Tell Me

by Strom, Abigail

  “Um . . . a Diet Coke?”

  “Sure thing. Are you two ready to order, or do you need a minute?”

  Jane glanced at the menu in front of her, but she didn’t open it. “I’ll just have a salad.”

  She looked a little thinner since the last time he’d seen her, and the need to stuff her full of high-calorie food overrode the voice in his head telling him not to push his luck.

  “This is a barbecue place,” he said. “You should get ribs.”

  She glared at him. “Just a salad,” she said to the waitress.

  His hand curled into a fist on his thigh. “I’ll take a full slab of ribs, beans, slaw, and cornbread.”

  “Sure thing,” the waitress said, flashing him a smile before leaving.

  Jane was still glaring at him.

  “What?” he asked, defensively.

  “Did you get her number yet?”

  “Whose number? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The waitress. The one flirting with you.”

  “Jesus.” He took off his hat, dragged a hand through his hair, and put the hat back on. “I didn’t even notice her. Can we talk about Canada, please?”

  She still didn’t look happy. But she shrugged, reached into the quilted bag she’d put on the seat beside her, and pulled out a letter.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “This is why I’m going to Canada.”

  He read it through once. Then he read it again.

  He handed it back to her. “You have to be kidding me.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, slipping the letter back in her purse.

  “You’re going to Canada to meet this bullshit artist? Why?”

  For a moment he thought she’d walk out on him. He could see her thinking about it. But then the waitress came with her Diet Coke, and the moment was over.

  She took a sip of her drink. “This bullshit artist, as you call him, is actually capable of falling in love.”

  The obvious implication being that he wasn’t.

  Jane went on. “He’s going to be there at sunset on May 1, waiting for a woman who will never come. And it’s my fault.”

  “So write him a letter or something. You don’t have to go all the way to Canada.”

  “I don’t have his address or contact information. I have to go in person.” She bit her lip. “Don’t you understand? I didn’t tell him the truth about Sam. I didn’t tell him who she really was. I can’t leave things like that, knowing that lie is in the world. I have to make it right.”

  He shook his head. “You’re torturing yourself for nothing. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars Horn-Rims won’t be on that damn bridge. I know his type. He’s got some kind of pathetic romantic fantasy going with some other woman by now, Jane. I promise you that.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing, and he prepared himself to be yelled at.

  But she didn’t yell. She pressed her lips tightly together, sat back, and fished around in her purse again. Then started to write, keeping the pen and paper out of sight.

  After a moment, she slapped something down on the table between them.

  A check made out to him for $1,000.

  “It’s a bet,” she said.

  He looked down at the check and back up at her. “You’re not serious.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Her eyes were glittering, and he knew if they really got into it things would get ugly.

  Then something occurred to him.

  “Fine.”

  She blinked, and he realized with satisfaction that the last thing she’d expected was for him to call her bluff.

  “But since it’s a bet, I have a right to proof.”

  She was still trying to assess this new twist. “Proof?”

  “How will I know if Horn-Rims was really on the bridge when he said he’d be? You could lie and say he was, but—”

  Her eyes narrowed and fire looked imminent once again. “You think I’d lie about it? You think I’d—”

  “I don’t have to think anything. I’d rather know for sure.”

  “And how exactly do you expect to—”

  “I’m going with you.”

  She blinked again, and the expression on her face was worth being back in New York.

  “What do you mean, you’re going with me?”

  “I mean I’m taking you to Canada.” He paused. “How are you planning to get there, anyway? I looked it up online, and most people drive across the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick and use their own cars to get around the island. Seems like a simple plan, with one obvious problem.” He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t have a car or a driver’s license.”

  She flushed. “I live in New York! Lots of people in the city don’t drive.”

  “There’s a whole world out there to explore, you know. New York isn’t actually the center of the universe.”

  “I know that! I—” She shook her head sharply. “Okay, not the point. The point is, I can take a plane to the Charlottetown airport.”

  “And then what? Get around by taxi? Sounds inconvenient and expensive. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have your own transportation?”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Now you do.” He folded his arms. “Me.”

  She folded her arms, too. “You’re the last person in the world I want to take a sixteen-hour car ride with.”

  That stung a little. “Too bad. I have a right to oversee my bet.” He paused. “Unless you decide to cancel the trip altogether. You’d be off the hook then.”

  “You can’t bully me into cancelling.”

  “I’m not bullying you, damn it!”

  Her lips twitched a little. It wasn’t much, just the hint of a smile, but it eased some of the tension between them.

  He unfolded his arms, rested his forearms on the table, and clasped his hands. “Tell me why this is so important to you. Please, Jane. I really want to know.”

  She looked away for a moment, her expression uncertain. He just waited, still and silent, hoping the waitress wouldn’t pick this moment to arrive with their food.

  Finally Jane looked back at him. “Because he loved Sam. Or at least he thought he did.”

  Bullshit, he wanted to say, but for once he kept his stupid mouth shut.

