Faith

Had she known he would find her? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she needed him to.

"Some things don't change," she said simple as Brian fell into step beside her.

"I've found that out in one afternoon." He thought of the town that had stayed so much the same. And of his feelings for the woman beside him. "Where's your daughter?"

"She's sleeping."

He was calmer than he had been this afternoon, and determined to stay that way. "I didn't ask if you had other children."

"No." He heard the wistfulness in her voice, just a sigh of it. "There's only Claire."

"How did you pick the name?"

She smiled. It was so like him to ask questions no one else would think of. "Claire Dodd was a famous actress in the early 1900's. Her philosophy on life was to dream big and never let anyone step on your dreams." Dropping her hands in her pockets she told herself they were simply two old friends walking through a quiet town. "Are you staying at the inn?"

"Yeah." Amused, Brian rubbed a hand over his chin. "Bedford took my bags up himself."

"Local boy makes good." She turned to look at him. It was easier somehow walking like this. Odd, she realized, she had seen the boy when she looked at him the first time. Now she saw the man. His hair had darkened a bit but was still chocolate brown. It was no longer unkept, but cut in a carelessly attractive style that had it falling over his brow. His face was still thin, hollow at the cheeks in the way that had always fascinated her. And his mouth was still full, but there was a hardness around it that had not been there once. "You did make good, didn't you? You made everything you wanted happen."

"Most everything." When his eyes met hers she felt all the old longings come back. "What about you, Faith?"

She shook her head, watching the sky as she walked. "I never wanted as much as you, Brian."

"Are you happy?"

"If a person isn't, it's their own fault."

"That's too simple."

"I haven't seen the things you've seen. I haven't had to deal with what you have had to deal with. I am simple, Brian. That was the problem, wasn't it?"

"No." He turned her face to him and slid his hands up to her face. His fingers warmed up against her skin. "God, you haven't changed." As she stood very still he combed his fingers up through her hair, then down to where the tips brushed her shoulders. "I've thought about the way you look in the moonlight countless times. It was just like this."

"I've changed, Brian." But her voice was breathless. "So have you."

"Some things don't," he reminded her and gave in to the need.

When his mouth touched hers, he knew that he had come home. Everything he remembered, everything he thought he had lost was his again. She was soft and smelled of springtime even when the winter's air wrapped around them. Her mouth was willing, even as it had been the first time he tasted it. He couldn't explain, even to himself, that every other woman he had held had been nothing but a shadow of his memory of her. Now she was real, wrapped in his arms and giving him everything he had forgotten he could have.

Just once, she promised herself as she melted against him. Just once more. How could she have known her life had such a void in it? She had tried to close the door on the part of her life that included Brian, though she had known it was not possible. She had tried to tell herself it was only youthful passion and girlish fancy but she had known that was a lie. There had been no other men, only memories of one, and wishes, half-forgotten dreams.

She was holding no memory now but Brian, as real and urgent as he had always been. Everything about him was so familiar, the taste of his lips on her, the feel of his hair as he fingers raked through it, the scent of a man, rough and rugged, that he's always carried with him even as a boy. He murmured her name and drew her closer, as if the years were trying to separate them again.

She wrapped her arms around him, as willing, as eager, and as in love as she had been the last time he held her. The wind whipped around their ankles while the moonlight held them close.

But it wasn't yesterday, she reminded herself as she stepped back. It wasn't tomorrow. It was today, and today had to be faced. She was not a child any longer without responsibilities and a love so big it overshadowed anything else. She was a woman with a child to raise and a home to make. He was a gypsy. He had never pretended to be anything else.

"It's over for us, Brian." But she held his hand a moment longer. "It's been over for a long time."

"No." He caught her before she could turn away. "It isn't. I told myself it was, and that I had come back to prove it. You have been eating at me half my life, Faith. It is never going to be over.

"You left me." The tears she promised herself she would not shed spilled over. "You broke my heart. It's barely had time to mend, Brian. You will not break it again."

