Hold Her Heart (Words of the Heart) (6 page)

“Do you know about the rest?” he asked.

“Rest?”

“Have you read her bio or any of the articles on her?”

I shook my head. “I looked her up on the Internet. I realized she’d written a lot of books, and I found her picture.” I didn’t add that she didn’t look like that picture now.

“Ms. Pip started and ran a food pantry—Amanda’s Pantry. Over the years, she expanded it and added Amanda’s Closet, supplying winter coats to the kids who visited, and Amanda’s Bookshelf, giving them free books. But more than all that, she cared. She helped. After she married Ned, they kept his house and used it over the years to help out families. Mine was one of those.”

“Pardon?” I asked.

He smiled as I said the word, and though we’d just met, I could read his teasing in just his expression.

“My mom got pregnant when she was in high school and dropped out of school before she graduated,” he said. “We used Amanda’s Pantry. But you have to understand that Ms. Pip didn’t just hand out food. She talked to the people. She got to know my mom. We were couch-surfing most of the time, and Mom worked at odd jobs here and there. Long story short, Ms. Pip offered us this house on the condition that Mom went back to school. So Mom got her GED and then trained as an electrician. Other people occasionally stayed with us for a while, but Mom and I were here through my last year of high school.”

He paused a moment and then added, “It was the first time we ever had a consistent home. It was the first time I’d ever had a room to call my own. When Mom got a job, we got an apartment, and Ms. Pip had other families stay here.”

I thought he was done, but Logan added softly, “Mom bought her own home a few years ago in Girard. Not just a place to rent, but
bought
it. I came home for the closing. Unless you knew where she’d come from, you might not understand how significant it was. The first thing she did once we moved her in was have a dinner for Ms. Pip, Ned, and Fi.”

I could imagine it. A small house all lit up, and Ned and Piper being invited in. That sense of pride that Logan’s mom must have felt.

I thought he was done, but then Logan added, “Because Ms. Pip changed my mom’s life, she changed mine. It wasn’t just having a house to call home or a room of my own. I went to college. And I became a nurse, like Ms. Pip.”

“She’s a nurse?” I asked. I’d read her bio online and had seen her picture, but I hadn’t gone surfing for more in-depth information. Logan knew so much more about my biological mom than I did.

He nodded. “That’s what she was doing when she became a writer. I’m going back to school to be a nurse practitioner. I finished the first year and then did another stint with First Aid, an international medical relief organization. I’ve already signed up to go abroad again next year when I’ve finished—”

He was interrupted by the sound of the front door banging open. Fiona raced into the room. “You’re still here.”

There were so many confusing emotions still tossing about in me, but when I looked at Fiona, things were clear. She was a kid I already genuinely liked. “Yes. I’m coming to dinner tonight, and Logan invited me to stay here.”

“If you weren’t staying here, I was going to tell you that you could stay at our house.”

Her offer was earnest. “Thank you, Fiona.”

“Maybe sometime we’ll have a sleepover.” I caught Logan grinning, and obviously so did Fiona. She glared at him. “I just met my sister for the first time. You can’t blame me for being excited.”

He pulled her braid. “No, I can’t, squirt. But I’m guessing that this is very overwhelming for your sister.”

I nodded. “I was an only child when I woke up this morning. My stepmom doesn’t even have kids, so no stepsiblings,” I admitted. “I’m not sure I know how to be a sister.”

“Oh, it’s easy. I’ve given it a lot of thought. You think that everything I do is wonderful, and if I’m fighting Mom and Dad over something, you’re always on my side.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Is that so?”

She nodded so hard her braid audibly thwacked against her back. “Yeah. I have plenty of friends with older siblings, so I know how it’s supposed to go.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I promised her.

“I’m actually here to see if you have anything you won’t eat, or can’t eat.”

“Nope. No allergies or anything. And for won’t—I’m pretty good with most normal foods.”

“What’s an abnormal food?”

“Things that have eyes and look at you while you eat them. Snails. Snakes . . .”

“Logan’s eaten all kinds of creepy food, but I’m with you. So’s Dad. He’s not a great cook, but he’s making spaghetti so we’re pretty safe.” She turned to Logan. “You’re supposed to come over, too.”

