I Am Girl Power

by Katie Cross

  His bluster faded into narrow-eyed suspicion.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. This is my fault, so I’ll take responsibility for it. How much have you lost?”

  “Eight thousand dollars.”

  “Good grief,” I choked, swallowing. “A-all right. I’ll have to do a payment plan, but I will pay you back. I promise. And I can sign something if you don’t trust me anymore. I get it.”

  His tense shoulders softened.

  “Okay. You’re definitely signing a contract to pay it back. I’ll take it.”

  I motioned to the food with a tilt of my head. “I, uh … made you a Naked Black Forest Cake.”

  He glanced around, his gaze stopping on the tower of glazed cherries dripping off gooey layers of chocolate. His eyes widened.

  “’Bout time,” he muttered. “I’ve been waiting for that cake all summer. Fine. If you want to come back, you can have the spot. But I still can’t pay you. You’ll need to hardcore grovel for at least a week. Make Black Forest Cake every day at dinner. Sugar cookies before bedtime. Also, Sione may challenge you for the belly-flop title back, and you have to lose.”

  His expression didn’t falter.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Really?”

  One millimeter at a time, Mark’s trademark devil-may-care expression crossed his face, erasing the angst. He held out his arms. With a squeal, I ran headfirst into him. JJ and Mark cocooned me deep inside their protective hug.

  “Welcome home, blister,” Mark said, rubbing my hair with his knuckles. I pulled away. “It’s always good to have you back. But there’s someone else you need to talk to.” He glanced outside. “She’s been hanging out at the lake before helping with breakfast most mornings.”

  A deep pang of hurt raced through me. “Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s here?”

  “Until tonight. She has to work again.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Up the river fishing. Took the whole week off.”

  I hesitated. Talking with Mom could go so many directions I wasn’t ready for. JJ nudged me with a gentle hand, motioning outside with a jerk of his head. “You’ll feel better after you talk to her. Trust us, Meg. She has a lot she wants to explain.”

  Ten minutes later, I pattered down the dock in bare feet.

  A light fog curled along the top of the lake in wisps. Fish popped in and out of the water, sending widening rings across the surface. Tendrils of mist started to lift from the lake, extending my view to the reedy bank on the other side. Thanks to the low-hanging clouds, the day appeared gray and desolate. A familiar, lean figure stood at the edge, peering into the mist.

  I tucked my hands into my fleece jacket pockets and stopped right next to her. We stood at the edge of the dock, staring into the murky depths without speaking. I wondered if the young moose would wander by.

  “Hey, Meg.”

  I swallowed, grateful we didn’t have to make eye contact right away. The words sat like a rock on my chest.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Mom.”

  “You were scared.” She put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “I completely understand. Besides, I should be apologizing, not you. News like that is bad enough, but childish bickering? We’ve let you down. In so many ways.” Tears thickened her voice. “I’m so sorry.”

  I reached over and threaded our fingers together, then squeezed her hand. To my relief, the following silence didn’t feel strained or awkward. Like the two of us, it just was. It gave me courage.

  “Are you scared?” I asked.

  She nodded, eyes glittering. The cut of her beautiful, elegant profile stood in stark contrast to the clouds behind her. I missed her long hair.

  “I’m terrified,” she said. “I’ve never been this frightened in my life.”

  She wiped away a tear with her other hand. In the distance, a bird called, low and mournful, over the water.

  “So, what really happened? What finally drove you and Dad apart?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Many things, Meg baby. Many, many things. But I believe it started years ago, when you were in middle school. Things were busy. Your father was distant. He never opened up much even on good days, and that bothered me. But we didn’t seek help. We just kept surviving.”

  Tears tightened my throat. All my memories would be different after this. I’d rethink every recollection. Every observation. A high price to pay for a once-innocent childhood. My thoughts shifted.

  “So, it wasn’t your job?”

  “Not alone, no. Your father worked and fished, and I hated fishing.” She grimaced. “The smell. Ugh. He hates running, and I love running … so we didn’t have many common interests. Anyway, I went into nursing to connect with people. Something I couldn’t do with my husband. He seemed to cocoon inside and shut me out.”