"You know I had to leave. If you had waited----"

"It doesn't matter now." With a shake of her head she backed away. She would never be able to explain to him why it had not been possible to wait. "It doesn't matter because in a few days you will be gone again. I won't let you whirl in and out of my life and leave my emotions in chaos. We both made our choices, Brian."

"Damn it, I missed you."

She closed her eyes When she opened them again they were dry. "I had to stop missing you. Please leave me alone, Brian. If I thought we could be friends--"

"We always were."

"Always is gone." Nonetheless she held out both hands and took his. "Oh, Brian, you were my best friend, but I can't welcome you home because you scare the hell out of me."

"Faith." He curled his fingers around hers. "We need more time, to talk."

Looking at him she let out a long breath. "You know where to find me, Brian. You always did."

"Let me walk you home."

"No," Calmer, she smiled. "Not this time."

----------------------------------------------

From the window of his room, Brian could see most of Main Street. He could, if he chose, watch the flow of business in Porterfield's dress shop or the collection of people walking through and loitering in the town square. Too often he found the direction of his gaze wandering to the white house near the end of the street. Because he had been restless, Brian had been up and at the window when Faith walked outside with Claire to see her off to school with a group of other children. He had seen her crouch down to adjust the collar of her daughter's coat. And he had seen her stand, her back to him, as she watched the children drag themselves off for a day of books. She stood there a long time with the wind pulling and tugging at her hair, and he waited for her to turn, to look at the inn, to acknowledge somehow that she knew he was there. But she walked around the side of the house to her shop without looking back.

Now, hours later, he was at the window again, still restless. From the number of people he could see walk back to the Doll House, her business was thriving. She was working, busy, while he was sitting unshaven at a window with his portable typewriter sitting silent on the desk beside him.

He had planned to work on his novel for a few days-- a novel he had promised himself he would write about the travels he had experienced. It was just one more promise he would never be able to keep because of the demands of law. He had expected to be able to work here, in the quiet, settled town of his youth away from the demands of his job and the fast pace he set for himself in New York. He expected a lot of things. What he did not expect was to find himself just as wildly in love with Faith as he had been in his teens.

Brian turned away from the window and started at his typewriter. The papers were there, notes bulging in manila envelopes, the half-finished manuscript pages. He could sit down and make himself work through the day into the night. He had the discipline for it. But in his life there was more than a book that was half finished. He was just coming to realize it.

By the time he had showered and dressed, it was past noon. He thought briefly about walking across the street to Beth's to see if she still served the best homemade soup in town. But he didn't feel like chatty counter talk. Deliberately he turned south, away from Faith. He wouldn't make a fool of himself by chasing after her.

As he walked, he passed a half a dozen people he knew. He was greeted with thumps on the back, handshakes, and avid curiosity. He strolled down Venice Boulevard. After a decade of absence he found the walk down Main just as fascinating. There was a barber pole that swirled up and around and back into itself. A life-size cardboard cut out of the Mayor stood outside a hardware shop gesturing passersby inside.

Spotting a display of tulips, Brian slipped into the store and bought the biggest one he could carry. The saleswoman has been in his graduating class and detained him for ten minutes before he could escape. He had expected questions, but he had not guessed that he had become the town celebrity. Amused, he made his way down the street as he had countless times before. When he reached the old house he used to call home, he didn't bother with the front door. Following an old habit, he went around the back and knocked on the storm door. It still rattled. It was a small thing that pleased him enormously.

When the door opened, and his mother's eyes peered through the bright-yellow leaves of the flowers, he found himself grinning like a ten-year-old.

"It's about time," she said as she let him in. "Wipe your feet."

"Yes, ma'am." Brian scrubbed his boots against the rough mat before he set down the tulips on her kitchen table.

No more than five feet tall, his mother stood with her hands on her his. She was bent a bit with age and her face was a melody of lines and wrinkles. The bib apron she wore was covered with flour. Brian smelled cookies in the oven and heard the majestic sound of classical music from the living room speakers.

When she turned to look him up and down, Brian found himself automatically standing tall. "Put on a few pounds I see, but more wouldn't hurt. Come, give me a kiss."

He bent to peck her cheek then found himself gathering her close. She felt frail; he hadn't realized it by looking at her, but she still smelled of all the good things he remembered- soap and powder and warm sugar.

