by Lisa Dale
She looked up at him, her eyes bright, but she said nothing.
“Let’s go get dried off,” he said.
• • •
July 20
Lana looked out the window of the Wildflower Barn, watching the summer tourists fumble with their digital cameras to snap pictures of the black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, and dame’s rocket that grew behind the building. Every time the bell above the door chimed, she looked up, expecting Eli. But always it was the tourists, visitors who came to Vermont for the state’s guileless beauty and wholesome amusements. This time the family pushing into the Barn boasted a half dozen chattering children and two women who laughed and said, “Oh, isn’t this place adorable,” like they were either sisters or best friends.
Lana tucked her disappointment about Eli as far down inside her as she could. All week she’d been hoping he would come find her. Even if they didn’t talk, even if she didn’t have enough time to unburden her heart with him, she craved the comfort of seeing his cheerful smile, his bright eyes. But since the days continued to pass without him, all she could do was give to her customers the smile she would have reserved for him. “Hello. You folks here for the wildflower walk?”
The older woman, who wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and big sunglasses, looked around while she talked. “This place is so great. I’m so glad we found it.”
Lana grimaced at the sound of a half dozen little sneakers squeaking on the floor. The children were running through the store, among the displays of lawn art and wind chimes. Lana held her breath. The younger woman frowned sternly and went chasing and yelling after the kids.
“Yes, we’re here for the walk… er, maybe the run,” the woman with the hat said. “How much?”
Lana peered around her, to where a little boy was spinning a stained-glass pinwheel faster and faster by batting it with the palm of his hand. “There’s no charge for the walk. The paths are open to the public.”
The woman called over her shoulder. “You can go out! Angie? Take them out.” She rolled her eyes and smiled when she turned back to Lana. “Do you have any children?”
Lana started to say no. But then she remembered. And for a second she felt as if she were answering not for herself, but for someone else. “Not just yet.”
The woman nodded. Her smile was warm and her irises were dewy white and green, like the jack-in-the-pulpits that grew behind the barn in the spring. “Well, you’re young. You have some time.”
“It seems like an awful lot of work,” Lana said, nervous.
“Oh, it is.” The woman laughed. “Tons of work. But tons of joy too. You’ll see, once you have your own.”
Lana was struck silent for a moment. Not long ago this would have been the part of the conversation where she said lightly and certainly, “Oh, I don’t want kids. I want to live in Costa Rica.” And then the woman would have answered the same way all the veteran mothers would answer: “You might change your mind.”
This time, however, the script was unwritten and entirely new.
“I don’t know,” Lana said. “Your kids seem perfectly sweet, but there’s so much sacrifice you have to make for them, isn’t there? So much to give up?”
The older woman peered at her thoughtfully a moment. “Sure, I’ve given things up. I always wanted to be a lawyer, you know? Go to law school. Work long hours and get designer shoes.”
“I’m guessing you’re not a lawyer?” Lana said, embarrassed now by how urgently she clung to each word the woman spoke.
“Dreams are tricky things. They ebb and flow. They change as we change, you know? It’s not… it’s not a matter of right dreams and wrong dreams. I mean, sure, choosing one sacrifices another. But it’s not about what you give up. It’s about what you get.”
Lana fought the odd urge to reach out and grasp the woman’s hand, just for a moment. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask. A thousand. But propriety got the best of her; customers should never be burdened by the storekeeper’s personal life.
“Well, like I said,” Lana replied. “It’s not really something I’m thinking about right now.”
The woman watched her, and Lana felt as if those clear green eyes could see straight down to the truth. “Sometimes it’s hard to know what you want. But that’s okay. Things have a way of working themselves out.”
One of the children who had come in with her poked his head inside the door. “Ma? Ma? Are you coming?”
The woman gave one last smile to Lana, her scrutiny replaced with what Lana thought might have been embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to lecture you,” the woman said. “Sorry. Maternal instinct, I suppose. Enjoy the rest of your day!”
“You too,” said Lana. Then, too quiet for the woman to hear, she added, “Thanks.”
The stoplight turned red and Karin banged her fist on the steering wheel. “Oh, fudge!” When she finally got home—the ride from church had never taken so long before—she opened the front door, said hello to her husband in the living room, and tried to act normal as she set down her purse and tote.
Unfortunately she’d never been very good at keeping her feelings inside. She jerked at the laces of her sneakers, unable to get them off fast enough. “Gene! My period is late!”
Gene put down his bowl of cereal and stood up from the couch. He’d already changed out of his work clothes and was wearing his favorite maroon sweatpants and a T-shirt that made his chest look burly and wide.
“Whoa, Kare. Slow down.”
“What if this is it? What if it really happened this time?”
He didn’t return her smile. “Let’s not set ourselves up for disappointment. Take it slow. Let’s eat dinner together first.”
“You want to… to wait?”
“Just so we can be calmer when we do it.”
Karin laughed. “You think I’ll be calmer if I wait longer? No way. We have to do this now.” She brushed past him, heading for the bathroom and knowing he was following. Just before she reached for the knob, it occurred to her that maybe he was as nervous as she was, if not more. She paused for a moment, to take his hand and rub its warmth against her cheek. “Will you wait outside the door?”
