Free When I Look to the Sky by Barbara S Stewart Page A

and pulled her to him. She put her head on his chest and they sat like that for some time. The only sound was the waves rolling in on the beach just below where they sat.
    Andy just kept thinking how grateful he was that she wasn’t in the car with him, it couldn’t have been ten minutes after John dropped her off.
    “ What do we need to do?” she asked, finally.
    “ Well,” he paused; “Kimmy is looking into all that now. She wanted me to come get you,” he told her and squeezed just a little tighter.
    After a while, she turned to him and asked, “Where will I live?”
    “ We all decided that we should let you decide about that,” he told her. “There’s Kimmy, and Nanny…”
    “ What about you?” she asked, before he went any further.
    “ What about me?” he asked her, and prayed.
    Slipping out of his embrace, she turned to look at him. “I’ve spent the last eleven years being shuffled around. I spend a week here, a weekend there. I have four bedrooms; I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.”
    “ And?”
    “ I’m ready to have one room.”
    “ Where?” he asked her.
    “ 1750 Amberville Lane,” she said.
    “ That’s my house,” he replied, and smiled.
    “ Now it’s our house,” she said. “We need to go, I’m sure there are things we need do.”
    “ Carlee Elizabeth…”
    “ Yes, Papa?”
    “ I love you like crazy.”
    “ I love you, right back. Let’s go home,” she said and reached for his hand.
     
    Andy called Kimmy on the way, “Hey there, we’re on the way to our house,” he told her, as he looked at Carlee and smiled. “Want to meet us over there?”
    Kimmy ’s house was just around the corner from Andy’s, and only a few miles from where they were. She was already there when they arrived. She had a key, let herself in, and had a pot of coffee brewing. She went to Carlee and wrapped her in her arms when they came in through the kitchen door.
    “ I’m so sorry, honey,” Kimmy said.
    “ Where’s Jenna?” Carlee asked. Jenna was six years older, but the two had grown up together, like sisters. She was a first year teacher at the local elementary school.
    “ I called her, and she’ll be here as soon as school is out for the day.”
     
    Carlee left them and went to her room. Kimmy poured coffee and she and Andy sat at the kitchen table.
    “ How’d it go,” Kimmy asked.
    “ OK, I guess. I’m a little worried,” he said, after a while. “She hasn’t cried since I told her.”
    Kimmy sat back savoring the dark brew , and looked at Andy. She had known him a very long time. They’d shared a lot over the years. She lived through every up and down he’d been through with Beth, and every experience he’d shared with Carlee since. Life had a way of bringing people together, and she was happy to call him her friend.
    “ She will, on her terms, in her time. You know she’s a different soul, Andy,” Kimmy said. “She’s a loner. Life made her that way. Her life isn’t like the kids she goes to school with. Her family is her friends, and I think she likes it that way.”
    “ You know what she wanted to know when I told her about John, ‘Where will I live?’”
    “ And?” Kimmy heard him say ‘our house’ again in her head as he spoke, and smiled.
    “ I told her it was up to her, and before the conversation really started she told me she wanted to live here.”
    Kimmy looked at him as he said the words. She wasn’t surprised by this at all. She knew how much Carlee loved him, and he adored her.
    “ And?”
    He looked up from his coffee mug and smiled; “And, I couldn’t be happier.”
     
    Kimmy knew how much he loved Carlee. She knew it started as a connection to Beth, but it grew into way more than that. He rescued her when her dad wasn’t there for her, but she had done the same for him. He was a different soul too, since she came into his life. They saved each other.
    They talked a while, and then Andy excused himself to go look in on Carlee.