Down From the Clouds (13 page)

She laughed. "Willoughby and Mary Anne. And Willoughby ends up not so nice in the end. He chooses money over love."

"Right. So we are pretending to be a modern day Jane Austen story, but really now, can we pretend to be normal tonight?"

"Normal is relative."

"Normal is a relative to me, not so sure you guys are related though."

She shoved my shoulder and laughed. "You think I'm weird, huh?"

I shrugged and nodded.

"Well, buddy, it's my weirdness that will keep our candle burning when most snuff out and find another light."

"I'm not gonna argue with that, but why can't we just cuddle in bed on a rainy Sunday afternoon?"

"One day you'll look back. Maybe when you're ninety. But it will happen and you will thank me. Trust me." She looked across the hills. "So where's the next letter?"

"Probably by the plum tree." I pointed and we started walking. "But why will I thank you then?"

"Your grandfather liked to plant. Didn't you learn anything from him?"

"What's planting got to do with it?"

"No matter how excited you are when you come home with pots and pots of beautiful plants, you can't just stick them in the ground and expect them to grow. You need to prepare the soil first." She locked her fingers with mine. "So we're preparing our soil. You aren't just anyone to me. You are the one. The only. If we start our lifelong relationship with passion and sex then what would happen when that's gone? When kids come and bills happen? If we don't start as best friends it will be a lot harder to become best friends when hard times come. We will start blaming each other for all of our problems instead of working through them together."

I nodded. Speechless. What could I say to that? Most people I knew wanted passionate and emotional whirlwinds. They couldn't get through a romance novel unless someone had their shirt off by chapter three. Then there's my Ella. Romance was different in her world. In our world. She believed it lived all around us. In the trees, the blue sky hiding behind rain clouds, snow flakes clinging to windshields, squirrels hiding their food, blades of grass catching drops from a misty morning, and in every person to walk the earth. Ella loved to sit on city benches and make up stories about passing strangers. Since meeting her my entire world changed. I always turned life into strands of color on an empty canvas. People blurred by like flashes of light. Just blurs. Then Ella walked into my life and everything slowed down. The blurs of color became people with stories. People with hearts. People. Like me.

She ran her fingers along the arms of the plum tree and stopped at the tip of a leafless branch. "Do you ever wonder what would happen if we broke off all of our dead branches?"

I smiled and nodded. The way I always did when she said something I didn't understand.

She smiled back and squinted her eyes. "What kind of beautiful tree would I be if I cut off all the rotting parts?"

"You already are beautiful."

"Maybe to you, but most of us are more rotten than we realize. Seriously, Gavin. What if I just become a big dead tree that catches fire and turns to ashes?"

"You won't." I knelt down and held out my hand. 

She put the shovel on my palm and hung her thumbs from the loops of her jeans.

"What's on your mind?" I said, pulling a ziplock bag out of the ground.

"I'm just wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"Wondering what my dead branches are. It's hard to remove something if you don't know it's there and I don't know . . . I kind of have this fear."

"Fear?"

"What if we find dead branches and you fall out of love with me? What if I can't change and you change without me? What if you don't like what you find inside? What if—”

I stood and pressed my finger over her lips. She closed her eyes. I kissed them and made my way down her cheek to her lips. "And everyone thinks I think too much."

She smiled. "I'm serious. I really fear that."

I cupped my hands around her face and pulled her toward me. "There is nothing that can make me stop loving you. Do you hear me? Nothing."

“But—”

"Nothing."

"I don't want to lose what we have." 

"We won't lose this, but it takes work like everything else does. I'm going to fight for you every day of my life, Ella. So relax and let me love you."

She leaned into my chest and wrapped her arms around my back. Her head in one hand and Pop's letter in the other, I stood there and cradled her until the evening sun painted the clouds purple. 

Finally, she took the bag and opened the letter. I closed my eyes as she read.

Hey there boy,

Remember when a bee found its way into your suit and you ran around in circles like you'd been caught on fire? Do you remember our talk after that? I told you to stop putting up walls to protect yourself. It's easy to build brick walls, but one day you will want to escape the walls you've locked yourself in and you won't know how. You'll be trying to crawl through holes and find some escape, only to get stuck.

I imagine your walls may be pretty high right now. You've probably let your girl in by now, but what if she dies too? No one on this earth can be everything to you, Gavin. So stop looking for it in others and find it in yourself. There's a beautiful world inside you and it's waiting to be discovered. Sometimes when you build walls you don't realize that other people can see through them. It's yourself you've harmed because you can't see out. So let go please. Let go of your fear of losing people, your fear of being lost. You are not an orphan. You are not an unwanted little boy. You are an adult now and you have to stop letting the little boy inside dictate how you live now. 

Let go, Gavin. Do it for me. Don't live the rest of your life wishing the past were different and trying to control your future. You will regret it even more than you regret not coming to see me before I died. 

Love, 

Pop

PS - your father came to see me before I died. I know you are having trouble with this and I asked him to wait. But now is the time. He has the next letter. It's locked in a box. You will have to bust it open, but I wanted you to know that there's no way for him to read it. Forgive him, and then go get it. Since you probably deleted his address or phone number, here they are. 

Chapter Fifteen

Ella and I drove back to our house in Philly without talking much. Exhausted, I walked in and fell back into the couch. She sat beside me and pulled her cell phone from her purse.

"That's weird," she said.

"What?"

"About five missed calls from an unknown number."

"Pennsylvania?"

