“And take naps,” Amy said.
“And never miss a meal,” Harrison added.
“And ask for belly rubs and bedtime treats.” She giggled.
The sound of a car—wait, make that two—caught their attention before they could go down the rabbit hole of how great it was to be a dog, and they both turned just as Duchess jumped up and started to bark in the wrong direction.
An SUV and a minivan barreled up the drive, crowding in behind Amy’s car.
The minivan, with the tinsel-coated longhorn steer antlers on the front bumper, got there first. The SUV was a run-of-the-mill red one.
“Is that Ryan?” Amy asked, shielding her eyes with her hand.
“Your ex?” Harrison asked. He knew there would be visitors, but he didn’t know about Ryan.
The doors of the vehicles opened and people began to spill out.
The Bossy Posse, in matching sweatshirts that read, Still Merry and Bright After All These Years.
Hillary, in a red sweatshirt that matched the color of the other ones but was missing the caption.
Amy’s father and her brother, and two boys who had to be Amy’s kids—the smaller one raced for her and threw his arms around her waist so violently that it almost knocked her over.
The taller, lankier one sort of loped over, his long, dark hair covering his eyes, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his cargo pants.
Harrison marveled that he could see where he was going.
Then there was the man who eyed Harrison coolly.
“What is going on?” Amy cried, looking around at them all. “Did someone die?”
“Die? Of course not! Would I be wearing this if someone died?” Barb asked.
“Not a fair question, Mom. You once told me my dog died with a handful of balloons and T-shirt that said, ‘I refuse to tolerate lactose.’ ”
“You came home early that day, Amy. I wasn’t prepared.”
“Here, Barb,” said Carol, and handed a roll of butcher paper to Barb. She began to unroll it.
“Mom, you’ve got it upside down,” Kevin said.
Barb looked down.
“I’ve got it. Let’s just switch places,” said June. She tried to walk to the other side of Barb; that confused them even more.
“Mommommommom, are you coming home now?” the boy with the death grip on Amy asked.
“Soon, Ethan.” She ran her hand over his honey-colored mop of hair and smiled.
“Good, because I don’t want to live with Dad,” the boy said. “He likes Jonah better than me.”
“That’s not true,” Amy said, but the taller kid said, “I kinda think it is. Who wouldn’t? Mom, can I have fifty bucks?”
Amy smiled up at the giant boy. “Hello, Jonah. Maybe we start with a greeting before you start asking for money.”
“Sorry. Hello. Can I have fifty bucks?”
But Amy wasn’t listening. She was leaning to one side to look around her son. “Hold on—your grandma is trying to do something and she’s got it wrong.”
“How do I have it wrong?” Barb demanded.
Amy let go of her younger son and stepped forward. “The sign is upside down, Mom. June, bring your side over here, and, Melissa, if you could help them turn it over? And, Carol—trade places with Mom.”
The women did as Amy asked, then looked down at the sign. “That’s better,” Amy’s dad said.
“I just need fifty for this cool new game,” her older son said. “I’ve saved the rest from my allowance.”
But Amy put her hand on his chest. She was frowning at the sign. It said We’re Sorry Amy and had been decorated with Christmas trees and candy canes. In one corner, there looked to be a failed attempt at a pair of ice skates.
“Why does that sign say that?” Amy asked. “Sorry for what?”
“For invading your space,” Barb said. She glanced at the rest of the Posse. “We should have let you have it. We should have let you be the person you needed to be these last several days. So you could pursue your dreams.”
Amy stared at her mother, her expression full shock. “Are you…are you apologizing?”
“Well, obviously,” Barb said. “Look at the sign.”
Amy blinked. She turned to look at Harrison. “Did you have something to do with this?”
How on earth had she guessed that? “I, ah…I guess a little? We, ummm…talked about it.” He hadn’t meant it to be a production.
But when he’d stopped by this week to grab a few things, the ladies had assailed him, wanting to know why Amy couldn’t wait to escape them.
So he’d told them. He’d said simply that she was still a person of dreams and aspirations, and she had this chance, and it wasn’t supposed to be a family affair.
That dreams and aspirations rarely are. When June asked him what they should have done, having been offered the use of the same house, Harrison said they ought to have given her a little room. “She was here first,” he’d said.
“Oh my God,” Barb had said, and had clapped her forehead into her palm. “I’m so stupid. I should have realized.”
He had thought at the time it was terribly ironic that she could hear that from him, but not when her own daughter had said it repeatedly. Now, she said, “We’re really sorry we didn’t understand how important this time was for you, honey.”
“I did,” her ex piped up. “I understood.”
“And you’ll get your father-of-the-year trophy later,” June said.
