Chapter 8

Elana

Sundays were both painful and relaxing at the same time. When the clock chimed noon, you could expect that I would be at my mother’s house, drudging through whatever lecture she had for me, and then finally enjoying my time with her. She lived alone. My dad and her divorced years before. I felt like it was necessary for me to spend as much time with her as possible. My mom’s name was Tammy, and she kept herself busy with gardening, canning, and pretty much anything else that you could imagine an old homesteader taking care of. She lived about ten miles from me, on the outskirts of town in the same house that I grew up in. I loved being home now, but it had taken me a while to be able to drive past Lillie’s old childhood home without bursting into tears or having a mental breakdown. Now, I was okay, and I usually just drove right past, only giving her ghost a small bit of recognition.

“I need you to get the last of the tomatoes out of the garden,” my mom said, moving around the kitchen and getting her tools ready for the day’s activity. “Then I need you to go to the car and bring in the canning supplies. You’re going to help me make sauces today.”

“That sounds riveting,” I said, popping a grape into my mouth and grabbing the basket for the garden. “All I ask is that you send me home some for my freezer. I’m almost out from last year’s crop.”

“Of course,” she said, scoffing. “Like I could eat all of this on my own.”

“No, but the ladies at your church could.” I laughed, walking out the back door.

I spent every Sunday with my mother, even those that I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Actually, especially those days that I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I did chores for her, things she needed help with, but lived alone the rest of the time. In between, I got to listen to her harp on me for not having a boyfriend, something that I had given up on a while ago on, though I would never tell her that. My mom, though, was relentless in the pursuit for grandchildren, and these Sundays were less of a relaxing day at Mom’s and more a penance for being a single woman. Most of the time, I was fine with it, but other times, I considered just getting into a non-serious relationship with someone just so that she could stop harping on me, though I knew that was never going to happen. If I had a boyfriend, she would then start asking when we were getting married. If I was married, she would be hounding me for grandchildren. It was a never-ending cycle.

I smiled as I plopped the basket of tomatoes on the counter and grabbed my mom’s keys, watching her put together her tools. She loved doing this. I went out to the car and popped the trunk, lifting the two cases of mason jars and shutting the trunk. I set them down on the trunk and shoved the keys in my pockets, knowing if I dropped and broke her jars, the world as I knew it would end. As I went to pick them back up, I paused, seeing a familiar figure walking down the street. I squinted for a minute, but then realized I wasn’t seeing things. I pushed the boxes back up on the trunk and made sure they weren’t going to fall before taking off in a jog down the street.

“Ollie,” I called out, jogging after him.

He didn’t hear me at first, so I picked up the pace, realizing that I needed to start working out more often. I was losing my breath like I smoked a pack a day. I called out to him again, and his pace slowed, allowing me to stop jogging. Slowly, he turned around and blinked, almost as if he was expecting someone else. His face was white at first, but when he realized who I was, the color started coming back to his cheeks. I wondered if he thought he was losing it, hearing Lillie’s voice like I had thought I had heard many times over the last five years. He was clearly not expecting to see me standing there, which was exactly what I was feeling when I saw him jog straight past me, his eyes zoned out on the road ahead of him.

I was more than a little confused, seeing his face in this neighborhood. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing all the way out there. He looked almost bewildered to see me, like he wasn’t expecting it, or maybe like he wasn’t expecting to find me so easily. He had been to Lillie’s parents’ house before but never to mine, so even though he knew I lived in this neighborhood, he couldn’t have known where exactly I was going to be. I had told him that I was coming there, though.

In reality, our dinner had been a complete disaster on Friday night, the evening ending in a ball of tears, valium, and really awkward feelings. The tears and valium being my side of things, once I got home. It was hard for me to believe that he would actually come looking for me. I was pretty sure after that disaster, he wouldn’t even think about trying to seek me out again. Maybe I was wrong. He seemed lost, and it was only natural to move toward what was familiar. I knew that in this town, with our past, I was pretty much the only familiar thing left.