“Kare…” There was concern in his voice.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him, then she shut the bathroom door.
She’d taken pregnancy tests so many times she could do it in her sleep—and it was a good thing too, because her hands were trembling. She watched the clock on the wall, waited the appropriate time, down to the exact second, and then she looked.
NOT PREGNANT.
Her joy took a huge, stomach-flipping nosedive, but then swelled slightly again. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, she thought. She reread the box; it predicted accurate results from the first day of a missed period. She’d just started to convince herself that she needed to do a retest when she realized that the line between optimism and denial could be shamefully thin.
“Well?” said Gene through the door.
She opened it. Then she shook her head.
“Oh, Kare,” he said. He hugged her, but she didn’t quite hug him back.
“Next month,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“I’m sure of it,” she said.
July 21
Early in the morning, Lana hiked the 5.2-mile trail to the top of Mount Abram. She sat on a lichen-speckled rock and looked out. In the distance the blue luster of Lake Champlain glittered in the soft morning light. A wispy line of thin clouds lay on a bed of air just above the peaks of the Adirondacks, contrasting rock and cloud.
Climbing up the mountain, past the ashes and maples and pines and scrubby bushes, usually made her head clear, as if the thinner the air got, the easier it became to think. But not this time. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been walking around in a fog.
The problem was that she still didn’t feel pregnant. She was twelve weeks along, and her body was changing—there was no denying the way her nipples had darke
ned, the way her belly was no longer a taut vertical plane, the way her appetite raged. She’d googled pictures of other women’s bellies to see how she compared, and if there hadn’t been such a surprising disparity from one woman to the next, she wouldn’t have known that she was quite small for being so far along. Her belly was noticeable, but easily hidden.
She stretched her arms over her head, trying to loosen the tension in her back. She wondered: What had her father thought when Ellen told him she was pregnant? Was he glad? Did he have one single moment of genuine joy about fatherhood?
She took in a deep breath, exhaled. She needed to try to find Ron. That much was clear. She owed it to him. And to the child. The baby deserved a father. And if Ron wanted to do that job, who was Lana to stand in the way?
If only she could talk about how she felt with someone. But Karin was involved in her own pregnancy issues, and Eli… Eli was gone. How many times a day did she catch herself thinking, I need to remember to tell this to Eli, only to realize that she wouldn’t be telling him anything at all?
She was off-balance and empty without him. And yet she had to stay away.
He deserved a chance to be happy. He deserved the chance to get clear of her, to break away from the mess she was making of her life. But she needed him. More now than ever before. She needed him to reassure her that everything was going to be okay with this baby, with Karin, with Calvert. She couldn’t do this on her own.
She wondered where he was and tried to imagine him—to picture what he was doing—but she couldn’t. Wherever he was, she hoped he was happy. Only that would make her longing for him worthwhile.
July 22
On Wednesday afternoon Lana was on her knees outside the Wildflower Barn, tugging tiny weeds from hard soil around the post of a split-rail fence and sweating in the bright sun. She wore old, grass-stained overalls and a purple bandanna to cover her hair. Charlotte, who was on her lunch break and too dressed up for weeding, was sitting on a Victorian wrought-iron patio chair, thumbing through a Sierra Club magazine.
They’d just come back from the doctor’s. Of course Lana knew how it must have looked, two women who could complete each other’s sentences going to the obstetrician. At one point the nurse had referred to Charlotte as Lana’s partner, and Lana hadn’t corrected her. She felt better having Charlotte there by her side, and she would take whatever kind of partner she could get. The doctor had listened to the heartbeat for what seemed a very long time; though her belly was small, the baby inside it was developing fine.
“So when are you going to tell Karin?” Charlotte asked.
Lana sat back on her heels. “I tried once already.”
“If you don’t tell her, she’s going to figure it out. I can’t believe she hasn’t already.”
Lana nodded. “I think she’s depressed. It’s like a vicious cycle. But I’m just the little sister. What do I know?”
“About having babies? Apparently more than you’d think.”
Lana rolled her eyes and went back to weeding. A shadow fell across the earth before her, and when she looked up and held her hand up to block the sun, Kelly was there, wearing a short denim skirt, a hot pink tank, and sunglasses so big they covered most of her face.
“Hi, Kelly,” Lana said, smiling and getting to her feet. Hope swelled within her. She looked toward the parking lot, expecting to see Eli coming toward her across the grass. But no. She felt his absence like a cold soaking rain, but she smiled on. “Do you know my friend Charlotte? Char, this is Kelly, Eli’s friend.”
“Girlfriend,” Kelly corrected her, taking Charlotte’s hand.
Lana felt the word like a punch to her gut. “Of course. Sorry. Girlfriend. So what brings you this way?”
“I need a bag of those little white stones—what’s it called? Limestone.”
“No problem. I can certainly help you with that!”
“No!” Kelly said quickly, her fingers resting light as a butterfly on Lana’s shoulder. “I need a twenty-pound bag. Isn’t there some young set of muscles around here to help?”
