Instead, it was business as usual, almost like nothing was amiss. More studying, even more photography. By then, I understood the camera like the back of my hand and could make adjustments blindfolded; I’d practically memorized the technical aspects of every photo in the file box and understood the mistakes I’d made when taking my own photos. When my aunt got home, she asked if Bryce had a few minutes to help her install more shelves for the book section of the shop. He willingly agreed, though I stayed behind.
“How did it go?” I asked when she returned alone.
“He’s like his father. He can do anything,” she marveled.
“How was he?”
“No strange questions or comments, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“He seemed okay with me today, too.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I guess.”
“I forgot to mention it earlier, but I spoke to the headmaster and your parents today about school.”
“Why?”
She explained, and although I was in accordance, she must have seen something in my expression. “Are you doing okay?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. And even though Bryce had acted as if everything was normal, I think he was unsure as well.
* * *
The rest of the week was much the same, except that Bryce ate dinner with my aunt and me on both Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, after I’d taken three exams and my aunt had returned to the shop, he asked me on a second date for the following evening—another dinner—but I quickly declined.
“I really don’t want to be gawked at in public,” I said.
“Then why don’t I make dinner here? We can watch a movie afterwards.”
“We don’t have a TV.”
“I can bring mine over, along with the VCR. We could watch Dirty Dancing or whatever.”
“Dirty Dancing?”
“My mom loved it. I haven’t seen it.”
“How can you not have seen Dirty Dancing?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, there are no movie theaters in Ocracoke.”
“It came out when I was a little kid.”
“I’ve been busy.”
I laughed. “I’m going to have to check with my aunt to make sure it’s okay.”
“I know.”
As soon as he said it, my mind suddenly flashed to his mom’s visit the previous weekend. “Does it have to be an early night? If you’re going fishing on Saturday again?”
“I’ll be here this weekend. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Another cemetery?”
“No. But I think you’ll like it.”
* * *
After I completed my exams on Friday morning with satisfying results, Aunt Linda not only agreed to the second date but added that she’d be happy to spend the evening at Gwen’s. “It’s not much of a date if I’m sitting there with you. What time do you need me to be out of here?”
“Is five o’clock okay?” Bryce asked. “So I have time to make dinner?”
“That’s fine,” she said, “but I’ll likely be home by nine.”
After she left to head back to the shop, Bryce mentioned that his dad would be returning home the following week. “I’m not sure exactly when, but I know my mom is happy about it.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” he affirmed. “Things are easier at the house when he’s around. The twins aren’t so wild.”
“Your mom seems to have it under control.”
“She does. But she doesn’t like always having to be the bad guy.”
“I can’t imagine your mom being the bad guy.”
“Don’t let her fool you,” he said. “She’s pretty tough when she needs to be.”
* * *
Bryce left in midafternoon to take care of a few chores. Waking from a late-afternoon nap, I found myself staring in the mirror. Even my stretchy jeans—the bigger ones—were getting tight, and the larger tops my mom had bought for me at Christmas merely stretched across the bulge.
With no possibility of looking dazzling in an outfit, I went a little bolder with makeup than usual, primarily using my Hollywood-quality eyeliner skills; aside from Photoshop, applying eyeliner was the only thing I’d ever been naturally good at. When I stepped out of the bathroom, even Aunt Linda did a quick double take.
“Too much?” I asked.
“I’m not the proper judge of such things,” she said. “I don’t wear makeup, but I think you look striking.”
“I’m tired of being pregnant,” I whined.
“At thirty-eight weeks, all women are tired of being pregnant,” she said. “Some of the girls I worked with would start doing pelvic tilts in the hopes of inducing labor.”
“Did it work?”
“Hard to say. One poor girl went more than two weeks past her expected due date and did pelvic tilts for hours, crying in frustration. It was miserable for her.”
“Why didn’t the doctor induce labor?”
“The physician we worked with back then was pretty conservative. He liked pregnancies to run their natural course. Unless, of course, the woman’s life was in danger.”
“In danger?”
“Sure,” she said. “Pre-eclampsia can be very dangerous, for instance. It makes the blood pressure skyrocket. But there are other issues, too.”
I’d been avoiding thinking about such things, skipping over any frightening chapters in the book my mom had given me. “Am I going to be okay?”
“Of course you are,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “You’re young and healthy. Anyway, Gwen has been keeping a close eye on you, and she says you’re doing great.”
Though I nodded, I couldn’t help noting that the other girls she’d been talking about had been young and healthy, too.
* * *
Bryce arrived promptly, carrying a grocery bag. He visited with my aunt briefly before she left and then returned to his truck to get the television and VCR. He spent a little while setting it all up in the living room, making sure the system worked, then got down to business in the kitchen.
With my feet hurting and feeling the discomfort of yet another Braxton Hicks contraction coming on, I took a seat at the kitchen table. After the contraction passed and I could breathe normally again, I asked, “Do you need my help?”
