Finding Home (12 page)

All the love I’d ever had for him came
gushing up from deep inside me. I couldn’t hide how I felt. I cried
and cried and cried. I didn’t even bother to run to my room, just
sat there at the kitchen table sobbing.

Kiera touched my arm. “You okay?” she
asked.

I shook my head.
No, no, no!

“Phoebe,” she said, waving her away, “could
you call the school and say I’ll be late? But go ahead for the
groceries, the list’s ready. Then maybe you can give me a ride down
later.”

As soon as Phoebe left us Kiera asked,
“Somebody special?”

She handed me a box of tissue and I got
myself under control enough to answer, “Used to be.”

“Want to tell me about him?”

I rubbed my eyes and blew my nose. God, I was
a mess. “No. It’s over.”

“Sure doesn’t look that way. What’s his
name?”

I couldn’t not tell her. “Jay,” I said, the
word sweet on my lips. “Jay Williams. Well actually, his mother
called him Jiro, which means second son, but everybody else just
calls him Jay.”

Kiera folded the newspaper she’d been reading
and set it aside. “When did you meet him?”

“A long,” sobs starting again, “time
ago.”

“How did you meet him?”

“Working at the Children’s Agency.” More
sniffling and nose blowing. “Oh Kiera, I can’t talk about this. I’m
trying to forget him.” Yeah, right. Just thinking about him was a
rush.

She stroked my hair and rubbed the back of my
neck, like the mother I never had. “Come on, tell me, you’ll feel
better.”

And then I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, I was
eighteen and I’d just dropped out of college because, well, just
because. I was in denial, I guess you’d say, and I was running away
from Middleford and my foster parents.”

Kiera nodded and poured me some herbal tea.
“The ones you were living with in high school?”

“Yeah, the Wembles. Vera and Walter. Anyway,
I went to work in Toronto, at the Children’s Agency. I didn’t have
the proper qualifications but I had so much experience with the
social services system they hired me anyway. I could really relate
to kids in care, since that’s all I’d ever been.”

“I’m sorry,” Kiera said softly. “I can’t
imagine, growing up the way I did, what your life, or Nick’s, must
have been like.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know which is worse.
Not having a family at all or having one like his.” I stirred my
tea but couldn’t drink any. A sudden cold feeling of dread came
over me. What kind of family was my baby going to have?

As if she knew what I was thinking, Kiera
said, “Don’t worry, Luce, your child will have a good family, full
of love.” She patted my back. “C’mon, tell me more about Jay.”

“Well, he was a supervisor at the Children’s
Agency. He was supposed to train me, so I got to know him right
away.”

Kiera gave a sympathetic laugh. “And you fell
for him.”

“Like a ton of bricks. He seemed so grownup
and worldly, but so open and down to earth too. And also gorgeous,
to die for.” I had to stop a minute to ease the ache of wanting to
touch Jay’s hair, to feel his skin against mine again. “But mostly
he was the first guy I could really talk to, you know, about
myself, without pretending to be someone or something I wasn’t. He
accepted everything about me, I mean he understood. He’d grown up
in Vermont in the 1950s as the child of a mixed marriage, and he
knew how it felt to be different, to be shunned.” I made a sort of
sobbing sound. “People teased us about him being a father figure to
me, everybody knew his daughter Becky was almost my age, but it was
more than that. Far more. I thought he was some kind of god.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” Kiera cried.
“That’s exactly how I felt when I first met Nick.”

“You did?”

“Yes. But don’t let me interrupt. We can talk
about Nick some other time. What happened with Jay?”

“I moved in with him, and I was happier than
I’d ever been in my life. The job was demanding but I really felt
like I was making a difference. Becky was in college and she came
up to visit us sometimes. We got along just fine. She was a shining
star, top marks, athletic scholarship, and then – ”

And then I lost it again. The whole horrible
story was just too much. I cried so hard I shook all over. Kiera
threw her arms around me, making soft, comforting sounds. “Hey,
hey,” she said. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes it can,” I said between sobs, “it’s
worse.” I rested my head in my hands, the box of tissue close by.
“Becky was just about to graduate when she, she had the accident.
She was in a car crash on her way home for the weekend and she
almost died. She was in a coma for six months. And when she finally
came out of it she couldn’t walk. She was paralyzed.”

