“I do worry about you sometimes,” Karen said. “You work so hard. I’m not sure it makes you happy.”
Jane’s mouth was filled with the cream cheese. She chewed while Ken struggled with a song that may have been Pearl Jam, then sipped her coffee. “I’m not either.”
Karen nodded, folding a paper napkin into triangles. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.” Jane shrugged. “At least I’m not a drug addict.”
“That’s a pretty low bar.”
“Not at all. I hear about college friends who are alcoholics or have trouble with pain meds—”
“Yes, yes. I’m just saying you might want to aim a little higher than avoiding substance abuse.”
“My whole life you’ve been telling me I’m too ambitious. Now you’re saying I need to try harder?”
Karen had to shout over the electric guitar. “In some ways, yes.”
This time Jane’s feelings did suffer a glancing blow. “I’m always trying, Mom. Always. I wish you—” She cleared her throat, willing the bloom of emotion to die. “I wish you’d move the party. Ian’s a multimillionaire. There’s no shame in letting him pick up the tab.”
“Of course there is. We are Billie’s parents. We’re throwing this party.” The guitar came to abrupt halt. Karen lowered her voice but didn’t soften her tone. “We’re also going to help pay for the wedding, although Billie’s giving us a hard time about that.”
“OK, so you want to pay. So find a local, independent restaurant. There’s got to be something cute and affordable that isn’t a chain.”
“Billie loves Chevys,” Karen said. “And she says Ian’s fine with it.”
“Of course Ian’s fine with it. He adores her. And wouldn’t do anything to make you hate him.”
“Hate Ian?” Karen laughed. “As if. Even you can’t hate him.”
Jane shoved a handful of crackers into her mouth and tried to figure out what Ken was trying to play now. He went to high school in the seventies, so it was only a matter of time before he attempted—
Yep, there it was. “Stairway to Heaven.”
Her mom was right. It was impossible to hate Ian. He was a great guy and great for her sister. Her mind was on an entirely different man at the moment.
“What if I find a place I know she likes?” Jane asked, but she knew the battle was lost.
“I’ve already found a place she likes.” Karen took Jane’s napkin and began wiping infinitesimal crumbs off the table. She and Jane had more than a few things in common. “Why don’t you tell me about this guy you’re bringing to the party?”
Because so many reasons. “You’ll meet him next week. Not much to say.”
Karen shook her head, sighing, as if it were as bad, as hopeless, as she’d feared. “Why not?” she asked.
Oh, to hell with it. He’d helped her; she should just cut him loose and return the favor. “Confession, Mom. He’s just a guy renting a bedroom in my house. We’re not really dating. His brother is my boss at Whitman. He’s writing a book about hiking and camping and living in the outdoors, which is where he prefers to reside.”
“How interesting. What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t. I told you, we’re not really dating.”
“You’re going to have to tell me his name sooner or later,” her mother said.
Oh God. She was smiling.
She doesn’t believe me.
15
When writing about his escapades in the outdoors, Grant often used a fictional point of view. It helped him let go of his ego and get the words on the page. Some bookstores shelved him in fiction, which he understood but didn’t agree with. He wrote about the real world, what he’d seen, smelled, tasted; the way a blister felt when it popped: wet, sticky, hot; the annoyance of hearing the distant roar of a jet airplane when you just wanted one full day in your short life on this earth without ever hearing a machine.
When it had become clear that Jane was happy to throw herself back into her job, and happy to lock the door between his end of the house and hers, his writer’s block had flattened him like that giant boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
And so he decided to write from a different point of view for a while. It wasn’t Grant taping up his blister and eating miner’s lettuce, it was Jane.
Well, not Jane. Fictional Jane.
Fane.
He was going to have to come up with a better name, but Fane is what he’d been calling her. Luckily, he’d never been one of those writers who posted his daily pages on the internet. The only person who’d know whose eyes and ears and soul were interpreting the sequoias and slugs and pit toilets was him. Writing from Jane’s—Fane’s—point of view gave him the fresh, new, unspoiled perspective he needed to squeeze out one last book before he retired.
Because he’d known for a long time now that he didn’t want to write creative nonfiction about the outdoors anymore. Not for a living, at least. He was as burnt out as an acre of drought-weakened Douglas fir, charred to stumps in an August wildfire.
His dream now was a cliché: those who can’t do, teach. He already had his MFA—he’d gotten that after the first book—and had taught writing as a visiting professor at universities and community colleges up and down the West Coast. But before he returned to teaching for the long term, he was determined to fulfill his contract with the publisher and finish his final masterpiece.
Grant forced his hands back onto the keyboard.
I didn’t realize water could be so cold and not be frozen. I watch something small and creepy floating on the surface of the rapids and wonder what it is. A spider? I’ve always hated spi—
Did Jane hate spiders? It seemed sexist to assume she was afraid of spiders. Truth was, it was Grant who was afraid of spiders. Anyone who had read his earlier books would know that. He’d once shrieked like a four-year-old when he’d found a spider in his underwear. Just because he was wearing them at the time didn’t mean a man should cry like a baby.
