Like Sweet Potato Pie (37 page)

“Nah. It’s nothing. You do good work.”

I meant it. From the little I’d seen of Adam actually on the job, I liked the way his hands circled the tiny trees, packing earth around their roots like a blanket. Shoveling and leveling the rocky ground. Cradling his seedlings, moving their pots into shade as the sun shifted. Matching colors and textures like my university art-minor days, filled with swatches and oil colors and paint-stained clothes.

Maybe we weren’t so different after all.

“So you’ve always wanted to work with plants?”

“Not really.”

“No?” I turned in surprise. “I thought you loved landscaping. You’re really talented.” A recollection of Adam’s neatly pruned shrubs and ferns in contrasting textures flitted through my mind like one of his beautiful variegated basil leaves, striking and fragrant.

“I did people’s yards and gardens in high school to earn some money, and people liked my work, so …” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I mean, I like being outside and working with my hands. But I didn’t grow up dreaming of mulching trees at hotels, if that’s what you mean.”

Which is exactly what he was doing when I met him.

“But then Rick got hurt, and even though the military pays for most of his treatments, it still changed our lives a lot. Mom had to quit substitute teaching to stay home with Rick. So Dad picked up an extra job after school, but then Todd started to suffer, so I just went full-time and let Dad quit and just teach math. And that’s … where I’m at now. Don’t know when that’ll change.”

I leaned against the deep blue side of Adam’s truck, feeling an unexpected spark of kinship. Both of us stuck in Staunton, doing what we never really wanted to do.

A sports car turned into the parking lot, and we both turned. A noisy gaggle of twenty-somethings emerged, slamming doors, and laughed their way into the restaurant, tearing our silence. The big Japanese-style wooden door fell closed behind them, and I heard the wind again. The trickle of water over the garden pond, all decorated with lanterns and shrubby trees.

“Hey, that looks like my neighbor’s garden back in Tokyo.” I pointed. “See those ponds and lanterns in the garden?”

We strolled through the white-stoned garden, stepping over a curved wooden bridge where sluggish water flowed through a pond stocked with gigantic spotted
koi
goldfish. I felt sorry for them, so cold and silver, huddled on the bottom, not moving. Streaks of gold and rust on their chilly scales flashing like sequins.

Fish are cold-blooded; apparently they keep right on breathing even when ice glasses the surface. I felt like that suddenly, looking up at Adam and wishing—for the first time in my life—that I could stay in Staunton a little longer. That I could stop time, hovering there in my motionless world, and come to life when everything had straightened itself out. When Adam and I could maybe, just maybe …

Adam was saying something about a horse.

“Sorry?” I tilted my head. “A what?”

“Equine therapy. For Rick.”

“Oh, like for riding,” I said slowly, showing my vast knowledge of all things equine.

“Right. Sitting around is killing him. He aches to walk again. And riding is something he can do without depending on his legs.”

I studied Adam there, his reflection glassing the smooth mirror of water. Making him twice his size.

Come to think of it, anyone who’d do for Rick what Adam had done deserved to stand taller than everyone else.

“You gave up a college scholarship for Rick.” It misted out before I could catch myself. Empty branches rattling as if by the force of my words. “Jerry told me.”

Adam tossed a small white stone from the garden before answering. “It’s not a big deal. Rick lost his legs, Shiloh. I hardly think putting off college a few years qualifies as major suffering. And he’s … well, he’s a great brother. I love him.”

“I know you do. But anytime we give up something for someone else it’s suffering. It’s what Jesus did, in a different way. A choice of the heart,” I said, looking across the garden at Adam in a sudden burst of courage. “You know something? Rick’s a fighter, and so are you. I’ve never seen people so determined as both of you. You’re … well, amazing.”

I meant
you
as in the plural
you
to include Rick, but it just sort of came out that way. I blushed and ducked down to look at the goldfish, but not before noticing the warmth that suddenly crept into Adam’s eyes as he looked at me, like seeing me for the first time. The way he’d looked at me in church, and if I pressed my memory hard enough, maybe before that.

Adam cleared his throat. “I think you’re pretty amazing yourself, Shiloh,” he said in a tone of voice I’d never heard him use.

“Me?” I squeaked, wishing desperately that Tim and Becky would arrive. And at the same time, over the hammering of my heart, that they wouldn’t. That the low gurgle of the water and wind through the shivering shrubs would keep our silence. “I haven’t ever given up anything for anybody. Not in my entire life.”