  Already, my memories unraveled. Mom trying to find a movie at the theater Dad would watch, but never leaving. Long, quiet nights at home while she moved restlessly around the kitchen and Dad worked on his fly fishing lures. Dad’s stoic silences and lack of conversation had always been normal to me. Comforting, even. But he hadn’t been my husband. I felt a new pang of sympathy for Mom. While I loved Dad, he would have been very difficult to understand as a spouse.

  “Then I realized how much I loved having a career,” she continued, “so I threw myself into it. People talk, you know? Your father never did. I even tried to talk to him about fly fishing, but it didn’t work. For years we grew apart. Neither of us stopped it. We didn’t even fight—not until the end. Of course, my career played a part in the demise of our marriage, but it wasn’t fully responsible, the way your father believes. I think it’s easier for him that way.”

  Without realizing it, she reached up and ran her fingers through my loose hair. The steady movement calmed me. Finally hearing Mom’s side brought new light to the situation. The hurt in Dad’s expression when he’d revealed that Mom didn’t want him—or so he thought. Like my debt, their divorce happened in layers. Layers of emotion that brought about terrible decisions. For some reason, that made it easier to bear.

  “Does that answer your question?” she asked.

  I blinked, peering into her soft eyes, still sparkling with unshed tears. I pressed my lips together, nodding.

  “Yes. Thank you for being honest.”

  She smiled. “Enough about me—you’re here. Which means you must have given up the job.”

  I pulled in a deep breath of fresh mountain air. The sound of the warblers waking up in the trees drifted across the lake. In the distance, I could just make out the vague chatter of the staff as they streamed into the lodge. Within moments, they would see their breakfast. They’d eat, jostle, and tease each other. Come visit me between meals. Request ten dozen cookies just for them and their tent mate. Try to put mustard in the ketchup bottle.

  I couldn’t wait.

  “Yes. I did give the position at West End up. But that’s okay. I think the hospital is on the decline. The corporation expanded so much that things have started to suffer.”

  “I’m sorry, Meg. You wanted that position for a while.”

  “Yes. I really did. But I think I may have found something else.”

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows rose halfway to her hairline. “Where?”

  I grinned. “Montrose.”

  Her mouth opened and closed several times. “Montrose?” she cried. “Not Montrose as in … but that’s only four hours away from here!”

  “They have a travel-nurse position open for an ER nurse. Starts at the end of August.”

  “How did you find out about that?”

  “Jodie, a nurse recruiter I worked with, told me about it on the sly. Technically, she’s not supposed to. But pickings back home were slim. She has a friend who works for the travel company, and they offer sign-on bonuses. I’ve already contacted the travel-nurse recruiter. My application goes to the hospital to
morrow. And they have a flight team! So I might hire on as a full-time nurse and work up to their flight team if I like it there. If I don’t? I’ll move on.”

  “Travel nursing,” she murmured. “Now there’s a challenge. New hospital. New city. New everything.”

  “I know! And best of all, I get to pick where I live.” I squeezed her hand. “And for now, I want to be close to home for a while.”

  “But what about your townhouse?”

  My lungs expanded in a deep breath. “I’m going to rent it out, furniture and all. That way I don’t have to drag furniture around until I know where I want to stay. It’ll be a source of income in the future if I ever lose my job again. At the very least, it’s a place to stay should I ever find myself in this position a second time.”

  “So you’re leaving all your friends?”

  Moving away from the Health and Happiness Society wouldn’t be easy. I’d miss them all desperately. But my parents’ divorce had thrown more rapids into my course than I’d expected—ones I wanted to navigate with JJ and Mark close by for a while. The townhouse kept me linked to the Health and Happiness Society. I could always go back.

  “Yes.”

  Her jaw bobbed up and down. Her eyes seemed to wrestle with something.

  “Will that make you happy, Meg?”

  “I think so. It feels right.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Good,” she whispered, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “Because I wouldn’t want anything else for you.”

