Sweet Reunion (4 page)

Amanda sat in silence,
looking at the ground. The other three were able to take only a few bare
moments of this suspense before they cried in unison, “AND??? What happened?”

Amanda continued looking at
the ground as she began to slowly shake her head. “Nothing,” she replied
evenly. “Nothing happened, because he was gone. All of his things were gone.
The bunkhouse was scrubbed bare, like no one had ever been there. Except for
one small square of paper sitting on the middle of his bed, on which he had
written, ‘Amanda. Forget about me. Justin.’  And that’s the last I ever heard
from him.”

“Wow.” Sam breathed.

“Maybe he’s on Facebook,”
Karina said reasonably, and this time her arms were already up to block the
flying pillows, “I’m just saying! You’d never know if he was. My Grandma could
try to look him up for you.”

“No,” Amanda sighed sadly,
“All joking aside, I’ve never looked for him. I’ve tried to respect his wishes.
But I think about him all the time.”  Her tears spilled over, “It’s ironic, you
know? We’d been friends since I was 6 years old, and from the first instant we
met, I would do anything for him. He could have told me to walk through fire,
and I would have done it without question. He must have known that. He never
took advantage. He never asked me to do anything for him, nothing in all the
years we knew each other.

“Except for that one, simple
thing. ‘Amanda. Forget about me.’  The very last words he ever said to me, the
only thing he ever asked of me, and it was the one thing I was never able to
do.”

Chapter 3

The morning of the reading
of Parker Jacobs' will dawned far more brightly than Amanda thought appropriate
for such a life-alteringly sober occasion. If it were up to her, in fact, the
sun would never shine the same way again.

She sat at her kitchen
table, drinking her first mug of piping hot coffee of the day, watching the sun
as it slowly began to crest over the horizon. This had always been her favorite
time of day, watching the world wake up. The trees, the plants, the birds, the
animals - it had always seemed to her that the unfolding of morning in her little
corner of mountain paradise was even more majestic than in other parts of the
world.

As she listened to the birds
chirp out their morning songs and watched white crystalline brightness begin to
peek through the upturned branches of the pine trees outside her window, she
marveled at how nature's beautiful sunrise dance was still playing out in
exactly the same fashion as it had before her father had died.

It was so amazing to her how
the rest of the world just kept on spinning as if nothing had happened. Didn't
they know? Couldn't they feel it? Couldn't they sense the tectonic shift that
had occurred the minute that one of the greatest souls ever to grace the earth
had left it?

Amanda sighed to herself.
She knew she was being self-indulgent. She didn't care. After all, wasn't that
part of being self-indulgent? You couldn't enjoy a proper pity party if you
felt guilty about it at the same time. Waste of a perfectly good pity party!

She smiled. That sounded
like something Karina would say.

As if magically summoned by
Amanda's affectionate thoughts about her, Karina padded into the kitchen like a
sleek and supple alley cat. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned
with leonine grace before folding herself into the chair opposite Amanda and
pushing her soft dark hair out of her sleepy face.

"You're up early,"
Amanda remarked, "I didn't expect to see any of the three of you for
several hours yet."

"Believe me, this isn't
usual," Karina grumbled, picking up Amanda's mug and taking a generous
swallow, "Usually if I see the sunrise, it's because I haven't been to bed
yet."

Amanda smiled, taking her
turn at drinking from the mug of coffee, and then setting it back down even
closer to the middle of the table to show her friend that she, as well, had
comfortably fallen back into their teenage habit of share and share alike.
"This is my favorite time of day. It's quiet, and bright, and the air
feels clean. I sit here every morning to take it in and prepare for the day. I
don't know how successfully I was managing to prepare for today, however. This
one will be quite a hurdle."

Karina closed her long,
graceful fingers over Amanda's small, elfin hand and gave it a comforting
squeeze. "We're here for you, babe. Anything you need. We're the Fabulous
Four again. Nothing we can't accomplish. And that includes holding you up when
you can't do it yourself."

