The Light Before Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  “That’s one word for it,” she says. “And you aren’t so bad yourself. I’m sorry for yelling at you. I like to blame it on the stroke, but let’s be real—I was being a real bitch.”

  How can I help but to smile at that? “So, I’ve made the cut? You plan on keeping me around longer than the others?”

  She laughs. “The others they sent over here were just plain rude. Can you imagine having to take a dump while someone stands over you and watches you? The first lady they sent over looked at me like I was a child taking too long on the toilet. She actually told me to speed things up so she could leave on time! And then the next one was so timid and burst into tears when I told her she’d burnt my lunch into unrecognizable, charcoaled lumps.

  “By the time they sent the third and then the fourth one over, I just started yelling and acting like a nut job. I decided I’d rather sit in my own filth than be talked down to or treated like a kid.”

  “I was raised to respect my elders,” I tell her, jumping up from the chair and walking over to her. “You’ll have to let me know if I can help you with anything. I won’t be pushy. I’ll let you ask.”

  Barbara purses her lips out like she’s impressed, then says, “Well, it’s not the most glamorous task, but I’ve got to take a leak before I pee myself again. I’ll need you to make sure I don’t fall on my ass, okay?”

  I laugh again. I can’t help it, and she doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, I think it puts her at ease. “Okay,” I say, “You lead the way.”

  After the trip to the bathroom, she trusts me to make lunch for her, even though I’m still a pretty terrible cook. She tells me about what Meadow Brook was like when she was a child and how much it’s changed, how she used to take Melissa to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland every summer and how they stopped going when Camille had a tantrum during one of their visits.

  Our day goes well, really well, and I barely notice Melissa’s arrival as I sit on the couch next to Barbara, patiently helping her with the word search while Maxie and Dougie—the second pug—both sleep soundly in their doggy beds, and an old Bette Davis movie plays on TV.

  “Are my eyes deceiving me?” Melissa asks, still in her waitressing uniform.

  “Why the hell would they be?” Barbara replies, looking up from the word search.

  “Hi, Melissa.” I’m all smiles.

  “She’s not only not scared you off, but she’s actually doing a word search with you.” Melissa shakes her head like she can’t believe it. “And what is that on TV? Isn’t it usually stuck on some horrible talk show?”

  “Your mother apparently likes old movies,” I say, offering Barbara a grin. “She’d just forgotten there was a channel that played them all day.”

  “Well… that’s just great.” I can see the relief in Melissa’s eyes and the weight being lifted off of her shoulders in seeing what progress we’d made today.

  I’m relieved too when, after we’ve all talked for another few minutes, Barbara tells me she hopes I’ll be back tomorrow. Melissa seconds that desire, and I assure them I absolutely will be.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Melissa says, having walked me out to my car. “I haven’t seen her doing anything constructive like that or even remotely happy in, well, in months! You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Far from it. I think we just got lucky.”

  But when I drive back into town, I can’t help but to feel a burst of pride, knowing that I’d found a way to break through to Barbara when others had not. It does make me wonder, though, if I could be so successful in holding my own with someone on the first day I’d worked with them, then why had I failed so miserably when it came to Michael and my parents? How had I allowed myself to be so passive in their company, letting them bulldoze me into the kind submission that women aren’t supposed to experience in this day and age?

  The thought of all those lost years living under their heavy thumbs pretty much makes my pride evaporate. It’s replaced by a worry that if my parents and Michael manage to find me, that if I have to come face-to-face with them again, some spell I don’t fully understand will cast itself all over again, and I’ll be rendered weak and pathetic, unable to stand up for myself.

  I can almost picture them dragging me back to Seattle, the hysterical young woman who hadn’t been able to accept the pressures of adult life. It would all be hush-hush, but people would be led to believe I’d had a mild mental breakdown, one brought on by too much stress, one that would only require some rest and relaxation. After my parents and Michael would patiently nurse me back to mental health, I’d be standing up at that altar all over again. It could be in six months or a year, but if they believed they could salvage the perfect image they had for my life, they’d do it. They’d make sure I’d marry Michael for real.

