“You have a one bedroom apartment. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“You can sleep on the sofa.”
“Gee, you’re not offering to sleep on the sofa so I can sleep in the bedroom?”
“No. I’m offering you a place to stay. Honestly, I’m not there that much anyway so you’ll have the place to yourself. So yeah, I guess you can sleep in the bedroom when I’m not there. I’ll be moving out in the near future when Katie and I are ready.”
“Yeah? So quick?”
“Yes. I told you. She’s the one.”
“I’ll have to commute to work if I live in Sweet,” she argued.
Caleb rolled his eyes. “It’s an hour. You just said so.”
She sighed. “I don’t want to.”
“Why not? Come home, Julie. I miss you. If you’re in Sweet, I can stop by and see you when I’m out on patrol. You can stop by our place whenever you want.”
Her heart squeezed. Throughout the years, she had missed her brother. She’d wanted to talk to him the way they used to talk before he went into the military and so many things in her life had changed.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“I get mistakes have been made. Both sides. I should have done more to...”
“Stop.” She knew where he was going and she hated it. “Don’t blame yourself for what I did. You were in Afghanistan for God’s sake. I was here. You could have died. I should...have come back to see you. I didn’t know when you came home until I found your name and address online.”
“Is that all you did? Did you even try to reach Mom and Dad?”
“Yes. I called them, but the number had been disconnected. They’d changed their cell phone numbers, too, so unless I called you, it was a dead end. I know I could have found them the way I found you. I just didn’t know where to look.”
“You had my number. Christmases. Birthdays. Fourth of July picnics. You could have called.”
“I was scared. I supposed I could have called Katie.”
“She wasn’t here. She was married. Like you, she was living somewhere else.”
“Katie was married before? When?”
He genuinely looked surprised. “She got divorced over a year ago.”
So much had changed. She’d missed it all.
“Just come home, Julie. I want you to. I miss my sister.”
“Did you tell Mom and Dad you’ve seen me?”
His eyes widened. “You mean you still haven’t called them? I gave you the number.”
“Don’t rush me. This is hard. I will. Tonight. I promise.”
“Enough of this already. Just come home. Be with people who love you.”
“Who? You’re the only one left in Sweet who loves me.”
He shook his head. “You know that’s not true.”
She couldn’t take the pleading in Caleb’s eyes. She had no argument other than she lived with Margaret, an old woman who needed some help every now and then even though she had a visiting nurse. But Margaret wasn’t family. She was a kind old woman who had given her a place to live when she’d decided to come back to Montana and make her way back home. Now Caleb was urging her to take the final step and come home all the way. Dr. Matthews would be so pleased.
“Okay, I’ll come home. But I don’t want to feel your hands on my back all the time. I’m not your baby sister anymore.”
“You’re wrong. You’re always going to be my baby sister.”
He reached for her and squeezed her in his arms as he used to when they were younger.
“Let’s do it now.”
“Can we at least eat first?”
Caleb chuckled as he picked up his bison burger. “Sure. But I want to help. I’ve got the rest of the day off.”
“No, let me do it.”
He frowned. “Why? Don’t you have a lot of stuff?”
She sighed impatiently. “Just let me do it, Caleb. I can do it. Don’t—”
“I know, I know. Don’t keep my hands on your back. Fine. Get your stuff together and I’ll make sure I’m there so I can help you move in.”
“Okay.”
Julie turned to her tuna sandwich and played with the pickle on the plate. She was glad Caleb had backed off. But as soon as they finished lunch and they walked to their cars, she regretted her decision.
* * *
As soon as she’d gotten back to her room, she’d called her therapist. Dr. Matthews had said that coming back to Montana was a step closer to confronting her past. Julie hadn’t believed her any of the hundred times she’d said those words. But something in her shifted that last time they’d spoken. Your life can’t move forward unless you confront the past.
Well, she’d not only confronted it. She’d bowled it over.
Five years of therapy had been what it had taken to get her to this point. In the beginning, Julie had squashed everything. She’d kept everything buried deep inside and it had chipped away at her little by little each day.
She’d purposely moved a distance away from Sweet when she came back to Montana. She’d needed time. She had only been working at the Red Wolf Casino for about six months. It was a step. She hadn’t bothered to find a real apartment. In fact, the only real apartment she’d had was early on. It felt too big, even though it was only a one-bedroom garden apartment.
She’d started renting rooms in big old homes with elderly ladies soon after she’d moved to Seattle. Mrs. Golding was a sweet woman. But she had too many rules about closing the cabinets and facing the towels in the bathroom a certain way, and always pushed Julie to come down to the TV room to talk more. She’d left there for a boarding house for women in Olympia. She’d stayed there about the same amount of time before she’d ended up moving further south to Portland, and then Eugene. The house in Eugene was owned by two elderly sisters. She’d stayed there the longest because they were easy to live with. They’d kept each