He shook his head. “This is for family.”

“You’re family,” Fiona informed him.

“I know, but tonight I think it should be the four of you. I’ll come over for dinner next time.”

“Mom’s not going to like your answer.” She turned to me. “Everyone thinks Mom’s so easygoing, but she has very firm opinions on things. Like finding you. Dad’s going to be in the doghouse for a long time for this one.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she didn’t want to bother you. She didn’t want to make you feel guilty, like you had to come. She wanted to wait for you to come on your own.”

“But if I can help her?” I asked.

Fiona scoffed and sounded decades older than she was. “One of the first things you need to know about our mom is she’ll help anyone she can, but she would never ask for help for herself.”

Logan nodded his agreement.

“I’ll see you at five.
Both of you
,” Fiona warned Logan, and then she scampered back out of the house as quickly as she had come.

“Fi’s right. Ms. Piper would do whatever it took to help someone. But asking for help? She’s not very good at that.”

I suddenly didn’t want to learn more about Piper George. A woman who’d given me up for adoption. A woman who was a nurse, a writer, an altruistic do-gooder, a mother, a wife. A woman who was battling cancer. A woman who knew I might be able to help but didn’t want to
bother
me.

“I’m going to go get the rest of my stuff out of the car and then go upstairs until dinner, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” he said.

I started to leave the room then Logan called, “Siobhan, you should call someone.”

“Who?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. A family member, some friend. Just someone. This is a lot to take on. A lot to deal with.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I was going to take his advice. I mean, how could I explain what was going on to someone else when I wasn’t sure I could articulate it to myself? Meeting Piper and knowing she’d never forgotten me felt good. But meeting her and seeing her with Fiona made me miss my mother more than ever.

And though I knew it was crazy, it still made me feel guilty.

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” Belle told her mother.

“But you can judge a girl by her holey jeans. Go change,” her mother insisted. Her mother wore an expression that brooked no arguments.

It looked like Belle was going out to dinner, and her holey jeans were not.

—Beautiful Belle
, by Pip

I don’t own many dresses—
any
dresses, to be honest. Most of my business meetings are on Skype. All that’s really required for that is a halfway decent shirt and a scarf. I have half a dozen scarves in a variety of colors. My style mantra is, you can’t go wrong with a scarf
.

Jaylin does not share my casual dress style. When we were college roommates, she was forever trying to dress me up like some doll. I normally balked at her attempts, but today I would give anything if she were here in Erie instead of Asheville. She’d know what to wear to a first meal with your biological mother.

Or what not to wear.

It seemed as if I had more
nots
than
possibilities
in my suitcases.

I’d brought one carry-on and one bigger suitcase with me. I thought I had plenty of clothes to last me however long I stayed in Erie. They were all casual. And I’d only packed one scarf. It was a black-and-brown patterned one. I hadn’t really thought my packing through.

There was a knock on my door.

“Siobhan? Is everything okay?” Logan called.

“I don’t have anything nice to wear.”

Okay, that was a whine. I know it was a whine, but I couldn’t help it. I was nervous. Piper had seemed nice enough. So had Ned and Fiona. Still, I couldn’t shake the butterflies that were cartwheeling around in my stomach.

“Wear whatever you’re comfortable in,” Logan called through the door. “Ms. Pip won’t care. I swear; she doesn’t own jeans without holes in the knees.”

I tried to remember what she had been wearing earlier. I couldn’t. I remembered the scarf around her head—it was robin’s-egg blue. And I remembered how gaunt her face looked, but I couldn’t remember her clothes.

Thinking of Piper’s scarf, I dropped my own back on the pile. I wasn’t going to wear one tonight, I decided.

I looked down at my jeans. At least they didn’t have holes in the knees, though my favorite pair in the pile of clothing on the bed did. And the white T-shirt and black cardie were dressy enough. I slipped my feet into my ballet flats and opened the door. “I want to make a good impression.”

Logan was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. “They’re not dressy people. And they’re family. You’d look beautiful to them in Ms. Pip’s holey jeans.”

My accidental roommate was a very nice man. He nodded toward the stairs. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “Thank you for coming with me. I know we’ve just met, but I feel like I have an ally.”