“Oh my god,” Kiera said. “Oh my god.”

“Jay was devastated,” I said. “We both were.
We went down as much as we could, but it’s over eight hours from
Toronto to Vermont. Becky spent a year in rehab. She did great,
she’d trained in physio after all, she understood what had happened
and how to live with it. She was home about a year, they’d
renovated the house to accommodate her wheel chair and everything,
and things were starting to be almost normal again. Everybody but
her mom, Ruth, who was a still a wreck and couldn’t cope with what
had happened, had made adjustments. We’d accepted the situation.
Becky even had a part-time job. Then Ruth killed herself.”

“Jesus Christ!” Kiera cried. “Oh Luce, I’m so
sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said, “everybody is.” I got up and
cleared our dishes, paced around the kitchen. I paused at the
table, looking at Jay’s letter. Lord, how I loved that man. I could
never get over him. But I had to.

Kiera motioned for me to sit down again.

I didn’t really want to tell the next part,
but the words just kept coming. “After Ruth died, well, Becky
couldn’t live on her own. We talked about hiring a companion for
her, Ruth’s family had set up a trust fund, but Jay felt he had to
look after Becky himself. He felt she’d suffered so much, and now
she’d lost her mother too, she really needed him. I guess he had a
sort of mid-life crisis, he’d just turned forty. Anyway, he was
racked with guilt. He hadn’t been there for Becky when she was a
kid, and he felt so bad about that.”

“Sometimes I’m so scared to be a parent.”
Kiera checked the teapot, then got up to put the kettle on again.
“Don’t worry, I do want this baby. But there’s just so much danger
out there.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. Dealing with
Becky’s accident was a nightmare. And now, well, what can I say?
Jay felt he had to do his family duty, at long last, which was to
look after Becky. It broke us up.”

“But did it have to?” Kiera added hot water
and more tea leaves to the pot. “I mean, couldn’t you have worked
something out? It’s obvious you still love each other.”

I just shrugged. “He asked me to come with
him, but I didn’t want to. I guess I was jealous, I don’t know, I
just didn’t think I could live with them both, with Becky always
being the center of attention.”

Kiera dumped out my cold tea and poured me a
fresh cup. “Chamomile,” she said, “with mint and rosehips. Very
soothing.”

I sipped some and sighed. “I’m so ashamed,” I
said. “It sounds so small of me, that I wouldn’t go with Jay. But
Becky is so controlling. She’s so bloody well-adjusted, she never
complains, never feels sorry for herself and she makes so much of
what she has. She’s gorgeous, outgoing, plays wheelchair
basketball, she’s even taught herself to walk a bit with braces.
She’s got tremendous upper body strength and tremendous inner
strength. She’s got lots of friends, everybody that meets her loves
her. And Jay worships her, he does whatever she says.”

“Ah,” Kiera said. “The other woman is his
daughter.”

“Exactly.” I decided to skip the next bit,
the four long years we lived apart, when I worked to the end of my
sanity to forget Jay. She didn’t need to know I’d almost had a
nervous breakdown. “When I left the Children’s Agency, well, the
second summer I was at the lodge, I decided to forgive him and try
again, so he started coming up when he wasn’t teaching.”

Kiera poured me more tea. “What went
wrong?”

“Becky,” I said. “As usual. She was working
at a camp for disabled kids, that’s how Jay was free to get away in
the summers, and she wanted to start her own camp, make it a
full-time thing. I wanted to buy the lodge and convert it, get rid
of the hunters. I figured we could take disturbed and disadvantaged
kids too, and we could all work together, be one big happy family.
But when the lodge became available, Jay and Becky wouldn’t budge.
They wanted to stay in Vermont.” I finished my tea before adding,
“So I told him it was over and I was going ahead on my own.”

“I see,” Kiera said. “So that’s why you need
the fifty thousand dollars? I kind of wondered, but Nick said I
shouldn’t ask, you’d tell me if you wanted to. Wow, what a
story.”

“Yeah,” I said, “isn’t it.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“God, Kiera. What more could there be to
know?”

“Well, you said you’d been pregnant before,
and I can’t help wondering if it was Jay? Was it his baby?”