I didn’t bother to hide the tepid nature of my offer, and clearly Bryce picked up on it.
“I guess you could go outside and chop wood for the fire.”
“Ha, ha.”
“No worries. I’ve got it. It’s not too hard.”
“What are you making?”
“Beef Stroganoff and a salad. You mentioned it was one of your favorites and Linda gave me the recipe.”
Because he’d been at the house so many times, he didn’t need my help to find knives or the chopping block. I watched him dice lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes for the salad, then onions, mushrooms, and the steak for the entrée. He got a pot boiling on the stove for the egg noodles, dusted the steak in flour and spices, then browned it in butter and olive oil. He sautéed the onions and mushrooms in the same pan as the steak, added the steak back in with beef broth and cream of mushroom soup. The sour cream, I knew, would be added at the end; I’d seen Aunt Linda make it more than once.
As he cooked, we chatted about my pregnancy and how I was feeling. When I asked him again about the fishing trips, he said nothing about the things that had concerned his mother. Instead, he described the early-morning outings, a hint of reverence in his tone.
“My grandfather just knows where the fish will be,” he said. “We left the docks with four other boats, and they each went in a different direction. We pulled in more than anyone else every time.”
“He’s had a lot of experience.”
“So have the others,” he said. “Some of them have been fishing nearly as long as he has.”
“He seems like an interesting man,” I observed. “Even if I still can’t understa
nd a word he says.”
“Did I mention that Richard and Robert have been learning the dialect? Which is kind of hard to do, since there’s no book on it. They’ve been having my mom make recordings and then they memorize them.”
“But not you?”
“I’ve been too busy tutoring this girl from Seattle. It takes a lot of time.”
“The brilliant, beautiful one, right?”
“How did you know?” he responded with a grin.
When dinner was ready, I summoned the energy to set the table; the salad went into a bowl on the side. He’d also brought over powdered lemonade, which I mixed in a pitcher before we sat down to eat.
Dinner was delicious and I reminded myself to get the recipe before I left. For most of the meal, we reminisced about our childhoods, a memory of his sparking a memory of mine and vice versa. Despite my massive tummy—or maybe because of it—I couldn’t eat very much, but Bryce had a second helping and we didn’t settle into the living room until half past six.
I leaned into him as we watched the movie, his arm around my shoulders. He seemed to enjoy it and I did, too, even though I’d seen it five or six times. Along with Pretty Woman, it was one of my favorites. When the film reached the climax—when Johnny lifted Baby on the dance floor in front of her parents—I had tears in my eyes, like always. As the credits rolled, Bryce looked over, amazed.
“Really? You’re crying?”
“I’m pregnant and hormonal. Of course I’m crying.”
“But they danced well. It’s not like one of them got hurt or she messed up.”
I knew he was just teasing me and I rose from my spot on the couch to retrieve a box of tissues. I blew my nose—so much for trying to be glamorous, but with my tummy, I knew glamour was a long way off. Meanwhile, Bryce seemed inordinately pleased with himself and when I returned to the couch, he put his arm around me again.
“I don’t think I’m going to go back to school,” I said.
“Ever?”
I rolled my eyes. “I mean when I get home. My aunt talked with my parents and the headmaster, and they’re going to let me take my finals at home. I’ll start up again next fall.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“I think it would be weird to show up right before school lets out for the summer.”
“How are things with your parents? Do you still talk to them once a week?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We usually don’t talk long.”
“Do they tell you that they miss you?”
“Sometimes. Not always.” I shifted slightly, leaning into his warmth. “They’re not the touchy-feely types.”
“With Morgan they are.”
“Not really. They’re proud of her and brag about her, but that’s different. And deep down, I know that they love us both. For my parents, sending me here is a sign of how much they love me.”
“Even if it was hard for you?”
“It’s been hard for them, too. And I think my situation would be hard for most parents.”
“How about your friends? Any word about them?”
“Morgan said that she saw Jodie at the prom. I guess some senior brought her, but I don’t know who it was.”
“Isn’t it a little early for prom?”
“My school hosts the proms in April. Don’t ask me why. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Have you ever wanted to go to a prom?”
“I haven’t thought about that, either,” I said. “I guess I would if someone asked, depending on who they were or whatever. But who knows if my parents would let me go, even if I did get asked?”
“Are you nervous about how things will be with your parents when you get back?”
“A little,” I conceded. “For all I know, they’re not going to let me out of the house again until I’m eighteen.”
“And college? Have you changed your mind about that? I think you’d do well in college.”
“Maybe if I had a full-time tutor.”
“So…let me get this straight. You might be stuck in the house until you’re eighteen, your friends might have forgotten you, and your parents haven’t told you lately that they missed you. Did I get all that right?”
