“He is more myself, Than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, His and mine are the same.”― Emily Bronte
the stars. Living in Arlington, I think I forgot how beautiful a night sky is when there’s not a bunch of light pollution messing it up,” I said.
Jack and I were sitting on the back porch after dinner. Everyone else had been sitting out here with us, but one by one, they seemed to find something else to do. T.J., Nick, Max, and Benny were inside playing pool and Mr. And Mrs. Hallowell went to watch the nightly news and get ready for bed. Now, it was just Jack and me.
“I guess it is something we take for granted around here,” Jack responded.
We sat in comfortable silence, each lost in our own thoughts. He was nursing a beer, and I was sipping on my second glass of wine. Dinner felt like old times. Everyone seemed to collectively agree that it was time to let the past rest. It felt like I had just had dinner with the family last week instead of the years that it had actually been since I’d shared a meal with them. Still, as comfortable and familiar as it all was, there was a sadness that blanketed the evening. Leigh hadn’t been at the Hallowell’s as much as me growing up, but she had been there enough for the whole family to feel her loss. Still, dinner had been fun, lively, and full of conversations just like always at the Hallowell’s.
“So, do you plan on staying here for a while then? Like moving back?” Mr. Hallowell asked me as he passed me the chicken.
“Well, yes, I guess I kind of already did. I didn’t have any furniture as it all came with the apartment, so I only had clothes and stuff to move. I packed up everything that night. The night I found out about Leigh.”
He put his hand over mine in a fatherly gesture. His hands were rough from years of hard labor on the farm, but his touch was gentle. “I’m so sorry,” he said simply. I nodded and held his hand for a minute. It reminded me of my dad’s.
“We are all here for you if you need anything, Tess,” Mrs. Hallowell said. She was sitting on the other side of Mr. Hallowell.
“Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ve made a lot of progress on the eulogy, but I need to get it done. I may come by and read it to you. Let me know what you think of it. If I need to change anything.”
“Absolutely,” she said and then changed the subject, for which I was very grateful. I had been holding it together ever since finding out about Leigh and I really didn’t want to fall apart sitting at the dinner table. I think all the other complications of coming home had preoccupied me. Facing the people I had hurt and trying to make things right had been a distraction. Now that I had reconnected with most of those people, that anxiety and worry that had been acting like a shield was going away. Thoughts and memories of Leigh were coming through and taking over. I was feeling her loss worse now than when I first heard about her death.
“How is our new baby doing?” Mrs. Hallowell asked Max.
That snapped me out of my thoughts. “New baby?” I asked.
“Not a baby baby,” Max said, grinning.
“The way you run around, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nick joked, earning him a sharp look from Mrs. Hallowell, but she directed her attention to Max.
“Maximilian Hallowell, you better not be running around like that,” she said. “I did not raise my boys to think they can behave that way.”
“I don’t,” Max said, holding his hands up like he was waiting on her to shoot him right there at the table. He very obviously kicked Nick under the table. Nick just chuckled and went back to his dinner.
Jack was next to me, and I gave him a questioning look. He just raised his eyebrows and kept eating. That look said it would be best not to comment on Max’s “running around.”
To take the heat off Max, I asked, “So, who is the new baby?”
“One of the mares had a foal about two weeks ago,” he said.
From then on, the dinner conversation was taken over with talk about horses, the planting schedule, and other farm matters. Mr. Hallowell asked Benny about the shop and Uncle Rob, and we discussed the business plan I was creating for them for a bit. Dinner with the Hallowell’s was like putting on your favorite well-worn sweatshirt and pajama pants. It was comfortable and familiar. I could feel the tension I had been feeling for the past few days easing little by little.
After cleaning up from dinner, we had all come out to the back porch to relax and watch the last vestiges of light fade away to darkness. I was sitting on the top step, leaning against the railing and facing Jack. He was leaning against the opposite railing, facing me.
“Do you still do your photography?” I asked, breaking the silence. “I saw some new photos hanging around the house. Are they yours?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m still at. I built a website and have sold a few photos.”
“Oh my goodness, that’s great, Jack!” I said excitedly. It had always been his dream to get into photography.
He shrugged. “It’s a good hobby and puts a little a extra cash in my pocket.”
“I know you have the farm and your family here, but did you ever consider trying to make a go of photography full-time? As a career?” I asked.
“Of course I have, but it’s kind of my escape, you know,” he said. “If it becomes my job, I wonder if I would love it as much.” He shrugged again and took another sip of beer. “Besides, the future isn’t written in stone. Who knows what happens down the road? For now, I’m happy with working on the farm and doing the photography thing on the side.”
“What about you?” he asked. “I mean, I know you just got back and are dealing with Leigh’s funeral and trying to help her family. But what comes after that?”
