Return to Me

  ***

  Three weeks later…

  He would come back, he'd said he would and so it would be, at least, she hoped so. Icy puffs of breath misted in front of her face, a visible testament to the cold-and her less than ideal predicament. Twilight shadows gathered around her, marking the passing of another day, the start of another blustery night.

  Whatever had she been thinking, to follow him out here to this God forsaken no man’s land? The answer came to her lightning quick, she hadn’t been thinking, plain and simple. There was no other plausible explanation, she admitted, bare hands fumbling with the frozen lock on the cabins’ ancient front door.

  If she’d had any sense at all she would have stayed at home, problems and all-at least it was warm there, well, warm compared to this place, she amended.

  She loved Erik in her own way, she reflected, putting her full weight against the door and tripping into the cabins’ dim interior when it gave way under her onslaught, but this was just too much.

  Put some shoulder into it, her step-father had constantly chastised her. Put some muscle into it; give it your all, why are you so weak. The long ago words whispered through her mind, remnants of another time, another place…another life. This is what happens when you give something your all,she thought, surveying her dismal surroundings. You fall flat on your face.Then again, she was reasonably sure Denmari hadn’t intended for her to put her ‘all’ into running away from home at the age of seventeen to traipse after a homosexual.

  No, he’d probably been referring to applying herself at school, at work, maybe even her design sketches she was forever tooling around with.

  The sketches, she groaned, sinking onto the cool flagstone ledge of the silent fireplace. She hadn’t worked on her sketches in weeks. First the whole mess with Guy, now running off with Erik…it would seem her well of inspiration had run dry. She choked back a sob, heavy tears swelling in her wide dark eyes, telling herself it was of no use to cry.

  A break down wouldn’t solve anything. So she would weep and then what? All the bawling in the world wouldn’t change the nightmare in which she had become entangled. She told herself all this and more, to no avail. Her lip quivered, her chin wobbled, huge fat tears spilled over to run down her frozen cheeks. Wracking sobs tore from her throat, guttural animal noises she didn’t recognize as her own.

  She had no clue how long her outpouring of grief lasted, only that when her last tear fell, it was still dark out, the moon high and round and brilliant in the onyx sky. The twill sofa felt rough against her thighs and springs dug into her knees when she leaned forward to rest her chest against the back of the ugly plaid couch, arms crossed over the top as she stared out the wide front room window. The emotional storm that had raged through her only moments ago was gone, leaving her weak and spent and thoroughly exhausted.