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I was honestly afraid one day he would show up. Each time the door chimed at the studio during the last two weeks, I’d jumped. That was a lot of jumps, as it was our busiest time of year. People loved getting an early start on their holiday shopping, and we always had a lot of homeschool groups bring their kids in this time of year to make their own ornaments. Not to mention we had become a popular date night destination on Friday nights. I had named our Friday night workshops Sip and Solder. Only nonalcoholic beverages were served. You know, on account of us dealing with 350 degrees of melt-your-skin-off heat.
I knew Dani and Kinsley had seen him; they were done hiding their contact with him. They gushed about how cute his little girl, Whitney, was and how charming Jonah still was. “He moved into the new Creekside development south of town. Isn’t that nice?” Kinsley asked. Or Dani would mention, “The years have been really good to him.” That I already knew from the Christmas cards. It didn’t matter what kind of information they gave me about him, I never asked them to elaborate.
Since they couldn’t bait me verbally, Dani started leaving mental health pamphlets around the house. They ranged from coping with traumatic events and abandonment all the way to how to manage anxiety. Uh, I hadn’t been anxious until two weeks ago. She even left a business card on my pillow for a local therapist she admired. On the back of it, Dani wrote, Living in fear is the worst terror there is. Stop tormenting yourself. You’re not your mother. And if you ask me, your mother emotionally abused you. Read the pamphlets. Love you.
It was as if she had sucker punched me. My mom had done the best she could. That was the lie I always told myself, so I didn’t blame her. What good would that do? And I wasn’t tormenting myself. I was only doing what was necessary to not become my mother. A woman who was broken by men. And I didn’t want to point it out, but Jonah did get divorced, which proved my way of thinking to be correct.
But I never said anything because Jonah didn’t move back here for me. I mean, we hadn’t even been technically boyfriend and girlfriend. Men didn’t move back to a town where they had no family for a woman who wouldn’t even let him touch her in public for fear of someone thinking you might be more than what you were. He totally made up for it in private, but that was another story. The story of the best year of my life. Yeah, we had the same best year. That was classified information.
I was happy. Really, I was. I would say it until one day I believed it, or it came true. What more in life did I really need? I had a job I loved that paid the bills with a little extra left over. I had friends and Grandma and Grandpa. And my goldfish. Goldie Hawn and I were tight. We had great conversations in the middle of the night. She would swim in place, intensely staring at me with her big eyes, while I told her all my secrets. See, I didn’t need therapy. My fish knew everything.
And, it wasn’t like I was a man hater. Once in a while I did agree to have dinner with a member of the opposite sex. I called them appointments instead of dates. You don’t accidentally fall in love if you are keeping appointments. Appointments were sterile environments where you never got personal. On the other hand, dates were gateway drugs. That was my problem with Jonah. He had worked his magic on me and I’d spilled my guts to him. The man knew almost everything about me, right down to my menstrual cycle. And he still fell in love with me.
Not thinking about it.
I had other things to worry about, like my sick grandma. She called me early this morning, hacking into the phone. “I know it’s your morning off and the last thing you want to do is take your elderly, frail grandmother to the doctor this morning, but could you make some time for me?”
Wow, that was over the top. And a lie.
“Grandma, you still run circles around women half your age. You know I’ll take you to see Dr. Gibbons. I love nothing more than spending time with you.”
She chuckled, sounding better already. “I thought I better be dramatic in case you had any ideas of saying no.”
“Why would I?”
“I know how busy the studio gets this time of year.”
She rarely came in anymore. She and Grandpa decided to semi-retire now that they were in their late seventies. Grandpa, though, still ran some survival camps in the summer. He sold his wilderness and survival business last year, but the new owners used him from time to time. The old man was still hiking fourteeners.
