From Here to There (36 page)

 Laying him on the blanket, Helene unsnapped his terry cloth sleepers, pulled them and the disposable diaper away from his legs. When she opened up the new one, she had to figure out how it was put back together. Before she could get it back on him, a tiny waterspout erupted from his body, nearly catching Helene in the face. Quickly she threw the new diaper over him.  As she talked, he laid playing with his fingers and watching her. The little sounds he made were of contentment. She pulled back on the sleeper, wrapped him in a blanket and carried him out to the kitchen where Amos had remained. He looked up as she came in. "He okay?" he asked.

 "You coward," she said. "Don't you even feel guilty for not coming in and helping me?"

 "Nope," Amos said with a grin. "Babies are women's work."

 She eyed him narrowly. "You need educating. Grandfathers do things like that these days." She took the bottle from the water and tested a drop or two on her wrist. She didn't know where she'd learned that. Maybe that was inborn mothering... or just commonsense.

 Smiling and talking to the baby, she sat in a chair. Cradling the baby in her arms, she tried to put the bottle into his mouth. He spit it out.

 "I bet he's used to his mama's... uh, you know," Uncle Amos suggested.

 "Well, he'll have to get used to this too," Helene said as she tried again, talking and crooning to him as she again placed the nipple in his mouth. This time a few drops got past his lips. He licked them, seemed to approve of the substance and gave the bottle a more interested effort. Soon the milk was flowing and Helene and baby relaxed.

 Amos heaved a sigh of relief. "It's good having him here, but... it'll be good having him go home too. Last time around I was a lot younger."

 By the time Helene was ready to lay the baby back down, she was beginning to like this idea of taking care of an infant. It might not be so bad to have her own someday. She wondered what Phillip's baby would look like and then censured herself for the thought. She couldn't afford to begin wanting what it looked likely she'd never have.

 Three long days passed. Helene read her aunt’s journal as she wrote about her dawning realization that she might love Amos and not as a friend. She had no hope it could work out. She constantly reminded herself that he had someone. There were entries where she wrote of her doubts about even coming to Montana. Writing of the doubts seemed to only strengthen her belief that it was to be her home even if she lived out her life as a spinster. She had written some lovely descriptions of the river at the heart of this valley and her picnics on it with Amos.

One day her brother showed up and she wrote her disappointment that he didn’t like Amos or Montana. The last entry was the longest.

May 13, Amos came into town today. He came to the Georges’ home and asked to talk to me alone.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Want? Well...” He stumbled over the words.

“Amos, what is wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking on something. You been here near a year now.”

“Yes.”

“You planning to go home?”

“This is home.”

Well he stopped then for awhile. “I might’s well get this over.”

“You’re marrying Beth?” I asked feeling a sinking deep inside. “I wish you both the best.”

“Beth? What the hell you talking about? No, I am not marrying Beth... Chelle, I am asking you to be my wife.”

“Me?”

“It’s stupid to ask. I know you don’t want me that way, but I gotta ask if I wanta live with myself. There ain’t nothing that scares me that I don’t face and this is one of those things.”

“Scares you?” I smiled then. Probably one of the biggest smiles I ever did give anybody. “Why would it scare you?”

“I know you ain’t been thinking of me that way. You’re way above me, gal, classy and all. No way you’d take me.”

“Amos, are you trying to talk me out of saying yes. If so, it’s not going to work. I’d like to be your wife.”

He looked at me like I was saying the very last thing he had ever expected. “You would... I mean that’s a yes?”

I put my arms around his neck. You know at this point, well he hadn’t even kissed me. Should a woman ever say she’d marry a man who hadn’t even kissed her but I said yes, definitely it was a yes.

“You sure?”

“Amos, did you want me or not?” That’s when he grabbed me and the kiss he gave me told me everything I ever needed to know about what kind of marriage we’d have. When he let me go, I was barely able to stand my knees felt so weak.

“When will you marry me?” he asked then.

“When do you want?”

“Justice of the Peace can do it in a few days, right after we get a license and the blood work taken care of. Doc’ll do that.”

This man wasted no time on what he wanted, that was one thing among many others that I knew for sure about him. So we went down and got that done and now I have to figure out what I’ll wear because on May 17
^th
, we are going to be man and wife. My family might never forgive me but I don’t care, not at all. I know where my heart is and it’s with Amos. I am lucky he lives where I want to make my life, but if he didn’t, well, I’d follow him anywhere. That’s how it is.

After that last entry, Aunt Rochelle had added a note to Helene.
“By now you might realize why I would want you to have these words or maybe not. Basically it’s because I wanted you to know how it was for me, that it didn’t come without some difficulty, that love was all I had hoped it would be. You saw the up side with us but I guess I thought you needed to know it hadn’t always been that way.