  The vision feels so authentic that I have to remind myself it isn’t before panic can set in. God, they’d all done a number on me, letting me think I was an independent woman when I was at Stanford and actually thinking being so far from home would bring a natural end to my engagement with Michael. But I’d only been on a very long leash. They allowed me to explore and sniff around like I was a dog—they even let me make some decisions for myself. They were always ready to pull me back, though.

  And they did.

  I’d plastered on fake smiles through the bridal showers—three in total because one simply wasn’t enough—dress shopping, cake testing and even meeting with a professional writer who was responsible for penning the flowery vows I never got around to repeating. I’d hated every moment of it because it was all in preparation for marrying a man I didn’t love, a man who would only make me unhappy. And yet I hadn’t snapped that leash until the very last moment, until I’d felt so far backed up against a wall that I might have exploded if I’d remained in that church for another second.

  It had taken everything in me to do that, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d be able to do it again or if I’d be like one of those escaped cult members, captured again and hypnotized into submission.

  If they came for me, my escape would amount to nothing.

  Chapter Six

  JACK

  The last time I’d fished was when my father was still alive, and I don’t remember us needing all the gear I found myself using today. Then again, I’d probably allowed the guy at the gear shop to talk me into way more than was necessary to catch a few trout. The colorful lures I’d purchased have only netted me three fish during half a day out on the lake while Dad and I used to catch three times that with just a worm on a hook.

  “Man, I miss you, Dad.” I look up into the blue sky when I say the words, grateful for those times just he and I would go away to fish or hunt or fly out for the weekend to Denver or Kansas City or Houston to catch a Sunday NFL game. They were father-son trips he insisted on even if it meant he’d have to spend the next week working eighteen-hour days to make up for any work he’d fallen behind on.

  He’d instilled in me the same sense of balance, the philosophy of working hard while making time for friends and family the way he had. I’d mostly adhered to it, working through lunches so I could get home earlier or taking one or two fewer patients than Lincoln or Louisa did each week. It made my share of the profits smaller, but what was a few extra thousand dollars when you never had the time to spend it or enjoy it?

  But even with all of that, it hadn’t been enough. There was still more time I could have spent with Marjorie and didn’t. I hadn’t seen the signs until it was too late. And now I’m alone and miserable and would gladly go right back to work if I thought it would take my mind off of her, but I’d tried that trick, and it hadn’t worked.

  I bring the boat in, gut and clean the fish and start a fire in a pit behind the cabin to cook them over. The flesh of the fish starts to sizzle as the fire reaches the spits I’ve got them on, and I’m reminded of how much Marjorie hated the idea of killing things, how she’d never go fishing with me because she couldn’t stand to see anything living st
ruggle to take its last breath. She made me think about things like that, so when I’d hauled the fish in, I’d done it quick, then cut their heads off just as fast so they didn’t have to suffer.

  And maybe, in some small way, it’s not a bad thing to bring a bit less pain into this world.

  My thoughts snap to Natalie, to the fact that her family owned this cabin before me. I wonder if they fished out here and had some code when it came to killing their catch. Did they ascribe to the Native American custom of thanking your prey or did they bellow in laughter as they watched the fish flop around the boat. Maybe Natalie learned how to throw a line and to catch her own dinner, but it’s really difficult to imagine either of her parents being the ones to teach her. Maybe they were different people before Lincoln joined the practice—maybe there was a time they’d sit around a fire eating melting marshmallows and telling ghost stories, going on nature walks and learning about wildlife. They might have been content with that then.

  When I’d confided in Lincoln that I needed to get as far from civilization as possible, he’d mentioned me buying the cabin, told me he’d once fought to keep it but didn’t have any need for it now. Like I’d be doing him a favor in taking it off his hands, he said it would be a perfect fit for me.