He knew what my plans were for the day because I had told him on the car ride home. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had purposely tracked me down. The question brought feelings to my chest that I hadn’t felt in a really long time. It was like a mixture of excitement and confusion fusing together and creating a knot in my stomach as he breathed heavily, walking toward me in the street. He definitely looked lost, like he was searching for something. In the end, though, it turned out that finding me was not what he was doing all the way out there. Instead, the reasoning was a lot sadder and way more depressing than I was expecting. This guy was having a really hard time, and I was almost glad that I had seen him in the street. Five more minutes picking tomatoes, and I would have completely missed him.

“Hey,” he said, walking up.

“Hey,” I replied. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sighing. “I thought I knew when I started out, but now I am wondering the same thing. I woke up this morning thinking about Lillie, so I went for a jog. That jog turned out to be a little longer than usual, and I ended up here, my feet carrying me before my mind could catch up. I’ve just been walking around the neighborhood because it was where Lillie grew up. I’m not sure what I hoped to find; maybe a spark for my memory, something to fill the void since I moved back here. I don’t know. It’s stupid really.”

“No, that’s not stupid.” I smiled kindly. “I used to do laps around this neighborhood looking for the same thing.”

We stood there in the street for several moments, just looking at each other. Ollie had a look on his face that was all too familiar, the look of being completely and utterly lost. I realized then that he was where I was four years ago, a place I visited from time to time, and more frequently since he had returned. I had almost forgotten that he had run away, leaving all of this in the past, and I knew he had to work through it to have any chance at a happy life.

My eyes scanned his face, and I recognized a very familiar beast lurking in his eyes. It was grief, the shadowy figure that followed us both wherever we went, relentless in its path to cause as much suffering as possible in this life. Ollie was still grieving, just like me, but for him, it was like reliving everything all over again. For him, I realized, leaving Madison was just a pause, not a fix. He had paused the grief and sorrow, thinking that he could outrun it, but coming back to this place made him realize that he had been tricked, and he had never actually gotten away. Instead, he had spent all that time just waiting for it to rear its ugly head again.

I took in a deep breath and realized I couldn’t just leave him like that. I couldn’t let him run off, circling the block over and over again, searching for something that he would never find. Maybe it was a good thing I was there, having already moved past that place. I could lend a helping hand and show him that he wasn’t alone. I reached out and slid my arm through his, patting it with my hand.

“Come on,” I said quietly. “Come inside.”

He sighed and forced a smile, knowing that the best thing he could do at that moment was go with me wherever I wanted to take him. When I walked through the front door, though, my mother stopped what she was doing, surprised to see a man with me. I instantly regretted my decision as hope started springing to life in her eyes. She hadn’t recognized him yet, which was going to make things a little bit more awkward than they already were.

“Mom, this is Ollie,” I said. “We were really good friends in college. You met him once before.”

“Yes,” she said happily. “I remember you, Ollie. Welcome to my home. You can call me Tammy.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, smiling uncomfortably.

“Ollie has been gone for about five years, but he just got back into town,” I said, trying to keep the details distant, seeing in my mom’s eyes that she knew who Ollie was without me having to say it. “If it’s okay, he’s going to stay for dinner and some good company.”

“That is perfect,” my mom said, walking over and giving him a hug. “Well, come on in, and make yourself comfortable.”

I watched as my mother flitted around the room, grabbing Ollie a beer, and then putting him to work helping us out with the task at hand. It wasn’t quite what I was looking to have him do, but after watching him loosen up a bit as he grabbed the mason jars, I realized that keeping him busy was probably the best thing I could offer him. He needed to remember that life was continuing on, with or without him, and that it was a lot easier not to fight the tides.

We spent the afternoon in the kitchen, peeling and stewing tomatoes, and sealing them in the jars. My mom really liked showing him how to do things, and I was just glad that his mind was on something other than Lillie, even if it was only for a short time. None of us really talked that much, which I appreciated from my mother. Instead, we went to work getting the task at hand out of the way so that we could relax and maybe even watch a little football together. I couldn’t help but notice how nice it felt to have him there, almost like it was natural.