“Point taken,” I said. “Have you ever dated a woman?”
A flush touched her cheeks. “Well, no. But my point remains valid.”
I chuckled. “You’re right.”
“I mean, think about how long it took for us to start dating after we met. When you died, I tried dating, and it was impossible for me to find anyone I wanted to get physical with. I was really turned off by guys making sexual innuendo early on, or sending me dick pics—”
“That’s because unsolicited dick pics are disgusting. When someone sends me those, I use Google images to send one right back. Usually a bigger one.”
She smiled. “Eventually, though, I concluded that I have to get to know someone—male or female—before I’m capable of feeling anything romantic, any sexual feelings. I’d just started to think there was something wrong with me when I met a patient who was demisexual. And all of a sudden, everything fell into place.”
“So you’re attracted to men and women?” I asked. It wasn’t something that ever occurred to me when I knew her, but she’d never been one to comment on the attractiveness of celebrities or other guys, even when we were just friends. I’d always thought she was just being considerate of my feelings.
“I’m attracted to a person. To their insides.”
“So you’re okay with this? With…us?”
She nibbled on her lower lip, something I’d seen her do a thousand times. It had never been more endearing. “I’m not sure I’d go that far. We still have a lot to work out. But…I’ve missed you. Kissing you feels nice. Right now, that’s good enough.”
She leaned forward, lips curving into a smile. I pulled her against me, and my mouth found hers. As soft and supple as I remembered. She shifted, and I ran my tongue across her lower lip. Her tongue met mine, hesitantly at first, but then more eagerly. A sigh escaped me.
My hand found her waist, and she trailed her fingers down my back. I shifted so I lay on the bench with Jess atop me. She moaned when my hands found her perfect breasts. We still fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
I needed more. Needed to feel her burning skin against mine.
One of Jess’s hands moved to my breast, and she stiffened. I pulled back. “Are you okay?”
Her face turned bright red. “I don’t know. This is really new. But I made a vow. Until death do us part, right?”
A wave of disappointment hit me. If she was only doing this because she didn’t believe in divorce… “The man you married died, remember?”
“I know. Really, I do. But I never stopped loving that person. And now that you’re sitting here in front of me…I want to be okay with it. We just need to take things slowly, if that’s okay.”
I pulled her toward me, rested my chin on top of her hair. “Of course it’s okay. How could I expect you not to need a little time? This is a major adjustment, for both of us. It’s not like you adding blond streaks to your hair.”
With a chuckle, she reached up and twirled a highlighted strand around one finger. “No, I guess it’s not. But…my heart beats faster when you’re around. I’m more alive. I just want to…”
She tilted her face up to mine, and I leaned forward. We closed the gap between us, parted lips meeting eagerly. I cupped her face, moved my hands into her hair, reveling in the touch, taste, and feel of someone I never thought I’d see again. Someone I never even dared dream would let me touch her if she found out the truth.
Jess shifted, pulled me closer and sweeping her tongue into my mouth. If there was a God, I’d found my heaven. I never wanted to spend another second without this woman. I moaned.
She stiffened a second time, and I cursed myself for getting carried away so easily. Then she leaned back, and I realized what had made her pause.
Over Jess’s shoulder, the patio doors stood opened. Ethan stood in the opening, mouth agape. Fragments of glass littered the floor around him: one of my plates. I’d been so caught up, I hadn’t even heard it.
Before I could move, Ethan found his voice. “Mom? Christa? What are you doing?”
∞ ♡ ∞
Jess
Oh, shit.
Ethan’s voice sent a wave of panic through me. Caught by my own son, when I didn’t even know what I was doing. Not knowing how to explain things, I immediately went on the offensive. Time to change the conversation.
I bolted to my feet, ran one shaking hand through my hair, and put my fists on my hips. “What are you doing up so late, young man?”
He snorted. “Nice try. I’m going to be eighteen soon. I’m not a child.” He eyed me, Christa still lying on the couch, then me again. “Are you two sleeping together?”
