Coming Home To You

“Well. Tell him I’m glad, and that he’s my favorite father,” I replied.

“Will do. Bye, baby,” my mom said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. So much.”

My coffee was ready before I reached the counter.

“Should I give Neil a call?” Ray asked as he handed me my cup.

I nodded, giving him a questioning look.

His normally broad grin was replaced by a look of sympathy and concern.

As if he knew.

“Kate’s been in here every day since movie night,” he said in explanation.

“Ah. And I’m guessing she told you everything,” I said, dropping my eyes.

“Yes, she did. And I’m sorry.” There was a knowing in his voice that made me raise my eyes to meet his. It was hard to see, but somewhere behind all that carefree humor was the remnant of a pain that had shaped his life as much as my pain was shaping mine.

We stood there, silently communicating our own individual wounds without ever uttering a word. It’s strange how pain can level the field, can bring shared ground to people who might otherwise have nothing in common.

Ray nodded, breaking the spell. “I’ll give him a call tomorrow,” he said.

“Thanks, Ray.”

“No problem,” he smiled, snapping the mask back in place. “And as repayment for the favor,” he said, his eyes shifting from side to side and leaning forward as though he was about to whisper a secret, “you can tell Kate she needs to take me up on my offer for dinner.”

I smiled back at him.

Here he was, an unexpected answer to a prayer I never thought to pray.

Chapter 6

The apartment seemed small now, suffocating somehow. I stood in the doorway, trying to look at my surroundings with new eyes, with the eyes of someone who was starting over. I saw the past everywhere, and it seemed inescapable. It was in the painting in the front hall that Paul had given me for Valentine’s Day last year, in the set of knives that he’d helped me pick out when I’d gotten my apartment. It was on every wall that we’d primed and re-painted together, infused into every room.

I couldn’t start over and still be here.

I sat on my couch, surrounded by suitcases and banker’s boxes full of the things I was going to rely on for the next few months. Everything else would stay here to be packed, piece by piece, and put in storage. Eventually, it would be moved to a new home. A new home where I hoped to feel different.

Better.

I wanted to stop feeling so broken all the time, so I had decided that Neil’s would be a stopgap. A place to land while I looked for another, more permanent place to call my own.

Was I ready for this? God, I hoped so.

I hefted one of the boxes and walked out into the hall, looking up to find myself face to face with the door of Paul’s apartment.

It was a sight that greeted me every time I went out, every time I came back.

It was a sight that drove home how alone I felt.

And it was something that I wanted to get away from. Needed to get away from.

Paul’s apartment.

Even though it wasn’t. Not anymore.

The new tenants were people I avoided at all costs. I didn’t want to know them, didn’t want to think about the lives they were living in the apartment where my dead fiancé once lived. I didn’t know their first names or even how old they were, just that it was a man and a woman. I didn’t even know if they were just living together or married—each choosing to keep their respective last names.

And it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that their names now replaced Paul’s next to the buzzer for 5B in the lobby downstairs. That their furniture was where his had once been. That their lives were going on behind that door, within those walls, while his had stopped.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Here we go, I thought. This is the beginning.

The beginning of what, I wasn’t at all sure. What mattered was that this was a step in the right direction.

“Zoë, dear, are you alright?”

I opened my eyes to see Mrs. Fenmore, the lady from two doors down, looking at me with eyebrows knitted tightly together in concern. I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but I’m not sure it came out looking right.

“Oh, I’m fine, Mrs. Fenmore,” I lied. “I’m just getting my stuff out to my car. How are you this morning?” I asked, anxious to shift her focus.

Her wrinkled face sharpened as she assessed me over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses. I could see all the wheels turning in her head as we stood there, silently facing each other in the hall. She may have given the appearance of being absent-minded and often flighty, but I knew well enough that she was sharper than a tack. She just knew how to use age to her advantage. I had a feeling that she knew more about every tenant in the building than they realized, simply because she was so good at unobtrusive observation. That, and the fact that people seemed to just off-handedly spill their guts whenever they were around her.

Which was precisely what I was determined not to do right now.

She smiled sadly at me and took a small step forward, getting close enough to rest a gnarled, vein-mapped hand on my arm.

“We’re going to miss you, my dear girl,” she said softly, her watery blue eyes seeming to bore directly to my soul.

I took a long, deep breath, fighting off the tears that seemed inevitable. I managed a wobbly smile and nodded, fearful that opening my mouth to respond would open the floodgates; and then I’d never be able to leave.

“Let me know if you need anything, Zoë. I know of a few able-bodied young men who’d gladly help you move your things.” She squeezed my arm with another small smile, then turned to go.

“Mrs. Fenmore,” I said, wanting to catch her before she walked away. “Thank you. For everything.” I had to stop there, but I knew that it was enough. She dipped her head in kind of a half-nod, the corners of her thin lips curving up ever-so slightly.