“Well, there’s Meggie…” Lana saw a look flicker over Kelly’s face, a narrowing of her eyes, the hint of a smirk. Or maybe Lana imagined it. She pulled at the fingers of her glove and tossed it to the ground. “But I don’t mind getting it for you. They’re just right over he—”
“Really,” Kelly interrupted. “I know you’re not supposed to lift anything too heavy. I can find someone else.”
Lana stopped taking off her glove, her gaze darting to Charlotte. Her friend was scowling with the rage of a hundred wild bulls.
“How are you feeling?” Kelly asked. There was no mistaking the righteousness in her smile now. “Is everything going okay?”
Lana finished pulling off her glove and tossed it on the grass with its mate. Anger and hurt stretched her apart, a slowly splitting seam. This was betrayal, pure and simple. Eli, her Eli, had thrown her to the wolves. “You know?”
“Yes. But don’t worry. I know it’s not Eli’s baby. He said he doesn’t find you attractive. Obviously.”
Lana smiled to cover her discomfort, but it was entirely fake. She hoped her hurt didn’t show on her face. Of course Eli wasn’t attracted to her anymore. And yet the fact seemed oddly painful when it was said out loud.
“I think you should go,” Charlotte said.
“But my limestone…”
“Forget it,” Charlotte said.
“I really don’t see what the problem is.”
“I do,” Charlotte replied. “And it has terrible taste in sunglasses.”
Kelly smiled, showing her teeth. “Good-bye, Lana. I’ll let Eli know you said hi.” There was a little bounce in her step as she walked away.
Charlotte spoke once Kelly was out of earshot. “Are you okay? What hurts?”
Lana was puzzled for a moment, then realized that sometime during the conversation, she’d put a hand on her belly, her palm pressed against the hard, comforting warmth. It was a gesture of protection as well as comfort, one that caught her off-guard because of the odd question of who was comforting whom. “I’m fine.” She dropped her hand and sat down on the bench.
He doesn’t find you attractive. The words stung.
Charlotte crouched to look her in the eye. “You need to talk to him. This isn’t healthy for either one of you.”
“Eli and I will get through this.”
“I mean you and the baby.”
Lana closed her eyes for a brief moment, gathering strength, and when she opened them, Karin was charging toward them from across the yard. She was covering ground in long, fast strides, her brown-red hair bouncing around her shoulders and blowing back.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Eli’s girlfriend happened,” Charlotte said, rising to stand.
“What did she do?”
Lana panicked. She could feel Charlotte’s gaze on her, her friend’s silent communication that she should tell Karin now. But if Lana confessed right this second, she would have to explain the whole story, about how Eli knew, about how he’d told Kelly, about how Charlotte knew as well—and then the only thing Karin would be able to think of was why everyone was told but her. The bad news would be hard enough to take without the added injury of being the last one to know.
“Turns out Kelly is nastier than I thought,” Lana said. “She came over here to flaunt her thing with Eli. I guess she just wanted me to know that… that he picked her over me.”
Karin nodded and put her hands on her hips, as if she’d expected this. “Have you been seeing him?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t. You need to give them some space.”
Charlotte put an arm around Karin’s shoulders. “Maybe what we should do is give Lana some space.”
“I give her plenty of space. Don’t I, Lana? Is something going on?” Charlotte tried to steer Karin back toward the Barn, but she shook off Charlotte’s arm. “Lana, tell me what’s happening. Are you… are you
in love with Eli?”
“No!” Her heart was thudding hard in her chest and her palms were damp. “Of course I’m not in love with… with him. Why would you think that?”
“Why else would you get so upset about his stupid girlfriend?”
Lana couldn’t take it anymore. Karin obviously thought she was jealous. But she wasn’t jealous of Kelly. She was just… just…
She was jealous of Kelly.
She was out-of-her-mind, tear-her-own-skin-off jealous of Kelly.
That had been the truth all along. But even if she was jealous, she wasn’t in love with Eli. She couldn’t be. She was attracted to him occasionally—it was bound to happen, really, since they were so close. And maybe being away from him had sort of… augmented that annoying little bit of attraction. But she wasn’t in love with him. It was insane to even be considering love when Eli went around telling people she wasn’t attractive, and he’d gone behind her back and told the biggest secret of her life.
Karin hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. She could see that Karin knew she was missing something, and she wished her sister could hear her thoughts: Please just trust me. I’ll tell you very soon. I promise.
Karin nodded, then allowed Charlotte to take her arm and walk her back inside.
Lana took a deep, cleansing breath. She wasn’t in love with Eli; what she felt was just a passing longing. She knew it, but she felt the need to reassure herself of her feelings somehow.
There were reasons people didn’t let themselves even think of having mushy feelings about their best friends. If friendship—that most durable, trustworthy, and lasting kind of relationship—could make a person hurt as badly as Lana did right now, then she couldn’t imagine actually letting herself fall in love with Eli. Losing a friend she was also in love with would be the devastating burn of lost passion coupled with the hollow, unendurable chill of losing a part of herself.
She couldn’t be in love with Eli. But she was hurt. And lonely. There was only one thing to do: confront him. If he confessed what he’d done, she would forgive him. And if not…
