Ian calls me a car in a gesture of courtliness so simple and straightforward it almost breaks my heart. I stand by the door like a little kid waiting for a ride to camp, listening to him speak perfect French into the receiver.
“Thank you for this,” I say as the car pulls into the driveway, two neat taps on the horn to let me know it’s arrived. Outside the sun is a ripe, dripping yellow, the sky a million brilliant shades beyond blue. “Not just for the cab, I mean. But for all of it.”
“Yeah,” Ian says, shrugging a little. “Of course.” He takes half a step in my direction, then hesitates like he isn’t sure if he ought to hug me or not. Finally he lifts his hand in an awkward wave. “Bye, Molly.”
I smile faintly and press my palm against his, lacing our fingers together long enough to squeeze in gratitude. I pull him a little closer, plant a kiss on the back of his hand. “Bye, Ian.”
Day9
One Week Later
I’m curled on a lounge chair in the lush green backyard of my mom’s house in Star Lake when the back door creaks open. “Whatcha reading now?” she calls, padding down the steps from the deck with a massive coffee mug in one hand. She’s wearing ripped jeans and one of her trademark long, thin cardigans, her blond hair in waves down past her shoulders.
I hold it up for her inspection as she crosses the late-summer grass—a fat paperback pinched from the overflowing bookshelves in our living room, a voluminous and wide-ranging cache that I never really paid much attention to until this week. It occurs to me to wonder if that will be the big takeaway from my relationship with Ian, this newfound ability to lose myself in stories—to find myself less alone there, to find myself forgiven. I want to thank him for that, though itoccurs to me that now probably isn’t the time.
My mom takes the book from my hand and glances at the back before returning it with a satisfied nod. “I’m going to try and not take it as a personal failing that it took you twenty years to discover you like to read,” she says, lips twisting. “What is that, your fourth book this week?”
“Fifth,” I confess, settling back down into the lounge chair and tilting my face up toward the sunshine. I’ve spent the week since I got back from Paris almost as if this entire year had never happened at all, holed up at the house while my mom’s cranky cat, Vita, wound wary circles around my ankles and industriously kneaded a pillow next to my head. Jet lag, I assured my mom when she periodically popped her head into my bedroom that first morning, but of course it was more than that; in the past she might have taken me at my word, closed the door and left me to my own mopey devices, but this time she sat down on the mattress beside me.
“Hey,” she said, reaching out and straightening the sleeve of my T-shirt. “We don’t do that anymore, remember? You don’t have to tell me what’s going on if you don’t want to. But you also don’t have to lie.”
I hesitated for a moment, old suspicions creaking like a medieval suit of armor, but in my heart I knew she was right. I opened my mouth to tell her everything. “I broke up with Ian” was as far as I got before I burst into tears.
I cried for a long time with my head on my mom’s shoulder, leaving dark spots on her delicate silk shirt—for what Icould have had with Ian if I’d trusted either one of us enough to be myself around him. For whatever I might have had with Gabe. Finally I sat up on the mattress, wiping my wet, puffy face with the back of my hand. “You can’t write a book about any of this, you realize,” I warned her, sniffling wetly. “No matter how blocked you ever get.”
My mom made a face at that, rueful. “I deserved that,” she admitted wryly, then gathered me up one more time.
Now, a week later, she squeezes my knee and boosts herself up off the lounge chair, takes a sip of her coffee. “Corina is driving up from the city tonight to work on some marketing strategies for the new book,” she tells me. “I thought we could go have dinner at the Lodge, if you’re interested.”
I nod, curious. “That sounds great.” Then: “Mom,” I blurt, before I can talk myself out of it. “Are you and Corina...” I trail off, not exactly sure how to continue.
My mom raises her sharp eyebrows. “Are Corina and I—” She stops short, and I think she’s about to play dumb or deny it, or that maybe I really do have it wrong, but instead she tips her head to the side and looks at me for a long moment. “Would that bother you?” she asks. “If we were?”
I laugh a little, surprised. “No,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Of course not.”
Her eyes narrow. “Really?” she asks quietly, and it’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever heard her sound. It occurs to me that all of us have secrets. It occurs to me that all of us are afraid.
“Mom!” I scramble up off the lounge chair, my book hitting the grass with a crinkly flop; I wrap my hands around her wrists, her coffee sloshing a bit. “Not atall. I want you to have someone, you know? I want you to be happy.”
She flushes at that, pretty and pleased and young-looking. “All right,” she says, gently shaking me off and making a bit of a face like she’s the teenager and I’m the mom, like I’m embarrassing her. “Then yes, to answer your question. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months.”
“That’s amazing,” I tell her, sitting back down on the lounge chair. “Seriously. I’m really glad.”
“Well,” she says, a little awkwardly. “I’m really glad, too.” She clears her throat then, picking my book up and flicking at the cover with one painted fingernail. “That one ends happy,” she tells me, then heads back across the grass toward the house.
That afternoon I lace up my sneakers and go for a long, sweaty run, perspiration dripping down my backbone and my sneakers hitting the hard-packed dirt with a satisfying thud as I loop the lake. I find myself smiling at moms with baby strollers and raising my hand to wave at tourists in kayaks, weirdly cheerful: I’ve spent so much of my time in this town hiding. It’s nice to feel the sun on my face.
I take my old familiar route from last summer, along the trail that hugs the water and winds down past the Star Lake Lodge, the inn where I worked last year. I stopped by andsaw my old boss, Penn, and her kids earlier this week, chasing sweet, mischievous Fabian through the lobby and lying on the floor of the office to color with Desi, who was completely silent for the entirety of last summer but chattered a blue streak as she dragged a crayon across the page with one chubby fist.
“Since when do you talk so much?” I teased her, and she looked at me like I was demented.
“Um, sincealways?” she asked with exquisite five-year-old exasperation, and dug another crayon out of the box.
Now I turn down the road that leads into town, passing French Roast and the tiny bookstore with its perpetual stack ofDriftwoodpaperbacks in the window. The magazine rack outside is full of tourist-friendly gossip rags:SABS HITS REHAB, the headlines scream. Well, I think with a combination of sadness and admiration. Good for her. Probably both of us could stand another fresh start.
I keep going, down past Bunchie’s Diner and the new, cursed juice place, but split off before I hit the block that houses Donnelly’s Pizza. Gabe said Patrick was home for the summer, but even after all this time I can’t imagine that running into me would be anything close to a kuddelmuddel for him. I hope he’s happy, though, whatever it is he’s up to. And I like to think he’d hope the same for me.
I’m starting to slow down when my phone dings in my pocket with a text from Roisin:Any requests from Costco?she wants to know.I’m here w my mom and she’s buying usthe whole store for the apartment.
