My hormones must be way off,” Shelly finally managed to say in an effort to explain her emotional outburst.
“That’s okay,” Meredith said. “You’re normal.” She went for a box of Kleenex and a glass of water. Clearing a spot on the end table next to her futon couch, Meredith offered her sister the drink.
“Okay,” Shelly said, clearing her throat. “This is obviously deeper than I had imagined. I suppose we could talk about it, although I don’t know what good it will do. It was so long ago. It shouldn’t matter this much.”
“Apparently it does,” Meri said softly.
“I guess it does. I don’t regret my decision.” Shelly wiped her dripping nose. “When I look back, I still think it was the only choice I could have made. Jonathan should have understood that. He was so strong about it being all or nothing. We were both so immature.” Shelly took a drink of water. “What did he tell you?”
Meredith tilted her head and gave Shelly a compassionate look. “Jonathan’s heart was broken. I don’t know if you ever really understood that. He loved you. He knew you well enough to know you wouldn’t change your mind. As he said, you were a brick wall, and you weren’t going to move.”
Shelly closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “How can anyone know what love is at eighteen?”
“Jonathan was pretty sure he knew,” Meredith said.
Just then the phone rang. Meredith ignored it. On the third ring the answering machine picked it up in the kitchen. They could hear the caller’s voice. “Hey, it’s Byron. Just wanted you to know I’m running a little late. I’ll be over in twenty minutes to help you pack. Call me if you want me to bring some food.”
Meredith sprang from her seat and grabbed the phone. “Hi, I’m here. Would you mind coming over a bit later?” Meri listened for a few minutes and then said, “Just a sec. I’m going to change phones.” She motioned to Shelly to hang up the extension in the kitchen as Meredith moved to the bedroom.
Shelly hung up for her sister. She had done that dozens of times before. Meri liked her privacy when she was on the phone. Shelly guessed that was about the only thing the youngest of four sisters could demand that the others would respect.
Returning to her spot on the couch, Shelly took another sip of water. She closed her eyes and heard her sister’s words once more. “Jonathan was pretty sure he knew.”
Deep inside, a memory begged to be brought to the forefront of Shelly’s thoughts. Too weary to ward it off, she let the memory come.
She was sixteen again, and she and Jonathan were sailing with his uncle off the San Juan Islands. The summer day had been clear and warm when they started, with white clouds skittering overhead. By two o’clock a high, thin layer of gray clouds covered the sky. Jonathan’s uncle called them “doom and gloom” clouds. The wind kicked up as the boat moved back toward the harbor. The three sailors tacked their way furiously back and forth, trying to get the wind to cooperate with them rather than send them back to sea.
Shelly secured herself and held tightly to the rope Jonathan’s uncle handed her. The water splashed over the side of the small craft, rising like a fountain and raining itself down on Shelly. She shivered but held the rope with all her strength. The thrill of the adventure ran all the way to her toes. She wasn’t a bit frightened. Ever since she had overcome her fear of heights by climbing up into Jonathan’s tree house, she had been drawn to daring escapades. When the carnival came to town, she was the one who wanted to ride the roller coaster one more time. This confrontation with nature made her skin tingle.
Shelly distinctly remembered the moment Jonathan’s uncle said, “Now!” She let go of the rope, and the sail unfurled, catching the wind and turning the sailboat. All that power was harnessed and then unleashed. Shelly flashed her smile at Jonathan, and their eyes met.
His light brown hair caught the wind, too, and was blown back, fully exposing his stormy, gray eyes and his ignited smile.
In that moment, Jonathan transformed before Shelly’s eyes. She didn’t know what it was, but he looked different to her. Vastly different. And her heart responded to that change. Under those “gloom and doom” clouds, three weeks before their seventeenth birthdays, Michelle Annalee Graham realized for the first time that she was in love with Jonathan Charles Renfield.
It took Jonathan a little longer to realize the same. Shelly was pretty sure she knew when it was, though. About five months later, they were in his garage. Jonathan was under his car, an old Jeep Cherokee, trying to prove his manliness by changing the oil. Shelly had come over to collect a CD he had borrowed from her. She walked into his garage wearing a dress because her family was leaving in a few minutes for Meredith’s flute recital. Jonathan asked her to hand him a socket wrench. She made a random choice of the tools before her and slapped it into his grease-streaked hand.