I watched her retreating figure, wondering just how much she knew. Wondering just how much those watery blue eyes had seen, and thinking that maybe she had once been where I was standing.

There it was.

My new life, twenty minutes and fifteen miles away from my old one. Yes, I could have moved to another state, another country, even. But this was far enough. Even such a short distance was a huge step for me—the thing that mattered most here was the simple fact that there was nothing, no reminders of my life with Paul, here.

The house was one story with a brick and wood siding façade, sitting on a postage stamp yard. There was no garage, just a carport and a small area near the front door that had aspirations of being considered a porch. I was guessing that the house was at least thirty years old, but it looked as though it was wearing those years well. The yard was well-kept, and nothing appeared run-down or cluttered.

There was a truck parked up under the shade of the carport, a late model Ford Ranger. The charcoal body of the truck looked newly washed and meticulously polished, a telling sign that its owner took pride in its appearance—even if he was going to be too far away to enjoy it.

I sat in my car, idling in the driveway as I tried to process what I was staring at and how it now related to me. This was going to be home. For the next nine months of my life, this was where I was going to start and end my days.

I sucked in a long, deep breath, letting it out slowly.

I was really going to do this.

I took another deep breath, hoping that maybe I would feel a little more resolute. Not that having a car jammed with boxes and suitcases of my belongings wasn’t resolute enough. I was just scared.

Scared stupid, if I was going to be brutally honest.

Here we go, I thought, gritting my teeth as I cut the engine and opened my door. I stepped out onto the worn concrete of the driveway and unfolded myself from the car. I took a minute to look around at the houses around me, trying to redirect the nervousness I was feeling. Putting off going into the house just a little bit longer.

It was a nice enough neighborhood. Small, nothing spectacular, but it looked safe. There were a couple kids zipping up and down the street on bicycles, hollering indecipherable things at each other. A woman across the street was busily pulling up the weeds in the flower bed that bordered the front of her house, and somewhere nearby someone was mowing their lawn.

I stood there listening to the sounds of Saturday, the sounds of normalcy, feeling the warm sun on my face as I waited for…what? Why was I waiting? I shook my head at my own idiocy and shut the car door.

When I reached the front door of the house, I pulled the key from my pocket and held it in my hand for a minute, just standing there and contemplating the door. It was brown; a deep chocolate color that made a nice contrast to the sand-colored wooden siding fronting the house. This was a guy door, I thought with a small smile. To go with a decidedly guy house, I added mentally, noting a beaten-up toolbox shoved into a corner of the front porch.

I slid the key into the lock and twisted the knob. It took some jiggling and a hard shove against the door with my shoulder to get it open, and then I found myself standing in a small living room. A large window to my right let in the only bit of light. White mini blinds, closed against the curious eyes of the neighborhood, gave the room a soft, hazy feel. I looked around without turning on any lights, wanting to get to know the room a little bit before I exposed it to the harsh realities of a light bulb.

Time to start the tour.

An hour later, I’d determined through various clues that the guy was far from a germaphobe, but still clean enough that I didn’t feel as though I had to attack every room in the house wearing a hazmat suit. He was a runner—and quite good at it, if the collection of various medals and awards were anything to go by. And, aside from an assortment of empty missile shells, the man was definitely not prone to tchotchkes.

I started making a mental list of things I wanted to do to make myself feel more at home in these new surroundings. Vacuum, clean the bathroom, dust…and I’m going to have to stock the fridge, of course, I thought as I moved down the hall to the kitchen.

It was modest and serviceable, much like the rest of the house. There was a refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, and microwave that all looked like they might possibly be pushing the twenty-year mark, all in a strange shade that I was assuming used to be almond.

At least it wasn’t avocado, I thought with a small smile.

I turned my full attention to the fridge, which was humming a little louder than I was used to hearing. I raised an eyebrow. The last thing I needed right now was an appliance malfunction.

There were a few photos posted randomly across the front, babies and a couple of little kids, each of which I turned over to inspect for identification. Apparently, Neil was the proud uncle of five very cute children.

I wondered how many siblings he had.

Not that I should really care, I thought. I probably was never even going to meet this guy. As Ray had explained it, his deployment had begun a bit earlier than expected, which meant he’d left before our arranged introduction.

I opened the door to the refrigerator and cautiously peeked inside, lest something jump out at me. A lone bottle of ketchup wobbled inside the door. At least there was one thing I could knock off my grocery list, right?

Oh, make that two things, I thought as I opened the freezer door to find a bottle of vodka.

Was there a drink you can make with ketchup and vodka?

I almost laughed out loud at the thought.

Maybe some sort of Bloody Mary-type concoction, if he had some Tabasco sauce in one of the cabinets.

