Chapter Twenty-Two
Zee watched as he stood in front of the sliding metal door, staring at the padlock as if to unlock it would be to unleash Pandora’s troubles upon the world. She glanced at the hand that held the key, saw that it was clenched around the ring until his knuckles were white.
“Even after all this time, it’s really that hard?” she asked.
“I told you I couldn’t—”
She waved a hand and shook her head. “I wasn’t criticizing. Not anymore. I was genuinely asking. I only had to do a…second round of this, after our parents were killed, because True sorted it all out it first. I guess I’m only now truly realizing what it must have been like for him.”
“Middle rung of hell?” Jamie suggested.
She winced. “You always did have a way with words.”
For a moment he just stood there, then he asked softly, “Would she have felt the way you did? That I didn’t…care enough, love her enough, to come back right away?”
“I hope I have the grace to admit when I’ve been as wrong as I was. It was stupid of me to think everyone grieved in the same way. And arrogant to think that way was my way. So the answer is no. Aunt Millie knew you, knew your heart. And she loved you to the depths of her soul, and would have forgiven you if you’d danced on her grave.”
“God, Zee…”
She barely realized he’d moved before his arms were around her. For a split second she thought about resisting; they were not as they had once been, and there had been too much time and rough water under that particular bridge. But something in his voice, in the way he’d looked forestalled her, and instead she slipped her arms around him.
For a long moment they just stood there. They fit together as well as ever, and his arms were strong, familiar, his body still long, lean, and full of grace. He made her feel not just sheltered, but safe as well, and she could only hope she was giving him that in return, for he was the one who needed it now.
“Do you want me to open it?” she finally, almost reluctantly asked.
“No.” He released her, looked down at her with a soft, almost loving smile. The smile of the Jamie she remembered. “I’m good now.”
He lifted a hand to her cheek, cupped it for a moment, and for that moment it wasn’t just the smile, he was everything she remembered. Everything she had loved with all the passion of her teenaged heart.
He did better than she’d expected. His first words as he scanned the space were, “I may need to rent a truck.”
“Borrow True’s.”
“He’s working. He can’t do everything.”
“Tell him that, will you?”
He grinned at her, and it was almost normal. “Think he’d believe me?”
She grinned back. “No.”
They started through the accumulation of a lifetime in a fairly good state. Not that there weren’t quiet, aching moments, in particular when they found the box of his parents’ things that Aunt Millie had saved for him.
“She said you’d want them, someday,” she told him.
He’d only nodded, and they went on. And more than once she’d caught his eyes glistening with moisture, but there was some laughter, too, when they found Aunt Millie’s stuffed dragon, a wildly purple beast she had laughingly adored and kept since childhood.
“That,” he said, “is definitely coming home with me now.”
Home. Did he mean it? Was this home to him again? She reined in the sudden leap of her heart. Even if he did mean it, hadn’t she learned the hard way that what he meant wasn’t always what she meant?
A few minutes later, after she’d gone to find a particular box in the back of the space, she came back to find him clutching that silly dragon to his chest, his eyes closed.
“Jamie? Are you okay?”
“She used to let me sleep with this, when she first brought me home,” he said, without opening his eyes. “She said ‘I know you’re too old to need a protector, so just let him be a friend.’”
Her throat tight, Zee whispered, “God, I miss that woman.”
“The night True called with the news she was gone, I wanted this damned dragon more than I wanted my next breath. I wanted to curl up with him and cry. Sometimes I still do.”
Zee wanted to cry herself, and the only thing that stopped her was anger. Anger not at him but at herself, for not understanding. The memory hit her again, of asking her brother back when Hope didn’t think she could face the mess she’d been running from, if he could accept that Hope’s way of dealing wasn’t the same as his. Yet she had done the same thing with Jamie, judging his way of grieving by her own and thinking his lacking. But here it was in front of her, coming off him in palpable waves, and she felt like a complete fool.
“I’m sorry, Jamie.” For so many things.
He opened his eyes then, and when he looked at her she could see the pain roiling just beneath the surface. “I was here when it all got ripped away the first time. Me being home didn’t save them.”
Zee stared at him. “So you thought…if you stayed away…”
“I know, it’s insane, but somewhere in my head I guess I thought fate wouldn’t hit again if the circumstances were different.”
She swallowed. Felt slammed with another sudden understanding. Struggled for the breath to speak something she’d never admitted, even to herself. “And I stayed home because I thought I could somehow guard against it. That if we were together, nothing would happen to True.”
He stared at her. She could see in his eyes that he’d never realized that was part of her refusal to go with him. How could he, when she hadn’t even realized it herself until he’d said what he’d said?
Then he let out a pained laugh, again closed his eyes, and slowly shook his head. “Like we have any control at all.”
“But we keep trying,” she said. “And as long as we’re mired in this, I have something for you.” She held out the letter she’d retrieved from the box in the back. “Aunt Millie gave this to me, to give to you after…enough time had passed. She trusted me to know when the right time was, because she said no one knew you better.” Her mouth twisted almost painfully. “She was wrong about that, obviously, since I couldn’t even understand the simple fact that you grieved differently than I, but I decided that when you were strong enough to come here for this, that would be the time.”
He hesitated. She couldn’t blame him, for his name in Aunt Millie’s distinctive handwriting on the front of the envelope had to be painful to see. She had been his last living relative. At least she still had True. And now Hope.
Then he reached for it. His fingers brushed over her hand, seemed to hesitate for an instant on her birthstone ring. A little shiver went through her. Then he took the envelope, but didn’t open it. Instead he looked at her. And something in his expression made her say, “Did you know that when he first got home, before they tracked down Aunt Millie, he asked what would happen to you, and wondered if they’d let him adopt you?”
His eyes widened. “True said that?”
“He did. And he would have tried, if you’d really been alone.”
He was silent for a long moment before saying quietly, “Your brother is the most amazing guy I’ve ever known.”
As she’d hoped he smiled. And then he looked at the purple dragon and back at her. “Aunt Millie would have taken you, too.”
“I know.” He drew back slightly. “True told me she offered, if he thought it was too much for him at eighteen, and having to leave college.”
“Let me guess. He said it was his responsibility so he’d do it.”
“That’s my bro.”
He smiled, nodding slowly.
She went on in a rush. “You’re not really alone, Jamie. You have us. I know we’re not blood family—”
“Family isn’t always blood.”
It struck her suddenly, as he said words that were familiar to her from her daily play list. “Connections.” Fourth Scorpions song in her rotation. Family isn’t always blood/And sometimes you have to build your own.
“I always hoped that song was…about us. You and Aunt Millie and True and me.”
“Of course it is.” He gave her a sideways look. “All you had to do was ask.”
“That,” she said with rueful clarity, “would have required getting over myself, apparently.”
The smile she got then was worth the self-humbling. “Something you’ve always been able to do, Zee. Eventually.” His mouth quirked. “And something I had to constantly relearn.”
“Hard to do with millions thinking you’re all that.”
“I’ll just send ’em to you, and you can give them the truth.”
She laughed at that, and suddenly everything was fine. He tucked the letter into a pocket. “I’ll read it, when I can face it,” he promised. “Back home.”
And this time when he said it she knew he meant it.
At least for now, Jamie Templeton was home.