Hawthorne & Heathcliff Read online

  “I love you!” I called suddenly, my voice wavering. Heathcliff froze, his back to me, and I took a step forward. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to look at me. That’s okay. I just needed you to know.” The early morning air was heavy and wet, sitting on me like a cotton soaked blanket, and I swatted at my frizzy hair. “In my dreams, I’m standing in a kitchen cooking. Next to me is a table full of the people I love. All of them alive.” Another tear rolled down my cheek. “There’s meatloaf and cherry pie. No pecans anywhere. We’re all barefoot because with no shoes on no one would be tempted to leave. In my dreams, I’m a buzzard, and I’m saving the world from the sun, bringing back everyone I’ve ever cared about.”

  Heathcliff turned, and I swallowed hard, words tumbling out of my mouth, so that he didn’t have a chance to speak. “But this,” I gestured at the woods, “isn’t a dream. You say I keep people. I do. Here.” I patted my chest. “I may lose them but they’re kept, too, and I’ll never let them go.” The tears were coming fast now, and there was no way to stop them.

  “Do you know why I like cooking so much?” I asked. “Because when I was growing up, I used to stare at food magazines, at the covers. The ones that featured a table full of food surrounded by family, laughter, and love. Most girls pin up pictures of celebrities. I tore out those table pictures and kept them in a drawer near my bed. They’re still there.” I glanced up at the sky and then back down again. “Food brings people home. It brings them together. I keep cooking because one day I keep thinking my table will be full.”

  My gaze went to the building we’d shared so many memories in, and I thought of Heathcliff but I thought of Mams and Uncle Gregor, too.

  “I love you,” I finished, “and I just thought you should know that.”

  Heathcliff started to step toward me, and for the first time, I turned into a true coward. For the first time since I’d known Heathcliff, I was the one to run away. Because, in that moment, I didn’t need to hear him tell me he loved me. I just needed him to know that, wandering soul or no, I’d always have a plate waiting for him at my table.

  So, I left, and I didn’t look back.

  Chapter 35

  In the true scheme of things, life is love and loss. It’s a never-ending cycle of the two, like a row of dominos falling over. Occasionally, when the dominos finish toppling, there’s one left standing.

  Mams’ funeral felt like dominos. She’d always been the one left standing, even beating the odds against an illness that should have killed her much sooner. She’d been the center of her family, and she’d been yanked from it. The Vincents were a strong lot, many of them men, sons and sons of sons. Their women stood next to them, tall and proud, because to be married to a Vincent meant being strong, too. Yet, despite that strength, there wasn’t a single dry-eyed Vincent that day except Heathcliff. He didn’t cry because he’d shed all of his tears in the building in the woods.

  Other than the service, I remained in the Vincents’ kitchen with Rebecca, heating and cooking. In the kitchen, I could love better. In the kitchen, I could take all of my grief, pour it into a steaming dish, and then lay it on the table. Where I couldn’t nurture their hearts, I could nurture their bodies. In a way, I’d learned that’s how you survived grief. Nurture the body while the heart wore itself out.

  Ginger and Brayden were still there, Brayden a comforting presence for Heathcliff. I didn’t know Brayden, but I could tell just by observing the two men together that they shared a history no one would ever be able to understand. Watching them, I smiled despite the circumstances. Age, time, and loss were teaching me something. Early twenties or no, I’d learned through my experiences that it wasn’t possible for one person to be everything to another person. I could love Heathcliff, but he needed people in his life who comprehended parts of him I could soothe but never fully identify with.

  “Something’s changed about you,” Rebecca hissed in my ear.

  I glanced down at her, at the empty squash casserole dish she held in her hand, and I grinned. “Not changed. Things are just coming together.”

  She raised her brows, her gaze flicking from me to where Heathcliff stood across the room. “With him?”

  I shook my head. “No. That may never be a full reality.”

  She watched me. “You confound me sometimes, Hawthorne.”

  “Sometimes,” I replied, “I confound myself.”