  “There’s a lake out there, Jack. That’s your thing, isn’t it? You like the water, don’t you? You could do a lot of thinking out there in a boat and take all the time you need.” He’d spoken to me with what felt like an eagerness to get rid of the place, like the only boat he was interested in now was a yacht he could take out on Lake Washington or up to the San Juan’s.

  As the fire pops and snaps, the outer skin of the trout starting to blacken, I can’t even be sure this is the kind of meal Natalie would allow herself to sit down to now, if she actually ever did. I don’t know when she’ll get back or if she’ll be hungry.

  All of this wondering about the kind of person she is takes a back seat because I’m honestly still reeling from the very fact that she’s even here.

  I’d bought this place so that I could be alone. Sure, I’d spent plenty of days by myself hunkered down at the house in Seattle, shades drawn and missing Marjorie, wondering what, if anything, I could have changed to keep her and wondering how the fuck I was supposed to move forward in my life without her. But there had always been noise outside those walls—car horns and kids yelling, sirens and construction, well-meaning friends and not so well-meaning people associated with the clinic always wanting to stop by to see how I was. It was never really quiet. Nobody ever truly left me alone.

  And even now, someone has managed to find me.

  It’s hard to imagine Natalie sticking around for long, even if she is trying to hide out from her family. I won’t be very good company, and she’ll tire of me and my dark moods, maybe realizing it wasn’t so bad in Seattle after all. She definitely made the right choice in dumping Michael, but I really don’t want to have to field any more calls from Lincoln or Sharla, having to lie and say she’s not here.

  But maybe I will. Maybe it’s not so wrong to lie if it means helping Natalie.

  I flip the fish over and settle back into one of the Adirondack chairs I’d bought for this place, then take another pull from the up-teenth beer I’ve had today. My mind filters back to Natalie, not so much her predicament or how long I might have to lie for her, but the way she looked when I happened upon her in the cabin yesterday.

  Had it really been nearly three years since I’d last seen her? And had I just never noticed how beautiful she was or had she simply blossomed into a gorgeous woman while she’d been away at college? You don’t want to think of one of your friend’s daughters in any way that isn’t innocent, but that’s difficult to do when you come across a woman as striking as Natalie.

  If Marjorie were here with me, I wouldn’t have noticed Natalie’s long legs or the curves of her body. I doubt I’d have taken a second look to figure out if her glossy hair was blonde or brown, the color shifting when the light caught its many different shades. I most certainly wouldn’t have noticed how her face was both angelic and sexy, her big blue eyes sweet while her long lashes seemed to beckon, her lips firm and plump and begging to be kissed.

  The thought of her in this way stirs something within me, but at the same time I know without a doubt those beautiful lips of hers won’t ever be kissed by me.

  When I’d seen her last night, the idea of propositioning her, enticing her upstairs and having sex with her had entered into my head, as if the devil inside of me had been urging me on. It didn’t seem to matter how unrealistic the prospect of her agreeing or me being able to actually go through with it. I’d made that mistake before with a couple of other women not long after Marjorie left me. I’d been hoping it would ease the pain, but it only magnified it, the sexual act making me feel disgust for myself. It had done absolutely nothing to heal the giant hole my wife’s absence had left in my heart.

  Besides the wrongness of it, Natalie somehow doesn’t strike me as the type who’d go for an easy lay and sure as hell not with an old, miserable fuck like me. If I’d calculated correctly, she isn’t much older than twenty-one while I’d managed to hit the big 3-7. If I live to eighty, that will be forty-three years without the one woman I’d never imagined losing, forty-three years wishing one thing could have changed so that she could have stayed.

  “Hi, there.”

  I startle at the sound of her voice, momentarily imagining it’s Marjorie before I look up from under the bill of my hat to see Natalie standing above me. She’s dressed casually, her hair pulled back with barely any makeup on her face, but my first thought is of how beautiful she looks.