An instant later, Jonathan rolled out and said, “Hey! You got it right this …” The words stopped, but his mouth stayed open. He stared at Shelly.
“What’s wrong with you?” she teased. The dress was nothing like her eighth-grade graduation outfit, but it was blue and it was short. Her hair was out of its usual ponytail, and the curls on the ends calmly rested just below her shoulders. She had put on makeup and borrowed some of Megan’s earrings.
“So?” Shelly prodded Jonathan. “Are you going to give me my CD or not?”
“I … I’ll bring it over later,” he fumbled. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” Shelly answered, deciding to make the most of the moment.
“With who?”
“With whom, silly. Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased. Turning on her heels, she called over her shoulder, “Make sure you bring that CD back by tomorrow at the very latest. You can send it on the zip if it’s not raining, but I want it by tomorrow.”
Late bloomers, Shelly thought as Meri returned to the living room, apologizing for taking so long on the phone. That’s what Jonathan and I were. Late bloomers. All our friends were dating and going together, but I was seventeen before I gave up my tomboy ways. Jonathan held on to his naiveté longer than any guy I knew. He was too kind-hearted for his own good.
Meri sat down, and the phone rang again. “I can’t believe this. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the bedroom again, and Shelly returned to her daydream.
Within five minutes after her family had returned from Meri’s flute recital that evening, the doorbell rang. It was nine-fifteen on a school night. There stood Jonathan, showered, with his hair combed back, and wearing clean clothes. He held out the CD to Shelly and said, “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” she answered.
“Are you doing anything?”
Shelly remembered the way he looked. Nervousness was not a trait she had seen in him before. It only made her fall more in love with him.
They went for a walk around the block. In her heels, Shelly matched his height. Jonathan was wearing aftershave. The February night was chilly. Their hands found each other easily, and instantly Shelly felt warm inside and out. Neither of them spoke. There was no need for words, not when they already knew each other by heart. Shelly had never felt happier.
After they walked around the block, Jonathan delivered Shelly back to her door and said, “Would you like to go out Friday night?”
She nodded and gave him her radiant smile. “To the movies?” she asked. It was their common Friday-night activity already.
“No, I’d like to take you out to dinner. Someplace nice.”
Meredith bustled through the trail of boxes and back to the couch. “I’m sorry. Let’s get back to what you were saying.” She looked at Shelly’s face and said, “You look a little better. Are you okay?”
Shelly nodded. She knew a trace of a smile was on her lips. She couldn’t help it. Falling in love for the first time—the only time—brought up sweet emotions. If she could only stop the memory there, she would be fine. It was what followed that ruined everything.
“You were saying you two couldn’t really have been in love at eighteen.” Meredith tucked her legs under her and looked at Shelly.
“Is that what I was saying? I forgot.”
“Well, try to remember,” Meri urged. “I think this must be pretty important to cause such a strong emotional response.”
Shelly shook her head. The fiery emotions had subsided. “Maybe it was a sort of love. But, Meri, we were just kids. And I … well, … I …”
“You wanted to see the world,” Meri added for her.
Shelly lowered her head. “Yeah, I did.”
“But you loved him, didn’t you?”
Shelly looked up and met her sister’s gaze. She had never explained her relationship with Jonathan in those words to Meri or anyone else in her family. Looking back, she knew it must have been obvious to everyone who saw them together.
Meredith wrinkled her small nose slightly and leaned forward. “There’s no shame in loving somebody. It might help you to admit it.”
“Yes,” Shelly whispered, feeling the tears coming back. “I loved him.”
“It’s probably none of my business,” Meredith said, “but just because I’m your pesky little sis and I have the right to be annoying, I have one more question. You still love him, don’t you?”
Shelly’s mind went blank. How could she answer that? She knew that, deep down, over all these years, there had been only one love in her heart. Jonathan. Only Jonathan. She had dated lots during her time in Los Angeles, but none of the guys ever came close in comparison. She had loved only one man. In a rare moment of reflection about a year ago, she had struggled with the possibility that he might be the only man she would ever love so deeply. She might fall in love again, and even marry and spend the rest of her life with some terrific man. But Jonathan would always be in a corner of her heart. Her first true love.
“I don’t know,” she answered Meredith.
“What’s to analyze?” Meredith asked. “When you love someone, you know. If you don’t, you don’t.”
