The Light in Summer

by Mary McNear

  That wasn’t so bad, Billy thought again later that night as she stood at her kitchen counter, twisting a corkscrew into a bottle of wine. (Luke was in his bedroom listening to music; Cal was out on the back porch with Murphy.) As she pulled the cork out and got two wineglasses from the cupboard, she considered how different Luke had been since she’d picked him up from camp. It wasn’t a vast sea of change, but rather a dozen subtle changes, and a fractional shift in mood. He seemed less angry and gloomy than he’d been before, more thoughtful and mature. Before picking him up from the hike, she’d wondered if he would be resistant to going back to work at Nature Camp, but he’d left for it the next morning without incident or complaint. Even better, yesterday evening he’d hung out with Toby, his old friend from down the block. “Nothing major,” as Luke had said—they’d just played foosball and watched some YouTube videos. Still, to Billy it had seemed like a positive sign. And then, when Cal had called her last night from Seattle and said he wanted to take her and Luke out for dinner tonight, Luke had said okay in a way that seemed noncommittal but not, thank God, openly hostile.

  After pouring the two glasses of wine, Billy headed out to the back porch, where she found Cal sitting on the top step, throwing a tennis ball for Murphy.

  “You know,” Billy said, handing him a glass and sitting down next to him, “this used to be a tennis ball–free zone.”

  “Did it?” Cal asked, amused.

  “Yes. It was the only way I could get any reading done out here. And now,” she said teasingly, “you’re going to completely spoil him.”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “You know that chew toy I brought him? I went into the snootiest pet store in Seattle and said, ‘Give me the most overpriced dog toy you have here.’”

  Billy laughed. “You know it’s only going to take him one morning to get the squeaker out of that thing, right?”

  “A morning?” Cal objected. “I was going to say an hour. I think she’s sold you short, Murphy,” Cal said as he returned with the tennis ball.

  Murphy dropped the ball at Cal’s feet and wagged his tail obligingly.

  Cal threw the ball for him again, but after Murphy had hurled himself in its direction, Cal turned to Billy, suddenly serious. “That was okay, wasn’t it?” he asked. He meant the dinner at the Corner Bar.

  “All things considered, I think it was more than okay.”

  “If he has reservations about me, though, I get it,” Cal said.

  “I think the reservations are more about me,” Billy said. “Specifically about me . . . dating someone. Add to that his anxiety over meeting his dad, and I think it’s a wonder he agreed to go at all tonight.”

  Cal nodded. “It’s a lot for someone his age,” he said, putting his wineglass down so he could throw the ball for Murphy again. “He seems like he’s handling it really well, though.”

  “I think so,” she said softly. She twirled her wine around in her glass. “I think I’ll be relieved, though, when the next few weeks are over. I really want this meeting with Wesley to go well.” She’d spoken with him again the previous night to set up a date and time for them to meet in Minneapolis.

  “I know,” Cal said. “You liked him, though, didn’t you? When you talked to him on the phone?”

  “I did,” Billy said. She stopped twirling her wine. “He sounded nice. Still a little hesitant, of course. But how could he not be? His wife, apparently, is also . . . surprised,” she added, choosing that word carefully.

  “Is she . . . not happy about this?”

  “He didn’t say that, exactly. But he implied that it’s been an adjustment for her.” Billy brushed a mosquito away. She didn’t want to go inside, though. It was too pretty out here. The sky was a dark purplish black, and the stars were just beginning to come out. Even the fireflies, flickering at the edge of the yard, seemed intent on making the night beautiful.

  Murphy came trotting up to them. Cal took the ball out of his mouth and tossed it again. He followed Murphy with his eyes, but he said to Billy, “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” He picked up his wine, and Billy realized with surprise that he was nervous. Had she ever seen him nervous before, even at dinner tonight? She didn’t think so.

  “Remember I told you about that friend of mine from graduate school, the architect, who I went to see in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago?” Billy nodded. “His name is Steve Landau. We were Skyping while I was in Seattle, and he asked me to work with him on a project starting in September. I said yes.”

