The Journey Home (4 page)

The people around the table convinced him to stay for breakfast. He was thankful he did. Carmela's baking was as accomplished as her cooking. However, he told them he had to get on the road home immediately thereafter. He mentioned that he was going to check to see if anyone had filed a missing person's report yesterday. Though Joseph couldn't even give his last name, he thought he'd at least get a clue from this. However, Ralph told him that he'd already called the police department that morning and Joseph had not been reported missing.

Joseph sipped a second cup of coffee and listened to the others discussing their plans for the day. Then, thanking them profusely for their help and their hospitality, he left the house.

It was only at that point that he fully acknowledged that he had no plan. It was possible that one of the cars on the street was his – he could have gotten this far, left the car, and then passed out; it was an explanation as good as any other – but he couldn't say which. He didn't have keys in his pocket, anyway, so even if he had a car, he wouldn't be able to
drive it. Reaching into his pockets now, he confirmed that his wallet and phone were still gone. However, he pulled out a surprisingly large wad of cash. Had he made a huge withdrawal from the bank before his episode? If that were the case, why wouldn't whoever took his other things have taken the money as well? If he'd been mugged, the mugger wasn't particularly good at his job. This story just kept getting stranger and more elusive.

Joseph counted out the cash, a significant sum, and then glanced up and down the road. What was the next move here? Was there a bus or train station nearby? What would he say to the person selling him the ticket? “Home, please?” Putting the money in his pocket, he stood stock-still, unsure where even his first step should take him.

“You look a little lost.”

Joseph turned toward the voice to his right. A teenaged boy was standing perhaps ten feet away, hands in his pockets. He was lanky, close to six feet, with a mess of black hair coming at his face from a variety of angles. His eyes were a radiant blue.

“Why do you say that?” Joseph said.

“People don't usually just stand here on the street. Most people have somewhere to go. Since you didn't, I guessed you were lost.”

There was a bit of wryness in the boy's tone, but it didn't seem sarcastic. Amused, perhaps, but not sarcastic.

“I think it's fair to say that I'm lost. Let me put it this way: I'm so lost that I don't even know if I'm lost.”

“That doesn't sound good. Where are you trying to go?”

“There's the first problem right there.”

The kid looked down at the pavement and then back up at Joseph, wearing an expression that said that Joseph had just told him one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever heard. “I'd say you were
very
lost.”

Joseph slumped. “Yeah, me too.”

The kid shook his head compassionately, which Joseph's guidebook training told him was somewhat unusual for a teen. Feeling surprisingly comfortable with yet another new stranger, Joseph told the boy about everything that had happened in the past day, including the certainty he felt about his wife being out there somewhere, waiting for him, worrying about him. Simply saying these things aloud made the feelings stronger for Joseph. The pull he felt in the back of his head intensified as he spoke.

The boy cast him a sidelong glance. “But you have no idea where you live.”

“None.”

“You know you have to get back there, though.”

“That's the one thing I'm completely sure about.”

The kid looked off for a second and then regarded Joseph with new resolve in his eyes. “I'll go with you.”

“What?”

“I've been telling myself for weeks that it's time for me to get out of here. I always find a reason to hang around, though. I think you're my sign that it's really time to go.”

Joseph looked at the boy skeptically. Was the kid messing with him, trying to have some fun at the expense of a confused guy he met on the street? “How old are you?”

“I'm seventeen.”

“That would mean you aren't technically able to simply go with me.”

The kid shrugged and tossed his hair. “Depends on what you mean by ‘technically able.' I guess I'm officially a minor, but I don't think anyone would give me a hard time about that.”

“Like your parents?”

The kid's eyes softened a bit. “I lost my parents when I was a little kid. I've been living with these people. They're very nice, but, you know . . .”

Joseph gave the boy an opportunity to explain further, but the kid didn't say anything more. Instead, he just looked at Joseph, as if he were appraising him, or testing him.

Finally, Joseph broke the silence. “Amazingly, taking you along with me wouldn't even be the strangest thing that's happened to me in the past day. A couple of little problems, though: I have no idea where I'm going, and I have no way of getting there.”

“I can help you with the second part.” The boy pointed to a blue Camry across the street. “That's mine. You pay for the gas.”

Joseph stared at the car for what must have been close to a minute. Then he turned to the boy and said, “This doesn't seem ridiculous to you?”

The boy offered a lopsided grin. “Yeah, of course
it does. But you need to get somewhere.” His brows furrowed. “And so do I.”

Joseph looked at the car, then at the sky, and finally at the kid. “Then let's go.”

They walked across the street – had a single car even passed while they had been standing there? – and entered on their respective sides. The kid put his key in the ignition and then offered his hand to Joseph.

“I'm Will, by the way.”

Joseph took the hand. He hadn't expected the kid to have such a strong grip. “Joseph.”

Will started the car and checked the mirrors. He obviously hadn't been driving very long because he took every precaution before he put the car in gear. “Do you want to pick a direction?”

Joseph closed his eyes and tried to feel for his wife. As always, the sensation was there, though it didn't take any palpable form. He opened his eyes and pointed at a thirty-degree angle from where the car was parked. “That way.”

“That way it is,” Will said, moving out of his parking spot.

“I'm hoping I can be a little more specific as we get farther along.”

“That would be good. At least we're heading somewhere, though.”

Yes, Joseph thought, at least we're heading somewhere.

Antoinette settled into the bed, hugging her pillow closer to her as she did so.

. . . She jumped from the couch when the door-bell rang.

“Is that Mr. Dreamboat?” her mother called from the kitchen.

“Mother, you promised that you'd never use that name in front of him. You still promise, right?”

