The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,41

door locked against the world. I wouldn’t eat, which worried Emmadean more than anything, and lost ten pounds in ten days.

I didn’t tell Emmadean what happened between Sophie and me until ten years later when I was in a hospital bed at Ramstein Air Force Base, recovering from my wounds. I told her everything, probably more than she ever wanted to know or more than I would have ever told her if I wasn’t high on Percocet; how Sophie and I fell in love, and why Ray kicked me out, how I’d learned about the Kinsey scale in college and had been given a name, a label, for my feelings for both men and women in a junior-level human sexuality class. That for the last ten years I’d gone back and forth between dating men and women, enjoying both, but finding no one who made me feel the way Sophie did.

Emmadean held my hand in silence for a long time. Later, I would realize what a torrent of shocking revelations they would have been to a woman who’d been married to the same man since she was seventeen years old and to who the idea of bisexuality was as foreign as people who put beans in their chili. Regardless, she never judged, or scolded, merely released my hand and pulled me into her wonderful, soft embrace and let me cry.

It was only natural to have negative associations with Ray’s house after he’d kicked me out, but it pissed me off that walking to my aunt and uncle’s house, a place full of unconditional love, brought back the despair of those final ten days before I left Lynchfield.

I stopped on the well-worn path between Ray’s and Emmadean’s houses and closed my eyes, chanting serenity and peace with each inhale and exhale. After a few minutes, my heart had settled into its normal rhythm. I took a large gulp of air and continued on, rubbing my cold hands together to get the blood flowing back to my extremities. A dually pickup drove by and honked. I jumped and clenched my teeth together. Serenity. Peace. Serenity. Peace. I determined to have a full meditation session after talking to Dormer and Emmadean, and yoga tonight. I shook myself together, put a smile on my face and walked through the back door.

I always craved fried chicken when I walked into Emmadean’s kitchen, and this morning was no different. The scent of fresh coffee barely broke through the familiar aroma baked into walls from forty years of country cooking.

“I brought eggs!”

The kitchen was empty and quiet, save the ticking of the mustard-yellow clock on the wall. A frying pan with hardened grease sat on the back burner of the green 1970s electric stove. I placed the eggs in a drawer in the refrigerator before pouring myself a cup of coffee into a Texas Cattleman’s Association mug. I sipped the strong brew and made my way through the house. I averted my eyes as I passed the open door of the room I’d lived in. I stopped and listened, hoping for some sign of life. The house felt like a vacuum.

“Emmadean? Dormer? You two decent?”

“Be right there!” Dormer called.

I cringed at the thought I might be catching my elderly aunt and uncle in a compromising position and retreated to the kitchen. I was searching through Emmadean’s cabinets when Dormer appeared.

“Mornin’.” He patted me on the back and kissed my temple. “Whatcha looking for, Bug?”

“I need to make a pound cake, and Ray’s cupboards are empty. Got plenty of eggs, though.”

Dormer poured himself a cup. “I’m sure Emmadean’s got what you need. What’re you baking a cake for?”

“Going to Charlie and Sophie’s for dinner tomorrow night.”

Dormer’s eyebrows raised. “Are you now? That’s mighty fine.”

“You two sleepin’ in? Or did I interrupt something?”

“Nora.” Dormer blew on his coffee and shook his head. He slurped his coffee. “It’s getting harder and harder for your aunt to get up in the morning.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Just gettin’ old.” Dormer wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I crossed one arm and held my coffee cup curled against my shoulder. “Dormer, you know I’m trained to spot liars, right?”

“That come in handy with your job translatin’ technical manuals?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Oh, Dormer’s an expert at evadin’ uncomfortable conversations.” Emmadean shuffled into the kitchen in one of her more colorful muumuus. There wasn’t a pattern to it, more a jumble of red, orange and yellow blots bleeding together. Her artificially dark hair and those colors together washed her out.