Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Eight
A Pearl of Wisdom
from Maeve Hearnshaw
“Sometimes, honey, detours lead to destiny.”
Juliet
It was nearly ten in the morning, and I was sitting across from Renny, a checkers game in progress. I’d dreaded coming to Juneberry, hating to tell him I was going home, and it had hurt just as much as I thought it would.
“Leaving tomorrow, eh?” Renny said in his raspy voice after I explained. “So today is Juliet’s Big Farewell Tour? What number stop am I? Tell me I’m top three at least. With my good looks alone, I think I deserve top three.”
Oh gosh. I was going to miss him. “Number two. I’ve only told Tallulah.”
Renny pumped a victorious arm.
I rolled my eyes. He pretended not to notice.
Vera was currently giving Mom and Amy a tour of Forget-Me-Not, showing them all the important places, like the Lickety Split and Snug’s and here, too, though they promised to let me talk to Renny and Maeve before they arrived.
They were going to stop at the Bean Patch for coffee first of all, because Vera needed to restock her bean supply after making endless pots of coffee these last couple of days.
Mom had offered to buy them, Vera refused, and I knew there was going to be a battle of wills for Amy to mediate.
I had a few more stops to make after this visit. I wanted to say goodbye to Nettie and Isabel.
And to Callum.
My heart sank, just thinking about him.
He’d been amazing yesterday, so caring and understanding that I fell just a bit harder for him even thinking about it.
He was never far while I’d been in the emergency room, getting oxygen, a medicated IV, blood work, heart tests, chest X-rays, and even a CT scan of my head, because of the headache.
When all the tests came back fine, the doctor had kindly talked to me about panic attacks, anxiety meds, psychologists and psychiatrists. My mom and Amy had looked on the whole time, with the same expression in their eyes, pleading with me to come home, get help. Finish healing.
My phone had been flooded with messages from my family.
Text after text from my brothers checking on me.
Eric sent hearts and promises of movie nights when I got back.
Inappropriate hospital memes came from Jordan and Hunter.
My dad had called. I’d barely been able to talk to him I’d been so choked up.
I’d been so embarrassed to have to go to the hospital for a panic attack. Ashamed, even, though it wasn’t really fair of me—my heart rate had been way too high. It just felt like I should’ve been able to control my emotions, and clearly I couldn’t.
I had to find a way to get better … so I could come back.
So I could be the nurse I wanted to be.
So I could be the person I wanted to be.
I reached into my pocket, felt the downy feather I’d found on the ground yesterday. Somehow it hadn’t gotten lost during the trip to the hospital, the aftermath.
Last night, I’d dreamed of my grandfather. Of him holding my hand and telling me to remember the good. And let go of the rest. That he was always with me, even when he wasn’t by my side.
I didn’t think it had been a dream. Or even a memory. It felt more like … a visit.
I glanced at the robin print hanging on the wall, the one Tenn must’ve hung yesterday, and blinked away the tears that were building.
With a gentle push, Renny moved a checker diagonally. “You feeling better today?”
“A little,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not rehash it.”
“Isn’t that what therapy is about? Rehashing?”
I smiled. “Are you a therapist now?”
“I can be.” He coughed, then intoned, “I’m all ears.”
The game was moving slowly. I suspected it was on pur-pose. He was dragging it out when he could’ve won ten minutes ago.
“I’m going to need to see some accreditation.” I slid a checker, instead of jumping over one of his pieces.
I supposed I was dragging the game out, too.
“I seem to have misplaced it. How long do you think you’ll be gone?” he asked, a bushy eyebrow raised.
“I’m not sure.”
I was trying not to think about being gone at all. Or even going back to Tenn’s this afternoon to pack and say my goodbyes there. It might break me.
I wanted so badly to stay.
He said, “There’s a chance, you know, that the town isn’t going to let you go. Your car might not make it to the county line.”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that a million times since deciding to leave.
“But what if it lets me go?” I asked, my throat aching.
I fully expected him to tell me that it meant I wasn’t supposed to stay.
But he surprised me by saying, “Maybe it would mean that you’re not supposed to be here right now.”
Which made me suspect that at some point in his long life, he’d come to recognize that it had been heartache that kept him and Walt apart, not destiny. I wouldn’t ask, but it did make me think about regrets, and I couldn’t help thinking I was going to regret leaving this town.
“So, you don’t know,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
He pressed his hands to his chest and dropped his jaw in faux outrage. “No need to call me out like that. I’m an old man. An old—”
“Don’t say it.”
