Chapter 14
Y vonne smiled, as she took in just this portion of Hathaway House. “I think it’s enough to just accept the fact that you have plans that you need to make and that you have accepted that needs to happen before you worry about more expansion,” she suggested. “There’s plenty of room for people to eat, to meet, to play cards here in this dining room. Nobody looks crowded, and nobody looks as if they’re short on space. If it becomes a problem, Dani should know soon enough.”
“I’m not sure how we’ll handle it at that future point,” he shared, laughing.
She smiled. “The one thing I can count on is you guys figuring it out.”
He looked at her, and the smile fell from his face. “Thank you for all these votes of confidence. You’ve grown so confident in everybody’s ability here.”
“And I think that’s because, although I appreciated everything you guys did for me last time,” she explained, “I’m not sure that I really understood exactly how much you did.”
“And it wasn’t necessary for you to understand, not as the rehab patient here,” he pointed out, with a gentle smile. He made their tea and asked, “Do you need a treat to go with your tea?”
“Treats?” she repeated, waggling her eyebrows. “Are there treats?”
“There are always treats here,” he stated, with a smile.
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Nothing I particularly care for myself, though.”
“I never hardly even see you eating,” she said. “So, for all I know, you have a secret stash in the backroom.”
“I do. Absolutely, I do.” And such a solemness filled his tone that she frowned at him. When he laughed, she added, “Oh, no, that’s not fair to even think that you guys have something even better than what’s displayed out here?”
“How could we possibly?” he protested, chuckling, as he picked up the two cups and carried them outside to the deck, with her rolling along beside him.
“I don’t know about that,” she began. “That has me thinking that there is actually something better, and I,… I know that that’s not really even a thing, is it?”
“No. We share with everybody all the time. If anything, maybe we share too much.”
She laughed and nodded. “And it’s late, so I don’t need food.”
“Good enough, but, you know that if you want it…”
“I do know to ask for it this time around.”
“Good.” Outside, he sat down at the closest table and smiled at her.
She sighed. “It’s a beautiful evening. I’m surprised more people aren’t out here at this hour of the night.”
“Sometimes they are,” he replied, looking around, “but it looks as if we have the place to ourselves right now.”
“And that’s a good thing,” she murmured. He looked over at her with an inquiring mind. She shrugged. “I just want to spend time with you.” It was obvious he didn’t know what to say with that. She smiled. “Fill me in on everything that’s happened while I’ve been gone.”
He burst out laughing. “I’m supposed to fill you in on five years, just like that?”
“I was hoping you would,” she said, with a smile.
“I dunno how to start,” he began. “The days have just gone by, filled with some tears, with some triumphs, with some things that hurt so much that they’re just hard to talk about.”
She nodded at that. “I can probably match you on tales like that too,” she replied. “And we always cry for the failures, but we also always cheer on the successes, right?”
He nodded back. “That’s part of life, isn’t it? Making sure that we have what we need to carry on to the next day,” he murmured. “And it certainly isn’t wrong.”
“No, I can’t imagine anything being wrong about that,” she said. “And, when you think about it,… so much is always going on that you just take it day by day.”
“Agreed.”
“And I,… I should have done more to take things day by day.”
“Ah, don’t even go down that road. Life is like that. We do the best we can. You get up every day, you do your best, and you go to bed that night and hopefully sleep well.” He added, “I saw a video somewhere about a monk, and he said the way to get a good night’s sleep was to sleep on a bed of merit.” She stopped and stared. He shrugged. “It tickled my fancy at the time, and it’s something I’ve never really forgotten.”
“It’s a hard thing to forget,” she agreed. “I have never heard anything like that, but I really like that.”
“When you think about it, we all have that challenge, day in, day out—doing a good job, doing a job that we would be proud of, to do a job of merit,” he explained, with a smile. “And I’ve… It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”
She pondered it for a few moments. “I really like it. I wish I could remember these inspirational words when I get down or depressed, or when it feels as if life is against me.”
