by Lisa Dale
With other men—boys who plied her with cheap beer and who only pretended to understand her fascination with flowers—she sometimes gave in easily, because it meant so little deep down. But Eli was different. He too was fascinated by everything, always asking questions, always reading. He understood her then and he still did now. They had slipped once, taking their relationship beyond friendship, and it had almost ruined everything. She certainly wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
But now, as she forced herself to watch Kelly running her fingers through his hair, possessiveness spiked hot and fierce in her heart—not appropriate feelings for a casual friend. She dismissed them and turned away. “Well, Eli must have a reason to like her. We just have to figure out what it is.”
“When I left, she was trying to make him lick the Doritos powder off her fingers.”
“Okay, that’s pretty bad.”
“I think she feels threatened by you. I’m good at reading people. I think she suspects you and Eli are a thing.”
“But we’re not,” she said.
For a moment they listened to the seagulls, to the children yelling behind them, to the college students playing Ultimate Frisbee on the lawn. The tension in the air was palpable. The whole town was wound up, waiting for the fireworks to start.
“Lana? Do you want to talk about Calvert?”
Lana rolled her eyes playfully. “Do I ever?”
“No. But now might be a good time. Given that he’s back in town.”
“He might have left.”
“You mean you don’t know?” Karin asked, something sly in her question.
“How would I know?”
Karin grabbed the thick metal railing in front of her, her knuckles going white. Lana saw that she wasn’t even attempting eye contact. She was staring at the lush peaks of the Adirondacks with intense focus. Something was definitely wrong.
“I just want to know the truth,” Karin said, steel in her voice.
“Karin, I…”
“I want to hear you tell me, so I don’t have to be mad when I find out later on.”
Lana stiffened, her poise failing. She should have known Karin would put everything together. No one was more of an expert on reading the signs of pregnancy than Karin.
“I’m sorry,” Lana said. “I thought you’d be upset.”
“I am upset. I feel like you’ve thrown me under the bus. How could you do this to me?”
Lana was quiet, ashamed.
Karin sighed. “I just feel so… betrayed. If you wanted a relationship with Calvert again, why wouldn’t you just tell me? I don’t understand.”
All at once, the fog in Lana’s mind lifted. “Wait. You think I… I haven’t had anything to do with him since that day at the jail. Why would I?”
“He came here to see you, not me. He sent that card to you. And you’ve been acting so weird. Leaving work early. Having secret conversations that stop usually right when I’m in hearing range. You must be talking to Calvert.”
Lana shook her head. “I’m not.”
The fire in Karin’s eyes didn’t die immediately, but instead flickered, then faded, then grew dark. “You’re not?”
Lana touched her sister’s shoulder. “Why would I want to see him? And more, why would I see him without you?”
“I don’t know. I just thought…”
“You thought I was trying to keep him to myself?”
Karin grimaced. “I’m ridiculous.”
“Not at all,” Lana said gently, letting her hand fall from Karin’s shoulder. “I understand.”
“So why were you so ready to go running to his rescue when he called from jail?”
Lana looked studiously at her hands. “I just wanted to do the right thing for someone who needed help. But I don’t want to see him again. Not really.” Lana let her voice trail off. She could have said more. It still hurt to think of how little he’d cared for them. But talking to Karin about their childhood always made her feel so claustrophobic. Probably because Karin shared the same memories she did, and so there was no outside perspective to let any light in.
Karin put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “So if it’s not Calvert, then what were you apologizing for?”
Lana kept her face motionless. “I got confused.”
“Maybe you can pull that over on somebody else, but I’ve known you for your whole life.”
Lana turned her back on the lake, suddenly disgusted by it—by the sky, by the birds, by the spectators throwing their crushed beer cans into the water and chanting for the fireworks to start. She leaned her lower back against the thick round railing and looked up into the branches of the honey locusts overhead. Should she tell Karin that she was pregnant? She didn’t want to—no more than a person would want to tear her own sister’s heart from her chest.
Karin watched Lana’s face as if she could read the thoughts in Lana’s mind. “It’s Ron, isn’t it? You and Ron broke up and you didn’t tell me.”
Lana realized what this was. An out. She had to take it. “He hasn’t called me in a long time.”
“What happened?”
“My birthday was the last night I saw him.”
“You mean, after he met Eli?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Jealousy. Simple as that.”
“No,” Lana shot back. But the gears were turning in her mind, the logic closing in. Could it be that Ron had given up on her because he’d met Eli? Did he, like so many of her other attempted boyfriends, write her off as a dead end?
“You’re upset. You feel like you blew it,” Karin supplied.
Lana heard the first firework explode and crackle over the lake, and the crowd let up a surprised cheer. She saw Karin’s face change from pink to green to blue.
Maybe Karin was right. Maybe she’d scared Ron off when she confessed that she and Eli had once been lovers. She wasn’t brokenhearted to think that Ron had lost interest in her. But perhaps her lack of heartbreak was simply because she was overwhelmed by a more urgent, crushing reason for regretting her confession. She pressed a hand to her belly, hard.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Karin said. “But I think the problem with your relationships is that you’re too close to Eli.”