But damn, that sucker had been huge.
A knock on the door interrupted his marathon of brilliance. He did a quick word-count check for the day.
Sixty-seven.
Fuck me.
“Grant? It’s Jane.”
Of course it was her. Who else would it be? A voice inside him suggested Fane? and he ducked his head, laughing to himself.
“Are you sleeping?” she asked.
He got up, walked to the door, and opened it. “Just trying to work.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll come back later.” Her hair was pulled back tightly, sleek along her skull. He noticed her ears stuck out in a truly adorable way. Handles that would be good for holding on when he kissed her.
Fane was totally into outdoorsy guys.
“No, I was having trouble before you knocked,” he said. “I’m psyched to have an excuse to take a break.” He gestured for her and her head handles to come into the room.
“It’s about that party of my sister’s,” she began.
“Day after tomorrow, right? Saturday at noon, the invitation said.” He rubbed his stomach. “Looking forward to it. Love that salsa at Chevys.”
She looked pained. “Not you too.”
“More of a salsa fresca type, are you?” He went over to his mini fridge and popped it open. “Can I offer you a canned water? I’m fully loaded with a wide selection of flavored carbonated water in convenient twelve-ounce cans.”
“Are you all right? You seem a little, I don’t know, drunk or something.”
“It’s my book. I’m slowly going insane.” He took out a lemon-flavored water and held it out to her. “Please, take it. It’ll make me feel useful in the universe.”
“Going that badly, is it?” Offering a quick smile, she accepted the can and popped it open.
“Worse.”
“Then I have good news. You’ll have all day Saturday to get caught up.”
His spirits fell. He could actually feel
them sink even lower than they’d been a few minutes ago. They were probably seeping out of his toes like blister ooze. “They canceled the wedding?”
“I told my mother you’re not really my boyfriend.”
“So she doesn’t want me to come?”
Jane made an incredulous face. “You don’t want to come.”
“Oh yes I do. I told you. Love that sals—”
“Stop. You can’t be serious.”
“I am. I think they put sugar in it. If I ever find myself really shoveling something in and I can’t stop, I know there’s sugar. But it’s not just the salsa, it’s the chips.” He kissed his fingertips. “So light and crispy.”
“I can’t believe this. Listen, if you want to eat there, you can go anytime. No reason to suffer through a family party with a bunch of strangers.”
“I want to go, Jane,” he said.
“You can’t.”
“Please let me go to the party, Jane.” He put his hand over his heart. “Please.”
“But why?”
“Look at me. You need to ask?”
She frowned. “I don’t see how an awkward social gathering is going to help you with your book.”
“You don’t understand the creative process.”
“Sounds like you don’t either,” she said.
“Ouch, Jane.”
Her face twitched with a suppressed smile. “Sorry. I only have good thoughts for you and your book.”
“I’m going stir-crazy. Going out with people is just what I need.”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“Nope.”
She lost her battle with the smile. “I doubt that. You’ve probably got tons of friends.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at you. You’re funny, you’re…” She bit her lip.
“Handsome?”
“Yeah. So handsome.”
“It’s the beard. It hides my flaws.”
“Is that so?” she asked.
“Very so. I’m actually hideous under all this fur.” He rubbed his jaw, wondering what else he could do to keep her from leaving the room. “Say, I’ve got some excellent, ah, dried cherries. Want some?”
“Bad for my teeth.”
“Right. I lost mine years ago so it’s not a problem.” He stretched his lips over his teeth to hide them and opened his mouth in a wide, toothless grimace. “Thee?”
“You need to get out.”
With his lips still pulled over his teeth, he said, “Thaf whaf I wath felling you.”
With a snort, she sat on the bed and held out her hand. “All right, give me the cherries.”
Yes. He went and got them and a bag of chocolate-covered almonds and handed them to her.
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “My family is complicated. Mom and Dad had us really early and realized their mistake before Billie was three. They were trying to figure out how to afford getting divorced and sharing custody when my mom met Ken, my stepfather—he’s a pharmacist by the way—when she was filling a prescription for a yeast inf— Well, anyway, you can see it’s a fun family story. Right around the same time my dad, his name’s Victor, got a job offer up in Seattle. High tech. Lots of money.”
“And he went?”
“He went. Working there meant he could afford child support, and she wanted to be with Ken anyway.”
“He still lives there, right?”
She skipped the cherries and went straight to the chocolate-covered almonds. Once she’d looked through the bag and chosen a good one, she said before popping it in her mouth, “He got remarried too a few years later. Also much happier the second time around. They have two kids, a boy and a girl, still teenagers, I think.”
“You think?”
She held up her finger as she chewed and swallowed. “They’re nineteen or twenty. We don’t see each other as often as, well, as often as you might think. My dad was happy to start over. We saw him mostly when he came here.” She gestured around her at the house. “This was his parents’ house.”