  After a moment she went on. “I thought you’d see it, too, once you read his letter. I know you don’t believe in love at first sight, but you read how he described her.” She took a breath. “‘It was as though all the light in the universe was shining through you.’”

  She put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, and he wanted to reach out for her so bad it hurt.

  But he stayed still, and a minute later she looked up. Her eyes were dry, but they were bright.

  “How can you say he’s full of shit after reading that? It’s the most perfect description of Sam I’ve ever heard.”

  His heart twisted in his chest. “She wasn’t an angel or a saint.” His throat felt tight and his voice was gruff, and he grabbed his water glass to take a sip.

  “I never said she was. But she was so . . .” Her hands lifted, sketching shapes in the air. “So bright. You know she was, Caleb. She was full of life, full of joy. Full of light.”

  The tightness in his throat spread to his chest, making it hard to draw a deep breath. His eyes stung, and he fought so hard to keep tears from forming that he almost missed Jane’s next words.

  “I know I screwed everything up by lying to him, but it didn’t stop him from seeing into Sam’s heart. Her essence. Don’t you see? He saw something in her worth loving. Something bright and beautiful. And it wasn’t just her physical beauty.”

  “You think he saw into her soul or something?”

  He wasn’t able to hide his skepticism.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s possible.” She leaned forward. “And I’m not going to let him go to that bridge and wait for her and wonder why she didn’t come. I’m going t
o meet him, and I’m going to tell him I lied about her loving books and wanting to be a writer and all that stuff, but that the Sam he fell for was the real Sam. I’m going to tell him who she was and that he was right to love her.”

  He could deal with feisty Jane and pissed off Jane and sarcastic Jane. But when she was like this, all earnest and intense and sincere, she was too much for him.

  “All right, fine. But I’m still coming with you.”

  “But why? And don’t tell me it’s about the stupid bet.”

  Jane thought she could find a way through her pain by going somewhere else, and that was something Caleb understood. But if Jane was finally going to leave this city on an actual journey, he would damn well make sure she accomplished something worthwhile.

  “Because there’s one important thing you’re going to do on this trip, and it isn’t meeting Horn-Rims at the Lake of Shining Waters. Whatever the hell that is.”

  “What important thing? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about scattering your sister’s ashes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jane put her passport in the front pocket of her suitcase because it zipped and her purse didn’t, and she thought it would be safer there. But what if something happened to her suitcase? Shouldn’t she keep her passport with her at all times?

  Of course she was going to Canada, not China or the Middle East. She spoke the language, and it was a friendly government. But still.

  She checked the time. Caleb would be here in twenty minutes.

  That’s what she was really nervous about. Not losing her passport, but being in a car with Caleb for two days.

  And if that wasn’t enough, they also had to haul a ceramic urn to the top of a mountain in Maine. Owl Mountain, to be specific. Sam had been very clear about that in the letter they’d found with her will and other papers.

  “How do you know I haven’t already done it?” she’d asked Caleb that night at dinner.

  “I’ll bet you ten thousand dollars you haven’t.”

  “You’d actually make a bet about my sister’s mortal remains?”

  He’d grinned at her. “Sam loved a good bet, as you very well know. She’d approve. What she wouldn’t approve of is you keeping her in the back of a closet. I’m surprised you haven’t heard a little voice from in there singing ‘Don’t Fence Me In.’”

  She’d laughed in spite of herself and then felt horrible for laughing. How could she find anything about her sister’s ashes funny?

  “Hey,” Caleb had said, looking at her with that way he had—his way of making it seem like everything would be all right. “Sam would’ve loved that joke, and she would’ve loved that you laughed at it.” He’d paused. “And she’ll love that you’re going to scatter her ashes from a mountaintop, just like she wanted.”

  And now here she was, about to take a thousand-mile journey with a man she lusted after but would never have, to scatter Sam’s ashes from the top of a mountain she was terrified to climb, all so she could meet a man she didn’t know to tell him the woman he’d fallen in love with was dead.

  It sounded like a recipe for disaster.

  She wished she hadn’t let Caleb talk her into the hiking thing. Yes, she owed it to Sam—but there was no rush, was there? She’d been planning to wait until summer. If not this year, then next. Or even two years.

  She opened her closet door and looked up. There it was, tucked away at the back of the shelf: the gray ceramic urn her parents had chosen to hold Sam’s ashes.

  She was afraid to just reach up and grab it. What if it fell?

  With morbid images of ashes on the bedroom floor filling her mind, she dragged a chair over and climbed up on it, closing her hands carefully around the urn and hefting its weight for a moment before—

  The chair wobbled, and she had a split second to realize she was going down before she did.

  She landed on her butt with the urn in her lap. It was cradled in her arms and she was hunched over it, protecting it with her body the way she would have protected a child in a fall.

  It was fine. The lid was still on, and everything was fine.

  She set the urn carefully on the floor beside her. Then she got to her feet, a little shaky, and took a deep breath.

  And then, suddenly, she started to laugh.