“No! Absolutely not.” It was Christa who answered, but my cheeks grew warm. Sure, we hadn’t made it that far, but who knew where things had been headed? Certainly not me.
“It’s none of your business, Ethan,” I said.
My son turned to Christa, who’d risen to a sitting position. When she was nervous, she played with her hair. Brett used to do it, too, tucking longer strands behind his ears, but it was more noticeable now that Christa’s locks tumbled down past her shoulders. It was adorable. Not the point.
Ethan asked, “Do you have any idea how fucked up this is?”
“Language, Ethan,” I said automatically.
“Of course we know. There’s a lot of history here, and a lot of feelings to unpack.” Christa’s words came out in a rush like they did when she was uncomfortable. “Let’s talk in the morning. Your mom and I got a little carried away walking down memory lane, but we still have a lot to discuss. Why don’t you head to bed?”
“It’s only seven-thirty.”
D’oh. So much for that. My son probably hadn’t gone to bed at seven-thirty in about ten years.
“Okay, then,” Christa said. “There’s a Coffee Crisp on the kitchen counter, and you can watch whatever you want on the TV in the basement.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” he said. The wary look on his face hadn’t budged an inch. In that moment, I felt very much like the child, not the parent. And I couldn’t get my warring emotions under control enough to do anything about it.
“It’s candy,” she said. “If you don’t like it, there’s other stuff in the bag. I didn’t know what you’d like, so I bought a bunch. Help yourself.”
Ethan’s slitted eyes grew rounder. “I’ll be in the kitchen, checking out the candy. And listening to you two.”
The door slid shut behind him, and feet pattered across the wood floor toward the kitchen. I raised one eyebrow at my spouse. “He can watch anything he wants?”
She shrugged. “Canadian TV is different from American. He’s not going to find anything he hasn’t seen before. Besides, I don’t have cable. He’ll probably wind up watching my Star Wars Blu-rays unless he finds a hockey game.”
“We love Star Wars.” I held out one hand. “Want to join him?”
She studied my face before taking it. “Do you want to talk about what just happened?”
Leaning forward, I kissed her softly on the cheek, without passion. “Later. I have a lot to think about. Right now, it’s more important for us to spend time with our son.”
“But you’re okay with this? With… everything?”
My stomach churned, but she didn’t need to know about that or the roiling thoughts in my head. Christa remembered my parents, my upbringing. We were light years away from my comfort zone. Tonight, after the lights went out, I’d lie alone in the bed in the guest room, staring at the ceiling and wondering what on earth was going on. But now, my son needed me. Needed both his parents. Everything else could wait.
“Not yet,” I admitted. “Not entirely, anyway. But I will be.”
PART IV
I didn’t run away to come home the same.
— E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Chapter 20
November 2019
Christa
Crossing the border had been much easier before 9/11. It certainly wasn’t as easy in 2019 as it had been for me to cross into Quebec. Especially because not only were the border patrol agents on the U.S. side stricter, I no longer possessed a valid passport: the one I’d found in 2001 expired years earlier. Not intending to leave Canada, I’d never renewed it.
Flying was out of the question. Even if I’d had the right ID, my fear of giant metal death traps in the sky only grew stronger after my intended virgin flight wound up killing more than two thousand people, including everyone aboard. I had never set foot on a plane, and I never would. Nope, nope, nope. If God wanted humans to fly, he’d have given us wings.
We agreed to leave the house and let Tina stay for now. As long as she had a roof over her head, she was less likely to press criminal charges against me—and since she’d be pissed to find out that I vanished with all the money in the bank and all the too-large clothes she’d been eying when she thought I wasn’t looking, the house was the least I could do for now. Someday, after I was declared legally alive, maybe I’d find a way to sell it.