Kyoko’d said that exact thing about Carlos. I nearly blurted that, too, then slapped my lips shut.

“Sure you have. For Jesus. You left the old life behind for the new,” said Adam, not taking his gaze from mine. “That takes courage. You’re here on your own, and it’s not easy to step into something new and not look back.”

“Oh, I look back,” I said, taking off a glove and kneeling to stir the icy water. “All the time. But the funny thing is that old just doesn’t look so tempting anymore.”

“You’ve changed a lot.” Adam’s voice came out bold and direct, just like when he asked to know me better. Unafraid. “We’re all proud of you. I’m proud of you.” He emphasized the last sentence, just in case I thought he’d pulled a collective
we
as I had done.

Now my face burned poinsettia red. I’d never seen Adam so intense or his eyes so blue.

“Well, you’re mistaken when you said I’m on my own here. Not anymore. You’ve all been my family,” I said, finally meeting his eyes. “And I don’t know what I’d do without all of you. Tim. Becky. Everybody. Thank you for being in my life.” I meant it. My heart suddenly overflowed, and I closed my mouth to keep it in.

All this time I’d longed for family, and here it stood, right in front of me. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus had asked.

Adam reached out with his palm, both cold and warm, and brushed the hair back from my cheek. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but at that very moment, my cell phone vibrated in my purse.

I sighed and dug it out, the perfect moment ruined once again.

“Becky Donaldson, where in the world are you, West Virginia?” I snapped then looked up as Adam stepped off the maze of barren Japanese maples and lanterns to wave at someone in the parking lot. Tim yakking and slamming the truck door, and Faye following politely alongside Earl, hands clasped.

“Oh, sorry. Hello?” I put the phone back to my ear.
You really need to stop with your preprogrammed messages, Shiloh!

“Shiloh Jacobs? This is Kevin Lopez from
The News Leader.
”

“The Staunton newspaper?” I pressed my ear closed, trying to hear over the crackle of the bad connection and Becky laughing. Earl stomping his feet in the bitter cold.

“That’s correct. I see here you …”

I lost him. “Hello? Mr. Lopez? I can’t hear you.” I stepped through the shrubs and mulch in search of a better connection. “But if it’s about my mom’s subscription, I canceled it. I noticed you guys made a mistake and sent the notice again.”

“I’m losing you here, Shiloh. Did you say something about a subscription?”

I pressed my ear closed. “Yes. I canceled it.”

“No, it’s not about … it’s …” The line went dead. I turned the phone over, moving to call him back and then remembering we’d stopped in Charlottesville, not Staunton. Roaming charges galore. Which I didn’t want to strap Adam with, since he technically owned the phone plan.

“Shah-loh?” Becky waved at me. “We got lost! Ya comin’? Or am I gonna have to eat all the sushi without ya?”

I
let myself in with the key under Faye’s orange clay flowerpot, its terra-cotta glow deceitfully warm in the winter chill, and checked my watch six times while I waited for her. Paged through a JCPenney catalog, chin in hand, and thought of Kato Japanese Steakhouse. The rice bowls with M
ADE IN
C
HINA
etched on the bottom, and our Mexican waiter who mispronounced all the Japanese sushi names. The sushi wasn’t even authentic—using cheap dyed yellow daikon radishes in place of ginger.

But it was unforgettable. Every bite a poem—of my past and present, all tangled together in one inseparable mystery.

Kyoko. I have to talk to Kyoko.

I checked my watch again then dug a glossy international phone card out of my wallet and dialed on Faye’s phone.

“Moshi moshi?”
Her voice distracted, soft as if not to wake the neighbors. Of course. Noon here meant after midnight in Tokyo. Not that Kyoko, of all people, cared much for something as frivolous as sleep.

“Kyoko! I got a job!” I slumped back, head resting against the fabric of Faye’s blue-flowered sofa. Unexpected delirium swirling in my head. I could imagine my Barnes & Noble lanyard folded neatly in a drawer. My Starbucks apron hung on a peg. Those filthy Green Tree clothes washed. Or no—burned.

“What kind of job? Where? In New York?” Her breath caught. “Are you coming back to Japan?”

