Clouds (5 page)

Shelly remembered. It brought little comfort, though. They got in trouble for ruining their clothes and going to the forest without telling anyone.

“I remember,” Shelly said flatly.

“Oh, I can tell that little memory isn’t one of your favorites,” Meri said, settling herself on the couch and getting down to business. “Come on, let’s figure out what you’re going to do. If you can’t stay with the airline, you need another job, right?”

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’ve hit a brick wall, Meri. I don’t know what I want anymore. Everything in my life seems to have changed overnight. I wish my problems were as
easy to solve as getting stuck in the mud.”

“Do you wish anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like,” Meredith cautiously picked her words as if she were picking apples at the grocery store, “do you wish anything else had been different when you were living at home?”

“What are you getting at?” Shelly never could stand the roundabout games Meredith played when she had something on her mind.

Meri looked at Shelly. “There’s something I think you should know.”

“What?”

“The week after you moved to Los Angeles, Jonathan and I went out to dinner.”

Shelly felt a tiny stab at the thought of Jonathan going out with her sister. “What does that have to do with anything?” Shelly remembered the way Meredith had tried to talk to her about Jonathan once before. Meri had called Shelly a week after she left for L.A., but Shelly hadn’t thought her little, sixteen-year-old sister could tell her anything that would change her decision to leave home.

“I’ve never really told you what Jonathan said to me that night.” Meredith looked intently at Shelly.

“That was five years ago. What does that have to do with losing my job?” Shelly heard the tension in her own voice and realized she was about to lose control.

Meri looked down at her hands and then back up at her sister. “Jonathan told me what happened between you two. He used the same words you just used. A brick wall. That’s what he felt happened to him. That he hit a brick wall.” She paused and looked concerned. Meredith resembled their mother at that moment, and Shelly didn’t like it one bit. “Have you ever talked that whole situation through with anyone?”

Shelly found herself unable to answer. A huge lump clogged her throat. Tears brimmed on her eyelids. Where was all this emotion coming from? She was sure it must be the stress of moving and the job problems.

“I know you’ve never wanted to talk about it with me,” Meredith said slowly. “And that’s fine if you don’t want to, but if you do, I think I understand better now than I did when I was so young. I’ll listen if you want to work it through.”

“There’s nothing to talk through. That was a long time ago. I didn’t come here to analyze my past,” Shelly said, trying to ignore the lump in her throat. “I’m worried about my future.”

Meredith nodded with sympathy. “It’s just when you said brick wall, it took me back to Jonathan. Sometimes to find the key that will unlock the future, we have to see what keys we buried in the past.”

The pressure building inside Shelly hit the bursting point. Tears raced down her cheeks. Her breathing turned into aching sobs. For the first time ever, she let herself cry over Jonathan.

Chapter Four
 

M
y hormones must be way off,” Shelly finally managed to say in an effort to explain her emotional outburst.

“That’s okay,” Meredith said. “You’re normal.” She went for a box of Kleenex and a glass of water. Clearing a spot on the end table next to her futon couch, Meredith offered her sister the drink.

“Okay,” Shelly said, clearing her throat. “This is obviously deeper than I had imagined. I suppose we could talk about it, although I don’t know what good it will do. It was so long ago. It shouldn’t matter this much.”

“Apparently it does,” Meri said softly.

“I guess it does. I don’t regret my decision.” Shelly wiped her dripping nose. “When I look back, I still think it was the only choice I could have made. Jonathan should have understood that. He was so strong about it being all or nothing. We were both so immature.” Shelly took a drink of water. “What did he tell you?”

Meredith tilted her head and gave Shelly a compassionate look. “Jonathan’s heart was broken. I don’t know if you ever really understood that. He loved you. He knew you well enough to know you wouldn’t change your mind. As he said, you were a brick wall, and you weren’t going to move.”

Shelly closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “How can anyone know what love is at eighteen?”

“Jonathan was pretty sure he knew,” Meredith said.

Just then the phone rang. Meredith ignored it. On the third ring the answering machine picked it up in the kitchen. They could hear the caller’s voice. “Hey, it’s Byron. Just wanted you to know I’m running a little late. I’ll be over in twenty minutes to help you pack. Call me if you want me to bring some food.”

Meredith sprang from her seat and grabbed the phone. “Hi, I’m here. Would you mind coming over a bit later?” Meri listened for a few minutes and then said, “Just a sec. I’m going to change phones.” She motioned to Shelly to hang up the extension in the kitchen as Meredith moved to the bedroom.

Shelly hung up for her sister. She had done that dozens of times before. Meri liked her privacy when she was on the phone. Shelly guessed that was about the only thing the youngest of four sisters could demand that the others would respect.

Returning to her spot on the couch, Shelly took another sip of water. She closed her eyes and heard her sister’s words once more. “
Jonathan was pretty sure he knew
.”

Deep inside, a memory begged to be brought to the forefront of Shelly’s thoughts. Too weary to ward it off, she let the memory come.

She was sixteen again, and she and Jonathan were sailing with his uncle off the San Juan Islands. The summer day had been clear and warm when they started, with white clouds
skittering overhead. By two o’clock a high, thin layer of gray clouds covered the sky. Jonathan’s uncle called them “doom and gloom” clouds. The wind kicked up as the boat moved back toward the harbor. The three sailors tacked their way furiously back and forth, trying to get the wind to cooperate with them rather than send them back to sea.

