Northern Light

by Deb Davies

  Edited by Chelsea Cambeis

  Proofread by Hannah Ryder

  NORTHERN LIGHT

  Copyright © 2020 Deb Davies

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by BHC Press

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2019954386

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-120-9 (Hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-121-6 (Softcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-122-3 (Ebook)

  For information, write:

  BHC Press

  885 Penniman #5505

  Plymouth, MI 48170

  Visit the publisher:

  www.bhcpress.com

  To my family,

  who have always encouraged me to write.

  Claire and Laurel were sitting at a heart pine table, letting the day fade. The kitchen cupboards had, at some point in time, been painted lemon yellow, but the wood had been dented and touched up with lighter shades. White café curtains were pushed back from the two six-over-six windows facing the North Branch of the Au Sable. Sunlight lit the row of tall cedar trees that ran along the road to the east and turned a corner, shielding the garage that held what had been, for Claire’s late husband George, a “driving around” car.

  “Congratulations on your divorce,” Claire said. “We should toast!” She poured out the last of the wine in the bottle, so bubbles wobbled and burst on the rim of Laurel’s glass.

  When Claire had transferred to ninth grade in Wyoming, a Grand Rapids suburb, Claire’s would-be followers arrived in a gaggle, awed by Claire’s physical attributes: blond hair, green eyes, heavy breasts, narrow waist, long legs. But that Claire wasn’t who Claire was, or would be. She was still tree-climbing Claire, stone-skipping Claire, Claire who played street hockey with her brothers. Her brothers had let her be the goalie as a joke. Her nose had been broken in an hour, but she’d toughed her way through the taunts, split lips, and black eyes, and been their goalie in a number of games. Her mother was German and had read them Grimms’ fairy tales; her Irish father adored Beowulf and crowed over the gore.

  Arriving at her new school, Claire had sized up her admirers and decided to be practical. Win more flies with honey, her mother would say, and so Claire was kind to everyone. She relived the colossal relief she felt when she realized Laurel walked to school and back the same way she did. Laurel who was not popular, but was skeptical, honest, and, thank the Lord, smart.

  A flood of good memories swept over her. Sharing a family vacation at a small Michigan beach. Swimming, running, swinging out on a rope swing tied to a tree on a hilltop, then letting go to land with a splash in deep water. Sitting up at night on a shed roof, looking at the stars, talking about plans for the future.

  Laurel, even when she was that young, had wanted to be a teacher. After getting her Master’s degree in English Education, she became an assistant professor at the same community college where David, her husband, taught literature. Claire had wanted to travel, and she and George had done that, never making it to Europe but touring Nova Scotia, New Orleans, and the Hawaiian Island of Kauai.

  “What did we used to sing? ‘Make new friends but keep the old’?”

  “Who are you calling ‘old’?” Laurel sounded rueful.

  Claire looked at Laurel, whose thick, dark, short hair, now showing some white, looked part pixie cut, part hacked-off. Her arms and hips were thinner, and she had laugh lines around her eyes, but in her green rayon tank top, shorts, and amber framed glasses, she looked much the way she had when Claire had last seen her. Laurel, when she arrived, had looked at Claire, seeing places where her friend’s once dark mahogany hair had faded to toasted marshmallow. Claire’s pink, striped sundress revealed tops of breasts beginning to permanently freckle.

  Neither woman had looked at the other for signs of age or mileage. Rather, each looked for reassurance time had not changed the connection that, since ninth grade, had made them instant friends.

  “To you,” Claire said.

  “To us,” Laurel responded, pulling her glasses down on her nose to look at Claire.

  They clinked glasses. Laurel was sipping from a Waterford wine glass with a chipped rim, and Claire took a gulp of scotch from her own glass, big enough to be an iced tea tumbler.

  “You made new friends here,” Laurel said. “Which is a damn good thing, because I didn’t get here when George died. I thought I would be here instantly, but David kept protesting he would turn over a new leaf, and Jen—our supposedly all-grown-up college graduate—fell completely, inexplicably apart. How could I divorce her father now? She wanted all three of us to go to counseling. She and I went. When David finally came, he tried to charm the counselor, who said I should dump him on his ass. So counseling helped, but the process took forever. By the time Jen took off with friends ‘to heal,’ as she put it, you had already gone through some of the shock of losing your husband within two years of moving to a new place. Be honest, Claire. We promised we would be. How awful do you feel? Do you hate me because I didn’t come?”

  “I’m mostly all right, I think. Of course I don’t hate you. You called. You wrote. You know I’ve always kept your letters.” Claire swiped tears from under her eyes. “Things could have been worse. George’s death was peaceful. And you’re right; we made friends here, so I had generous support. Maybe I ran on adrenaline, because now, I’m always tired. If I drink enough coffee or scotch, I can do odds and ends, but I don’t seem to get anything done. I need to get my hair cut. Maybe colored. George would hate the way I look.”

  Laurel put down her glass, reached over, and not for the first time since she’d arrived, hugged Claire gently. “You will always be my beautiful best friend. You’ll turn heads of lustful men when you’re ninety-five.”