“I understood, Mom,” said Jonah. “Should I go get your purse?”
“Not now, Jonah,” Amy said kindly.
“Mom, who is he?” the younger one asked, and pointed to Harrison.
“I’d like to know the same,” her ex said.
“Everyone,” Amy said firmly. “This is Harrison Neely. Okay? Harrison, my family, most of whom you’ve met. My sons, Ethan and Jonah. My ex-husband, Ryan. Now can we get back to me trying to understand what’s going on here?”
“We’re apologizing,” Barb said again. “We are admitting you were right. I hope you accept it.”
Amy looked so stunned that Harrison felt he had to intervene. “Amy,” he said, and took her by the elbow, drawing her aside. “You’re lucky you have them, you know.”
“Who, exactly?”
“Your family.”
“Oh. The whole lot.” Amy risked a glance at them all staring back at her. “Of course I am. I love my family, I just…”
“Can’t escape them.”
“I mean…” She sheepishly glanced back at them. “Obviously. That has been the staycation theme, hasn’t it?”
“Maybe, if you set some boundaries, and your family agreed to them, you could have the best of both worlds? Just an idea, but…a family side and a creative side? Because I think both are important to you. But…without this family, I think it would be a pretty lonely existence in this world. I know the art is important to you. But I also know that life can be hard, and what you have here is real. You’re lucky. ”
“Everything I have here is real,” she said, her eyes locked on his.
His heart skipped. It had been doing that a lot lately, every time he looked in her eyes. He was going to miss this.
“Hel-lo-oh. We’re over here.” Ryan had appeared, interrupting their conversation.
“Care to join us?” Amy’s eyes were still on Harrison.
Her mouth twitched up in a wry smile. So did his.
They truly did get one another. “Sure,” she said, and turned to face her family.
She thanked the Posse for their apology and said it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be.
Barb took slight offense to that, but for the most part, she was pleased that Amy accepted her apology.
It was chaos, the rest of it, as they packed things up.
Some were returning to the house, the boys wanting to swim in a heated pool.
Some were headed back to Willow Valley, including the ex, Amy’s father, and Kevin.
It seemed to take forever, but finally, the minivan and SUV were headed back down the drive, leaving Amy, Harrison, and Duchess.
Amy put Duchess in her minivan, then turned to Harrison. She shoved her hands in her pockets and smiled sadly. “So…I guess after you’ve patched things up between me and my family—and thank you for that, by the way—that this is it?”
“This is it for now,” Harrison insisted. But even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they probably weren’t true.
“Do you really believe that?” she asked, reading his mind—and how did she do that?
“Wow,” he said, chuckling. “We can’t be together, Amy. We seem to have one brain between us and that’s not enough for two geniuses.”
She laughed and slid her arms around his waist. “Do you promise you’ll call?”
“Is every day too often?”
“It’s hardly enough.” Tears appeared in her eyes, and she cursed softly under her breath. “I told myself I wouldn’t do this. I’m a grown-up. I get it. Life happens and never turns out like we thought. But I’m really going to miss you, H.”
He smoothed her hair back with his palm. “I’m going to miss you, too. So much.”
“Still…why would the universe allow you to meet someone who could really be the one, but in the middle of a life? Is it punking us?”
“I have wondered the same damn thing.”
She pressed her forehead to his chest. “Where do you go from here?”
“Miami. Pack up a few things and head to Scotland. Then after that, to California for a tournament. Who knows, maybe even see my parents. What about you?”
“Big plans,” she said. “Back to work on Monday. I’ll do some last-minute shopping for stocking stuffers before I attack what I am sure is mountains of laundry. Take my paintings over to the gallery town hall for the contest. And that’s all before I clean the bathrooms.”
He kissed her temple. “Stop it. You’re turning me on.” He hugged her tightly to him. She hugged him back. He could feel her shaking slightly, and tightened his grip of her. “It’s okay, Amy,” he murmured into her hair.
“It’s not okay.”
“It’s not okay, but we’ll live, I think.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“You better live. You better be alive when I come to visit you.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
He slipped his hand under her chin and lifted her face. “Promise me you’ll be alive.”
“Fine,” she said tartly. “I promise I’ll be alive if you promise you’ll come visit.”
“I promise.” He kissed her. He kissed her for a long time, with all the tenderness he felt. When he finally let her go, he could feel a universe empty out of him. He could feel the cold front approaching from Canada, bringing the heaviness of snow. He could feel how empty and sullen he was.
And later, when he drove away from the lake, he could feel true, bitter grief start to well in him, clogging his throat, forcing him to wipe his eyes more than once. Why would the universe allow this to happen? It defied all logic.