“How does he factor into it?”
“A man doesn’t like to share the woman he loves.”
Lana’s heart gave a shattering bang, bursting with the intensity of gunpowder. Warmth spread from her chest to her fingertips to the tips of her toes. “Eli? Eli is in love with me?”
Karin laughed. Her brown eyes glinted weirdly green under a firework. “What? No, I didn’t mean Eli. Wow. You should have seen the look on your face. No, I meant the other guys. Men in general. They don’t like to share.”
“But he’s just a friend,” Lana managed. Gradually her breathing returned to normal. The world slipped back into place. What on earth was that? she thought. “Eli doesn’t want me that way.”
“I know that. And you know that. But the men you date? They don’t know that. I actually think it might be good for you to put a little space between you and Eli. I mean, look at him, Lana. Really look.”
Lana looked toward the picnic blanket, where Gene was leaning back on his elbows and where Eli was sitting with Kelly, wrapped up with her in a handmade quilt. They both had their faces turned upward. The image made her eyes burn. Quickly, she turned toward the fireworks, lifting her face to the wild sky.
Over the course of her long friendship with Eli, moments had arrived that required her to be merciless. To look square at the facts. Right now, she saw a relationship that was changing, a best friend who was moving on. Eli had been acting so distant, and the more he pushed her away, the closer she longed to be. She yearned for him—not a word she would use lightly. She didn’t think it was a sexual yearning, but it was a strong, deep, unignorable yearning, nevertheless. She felt Karin rubbing her back, not gently to soothe her, but hard as if urging
her on.
“Whether we like the woman or not, Eli has a chance to be happy,” Karin said, her voice quiet yet firm. “But he can’t focus on his relationship with Kelly if you’re in the picture. And Kelly won’t be able to relax around him if you’re always at his side.”
“You’re right,” Lana said. “You’re right.”
“And as for you… well, maybe if you weren’t so close to Eli, it would have worked out with Ron.”
Lana nodded. Tears turned the fireworks into red smears. She wiped them away with her hands. “What should I do?”
“You’ve got to give Eli room. When you and Eli are together, it’s like you live in this little world that only the two of you have access to. If you’d let a little distance come between you, you’d both be happier.”
Lana closed her eyes and gulped down a deep breath. The air tasted sweet with sulfur and smoke. Above, the fireworks raged, but the lake was placid, reflective beneath the restless lights.
Eli was the most kindhearted and deserving man she knew. It would be selfish to endanger his relationship with Kelly just because she was having a minor lapse in common sense. She longed for him, wanted something from him that she couldn’t quite name, but whatever the feeling was, it would pass. It had before, it would again. In the meantime she needed to lie low. For both their sakes.
“Feel better?” Karin asked.
“Yes,” Lana said. Above her, the fireworks burst into flames.
July 5
The next day, Lana sat on the front stoop of the Wildflower Barn, waiting. In the distance, church bells chimed six o’clock, their tones muted and sleepy-sounding. A brown bunny perched on its back legs at the perimeter of the property and sniffed the air.
Once again, Lana had locked herself out of her car and Karin was on the way to bail her out. Because she didn’t have a cell phone, she’d had to walk a half a mile to a pay phone to call Karin. Then she’d headed back to the Barn with nothing to do but kill time. Now she was alone with thoughts she’d tried all day to ignore. For almost a decade she’d avoided thinking about the day that she and Eli had made love, but now the memories crowded her at every turn—so much bigger in her mind today than when they’d first happened.
Even now, she grew warm thinking of the way her whole body had come alive when suddenly he was kissing her, all instinct and joy. Their lovemaking had been amateurish, rushed, and fumbling. Yet Lana had never had a more intense connection with another person in her life. For one split second, everything she’d come to regard as dependable and predictable had burst into chaos. Eli had lain with her under the wide dark sky and brought her a kind of pleasure that drove a wedge between friendship and lust. It had scared her. That wild passion. That uncontrollable desire. It was no more sustainable than the flash of a meteor in the sky.
When she looked into the future she saw two paths: one filled with independence, traveling, and adventures; the other here in Vermont—a quiet, satisfying, but uneventful kind of life. A life that would involve getting married and starting a family. A life she didn’t want.
Limiting their relationship to friendship had seemed the only compromise. But after she’d slept with him, she no longer trusted herself to set boundaries and keep them where he was concerned. If he pursued her, she would not be able to resist. And so she had to find a way to ensure that he would not pursue her, so that she alone wouldn’t have to bear the responsibility of staying friends. Both of them had to be committed to never crossing the line. That, or they would fail.
So the night after they made love, she’d invited Chip, her study partner, to her room. The television was on but muted. The bedsheets had been drawn back. Again and again, she’d glanced at the clock, bit her nails, and flirted aggressively, laughing far too loud.
When at last Eli opened the door, he was softly silhouetted in industrial yellow light from the hallway. Her legs had been draped across Chip’s lap.
“What are you doing here?” she’d said.
