Heart on a Chain (35 page)

“
It wouldn’t last Henry. You know that.”

“
Kate, I love you,” he says, yearning in his words.

“
I love you, too.” I struggle to keep my voice light, to suppress the emotion that demands to be released with the words. “I always will. You’ve been my best friend. I will never forget anything you’ve done for me. You have no idea how much it means. But now it’s time for me to move on.”

“
No,” he moans, pressing his forehead against mine. I reach up, laying my hand against his cheek, allowing myself this one last indulgence.

“
Bye, Henry,” I say, pulling away, hurrying through the gate, running once I’m beyond the house, running blindly with tears flooding my eyes, not stopping until I can’t run anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I end up staying
with Jessica throughout the summer. Every time I try to leave, Jessica or her parents talk me into staying just a little longer, until eventually I quit even bringing it up. It just seems easier to stay.

When I came home from breaking up with Henry, and told Jessica about it she sat with me while I cried.

“
I can’t do this,” I tell her.

“
Then don’t,” she says, “Go back to him.”

She stays close to me while I work through the depression, dragging me out of bed on the days that I don’t want to get up.

“
Come on, Kate, let’s go get ice cream,” she says.

“
I don’t want to eat ice cream again,” I moan.

“
Then let’s go get a cup of cyanide. I hear they serve the best cyanide west of the Rockies at Joe’s.”

She also tells me that I’m an idiot, that if she had someone who loved her in the way Henry loves me, she would do anything to keep them,
not
push them away.

She can’t see the picture in my head, though, the one where Henry hates me for destroying his dream, the one where being married to a murderer has shattered his perfect life.

I find work at the nursing home, taking care of Alzheimer patients, learning patience and love for people who are suffering so much worse than me, people who don’t care about my sudden local celebrity and don’t ask me questions about it.

I apply for several scholarships, and receive enough to take a full course of classes at the community college, even enough to cover book costs. Jessica is also going to be attending, though we only have two classes together.

I go to the bank with Grandpa Henry’s money and convert it into a money order, which I then mail to him. It comes back a week later. I mail it again to him, with a letter this time, telling him I’m no longer with Henry and no longer need an “emergency fund”. It comes back again, this time a new money order for
two
-thousand dollars, with its own letter.

Dear Kate,

I am aware of your misguided break-up with my grandson, but I still hold out hope that you will realize the foolishness of this and will return to him. In the meantime, this money is mine to do with as I please, and it pleases me for you to have it. I am happy you no longer need emergency money, so spend it on yourself. You deserve it. Return it to me and I will again double its value and will continue to do so as long as you keep returning it. Do you want to be responsible for wiping out an old man’s life savings?

Love, Grandpa Henry

The letter makes me laugh and cry. I miss Grandpa Henry, more so knowing I’ll never see him again. But I know he means what he says, and so I keep the money, this time sending him a letter thanking him for his donation to the Kate Mosley New Life Fund.

“
So, I hear you don’t drive,” Jessica’s dad, Tom, tells me over dinner one night.

I glance at Jessica, who pointedly ignores me as she’s piling potatoes on her plate. I turn back to Tom.

“
That’s only kinda true. I have a drivers license; I’ve just never really had much of an opportunity to actually drive, so I’m not really sure if I still can or not.”

“
Well, then, let’s get going.”

He stands up, and I look around, confused. Jessica only shrugs, shoveling a forkful of potatoes into her mouth—to cover a grin, I suspect. Jill, Jessica’s mom, only smiles and nods for me to follow her husband.

We head out to the garage, and Tom throws me the keys to the small SUV as he climbs into the passenger seat. I take a breath, climbing into the opposite side.

And just sit.

After long, silent moments, Tom looks over.

“
Well?” he prompts.

I turn to him.

“
This is really nice, but…”

“
But?”

“
It seems silly. I don’t even own a car.”

“
No big deal,” he says. “You’ll be the official family driver from here on out, until you get your own car.”

“
I’m not going to have money for a ca—” I break off as a thought pops into my head. I look at him with a smile.

“
What now?” he grins back.

“
Know any good used car dealers?” I ask, sticking the key into the ignition.

Jessica’s family is different from the Jamison’s, not as loud and exuberant, hugs given sparingly, but they are still so far above what I have ever known. Her parents are quiet and steady, warm and welcoming me into the family from the beginning, as if I already belonged but only just showed up. They clearly love one another; they just aren’t as public about it as Emma and Dr. Jamison.

I’m woven into the tapestry of their family so completely that I’m even given some chores to do along with Jessica. When the summer is coming to an end and I begin talking about moving out again, they ignore me, not making a big fuss and I find myself staying—again.

