Page 556 of Summer Heat
For the first time in a week, he actually smiled. And nodded. “I won’t k
eep you, honey. Go on and get your guy.”
She nodded, then leaned forward and put her hand on his arm. “Just one thing, Lance. I want you to think about what it would be like for you if you don’t take this chance, and someone else comes along for Tamara. I want you to imagine her married to someone else.” She kissed his cheek this time. “Think about it, okay?”
“I will. Have a good time. Call me and tell me how it goes with that certain snotty blonde, will you?”
She laughed. “Oh, I will.” She paused, her hand on the door. “Remember, sweetie, the ones who never fall always fall hardest when they do.”
The words echoed in him as he drove home then changed out of his good suit into a pair of reliable comfortable jeans. In his still-faceless apartment, he heated a TV dinner and watched an idiotic movie, feeling restless and lonely and—lost.
It was the same feeling that had been dogging him for his last three years in Houston. He liked the city, liked his company, liked his friends, but the hollowness never left him. And the weird thing was, he’d had no earthly idea what was bothering him until the telegram about his father had come. He was homesick.
But he was home now, so what was the problem? It felt like homesickness again.
I want you to imagine her married to someone else.
Marissa’s words hit him hard. And he forced himself to do exactly that—imagine Tamara married to another man. Cooking for him. Laughing with him. Making love to him.
The lost, restless feeling in his chest rose to a keening howl. He nearly choked on it.
And suddenly, he knew that it was homesickness he felt. He was pining for the home he wanted to build, pining for the woman he wanted to share it with. He was pining for his family—the family that existed, and the one he hoped to build.
In relief, he bowed his head, and for the first time, in twenty years, he wept. Wept the long-halted tears of grief for his father, for the man he could have been and the man he had been, for the lost years his mother had spent on her children, even for Valerie.
It wasn’t manly. It wasn’t macho. His brothers would snicker for days if they knew. It didn’t even last long because he ended up feeling completely stupid.
But it helped. When he raised his head, his heart was clear and full of purpose. The lostness was gone.
He knew what he had to do.
* * *
Tamara drove to Denver Saturday, to arrange her classes for the following semester. Her excitement over the trip got her through the awkward moments at Louise Forrest’s house, those moments when Tamara looked around eagerly for signs of Lance and found none. After the last incident at her house, they’d agreed it would be better if they didn’t see each other in person for a while, and worked out this arrangement with Louise.
It didn’t really help much. Tamara missed him desperately. She ignored it as much as possible, but it seemed there was always a little voice in her heart crying his name. All the time, day and night.
But this morning, she shoved him out of her mind. Not even a broken heart would spoil her joy at finally returning to school, to the classes she loved and that would lead to the life she had missed so desperately. If she couldn’t have Lance, at least she’d have this.
Walking around the Denver campus, Tamara found herself looking at it all with a different eye. The taste of intellectual energy and infinite possibility lingered in the crisp late-autumn air, and the smell of challenge filled her head, but it wasn’t quite as heady as it once had been. She didn’t have quite the same need to become absorbed into the university itself, to be a molecule within its vast, hallowed structure. As much as she looked forward to her classes, they would be a means to an end this time.
She mused at the change on her way home. What had the university represented to her as a young girl that she’d found elsewhere?
Identity. Yes, that was it. She’d been so afraid that she would disappear if she didn’t affiliate herself with the university life. That somehow life would snatch her back into its bowels if she didn’t keep her hands on those walls.
Cody had changed that for her. Cody—and Lance—who had each given her, in different ways, the courage to be herself, to claim her own life, within or without a structure.
What freedom!
A note was pinned to her door when she got home. It looked like Lance’s handwriting, and Tamara felt an immediate sense of worry. She tore open the envelope and found a note in a childish scrawl. “Look in the bread box.”
She smiled. A treasure hunt.
In the bread box, she found another note. In Lance’s handwriting was a line of a poem. “‘And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes.’”
Tamara swallowed. Byron.
The note directed her to go to the drugstore and ask the clerk for the next note. Feeling silly and a quiet anticipation, Tamara drove there. The older woman behind the counter smiled broadly. “Oh, yes.” She gave her an envelope, her eyes twinkling. Tamara carried it outside before she opened it.