  She’d been worried about riding in a car beside Caleb Bryce, the human match to the gasoline of her sex drive. But she’d forgotten that she’d be travelling with the world’s best mood-killer.

  A ceramic pot full of human remains.

  It felt good to laugh. And this time, she knew that what Caleb had said the other night was true: Sam had loved to laugh, and to make other people laugh, and she would have loved hearing her sister laugh now.

  Twenty minutes later, she met Caleb at the door with the urn in her arms and her suitcase beside her.

  He raised his eyebrows at the burden she carried. “I guess I’ll carry this down, then,” he said, picking up her suitcase and waiting for her to lock her apartment and precede him down the stairs.

  “You seem surprised,” she commented, standing on the sidewalk as he popped the trunk of his rental car—a dark blue four-door sedan. He put her suitcase in beside an old, beat-up pack.

  “I guess I thought you’d have the urn in a box or a bag or something,” he said. “Do you think it’ll be safe in here?” he asked, shifting things in the trunk experimentally. “I guess we could wedge it in with—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I want it in the back seat.”

  He raised his eyebrows again, but he closed the trunk and opened the rear passenger side door for her before going around to the driver’s side.

  She set the urn down on the butter-soft leather. For a moment she studied it, a glazed ceramic pot with white seagulls painted on a gray background, resting like a squat, rotund passenger on the seat behind hers. Then, on impulse, she pulled the seat belt around it and hooked it in.

  “That looks really weird,” Caleb commented, watching her in the rearview mirror.

  “This whole trip is weird,” she said as she slid into the front seat and buckled her own seat belt.

  “Scattering your sister’s ashes according to her wishes is not weird. Traveling with them in the back seat is a little weird. Going to meet a total stranger on a bridge in Canada is extremely weird.”

  They pulled away from the curb, and the early-morning sun was directly in their eyes for a moment. Jane blinked and pulled down the visor.

  “I respectfully disagree, but I’m not going to fight about it.”

  “Well, that’s a nice change.” Caleb reached for the knobs on the radio and fiddled for a moment, but Jane swatted his hand away and pulled out her phone, plugging it into the port on the dash.

  “You’ve got a playlist?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What, then?”

  “You’ll see,” she said, opening her audiobook app and then settling back in her seat.

  A female voice with perfect enunciation came through the speakers.

  “Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery.”

  Caleb looked at her sideways. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re going to make me listen to a kids’ book.”

  “Yep.”

  “A kids’ book for girls.”

  “Yep.”

  “Chapter one. Mrs. Rachel Lynde is surprised.”

  He sighed as he pulled up at a red light. “How long is this thing?”

  She squinted at her phone screen. “Ten hours.”

  “Jesus.”

  She grinned at him. “Don’t worry, you’ll love it. Everyone does.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Hell yeah. How much?”

  “Loser buys dinner tonight.”

  “Deal.”

  He ended up hooked on the damn thing.

  He didn’t pay much attention to the first cha
pter. But when Matthew Cuthbert showed up at the train station to meet the orphan boy he and his sister were expecting and found scrawny, red-haired Anne Shirley there instead, he started to listen. And when Matthew and Marilla were deciding whether to keep her or send her back, he actually paused the audio at a tollbooth so he wouldn’t miss anything.

  It made the time seem to fly by.

  Jane looked smug when he suggested they stop at a drive-through for lunch so they could eat in the car and keep listening. On their way through Massachusetts, Gilbert Blythe teased Anne in school by calling her “carrots,” and she cracked her slate over his head. Crossing the border into New Hampshire, Anne accidentally made her friend Diana drunk by giving her currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. By the time they reached Maine, Anne had flavored a cake with anodyne liniment instead of vanilla.

  “What the hell is anodyne liniment?” he asked, and Jane Googled it.

  “It’s an old remedy for pain relief. Let’s see. It was considered good for coughs, colds, colic, asthmatic distress, bronchial colds, nasal catarrh, cholera morbus, cramps, diarrhea, bruises, common sore throat, burns and scalds, chaps and chafing, chilblains, frost bites, muscular rheumatism, soreness, sprains, and strains.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of ailments.”

  She read a little further. “The main ingredients were morphine and alcohol.”

  He grinned. “Well, that explains it. That recipe would make you feel better no matter what ails you.”

  They had a long drive through Maine to the motel they were staying at that night. Halfway there, Matthew gave Anne a dress with puffed sleeves.

  When they stopped for a bathroom break, Jane showed him a picture of a dress from 1910 to explain what the hell puffed sleeves were.

  He shook his head. “I’m with Marilla on this one. Those things look ridiculous. Thank God women’s clothes have gotten more practical.”

  Jane laughed. “Not really. Do you remember the blue silk dress in that store window? Wear this and find the man of your dreams? That had puffed sleeves. Not this big, but they were definitely puffed.”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t get why you’d want to wear something that serves no useful purpose.”

  “You mean like a cowboy hat?”

  “Are you kidding? My Stetson keeps my head cool and shades my eyes. It’s the definition of useful.”