She nodded. "No voicemail. Should I call back?"

"Maybe? I never call back if I don't know the number, but they called five times."

She pressed the phone to her ear. "This is Ella Rhodes. Did someone call me from this number?" She squinted as all peace vanished from her face. Then she raised her eyebrows and dropped the phone. 

I picked it up. "Hello. This is Ella's fiancé. Who is this?"

"I'm sorry, sir. Sarah had Ella as her emergency contact so we are only allowed to notify her. We have disclosed the information to her. She can contact the hospital if she needs more information."

I hung up and pulled Ella's shoulders back to my chest and swept the hair from her face. "What happened?"

“Campfire accident.”

"Bad?"

"James is in burn unit and Sarah...." Her voice trailed off into sobs. I held her for a few minutes. Expecting the worst. She wiped her face and looked at mine. "She's severely burned and in a coma."

"Severely burned? From a campfire?”

"They didn't say much. Just warned me that she will look bad if I visit and that her entire body was affected."

"Wow. Should we go visit them?"

"They were taken to West Penn. It's kinda far."

I looked at my phone. "If we leave now we will get there by midnight."

"We can't visit at midnight anyway. We can go in the morning."

"Does that mean you will stay the night?"

She gave me the eyes.

"Let's be honest. I've wanted to make love to you since the first kiss, but I'm not asking for that. I'm just asking for a little lady to get tangled up in my sheets while I dream about her from my couch."

She ran her fingers up my sleeve and squeezed my shoulder. My self-control had its limits and she was walking me along the edge. I closed my eyes as she moved toward me. Her self-control wasn't holding up so well either. I could tell by the way her lips trembled as they lingered on mine. She put her finger on my mouth and kissed around it. I held her head as she squeezed the back of my neck, then stood, taking the road less traveled. At least since about 1920. 

"I need to go home anyway for clothes and I want to grab a few things of Sarah's. I will meet you here in the morning. How's eight?"

I stood. "Eight is good."

I kissed her goodbye and stood at the front door until the taillights disappeared. Tomorrow I'd tell her the truth. Maybe in the car ride. Maybe, I thought, I'd make it like a Jane Austen movie. And since I had no idea how, I decided to watch
Sense and Sensibility
, but as I watched I thought of Sarah, pictured her body in flames and my own mortality. I couldn't focus on the movie. At all. Eventually I closed my wet eyes and drifted off to a restless attempt of sleep. 

I heard Ella in the kitchen as I stepped out of the shower and got dressed. One of the many things I loved about her. The girl could cook way better than anyone I ever met. And she did it with dance and song and a perpetual smile that sweetened my mornings. I loved it so much that I ate most of her creations with her on my lap, feeding me from our shared fork and plate, with a dumb grin on my face.

I walked into the kitchen. Caught her eyes. Her smile. And stored them in my gallery of memories worth coming back to. 

She covered a plate with two omelets stuffed with chives, red peppers, kale, homemade home fries, and cheese. Nothing compared to her omelets. Though she'd smile and say it's because of the local organic ingredients. Underneath she knew better. Everything she did, she did well, yet she never gave the slightest hint that she thought well of herself. She never thought low of herself either. Come to think of it, she rarely thought of herself at all. 

She scooted her chair so that it touched mine, then wrapped her legs around mine and handed me a fork.

"Your turn to feed me," she said with less joy than most mornings. 

She was trying to be normal, but as soon as we saw Sarah she'd lose it. 

"There's something I need to tell you," I said. "I was going to try to make it romantic and Jane Austen-ish, but I couldn't get into romance mode with James and Sarah on my mind. So, here I am." I lifted her legs off of mine and knelt on the ground beside her. "I am begging you with all I've got, marry me tomorrow."

She laughed. "Are you talking with your hormones or your heart?"

"I have hormones, don't get me wrong, but I don't let them speak for this." I tapped my chest. "I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is."

"Thank you, Forrest Gump."

"Seriously, Ella. Marry me. Marry me now."

"And give up my dreams of the perfect wedding?"

"Give them up."

She squeezed my hands and smiled. "Okay."

"Yes? Really, Ella? I'm dead serious here."

"We can get married sooner. Something more simple. But I have one condition."

"Anything."

"My maid-of-honor needs to be there."

I sat on the chair beside her. "I agree with you, but that could be months after our current wedding date. If she's as bad as they say, she won't be home anytime soon."

"Really?"

I nodded. We finished eating in silence. Gourmet breakfast on paper plates. Always made me laugh inside. She cleaned up the table. I took out the trash. And we got in the car and headed toward Pittsburgh.

We barely spoke, but kissed at every red light until the cars behind us beeped. A habit we never wanted to break, regardless of how much it annoyed those behind us.

Eventually we arrived. Ella broke the silence in the waiting room. "Should I call Sarah's parents?"

"Wouldn't someone have already notified them?"

"Not sure." She scanned the other faces in the waiting room. "Wonder how Tylissa is doing."

"Yesterday's news for the world is today's nightmare for her."

"Last I talked to her she said Mwenye was still claiming guilt. She's a mess, but she still won't tell me why he is willing to die or spend his life in prison for something he didn't do."

"Well, maybe he really did it."

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"I saw on the news that his fingerprints were all over the weapons."

"Yeah." She looked down. "I just can't imagine."

"Poor Tylissa."

"She is having a tough time. I think she is going to need to go back to work to pay the bills, but she has no family to watch the baby."