by Lisa Dale
Ever since he’d returned from his trip, things had been different between them, so different that she worried she’d done something wrong. Instead of spending his every waking minute with her when he returned, she was lucky if she saw him a couple of times a week. And when she did see him, she was nervous around him, her whole body on edge.
When at last his voice came over the line she knew he’d been sleeping.
“I woke you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I just haven’t talked to you in a couple days. I wanted to say hi.”
“Hold on.”
Lana waited. There was some shuffling, the sound of Eli muttering to himself. She guessed he was fumbling for his glasses. Maybe he’d fallen asleep leaning over his books or watching a documentary. She could picture him, the way he looked when he woke up, his adorable grogginess, his rich brown hair spiked on one side, flat on the other. He had the most charming freckle just under the lower lid of his left eye, which he rubbed when he was tired.
At last he came back on the line. “So what’s going on?”
“What’s going on with you?”
His voice was low and raspy with sleep. “I dreamed that I was giving a lecture about the constellations, except I’d forgotten their names.”
“Stargazing even in your dreams.”
“Always.” He paused. She felt the luxurious comfort of silence between them, thick as the hiss of static over the phone. “You can’t sleep?”
“I went to bed too early.”
“A nightmare?”
“No.”
“Is it… did something happen with Ron?”
Lana took a deep breath of the cool, crisp air and lifted her face to the sky. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Eli was quiet for a long, long time. She spun slowly in place in the cold grass, and the sky pivoted in a circle, twirling on the point of a single star.
When he spoke again his words were flat. “Are you in love with him?”
She thought about the question, but not for long. Passion was like a flower that bloomed for one night a year—exquisite, poignant, and tragically brief. She gave herself completely to passion when she was lucky enough to find it. But she didn’t delude herself into thinking it would last. Not like her mother had. Only a week after meeting Lana’s father, Ellen had been so head over heels in love that she’d had a shepherd’s staff tattooed on her shoulder blade—as if she was endlessly sure that the name Calvert not only meant “shepherd,” but meant it specifically in relation to her.
How wrong she’d been.
“No,” she said. “I don’t love him.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought she sensed relief on the other end of the phone. “Does that surprise you?”
“No. But I won’t say I’m not glad.”
Lana stopped spinning, trying not to read too much into his words. The last thing she needed was to invent subtext where there was none. This was Eli she was talking to. What-you-see-is-what-you-get Eli. What she loved about his friendship was that it was predictable—even routine. She always knew where she stood with him.
She heard a noise in the background on his end of the phone.
“Just a minute,” he said.
But he wasn’t talking to her.
Suddenly Lana realized: Eli wasn’t alone. He was with a woman. He was sleeping with her. A knot of irrational fear gripped her stomach. She couldn’t have predicted this. Things had moved along more quickly than she would have thought, much more quickly than with any of the others. What if this time, he’d found the One? And Lana couldn’t even remember her name.
“Sorry about that,” he said, talking to her once again.
“I should let you go,” she said. She wanted him to contradict her, but he did not.
All at once, she was tired. Tired down to her bones. She could sleep right here, standing on her feet in the front yard, the sound of Eli’s voice weaving and looping through her consciousness like ribbons drawn through water.
Kelly. The woman’s name was Kelly.
“Good night,” she said, and she hung up the phone. She carried it upstairs, put it on her nightstand, and willed herself to find safer, gentler dreams.
June 20
Eli put his heel against the edge of the shovel and leaned to puncture the hard-packed dirt. The Kansas sky was a brilliant blue and the temperature of the afternoon had cooperated with him, mild and fair. He could see for miles. In the distance to the south, the Wintermutes’ little white farmhouse sat motionless as a ship on the ocean’s horizon. He remembered an article he’d read once, about the efforts of some colleagues to determine if Kansas was actually flatter than a pancake. Even without the financing, Eli could have reached the same conclusion: Yes, it certainly was.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his canvas glove and kept digging. A few minutes ago his wheeled metal detector—Excalibur—had given a loud, aggravated whine. Whatever was down there, it was solid.
This was Eli’s favorite part. The anticipation. The hope.
He’d thought, ages ago, that he’d wanted to be a scientist. He’d pictured himself looking distinguished in a long white coat and carrying a clipboard. Unfortunately when he was done with his very expensive geology degree, he realized that he just didn’t have the heart to work in a lab. And so he decided to teach. And when the grant money was good, he headed for the fields to hunt for buried treasure. After his first big find, he was hooked.
He leaned on the handle of the shovel, tired. The fields were quiet as an afternoon nap. In the distance, a hawk spiraled slowly against the empty sky.
Lana would love this, he thought. One of these days he hoped she would be able to leave the Barn long enough to go on an expedition with him. After all, she’d been there for that moment in his life when he’d decided to study the skies.
In their first year of college, they used to sneak out of their dorms in the middle of the night. Lana hadn’t been very good at sleeping—she still wasn’t—and so from time to time, they fled their stuffy, cellblock-style dorm rooms to walk the dark lowlying golf courses just beyond the athletic fields.