“This isn’t a battle, Siobhan. You don’t need an ally, but maybe you need a friend. I can be that.” He reached out and took my hand. It was simply for moral support—I got that. I took comfort in it as we walked across the driveway and up onto Piper’s porch. I dropped his hand as I knocked.

“This is her office,” he said conversationally, nodding at the chair on the porch. “Every year, as soon as the weather is even halfway warm enough, she’s out here working every day. In the winter, she moves inside by the front window. I know that most people count robins as a true sign of spring, but everyone at school looked for Ms. Pip on the porch. That’s how we marked the change of seasons.”

“I work on my porch, too,” I said.

In a world of nine-to-fivers, it was weird to find someone else who worked for themselves. Jaylin was the only other person I’d ever met who understood that sometimes having no boss was worse than working for a tyrant. I mean, when I got hung up on an encroaching deadline, I only had myself to blame.

I bet Piper would understand that.

It was a tangible connection to my birth mother that I hadn’t considered before.

“Thanks,” I told Logan just as Ned opened the door.

“Welcome home,” Ned said as he threw the door open wide.

Logan and I stepped inside the house. Again, I was thankful for Logan’s presence. He didn’t wait for further invitation. He walked toward the back of the house—which I guessed was the kitchen—as if he’d done it hundreds of times.

He probably had.

But I hadn’t. I stood, rooted to the spot, trying to catch my breath.

“It’s overwhelming for Pip, too,” Ned told me softly. “But I swear we don’t bite.”

Suddenly a giant hairy dog ran into the foyer and jumped at me. I had just enough time to brace myself before he hit me like a ton of bricks. There was no menace in him. He was tall enough that he began to lick my face, doing his part to assure me I was his new best friend.

Ned grabbed at his collar, but the dog wouldn’t be denied. He wrestled to stay close to me.

“Killer watchdog?” I asked Ned, laughing as they battled.

He laughed. “Archie, down.”

The dog thumped down to the floor, swinging his giant tail from side to side like some huge dust mop, seemingly not carrying that he was whacking it against the newel post.

I leaned down and patted his head, which made his tail wag even faster. “He seems sweet. What kind of dog is he?”

“A shepoodle,” Ned answered. “At least that’s what Fi calls him.”

He looked like a dust mop. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”

“Part sheepdog, part standard poodle. I think there might be an official name for them, but Fi has firm opinions on everything,” Ned supplied. He paused a moment as the dog flopped on to his back, telling me a stomach scratch was in order without saying a word. “He’s obviously king of the castle.”

Fiona came barreling into the living room so quickly she almost made Archie seem sedate. The dog jumped back up and ran over to kiss her and then came back to me.

“Mom said there’s ten minutes till dinner, so you have time to come see my room before we eat,” she blurted out in one breathless stream of words.

“Fiona, I don’t think—” Ned started.

“It’s okay. I’d love to see your room,” I told her.

She took my hand, pulled me up the stairs as Ned called after us, “I’m going to help finish things up.”

“I’ll bring her down in a minute, Dad,” Fiona called back to him.

She led me down a narrow hall to a bedroom door.

“My room,” Fiona said, opening it with a flourish.

There was a huge stuffed horse in one corner, a dollhouse in another, bunk beds, and a dresser that looked as if a rainbow had exploded on it. Every available section of wall space was covered with bookshelves. “This is amazing.”

I walked closer and noticed that the horse was wearing a cardboard horn. “Flo likes to disguise herself as a unicorn,” Fiona said with a laugh. “When Mom’s
Fi Fly Flo
hit its third month on the bestseller’s list, her publisher sent her the horse.”

“I didn’t read that one. I reread all the ones I had, but I know she’s written a lot since I outgrew them. I plan on buying them.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Fiona said with a laugh. “Mom gets author copies. She’s got a ton in the attic. She gives them away for fundraising auctions all the time. Once she even let a fundraiser auction her off. Well, a date with her. It was a girl from Meadville who won. Mom took her out to lunch. Anyway, you don’t have to buy ’em. She’ll give you any of the new ones. I get copies of all of them.” She led me to one of the shelves that was filled with Pip books. The other shelves were filled with books by a lot of authors I recognized. Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Madeleine L’Engle. C. S. Lewis. Laura Ingalls Wilder.