My wind sort of deflated, but I refused to let the glow dwindle like a winter sunset, low and pale over blue mountains. “It’s here, Kyoko. At a local paper. But isn’t that better than waiting tables?”

I scrubbed a hand through my silky bangs, still fragrant from Trixie’s scissors at Crystal. “They still had my résumé from last year. And when I interviewed this morning, they practically hired me on the spot. A crime reporter, Kyoko! I’m going to do the crime map and updates and investigations. I start right away. Tuesday. Tomorrow. Jerry’s going to kill me.”

“Wow, you mean it?” She gasped. “With a full-time salary?”

“Benefits, too. It’s not much, you know, compared to”—my face colored—“you. And what I used to have. But it’ll do.”

“Aw, Ro, that’s fantastic! I’m so happy for you!” I heard the chair squeak as Kyoko bounced. “You didn’t tell the paper you’re moving when the house sells, did you?”

“Of course not. Although I’ve been thinking about things lately, and maybe—” I broke off, staring into the patch of sun coming through Faye’s curtains as I pictured Adam’s face. “It makes no sense, but I just wonder sometimes. Maybe I should stay a little longer and just … see how things go with him. At least until my house gets taken in March, and then I’ll decide what to do.” I twisted off my heels, wiggling my toes.

Kyoko apparently hadn’t heard me, still hooting her congratulations. “Let’s just hope they don’t find out about your fiasco with AP, right?”

“The editor knows. I … uh … told him.”

Dead silence. “You WHAT?”

I held the phone out, grimacing. “I figured they’d find out anyway, and I wanted to be on the level. He raked me over the coals about journalistic ethics and then thanked me for being honest.”

Static popped for a second while Kyoko seemed to scramble for words. “Seriously? How … I mean, how on earth did that happen?”

“ ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Something fell off Kyoko’s desk, and I heard rustling paper as she shoved it back on her bookshelf with a muffled bang. “What is that? What did you just say?”

“I told the truth.” I shrugged. “I’m changing, Kyoko. I’m not hiding anymore.”

“Please. No religious stuff, Ro,” Kyoko shot back with a snort. “Just let me be happy for you.” Her voice softened. “Really. You’ve been through a lot, and this is good news.”

“Thanks.” I adjusted the phone, feeling like crying and celebrating at the same time. I mean, here I sat, getting all emotional about a dinky newspaper that wrote up stories on bear hunting and livestock shows.

“What about that farmer? Does he know?”

“No, but maybe it’ll show him that I’m really … interested. Because I think I might … maybe … I don’t know. I like him a lot, Kyoko.” I twisted a ring back and forth, suddenly jittery. “I didn’t really before, but …”

“You said he’s not your type at all!”

“He isn’t.”

I could almost see Kyoko tapping her nails, probably painted black or that moody plum she liked so much. “Just how interested are you?” Her voice suddenly turned suspicious. “Are you dating? More? What?”

“Not exactly. He … uh … doesn’t date. Per se.”

“He WHAT?” Kyoko blew her breath out in disgust. “You’re wacko! All of you! I swear!” She muttered something about religious nut jobs.

“I don’t know. It seemed a little weird at the beginning, but not so much anymore. You don’t have to date to get to know someone, Kyoko. Really. You watch him live. Meet his family and friends. It might not be conventional, but it works.”

“Not conventional? Ro, it’s absurd!”

I rubbed my feet on the carpet. “You really think it’s that strange?”

“You’re all just weird down there. Must be something in the pork rinds.”

“I don’t eat pork rinds.”

“Of course not. They’re pure fat. Fried fat, if that’s even possible.” She sighed and shuffled some papers around, waiting so long to speak that I wondered, briefly, if she’d hung up.

“You’re not rebounding, are you?” she snapped.

“I don’t think I am.”

“Nobody thinks they are.”

“No, really! He’s … way different than anything … anyone I … anyone.”

“You can stop stammering, Juliet. I get your point. Just don’t wind up in a double-wide eating MoonPies.”

I grimaced. “I’ll do my best. Although the image is tempting.”

“At least you’re not seeing Carlos. I still can’t believe that little creep showed up in Staunton! If I ever see him again, I’ll beat the stuffing out of his pretty Argentinean head.” Kyoko let out a long string of heinous threats and then expired into a yawn. “Well. It’s about that time.”

“For bed? You never sleep!”