by Cari Noga
ALSO BY CARI NOGA
Sparrow Migrations
Plover Pilgrimage
Road Biking Michigan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Cari Noga
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503901322
ISBN-10: 1503901327
Cover design by David Drummond
For all the brave souls who dare to become parents.
CONTENTS
Prologue JANE
Chapter 1 LUCY
Chapter 2 JANE
Chapter 3 LUCY
Chapter 4 JANE
Chapter 5 LUCY
Chapter 6 JANE
Chapter 7 LUCY
Chapter 8 JANE
Chapter 9 LUCY
Chapter 10 JANE
Chapter 11 LUCY
Chapter 12 JANE
Chapter 13 LUCY
Chapter 14 JANE
Chapter 15 LUCY
Chapter 16 JANE
Chapter 17 LUCY
Chapter 18 JANE
Chapter 19 LUCY
Chapter 20 JANE
Chapter 21 LUCY
Chapter 22 JANE
Chapter 23 LUCY
Chapter 24 JANE
Chapter 25 LUCY
Chapter 26 JANE
Chapter 27 LUCY
Chapter 28 JANE
Chapter 29 LUCY
Chapter 30 JANE
Chapter 31 LUCY
Chapter 32 JANE
Chapter 33 LUCY
Chapter 34 JANE
Chapter 35 LUCY
Chapter 36 JANE
Chapter 37 LUCY
Chapter 38 JANE
Chapter 39 LUCY
Chapter 40 JANE
Chapter 41 LUCY
Chapter 42 JANE
Chapter 43 LUCY
Chapter 44 JANE
Chapter 45 LUCY
Chapter 46 JANE
Chapter 47 LUCY
Chapter 48 JANE
Chapter 49 LUCY
Chapter 50 JANE
Chapter 51 LUCY
Chapter 52 JANE
Chapter 53 LUCY
Chapter 54 JANE
Chapter 55 LUCY
Chapter 56 JANE
Chapter 57 LUCY
Chapter 58 JANE
Chapter 59 LUCY
Chapter 60 JANE
Chapter 61 LUCY
Chapter 62 JANE
Chapter 63 LUCY
Chapter 64 JANE
Chapter 65 LUCY
Chapter 66 JANE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
JANE
January 1991, US Coast Guard Air Station, Kodiak, Alaska
Kodiak had hunkered under a blizzard for the last two days. The wind was so ferocious I’d gazed at the nautical map on our dining room wall and wondered aloud whether the archipelago the island anchored would rattle apart, its fragments drifting into the Gulf of Alaska and then the northern Pacific. Even across the international date line into tomorrow.
“If it does, we’ll go out after ’em,” Jim declared, his Coastie pride so assured that I believed him, or at least I would have loved to believe him, especially when he lifted Matt onto his shoulders and paraded around the tiny house with our delighted almost-three-year-old. “A Coastie always delivers.”
But the storm abated with no need to call out the Coasties. After two days indoors, I relented and went out with Matt to play on the giant snow mounds. It was colder and windier than I’d thought.
“Ten more minutes, then we go in, OK?” I crossed my arms over my bulging belly, trying to pin down Jim’s flapping coat. Maternity snow gear wasn’t standard stock at the CGX. Rather than pay for shipping on a special order, I’d worn one of his coats all winter, but the zipper no longer closed.
“Watch me!” Atop one of the mounds, Matt waved a mittened hand, blue to match his hat. I’d knitted both. Another way to stretch Jim’s paycheck.
“I’m watching.” Inside, my needles now held a pair of booties. Yellow, not tempting fate. We’d know in four more weeks, anyway. As long as the baby was healthy, it didn’t matter, I reminded myself. And a brother would be nice for Matt. Still, I wanted a daughter. Amy? Heather? Laura? None of the names we’d discussed sounded quite right.
Matt belly flopped down the path he’d eroded. “I can go fast!”
