Heart and Home (32 page)

“I didn’t ask for you to
champion me,” he said. “All I wanted was for you to love me just the way I am.”

“Don’t you see, Troy? I do
love you just the way you are, only I love the parts of you that you pretend
aren’t really there. The ones you hide from yourself out of shame and fear.”
Fat tears dripped in salty patterns over my lips and chin. I didn’t even move
to wipe them away. “And maybe, like you said earlier, it’s too soon, and I
shouldn’t tell you this,” I started, “but I want to spend my life with you,
Troy. You. Not the man you pretend to be every day to please the world, but the
man you are in here,” I touched my heart. “The one who loses himself in angles
and designs and redefines the world to suit his vision.”

He shook his head and pushed
the chair away from the table. “That man doesn’t exist,” he said.
 

My heart raced as he walked
into the living room and stood with his hands in his pockets in front of the
window watching the snow that fell once again over the city. I could barely
make out the flakes against the dark, but occasionally one sparkled in the
light of the streetlamps outside. For the second time that day we walked away from
finishing a meal because of the same conversation, and while I knew I should
have felt incredibly hungry, the emptiness and anguish of his misery made me
feel sick instead.
 

My mom was right. Diana was
right. This was not an easy task, and I was starting to doubt I could actually
pull through it.

I wiped my tears on the
napkin beside my plate, and for a long time neither of us moved. More than an
hour passed before I finally started to clear the table. I combined the
untouched plates of food and covered them in plastic wrap, then left them in
refrigerator. After I wiped the table down, I walked into the living room,
waiting for a moment to see if he’d acknowledge me standing there. When he
didn’t even turn, I slipped into my bedroom and closed the door to hide my
sorrow.
 

I don’t know how long I lay
in the dark crying. I couldn’t understand why this ridiculous task had fallen
to me, of all people, and during such a challenging time in my own life. I
remembered Diana’s words, that his heart chose me as its healer, but why, when
clearly he wanted nothing of the kind. It was like he somehow felt comfortable
suffering. He was stubborn and bitter. His own confusion moved my tears between
emotional affiliations, one minute sad and the next so angry I wanted to march
out into the living room and shake him until it all made sense.

Finally hypnotized by the
spiraling shadow flakes playing beneath the elusive streetlight, I drifted into
a troubled sleep only to be woken by the sinking of the bed under his weight on
the edge beside me. I was surprised when he lowered a hand on my shoulder, and
then lifted it thoughtfully to brush the hair from my face.

He leaned inward, the shadow
of his body covering me as he whispered, “I’m sorry.” Forehead lowered against
my temple, he released a troubled breath against my cheek. “Forgive me,
please.”

The breath I drew in caught
raggedly against the last of my tears, causing me to almost hiccup. I lifted my
hand to the back of his head and tangled fingers of comfort into his hair. He
turned blindly into my kiss, and then brushed his lips along my cheek and chin.
I returned his eager kisses in a desperate need to reconnect after the harsh
things we’d said. The fear was still there, entangled with anxiety, as we moved
frantically to strip away all that inhibited us from reconciling our earlier
differences.

We made love to continual
apology and constant whispers of, “I love you,” the fear of losing the
connection we’d established with each other binding our bodies long after the
act had been finished.

We fell asleep still
tangled, exhausted and hungry, but content to know that beyond angry words and
silences the bond between us had not faltered. I woke only once after that, and
found that we still lay face to face in the dark, our limbs entwined and breath
matched. I closed my eyes again and fought off the thoughts of morning, for I
knew that come daylight the rift had yet to be mended.

Troy still did not believe
in the man I knew he was, but how could I convince him without destroying
everything we had?

Chapter Thirty-One

I woke the next morning to
find the bed empty, but sounds from the kitchen told me Troy was out there
preparing breakfast. I lay and listened to the clanging of cookware, silverware
on the counter and the hiss of pancake batter seeping across a hot griddle. I
breathed in the aroma of coffee and stretched into the sheets.

After finally urging myself
out of bed, I tied my bathrobe at the waist and sauntered into the kitchen,
pausing silently in the doorway to watch him cook. Guilt ached in the pit of my
hungry stomach, guilt for making him feel stupid, for making him feel like he
was somehow less of a man because he took the burden his father laid on his
shoulders and learned how to run with it anyway.

I was lucky to have a man
like Troy head over heels in love with me. The guilt became tingly, almost like
the butterflies that accompanied me everywhere during the first couple of weeks
of our relationship. How could I push so hard for him to consider doing
something it hurt him just to think about?

“How am I supposed to
surprise you with breakfast in bed if you’re not still in bed?” He turned from
the stove.

I slid in and wrapped my
arms around his waist before overlooking the feast unraveling over all four
burners. He had bacon frying in the back and eggs sizzling beside the pan of
bacon.

“You have no idea how
impossible it is to stay in bed without you, especially knowing you’re just a
room away.”

“Sorry,” he lowered his chin
to rest atop my head for a moment. “I couldn’t sleep. I woke up before the sun
and went for a walk.”

“A walk?”

His chest expanded with the
breath he drew in through his nose. “Bad dream,” he explained.

I stepped away and went
toward the coffee pot, filling the mug he already filled with cream and sugar.
Turning back to face him, I folded the mug inside my hands and watched him flip
bacon. “You want to talk about it?”

Brow wrinkled, he shrugged,
“I don’t know, it seems so absurd now.”

“Dreams usually are absurd.”

“I’ve been having this one a
lot lately.”

“Hmm,” the field in my
dreams stretched through my memory for a moment, and the image was so real I
could almost smell the earth, the damp. “I have a couple like that myself.”