  “Cal, that’s wonderful,” Billy said, smiling. “Does that mean . . . you’ll be staying in Minneapolis this fall?”

  “No, it means I’ll be moving there. I’ve been looking at apartments on Zillow.”

  “You’re leaving Seattle?” she clarified.

  “I am,” he said, watching her carefully. “I feel like my life there somehow got away from me. I need to start over somewhere else, and this time, from the beginning, I need to concentrate on what’s important to me. And you’re part of that, Billy. I know this is really new, but I want to see where it goes.” He smiled at her and, brushing a hair off her face, he kissed her, a lovely, tender, sweet kiss. Well, it wasn’t all sweetness. There was enough of something else there—lust?—to make her think about that evening and night they’d spent together. It would happen again, she knew, when things settled down a little. Maybe not a whole night, not right away, but she pictured a stolen hour of lovemaking on his twin bed at the cabin. Cal had said the cabin wasn’t designed for that kind of fun, but obviously, they would prove this idea wrong. Unless . . .

  “Cal?” she asked suddenly. “Will you still be using the cabin?”

  “I hope so. I haven’t told Allie yet. But she said I could use it whenever I want to. And I’m planning on it. Hopefully you and Luke will be coming down to St. Paul, too.”

  “We will,” she said, flushing with pleasure. “We already visit my mom at least once a month. Now, though, between you being there and Luke having a new friend from camp there, I think we’ll probably come down more.”

  “Good,” he said, kissing her again. And Billy felt it, the feeling she’d had the evening they’d first made love. It was a clear, sweet, pure happiness. Murphy barked now, a little bark of impatience, standing in front of them, tennis ball at his feet. They both laughed, and as Cal threw it again, Billy sipped her wine. She caught sight then of something out of the corner of her eye. It was the Jane Austen box set sitting on the little table. She must have left it out here overnight. Funny, she’d never done that before. And seeing it made her wonder . . .

  “What’s wrong?” Cal asked.

  “Nothing,” Billy said. Had she been frowning? “I just realized something, though. It’s going to be complicated, isn’t it? Me and you and Luke and Wesley. There won’t be any neatly resolved storylines, will there?”

  “Storylines?” Cal said, his eyebrows quirking up in amusement. Billy blushed. “No,” he admitted. “No neatly resolved storylines. Is that a bad thing?”

  Billy chuckled. “I’m a romantic. In novels—not all novels, just my favorite ones—everything has a way of falling effortlessly into place.”

  He smiled. “Hmm. Well there’s definitely going to be some effort involved here. But I’ll tell you one thing about this storyline. It won’t be boring.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The next evening Cal stretched out on his couch. He had worked all day—probably for the last time—with Jack on the White Pines cottage. He hadn’t worked with him since before he’d left for Seattle. He’d gone over to see Jack this morning to tell him about moving to Minneapolis, and he’d ended up helping him put in the new front porch. But despite his tiredness now, when he heard a car pull up outside, he sprang up and opened the door before his guest had even gotten out of the car.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, when he saw it was Allie. He leaned in the doorway as she climbed the steps carrying a foil-wrapped casserole dish.

  “Yes,
it’s me,” she said, mildly offended. “I brought you leftovers, which I am now seriously considering taking home with me again.”

  “No, don’t do that,” Cal said, kissing her on the cheek and relieving her of the dish at the same time. “Is this what I think it is?” he asked, peeling back a corner of foil.

  “Yep. Shepherd’s pie,” Allie said, of her housekeeper’s famous dish. “Lonnie Hagan made it for you,” she added, coming into the cabin and closing the door behind her. “And when you told me you were too tired to come over tonight—”

  “—you got in the car after dinner and drove it over to me,” he finished for her. “Like the amazing sister you are. And I’m going to eat it, too, all of it,” he said, setting it on the kitchen counter. “Eventually.” He went back and lay down on the couch.