I shrugged and sighed. Now was probably as good a time as any to talk about New York. I needed to tell someone and talk about what I wanted to do. But the words wouldn’t come. I don’t know what was holding me back from bring it up to anyone or really even thinking about it. “For now, I’m focused on helping Benny with the things he wants to do at the shop. It’s the least I can do after everything he’s done for me. He pretty much put his life on hold to raise me. Who knows what plans and dreams he had before our parents died and he got stuck with raising a depressed and moody teenager?”
“You? Moody? No,” he said jokingly. “Calling you ‘moody’ is like calling …”
Laughing, I kicked him with my foot. “Be careful finishing that thought,” I joked.
“In all seriousness, Benny would be hurt if he thought you felt like you owed him,” he said. “He could have easily let Rob or Ms. Ruby take you, they both offered, but you were his sister. He wanted you with him.”
I felt so much love and appreciation for everything my brother did for me. I wanted to help him as much for me as for him.
He slid across the step and pulled me to him so we were sitting side by side and he put his arm around my shoulders. I laid my head against his shoulder. “It’s not that I feel like I owe him, although I do. I just want to help him. I want to show him I can be there for him like he was for me,” I said. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
We sat on the steps and watched the fireflies dancing in the yard. We didn’t talk. It was a little cooler outside now that night had finally taken over completely, but it was still warm enough to be comfortable. In some sense, it felt like nothing had changed between us. But we couldn’t completely ignore the past or sweep the years that I had been away under the rug. We both grew and changed over those years. Pretending they didn’t happen would not help us rebuild our friendship.
After a few minutes, I lifted my head off his shoulders and pulled away, putting some space between us.
“So, besides work, what else have you been up to?” I asked quietly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Jack was good-looking, smart, and charming. There was no way he hadn’t had at least a couple of girlfriends while I was away. Heck, he could have a fiancée for all I knew, but I doubted no one would’ve mentioned that since I’ve been back.
He shrugged. “I’ve dated here and there and had some relationships that lasted a couple of months but, mostly, nothing stuck. There was one, though, that could have worked out. She was a grad student and teacher’s assistant at JMU. I met her when I was taking some classes in photography.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“She graduated and didn’t want to stick around here. Max was still recovering from his rodeo accident. Dad and T.J. were trying to get us into the horse business, too. It wasn’t a great time for me to leave the farm and follow her. I would’ve been leaving my family in the lurch, which I would never do for anyone,” he said. “Plus, I love it here. I don’t want to live somewhere else. At least not now. But, like I said, you never know what the future holds.”
I nodded. “No, you definitely don’t,” I said. “I’m sorry she didn’t want to stick around, at least until it would’ve been a better time for you to consider leaving.”
“It is what it is. I don’t blame her. She worked hard to get where she is and there wasn’t going to be a lot of opportunity around here for her.”
“Do you keep in touch?” I asked.
“Not really,” he replied. “There were a couple of phone calls here and there at first, but that stopped after about a month or two. We’re friends on Facebook but I’m hardly ever on it, so I don’t know if that counts as keeping in touch.”
I laughed a little. “Probably not, Jack.”
He smiled at me. “So, what about you? Did you find Prince Charming while you were away?”
I smiled back at him. “Ha ha. No, there were no Prince Charmings. I kept to myself a lot at Tech. I tried doing the partying thing. See if I could snap out of it and feel like myself again. Turns out, drinking and partying wasn’t going to be the way.”
“No?” he said, faking shock.
I rolled my eyes. “My junior year, I talked to one of the school counselors.”
“Did it help?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It may have if I would’ve kept up with it. I would go a couple of times, and then drop off and not go for a month, and then go again once or twice, and then drop off again.”
“I was shutting people out and closing myself off. Logically, I knew this wasn’t healthy. The few people that I would hang out with or talk to tried to get me to go out or do something outside of class, but they stopped trying after a while. I thought about dropping out for a while there.”
“That probably wouldn’t have solved anything.”
“I know, and I didn’t want to come back home. I was ashamed how I had treated everyone. How I left things. I didn’t have it in me to come back and fix it. At any rate, I also knew that running away from Tech wasn’t going to fix anything or be good for my future.”
I stopped for a minute. Trying to collect my thoughts and explain the place I was in. Jack sat quietly, giving me time.
“I made it through sophomore year and started working at one of the local restaurants over the summer. Instead of being a server like most of the college kids, I worked in the kitchen. I learned to do prep work and helped work the line. I loved it. It kept me busy, and I felt like my old self again for just a little while. I became friends with some of the people I worked with. It was good.”