  “God, I hope not,” Claire said.

  The house was quiet. Both women took a deep breath and relaxed.

  Claire’s neighbors had welcomed Laurel and were gone, leaving leftover food they had brought: deviled eggs, hummus, fresh pita, a white china bowl of dark, sweet Michigan cherries. The remains of a New York style cheesecake still sat between them.

  “Your friends here are interesting.” Laurel waved a fork at Claire. “I think they were nice to me because they’re worried about you living here by yourself. I have to say, I am flabbergasted to find you here, with or without George. I thought you two loved the condo in Grand Rapids and the life you had. Concerts and fundraisers and bookstores.”

  “Lots of single people live alone. I’m not on the yellow brick road here. You make my life sound like lions and tigers and bears.”

  “I was thinking thunderstorms and snow, and no power.”

  “I’ll figure it out, Laurel. George lived in this area when he was younger, and moving here remained an ongoing dream for him. He liked working as a bank examiner when he was younger, but his job meant he traveled a lot. Expressways got busier, speed limits got higher, and his boss wanted his reports e-mailed the day before yesterday. He dreamed about retiring to a simpler life. We talked about Gaylord, which has class; Fairview, which has hills; and Oscoda, which has the beach on Lake Huron. Then he found this place, and the odd thing was that this exact s
ame house had been his nana’s—his grandparents’—home, up for sale after a different family moved out. They took his first offer. My gosh, Laurel, you should see your face!”

  After a pause, Claire added, “Of course, if we’d known what was going to happen, we would have stayed in Grand Rapids. Oh, Laurel, don’t cry. Do you want some more wine? There’s more wine, more scotch, and more bourbon in the basement.”

  “I don’t want more wine!” Laurel rubbed the back of her hand under her nose. “I want to have helped, Claire! We promised we would always help each other, no matter where life took us.”

  “We were kids, Laurel. We didn’t know how tangled adult lives get. And you still can help. Look, isn’t this sunset gorgeous?”

  The sun had started to slide behind the oak trees on the far bank of the river, but was still reflecting off the water and pouring through the west windows. They couldn’t see the river clearly. The bank nearest the kitchen was a tangle of raspberry creepers and tree-strangling nets of wild grapes draped over stunted cedars and tamaracks.

  “I’ve already gone through mourning.” Claire sounded determined. “I am not going to waste your visit doing it again. Even after he was sick, George never forgot how happy he was here, as a kid, catching his first trout in the river, eating wild blueberries, finding morels. The Campbells—that was their place to the south, before it burned—remember him first coming over when he was younger than four years old. Before he retired, we enjoyed planning what we’d do here: looking up repair options online, budgeting, watching This Old House.”

  Laurel could not picture George as a four-year-old boy. He’d loved good cars, expensive scotch, and good cigars. “Wild blueberries. Huh,” she said.

  “We didn’t give up our lives when we moved here; we just changed them. Plus, once George retired, we weren’t in his business friends’ everyday lives. Friendships drift. People moved to live near their grandkids. Retired corporate friends moved to New Jersey or Gulf Shores. I may have more support than I did before we moved. This might have been an awful time to throw you a welcome party, Laurel, but the people we’ve gotten to know are welcoming, and they wanted to meet you. They seem drawn to this house.”

  “They’re drawn to you.” Laurel’s tone was wry. “People always have been.”

  The flick of a cat door announced the arrival of a small black cat. Its hair was neither long nor short. It had small, owl-like ear tufts and a plume-shaped tail that stuck up like a bottle brush. Regarding Laurel with round gold eyes, it opened its mouth, revealing small, even white teeth and a curled red tongue, and made a noise that sounded like “mao.”

  “Yours?” Laurel asked.

  “I think so,” Claire said. “He has taken to sleeping near me. Pour him some cream, would you? You’re closer to the refrigerator.”

  Laurel found a saucer and complied while the cat transferred his attention to her leather sandals, rolling on her feet and rubbing the side of his head against her ankles. He brought in outdoor smells of sun and clean dirt and pine needles and grass.

  “You’re a hit,” Claire said. “He turned up on the patio a few days after George died.”

  “You know what most people would say.”

  “That it’s George’s spirit? I doubt it. George was lactose intolerant.”

  “Are you going to keep him?”

  The cat eyed Laurel while she supplied another installment. From this angle, Laurel could see a little streak of white hair, like spilled cream, running down his throat and chest.

  He stretched out one fur-pantalooned leg at a time and cleaned his paws before getting up, stomping over to the cat door, and butting it open with his head to let himself out on the porch.

  “If he’ll be a kept cat. I managed to get him in to Sanjay, my vet and a friend—you’ll meet him—to be checked out and neutered. He didn’t claw me, but he knocked a screen loose when I took him home and closed him in the house. So I had the cat door installed, and I give him a bowl of food twice a day. He likes me better now that he can come and go.”

  “What did the vet say?”