  “Hey,” I say, hoping I’m not slurring. I can generally hold my weight and then some when it comes to alcohol, but I’d seriously lost count as to how much I’d had to drink today.

  “How was your day?” she asks, moving the other Adirondack so that it’s facing me and then sitting down like she and I have some standing date to sit by the fire together.

  “Caught a few trout,” I tell her, tilting my head toward the fire. “But other than that, not much.”

  “Oh… okay.”

  I can feel the weight of her eyes on me, as if she’s waiting for me to ask her how her day went, but I won’t. Maybe I don’t have the energy to care.

  Another pull on my beer, and I stare into the fire, willing Natalie to leave me alone even if part of me wants her to stay.

  “I guess I’ll go in,” she says, sounding disappointed as she gets up and walks back toward the cabin.

  And I let her go.

  I’m being a dick, but what the hell am I really supposed to say to her? I hadn’t been that rude to her last night, had I? And I sure as hell hadn’t been an asshole when I’d left her that note this morning. I blame it on the alcohol and the depression, me feeling sorry for myself and wanting to take someone else down with me.

  “Wait!” I call out, letting my beer drop to the ground. I stand up, jog toward the cabin and catch up to her just before she’s about to hit the back steps.

  Slowly, she turns back to me. Her face, her body, everything about her is appealing, but the look in her eyes tells me she doesn’t like being dismissed.

  “Sorry for being a dick,” I tell her, taking a few steps in her direction.

  She looks at me with suspicion. “I get it,” she says, not moving an inch. “This is your place now, and I’m crashing. I can leave if you—”

  “No! I mean… no… I don’t want you to go. Your folks would want you looked after.” While I still think I’d be better off alone, I’m not going to push a young, scared woman back out into a world she’s trying to escape until she’s good and ready.

  She narrows those gorgeous blue eyes at me. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You hungry?”

  She says she is, and she follows me back to the fire and settles in. I share my catch with her, and I’m pleasantly surprised when she doesn’t make a face or pick
at the meal like it isn’t good enough for her tastes. I offer her a beer, which she accepts, slowly sipping it while I try to slow my own consumption.

  “I haven’t seen you in a really long time, well, except for yesterday,” I say, not stopping myself when I laugh, my mind not as clear as I’d like it to be from all of that beer.

  “Well, I was away at college, so...” She sets her now empty plate on the ground and then takes another small sip from her beer.

  “And how has that been. You went to Stanford, right?”

  “Uh, huh. I started pre-med, but now I’m focusing on occupational therapy. Switching up sent dad through the roof, but Mom seemed to think I’d come to my senses and get back on the doctor track. But I kept telling her that Michael had that covered, and—” She stops abruptly, sighs, then looks at me as if she’s just said something top secret. “Anyway,” she says, pushing past it, “none of that really matters anymore. But I did get a job here in town. I think I mentioned it in the note I wrote you?”

  It takes me a couple of seconds to recall, after which I say, “Yeah, that’s right. How’d it go?”

  “Pretty good. Melissa—the woman who hired me to take care of her mother—well, she actually owns Al’s Diner. I think you know it?”

  “I do?” She’s looking at me like she knows something I don’t, and I attempt to recall a place called Al’s Diner. “The greasy spoon over on Front Street?”

  “Yeah.” She smiles knowingly at me. “I figured the customer Camille was talking about was you. That’s Melissa’s daughter by the way.”

  “Wait. What? Who’s Melissa again?”

  She laughs. “The woman who hired me! Camille is her daughter, and she’s waitressing at the diner for the summer at least. She was describing a guy who’d come in this morning, and I just knew it was you. I think she’s crushing on you pretty bad.”

  “Crushing on me?” I ease back into my chair and think about that. I’d come to this town to get away and be anonymous, not to have someone crushing on me, especially not someone Natalie seems familiar with. But I do remember the girl in the diner, looked to be a few years older than Natalie. Yeah, she’d been flirty, but I’d mostly ignored her.