LeOmi's Solitude (37 page)

LeOmi nodded, but she seemed unsure.

Bekka flipped through her notebook. “Use the
Signet as a plummet. Stretch it out upon the Line of Confusion.
Desolation can be void and without form, and represent the Stones
of Emptiness or if left untilled they lay waste.”

Bekka closed her notebook and said, “Has Mr.
Diefenderfer had any additional insight into the song. What is the
Desolation?”

“Once again, all things in their own time.”
He turned to leave and then he stopped.

“By the way Miss Jones, do you plan to keep
me busy again next year?”

“Is that another way of saying that she has
been accepted for enrollment for her second year at The Seventh
Mountain?”

“How insightful of you, Ms. McGraw.”

* * *

Her dad had built an entire wall of
Nightingale Floors in her room. There were coney food stations,
play areas, tunnels and secret passages and a large crated section
on the bottom that had doors that could be opened to retrieve
occasionally stubborn coneys. It was siesta time and LeOmi was
keeping watch at the windowsill. It was still her favorite thinking
place. In the past three years, the camellia bush had grown so much
that it obstructed her view of the driveway and most of the street,
if it could only cover the memories too.

Her dad stopped at the door.

She looked at him and said, “Why did she
leave?”

He came into the room and sat on the old
naval locker that had been a coney home.

“I think that your Mother tried to protect
us, in her own way, but she was wrong in thinking that her way was
the right way, the only way, and also by trying to do it all
herself.”

“She failed didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“She failed by dying.”

Her dad said, “Yes, and with Ruby, but we
can’t know the secret depths of her heart. Perhaps there was some
other reason that we don’t know about.”

“She left us making me feel useless to her,
and unloved.”

“Somebody famous once said ‘All that you can
take with you is that which you have given away’.”

LeOmi nodded, “Grandmother and Hannah told me
to remember and forgive.”

“Good advice, but sometimes it is easier to
forgive others than yourself.”

“I know. I run everyone away, or I stay so
far away that…I have to know if it was my fault.”

“Why? It wouldn’t make it any easier if it
were my fault or Jesse’s fault or Ruby’s?”

“You’re right.”

More things to pile in that basket, Henry.
Only you can decide whether to close the basket or leave it
open.

Her forehead wrinkled and she said, “The last
of Lydia’s song said, ‘In the end, invasion is unavoidable. Success
isn’t sure, in fact failure is likely. Time is running out’.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think it has something to do with Mark
Young.”

“The boy with the staff?”

She nodded, “When he took the number one spot
for the school year, I realized that I am to follow him. I may not
always like it, but I will be his friend and he will be mine. We
will work together for a purpose. I must trust him.”

“You have learned a lot since that little
girl throwing her hair into the wind.”

“The short time that I was with Ruby, she
asked me ‘What was my heart’s desire?’ I told her that I wanted to
be a family again. I didn’t know how much I had missed that until
that day.”

“You have always had your family, as whole as
it can be. Your mother always tried to make sure of that–more than
we knew at the time. The parts make up the whole, the bad with the
good. Don’t you want blue skies without storm clouds Omi?”

LeOmi smiled, her eyes shining brightly, and
then she said, “Omi? No one has called me that since I was a small
child.”

“Well, let’s make that a habit again, shall
we?”