I smiled, knowing I’d verged on melodrama, even if it did feel more than a little true. “Sorry for being such a downer.”
“You’re not,” he said.
I lifted my head and when we kissed, I could feel his hands in my hair. I wanted to tell him that I was going to miss him but knew the words would make me start crying again.
“This has been a perfect night,” I whispered instead.
He kissed me again before his eyes lingered on mine. “Every night with you is perfect.”
* * *
Bryce came over the following day—the last Saturday in April—and again, he seemed his normal self. His mom had ordered a new photography book from a store in Raleigh, and we spent a couple of hours looking through it. After a lunch of leftovers, we went for another walk on the beach. As we strolled through the sand, I wondered if this was the spot he’d wanted to bring me to, the one he’d mentioned on Thursday. But when he said nothing, I gradually accepted the idea that he’d just wanted to get me out of the house for a while. It was strange to think that Bryce’s mom had come to see me just a week ago.
“How are the workouts going?” I finally asked.
“I haven’t done much in the last couple of weeks.”
“Why not?”
“I needed a break.”
It wasn’t much of an answer…or then again, maybe it was, and his mom had been reading too much into it.
“Well,” I began, “you were working out hard for a long time. You’re going to run circles around your entire class.”
“We’ll see.”
Another nonanswer. Bryce could sometimes employ doublespeak as well as my aunt. Before I could clarify, he changed the subject. “Do you still wear the necklace I gave you?”
“Every day,” I answered. “I love it.”
“When I was having it engraved, I wondered whether to add my name, so you would remember who bought it for you.”
“I won’t forget. Besides, I like what you wrote.”
“It was my dad’s idea.”
“I’ll bet it will be good to see him, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s something I need to speak with him about.”
“What?”
Instead of answering, he simply squeezed my hand, and I felt a sudden flutter of fear at the idea that as normal as he seemed on the surface, I had no idea what was going on with him at all.
* * *
On Sunday morning, Gwen came by to check on me and let me know that I was “almost there,” something the mirror had made pretty obvious.
“How are your Braxton Hicks?”
“Irritating,” I answered.
She ignored my comment. “You might start thinking about getting a bag ready for the hospital.”
“I still have time, don’t you think?”
“Toward the end, it’s impossible to predict. Some women go into labor early; some take a little longer than expected.”
“How many babies have you delivered? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”
“I can’t remember exactly. Maybe a hundred?”
My eyes widened. “You’ve delivered a hundred babies?”
“Something like that. There are two other pregnant women on the island right now. I’ll probably do their deliveries.”
“Are you upset that I wanted to go to the hospital instead?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“I also want to thank you. For staying here on Sundays and checking on me, I mean.”
“It wouldn’t be right to leave you alone. You’re still young.”
I nodded, though part of me wondered if I would ever feel young again.
* * *
Bryce showed up soon after, wearing khakis and a polo along with loafers, looking older and more serio
us than usual.
“Why are you dressed up?” I asked.
“There’s something I want to show you. The thing I mentioned the other day.”
“The not-another-cemetery thing?”
“That’s the one,” he said. “But no worries. I swung by right before coming here, and there’s no one around.” Reaching out, he took my hand and kissed the back of it. “You ready?”
All at once, I knew he’d planned something big, and I took a small step backward. “Let me brush my hair first.”
I’d already brushed my hair, but I retreated to my bedroom, wishing there were a way to rewind the last couple of minutes and just start over. While Recent Bryce had occasionally seemed off, today’s version was entirely new, and all I could think was that I wished Old Bryce had shown up instead. I wanted to see him in jeans and his olive jacket, with a file box of photos beneath his arm. I wanted him at the table, helping me learn equations or quizzing me on Spanish vocabulary; I wanted Bryce to hold me like he had on the beach that night with the kite, when all felt right with the world.
But New Bryce—all dressed up and who’d kissed my hand—was waiting for me, and as we started down the steps, I had another Braxton Hicks contraction. I had to grip the rail while Bryce looked on in concern.
“It’s getting close, isn’t it?”
“Eleven days, give or take,” I answered, wincing. When the feeling finally passed and I knew I could safely move again, I waddled the rest of the way down. From the bed of the truck, Bryce grabbed a small step stool so I could climb in, just like he’d done before we’d gone to the beach.
The drive took only a few minutes and it wasn’t until he’d turned off the engine at the end of a dirt road that I even realized we were there. Beyond the windshield, I stared at a small cottage. Unlike at my aunt’s place, the nearest neighbors were barely visible through the trees and there was no water in sight. As for the dwelling itself, it was smaller than my aunt’s, set lower to the ground, and even more dilapidated. The wooden planking was faded and peeling, the railings on the front porch appeared to be rotting away, and I noted clumps of moss on the shingles. It wasn’t until I spotted the FOR RENT sign that I felt a sudden sense of dread, my breath catching in my throat as the pieces came together.
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