Kate, in her encyclopedic knowledge of all things mixed, would know. I would have to have her come over later to help me get settled. Or at least to help diffuse some of the strangeness. Maybe she could stay with me for this first night here, I thought.

My cell phone began to ring, and I pulled it quickly from my back pocket, hoping it was her.

“Are you there yet?”

She hadn’t even waited for me to say hello before launching into her excited inquiry. I rolled my eyes, smiling at her complete lack of ceremony.

“Yup, I’m here. I haven’t gotten anything into the house yet, I’m sort of just doing a walk-through to get a little more acquainted with the place.” I trailed off as I moved my focus to the cabinets over the counters, opening them one by one. So far nothing strange.

“That bad, huh?” I could picture Kate on the other end of the phone, her nose wrinkled in distaste. She was probably already thinking the place must be vile.

“No, no, not at all. It’s,” I paused as I searched for an appropriate word, “cozy? Kind of small, a little dated, and you can definitely tell a guy lives here.” My eyes fell on a very ample supply of beans and canned tuna. “But it’s still nice. It’s going to need a cleaning job, but nothing major.”

There was a silence on the other end, and I knew she must be trying to decode my words. I raised an eyebrow.

“Really. You can come over later and see for yourself, Kate.”

“Oh, I’m definitely coming over later. Ray’s coming with me, if that’s okay. I think he wants to make sure you feel settled, and he promised Neil he’d check in on things periodically, anyway. We’ll bring dinner, okay?”

Great. I would have a little time to get my stuff in and at least a few things cleaned to my satisfaction.

“Sounds fine to me,” I replied, opening another cabinet to find stacked boxes of Gu energy gel. Mocha, berry, and chocolate flavored.

Mmmm.

“Could you do me a favor and bring something to drink when you come?” I asked. “Otherwise, the options will be limited to water, vodka, and Gu. Or maybe a combo of all three?”

She laughed. “Done. However interesting that might taste, I don’t think any of us would really want to try that one. I’m thinking more along the lines of wine, beer, and maybe some soda.”

I knit my eyebrows together. “How long are you planning on staying, a month?”

“No. But I’ll stay as long as you need me to,” she replied.

It was one thing I so loved about our relationship; I hadn’t even had to ask, and she knew.

Chapter 7

I was hot. I was sticky. And I was nearly suicidal by the time I unlocked the front door to the house. Florida summers, even early on in the season, are not the time to be without air conditioning. Especially not in the car. Sure, you’ve got the air coming in from any open windows, but there’s only so much that can do. The heat of the pavement reflected back up into the already boiling air, when combined with the small convection oven created by the interior of a car, pretty much negates the entire theory of “fresh air.”

The air-conditioned interior of the house felt so good I almost cried. I really, really needed to get the car fixed. Before I turned into an overheated, hysterical mess.

I threw my purse onto the chair in the living room, kicked off my sandals, and squished down the hall toward the bathroom. I was desperate to wash my face and get some of the grime off, just so I could feel human again. My shirt was stuck to my back and my jeans felt heavy enough to slide right off my hips.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” I called out into the empty house. It had become almost ritual. Some people kissed the door frame when they walked through the door, I called out greetings to the imaginary man who lived in the house with me. Not that I really thought he was there, mind you. But the overall presence of guy was undeniable, even though said guy wasn’t physically there.

Somehow, it made the whole idea of living in someone else’s house a little less strange. I imagined all sorts of scenarios: maybe he was just up at the corner store, or at work, or off doing manly man things with his buddies…wherever he was, and I allowed myself to imagine that he was going to be back soon. And that we were, in fact, quite close, instead of complete strangers. I wasn’t even sure what he looked like, because even after two months of living in his house, I still had yet to run across a photo of Major Neil Epstein.

I pictured someone tall, handsome, rugged. And athletic, judging by all the running medals looped over the corner of the mirror on his bedroom dresser. He was sensitive, caring, educated without ever being aloof, but still a total man’s man.

He was The Perfect Guy.

At least, in my head he was.

I had plenty of time to imagine what Neil was like as I lay in his bed at night, as I sat at his dinner table eating my cereal every morning, as I brushed my teeth in his bathroom.

It was how I dealt.

That, and I’d begun to write him letters that I never sent. Not that I could have sent them, even if I wanted to. I had no address for him, not even an e-mail address.

Every night, before I went to sleep, I wrote him a letter in a notebook that I kept by the bed. Call it journaling, Anne Frank style. Her journal was written to an imaginary person she called Kitty, mine was written to a real person named Neil.

It helped me feel more connected to another person, to this man whose home I was living in.

I wrote to Neil about my day, about what I was feeling, about anything going on with the house.

I thought of it as a kind of therapy, because while I was telling Neil about myself, I was also learning things about myself. Things that I hadn’t ever really taken time to think about. Things that I was sometimes surprised to realize. Most importantly, though, I had stopped focusing so much energy on all the things Paul and I would never have the chance to do.