  The sorrow in her eyes opened a vein of compassion right in my heart. The burning sense of betrayal I’d felt at their divorce softened. Mom and Dad hadn’t separated to hurt us. In their own way, they’d done the best they could. For now, I could accept that much and deal with the rest as it came.

  “Do you think it can be done?” I asked. “Balancing a career and still maintaining healthy relationships? Do I have hope?”

  She paused. “Yes. But I think it takes a lot of guts, communication, forgiveness, humility, and loyalty. Things your father and I struggled with from the very beginning.”

  My mind spun back to Nathan. To my conversation with Dad at Rudy’s Diner. The happy glow in Mom’s eyes at the hospital. Lexie’s giddiness at her engagement. The way I felt hiking in the mountains when I’d first arrived. Saving Atticus. Working in the hospital during Gary’s heart attack. Helping in the medical cabin. Mark forgiving me for leaving. And the deep sense of joy that thrummed in my soul when I helped people.

  It all seemed so jumbled and slippery, like I’d never have a firm grasp on how to manage it. Could it all fit together? Somewhere in all the layers, there had to be some sort of answer.

  For now, making things right with Mark felt like the first step on a long journey of figuring out it.

  Mom pulled me into a warm embrace. I inhaled the sweet scent of fresh cotton and let go. When she pulled away, concern furrowed her brow. “I’m ecstatic to have you closer, Meg, but what about Lexie? You love her so much, and now she’s getting married.”

  Something uncomfortable and prickly moved underneath my skin. Lexie didn’t even know I’d been home for a few short days. Thinking about her engagement still sent a twinge of pain through me. How I would miss her.

  “Lexie has Bradley now.”

  “But she still needs her best friend. Every girl needs one.”

  Not after they get married, I thought, recalling the ghosts of my old best friends. “I’ll talk to her, Mom. I promise.”

  Mom’s hands fell away from my shoulders. Her eyes sparkled. “I love you, Meg.”

  “I love you too.”

  I wrapped my arm around her waist, and we headed to the lodge together.

  How to Grovel to the Staff

  Bacon.

  Cookie dough.

  Stop sneaking spinach into everything.

  More bacon

  Let them play with the grill. (Two minutes only!)

  Lose my belly-flop title forever.

  Clean the biffies for Justin again.

  Make Sione a roasted pig.

  Work again next year. For free.

  Three weeks later, I sat on the counter in the kitchen. The gleaming surfaces, scrubbed to perfection, winked in the streaming afternoon sunlight. My nostrils filled with the tang of glass cleaner and soap. Outside, car doors slammed and staff members shouted as they loaded the last of their bags. Now that August had arrived, the explosive colors of fall didn’t seem so far away. New job willing, Justin and I had plans to hike Custer Mountain in the middle of September, when the leaves set fire to the forest.

  “I knew I’d be sad to see the summer end,” I murmured, eyeing the stove and perfectly seasoned grill. It hadn’t been so hard to learn after all. “But I didn’t think I’d be this sad.”

  Justin propped his hands behind him and leaned back.

  “Yeah. Seems so … empty.”

  Until next year, Justin and the twins would conserve electricity and funds by living out of the office. The rest of Adventura would need to winterize by the end of September. Rolled blueprints lay by the window. Because the camp had almost broken even, Mark’s investors had agreed to invest enough for upgrades for the next year. The kitchen would be the first priority for improvements.

  Mark glanced around, his lips pushed to one side in a duck face. “Yeah,” he said. “I knew you would be sad to leave me.”

  I rolled my eyes and smacked him on the shoulder.

  From my perch in the kitchen, the windows revealed a naked camp. The cord for the flag banged against the tall wooden pole. Birds swooped by. Without the campers and all the staff, the empty skeleton of Adventura seemed brittle.

  “C’mon,” Mark said, hooking an arm around my neck and pulling me off the island. “You have a flight to catch and a house to empty out. In the meantime, Justin is taking JJ and me out to a really expensive steak dinner. Salad for JJ, though. I’ll eat his steak.”