“And sometimes that happens for a reason so that you can cope, so that you don’t get so depressed about everything because that onslaught comes sometimes where we’re expecting too much out of ourselves.”
“Sometimes I feel as if that’s every day,” she admitted, eyeing him with a wry look.
He nodded, looped his fingers in hers, and said, “Remember to take it one day at a time.”
“Yeah, but I do like that idea of merit,” she noted. “I just need to remember it when it comes to… I’m very good at forgetting. I start some things, affirmations or what seems to be a good idea at the time, and then I completely forget about it. When I feel as if I’ve lost something special, I turn around and look for what I’ve stopped doing, and then I find that weeks have gone by.”
“It’s not just you either,” Dennis stated. “I think that’s a common problem with a lot of people. So many people leave here with all these intentions of doing really well and yet don’t necessarily follow through,” he shared, with a smile. “We don’t blame them for it, and we certainly can’t blame anybody else. Again, we don’t walk that mile in your shoes.”
“And yet I think one of the things that got me going was the fact that I always felt as if I had to do more.”
“Of course because you always felt that you had to prove yourself.”
She nodded. “Not sure I proved it though,” she admitted, giving him a wry smile.
“Not sure you had to either,” he declared immediately.
She grinned. “That’s what I like about you. You always let me off the hook.”
“If you need to be let off the hook, then let yourself off the hook on your own,” he murmured. “No reason not to.”
“And again, you’re one of those really nice guys.”
He winced. “I heard nice guys finish last, a time or two.”
She nodded. “I imagine you have, and I imagine that in so many ways it felt like that the last time.”
He stared at her. “We don’t need to talk about what happened before.”
“Maybe, and yet in some ways I feel as if I do.”
“Why?” he asked. “You did what you needed to do for you. Was it hard on me? Yes. Did I blame you for it? No.”
“Maybe you should have,” she muttered.
“No, that won’t get us anywhere,” he pointed out, with a gentle smile. “And something I also had to remember was that we did have to work on moving forward ourselves, individually,” he shared. “I couldn’t take that negative reaction in to the other patients here. That would never have done me any good.”
“And I never even think of things like that,” she admitted, “or how, when you get down and depressed, it would make everybody around you down and depressed.”
*
“It’s hard to have that problem and be private here at Hathaway House. Of course when you left—and everybody knew that it didn’t work out between us—that was hard, but it also showed me how much everybody supported me in at least trying.” Her face crumpled. “And I’m not saying that to make you feel bad. Had you been here, you would have been equally supported for your choices.”
She shook her head. “My feeling bad for my actions back then isn’t your problem either,” she murmured. “It just goes to show that I was somebody who needed something else.”
“Exactly. What I don’t know is whether you’re that somebody who still needs something else.” She stared at him, and it was obvious she was trying to work her way through what he was saying.
“So are you questioning if I care?” she asked. “Because I thought I had already expressed that.”
“You did, but I guess I’m asking… And yet it’s not even fair to ask. We should wait until you’re a whole lot better, a whole lot more stable, a whole lot more healed, before we even bring up any of this personal stuff.”
“Maybe,… yet maybe I would heal faster, if some of this uncertainty was off my plate.” He stared at her in surprise. She shrugged. “It certainly feels as if a lot of unresolved issues are between us, and yet I don’t think it’s so much unresolved as much as we just need to communicate better, honestly and fully.”
“Well, I’m never against communicating,” Dennis stated. “The question is, what is it that you feel you need to communicate about?”
She winced. “It’s always hard.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Dennis said, slipping back ever-so-slightly so he could face her fully. “I’m totally okay with just seeing if we still like each other, seeing if we want to be friends.”
She gave him a misty smile. “And I get that because that’s the nice part of you coming out again. I’m not sure I can be so nice.”
He frowned at her. “So what are you saying?”