Shelly secured herself and held tightly to the rope Jonathan’s uncle handed her. The water splashed over the side of the small craft, rising like a fountain and raining itself down on Shelly. She shivered but held the rope with all her strength. The thrill of the adventure ran all the way to her toes. She wasn’t a bit frightened. Ever since she had overcome her fear of heights by climbing up into Jonathan’s tree house, she had been drawn to daring escapades. When the carnival came to town, she was the one who wanted to ride the roller coaster one more time. This confrontation with nature made her skin tingle.

Shelly distinctly remembered the moment Jonathan’s uncle said, “Now!” She let go of the rope, and the sail unfurled, catching the wind and turning the sailboat. All that power was harnessed and then unleashed. Shelly flashed her smile at Jonathan, and their eyes met.

His light brown hair caught the wind, too, and was blown back, fully exposing his stormy, gray eyes and his ignited smile.

In that moment, Jonathan transformed before Shelly’s eyes. She didn’t know what it was, but he looked different to her. Vastly different. And her heart responded to that change. Under those “gloom and doom” clouds, three weeks before their seventeenth birthdays, Michelle Annalee Graham realized for the first time that she was in love with Jonathan Charles Renfield.

It took Jonathan a little longer to realize the same. Shelly
was pretty sure she knew when it was, though. About five months later, they were in his garage. Jonathan was under his car, an old Jeep Cherokee, trying to prove his manliness by changing the oil. Shelly had come over to collect a CD he had borrowed from her. She walked into his garage wearing a dress because her family was leaving in a few minutes for Meredith’s flute recital. Jonathan asked her to hand him a socket wrench. She made a random choice of the tools before her and slapped it into his grease-streaked hand.

An instant later, Jonathan rolled out and said, “Hey! You got it right this …” The words stopped, but his mouth stayed open. He stared at Shelly.

“What’s wrong with you?” she teased. The dress was nothing like her eighth-grade graduation outfit, but it was blue and it was short. Her hair was out of its usual ponytail, and the curls on the ends calmly rested just below her shoulders. She had put on makeup and borrowed some of Megan’s earrings.

“So?” Shelly prodded Jonathan. “Are you going to give me my CD or not?”

“I … I’ll bring it over later,” he fumbled. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” Shelly answered, deciding to make the most of the moment.

“With who?”

“With
whom
, silly. Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased. Turning on her heels, she called over her shoulder, “Make sure you bring that CD back by tomorrow at the very latest. You can send it on the zip if it’s not raining, but I want it by tomorrow.”

Late bloomers, Shelly thought as Meri returned to the living room, apologizing for taking so long on the phone. That’s what Jonathan and I were. Late bloomers. All our friends were dating and going together, but I was seventeen before I gave up my tomboy ways. Jonathan held on to his naiveté longer than
any guy I knew. He was too kind-hearted for his own good.

Meri sat down, and the phone rang again. “I can’t believe this. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the bedroom again, and Shelly returned to her daydream.

Within five minutes after her family had returned from Meri’s flute recital that evening, the doorbell rang. It was nine-fifteen on a school night. There stood Jonathan, showered, with his hair combed back, and wearing clean clothes. He held out the CD to Shelly and said, “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” she answered.

“Are you doing anything?”

Shelly remembered the way he looked. Nervousness was not a trait she had seen in him before. It only made her fall more in love with him.

They went for a walk around the block. In her heels, Shelly matched his height. Jonathan was wearing aftershave. The February night was chilly. Their hands found each other easily, and instantly Shelly felt warm inside and out. Neither of them spoke. There was no need for words, not when they already knew each other by heart. Shelly had never felt happier.

After they walked around the block, Jonathan delivered Shelly back to her door and said, “Would you like to go out Friday night?”

She nodded and gave him her radiant smile. “To the movies?” she asked. It was their common Friday-night activity already.

“No, I’d like to take you out to dinner. Someplace nice.”

Meredith bustled through the trail of boxes and back to the couch. “I’m sorry. Let’s get back to what you were saying.” She looked at Shelly’s face and said, “You look a little better. Are you okay?”

Shelly nodded. She knew a trace of a smile was on her lips. She couldn’t help it. Falling in love for the first time—the only
time—brought up sweet emotions. If she could only stop the memory there, she would be fine. It was what followed that ruined everything.

“You were saying you two couldn’t really have been in love at eighteen.” Meredith tucked her legs under her and looked at Shelly.

“Is that what I was saying? I forgot.”

“Well, try to remember,” Meri urged. “I think this must be pretty important to cause such a strong emotional response.”

Shelly shook her head. The fiery emotions had subsided. “Maybe it was a sort of love. But, Meri, we were just kids. And I … well, … I …”

“You wanted to see the world,” Meri added for her.

Shelly lowered her head. “Yeah, I did.”

“But you loved him, didn’t you?”

Shelly looked up and met her sister’s gaze. She had never explained her relationship with Jonathan in those words to Meri or anyone else in her family. Looking back, she knew it must have been obvious to everyone who saw them together.

Meredith wrinkled her small nose slightly and leaned forward. “There’s no shame in loving somebody. It might help you to admit it.”

“Yes,” Shelly whispered, feeling the tears coming back. “I loved him.”

“It’s probably none of my business,” Meredith said, “but just because I’m your pesky little sis and I have the right to be annoying, I have one more question. You still love him, don’t you?”

Shelly’s mind went blank. How could she answer that? She knew that, deep down, over all these years, there had been only one love in her heart. Jonathan. Only Jonathan. She had dated lots during her time in Los Angeles, but none of the guys ever came close in comparison. She had loved only one man.
In a rare moment of reflection about a year ago, she had struggled with the possibility that he might be the only man she would ever love so deeply. She might fall in love again, and even marry and spend the rest of her life with some terrific man. But Jonathan would always be in a corner of her heart. Her first true love.