"You don't seem surprised to see me," he murmured as he straightened up.

"I knew you were here." She turned to fuss at the oven because her eyes had filled. "I knew before the ink dried where you signed the registration at the inn. Sit down and take off your coat. I have to get these cookies out."

He sat quietly while she worked and absorbed the feeling of home. While he watched, she began to heat chocolate in a dented little pan on the stove.

"How long are you staying?"

"I don't know. I am supposed to be in Hong Kong in a couple of weeks."

"Hong Kong." She pursed her lips as she arranged cookies on a plate. "You've been to all your places, Brian. Were they as exciting as you thought?"

"Some were," He stretched out his legs. He had forgotten what it was like to relax, body, soul, and mind. "Some weren't."

"Now you've come home." She walked over to put the cookies on the table. "Why?"

He could be evasive with anyone else. He could even lie to himself. But with her there could only be the truth. "Faith."

"It always was." Back at the stove, she stirred the chocolate. He had been a troubled boy, now he was a troubled man. "You heard she married Nicholas."

And with her, he didn't have to hide the bitterness. "Six months after I left I called. I'd landed a job with a big firm. They were sending me to New York. I called Faith, but I got her mother. She was very kind, even sympathetic when she told me that Faith was married, had been married for three months and was going to have a baby. I hung up. I got drunk. In the morning I went to New York." He plucked a cookie from the plate and shrugged. "Life goes on, right?"

"It does, whether it tows us along with it or rolls right over us. And now that you know she's divorced?"

"We promised each other something. She married someone else."

She made a sound like steam escaping from a kettle. "You're a man now from the looks of you, not a bull-headed boy. Faith Kirkpatrick--"

"Faith Monroe," he reminded her.

"All right then." Patiently, she poured heated chocolate into mugs. After she set them on the table, she seated herself with a quiet wheeze. "Faith is a strong, beautiful woman inside and out. she's raising that little girl all alone and doing a good job of it. She's started a business and making it work. Alone. I know something about being alone."

"If she had waited---"

"Well, she didn't. Whatever thoughts I have about her reasons I am keeping to myself."

"Why did she divorce Nick?"

The old woman sat back, resting her elbows on the worn arms of her chair. "He left her and the baby when Claire was six months old."

His fingers tightened around the handle of the mug. "What do you mean, he left her?"

"You should know the meaning. You did so yourself." She picked up her chocolate and held it in both hands. "I mean he packed up his bags and left. She had the house-- and the bills. He cleaned out the bank account and headed East."

"But he has a daughter."

"He hasn't laid eyes on the little girl since she was diapers. Faith pulled herself out. She had the child to think of after all if not herself. Her parents stood behind her. They're good people. she took a loan and started the doll business. We're proud to have her here."

He stared out the window to where the boughs of an old sycamore spread. "So I left, she married Nick, then he left. Seems Faith has a habit of picking the wrong men."

"Think so?"

He'd forgotten how dry her voice could be and nearly smiled. "Claire looks like Faith."

"Hmm. She favors her mother." She smiled into her mug. "I've always been able to see her father in her. Your chocolate's getting cold, Brian."

Absently, he sipped. With the taste came floods of memories. "I hadn't expected to feel at home again. It's funny."

"Maybe the time's right to come back again. You weren't a good boy, Brian. But you weren't so bad either. Give yourself some of that time you were always so desperate to beat ten years ago."

"And Faith?"

"As I recall, you never did much courting. Seems to me the girl chased after you with her eyes wide open. A man who's been all the places you have been oughta know how to court a woman. Probably picked up some of those fancy languages."

He picked up a cookie and bit into it. "A phrase or two."

"Never knew a woman who wouldn't flutter a bit with some fancy language."

Leaning over he kissed her cheek. "I missed you."

"I knew you'd come back. At my age, you know how to wait. Go find your girl."

"I think I might." Rising, he slipped into his coat. "I'll come back and visit again."

"See that you do." She waited until he opened the door. "Brian---button your coat." She didn't pull out her handkerchief until she heard the door close behind him.