  Allie followed him, a quizzical expression on her face. “You’re too tired to eat? Jack must be working you hard,” she said, sitting down on the end of the couch as he moved his feet up to make room for her.

  “No, it’s good,” Cal said, stretching luxuriantly. “I feel good.” And he meant it. It had been this way ever since he’d gotten home from the cottage today; he’d been acutely, but pleasantly, aware of his body’s every physical sensation. The ache of his muscles, the heat of the water pulsing over him in the shower, the softness of the flannel shirt and faded jeans against his skin. He wondered how much of this had to do with Billy. Since he’d gotten back from Seattle yesterday, he hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her, unless he counted sitting on her back porch last night. It didn’t matter, though; he was still hyperaware of all the feelings—physical and otherwise—she called up in him. In fact, the best thing about working with Jack today might have been that it had taken the edge off his need and desire for her. Not in any permanent or meaningful way. Just enough to allow him to think that he could wait a little longer for their relationship to find a balance of its own that would include all three of them—him and Billy and Luke—and perhaps, now, even Wesley. He smiled to think of Billy’s concern about all of the convoluted storylines in their future.

  Allie, watching him, misunderstood. “You’ve liked working with Jack, haven’t you?” she asked, grabbing the throw off the couch and wrapping it around herself. It had been sunny, but still cool, these last couple of days.

  “I have liked it,” he said. “He’s not a trained architect, obviously, but like most builders, good builders, he’s very intuitive about design. And he’s a good worker, too. A fast worker.” This was all true, but sometimes Cal thought he valued Jack’s camaraderie as much as his work ethic. This had been especially true in the earlier days of the summer, before he left for Minneapolis and Seattle. They hadn’t talked a lot as they’d worked, but when they’d finished at the end of the day, they’d often sat on the back porch of the cottage. As the breeze blew in off the lake and the smell of sawdust hung in the air, they’d drunk a couple of the sodas that Jack kept in his cooler. It had reminded Cal, sometimes, of his first construction job, the summer he was sixteen, the summer he worked with one of his dad’s crews at the cottage on Cedar Lake. The details were different, of course, but there’d been the same sense of satisfaction at the end of a day, of pride in a job well done.

  He told Allie about this now, about how these two jobs, separated by almost twenty years, still had this in common. She listened, in her slightly proprietorial older sister way. He wanted her to know this, partly because their time together so far this summer had brought them closer together, but partly, too, because he wanted her to understand that what he was going to tell her next hadn’t simply come out of nowhere. This summer, in its way, had been a lead-up to it. “Remember when I drove down to Minneapolis last month?” he asked her now. “To see Steve Landau?”

  “I do. But you left for Seattle so soon afterward, you never told me how it went.”

  “It was good. Good enough for him to offer me a job.”

  “Working for him?” Allie asked, sitting up straighter on the couch.

  “Working with him,” Cal corrected her. “He’s looking to expand.”

  “Cal, are you thinking about moving back here?” she asked, sitting very still. She looked like she didn’t quite know if she trusted herself to believe what he was telling her.

  “I’m looking at an apartment in St. Paul on Monday,” he said.

  “Why am I just hearing about this now?” she objected, but when Cal started to explain that he hadn’t wanted to get ahead of himself, she waved his words away and instead flung herself down onto the other end of the couch to hug him. “Never mind. I don’t care. I just want you to be close by. Or closer than Seattle, anyway.”

  “I will be,” he said, hugging her back. “Can I tell the kids, though?”

  “Absolutely. They will be ecstatic. They’ve loved having you here this summer.”

  “I’ve loved it, too,” he said, thinking especially of two-year-old Brooke, with whom he’d bonded lately. Brooke was going through what Allie referred to as “a Band-Aid phase.” The last time Cal had come over, he’d brought her a box of Finding Dory–themed Band-Aids and then spent half an hour helping her put all of them on imaginary boo-boos she claimed to have suffered.

  When Allie was done hugging him, she said, “You know, this place”—she made a gesture that included the whole cabin—“will always be here when you need it.”