“Going into junior year, I changed my major to restaurant and hospitality management. I also took some night classes in cooking through junior and senior year. When I was cooking, I felt like me again. It had been a long time since I felt like me,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Jack. “I graduated and got the job at Vito’s restaurant. I moved to Arlington and have been living there ever since.”
"Until I left it all in the middle of the night and moved back in with Benny a few days ago. I might need to stop packing up and leaving in the middle of the night,” I joked half-heartedly.
“No kidding. I need to talk to Benny about putting a lock on your door at night or something.”
I laughed.
“It sounds like you found something you really like,” he said.
I nodded. “Cooking and working at The Olive Tree may have been my Prince Charming. I’m not saying it saved me, but it was the first time I felt…” I struggled for the right word to explain it. “Better, I guess. I’m not the same person I was before my parents died. I doubt I ever will be, but cooking made me want to be out in the world again.”
“I feel the same about photography. It’s my escape. When I’m looking through a camera, everything else just fades away and all I think about is capturing what I’m trying to take a picture of, all of it. The essence of it,” he said.
“I was looking at some photos hanging inside. You’ve gotten a lot better since high school. You really are talented.”
“Thanks.” He stared at the ground, lost in thought. “For a time there, after we broke up and then when you moved away, when I wasn’t working on the farm or in class, it was practically all I did. It helped me get through everything.”
I reached over and tentatively touched his hand. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He slowly turned his hand over so he could hold mine, staring down at where we touched. I slowly scooted back over so I was sitting close to him again.
“Dating your best friend can be great while things are going well,” he said. “But when things go south, it’s so much worse. I didn’t just lose a girlfriend; I lost my best friend. I was lost and it took a long time for me to get through it. Deep down, I knew the pain I was feeling was just a fraction of the pain you were feeling from your parents’ deaths. In a way, it helped me to understand. I just wanted you to be happy. If you had to do that away from here, then so be it.”
“I wish I hadn’t hurt everyone the way I did, though,” I said.
He shrugged. “It was years ago, Tess. You were young and dealing with a lot of pain that most people don’t have to deal with until they are much older. No one knows how they will react to something like that. All you can hope for is some understanding and forgiveness from your friends and family while you work through it. I don’t think anyone is going to hold it against you or not want you around.”
“Everyone has been really great since I’ve been back, actually. Ms. Ruby was a little miffed about me leaving for school in the middle of the night, but she understood why I did it. I was nervous about how Uncle Rob would be when I went to see him, but he was great.”
“I think we’re all glad you are back again, and you seem happier,” he said. “No one is going to hold anything against you, Tess. And if they do, they are being ridiculous, and you don’t need them.”
I smiled at him. We sat on these same back porch steps for years growing up, talking, playing cards, listening to music, just hanging out. The day after our first kiss by the campfire, I came over to his house and we sat on these steps drinking his mom’s iced tea and talking. He told me he wanted to take me out, wanted me to be his girlfriend, but he didn’t want to lose his best friend. I had promised him he would never lose me as a friend, no matter what.
But you never know what the future holds.
We were still holding hands.
“It’s getting late,” I said. “Benny and I will need to go soon.”
“I know.”
I went to stand up, but he held onto me and pulled me back to the steps.
“What do you think about you and I going out one night?” he asked, looking into my eyes. His hair was blowing just a little in the slight breeze.
I didn’t want to hurt him again. “As friends or something more?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe we go out and find out where it leads.”
“I don’t want to hurt you again. I just got back and I’m still trying to figure things out.”
“I’ll pay,” he said, smiling.
I laughed. “I didn’t say I was broke.”
“I’m not trying to rush into anything. Let’s just hang out, me and you. No brothers or parents around. We don’t need to define it right now.”
I took a breath. “That sounds perfect, actually,” I said. “But not until after the funeral. Leigh is always at the back of my mind and maybe always will be, but I think I’ll enjoy hanging out more after the funeral is done.”
Thinking about her funeral always brought a fresh wave of sadness and anxiety. My best girlfriend was gone, and her family was depending on me to do the eulogy. “I miss her so much,” I whispered.
He put his arm around me and pulled me to him. “Me too.”
We sat quietly together, each lost in our own thoughts about Leigh, until Benny came out on the back porch. “Hey Tess, you about ready to go?”
“Yeah.” I stood up with a sigh and stretched.
Jack got up too. “Let me know if you need any help with Leigh’s eulogy, the Shays, or the funeral arrangements,” he said.
“I will. Thanks for having us over for dinner." I gave him a brief hug.
Benny shook his hand. “Thanks, man.”
“See you soon,” he said.
“See you soon.”
Benny and I walked to the Jeep. I looked back and gave Jack a wave as I got in. He stood on the back porch and watched us drive away.