Home

She stood on the doorstep crying. At least she thought she was crying. It was hard to tell because the pouring rain was soaking her to the bone and she was dripping all over the welcome mat.

For a moment her mind flashed back to a night in the past when he had stood at her bedroom window. She was on the other side kneeling on her bed. He had kissed her fingertips with feathery brushes of his lips and told her how much he loved her. Her knees quivered with the memory.

She rang the doorbell and waited, rehearsing what she would say. She had thought of it so many times in the years that they had been apart. She had gone over it time and time again in her mind. She always thought she knew exactly what she would tell him when she got a chance. She would say how much she loved him, how much he meant to her and how much she had missed him. That would be all it would take and he would welcome her with open arms, wouldn't he?

The door opened and he stared at her for a moment, the dripping mess that she was.

She tried to speak, but her voice stuck in her throat. He was no longer the fresh-faced 16-year-old from her memory and there was virtually nothing left of the 9-year-old boy who had tortured her and all the other little girls in the neighborhood. His face was that of a man, his hair had begun to gray slightly, and his body had thickened. It took her a moment, but she found her voice and she began to speak.

"I told you once that you didn't get me. I said that you didn't stimulate my mind and that I needed someone who could. I was wrong. You touched my heart. You let me see that underneath all the bravado that you were vulnerable and you could love, but not completely and I thought that wasn't enough for me. I was wrong. For all those years your arms were comfort for me and your heart was the home where my soul took refuge when the world became too much to handle."

"I need that place now. Home. I have never been able to find it with anyone else. I don't have what it takes to live in this world without that home. I can't sleep, I can't breathe and I cannot be without you. Please, let me come home to you."

He was silent. None of that was what she had planned to say. She realized that she had her head bowed. She looked up into his eyes, silently pleading. He turned towards the door and she knew he would close it on her without a word.

Then, suddenly he turned back to her. There were tears in his eyes. After several moments he finally spoke.

"This is home," he said quietly. Then he took her hand and led her into the house and for the first time, her life was whole and complete.