  He smiled his thanks at her, but she seemed suddenly pensive. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just glad the mediation between you and Meghan is over. I know it’s been hard for you, Cal. I still can’t quite believe what Meghan did.”

  He’d told Allie, the day after he’d told Billy, the reason he and Meghan were divorcing. She’d been shocked at first. And then, once her sisterly instincts had kicked in, she’d been angry. Later, though, once she’d had time to digest it, she’d been more baffled than anything else. Why hadn’t Meghan told him the truth about not wanting children in the first place? Cal didn’t have an answer to this question, and he’d refused to speculate with Allie about Meghan’s motivations. In the end, though, Allie had agreed the important thing was for them to move forward with the divorce.

  Now he sighed and rubbed his temples. There was something else he’d been meaning to discuss with Allie: Meghan had not been the only one at fault in their relationship. Yes, she had lied to him, but he, in a sense, had been complicit in the lie. He’d refused to see what was right in front of him. He tried to explain this to Allie now, but she was reluctant to find fault with him.

  “No, it’s true, Allie. I shouldn’t have needed a file folder to tell me what should have been obvious to me from the start: Meghan didn’t ever like or want children. She was never interested in other people’s children when we went out in public. She never wanted to hold our friends’ babies. And once, after we’d left one of my coworkers’ apartments—it was a little chaotic because she and her husband had a new baby and a toddler—she said in the elevator on the way down, ‘Oh my God. What a nightmare.’ And then, of course, there was your family’s visit last year. She was so tense the entire time because of Brooke and Wyatt. She called Brooke”—he hesitated—“a ‘crumb magnet.’ I think Meghan thought I’d find it funny, but I didn’t.” He’d thought Allie would be appalled when he told her this now for the first time, but she only laughed.

  “That’s not totally inaccurate. She does leave a little trail of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish behind her wherever she goes. But seriously, Cal, you shouldn’t blame yourself for not seeing that about Meghan. Lots of people aren’t interested in children until they have their own. Who’s to say Meghan wasn’t one of them? And who’s to say that you should have known the difference?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I was just . . . so lazy.”

  “You were never lazy,” Allie objected.

  “Or complacent, anyway. I told you I didn’t see the things I didn’t want to see. But I didn’t want to see them because Meghan
made everything so . . . so easy for me. And I let her do that. She took care of everything. I’d come home from work, or home from the session with the personal trainer Meghan had scheduled for me, and I’d reach into the fridge, which was stocked with my favorite coconut water, and then I’d take a shower, which always had the shower gel in it that I liked, and then I’d towel myself off and change into clothes just back from the French laundry Meghan used, and then we’d go out to dinner at the restaurant she’d made us a reservation at—you know, the new restaurant where no one could get a reservation. Except Meghan. Of course Meghan could. And here was the thing: she liked doing all of this. She loved it. If I tried to do any of it, she got annoyed. So I didn’t even have to feel guilty about it. She managed all of it: our apartment, our social life, our travel, even my public relations. I mean, my firm had people doing PR, but it turned out Meghan was better at it then they were. Meghan was good at everything she did. Except for being”—he shrugged—“an honest person.”

  Allie got up and went into the kitchen. Cal heard her opening cupboards and drawers and heating something in the microwave. When she returned, it was with a plate of shepherd’s pie, a napkin, and a fork. Cal hadn’t realized how hungry he was, but he dug in now. Allie watched him with a gentle amusement.

  “Lonnie always tells Wyatt and Brooke that life feels better on a full stomach,” she remarked when he’d finished.

  “Lonnie’s right,” Cal said, setting his plate on the coffee table. And because he wanted to focus on something positive, he told her about Billy. She’d known they had “a thing,” but he wanted her to understand it was more than a thing. He told her about their phone conversations when he was in Seattle, meeting Luke last night, and the three of them beginning, tentatively, to explore a future. He told her about Wesley, too, a piece of information Allie met thoughtfully.