  My arm slid around his waist as he towed me out of the kitchen, JJ and Justin trailing in our wake. Trees swayed as we wandered through the camp, laughing. In the distance, the lake rippled in a breeze. With the scent of pine in my nose, I followed Mark to the Zombie Mobile, where my bags waited inside. The summer hadn’t been perfect.

  But it had been wonderful.

  Chapter 23

  Best Friends

  Three days later, I stared at a picture of cupcakes forming a massive tower in a magazine that Lexie had shoved under my nose. She’d always been so traditional. And yet … so inclined toward cupcakes.

  “Lex, are you sure you want cupcakes instead of a wedding cake? Didn’t you always dream of a cake?”

  “Positive.” She tossed a kernel of kettle corn into her mouth and caught it. “Wedding cake is overrated. The English language doesn’t offer adequate verbiage for my love of Oreo cupcakes. F’real, Meg.”

  A bag of kettle corn sat between us, kernels spilling onto the couch in Lexie’s basement lair. On her computer monitor flickered the main menu of a DVD that we hadn’t started because we’d been too busy laughing over wedding plans. With the help of the Health and Happiness Society, my townhouse lay empty and scrubbed bare, ready for the renters to move in the next day. A moving van took up the sidewalk and part of the street outside Lexie’s house. JJ would fly out in the morning and help me drive to Montrose. In the meantime, Lexie and I ended my final day in the Midwest with one last sleepover.

  She lay back on the floor, her hair spilling around her in a halo of golden waves. When I’d apologized after my return, she hadn’t been as angry about me avoiding her as I’d expected. In typical Lexie fashion, she understood.

  Still, a sense of hesitation held me back from fully enjoying the night. Would it be our last? Would Lexie forget me as all the others had? Lexie would move on into a new life this fall. I couldn’t stop mourning it in my heart.

  She looked at me.

  “So,” she drawled. “You ready to start your new job in two days? I can’t believe it’s al
most the middle of August. The summer went by so fast and yet … so slow without you to correct my dead-lift form.”

  I tossed the magazine aside and leaned back against her footboard. “Yes. I’m excited.”

  “What’s going on with the credit cards?”

  I cringed. “My first debt collector call came through today. But the sign-on bonus with the travel company should clear my account in a week.”

  “Urgh.”

  I held up a hand, ticking the numbers off. “Thanks to interest, I owe almost $3,000 to the credit card, $500 to Justin, $8,000 to Mark, and $1,000 to Rachelle’s mom.”

  Lexie whistled low. “Geez. $12,500. That’s a crazy amount.”

  “Tell me about it. The sign-on bonus will cover the credit card. The money from the rental will pay my mortgage, so I have to pay Rachelle, Mark, and Justin off slowly through the winter.”

  “Stupid adulting,” she muttered. Then she sobered. “I’m going to miss you, Meg. I can’t believe you aren’t going to live here. Bitsy is hiding it, but she’s secretly beside herself with anxiety.”

  A slow, quiet pang resounded in my heart. “I’m going to miss you too, Lex. You’ll have a wonderful life with Bradley. I just know you’ll be happy and have babies and … you know … move on.”

  She lifted one eyebrow. “I’m not dying, Meg. Grief. It’s just marriage. More sex. More Bradley. Less Oreo cupcakes. Sad, I know.”

  “Right. But things are different when you’re married.”

  “No they aren’t.”

  Defensiveness thickened my voice. I straightened. “Yes, they are. I’ve been through this with so many other friends. You’ll marry Bradley and slowly fade away. It’s okay. It’s kind of the circle of life.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Meg, don’t be so dramatic. I’m going to marry Bradley, but I’ll probably end up video chatting with you on the honeymoon.”

  “Lex, trust me.”

  “No, you trust me.” She waved her hand between us. “This? This will never die, all right? You’ll still be part of the Health and Happiness Society. We’ll video chat you into the meetings. You’re still going to correct my dead-lift form, and teach me good recipes that I’ll never fix, and make me laugh over bad date stories.”