I was becoming my own person again, and I was moving past that place where I’d been the sad woman whose fiancé was dead.

I was more than that.

And I was determined to be more than that.

I’d even started running every morning again.

How could I not, with all those medals mocking me whenever I looked in the bedroom mirror? Fortunately for me, Neil’s house was in an area that was conducive to running.

I planned on hitting one of the local races soon, but I wanted to get a little faster before I ventured that far. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself or besmirch my good name in the running community. Not that I was sure they would even remember me, so long had it been since I’d actually been to a race.

A harsh, unflattering glow flooded the bathroom when I flicked the light switch, granting me the most ungracious welcome as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I turned away quickly, deciding that merely washing the sweat off my face wouldn’t cut it.

I peeled off my clothes, throwing them into a damp heap in the corner. That was something else that had taken some getting used to—using someone else’s shower. Hotel showers are strange enough, simply because they aren’t yours. Someone else’s shower is strange because not only is it not yours, it’s someone else’s. It’s a very odd thing to pull back the curtain and see a half-empty bottle of men’s body wash and various shampoos that have been left behind.

When I’d gotten into the house, one of the first things I’d done was scrub the tub and shower walls with a very potent, very abrasive cleanser. It wasn’t quite strong enough to burn all of my nose hairs, but it was pretty close. Once the shower was sufficiently scrubbed and sparkling, I stocked it with my own shampoos and conditioners and body wash.

But I also put his back.

Somehow, I didn’t feel right totally displacing Neil’s things. This was still his house, and I was just a visitor here. Plus it kept me from feeling so alone. It’s amazing, isn’t it, the mind games you can play with yourself?

Once I’d showered, I wrapped up in one of the big, fluffy towels from the stack in the hall linen closet. I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom to find some clothes, thinking distractedly about how to blow up my poor excuse for a car.

Hmmmm. Wonder if any of Neil’s giant bullets would work? Or maybe he had some explosives somewhere in the house…

Probably he kept them in the same place that he’d stashed all the pictures of himself.

I found that terribly frustrating. Much as I hated having my picture taken myself, I should have given the guy a little more slack. But how in the world does somebody manage to not have a single picture of himself somewhere in his house?

Even I had a couple of snapshots that included my face floating somewhere in the sea of faces grouped together for a photo.

Even I, who was generally a reluctant party to any moment involving a camera that I wasn’t personally holding and controlling.

Squish.

I took another step further into the bedroom.

Squish.

What the?

I took more deliberate steps through the room, the carpet making squishing and sucking noises under my bare feet with each movement.

Okay, now I was getting really worried. I knew there was a water heater in a small closet-like space a few feet from the bed, and it seemed like the only logical explanation for all of this water.

Oh, dear God, don’t let it be the water heater, please don’t let it be the water heater, I prayed silently as I approached the door.

I knew, in all reality, that nothing would change between that particular second and the instant my fingers closed around the knob; but some small part of me was still hoping for a miracle.

A very small, very delusional part.

I opened the door and found an absolute mess in the small closet. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from on the thing, but the water heater was definitely leaking.

Call me ignorant, but at that particular moment, I had no idea what to do. This wasn’t the kind of thing that was supposed to happen when you were staying in someone else’s house. This was the kind of thing that was only supposed to happen to people with their own houses, with husbands there to fix the damn thing. Or husbands there to act like they knew what the hell they were looking at and then call the plumber, claiming to be too busy to fix the damn thing themselves.

My mind was racing, my heart was going at a rate rapid enough to rival a hummingbird’s wings, and I wanted to throw up. Had I done something that made this thing burst or leak or whatever it was doing that it obviously wasn’t supposed to be doing?

I felt sick and guilty and panicked.

Neil was going to blame me.

I don’t know where the thought came from, but all of a sudden it was there. And, for only being a thought, it seemed as loud as if someone had shouted it into the room.

Neil was going to blame me.

Of course he would. I was the one here, watching his house, and I’d let this happen.

Granted, I hadn’t actually been present, but it had still happened on my watch. And I had absolutely no idea of what I should do.

I needed to call Ray. It seemed logical enough to me. At least he might know what to do, which was definitely a step up from standing there, staring at the thing like a helpless idiot. My feet were almost rooted to the floor, sunken into the spongy carpet, which seemed to have absorbed enough water to fill a bathtub.

Oh, God, the carpet! What was I going to do about the carpet?

Somehow, the realization that I was going to have to deal not only with a defunct water heater, but flooded carpeting, as well, sent me over the edge.

Not just a little over the edge, either.

A lot over the edge.

I turned away from the water heater and barely made it two steps before I threw up. Right there, all over the ruined carpet.