The Ghost Of Willow’s Past-4
993 Words
“A friendly face, thank god!” Dusty was deep in packing boxes when Amy dropped by.
“How’s it going?”
He surveyed the damage. Bags of clothes for Goodwill lined one side of the living room. Bags of garbage lined the other. Boxes of books to take down to the used counter at Powell’s bookstore blocked the couch. He’d kept his father’s gardening books and the travel-picture books his mother had collected.
“Okay, I guess. I’m pretty much done. Anything that’s too hard, I figure that I’m just not ready to let go of yet. Thankfully, this place is really small, so there aren’t too many of those decisions.” There’d been hundreds, though it felt like thousands of them, but the passing three years had given him some time to deal with the pain of loss. He’d make sure to offer to help Amy, so that she didn’t have to face her mother’s past while the wound of loss still bled.
“I’ve sworn that I’m going to sleep in the big bed tonight, but now I don’t know.”
He watched Amy as she hung her winter coat on a bronze hook by the door and moved to inspect the progress he’d made. She moved as if this were a military inspection, he followed two steps behind. He could see by her nods that she approved of what he’d kept. Some things she inspected more carefully, those that fit stories he’d told yesterday, others that fit stories not yet told. It was a finely honed and much appreciated assessment. He felt better with each considered nod. Hell, he felt better every single minute they were together.
The master bedroom had a pair of walnut dressers, a small desk, and a queen-size bed with fresh flannel sheets and a faded quilt. Two of his mother’s oil paintings of the Rose Garden and a small collection of roses his father had pressed in glass hung on the otherwise bare walls.
She continued her silent inspection and led them into his old bedroom. He’d purged the kid crap long ago. Now it was mostly books and part of his old comic book collection. Some drawings he’d made that his mother had liked enough that he’d pinned them to the wall half a lifetime ago. They weren’t half bad, considering.
“Here.” She picked up the couple of dinged-up Frisbees he’d kept from his days of playing Ultimate and handed them to him. She also took the two pillows and added that to what he was holding. She moved about the room picking up odds and ends and piling them in his arms.
Then she moved to unpin the art.
“Hey!”
“Shh. It’s all right.”
He wasn’t quite sure how it would be all right, but he subsided and watched as she gently took them down.
She gathered the art carefully, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Where?” Dusty was feeling a bit dense.
She nodded her head back toward the short hall then led him into his parents’ bedroom.
He stood there with his arms full of his old belongings.
“What am I supposed to do?”
She set the art on the foot of the bed. Then she took his parents’ pillows and tossed them out into the hall.
“Your pillows go there. The rest is up to you to figure out.” She turned back to his old drawings, spread them out across the quilt and then inspected the room’s walls.
He started with the pillows. Set some comic books on an empty bookshelf. He dropped his sketch books and drawing pencils on the small desk. He glanced at Amy and then flipped the sketchbook open to a page he’d worked on while unable to sleep most of last night and set it back on the desk.
When he was done she told him to go get his bathroom stuff and move it into the tiny bath off the master bedroom.
After he’d finished, he leaned against the door jamb and watched Amy.
She’d worn jeans and a tight turtleneck that made her a pleasure to watch as she reached to pin each piece of art onto the wall.
He couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed this woman. Not her beauty or elegance. Okay, not just her beauty and elegance; she truly had turned his head and his heart completely around. Things he’d avoided for years simply made sense in her presence.
He looked about the room. For the first time in three years it felt right. His mother’s art now mixed with his own. Bits of his collection of science fiction and thrillers now leaned against his dad’s gardening books.
Amy simply swept him away. The woman was impossible to resist.
Nor did he t*****e himself by doing so.
He slipped up behind her as she noticed the open sketchbook.
He wrapped his hands around her waist in time to feel the shock of an indrawn breath. He laid a kiss on her neck between her turtleneck and soft hair.
“Is that me?” she whispered.
He nuzzled her neck again and ran his teeth over her earlobe where it just peeked out of her hair. Then he looked down over her shoulder at the charcoal sketch. Her face wasn’t drawn from the front. He’d drawn her looking off to the side, as if only just noticing the artist. Her expression reflected a mixture of sadness and the very first hint of a smile. He’d set out to capture her beautiful features, and instead captured her shifting mood. He could still see a woman who had cried at the loss of a tree, but also the woman whose natural state was a quiet joy.
“Best I could do anyway.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“It’s a start.” He hadn’t had as much fun as trying to draw her face in a long time. “You know, I can think of one more thing to help make this room mine.”
She turned in his arms and didn’t argue as he lay her upon the quilt and began making love to her.
6
Willow rested a little deeper into the dark soil, old roots slowly turning back into the earth itself. But Willow was aware of the bench where Amelia and Hiroshi had kissed and cried each year. And Willow had watched as Amy and Dusty sat, kissing and laughing, the sound trickling into the soil and healing the old pains.
- Writer