“Really fast!” I crouched down to grab his icy mitten and haul him to his feet, my chest pressing against my belly. Linda’s front door opened, and my neighbor stepped out.
“Jane! Have you been watching?”
“Sure.” I nodded at Matt, climbing the snow pile again.
“Not that.” Linda shook her head. “The TV. The news.” Her words were puffs of white.
My own breath caught, a frozen moment of realization. We all knew the deadline had passed. The Coast Guard was still military, even if civilians didn’t realize it.
“He’s sending them in. It’s on CNN.”
My breath finally released in a gusty puff. “Air strikes?”
Linda nodded, and we looked west, toward the base, where Jim and Linda’s husband, Adam, were both on duty.
“Come in,” Linda said. “I just put a pot of coffee on.”
Persuaded with the promise of brownies, Matt ate two before his eyelids closed. I tucked him in on Linda’s bed before returning to the TV, where we watched President Bush make promises. Nighttime video of Baghdad followed, a mostly black screen with a sickly yellowish-green glow along the horizon, flashes occasionally erupting above. Then a retired-general talking head, then back to the White House. Repeat.
Matt slept on. The baby was still, too. I’d remember that later. Adam called, said he and Jim had to work late. Linda made dinner, then helped me get Matt back home and into his own bed. On our living room couch, I knitted a few more rows on the yellow booties while the news cycled again, trying to stay awake until Jim got home.
It was after midnight when Matt’s cries and an eight-months-pregnant gotta-go-now urge woke me, still alone on the couch. Just how truly alone I would remember later, too. No kicking or pushing. Hadn’t been all day. Hurriedly I went to the bathroom, not even bothering to turn on a light, eager to soothe Matt. If only I’d turned on the light. If only I’d looked. I’m sure I would have seen the water turning pink. Instead, Jim found me curled up with Matt the next morning. Our son dozed peacefully. The bloodstains on the sheet under me seeped through to the mattress.
January wore on. Baghdad fell. Headlines trumpeted the US victory. Tensions eased on the rest of the base, except for our house, where I unraveled the yellow booties. I gave the needles to Linda when we transferred to the Lower 48 three months later. Houston. Jim said the warm sun would help. He was sure of it.
He was wrong. The cold had penetrated me too deeply. For years, in fact, I longed for a blizzard as wild as the one that shook the islands that time. Even fiercer, one that would have swept Kodiak out to sea, across the international date line, and into tomorrow, so that worst day of my life would never have come.
Chapter 1
LUCY
April 13, 2011, New York City
Phoebe and I walk around on wood-chip trails, looking at wildflowers and listening for birds, so we can fill out the flora and fauna columns on our worksheets. Ms. Kedzie and the other sixth grade teacher said the field trip was to teach us wildlife lessons, but you can see most of the same stuff in Central Park, and Daddy and I go there almost every weekend. Still, I write my list carefully, alphabetizing everything, making sure the columns are even, ten flora and ten fauna, when Mom’s text pops up over my Hello Kitty wallpaper.
Landed in LA. Wish us luck! Daddy sends besos. xoxo
“You can get texts out here?” Phoebe says, looking up from her list. It took us an hour to get from the city to the nature center for the field trip.
“Apparently.” Mom really wants this meeting with the network to go well, so I start to type back, buena suerte, but all of a sudden Eli Moore and Joel Griffin are standing right next to me.
“Hey! No screens on field trips!” Eli says.
“Go away.” I roll my eyes.
“Seriously. Mrs. Williams checked our backpacks, didn’t she, Joel? No fair.”
“Probably because you’re not responsible,” Phoebe says.
“Right. Ms. Kedzie didn’t check ours,” I say.
“Uh-uh. No one’s supposed to have them today,” Eli declares.
“So give it over!” Before I can stop him, Joel’s grabbed my phone.
“Hey! Give it back!”
“Catch!” Joel tosses it to Eli. The two of them break off the path, running through a little strip of woods toward an open, grassy space beyond.
“Come on!” I charge after them.
