Harvesting the Heart Read Online Free

th?t I would get off the bus
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was close enough to Rhode Island;
it sounded more anonymous than Boston; and also, the name just made
me feel good—it
reminded me of dark English sweaters and graduating scholars and
other fine things. I would stay there long enough to make money that
would pay my way to RISD. Just because Fate had thrown another
obstacle in my way didn't mean I had to give up my dreams. I fell
asleep and dreamed of the Virgin Mary and wondered how she knew to
trust the Holy Spirit when he came to her, and when I woke up I heard
a single violin, which seemed to me the voice of an angel.

    I
called my father from the underground pay phone in the Brattle Square
bus station. I called collect. I watched a bald old woman knitting on
a squat bench and a cellist with tinsel braided into her cornrows. I
tried to read the sausage-link graffiti on the far wall, and that's
when the connection came through. "Listen," I said, before
my father had the chance to draw a breath, "I'm never coming
home."
    I
waited for him to fight me on that point, or even to break down and
admit he'd been frantically searching the streets of Chicago for two
days. But my father only let out a low whistle. "Never say
never, lass," he said. "It comes back to haunt you."
    I
gripped the receiver until my knuckles turned white. My father, the
one—the only— person
in my life who cared what would happen to me, didn't seem very
concerned. Sure, I'd disappointed him, but that couldn't erase
eighteen years, could it? One of the reasons I'd had the courage to
leave was that, deep down, I knew he would always be there waiting; I
knew I would not really be alone.
    I
shivered, wondering how I had misjudged him too.
I wondered what else there was to say.
    "Maybe
you could tell me where you've gone off to," my father said
calmly. "I know you made it to the bus station, but after that
I'm a bit fuzzy on details."
    "How
did you find that out?" I gasped.
    My
father laughed, a sound that wrapped all the way around me. His
laugh, I think, was my very first memory. "I love you," he
said. "What did you expect?"
    "I'm
in Massachusetts," I told him, feeling better by the minute.
"But that's all I'm going to say." The cellist picked up
her bow and drew it across her instrument's belly. "I don't know
about college," I said.
    My
father sighed. "That's no reason to up an' leave," he
murmured. "You could have come to me. There's always—"
At that moment a bus whizzed by, drowning out the rest of his words.
I could not hear, and I liked that. It was easier than admitting I
did not want to know what my father was saying.
    "Paige?"
my father asked, a question I had missed.
    "Dad,"
I said, "did you call the police? Does anybody know?"
    "I
didn't tell a soul," he said. "I thought of it, you know,
but I believed you'd come through that door any minute. I hoped." His
voice fell low, dull. "Truth is, I didn't believe that you'd
go."
    "This
isn't about you," I pleaded. "You've got to know that it
isn't about you."
    "It
is, Paige. Or you wouldn't ever ha' thought to leave."
    No, I
wanted to tell him, that
can't be true. That can't be true, because all these years you've
been saying it wasn't my fault that she left.
That can't be true, because you are the one thing that I hated
leaving behind. The
words lodged in my throat, stuck somewhere behind the tears that
started running down my face. I wiped my nose on my sleeve. "Maybe
I will come home someday," I said.
    My
father tapped his finger against the end of the receiver, just as he
used to do when I was very little and he went on overnight trips to
peddle his inventions. He'd send a soft whap through
the phone lines. Did
you hear that? he'd
whisper. That's
the sound of a kiss runnin' into your heart.
    A bus
from I don't know where was coming through the dark tunnel of the
station. "I've been out of my head with worryin'," my
father admitted.
    I
watched the bus's wheels blot the