Turns out Tom does have a friend that owns a car dealership and he helps me find a good used car cheap, one that I pay for somewhat guiltily using Grandpa Henry’s money.

The pain of losing Henry doesn’t ever ease; I just learn to live with it. I avoid places in town that I know he might be. Jessica tries to tell me things she hears about him, but I plug my ears childishly, his name too painful to even hear. I don’t want to know what he’s doing, even as I yearn for the sight of his face, the touch of his hand, the kiss of his lips so much that I cry myself to sleep every night.

Then it happens, the one thing I had feared.

I’m driving home from work, and as I pull through a stop sign, I see a heartbreakingly familiar car coming the other way. I quickly pull to the side of the road, ducking, peering up over the steering wheel. My heart pounds, my hands sweat. My reaction is completely visceral, and I feel that I’m coming apart at the seams as I sit and watch, hoping and dreading.

It’s Emma.

I breathe a sigh of relief, then begin trembling in aftershock. It wasn’t who I thought—but was almost as bad. Waves of longing crash over me, and for an insane moment I consider turning my car around and following her. Then I scoff at myself.

“
Okay, Kate, get a hold of yourself!” I command.

I try to imagine if it was Henry in the car and the pain that suffuses me is overwhelming. I think that if I were to see Henry somewhere I would probably have a heart attack if my body’s current reaction is any indication. At the very least it would undo the progress I’ve made in learning to try to live without him—no matter how small that progress. I figure getting out of bed, and trying to make a life is better than nothing.

I’ve met a few new people in my college classes, though I still struggle with trust issues and believing someone would want to know me without malicious intent. I’m seeing a psychiatrist again, at the insistence of Jessica’s parents, who are worried about my deep depression after Henry. Having seen and felt the result of untreated depression firsthand in the form of my mother, I agree. I don’t need pills—refuse to take them, as a matter of fact—just someone to help me work through everything. She’s helping me learn to trust, to believe in myself, and to deal with being without Henry. She keeps encouraging me to date, but I know that isn’t going to happen for a very long time, if ever.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

My psychiatrist encourages me
to make peace with my father. I discovered that my birth parents are unknown, as I had been left on the steps of a hospital—not as romantic in reality as it sounds. So I decide to try to see him.

I pull up in front of the house next door to the house I had grown up in, ironically in the place where I had once made Henry leave me to avoid being seen.

My father is home—odd since it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. He has his head pushed underneath the open hood of his old car. It’s a peculiarly normal thing for him to be doing, something I don’t remember ever seeing him do before. I watch him for a few minutes, searching for the anger within. There’s a little rumble of it deep in my stomach, but mostly it’s gone.

I climb out of my car, and he jumps at the sound of my slamming car door, hitting his head against the open hood, cursing as he rubs the spot. His eyes fall on me and his hands still as he watches me come near with disbelief.

“
Hi,” I say, as I come to the other side of the car from where he stands.

“
Hi,” he echoes, his voice reflecting his bewilderment. He picks up a rag lying over the fender and wipes his hands.

“
Car trouble, huh?” I say.

He looks down at the engine as if there might be something there to explain my presence.

“
Yeah, I keep thinking I’m gonna keep this thing going for a few more years, but it has its own ideas.” I nod and he looks beyond me to where my car sits. “That yours?” he asks.

“
Yeah, I just got it about a month ago.”

“
Runs okay, huh?”

I shrug. “It seems to.”

“
You ever need it looked at, I can…” he trails off, looking at me uncertainly.

“
Okay, I might take you up on that sometime.” My answer surprises him.

He’s silent a minute, watching me, shifting nervously. “You wanna come in, have a soda or something?” he asks, sounding as if he expects a no.

“
Sure.” Again, his eyebrows raise in shock at my reply.

I follow him in, sitting at the table while he washes his hands in the sink. I take the opportunity to look around. I’ll be honest, I expected the place to be in complete disarray, dishes piled in the sink, floor splattered. It’s clean, and organized. When he opens the fridge to retrieve sodas it’s filled with food—and most unusual of all, no beer or other alcohol that I can see. As he sits across from me I really look at him for the first time.

“
You look good,” I say, and it’s true.

His eyes are clear. His face is anxious about me being here but underneath that he is relaxed, no jitters or nervous twitches. His nose is lined with the broken vessels that indicate alcoholism, but it isn’t red.

“
Thanks. So do you.” He takes a sip of his soda, watching me.

“
Lot of memories involving this table,” I say, running my hands across the clean, worn surface.

“
Not all of them good though, huh?”

I look at him, remembering my last time here when I learned I’d been adopted, the time of the failed Thanksgiving dinner, all the meals served but not eaten by me. Then I think of the times I sat here with Henry, or with Emma. And even a few of those times with my father there.

“
Not all of them bad, either,” I say.