They were both such nerds—just slightly outside what was considered normal. Eli had been fifteen pounds underweight, worn his hair so his bangs flopped over one eye, and had terrible allergies that made his nose constantly run. Lana, on the other hand, had been beautiful in broomstick skirts and flowery blouses. She might have passed for popular, except that she hung out with people like him.
That night, they were lying in the grass looking up at the stars, talking and not talking as the mood suited them. Then, all at once, a blaze of light ripped through the clear sky. It wasn’t lightning; there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. But the streaking fire was as shocking as the sun, as if daylight had been smeared across the darkest opacity of night.
Lana had screamed. Later, she confessed that she’d thought it was a bomb. But Eli had known what it was—that soundless, startling brilliance. He’d never particularly cared about fireballs—large meteors that blazed in the earth’s atmosphere—because reading about them on paper had never made them feel real. But then when he finally did see one, it was not only the sky that was illuminated; it was him.
He’d been amazed, dazzled, invigorated. And more, when he looked at Lana, he was amazed, dazzled, and invigorated by her as well. He felt as if someone had put a match to his spirit and turned him into flame.
He leaped to his feet, wanting to cheer for the sky, for Lana, for himself. When she stood up beside him, he didn’t think about it: He just kissed her.
They made love on the grass, with the sun coming up over the Green Mountains and dew falling gently from the sky. It was over fast—a fire burning fierce and bright, combusting. They hadn’t even taken off all their clothes. But Eli remembered every moment of it. The smell of the earth in her hair. The scrape of her teeth. The feel of her skin on his tongue. It was the most surreal, most unspeakably
intense connection with another person that he’d ever had.
Unfortunately he’d thought it was only the first time they would make love.
He finished his water and threw the bottle on the ground to pick up later. When he attacked the earth again, it was with renewed fervor. If this dig didn’t pan out soon, he’d have no choice but to quit.
At last he felt his shovel stop with a clunk. He climbed into the hole and began to dig with a trowel. He was excited now, his blood pumping, his brain abuzz with the certainty of a big find. He would take Kelly to dinner at Burlington’s most expensive restaurant. He would order their best bottle of wine…
He reached into the earth when it was loosened and pulled up—
A hoe.
A stupid garden tool.
He sat back on the edge of the hole he’d made and laughed.
He had to face facts: He’d never been a particularly lucky guy. Not in this and not in love. Searching for the right woman and hunting meteorites were the same in a way. There were superficial signals—the whine of a metal detector, or the sudden promise of sex in a woman’s smile—that said to a man, What you want might be right under here.
Sometimes, you hit the jackpot.
And sometimes, you got a woman who was perfectly nice, pretty, and conversational, but who, in the end, was little more than a diversion—not a fireball that turns night into day, and certainly not the wish of someone’s heart, hidden in Kansas farmland, deep underground.
June 21
The attic of Calvert’s house was only half-finished, painted cobweb yellow. The plaster-and-lath walls showed through where the drywall hadn’t been cut to size. There was one window—high as a belfry it seemed—that let a long beam of sunlight in during the evenings so that the little room turned pinkish-yellow and shimmered with floating dust. Karin’s and Lana’s beds were matching twins pushed up against the walls on opposite sides of the room, and the ceiling sloped so steeply they had to hunch their shoulders to get into bed. Though other bedrooms in the house were often vacant, Calvert had given the girls no choice but to live together in the attic until well past the age that was comfortable. He made more money off his real bedrooms that way.
“Excuse me?” A tall woman with big blonde hair smacked her fingers on the counter at the Wildflower Barn, jerking Karin from her thoughts.
“Can I help you?” Karin asked.
“That young woman in the clothing section just told me you don’t carry pickle seeds.”
Karin looked carefully at the woman’s face for a moment to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. And when she glanced toward Meggie, the latest seasonal employee to help her out at the Wildflower Barn, the girl had a wide smirk on her face. Obviously, she’d thought the question was funny enough to send the woman Karin’s way.
“We have them,” Karin said. “Actually by a stroke of luck I have a small packet back here. Let me just…” She bent down and retrieved the packet of cucumber seeds that had been left by another customer on the front counter. “Here you go.”
The woman took the packet and stared at the picture on the front. “No. I’m sorry. I’m looking for pickle seeds.”
Karin said nothing.
“Thanks anyway,” the woman said. Then she left, leaving Karin totally tongue-tied and Meggie laughing out loud.
Karin shook her head and took the next customer. She would have to talk to Meggie later. But there wasn’t time now. Children were playing tag among the blown-glass pinwheels, parents were scouring the store for gifts, touristy memorabilia, and more. The Barn was a madhouse.
But this was to be expected. It was tourist season. It was the longest day of the year.
It was also Father’s Day.
Karin started to ring up her next customer and forced herself not to think of Calvert or the life she once lived in his run-down boardinghouse. She wasn’t in some stuffy and menacing attic. She was in the Barn. This was her place, with its cheerful lemon-yellow walls painted with sunflowers, wild roses, speedwells, and forget-me-nots. A line of customers wove its way through the aisles, mothers clutching their children’s small hands.