  Snorting, she left me to run water in the kitchen sink, adding the empty dish to a pile of others we’d have to clean before the end of the day.

  From my corner, I watched. It was like attending a play, the mingling people swapping stories and fond memories. There was laughter, and there were tears. In the center of it all was the table, my food spread out across it.

  Heathcliff’s mom approached me, a smile lighting her features. “The food is good, Hawthorne,” she complimented.

  “Thank you.”

  For a moment, she stood with me, her eyes roaming the room. “They’re good people, my family,” she breathed, her voice full of pride.

  I smiled. “They are wonderful people.”

  Lynn glanced at me. “You’re a part of that, you know. It doesn’t matter what happens with you and Max.” She nodded at the room. “You are always welcome at my table.”

  It was the most painful and wonderful thing she could have said.

  “And you,” I rasped, “are always welcome at mine.”

  Her hand found my shoulder, and she squeezed. “You’ve got the same kind of gumption Mams had.”

  Surprised, I glanced at her. “Gumption?”

  “She never expected anything from anyone. She just loved people, albeit firmly, but in a way that no matter how stern she seemed, she was never pushy. She guided people but never pushed. It’s like she’d discovered that the best place to be in life was needed. She told me once that she’d felt what love felt like, so maybe she could turn the hurt she felt in losing it into love for those who may never get the chance to feel it otherwise. I see that in you, Hawthorne.”

  With those words, she left me. I stared after her, my heart suddenly fuller than it had ever been.

  Heathcliff may never want to admit it, but the paper I’d written in high school hadn’t been totally wrong. If I’d never met him, if I’d never known his family, and if I’d never loved them, then I wouldn’t have learned as much about myself as I had. I wouldn’t still be learning.

  My gaze rose, moving across the room to where Heathcliff was standing. He was watching me, a glass of iced tea in his hand. Brayden stood next to him, his gaze flicking occasionally to Rebecca as she moved back and forth from the kitchen. There was something about the way he looked at her, a spark of interest. There was nothing unusual about it. Rebecca was a beautiful woman, after all, with a heart bigger than she’d ever admit. She was also a lost soul, her marriages proof that she was desperate for love in a way most people weren’t.

  She was doing another pass into the kitchen when I leaned close and whispered, “Maybe you should look at those abs.”

  Her gaze followed mine, and she scoffed. “Two marriages remember?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe this time look at the abs and don’t expect anything?”

  She snorted. “I’m thinking soap operas are safer.” She continued past, and I fought the urge to chuckle. Lost soul or not, she had a place at my table, too.

  Maybe in a weird kind of way, losing so much in my youth had taught me that no matter how many pictures of tables I’d collected, it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have the souls to put at it. The key was collecting people, to making sure there was always happiness and a steaming cup of coffee waiting for the ones I brought in.

  Uncle Gregor’s words suddenly made sense. He’d been right. Broken hearts weren’t a bad thing. Sometimes it took a heart breaking to make it bigger. Because like anything else, a heart had to grow, and when there wasn’t any more room, then it had to break to make more.

  Behind me, I felt the sp
irits of Mams and Uncle Gregor watching me, and they were smiling.

  Chapter 36

  A week passed after Mams’ funeral. There were no visitors, nothing except orders to fill and occasional work at Caffeine’s. I still had the key to the building in the woods, but I didn’t go back. It didn’t feel right anymore, as if the spot where I’d felt so much happiness in my youth wasn’t mine now. It belonged to a wandering soul who didn’t need me watching him. Maybe Brayden would go with him, along with a group of his friends. Maybe there’d be poker and old stories, but either way, my story there was over.

  Rebecca and I were in the kitchen laughing over chocolate dipped strawberries when the phone rang. It was a call from a lawyer. He was a sweet man who talked about my uncle and life before suddenly informing me that my presence was requested at Mams’ will reading the next day.

  “But I don’t want anything,” I protested.

