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| 11.27.04 | chapter thirty three... |
Juno half carried, half dragged her suitcases through her front door and unceremoniously dropped them in her small family room. Her eyes felt gritty from the long flight home, from exhaustion, and from all the tears she'd cried and cried over the Atlantic. Her arms and legs felt like they had the consistency of warm jello after sitting on a plane for so many hours. She kicked the front door shut and halfheartedly shrugged her purse off her shoulder.
Without bothering to snap on a light, Juno crept by memory through her pitch black apartment to her bedroom. Toeing off her shoes and yanking out the rubber band holding her hair back from her face, she flopped forward onto the center of her bed and closed her eyes, not bothering to change clothes, wash her face or even check her messages.
Within a minute, she was fast asleep.
**
The insistent ringing of the telephone pulled Juno away from sleep, and she lay for a long moment, waiting for her answering machine to pick up the call. She could vaguely hear her mother's voice booming through the machine, and winced at the accusatory tone in her voice.
Juno glanced at the clock and winced again. Only her mother would dare to call at seven in the morning the day after a long transatlantic flight.
She knew she was supposed to call and check in when she got in from her travels, just like she did when she was seventeen, but it was the middle of the night when they landed and even later when Juno finally arrived back home and fell into bed.
Her mother would have to deal with no communication from her daughter for another few hours, Juno thought darkly. I'm not in any condition to even speak to another human being right now, much less my mother, who will want to hear every detail of the trip. I'm so not emotionally equipped to handle that right now, Juno convinced herself.
Dimly, Juno heard the machine finally kick off as she closed her eyes again, hoping to fall back asleep for another few hours... or days or weeks. After tossing and turning for ten minutes, Juno was resigned to the fact she was awake for the day, like it or not. Stumbling out of bed, Juno walked directly to the kitchen, praying that she still had some Folgers in the house. Minutes later the coffee was perking and Juno sat at her kitchen table, resolutely watching the steady drip of caffeine into the carafe and just as resolutely not thinking about Jamie.
No point in dwelling on the past, she reminded herself stiffly. Think of something else, like bunnies or an intravenous coffee drip or a pretty Monet painting.
Like bills, Juno thought wryly as she glanced around her and saw the enormous stack of mail and newspapers in the center of her kitchen table. Her next door neighbor had been collecting her mail and newspapers, and must have dropped it off before Juno arrived home last night.
After interrupting the percolating of the coffeemaker to pour herself an emergency ration of coffee into her mug, Juno sat down again and began thumbing through her mail. Catalogs, direct mail flyers, pizza coupons, bills, bills, bills. Not a single piece of social mail, and nothing from Ed McMahon telling her she'd won a million dollars.
Damn.
At the bottom of the stack was a large padded envelope, covered in black streaks and foreign looking stamps. Juno curiously eyed the package, noting that there was no return address. She looked at the postmark and the stamps embossed with Queen Elizabeth's profile, and her heart beat faster as she made out the word 'Scotland' amongst the wear and tear of traveling overseas.
Maybe Jamie had sent her something… anything.
A letter proclaiming his love? A plane ticket back to Scotland? A picture? An itinerary of him coming to see her in Chicago? Anything, absolutely anything, would be fine with Juno at this point.
Unable to restrain herself, Juno ripped open the envelope like a kid on Christmas morning and upended the package, holding her hand out to catch whatever letter or contents spilled out when she shook it.
Juno stared openmouthed as her wallet dropped heavily into her hand.
Immediately, her mind flashed in reverse to the small café in Cullen, the old men gathering around and talking her ear off, Jamie swooping in to rescue her just in time. Her eyes swam with tears as she thought of their first meeting, of the way he managed to take her panic and confusion at being deserted and alone and turn it into something… something beautiful.
Her heart hurt when she pictured Jamie's smile as he explained his role as rescuer as they stood facing each other in the street.
Someone had found her wallet, deserted on a café table, and had taken the time, effort and money to send it back to her address in the United States, probably finding it on her driver's license. She quickly thumbed through the contents, and noted that nothing was missing or disturbed – just as she expected. Frantically, she dug around in the envelope again until she found a small note wedged inside. She unfolded it to squint as some spidery writing in the center of a large piece of stationery.
"We found your wallet, but you'd gone. It was lovely meeting you, and we hope you enjoyed your stay in Scotland, luv. Signed, your (elderly) admirers."
"I don't believe it." Juno whispered to her empty apartment, turning her wallet over and over in her hands as though it were a totally foreign object. Finally, she put the wallet carefully back on the table and gently lay the letter next to it, allowing herself the chance to read the carefully written words again and again. Juno's eyes welled with tears at the gesture of those sweet old men, and she could do nothing but lay her head on the table and let herself cry again.
It was a wonder she had any tears left at all.
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