Jess cancelled her return flight to ride with me, although I tried to tell her I’d meet them back in Boston. She wouldn’t even consider leaving me alone. She pretended it was more about emotional support, but I’m sure she thought I was going to disappear again if I had a chance, going somewhere I’d never be found. I’d be lying if I said it never crossed my mind, but after spending only a few days with Jess and Ethan, I couldn’t stand the thought of not being part of their lives. I’d lost too much time already.
Her suspicions were clear in the way her eagle eyes watched me, the tilt of her head, and the timbre of her voice when she spoke. The way her hands shook when folding laundry. She spent hours sitting on the back deck with me, shivering but not talking. She knew me too well. And I knew her too well. She accompanied me to the bank when I went to close my accounts, volunteered to make coffee runs as if she worried I’d never stop driving. So when she insisted on sharing a car back to Boston with me, I didn’t argue.
Once that decision was made, it was time to figure out how, exactly, I’d get across the border now that I didn’t have a valid passport. I certainly couldn’t ask Tina to borrow hers—especially since we planned to be gone before she got back from her spa vacation. Instead, I phoned an old friend for help.
Before I left, Henny had mentioned they had ways to get people across the border. I hadn’t pressed for details, thanks to Tina’s passport, but now that it had expired, the women who ran Tranquility were the best hope I had of getting back into the U.S. other than being deported for identity theft and fraud. We’d call that Plan B. My heart pounded as the phone rang, hoping one of them would answer instead of some random helper.
“Tranquility Cooperative Bed and Breakfast,” a familiar voice said. Older, more frail, but familiar. “How can I help you?”
“Henny?”
“This is Valerie. To whom am I speaking, please?”
I swallowed. Val was okay, but talking to Henny would’ve been much easier. “My name is Christa. I stayed at Tranquility almost twenty years ago. I really need to talk to Henny if I could, please.”
“Sorry, dear. Henny died back in 2017. No one left but me and the dust bunnies.”
My heart dropped. By the time I’d left Tranquility, Bo and I had fixed up most of the exterior, and more people showed up every day. In my mind’s eye, I’d seen it turning into a thriving establishment, a new way of doing business, and of helping other kids who came through Vermont for generations to come. I’d envisioned Val and Henny running it side-by-side until both were well over a hundred years old, maybe with some grandchildren running around, collecting eggs and feeding the chickens.
“I’m sorry, Val. I didn’t know.”
“Can I help you? If you just wanted to chat, I’ve got animals to feed and some leaky pipes to fix. Lots of work to do around here.” She paused, but my mind was still processing everything she’d said. “Well, lovely to hear from you then. Have a good day.”
“Wait! Years ago, you and Henny helped me when I needed to leave the U.S. and start a new life in Canada. I’m here now, and it’s time to cross back into the States, but I don’t have a passport. I need your help.”
If I’d thought her voice seemed hard before, it turned to steel now. “Lady, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number. We’re not caught up in anything illegal here.”
Desperate to prevent her from hanging up, I let loose a flood of words. “When I stayed at Tranquility, I went by Chris. I was there for the entire fall of 2001. My friend Bo showed up a few weeks after I did. We were attacked by homophobes outside a bar. They beat me pretty badly, but he spent three weeks in a coma.” Sitting beside me, Jess squeezed my hand. She didn’t know about any of this. I avoided her gaze but my voice cracked, anyway. “That night, I was wearing Henny’s silver wedding shoes that she’d loaned me. I still have them. A few days later, you and Henny helped me escape so I wouldn’t be part of the news footage. You called me the day Bo woke up and we cried together for half an hour. Please don’t hang up, Val. I’m desperate.”
She sighed. “You know, we never got that wedding. We wanted to wait until it would be legal in the whole country. Stupid. By then she was too sick.”
“I’m sorry.” I hoped she heard the sincerity in my voice. “I’ve been hiding in Canada for so long, I don’t have any way to get home now. If there is anything at all you can do to help, I’d very much appreciate it. I’m prepared to make a generous donation to Tranquility.”