Grant had been so close to his father he still got choked up talking about him. So he didn’t talk about him. “Is he going to bother to come down for the party?”
“You make him sound like he doesn’t care.”
“Does he?”
Jane shrugged, shook the bag of almonds, peering inside again for a while before pulling out a small one this time. “In his own way. I think it’s impossible to love people you don’t see as much as people you live with. Even your own children.”
The admission made Grant glad he’d given her the chocolate. “That’s got to be hard.”
“It is what it is.” She shrugged again. “I’ve got a big family that loves me. Siblings right and left. A decent stepfather. I even like my stepmom. I really can’t complain.”
Grant thought it might hurt anyway. “I like having a big family too,” he said. Although when he thought about family, he was remembering his childhood with his father, when two adults and four boys lived in a twelve-hundred-square-foot bungalow, there was never enough money, and the front yard flooded whenever it rained for too many days in a row, usually in January. Golf-ball-sized snails would be left behind when the water finally drained away, and the boys would collect them in a bucket and dump them on each other’s heads.
“But to answer your question,” Jane went on, “yes, he’s coming to the party. They all are, I think. Which is why I can’t believe my mother insists on throwing it at a chain restaurant. They’re coming all that way for that? Ian can afford… anything! He could rent an entire villa and winery for a week.”
“But he’s too cheap?” Grant remembered the guy and his expensive pencils, wondering if he were the type to keep all the good stuff for himself.
“No, my mother won’t let him. Insists on being the hosts because they’re the parents of the bride. It’s medieval. What next, a hope chest? A dowry? Give me a break!”
“I’d be the same way,” he said. When she turned her rage-scowl on him, he cleared his throat. “That is, if I were a dad and my daughter was marrying some rich guy. Who cares how much money he has? I still have the right to be the one welcoming him to the family. Rich people don’t get to be the boss of everything just because they have the most money.”
Openmouthed, Jane stared at him, long enough to make him uncomfortable. He turned to find some other refreshment to offer her as a distraction.
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re totally right.” She stood up and came over to him, the bags of cherries and almonds in her hands.
“I shouldn’t lecture you. I’ve got issues.”
She smiled, creating small, adorable creases in the corners of her eyes, and handed him the bags. “No, it’s good. I needed to hear it. The funny thing is—” She stopped herself.
“Yes?”
It seemed to take her a moment to decide if she wanted to answer. “I think I was embarrassed because you were coming. Having just been to your family place in Marin, I—”
He tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself. “Me? You wanted to impress Grizzly Adams?”
“I know, right? What was I thinking?”
“And then I went on and on about the chips,” he said.
“It just made it worse. I felt like you were patronizing us.”
“Do you have any idea how different my growing up was from that place of my grandfather’s?”
She shook her head. “Troy mentioned you guys living there after your father died.”
“Troy and my brothers. With my mother. Not me. I’d already left home.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“You know why they moved in with him?” Grant didn’t like to talk about this, but in the face of her embarrassment about the restaurant, he felt he owed her. “Because she didn’t have enough money to support the family on her own after he was gone. My dad never took my grandfather’s money, even if he’d offered it, which I doubt. Dad was a junior high school t
eacher. Mom’s family didn’t have any money, and she’d left school at sixteen. When we were kids, she started painting—art, not houses—and selling her work at farmer’s markets. There was enough for us when he was alive, but… I was in college, and Troy was about to go, and Ben and Justin were still in high school but had to eat and all that.”
“I didn’t realize,” she said.
“So now that you know I’m just a poor nobody, will you let me come to the party? Now that you know I can’t afford food.”
She pointed at the almonds and cherries. “Nice try. You got those at Whole Foods. You can’t be hurting that badly.”
“Dumpster diving.”
“So you’re not actually Grizzly Adams the guy, you’re Grizzly the bear?” She threw her head back and laughed, exposing her soft, smooth throat, demonstrating what she might look like in bed if she felt really, really good.
The sight—and the thought—knocked the breath out of him.
“Well, then, all right,” she said, recovering her composure with a deep breath, her eyes twinkling. “You can come to the party and eat as many chips as you like.” With that declaration, she patted him on the arm and walked out of the room.
He could only smile and nod like an idiot.
16
A day after Jane had accepted the indignity of the suburban chain restaurant for Billie and Ian’s party, her mother called her with an emergency, eleventh-hour change of venue. After another boring yet stressful day at the office, Jane had gone out for a walk, finding herself heading toward the huge regional park up the hill from her house. Acres of redwoods, oak, picnic tables, miles of trails—it had never appealed to her except as a selling point on her planned Airbnb listing. But it was a beautiful day, and the call of nature—not the bathroom kind, the stop-and-smell-the-roses kind—was too sweet to resist.
“Abel and Francesca are flying in and out the same day and asked if there was any way they could avoid the drive north,” her mother said.
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