  The man on the other end of the line chuckled. “What she’s left you is … well, I’m not quite sure anyone will …” He paused and inhaled. “It would be an honor if you joined us.”

  There’d been more stuttering after that, but the only thing it had gotten me was more chuckles and a promise to be there.

  In the end, the call hung over my head like a cloud for the rest of the day, following me through orders, through work at Caffeine’s, into my bed, and into the van the next morning. Outside, the sun was shining. There was no rain. I kept looking for grey clouds, but there was only blue.

  The sun was hot, beating down on the van as I pulled into the small parking lot of a house that had been turned into an office. Mellow & Mayvern, the sign outside read. There were two other cars in the lot along with Heathcliff’s black F150. With only a cursory glance at them, I entered the building. The interior had that musty smell, the kind that made you wonder what year the house had been built in, and the air was too cold, as if the air conditioner never cut off.

  A young secretary, pretty with brown upswept hair, motioned me toward a small room with a long wooden table. “They’re ready,” she informed me.

  I stepped inside, my gaze going to the family sitting around the conference room; Lynn, Dusty, Samantha, Chris, and Heathcliff. The men stood when I entered, and I took a seat at the far end of the table near a small American flag sitting in a brass holder. Rather than looking at the family, I gazed at my reflection in the shining mahogany. Being here didn’t feel right.

  The lawyer I’d talked to the day before was a cheery man, bald except for tufts of white hair above his ears. He wore glasses that were too small for his face, making his cheeks look like a squirrel’s when it was stuffed with acorns.

  “Now that everyone’s here,” he said. “I’m George Mayvern. I’ve been working with Mams for years now, mostly over her charity stuff, and I want to take a moment to express how sorry I am at your loss.” He paused, but no one said anything. Laying out a stack of papers on the table in front of him, he pushed up his glasses, and said, “Mams didn’t have much really. She left the family business to Dusty, and the land she and Paps owned goes to the family. She’d like her charity funds to be taken over by Lynn and Samantha.”

  He looked up, his gaze sweeping the table before landing on Heathcliff. “Oh, as for the land, there was one exception.” He nodded at Heathcliff. “She wanted the land around the shed at the back of the property, about two acres, to go to her grandson, Max. It’ll be parceled appropriately.” He smiled. “And that’s about it. It was pretty cut and dry … except,” he looked at me, “what she left you.”

  The family’s gazes moved down the table toward me, and my cheeks flushed. “I’m sure whatever it is can go to the family,” I stuttered. “I don’t—”

  A pair of old boots were suddenly slapped onto the table, a deafening silence following.

  The lawyer cleared his throat, lifting a piece of paper and squinting through his glasses. “And as for my husband’s old combat boots, I’d like them to go to Clare Macy,” George read. “After all these years, they aren’t much to look at it. They’ve seen a lot of rough roads.” The lawyer looked up at me. “Give them to Clare, and tell her I know she’ll understand why.”

  I stared, my gaze locked on the boots, my hands trembling where they rested in my lap under the table.

  Mams had given me Paps’ shoes.

  Around me, the family started speaking, their voices rising as they asked the lawyer about other parts of the will, but the only thing I saw were the boots.

  She’d given me her husband’s shoes.

  I thought of Heathcliff’s sneakers resting in my bedroom closet, and I had to clench my fists to control the shaking in my body.

  At some point someone spoke to me, a small container slid in front of my face.

  “A little bit of Mams’ ashes,” Lynn said near my ear. “We figured you might want to spread them on your uncle’s grave alone.”

  Vaguely, I remembered thanking her, remembered asking if I could sit a little longer as everyone left. But as for everything else, I couldn’t recall it. As much as I hated to admit it, I didn’t even remember Heathcliff.

  There was only me, a long table, and a pair of old boots.

  Chapter 37

  For an hour, I sat in the conference room staring at the boots. I knew why Mams had given them to me. I understood it more than I’d like to admit, my heart filling with fondness for the old woman as I finally stood.

