It's been a long time since I've had a full night's sleep. Three years, six months, and nine days, or on a more exact scale: 1287 days. I will spend most of a night tossing and turning, dozing every so often and racking up about four hours of good sleep. I have seen my fair share of sunrises in those days and have found something to savor in each one.
This morning's rendition is a clear easing into the day in early June, when the night chill of late spring still hangs in the air as I ease the front screen door open and slip out, closing it just as carefully behind me. This time to myself will only last for so long and I take great pains to be as quiet as possible. I wrap my sweater closer around myself and ease down onto the porch swing, letting my toes push myself back to start the gentle motion. I tuck my other foot up under myself and scratch my ankle that itches from the wool socks I'm wearing.
Coffee goes wonderfully with a sunrise, and I take pulls off a steaming mug that I hold up under my nose to breathe in the bolstering aroma, no dilutions from cream or sugar hampering my enjoyment. Some things never change. While predawn light is already around me, the sun is just starting to come over the horizon and hit the Three Sisters mountains just south of us. When I finally arrived in this house on a cold day in December almost four years ago, those mountains had been covered in thick snow and most days they were shrouded by cloud cover. Snow was all around me, blankets of silent white. I'd never been in snow that was quiet before. The only freezing winters I'd experienced were in the city and that was always busy, but out here I could finally breath the clean, cold air and the first time that it hit my lungs I felt something stir inside me that felt like hope.
My little house, a two-story, old farmhouse sits back on a gravel road about a half-mile off the McKenzie Highway between Redmond and Sisters, Oregon. We're far enough from the road that we aren't bothered by the slim amounts of traffic, but close enough that you can still see the cars pass at what counts as "peak hours" around here. We're set in the high desert, scrub all around us growing out of red soil that speaks to the volcanic legacy of the area, but around the house there are trees and our lame attempt at a yard. It suits just fine though.
The property stretches out around us to encompass five acres including fence line that I walk regularly checking for holes. It's more of an activity to keep some sense of security, though the fence is really just the remnant of the small family farm that used to be here instead of providing any real protection. My improvised patches in the breaks that develop over time are a testament to that fact. I can see the house of my closest neighbor, an older woman named Maggie who lives a quiet, retired life. She took to me from the beginning and after I first moved in she would come over every day to check on me.
The first winter was hard. I picked the area, but it had taken a few days before I'd been dropped at the house. Steve brought me here, making the journey from New York to Portland where we'd spent two days making arrangements. We drove east from Portland to nearly the center of the state, making the trip in the middle of the night. When we left the green side of the state and passed down into the high desert, it felt like a completely different world. The more miles I put between myself and large cities the safer I began to feel. We'd arrived at the house just before dawn to find it furnished with the basics. He said I'd be taken care of, but it was surprising to find how true that was. After a few hours of sleep, he needed to leave again and gave me a thick folder to go through once he was gone. It contained my new paperwork, new name: Alyson Harper, new everything.
"Promise you won't tell him," I'd said one more time, and he nodded in response before giving me a last hug goodbye.
I stood on the front porch and watched him drive away, leaving me alone in the winter silence. That's when I first saw the mountains, peeking out from a rare break in the clouds and smiling down at me. I fell in love with them immediately and with the comforting feeling of such high walls around me. But there were plenty of tears, plenty of doubts, all coming at me when I would least expect them to. I found a doctor, made appointments, and took care of myself. My belly began to swell, my body changing and accommodating the growing baby.
Maggie showed up at my door on the second day and never stopped coming. She never asked me where I came from or why I was alone and pregnant in the middle of nowhere. Some days she told jokes and we laughed together, some days she held my head in her lap when I lay on the couch and stared at the wall for hours, but every day she came my world got a little brighter. When the time came, she drove me to the hospital in Bend and stayed by my side through a difficult labor and eventual cesarean section that brought a son into my life. She even stayed at the house for a couple weeks to help while I healed from the surgery. I have so much to thank her for that words alone could never do it justice.
When my coffee is drained it's time to get on with the morning and I go back inside, rinsing my mug and setting it in the dish rack to dry before I pad up the stairs and ease open the first door at the top, the one with the coloring book pictures of whales taped to it. We did those last week. Inside the room I creep across the floor that is a minefield of stuffed animals set up in an epic battle that has been raging for three days. They're allowed to stay out, as long as they reside within their respective camps at night to regroup and develop strategy for the following days efforts. I'm not sure who is winning, but it has been thrilling never the less.
My son faces me, still wrapped in the thick blanket he always sleeps with the clutching his favorite alligator and showing no signs of having inherited my propensity towards insomnia. His dark hair is ruffled and sticking out every which way. I perch on the side of his bed and run the tip of my finger down the bridge of his nose, his eyelids fluttering at the contact.
"Owen," I say, placing my hand on his tiny chest and giving him a little pat. "Punkin, it's time to get up, kiddo." He barely opens his eyes, gazing up at me with bright blue orbs that are still full of sleep but coming out of his haze. He shakes his head and I pat him again, this time jostling him a little to get him going.
"No choice, Punk," I say and he smiles trying to hold in giggles while I tickle him. I stop suddenly and his eyes fly open. "But wait, do you know what day it is?" I say dramatically. He lights up.
"Mags and cheese!" he says, not quite being able to get his mouth around all the sounds, and laughs when I tickle him again.
"Yes!" I say laughing with him. "Maggie's house and mac and cheese day!" It happens every Friday, he spends the day with Maggie while his Montessori group takes the day off, and in the evening the three of us have macaroni and cheese for dinner. A movie at our house will follow where he will fall asleep on the couch and I will carry him up to bed. The small normalcy of it is something I look forward to it as much as he does.
