Uncle Gregor shook his head. “Nothing except yell, rail, and shake our fists, releasing all of the anger so that we can move past it to something different.”
My gaze remained locked on his. There was a whole world in my uncle’s eyes. So many memories etched into his skin. He’d walked me through so much in my life, through so many firsts, through so many emotions. Each tear that trickled down my face was a memory. A tear. Eight years old. It was twilight, and Gregor was teaching me how to catch fireflies in mason jars. A tear. Ten years old. My first ride on an Amtrack train, the world passing the windows in a blur. A tear. Eleven years old. Playing Bingo at the legion with my uncle and his friends. I won twenty dollars and used every bit of it to buy candy on the way home. A tear. Thirteen years old. My first real cookbook, a grocery trip, and my first failed attempt at making a pineapple upside down cake. So many tears … so many memories.
“Leave your heart open, Hawthorne,” Uncle Gregor murmured, his gaze flicking to a fidgeting Heathcliff behind me.
“I’m just going to go and paint,” Heathcliff blurted.
The tears kept coming, trickling one after another as Heathcliff’s feet moved back through the house.
“Do you still need to scream?” Uncle Gregor asked.
I shook my head. There was no anger left, only sadness.
He stood, his tired gaze on my face. “We all say good-bye at some point in our lives, Hawthorne. Let’s laugh, skip, and holler our way to the end.”
Swiping my cheeks with the back of my hands, I laughed and stood with him. “Okay.”
He led me through the house, our coffee forgotten, and into the yard beyond. Heathcliff was there, the back of his truck open, a paint pail hanging from his hand. He glanced up at us as we joined him, his sympathetic gaze flicking over my face before meeting my uncle’s.
“You must have left early this morning to be back so soon,” Gregor said.
Heathcliff faltered, the pail in his hand swinging. “Sir?”
Uncle Gregor chuckled. “Come in for supper and a game of checkers next time. I’ll get Hawthorne to make a cherry pie. You’ve never tasted anything like it, I can promise you that.”
He walked away then, still chuckling, a murmured, “It’s so easy ruffling those young ones’ feathers these days,” under his breath.
Heathcliff glanced at me, at my tear-stained, spotty face, and said, “I take it last night isn’t a secret?”
In response, I grinned. “He’s a perceptive man.”
His answering smile was quick, the crestfallen expression that followed just as rapid, his sullen gaze searching my face. Stepping forward, he touched my cheek with his free hand. My face felt sore from the tears, my body drained.
“You okay?” he whispered.
For some reason, I hated the way I looked after I cried, hated the idea of anyone seeing me that way, and I pulled my face away. “I’m fine.”
His gaze flickered with something I couldn’t quite catch, but before I could figure it out, he turned and grabbed a couple of paint rollers. “There are brushes back here, too. Want to help?”
“Yeah.” Work was something I liked doing. Labor of any kind exorcised demons.
Heathcliff didn’t say anything after that. He simply walked to the house with me on his heels. Occasionally, he glanced at me as we worked, but we didn’t speak. There was nothing except the smell of paint and the sound of our movements.
The sun was setting, and most of the house was finished when we quit. Heathcliff rolled up the drop sheets he’d laid out when he first arrived, and rinsed off brushes with the water hose coiled up on the side of the house.
“I’m supposed to help load a few things for the work at the Parker farm this week,” he murmured. “Be back later?”
The last words came out as a question, and I glanced at him. “Cherry pie and checkers.”
He smiled. “No need to park in the fields I take it. I’ll be back.”
I watched as he finished gathering up the supplies before loading them up in his truck, the back of his shirt sticking to him despite the chill. He was closing the tailgate and about to climb into the pickup when I stopped him.
“Hey,” I called out.
He froze, his hand on the open driver’s side door, his gaze swinging to mine.
“I’m not okay,” I told him. “I will be, but I’m not right now. I think … maybe we should start feeling comfortable enough with each other to share that kind of stuff.”
His head inclined, and a smile lit his eyes. “Checkers and cherry pie,” he said. “That pie sounds like a really good idea.”
As he drove off, the twilight swallowing his truck, I found myself laughing. Such a strange leap in emotions, from a rage-filled scream to laughter.
Maybe Heathcliff was good for me.
Like cherry pie and checkers.
Chapter 13
Heathcliff was really bad at checkers. Or maybe Uncle Gregor and I were just really good. Either way, Heathcliff had lost three games against Gregor and two against me, a whole cherry pie demolished, before the night caught up to Uncle Gregor. His weary eyes met ours, an unspoken apology written in his gaze.