  “Young, already neutered, with a chip that no one had ever bothered to register. Maybe someone left him. I don’t know why he took to you so fast,” Claire said.

  “Recognized that I put up with bullshit?”

  “Laurel, your David—”

  “Not mine anymore.”

  “David,” Claire continued, “couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

  “Worse, he couldn’t keep it out of my friends’ private parts.” Laurel tried to look determinedly amused and failed.

  “Some friends those were,” Claire said. “I hope your divorce attorney was not someone David slept with.”

  “I hired a lawyer from out of town,” Laurel told her. “If David had been a teeny bit more discreet, we might have parted amicably. The last straw was when he and Beth Nelson—the woman who helped him input his grades—fell asleep together on the floor of his office and his officemate came in at 2:00 a.m. to work on assignments. His officemate tripped on them and dropped his computer on the arch of David’s right foot, breaking four of the long bones.” A quirky smile touched Laurel’s face.

  “You are smug,” Claire said. “Good for you, Laurel!”

  “You know what pisses me off,” Laurel responded, “is my other friends—those who didn’t succumb to David’s charm—told me if I’d kept him under my thumb, I could have stopped his sampling, which definitely got worse as we got older. Oh, wait. I almost forgot the people who told me if I grew my hair out, got a boob job, and kept dying my hair different colors, he’d come back to me. People who cared about me said he would hump a catsup bottle. Even Beth dumped him.”

  “George thought David had an ego problem.”

  “A what? Was George losing his grip on reality?” She paused. “Sorry, Claire, I did think you’d tell George, but I never thought anyone could believe David lacked chutzpah. Still, that ‘losing his grip’ comment was an awful thing for me to say.”

  “George said there was a guy he worked with who, every time he got passed over for promotion, sued for a divorce and married someone younger. Not necessarily someone prettier than the woman he’d been living with, but someone who was easily impressed.”

  Laurel wrinkled her forehead. “George’s theory might be right, especially for people who teach in colleges. Boy Genius earns his doctorate. He then has to wallow in office politics and chair committees before he gets tenure. But by then, B. G. sports a bald spot and is stuck behind a desk, supervising hotshot kids with new ideas and research. That definitely happened to David.”

  “That sounded sympathetic. Do you miss him?” Claire asked.

  “I miss him,” Laurel admitted. “And he always was crazy about Jen. I still picture him carrying her on his shoulders when she was a toddler and wanted to see over crowds. I miss him partly because he’s in my memories of those years. I did shit work for him. Ironed his shirts and sent out his manuscripts. I miss him the way I miss my mother, some days. She and I were never Hallmark card close, but there are days when I find I’m talking to her about something no one else would remember. Her recipe, say, for spice cake with meringue topping.”

  “She gave me that recipe too,” Claire said. “I’ve never made it, but I can share it with you. Heck, some day, when we feel better, we could even try to make it.”

  Both were quiet for a while, watching the sun slip below the trees. Laurel broke the silence.

  “What do you call the cat?”

  “Pearl,” Claire said, “and I’m not changing it. Black Pearl, if we’re being formal. I thought he was female. Scrape up the last of your cheesecake, and we’ll get you unpacked.” She reached down to get Laurel’s gym bag and then winced, dropping it.

  “I’m not packing any barbells or bricks, and not many books,” Laurel said. “I know you used to heft crates around at the bookstore when you worked there. What hurts? Your knee? Your shoulder? How did you do it?”

&nbs
p; “Crud,” Claire said. “See that door to the right of the windows? How clean and shiny the floor is? I paid for that cleanliness, but I’m not telling you how until I freshen up my drink and get you settled in.”

  This was a dining room,” Claire explained, leading Laurel through a small dim room lined with books. “George turned it into his library. You can come back and browse later.”

  They stepped into a long room, wood blinds drawn over a wall of west-facing windows. Claire pulled the cord on the blinds so Laurel could see more of the world. There were taller trees outside these windows—a few oak and hickory—also swathed by climbing vines, and when Claire pushed open the door to the overgrown flagstone patio, they could hear the river, gurgling and swooshing around fallen trees and stones. A little bleak, Laurel thought, neither wild nor domesticated, but “How beautiful!” was what she said.

  Laurel could feel Claire’s presence in the living room. In one corner, a black grand piano lurked, top down. She remembered Claire had taken lessons, at George’s suggestion, but that Claire had said the only things she’d learned to play were “Londonderry Air” and “Loch Lomond.” On the top of the piano, a blue ceramic bowl full of past-their-prime oranges perfumed the air with citrus and a hint of citrus mold, next to three of George’s white T-shirts and one of Claire’s recently shed, apricot-colored brassieres. Mismatched afghans and quilts slumped on the floor near the door wall. Books and magazines, ranging from Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal to back issues of Cosmopolitan ranged across the couch.

  George’s taste was also obvious. The color scheme was brown and navy blue, dominated by a plaid couch and a cream-colored recliner, and blue throw pillows on rocking chairs. Oil paintings of ducks taking flight hung above the piano. The Economist magazines, also obviously George’s, were piled in stacks beneath it.