“Forget it, Lucy. When we tell Ms. Kedzie, they’ll get in more trouble,” Phoebe says.
But I was sick and tired of them both. They sat behind us on the bus here, and Eli spent the whole trip with his knees up, jabbing my back. Inside, when they showed us the amphibian exhibit, I saw Joel poking at the snapping turtle, teasing the poor thing.
I dodge in between the trees, my Hello Kitty glitter high-tops pounding. The ground’s uneven with roots and old logs, not smooth like the trail. Ahead of me Eli trips, sending my phone and dead brown leaves flying.
“Hah!” Serves him right. I close in, but Joel gets there before me and then sprints out of the woods, across the grass. He’s fast and turns around to run backward, wiggling my phone, nyah-nyah-nyah, which makes me even madder. Deirdre calls things sodding when she doesn’t like them. Sodding crowded subways. Sodding international phone rates. Sodding boys.
I run faster than ever, lunging after Joel. My fingers brush the bottom of his T-shirt, then grab it. Got him! I lean farther forward, trying to gather in a fistful of fabric, but Joel speeds up, trying to get away, and I’m yanked off balance and falling forward, and it’s like the time Mom and Daddy and I saw a home-plate dive when we went to the network family night at Yankee Stadium, except on grass instead of dirt.
When I sit up, my sleeves and leggings have long green stains on them. I can scrape my fingernail through the green gunk on my knee, the smell sweet but too strong. Ms. Kedzie is marching my way, one hand piloting Joel, my phone in the other, her lips in a tight line.
Chapter 2
JANE
April 15, 2011, Old Mission Peninsula, Michigan
Shifting back onto my heels, I admire the row of new green shoots I’ve uncovered. Garlic grows straight out of the soil, and leaves start forking off the shoot in V formations. It always gives me a good feeling, once I’ve cleared off the winter mulch, to see those green Vs reaching for the spring sun.
One row cleared, three more to go. I rise, grabbing the old bleacher pad turned kneepad. I used to sit on it at Matt’s Little League games. A different rite of spring from a lifetime ago. Turning to the next row, I see Martha’s muddy postal car slowing down.
I hold my breath. It’s the fourth mailbox since last fall. Plow trucks hit the trifecta this winter, taking one out in December, one in January, and the third in February. That makes this the worst winter, mailboxwise, since I’ve lived up north. Now that Jim’s gone I’m stuck with replacing them. After the third one sailed into the culvert, I complained at the township office.
“Fact of life around here,” said the unsympathetic road supervisor, jamming his hands into the pockets of his Carhartt jacket. “Get a PO box, if you’re so tired of it.”
I considered it, briefly. But I knew I’d wind up regretting the daily five-mile trip up to the general store that doubles as the post office more than the chore of installing a fourth mailbox, even in the damp gray chill that is February here on the forty-fifth parallel.
Well, just shy of it. The Old Mission Peninsula is a ridge-lined, gnarled eighteen-mile finger of land that slices Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay and pokes right at that imaginary line halfway between the equator and the North Pole. It’s a lovely place in summer. Cool lake-effect breezes. Gorgeous views of verdant vineyards and orchards sloping down the hillsides. People don’t like it so much in the winter, when the lake-effect breezes drop snow that’s measured in feet, sometimes even double-digit feet.
I like it year-round. I live on top of one of the ridges, with a view of a bay on both sides. An aerie just for me. Except for the decimated mailboxes, I like the snow. Like the quiet, the stillness. Like how it further insulates my garlic, nestled under the mulch, my raspberries, my asparagus. Like how it keeps most people away, except for the plow truck drivers and Martha. She’ll be careful, I know, but the shoulders are treacherous in early April, spin-your-wheels muddy one day, slip-and-slide frozen the next.
The wind is blowing warm, from the south, and I unzip my own Carhartt as I go to meet her. Actually the jacket was Jim’s. It’s too big, but I wear it with a couple of sweatshirts underneath.