He flipped the eggs and
stood silent for a moment, as if wrapped up in his own thoughts. Brow furrowed,
it almost seemed as if his jaw was clenched. Turning the pancakes on the
griddle, he looked up at me for a moment.

“I’ve been thinking a lot
about what you said yesterday.” As if it embarrassed him to even bring it up, he
quickly averted his gaze. “Do you really think I’m making a mistake?”

“You mean by not finishing
your degree?”

I couldn’t tell at first if
the curt, concentrated movement he made with his head was meant to be a nod.

I lifted the coffee mug to
my lips and breathed in the steam for a few seconds before taking a sip. “Troy,
I don’t know anything. I mean really,” I paused, considering my words
carefully, “I’m moving through my own life at a rapid pace, playing everything
by ear and hoping I wind up in the right place when this crazy train stops. I’m
not the person to ask whether or not you’re making mistakes. I never should
have said anything, and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he shook his
head. “You were honest yesterday. I don’t want you to be afraid to tell the truth
now.” I wasn’t quite sure what he was suggesting until he went on. “I mean you
were right about all the others. They just stood by and watched me forget about
my dreams. Except for my mom…” I was surprised when he chuckled. “She never
quite let off of me for leaving school. Every time I built something or
designed a new building I wanted to put on the property, she would nag me, ask
when I was going to stop listening to the old ghost and listen to my heart.”

“The old ghost?”

He took the eggs from the burner
and turned them onto two waiting plates. “That’s what she calls my dad,” he
explained. “Says I let him haunt me like an old ghost, when for the first time
in my life I should feel free.”

“She’s right,” I said into
my coffee mug.

“Maybe,” he turned his
attention to the pancakes with a sigh.

After stacking both plates
and laying neat slices of bacon along the side, he walked both plates to the
table and gestured for me to sit down. He pulled the chair out for me, and I
sat down. He walked around to the other side and laid his plate down before
returning to the refrigerator for the butter and syrup. As if we were starving,
we both dug into the food before us without a word. Several minutes passed with
nothing more than the sound of silverware touching down.

“You might not believe me,
but I don’t feel like giving up school was what tore me open,” he cut through
the silence.

“Was it your dad?” I
wondered.

He shook his head. “He was a
bitter old cuss every day of my life, but I still learned a lot from him. The
thing that I think really got to me was that after he died he laid it all on
top of me like a burden. The farm, my mom… and the thing is, I love my mother
and I would have taken care of her no matter what. And the farm,” he cut a
stacked wedge out of his layers of pancake and held it dripping over his plate
for a second, “if he hadn’t made it seem like doom, I might have embraced it a
lot earlier than I did. I wasn’t lying that day I said I couldn’t give it up
now.”

“It’s too much a part of
you,” I remembered.

“That’s right, and while he
might have wanted me to hate it and suffer under it like he did, I can’t do
that. My daddy hated that farm, or at least I think he did, anyway. It always
seemed like that, but I don’t hate it, Janice.”

I nodded. “So even though
you like to put up a fuss, it still makes you happy?”

“In its own way, yeah.”

“But don’t you ever wonder
what it might have been like to finish school? I’m not kidding when I tell you
that you do amazing things with your hands.”

“I don’t know, I guess,” he
shrugged. “I love to create things, unique things, and I loved the entire
learning process, but I would have wound up on the farm anyway. It was where I
was meant to be, but the thing that always got me was that I felt like the
whole experience was like dangling a carrot marked freedom in front of me, when
that was never a possibility for me. That town is in my blood, just like it’s
in yours.” He paused for a moment as if choosing his next words carefully.
“Sooner or later, we all come home, Janice.”

That notion dropped inside
me like a ball of lead, “You really believe that?”

“It doesn’t have to be a bad
thing,” his voice was soft, encouraging. “I mean, think of all the good you can
do for the town now that you’ve been out in the world. Think of what a
difference you could make if you really did breathe life back into the
Standard
.”

I couldn’t help my own
laughter, which might have turned hysterical if I hadn’t found the presence of
mind to ask, “Did you have the power to change things after you came back?”

“I’d like to think so,” he
said. “I came back thinking about ways I could make the community stronger, to
make the kids see there was hope and potential in our little town. There is
something there the rest of the world doesn’t have, something I think you and I
missed as kids.”

The realization that next
came to me was enough to make my eyes sting with tears, “You really do give all
of yourself, don’t you?”

“One thing I did learn from
my daddy was if you’re not going to give all of yourself to something, you
might as well not give anything at all.”

“Your mom said he was really
hard on you.”

He avoided eye contact as he
admitted, “He was. He was a hard man every way you look at him, and all I ever
wanted to do was make him happy. It seemed like nothing I did was good enough
for him.”

“Does that still bother
you?”

The furrow of his brow
returned, and his eyes narrowed under it. “I don’t know. I try not to let it
get to me.”

“Well,” I broke a piece of
bacon in half and crumbled it into my mouth. “I won’t pressure you anymore
about finishing school, knowing now that it really hurts you, but I hope that
you don’t still think that I think less of your for it. There’s just this part
of me inside that loves you so much, Troy.” The emotion was swelling up inside
me, and I wasn’t sure I could keep it from flooding my self-control. “It wants
all of your dreams to come true, and if there is any way I can make that
happen, I want to do it.”

“Hey,” he got up quickly and
came to my side of the table. “Don’t cry,” he knelt down beside me and lifted
my face out of my hands. “Come on, don’t cry. You crying is definitely not
gonna make me happy,” he teased.

A partial laugh broke
through, and he cupped my face in his hands. He brushed the tears away and then
kissed me, his lips sweet and sticky with syrup.