The words comforted Amanda
in a way that the beauty of the morning hadn't been able to. "In your
world, I think they refer to this kind of thing as 'getting the old band back
together' right?"

Karina laughed, "I
don't think anyone actually says that outside of cheesy eighties movies, but,
yes, I think that's exactly the sentiment I was aiming for."

They were interrupted by the
sound of the front door opening, and they exchanged startled looks. Amanda was
about to voice her confusion when a sweaty and breathless Sam strode into the
kitchen, body encased in skintight spandex and cheeks suffused with a healthy
glow.

"Morning, girls!"
she enthused as she opened the fridge and took out a water bottle.

"I thought I was the
only one that got up this early!" Amanda exclaimed.

"Please." Teased
Sam, waving her hand dismissively, "I've already done six miles. I'm in
training. You two are lightweights."

"Well, then,"
Karina returned in the same teasing tone, "I guess Lauren's the only
sleepyhead!"

"Who's the only
what?" said Lauren as she entered the kitchen from the office hallway,
typing furiously on her smartphone.

She was fully dressed,
makeup impeccably applied, and hair swept back in an intricate updo.

Amanda and Karina eyed each
other's garb, Amanda in her flannel pajama bottoms and oversized T-shirt and
Karina in her men's boxer shorts and tank top, and burst out laughing. Amanda
managed to breathlessly squeak out, "You are the sleepyhead!"

Lauren glanced up
distractedly and then immediately began tapping her thumbs against the tiny
QWERTY keyboard as she spoke.

"No, I've been up for
hours. Start of business on the east coast is 5 am here..." she trailed
off as her attention became completely consumed again by what she was typing.

Amanda smiled contentedly as
she got up to start scrambling some eggs for her newly reunited best friends.
Sure, maybe now, after her father's death, she wouldn't ever be able to enjoy
her old solitary morning routine in the same way. Maybe that particular ritual
would forever be tinged with melancholy. But this crazy, impromptu sunrise
gathering of the Fabulous Four had shown her that, while some things may never
be the same again, they could be replaced with things that were equally as
joyous.

For the first time Amanda
opened herself up to the possibility that she might one day be whole again.

Chapter 4

"Manda Bear?" came
a deep and rumbling voice from the front door of Amanda's house later that
afternoon, "Are you here?"

Amanda called, "In the
living room, Uncle Henry!"

Geoffrey huffed
disapprovingly down at Amanda. "Really, it's hardly appropriate for your
attorney to address you so informally, Amanda. You really must speak to him
about it. And honestly, if he's in jeans and cowboy boots..."

Karina snorted. "Oh,
stuff it, Go Free. He's her Godfather. I think the lawyer-client rules of
decorum are generally suspended when the lawyer used to change the client's
diapers."

Amanda blushed and
exclaimed, "Karina!" just as Henry entered the living room, in full
rancher regalia.

He warmly greeted the four
women, and mumbled an annoyed hello to Geoffrey. Henry had never made any
secret of the fact that he couldn't stand Amanda's boyfriend.

"Well, there are my
girls!" He thundered. "I haven't seen you all in month of Sundays.
It's so good to see you all together again, the way you belong. What did you
used to call yourselves? The Fantastic Four?"

Samantha laughed, "I
can't believe you remember that! It's the Fabulous Four, though. The Fantastic
Four are superheroes."

"Well," Henry
enthused, "It seems to me that anyone who can make my sweet Manda Bear
smile with all she's going through qualifies for that title. I for one think
you all are super human." He cut a sideways glance at Geoffrey and
grumbled, "Or at least human."

Geoffrey rolled his eyes and
intoned tightly, "Yes, well, why don't we just get started?"

Henry pretended not to hear
him. "Manda girl, I sure am thirsty after that drive out from my place.
You think you could bring me some of your good old sweet tea?"