I pick my way around the potholes in the gravel driveway. Might not be able to get away with letting that go another year. If it’s too rough, my tomatoes bump and bruise in the truck. That’s not good for Plain Jane’s reputation.
My mother used to call me Plain Jane. That was before she married Esteban and Gloria was born. So she wasn’t comparing us then. But Gloria turned out to be the pretty one, too.
Muddy ice skims hide several more potholes on the driveway. Martha’s still sitting out on the road in her postal car, flashers on. That’s unusual. She’s not one who likes to chitchat, either. Sometimes I envy her the job. Lots of quiet on the back roads, and a steady paycheck.
“Hey, Jane. Feels a little bit like spring today.” Martha’s probably fifty, only a few years older than I am, but spending entire days in her car has taken a toll. She’s doughy around the middle and pale all year. But she’s dependable and has never once taken out the mailbox. She also always has the latest gossip.
“Little bit.” I nod, digging my toe into a clump of icy snow. The plow’s winter accumulation, thigh high a month ago, has melted to ankle depth, the once-soft white flakes now a crunchy, granular gray.
“Hear about the raid over in Leelanau?” Martha shields her eyes as she looks up at me, so I can’t see them.
“A raid? Like for drugs or something?”
“Not drugs. People.” Martha reaches over onto her passenger seat and hands me a newspaper. “Immigration.”
“ICE busts 12 at Catholic church,” the headline reads. “Priest decries raid as ‘cruel.’” I squint, but can’t read any further without my glasses.
“They came to the Spanish Mass over at St. Pat’s and picked ’em up afterward,” Martha fills in for me. “Most of them worked late into harvest and were trying to hang on over the winter. Working at the processors, keeping their kids in school.”
“There’s a crime,” I say tartly. “Taking the factory jobs no one else wants. Giving their kids an education.”
“And keeping them out of Mexico,” Martha adds. “Talk about drugs. It’s street warfare down there, the drug cartels and gangs and all. That’s w
hat Miguel says, anyway.” She adjusts the seat belt around her middle and waves the paper away as I try to hand it back. “Keep it. I’ve read it. Have a nice weekend.”
“You, too,” I say automatically, though for me, the only distinguishing feature is that the weekend driver, rather than Martha, will be by. I open the mailbox to check for her leavings. A catalog, junk mail coupons, and three handwritten envelopes, all with local postmarks. Subscriptions, most likely. Nothing that looks like a bill, so I decide to let the garlic wait and open the envelopes instead.
In the house, Sarge meets me at the door, then bolts for the barn. He’s an indoor-outdoor cat. Mostly indoors in winter, mostly outdoors in summer. Spring and fall it’s a judgment call. Today’s the first day he’s deemed outside-worthy since last fall. Another good sign.
Sure enough, the envelopes contain three subscriptions to Plain Jane’s Community Supported Agriculture. Two are for the standard deal. They pay up front; I deliver a weekly share of whatever the farm produces from June through September. Kind of like a farmers’ market delivery service. But the third wants to buy a working share—half off in exchange for coming to work two hours a week all season. The mother says she’s eager to expose her kids “to the work ethic of farm life.”
Video-game addicts, no doubt. Or permanently glued to their phone or game thing. Great. The county Extension people talked me into offering the working share at the marketing workshop I went to last fall. “By offering an experience as well as a service, you distinguish yourself,” the director had said. “Plus, you increase your word-of-mouth exposure exponentially.”
Exponentially, all I know is how the work piles up in summer. It’s started already, but from May on it just gains speed, like a snowball pushed downhill. It’s a lot to handle, but it’ll be worse trying to teach someone else to do what would take them twice as long. I do just about everything on the farm, and if I can’t, I call Miguel. With his contacts in the migrant community, he can round up someone eager and experienced within twenty-four hours, or he’ll do it himself, as well as or better than I can. As I’m pondering the problem, the phone rings.
“May I please speak with Mrs. Jane McArdle?” It’s a woman’s crisp voice.