Something clenched inside me. “No.” I said.
“No, and I’m never telling anybody who the father was, so let’s
talk about something else, okay?”

Luckily Phoebe came back then, and Kiera
jumped up to help her bring in the groceries. I hurried to my room,
needing to be alone after sharing far more than I’d meant to with
Kiera. I stuffed Jay’s letter in a drawer, then took it back out
and burned it in the fireplace. Nothing had really changed. He
hadn’t said he’d reconsider about the lodge. Sure, his letter was
touching, full of love and longing. But it was also full of
lies.

I took the postcard of Airdrie Bay I’d been
saving to send to the Wembles down off the mantle. I could buy them
another. On it I wrote:
Dear Jay, I’ve been in Nova Scotia since
September, doing a favor for an old friend. Please leave me alone.
It’s over. We’re through.

Later that afternoon I wrote to the Rivards.
I told them more about my plans for the lodge and asked them to
stay on and be part of my camp. Then I decided I’d done enough idle
daydreaming and I’d better work on the details. I took out the
notebook and pencils I’d bought a few weeks ago then hidden away
during those early woozy days of my pregnancy. Now it was time to
use them. I started drawing maps and diagrams, making lists of
renovations, staff, equipment. I couldn’t believe I’d never put all
this down on paper before.

As I worked I thought about Camp Sumac, where
the Wembles had sent me the first summer I lived with them. It was
a church camp, not fancy, but fun. The focus was on celebrating the
spirit in everything – the land, the air, the water, the people –
all were connected and sacred. We lived in tents on wooden
platforms and ate in a rustic dining hall and I loved every
minute.

That first year, after ninth grade, I was a
senior camper. The next summer I joined the CIT program, then
worked as a counselor for two years. Gordon Clark, being the
minister’s son, worked there also. He was my steady boyfriend right
up until the last week of the last summer, just before college. And
that summer was the beginning of the end of my conforming, good
girl years.

The Camp Sumac staff always stayed on a week
after the campers went home, to clean up and close down. It was a
time of fun and fellowship I usually looked forward to. But that
year I felt so restless I just couldn’t do it. Prom night back in
May, and what had happened then, hung over me. I’d been trying not
to think about Nick all summer, but he haunted me.

So I didn’t stay on. I told Gordon I wanted
to go home early to get ready for college. But really I just wanted
to see Nick. Which I did. With disastrous results.

But still, my memories of Camp Sumac were all
good. Even at the Wembles I’d never felt so truly at home. Part of
my plan for a camp at the lodge was an effort to recreate that
experience. I wanted to make that awesome feeling available to kids
who’d never been out of the city, never walked in a real forest or
swum in fresh water, never belonged anywhere.

There were a lot of snags and potential
problems, I realized now. Funding would be the biggest hitch. Even
the fifty thousand was just a start. I’d have to raise a whole lot
more. But I was sure I could find a way to do it. And it was
exhilarating to be making an actual plan at last. I felt totally
recovered from my bout of tears over Jay that morning. If he didn’t
want to help me with my camp, the hell with him.

I told Kiera as much at dinner as I showed
her what I’d produced so far.

“Hey, I’m impressed!” she said. “I really
love your ideas, especially this one about integrating disabled
kids. I didn’t realize they could do so much.”

“Yeah, that surprises everybody.” Of course
Becky was supposed to be in charge of that. But I could find
somebody else. She wasn’t the only disabled athlete out there.

“I’ve got lots of stuff on drama for kids if
you want it,” Kiera said. “And I’m sure Nick can help you with the
legal stuff. He’s a very sharp lawyer.”

When Nick phoned that night I was feeling
euphoric. It seemed like my goal was within my grasp. We talked a
long time about my camp and how I could make it happen. Then just
before we hung up he said, “I’ve been thinking about you all the
time. I wish I’d been able to get down there, but I’ve been
swamped.”

“Well, you’ll be here at Christmas, that’s
only a few weeks.” The suggestiveness in my voice shocked me.

“What should I buy you?” Nick asked.

“You don’t have to buy me anything.” What I
meant was, I want you to think of a gift for me yourself. I want
you to think about me and choose something you know I’ll love. Jay
had been a master at that, I realized. Tears threatened again and I
had to choke them back. He was out of my life. Forever.