Four-fifteen in the afternoon and the phone on my desk rings. I'm finishing paperwork for the week and enjoying my strategically scheduled gaps in my appointments and the ringing phone interrupts my train of thought. I put down my pen and rub my temples briefly to settle the annoyance that rises inside me before I pick up the receiver.
"Dr. Harper, your four-thirty appointment is here," Shelly, the receptionist on the other end says with a lilt in her voice of uncertainty. Shelly never sounds this way and it catches me off guard.
"It's Friday though," I say, wondering how she could have messed this up.
"I know," she replies and I can almost picture the way her forehead would scrunch up and her head would shake while trying to figure out how the screw up happened.
"I never take appointments after four on Fridays."
"I know. But it's right there in the computer. Appointment with a new patient" her voice drops to a whisper and in my mind I see her turning her chair away from the counter to hopefully keep her words private. "What do you want me to do?"
I look at my stack of papers and sigh. I've never liked this part of it, so what harm would one more visit with a patient do?
"Go ahead and room them, Shelly," I say. She lets out an audible sigh of relief. "We'll figure it out later."
I wrap up the last sheet I'd been working on and gather myself to head out into the clinic. Slipping my shoes on again and donning my white coat I take a chance to smooth my hair and make sure I'm in good order. It won't do to meet someone new looking like a mess. Before entering the room I grab the slim file and lean against the wall to quickly peruse the pertinent details. Male, young, needing a physical for employment. Straight forward enough, but confusing as to why it was booked in the time that I have made known is to be kept open, allowing me the freedom to leave at a decent hour and not miss mac and cheese night. And why he's come to me in the first place. Not my job to ask these kind of questions, but curious all the same.
Well, here goes, I think to myself with a deep breath and then setting my best calming before I open the door and walk straight into an emotional brick wall.
I am not prepared to see a ghost.
For a second I can't breathe. I'm frozen with my hand on the door and my smile still plastered on my face, but I can feel my eyes go wide with shock at the two people before me. One sits on the exam table, his fingers fidgeting with the hygiene paper he sits on, and the other in a chair in the corner and thumbing through an old copy of Reader's Digest. They both look at me, one with more nerves than the other, and my eyes flit between the two, not sure who I should address first.
"James," I finally manage to say, settling on the man on the table who breaks into a weak smile when I say his name. His eyes, the same blue as Owen's scan me up and down, taking every inch of me that they can and he looks like he wants to jump off the table but resists. I close the door behind me and lean against it, trying to steady myself at the suddenness of seeing him again.
"You lied to me," Steve says quietly from his chair.
"Withheld," I respond, never taking my eyes off James who smirks at my words. "I never lied to you."
"You made me promise not to tell him, but you had a plan all along, didn't you," Steve says.
James reaches into his pocket and pulls out the sheet of paper I'd hidden in the book before leaving the Tower. He gazes down at it with some kind of reverence but doesn't unfold it. We both are intimately acquainted with what it says.
"You knew I'd find it," he says, finally looking up at me again and the hurt and questions in his eyes are more than apparent. I nod, unable to keep the tears from sliding down my cheeks.
"I'd hoped you would," I say earnestly. "It was a long shot, thinking you'd want to go back there, but it was worth it."
"And this was your end game?" Steve presses. I can understand if he feels I betrayed him, but he has to understand my reasons.
"I wanted him to find it on his own," I say, looking at Steve but still aware of James' eyes on me.
"Whether or not he found it was up to whether or not he wanted to remember and wanted to keep those memories alive. I left it up to him. You have to understand that." I can see his resolve beginning to crumble in front of me and I know we'll be alright.
"How long ago did you find it?" I turn back to James.
"Two weeks," he says. "Took some time to break this one." He tilts his head at Steve who shrugs. "Wouldn't give up where you were or whether he even knew anything about it."
"I was sworn to secrecy," Steve says, putting his hands up in a gesture that says 'what was I supposed to do?'. But he can be persuasive and when he showed me he'd found the paper I finally told him."
The scheduling "mix-up" suddenly becomes clear and I smile at the memory of Natasha's fingers flying over keyboards and screens, navigating binary channels and screens like they a fish in a river.
"You guys hacked into our computer and set up this appointment," I say, knowing the answer before they have a chance to look embarrassed and nod. "Clever." James looks at me again and I let out a long sigh, setting the file down on the counter before running my fingers through my hair. This day was bound to happen, I had set the clock in motion myself, and the waiting had seemed like forever until this moment when three and a half years suddenly feels like three and a half seconds.
"Well," I say. "I guess there's only one thing to do."
Half an hour later the three of us are packed into my car and are headed out towards my home. Steve sits in the backseat next to the child booster seat that has a permanent place behind the front passenger chair, which at the moment is occupied by James who keeps up his fidgeting. Wringing his hands, rubbing his palms on his thighs, smoothing his hair. His nervousness sets off my own excitement in the pit of my stomach and gives me a thrill.
We turn into Maggie's drive and head slowly up towards the house, kicking up a dust trail behind us. The front door opens when we stop by the garage and Maggie steps out onto the porch and eyes the two men with me cautiously, but I wave and smile at her, and she takes her cue from me, stepping aside and I see a little dark head dart past her legs and come sailing down the path towards me.
I bend down and hold my arms out to Owen who hits them at a dead run. He's got a surprising amount of power for a three-year old and I spin him around to allow some of his momentum to dissipate. He laughs in my ear and I kiss his cheek. We slow to an eventual stop and turn to face Steve and James who are standing next to the car. Steve is smiling at me, James looks like he's in shock.
"Gentlemen," I say, hoisting my son onto my hip again to give him a better look at our guests. "This is my son Owen, Owen James Harper."