Page 55 of Remembering You
16
Friday morning, I was dressed for work, looking at myself in mirror. I’d run out of clean clothes and this outfit was my last business casual outfit I owned. I’d assumed I’d be in my nursing uniform most days that I wasn’t at class or working with the residency.
I swallowed, smoothing the pink cardigan down my waist and pulled my curly, blond hair into a lose braid at the nape of my neck and securing it with a thin, blue ribbon. One more day. I had to get through one more day working at Jim’s office, then I could move on from him entirely.
I hadn’t seen him at all yesterday, which wasn’t exactly a surprise since I had class all day. I guess this was a feeling I was going to have to get used to… not seeing Jim. Not regularly… maybe not ever. The thought alone caused a pang to resonate in my heart. But not as much as the thought of seeing him with another woman.
A knock at my door caused me to nearly jump out of my skin. I glanced at the clock, confused. I had ten minutes before the resident center bus, which left every half hour during commuter hours, was scheduled to leave. I cracked the door open, peeking through, shocked to find Jim standing there.
“Hi,” he said quietly. Snow fell silently from the sky, landing on the black knit hat he wore and he shook the flakes from his coat.
“What are you doing here?”
He nervously cleared his throat and inclined his chin toward his truck. “I need your help at a job site this morning. I figured it was a waste of time to take the bus all the way to the office, just to have to turn around and come back out this way.”
“Your job site is out here?” I asked, reaching for my suede, fringe coat, hung next to the front door. It still wasn’t nearly warm enough for these New England winters, but it was all I had right now and I couldn’t afford another.
“Not here exactly, but close by. Down the road a little”
Shivering, I rushed for his truck as best as I could with my foot, and he held the door open as I hopped inside.
A couple minutes later, Jim pulled into a lot with a small cabin set back against the lake. The snow whipped around us, picking up so that it was like a sheet of white. Helping me out of the truck, he tugged a key from his pocket and unlocked the cabin.
“Where’s your crew?” I asked, looking around.
“This is a brand new property. The plans haven’t been approved by the owners yet, so the crew isn’t here on site. Plus, with the blizzard rolling in, I gave them the day off. They wouldn’t be able to get much done, anyway.”
“Okay…” I said, slowly walking around the empty cabin. It was dusty. A few pieces of furniture were left over from the previous owners, but it looked like no one had lived here in a few years. “What do you need help with?” I crossed to the window, and through the snow, I could see the house was set right against the edge of the lake. Even in the snow, it was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. The land around the cabin was full of trees, their bare branches twisted and wound between each other’s. To the right of the house was a tire swing…
Wait. I recognized that tire swing. My polaroid on my vision board. “This is where I used to come when I was at camp,” I said quietly.
Jim cleared his throat behind me and I turned slowly. “You asked what I needed help with,” Jim said. “I’ve never created a vision board before. Did I do it right?”
Propped against the front window was a large poster board, similar to the one I had traveled with. Jim gripped it and spun it around. In the center was a sketched plan for a house, surrounded by magazine cut-outs depicting a beautiful life.
Like a magnet, I found myself walking toward the board, blinking, in awe. The sketch of the house was my house. It had a wrap around porch. A tree house in the back. A swing on the deck as well as a swing that went over the lake. The images surrounding the home had babies cut out. A man with a little boy on his shoulders. A woman in a nurse’s uniform. A wedding—a bride and groom holding hands in front of a lake. And… a picture of an airplane traveling to an outline North Carolina.
I laughed and ran my fingers over the cut-out of my home state. “You guessed it…”
“Carolina girl,” he said softly. “NorthCarolina girl.”
“How did you know?”
He scrunched his nose. “I looked up the bus schedule for two weeks ago. There was only one bus route that arrived on Sunday evening and it was from North Carolina.”
I smacked his shoulder playfully. “You cheated.”
His grin widened. “We never specified the rules.”
My own smile faded as I stared at his vision board. “But… what does this mean? I thought you didn’t want a relationship with me? What could have possibly changed in the last few days?”
Jim gulped and looked momentarily at his feet before tearing his eyes back to mine. “Two nights ago, I called Jack to place an order to pick up. I could hear your voice in the background as you talked to Elsa. I heard you stand up for me, telling her that you don’t want them to be angry with me for the choice to end this. I heard you say that you want a large family. That you are determined to be a working mother. And I realized… my own mother left my father and me when I was young. He was older than her. By a lot. And she just couldn’t handle the stress of being a young mother.” His voice cracked and he fisted a hand in front of his mouth before he continued talking. “So she left us. I couldn’t stand the thought of that happening in my own family. But I realized something when I overheard you at the diner… my father didn’t help her.”
My heart broke for Jim. It broke for the young boy who was left without a mother. And it broke for the man in front of me who felt as though he couldn’t take a risk in love because of that trauma.
“She did it all,” he said. “She gave up her job as a teacher to be a stay-at-home mom and my dad went to work and came home expecting the house to be clean, dinner to be on the table, and the kids to be cared for. Even after my Mom left, I took care of my sister, not him. All this time, I thought she left because she was young and couldn’t handle it, but the truth was… maybe she could have handled it with a little support from her husband.”
I stepped forward, grasping Jim’s hand in mine. “I would never leave my family,” I said, firmly.