At first he’d been too stunned to react. She detangled herself from Chip, needlessly tugged down her shirt and smoothed her hair, and walked toward him. His brown eyes, normally so warm and gentle, grew steely and hard. She’d never hated herself more in her whole life. But she needed to do more than just end his feelings for her. She needed to destroy them. She saw no other way.
She started to make a fake excuse, to feign surprise. But he held up his hand. “This is sorta funny,” he’d said, though there wasn’t a trace of laughter in his voice. “I came to tell you I made a mistake. But I guess you already knew.”
Then he left, leaving her speechless, hurt, and stunned. And when the door slammed shut behind him, the room went back to shadows once again.
Now, she watched Karin’s minivan pull into the driveway. Lana stood, pulled her purse on her shoulder, and said a prayer of thanks.
She didn’t know where these nagging thoughts were coming from all of a sudden. Maybe it was because Eli was seeing someone else. Whatever the reason, this had to stop. Karin had been right. She needed to stay away.
Karin opened the door of her van and tossed Lana’s spare set of car keys.
“Sorry,” Lana said.
Karin shrugged. “You really need to get a cell phone one of these days.”
“Are you doing something with Gene tonight?”
Karin shook her head. “No, but I’m going over to the firehouse for a tricky tray. Why? Do you want to come?”
Lana smiled with relief. “I’d love to,” she said.
July 6
Karin rubbed the last of the coconut moisturizer into her hands as she came through the bedroom door. The television and bedside lamp illuminated the otherwise dark room. Her husband was lying in bed, his glasses low on his nose as he read a newsmagazine. His pajamas—classic pin-striped blue—were buttoned wrong.
Last week, she’d told Gene her suspicion that Lana was secretly seeing their father, and it had turned into a fight. Tonight they were quarreling about Gene’s parents in Montpelier (she’d refrained from calling it Mont Peculiar, though in light of her in-laws, the name fit). The fight had ended with Karin shouting and Gene walking out of the house. They never fought like that.
She pulled down the covers and climbed into bed. Gene didn’t so much as glance her way. “Anything interesting in the world?” she asked, peeking over his shoulder.
“No.” He closed the magazine, took off his reading glasses, and reached to shut off the light. She turned off the television with the remote. Her eyes adjusted to the shadows as Gene tugged and tucked his blankets into place.
The darkness gave her courage. “Honey?”
He didn’t answer. He hadn’t talked to her in hours.
“Look, I’m sorry. If you want to go to your mother’s for the weekend, then fine, we’ll go to your mother’s. Lana will have to work and get over it. Okay?”
Still, nothing.
“Gene, please,” she said, reaching under the covers to find he’d turned his back to her. “This isn’t us. Please?”
He sighed. “I’m just tired of you arguing with me all the time.”
She buried her face in her pillow for a moment. Gene was going through as much as she was. She owed it to him to get herself under control. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not a barrel of laughs either these days. I shouldn’t have promised my mother we’d go see her without asking you first.”
“That’s okay.”
She heard him snuggle down deeper into his covers, getting ready to fall asleep. She knew he didn’t really want anything more to do with her tonight. But…
“Gene?”
He rolled over a little too fast. “What?” He rubbed at his face; she heard the sound of his fingers itching stubble in the dark.
“Honey, don’t you think we should… you know? Just in case?”
For long minutes he said nothing.
“Honey?”
“Just go to sleep
,” he said.
July 11
In the evening, Lana sat at the kitchen table in her house, her queasy stomach just beginning to settle down as she flipped through the pages of a landscaping catalog. Across from her, Karin was venting while they worked, huffing like a steam engine with her face turning purple-red. How were she and Gene supposed to get pregnant if she couldn’t even remember the last time they’d had sex? Karin had said. And what was she supposed to think of her own attractiveness when he acted like sex was a chore?
In the meantime Lana’s whole body ached down to her bones, as if her guilt over being pregnant had manifested itself as physical pain. The room was a thousand degrees too hot.
She had to tell Karin the truth. But Karin didn’t always take bad news very well. Her reactions were strong and visceral. In high school she and Karin had both tried out for the field hockey team. Lana made the cut, Karin did not. And even though Lana tried to explain—to apologize even—Karin had been so mad that she’d all but stopped speaking to her. Lana didn’t get the feeling that she was being malicious; rather, she thought Karin was learning to stomach the lot she was dealt in the best way she knew how. Three days later, Lana quit the team.
Of course Karin was much better now than she used to be. But telling Karin that she was pregnant was a much bigger deal than telling her she’d made the field hockey team—and she dreaded it for Karin’s sake and her own.
The other hindrance to telling Karin she was pregnant was that she’d yet to feel pregnant. For all the changes that were happening to her body, she had no sense that she was going to have a child. How could she own up to a truth that she’d yet to accept as true?
Well, whether she felt pregnant or not was irrelevant. If she didn’t tell the secret, it was only a matter of time before the secret told itself. “Karin…”
“What?”
Lana kept her eyes on the catalogs, gathering courage.
“And did I tell you that he thinks I’m obsessing about Calvert?”
Lana shook her head.
“Obsessing!” Karin said, half laughing. “The man shows up after how many years, he may or may not be lurking around any corner, and Gene thinks I’m obsessing.”