“That’ll be $19.50,” Karin said, putting a woman’s items into a bag—an Audubon guide, a card printed on recycled paper, and novelty-item fava bean “seeds” for growing Vermont moose. All standard tourist fare.
The phone at her side rang.
“What’s happening up there?” Lana asked, her voice coming from the line they’d installed at the back of the Barn.
“It’s insanity. And Meggie’s on the warpath.”
“Don’t worry. I made sangria for later.”
“I hope you made a lot.” Karin laughed. Later they would get together on Karin’s back deck to watch the sun set among the cattails of the marsh behind her house. It was what they did every year on Father’s Day.
Karin supposed she shouldn’t let the holiday get to her. Calvert had never abused them—she knew enough to be grateful for that. But he’d never quite known what to do with them either. The boardinghouse was full of rough-around-the-edges, blue-collar men—and two motherless little girls. Calvert’s idea of parenting was giving them a room to sleep in and telling them they could help themselves to whatever was in the fridge. Karin washed and folded myriad sheets and blankets, cooked big dinners for the boarders and served them with paper plates and plastic forks, and when she wasn’t keeping house she did the best she could to keep her sister out of harm’s way.
That had always been the scariest part of life in what was little more than a run-down hostel. Lana was a rail-thin, pretty-eyed blonde who loved to talk, talk, talk, and once in a while a boarder would take an interest in her that Karin didn’t like. Karin had learned to monitor her sister’s every move, whether Lana was taking a bath, doing homework, or picking the clovers one by one out of the lawn. At night Karin climbed from her bed three times before feeling satisfied that the door to the attic was well and truly locked.
“Oh, no.”
The sound of Lana’s voice brought her back to the present once again. “What’s wrong?”
“Karin, I’m shutting down my register for a minute.”
“But I’ve got such a huge line here…”
“I have to go!”
Karin hung up the phone and started on the next order. Only one thought could get her through this day: a vision of having a little boy all her own to take Father’s Day shopping. Gene was going to be an excellent father. She couldn’t wait to give him children. She could think of nothing more rewarding than laying a newborn baby in her husband’s arms. She wondered if it would be preemptive to start planning Father’s Day presents now.
In the bathroom Lana gripped the smooth, cold white sides of the toilet bowl. There was nothing left in her stomach. For a moment she thought she might faint: She was dizzy and seeing black, sparkling stars. She flushed the toilet and scooted back along the tile to sit against the wall.
She couldn’t remember the last time she was this sick. The oddest thing was that it wasn’t a twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour virus. She wondered if it might be food poisoning.
Or… could it be…?
No. She’d had her period. It had been a light period—an extremely light period—but still, it was a period.
Wasn’t it?
She forced herself to concentrate. She’d never been very good at paying attention to the signs of her body. She never knew she was getting a cold until it was full on. And she didn’t really notice hunger until she was ravenous. But now her body was screaming for her attention. She just didn’t know why.
She stood up slowly and used her hand to bring big gulps of cold water from the faucet to her mouth. She surveyed her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was pulled straight back in a smooth ponytail, and she grabbed a bit of toilet paper and wiped at the beads of sweat near her hairline. Normally she barely noticed her periods. They came and went with minimal cramping or bloating. But now, coupled with the puking, it was hard to ignore the
possibility that she was—
Oh, but she wasn’t. There was the period last month, and this month, she wasn’t due to get it until…
She’d missed a period.
No. She missed two—if she counted the one that was very light. The one that was more like spotting than bleeding. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?
She felt the ground tip; her ankles turned to jelly.
This wasn’t possible. A baby. What would she do with a baby? She didn’t want a child. She didn’t have hard feelings toward them, but a child of her own was unthinkable. Impossible. She wasn’t meant to have children. She couldn’t be a mom.
She put a hand on her chest, where her heart was frantic as a bird beating its wings against a cage. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. There must be some mistake, she thought. But if there wasn’t, how on earth was she going to tell Karin?
She felt the world slipping out of place around her. She’d always held firm to the idea that the universe was more gentle than cruel. But now she felt only that she’d been duped, violated, and maliciously used.
So much for her generous universe. A vision of Costa Rica flashed in her head—a narrow path through thick woods, hiking boots, waxy-leaved trees, and a verdant green valley—steaming, catching fire, and then turning to ash.
“Lana?” Karin banged hard on the door, annoyed that her sister had been in the bathroom for so long. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said, cheerful as ever.
“Can I open the door?”
Lana did it for her.
“Oh, Lanie, you look terrible,” Karin said. Lana’s lips had turned white and the capillaries under her eyes had darkened into a purple-gray.
“I’m okay,” she said, not meeting Karin’s eyes.
“Are you really?” Karin asked, desperate. She wanted Lana to be okay. She needed her to be okay. She’d just got terrible news, and she couldn’t bear it alone.
“I’m fine,” Lana said.
“Good. Because we have a problem.” She tugged her sister toward the door, but Lana stayed put.