If Shelly had had the emotional energy, she might have challenged her sister’s simplistic comment. What did Meredith know of love? She had dated more guys than she could list. Shelly even remembered when Meredith had first claimed she was in love. Meri was eleven years old. He was a movie star. Even though their parents forbade the Graham girls to buy Hollywood star magazines, Meredith borrowed copies from her friends at school and paid them for tear-out posters of her “true love.”
No, Meredith knew nothing of what Shelly meant when she spoke of heart-knit-to-heart kind of love. Meri couldn’t possibly understand what Jonathan and Shelly had, or why their relationship had to be all or nothing—and, therefore, had become nothing.
“I know you mean well,” Shelly said. “But this isn’t getting me anywhere. Right now my problems revolve around my job. Where am I going to work? Where am I going to live? What changes do I need to make, and what are my choices? I don’t see how dredging up all these memories of Jonathan and trying to get me to define what I once felt for him are going to help me at all right now.”
“You’re probably right,” Meredith said, pulling back. “It’s just that when you said you felt like you had hit a brick wall, it reminded me of Jonathan and how torn up he was when you left. Don’t you ever wonder where he is?”
“Sometimes.”
“We could probably track down his parents to find out,” Meredith suggested. “Where did they move to?”
“The Bahamas,” Shelly said.
“It might be worth a try. For curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.”
“What would be the point?” Shelly asked quickly.
They sat silently for a moment. Meredith seemed to be reviewing her options. She chose not to challenge her sister again.
“Well, I should help you start packing,” Shelly said, releasing her tension in a big breath. “We’re not going to solve my problems sitting here when neither of us has the answers. We might as well solve your packing problems. At least you have a place to go and a job waiting for you.”
Shelly didn’t mean for the last line to carry a bite the way it did. She was happy for Meri and immediately caught herself by saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I’m glad everything is working out for you.”
The phone rang again. Meri excused herself to answer it, and Shelly busied herself wrapping pictures.
“She’s right here,” Meredith said, holding the phone out to Shelly. “It’s Mom.”
“Oh, good,” Mom said when Shelly picked up the phone. “I wondered where you were. You received a phone call here from the airline. I didn’t know if you needed to call them back right away, but they said something about calling by five.”
“Thanks. I’ll call them. Did they leave a number?” Shelly wrote the number down on the side of a packing box with a wide marking pen she found on the counter. “Thanks, Mom.”
Shelly dialed the number and waited. A recording came on asking her to wait. When a human voice answered, Shelly explained that she had been asked to call. Everything about the Seattle system was different from LAX’s. When she called in there, she knew the people by first name, and they knew who she was. This stressed voice spoke with her only long enough to ask if she could work a red-eye flight to Philadelphia that night.
Her spirits instantly picked up when she agreed and promised to be there in forty-five minutes.
“Things might be working themselves out,” Shelly said after she hung up. “I have a flight. I need to leave, though. Sorry I couldn’t help more.”
“That’s fine. Byron said he would come if I needed him.”
“Are you and Byron getting serious?” Shelly asked as she looked for her keys.
“Byron and me? Are you kidding? He’s a lug. A sweet lug, but a lug. He went out with Trina from work, but she gave him the cold shoulder. Now he’s crying on my shoulder. That’s what the long conversation was about. I told him I wasn’t interested in dating him, but he said he still wanted to help me move. I think he needs to be needed.”
“Don’t we all,” Shelly muttered, moving around the packing paper on the kitchen counter. “Have you seen my keys?”
“No. Don’t forget your microwave dinner. Do you still want it?”
Shelly opened the microwave and checked under the cardboard lid. The noodles had turned to mush, and the beef had a gray tinge to it. “No, and I don’t recommend that you eat it either.”
“Here are your keys,” Meri said, lifting up the key chain from the top of a packing box by the front door. “What would you do without me?”
Shelly granted her little sister the smile of approval Meredith seemed to be hoping for. “I don’t know. What would I do without you?”
“Call me when you get back,” Meri said as Shelly left the apartment.
Shelly drove through a fast-food taco place before entering the freeway. With each bite of her burrito, she assured herself things were looking up. They had called her to work tonight. Maybe she would actually end up with more hours on reserves.
In the back of her mind, Shelly heard the word Bahamas.
“That’s silly,” she muttered aloud. “I would never call the Renfields to ask about Jonathan. Never.”