And then he left.
* * *
____________
Had we been telling the truth, he would have said, The place where I’m sending you—it looks beautiful, but it’s haunted.
Okay, I would have said.
It will bring everything back. All that you tried to bury.
I understand.
It’s going make you want to do bad things.
I have experience with that.
And how did it turn out?
Terribly. But I promise to do better this time.
We could have had that conversation—it would not have been impossible. I would not have told him everything about me, but I would have told him enough. I still would have taken that four-hour drive up the jagged coastline to be with Terry and Julia and Billy and Liz and Lee and the rest of the children. All I’m saying is it would have been easier had I known.
welcome
FROM MY UPSTAIRS BEDROOM WINDOW, I watched for Nick’s shiny black car. Once it appeared, I stood and set my cell phone on the windowsill. I didn’t expect Amy and Jonathan to keep paying the bill, and there was no service where I was headed anyway. I took one final look at the room from the doorway—drawers empty now, bed stripped—and then I went downstairs.
I said goodbye to Amy and Jonathan and promised to send letters as we loaded the little I owned into the trunk.
“I hope the baby is sweet,” I said to Amy. Her eyes darted away, but there was nothing for her to feel guilty over. They had let me live in their house for three of the four years I had been in the foster system. They’d given me a nice room and cooked me food and talked with me and bought me everything I needed. It was nobody’s fault that we didn’t fall in love. They were young and they wanted a baby.
“I mean it,” I said.
I climbed into Nick’s car and waved goodbye. The finality of it all rose over me. I was leaving. My vision went dark, the world stopped. But then it passed, and I was all right.
* * *
___
Five hours later, Nick turned off Highway One and onto an unmarked gravel drive. He avoided potholes for a quarter mile, and slowed as we approached a wide wooden gate.
“For the goats,” he said.
He stopped the car, opened the door to climb out, and left the engine running.
It was just before eight o’clock and the sky was pale pink, and I watched through the windshield glass as he unlatched the gate and pulled one side open, then crossed in front of the car to open the other. Behind him was a field and a big wooden barn. Some moss-covered boulders. Two goats munching grass.
Here I was.
I had made it.
And then he was back in the car, and we rolled forward. When he stopped again, I said, “I’ll get it,” and I stepped onto the farm for the first time. It was salty and muddy and cold—even in June—and I breathed in its newness as I swung the gates closed and latched them shut. When I turned back to the car, I could see a row of small cabins, and past them, a sprawling farmhouse with its lights on, all white and three stories, something from a picture book or an old movie, nothing like any house I’d ever set foot in.
“See that over there?” Nick asked, pointing to a curved, white tent. “That’s the flower tunnel. Julia’s famous around here for her flowers.”
“I can’t wait to see everything.”
He parked midway down the gravel drive, at the closest point to the cabins, and we walked across the field, Nick with my suitcase, me with my backpack and duffel. The cabins were identical from the outside—each of them tiny, more sheds than houses—with small front windows and old brass doorknobs. Some muffled words followed by laughter came from inside the first cabin as we passed it. About twenty paces later we reached the second, which was silent and still. And then after another twenty steps, he stopped in front of the last one.
“Welcome home,” Nick said.
He made no move to open the door, so I turned the knob myself. I expected the inside to be dark, but it wasn’t. A skylight cut through the middle of the ceiling, casting the room in the same pink glow as outside.
Nick tucked my suitcase just inside the doorway. My shoes were muddy from the field, so I set my backpack and duffel inside without crossing the threshold. I saw a rug, a twin bed with a wrought-iron frame, a writing desk with a chair, a wood-burning stove, and a stack of cut wood.
“I’ve always liked these little cabins,” he said. “But I never got to live in one. They’re only for the interns.”
“You lived in the house?”
He nodded. “In a room with two other boys. We whined about it all the time—we were total shitheads—but it was great. Now we meet up for vacations every summer and we always share a hotel room. I never sleep as well as I do when I’m in a room with my brothers.”
I smiled. “That’s sweet,” I said.
“I’m going to head over to the house, but take your time. Terry or Julia will show you how everything works a little later.”
“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”
I waited for a moment longer, there in the doorway.
Then I took off my shoes, lined them neatly by the threshold, stepped into the cabin, and closed myself in. The rug was soft underfoot and full of color—greens and pinks and blues. And even without a fire in the stove, I was warm.
* * *
___
I could have stayed there for the rest of the night, but they were waiting for me. After I’d sat on the bed to test its softness and hung my clothes on the tiny rack between the woodstove and the table, I slipped my shoes back on and headed across the field.
I approached the main entrance, but the windows on each side of the heavy oak door were dark. So I walked the perimeter of the house, running my hand along the white wood planks until I heard voices and saw light, and found a small patio with a door to a mudroom that opened onto a kitchen. It swung open before I finished knocking.
There was Julia, for the first time.
She had a soft body and laugh lines, white-blond hair and pink lips. “This is home,” she said. “No knocking on doors here. Just come right in.”
She wound her arm through mine and led me in. I had expected more people but apart from us it was only Nick and Terry, leaning toward each other from opposite sides of a butcher-block island, immersed in conversation.
“Ah,” Terry said when he saw me. He had silver close-cropped hair and brown skin, a wide white smile, and eyes that surprised me with their blueness. “Mila, welcome. I’m sure you’re hungry. We saved some dinner for you and Nick.”