  Reaching for the shoes, I picked them up, cradling them against my chest, my eyes welling with tears. To most people, they were shoes. For Mams, I had no doubt they’d been filled with memories. Shoes are often overlooked by people. They were worn on the feet, after all. How many stop to look down at their feet?

  However, it was the feet that did the walking, the feet that did the running, and the feet that did the resting.

  There was no going home now.

  Climbing into the catering van, I set Paps’ boots and the small container of ashes reverently in the passenger’s seat, my fingers lingering over them before starting the vehicle.

  As I backed out of the lot, I rolled the windows down, the wind rushing in around me, the gravel crunching under my tires.

  The wind freed me. It tugged at my hair, pulling and pushing it around my face, the sun pouring in through the windshield. The smell of honeysuckle, azaleas, magnolias, and even the occasional rank chicken house flooded my nostrils through the window, hugging me. The wind smelled like home. The wind was home. Like shoes, the wind saw everything, and then carried what it saw to the four corners of the earth. If the wind could talk, it could tell an infinite amount of stories.

  I was almost out of town when I turned onto a long dirt road. On one side was a large grass-covered hill, trees in the distance. Wild yellow flowers bloomed like a blanket of melted sunshine over the expanse. On the opposite side was a cemetery, an arched wrought iron gate marking the entrance.

  Parking on the side of the road, I climbed free of the van, stopping only long enough to get the small container of ashes out of the passenger side. The boots I brought with me, too, even though I had no intention of leaving them behind.

  My uncle’s grave was just inside the gate on top of a rise, his tombstone overlooking the sea of yellow across the road. In the sky, buzzards circled, probably eyeing a dead carcass, but it seemed fitting somehow.

  Pausing before the simple arched stone that marked Gregor’s resting place, I nodded at the yellow hill. “You have a nice view. That’s good.” Setting Pap’s boots just at the foot of Gregor’s grave, I held up the container of ashes. “I brought you a visitor.” Lifting the lid, I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I poured the ashes into my palm. “She’s going to keep you company, Uncle, when I can’t be here.”

  Maybe there should have been more words than that, but nothing came, my throat closing up as I sprinkled Mams’ ashes over the ground at my feet. The wind carried some of them away, twirling them up toward the sky and down into the sunny field, and I watched them.


  “I’m going to keep you both,” I whispered, patting my chest, “here.” My hand came down to rest on the tombstone, the etched words, Here rests a kind soul and a doting father, staring back at me. “You’ll always have a place at my table.”

  Across from us the yellow field shone. Above us, the buzzards flew. Clouds sent shadows over the area, but it never rained. The sun beat down, lighting the grave, the old pair of boots, and a wild-haired woman holding an empty silver container.

  The wind blew, carrying away my story.

  Epilogue

  Paps’ boots got a place of honor just inside the front door, forever a symbol that he was a part of the plantation. Things returned to normal around the house. The catering business bloomed, and Rebecca set up an online service that let us ship all over the States, with the hopes that we could eventually make it international. Caffeine’s also flourished, and we built on an extra building that offered baked goods from the plantation. Against all odds, we were becoming a success. It would take a long time to pay off the debts I owed because of school and the upkeep the plantation required, but I was making it.

  Once again, Heathcliff left. There’d been no good-bye. I think, in retrospect, we were past good-byes. He had a job out-of-state, a life away from our small town, and it was enough for me knowing he was still wandering, trying to find that piece of his soul that was missing. No matter the distance, no matter what he needed to find out about himself, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  My table was full, with ghosts, family, and friends. Even so, I left one space open … waiting.

  Two years passed.

  In those two years, Rebecca and I had developed a name for ourselves, the business continuing to expand. Rebecca had attempted two more serious relationships but bailed out before it could result in marriage. In the end, she’d started spending more time with the men in her soaps than she did in real life. I would have been worried if her constant soap opera babbling didn’t keep Caffeine’s customers so enthralled. Rebecca was a natural storyteller.