When the Leaves Stop Falling

Chapter 2

Courtney thought long and hard about what Mrs. Meyers' had said back in the diner, as she usually did when the woman spoke. She had a way of making even the devil grovel, but Courtney had no idea why this time the man discussion drew heavy on her thoughts. It was an everyday occurrence. How was your day? Have you found yourself a man?

But for the first time in almost ten years, she felt lonely. She was usually satisfied amusing herself and mustering through every day alone. Today, however, every commercial on the television had families or couples gallivanting around being happy. Even her fish looked joyfully blissful sitting in his bowl.

Rubbing her face and laughing at the sheer absurd thought, she got up and paced around her kitchen. There wasn't anything wrong with being alone. Plenty of people were unmarried and went on to live fulfilling lives. She would certainly be one of them. Of course, those people had friends to fill the void.

Courtney didn't have friends.

While walking down Grant Street earlier, she'd been up close and personal with the town's couples. The younger ones would hold hands and laugh at some private joke between just the two of them. How she wished she knew what it was. The older couples, like the Wrayburns, who had been married forty-three years, strolled with her arm through his as if no time had gone by at all. She would lay her head on his shoulder and sigh, a smile on her wrinkled face, and he would go on telling her of his day and days past.

And all the while Courtney walked with her own thoughts for company. No one had noticed when she'd brushed by them. No one looked up when she'd passed and smiled. No one said hello, or how are you. They just walked right by, lost in themselves. No one saw her at all.

And today that bothered her.

She peeked around her small apartment Mrs. Meyers had helped her find all those years ago. The couch was second-hand, like most of her furniture. It had been given to her by the previous tenant who'd no longer needed it. The television used to belong to Dr. Maynard, no longer wanted. Her bed in the other room was found on the curb, waiting to be thrown out. She used TV trays as tables, and saved up all her money to buy plants and food and the rugs hiding the stained carpet.

She'd fought hard to get out of where she'd grown up, and maybe didn't deserve all the support the town had given her, but she'd accepted it, as she accepted everything else. Guilt shifted in her belly for not appreciating all she had. For even being alive. Something she wouldn't be if not for Mrs. Meyers.

She just needed a pet that wasn't in water. A dog or cat to come home to, who would be happy to greet her when she arrived home from the diner. Who would cuddle with her at night. Maybe then her footsteps wouldn't echo and the bed wouldn't be so cold at night. She'd have more than a blanket to keep her warm.

Growling in frustration, Courtney decided she needed to get out of the apartment right now or she'd go insane. Sitting around feeling sorry for herself did no good. She'd spent nearly half her life doing that. Half afraid, hiding in shadow. Half in a state of auto-pilot, going through the motions.

She pulled back a lace curtain and peered out at the dark street. It was only ten-thirty, after all. She could go back to Zebb's and see what interesting people came in from the highway. There wasn't much else to do after hours in this place except Jerry's Tavern. But the run down bar at the edge of town would be full of married men who wanted a night away from the missus or someone to b***h to about their day. Not exactly what she needed, especially the stench of liquor, which had her stomach rolling just thinking about it.

She often went to the diner at night to casually talk with Doc, or listen to Mrs. Meyers rave, or to watch the highway people drift in. Nothing out of the norm there. Urgency clawed at her belly to go, like ants dancing under her skin, the longer she stood by the window contemplating. Why it was important for her to go now? Demand and necessity wrapped around her, calling her to...something.

Odd.

She let the curtain fall back in place. Rarely did she ignore what the feelings told her anymore, now that it was safe to do so. Making the decision right there on the spot, Courtney grabbed her denim jacket and ran out the door.

Serena Edwards picked up her cup of highly sugared green tea from the cup holder and drank deeply. Her brother's words played over and over in her head as she watched the highway and yellow dotted lines before her.

"You need to come home."

Home. She hadn't been back home since Christmas three years ago.

She adored her small loft in beautiful San Diego with its view of the beach and all that permanently sun tanned skin. Families, like the one she'd never have, playing and enjoying themselves. Despite the envy, she'd built a life for herself there, away from home and all on her own. It hadn't been easy. She'd had the inheritance, but money couldn't buy people to recognize her art, couldn't buy friends. When she'd left Georgia in search of a different life, different memories from the ones back home, she never thought she'd be coming backfor good.

Part of her couldn't even remember now why it was she'd left. She recalled setting out to see the world and gauging how far away from home she could go before forgetting who she was. She supposed that was the whole of it, to forget. Forget all the badgering of friends asking how she was and people trained to give her a hand as if she couldn't lift one herself. Trivial reasons at this point.

She thought for certain she would regret leaving California and most of her belongings behind as she passed the "Welcome to Arizona" sign. She had chosen California, above all other states, for mystical reasons. She'd read that California was a Spanish name given about an imaginary island from a poem. She had no idea if it were true, but the romance of that had sold her. She always was too much of a romantic.

Of course, now she was going back. The sorrow didn't come as she imagined it would. She loved Georgia, its southern charm and friendly people. Too friendly, some of them. But most of all, and more than anything, she longed to be back in Grandmother's arms. Grams would hold her and tell her not to be afraid, that it was going to be okay. And she desperately needed that now.

When her and Austin's parents had died in a car accident, they'd only been five at the time. Both hardly remembered them. But Grams had kept them alive with her scrapbooks and stories on the front porch swing. Suddenly, Serena craved the smell of a warm summer breeze lofting in the estate windows from the garden and the sound of the old porch swing creaking.

She didn't have much time left. Of course, the doctors had told her parents that when she was born. And yet, here she was, twenty-eight years later. Her twin brother had been born with a healthy heart. But that was just physical nonsense. Doctors couldn't explain how she made it this long. They weren't sympathetic to the feelings behind life. It was all science and tests and lab results.

They had known she may need a transplant one day, had been warned about it from her birth. But what her twin brother Austin didn't know was that when she'd left for California three years ago, the condition had been worse. Deteriorating. It had been the main reason she'd fled, her last chance to...live. She'd been on the national heart transplant list since then, but with a rare blood type of AB negative, it made it that much harder to find a donor. Now, in what the horrid doctors called "end stage heart failure," her body may possibly be too weak to receive one if the call ever came.

She felt fine. So she got short of breath easily and could never do as much as everyone else. In the anger phase, the doctors were liars and she'd refused to believe them. She missed the denial and anger phase of the five stages. Then, once grief was past, acceptance hit her like a blow. Though she felt healthy now, in a couple months she wouldn't be able to do much of anything. The pneumonia she'd struggled to fight off a couple weeks ago had taken its toll. The hospital had told her she should make arrangements, that they would make her as comfortable as possible.

Comfortable. As if they cared at all. She could only be comfortable in one place.

The hardest thing she ever had to do was to call her brother last night and tell him. Being twins, they always had a connection. They were close in everything they did, sometimes even feeling each other's moods. Both having dark hair and eyes, both being incredibly stubborn. The pain of what could never be sliced through her. Tore at her chest.

Austin hadn't said much of anything, she knew he wouldn't. He simply pleaded for her to come home. She felt a pang of regret that he was going to have to tell Grandmother soon, before she arrived.

Dragging herself into the present, and knowing she'd need to eat soon to take her pills, Serena checked the highway signs for a place to stop. She recognized the gas pump and the little fork and spoon next to it.

Two miles.

She craned against the steering wheel of her Mustang to fleetingly stare at a perfect clear night through her windshield. Arizona, being the first state she had to drive through to get home, was known for its beautiful springs and clear nights. There were stars too many for the counting, unhidden by the city lights and smog.

She sighed and, leaning back in her seat, got off at the next exit.