He coughed pitifully. “—dying man.”
I dropped my head, sighed heavily.
Two days with Amy and Mom and I’d already picked up the habit.
He jumped one of my checkers, gave me a smile. “I feel it in my bones that you’re supposed to be here, doll.”
I felt it, too.
Which was all kinds of confusing since I was leaving.
He cleared his throat, which devolved into a coughing fit. I jumped up. “Oxygen?”
“No, no. Just water,” he croaked, pointing.
I darted over to his nightstand, and in my haste, I bumped my hip against it, which immediately toppled his massive pile of books. They fell one after another onto the floor.
A strange noise came from Renny, and I realized he was laughing. “Graceful.”
I filled a glass of water, handed it to him. “You should’ve seen me take ballet when I was little. The instructor actually pulled my grandpa aside and suggested to him I try a different style of dance.”
Renny sipped, then wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Did you?”
“No, I tried soccer instead.”
“Really now. How’d that work out?”
“I broke an ankle.”
He chuckled.
I started picking up books. “I know. Sometimes it takes me a while to accept the obvious. I started art lessons not long after. They went much better.”
I reached for the green Whitman book and noticed an old black-and-white photograph hanging out of it, dislodged by the fall. I went to tuck it back in but stopped suddenly.
I knew that face.
Had studied it daily for nearly three months.
I tugged the photo out of the book and realized it was torn in half. The man in the image had slicked-back hair, fitted khakis, a button-down shirt.
Even though the photo was black-and-white, I knew his eyes were green.
I held up the picture.
“Oh,” Renny said. “You found Walt. It’s the only picture I have of him. He took the other half, the half that featured me, with him when he left.”
My hands were shaking as I picked up the book and carried it, and the photo, to the table.
“Juliet? What’s wrong? You’re pale as a ghost.”
I felt like I’d seen one.
I put the picture on the table; then I fumbled for my phone, called up the family pictures in the online cloud.
I found an old one of my grandfather. He was holding my mother, who’d been a toddler at the time. He’d been maybe twenty-four or twenty-five in the photo.
I turned the phone, put it on the table as well. “My grandfather. Ronald Stephens.” As soon as I said his name, a light went on. “Ronald Whitman Stephens.”
His breath caught. “Walt. I called him Walt. Ronald was much too stuffy.”
His hand trembled as he reached for the phone, picked it up. He zoomed in on my grandfather’s face, and a sheen of moisture filled his eyes.
My mind was spinning, counting the years. Grandpa’s trip here had been before he met my grandmother, by a year or so. It had to have happened, I suddenly realized, during his big road trip. Only he hadn’t told me about this stop in his journey.
My heart broke, guessing at the reason why and what had led him here in the first place. A big decision. In light of what I now knew, I suspected he’d been debating whether to keep secret this part of himself. Or let it be known.
I wanted to cry for him, that he thought he had to make a choice at all.
And that he’d ultimately kept it quiet.
A sad smile tugged at Renny’s lips. “Oh, how I loved him.”
I blinked and a tear fell. I opened the poetry book, read the inscription in my grandfather’s hand.
WILL YOU GIVE ME YOURSELF? WILL YOU COME TRAVEL WITH ME? SHALL WE STICK BY EACH OTHER AS LONG AS WE LIVE?
I tapped the page. “He loved you, too.”
His eyes were shiny as he nodded; then he suddenly laughed.
“What?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“I should’ve put this together earlier. I saw that dream catcher you made for Katy and noticed the robin feathers straight off. I thought it was a coincidence. I should’ve known better.”
Renny tugged the poetry book toward him. Every few pages, he pulled out a feather. By the time he was done, there were at least a dozen on the table.
I reached into my pocket for the feather I’d found yesterday. I pulled it out, held it in my palm, and told him all about the robin, the feathers, the dreams.
“Every time he found one, he’d give it to me,” Renny said. “He told me to keep them, to remember him by, and promised me that one day he’d return and leave more feathers. I thought he meant that they’d be for me, but they were for you. He was trying to show the link between us.”
I closed my fingers around the feather in my hand and could’ve kicked myself for not telling Renny about them earlier. I had to remind myself that the timing didn’t matter. We’d made the connection. That was the important thing.
Renny chuckled. “He’s a cheeky bird, isn’t he? Leading you here to Forget-Me-Not to make sure I knew how much I’d meant to him—and to help you find your way again.”