“Amos and I earned what we had, and by the time you’d come along, we’d had many years to perfect what we had begun with. I know you saw us as having something special, and we have but you can too. Marriage isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a real relationship between a man and woman that can be magic or seem like hell.

“I have seen that you are being particular about what you will have in your life. Where it comes to life, you can make all kinds of deals to get what you want, give up this or that, but when it comes to love, to your mated relationship, never settle, my dear. Everyone I ever knew who did came to regret it. Someday you will also find that man. I  wish I was going to be alive to see it but unless I can look down from heaven, I won’t. I know it though for how it’ll be for you because you are so much like me.

“Now I don’t know what that man will look like or where he’ll come from. That won’t be the important part. It’ll be that he’ll be a man you’d follow anywhere. You will have the kids, the career even if you want it but in the end, that relationship, it’ll be the star that lights your way. I never had a daughter but in many ways you were that to me. I love you very much. Just remember one thing—life is what happens between here and there. It’s neither the beginning nor the end. It’s the moment.”

Helene closed the journal thinking over the words. She supposed there was nothing that dramatic or unusual in her aunt’s story. Lots of people found love after being friends. It had been a key turning point though in a life where her aunt had found what she wanted to base her life around. Helene knew from seeing her aunt and uncle together that it had lasted. But she also understood better now that it hadn’t come easy or without work.

She felt happy to know the story, to see her aunt and uncle as people, not just substitute parents. Was Phillip her moment, her home? She was sure she loved him but not sure whether they had anything they could build a life on. Until he came back, if he came back, she’d not think about it or try to figure it out.

For the next few days, she sewed, baked, cleaned, read, or did anything that helped her avoid thinking. Sometimes she cried if she thought about it which was another reason not to do so. There were no phone calls, at least not from California, although Wes did call again to ask her to dinner and tell her he'd be around if she ever got over being afraid of another mistake. She was almost speechless at the call, and so only managed to say thank you before she hung up.

 With night, Amos headed into town for his lodge meeting. "You sure you don't want to come in with me," he asked, his eyes reflecting his concern for her.

 "No thanks," she responded with a smile. She wasn't staying home to listen for the phone. She really wasn't, but it seemed there was nothing she wanted to do, certainly nothing in town.

 "Hobo and I'll be fine here," she told him, kissing his forehead before he walked out the door. "If the weather closes in, you stay in town. I don't want to worry about you driving on icy roads, and you've been looking so tired lately."

 "Don't you worry about me. I been driving on icy roads since long before you were born, young lady," he reminded her with a grin as he closed the door.

 Helene took a leisurely bath, wrapped herself in a terrycloth robe and settled onto the living room sofa with a best selling novel she'd been wanting to finish for almost a year. Every time she got a few pages read, she became distracted and put it aside. At the rate she'd been progressing, the movie would be out before she managed to finish the novel.

 When she heard the truck in the driveway, she didn't get up, sure it was her uncle. The door to the kitchen opened, boots tromped across the floor. "What did you forget?" she called out, laughing.

 "What makes you think I forgot anything?" Phillip pushed open the door, still wearing his heavy coat. His eyes looked tired, and his jaw was unshaven.

 "Phillip."

 "You got the name right. I guess maybe I wasn't away too long after all." He grinned tiredly.

 "I didn't know if you'd come back," she admitted, sitting up, the book falling from her lap.

 "Why not?"

 "Well, for one thing, you hadn’t called." She tried to smile. "Are you hungry?"

 "I haven't eaten since last night, but no, I think I'm too tired to be hungry. I left San Francisco this morning. Took me an hour to get to the airport through traffic. In the air, there was a lot of turbulence. It seemed I went through one storm front after another. I feel like I've been run through the wringer and come out the other side flattened."

 She tried to smile but found it impossible. "Are you too tired to talk about how it went with your brother?"

 He shook his head. "There isn't that much to say. How about just it was not good but also wasn’t a disaster."

 His gaze didn't leave hers as she walked across the room to him. She only wished she could read the expression in those clear blue eyes. Was it wariness or simple exhaustion? She put her arms around his neck. "I missed you," she said, reaching up on tiptoe to brush a kiss across his lips.

 "I... uh. Where's Amos?" He sucked in a breath as he felt her unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it and the coat aside to reach the front of his chest with her lips. “What are you wearing under that robe?”

 "It's lodge night," she whispered against the skin she'd bared, the breath of air a teasing promise. “Want a hot bath?”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Want anything else?”  She had thought of doing this, dreamed of making love to him and the dream had become a driving force that would accept no answer but yes.

 "Uh he’ll be back late?" Phillip asked, his voice husky.