I glanced at Jess out of the corner of my eye. We hadn’t really talked about that, but she nodded. If Val couldn’t help, I’d be hiding in the trunk of a rental car, so we’d do almost anything for a better plan.
“Okay, listen. I have a friend who owns a ranch that straddles the border. Most of the property’s in the U.S., but part of it crosses over into Canada. You can get to it from the Quebec side before you get to Customs. Have someone drop you off at the ranch, then they drive across the border and meet you at the rest stop on the other side. You walk across the property to my friend’s house, about five miles, give her a hundred bucks in greenbacks, and you can get picked up at the front. You won’t go anywhere near border control.”
My entire body exhaled a sigh of relief. “That’s perfect.”
“Well, it’s a little more involved than that. I’ll send you the details. And if you tell anyone about this, I will find you and kill you in your sleep.”
“Thank you so much. I owe you.”
“Don’t I know it,” she grumbled. “Bring me back the shoes on your way through.”
“I’ll bring you whatever you want. Just email me the directions to the ranch.” I gave her the address, and she repeated it.
Voices rose in the background. “Thank you for your reservation with Tranquility. That’ll be two hundred dollars. We look forward to seeing you on November 30. Don’t forget to bring cash.”
The line went dead. Jess turned questioning eyes on me. I related what Val told me, ending with, “We cross the border on Wednesday.”
Two days later, we were on the road, headed through winding back roads according to the map Val had emailed me. Beside me, Jess gave Ethan a long lecture on the importance of following the law and respecting authority. He nodded along, rolling his eyes, too smart to point out what hypocrites we were.
If we lived closer to this ranch, I somehow suspected he and his friends would be visiting weekly as soon as they turned eighteen, which was the Quebec drinking age. Not because they wouldn’t have passports, but because danger’s fun at that age. Heck, if I’d had access to a place like this when I was a teenager, I’d have tried to talk Jess into having sex with me on the Border. Partly for the experience, and partly because my brother would’ve done it, too. I did a lot of things because Brad would’ve done them before I realized that was no way to live.
Under ordinary circumstances, the sprawling ranch wo
uld have been impressive. Instead, I wondered which country would throw me in jail if I got caught.
“Relax,” Jess muttered out of the corner of her mouth. She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.
“You’re one to talk.”
“You failed to mention that there’s barbed wire surrounding this place,” she said.
“Of course there is. You think you can just have a property half in the U.S., half in Canada and let people wander across at will?”
She groaned. “Please don’t tell me any more about this plan. Where do I let you out?”
I pointed to a small grove of trees off to the side, near the fence, and she pulled over. When Ethan hopped out to climb into the front seat, I hugged him. “Now remember, if anything goes wrong, you’ve never seen me before, okay? Do you remember how to say ‘Officer, I don’t know that woman’ in French?”
After making them each repeat the phrase three times, I promised I’d see them in about two hours and waited for the van to pull away. Part of me expected the Mounties to burst out of the trees, but nothing happened other than a rustling in the brush. Jumping, I whirled around and suppressed a scream before realizing that whatever made the noise was too small to be human. Much too small to be a moose, so I forced myself to relax.
Once the van disappeared, I walked further into the trees, following the fence. After about a kilometre, I found a yellowed link about a foot off the ground, just like Val described. Most people would pass right by it without paying any attention. Checking around for anyone watching, I pulled on the link, and a section of the fence lifted. There wasn’t much space, but it was enough for me to squeeze through. Once I went through the gap and replaced the fence on the other side, I stood on American soil for the first time in eighteen years.
It took probably an hour of walking across the ranch, following Val’s directions, before I stopped expecting police to storm out of hiding and arrest me. For the first time, a spring entered my step, my hunched shoulders fell, and my head lifted. I stopped, lifted my face to the sun, and let it all sink in. Tina couldn’t hurt me now. I wouldn’t be arrested and sent back to Canada. Maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.
Finding Tranquility Page 18