“Of course, dear.”

Antoinette opened the door, grinning. She planned to assault Don with kisses. However, when she saw the tight expression on his face, she simply held the door to usher him into the living room. They sat on the couch and Don finally leaned over to kiss her. In the six months that they'd been dating, she couldn't ever remember their first kiss of the night taking that long. He usually kissed her before he even said a word. Of course, he hadn't actually said a word yet tonight, either.

“You seem a little . . . scary,” Antoinette said tentatively. “What's wrong?”

Don let some of the tension go out of his body
and put his hand in hers. His eyes softened, too; he no longer looked like he was on a hunt.

“I'm sorry, Hannah. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm a little tense, that's all.”

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Not unless you have a spare father lying around.” Don's lips pulled together and his color deepened. “I had dinner with him tonight. He said he wanted to have a ‘man-to-man' with me. What he really wanted to do was have a ‘man-to-useless-waste-of-a-person' with me. He spent the entire time telling me how much of a disappointment I was to him.”

Antoinette squeezed Don's hand. “He said that to you?”

“Not in those words, exactly. Actually, what he said was worse. He told me that he thought I'd been making terrible decisions since I was a teenager. He said I was throwing away my time on unrealistic expectations for my career, and that if I didn't learn a trade soon, I'd wind up a beggar on the street.”

“He didn't actually say
that
, did he?”

“You're right; he didn't say, ‘beggar.' I think the word he used was ‘bum.' Yes, ‘bum,' that was definitely it.”

“Oh, Don.”

Don had barely spoken about his father in the half year Antoinette had been with him. She had met his parents on a few occasions, but she and Don never spent time there. Antoinette had always assumed that they visited at her house because her mother was always baking for him and fawning over him – she could smell brownies in the oven right now,
as a matter of fact. From what Don was telling her as they were sitting here, though, that wasn't the reason at all.

“He thinks I don't have the talent to be an executive, in spite of how well things are going for me at the company. He thinks they're going to find out soon enough that I'm just a dope and then they'll kick me out the door.”

“Your boss told you just the other day that you're one of the sharpest trainees they've ever had. They've been complimenting you left and right. Did you tell your father that?”

Don stood anxiously. She'd never seen him struggle like this to contain himself. He'd always been so cool.

“He even managed to turn that against me. He told me that corporations use those techniques to squeeze everything they can out of trainees before they toss them aside. How would he even know that? He's a pipe fitter!”

Antoinette reached a hand for Don to try to bring him back to her. She'd never seen him in so much pain and she wanted to hold him and let him know that she believed in him. She supposed it was possible that Don's father knew something about how corporations worked, but that didn't mean he was right about Don. Any corporation would know how lucky they were to have him and they would do everything they could to keep him.

Just then, her mother came into the living room with the brownies on a tray with two glasses of milk. Antoinette was afraid that Don might say something
sharp because he was so tense, but he greeted Mother warmly, even complimenting her housedress, which always set Mother fluttering. Antoinette signaled with her eyebrows that her mother should leave them alone, and fortunately she did so. Mother probably thought they wanted to snuggle. Little did she know that Antoinette was having trouble getting Don to even stop pacing around the room.

When she was gone, Don returned to the couch and Antoinette circled him with her arms, feeling him ever so gradually relax. They didn't say anything for several minutes. This felt okay, though. This felt natural. This was who she wanted to be for Don. She wanted to be someone he could always count on. She wanted to be his safe place.

Eventually, Don looked up at her, his expression wistful now, and said, “I swear, Hannah, I will never treat our children that way.”

The words took Antoinette so completely by surprise that she literally gulped. It wasn't the most graceful sound in the world. “Our children?”

Don shut his eyes tight and held that pose for something like fifteen seconds. When he opened them at last, he seemed embarrassed, but his eyes gleamed. He turned to face her. “That is definitely not how I intended to do this.”

Antoinette's stomach started to clench. “Do what, Don?”

“Talk to you about . . . our future.”

Antoinette found that she couldn't speak. Of course, she thought about her future with Don all the time. She knew he loved her and she couldn't imagine
anything pulling them apart. Still, the idea of addressing that future, right now, when only minutes before Don had seemed so shaken, left her speechless. All she could do was nod her head slowly, though even that took effort because she was so nervous.

“Hannah, you're everything in the world to me. I've looked at you that way since our very first dance. Whatever my father makes me feel, you make me feel the opposite. I feel like a king with you. I feel – ”

“ – Exactly the way you should feel. I believe in you completely, Don.”

Don's eyes glistened and he looked at her as though she were the most beautiful thing in the world. Nothing was better than that look.

“I love you like crazy, Hannah.”

He squeezed her hand, which Antoinette hadn't even noticed he was holding until now. “I love
you
like crazy, Don.”

He patted one pocket with his free hand, and then the other, looking down as though he thought he might find something there. “I'm not prepared for this. I was thinking maybe Christmas, or your birthday or something.” Suddenly, his eyes flashed up to hers and he took both of her hands into his lap. “I can't wait, Hannah, and I know I'm making a mess of this. But I'm not going to stop now that we've started.” He brought her hands to his face and kissed each gently, his lips just barely brushing them. His combination of strength and gentleness was an endless revelation. Antoinette thought it was entirely possible that she was going to swoon, though she very much wanted to stay awake for this moment.

“Hannah, will you marry me?”

Antoinette leaped into Don's arms with such force that they toppled onto the floor, crashing into the coffee table and sending brownies in every direction. She didn't care about the mess; you could clean up a mess in a few minutes. She only cared about showing Don the joy he always brought to her heart – especially now.