Amanda was up and bustling
into the kitchen before Henry had even finished his sentence. She returned a
several moments later carrying a tray containing several small mason jars with
colorful straws poking out from the top, filled with golden iced tea, ice
cubes, and sprigs of mint resting near the straws.

"Good Lord!" cried
Geoffrey, "We're drinking out of jars now. Are we in Mayberry?"

"They're
decorative!" Karina defended fiercely, seeing Amanda's wounded look,
"I think they're adorable. And if you don't agree, you can feel free to GO
FREE!"

With that, the girls and
Henry started forward to claim their jars of sweet tea, but Geoffrey stopped
the procession again with a huff. "Is the refreshment really that
critical? Can we please just get started with what we came here to do
today?"

Henry gave Geoffrey an
exasperated clap on the shoulder, which Geoffrey attempted to duck but was
unable to. "Son," Henry intoned, "I don't know why you're so all
fired eager to get this show on the road, seeing as how you don't even have a
horse in this race, but the truth is, we need to wait for everybody to get
here."

Geoffrey was taken aback.
Looking pointedly at Karina, Samantha and Lauren, he said, "Who in bloody
hell else is coming to this will reading now?"

"Well, I guess that
would be me," a dry voice intoned from the archway leading into the living
room.

Amanda looked up and froze.
She couldn't believe it. Was she imagining this? Had grief rendered her brain
so addled that she was suffering from hallucinations?

She took in the figure
before her. At six feet and two inches tall, he towered over her by almost a
foot. His dark brown hair was wind-ruffled and disheveled, and his skin and
hands were work roughened. Both of those things only added to his rugged
handsomeness, which was solidified by his wide shoulders and muscular arms.
This was clearly someone who didn't shy away from hard, physical labor – and it
looked good on him.

"Hi, Amanda," she
heard the handsome figure say, softly, hesitantly, as he looked into her
stricken blue eyes with his warm brown ones. Then she knew it was true. She
felt it like a lightning bolt, and then her entire body went completely numb.
The tray of iced tea jars slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor. In
some remote corner of her mind, she felt them leave her suddenly clumsy hands,
she heard them crash when they hit the ground, and she felt the icy liquid
splash her calves. But it all seemed far enough away that it might be happening
in a movie, or a dream. Her reality had shrunk to the pair of magnetic eyes
that felt as if they were boring into her soul.

In a tiny, tremulous voice
that was all she could muster, Amanda replied, "Hi, Justin."

Chapter 5

Justin Barnes had returned
home, he supposed, although he felt more like he was in some virtual reality
representation of a dream than the actual town of his childhood.

Hope Falls. Damn. It had
been a long time since he'd dared to utter those words, even in his own mind.
Thinking back on the quaint facade of Main Street, which he had entered town
through, he felt that the homey appearance of this little burg belied the pain
that people went through here.

Well, that he had gone
through anyway. Hope Falls down. Hope Falls away. Hope Falls apart. That was
more like it.

There was only one good
thing that had ever happened to him here, and her name was Amanda Jacobs. The
girl standing in front of him now. His first love. His only love, really. Sure,
he'd felt lust for other women. Affection, even. But nothing like he'd felt for
Amanda, the girl who had been his best friend as a child and the object of his
white hot passion as a young man.

Five feet two inches of
blonde mischief. Skin you could melt into, and blue eyes that could hypnotize
you. Curvy hips, a tiny little waist, and full soft breasts. She looked like
she was made for picking up and pressing against a wall while you kissed her
passionately, or fitting neatly onto your lap in a chair while making out.
Scenarios that, among many others, he had fantasized many times. He loved the
girl.

But, of course, just like
every other crazy aspect of his life, the course of his true love had not run
smooth.

She had been 16 years old
and he 20 when he had begun to realize that he didn't see Amanda as merely his
much-adored surrogate little sister, as he had since the day they had met at
ages 6 and 10, but rather as a crushingly beautiful young woman that he was
very much in love with.