I put my gaze straight ahead and say, “It’s sad, seeing this place empty.”
“What happened?”
“The Masons sold it a few years ago. They bought another farm in Florida and retired there. Apparently, the new owners purchased the place as an investment and haven’t done anything with it. It’s for sale again. Someone said if it doesn’t go pretty quickly, they’re tearing down the house and barn and building some kind of housing development.”
“That would be a shame,” he says.
I lift a shoulder in resignation, trying for an indifference I don’t feel. “Things change, I guess.”
“Do you still ride?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Why? You lived for it.”
“Other directions, I guess.”
“You giving up horses? That’s something I really can’t imagine.”
Just the words send up an intense spear of longing. Not just for riding, but for the map of my life I had once so believed in and shared with Tate.
How can I tell him that for all these years I’ve been trying to fit myself into a mold I finally realized I would never fit in? And in trying to fix what I’d broken, I’d ruined everything.
I get to my feet, quickly, stumble back a step. “I have to go,” I say.
He stands, shoving his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans, the stance so reminiscent of the boy he had been that I have to look away. “What are you running from, Jillie?” he asks.
“I’m not running,” I say. “But I won’t deny that this is painful. And pointless. I really am happy for you, Tate. And proud of you, too. You’ve done everything you said you were going to. At least one of us did.”
I turn then and run across the grass, not looking back, even as I get inside the Mercedes and drive away.
13
Tate
I SIT ON the dock for a long time after she leaves.
She’s right. Everything has changed. And yet it seems as if the life we led together couldn’t have been more than a blink ago. All those plans we made. Dreams we put into words and shared with each other.
In the years since I left the lake, I’ve kept it all locked away, never let myself go anywhere near what might have been. Those are dangerous waters, and I simply never let myself sail in them.
But being here. . .seeing her. . .that is something different altogether.
For so long, anger has been the stake I drove through the heart of whatever memories I had of Jillie. It worked too. That anger ran deep. Led me to write a book that, ironically enough, gave me a career I had always wanted.
Jillie was the first person who ever believed in me. I’ve let myself forget that. I remember it now, though, the acknowledgment piercing through me with a sharp arrow.
We had once been everything to each other. Compass, divining rod. I’d never had anyone look at me the way Jillie looked at me then. As if I were the rainbow and the pot of gold, all in one.
And, if I’m honest with myself, no one has ever made me want to live up to the possibility, before or since.
When We Were Sixteen
“DO YOU EVER write about your feelings?”
I looked up from the notebook into which I’d been writing fast and hard. Jillie studied me with interested eyes.
I shook my head. “Guys don’t write about stuff like that.”
“Why not?”
“Too girly.”
“Girly!”
“Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson stuff.”
Jillie laughed. “If you don’t write about feelings, what do you write about?”
“Fights, car races, shootouts.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, there’s some interesting stuff.”
We were in the horse barn at Cross Country, up in the hayloft, sitting on the wood floor, our backs against a stack of orchard-grass hay just put up that spring. Its sweet aroma filled the air, and I thought, not for the first time, that I could live in this barn. Jillie and I spent every free moment there, riding for Mrs. Mason, or just hanging around when we were done.
“When are you going to let me read it?” Jillie asked now.
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody’s ever read it.”
“So how are you going to be a famous writer, if you never let anybody read your work?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Someday I will.”
“No time like the present.” She grabbed for the book, yanked it from me, and scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, the spiral binder clutched between her teeth.
“Hey, Jillie, come back here!”
“Gotta catch me first!” She was up and running then to the far end of the loft, climbing a stack of hay bales.
I went after her, full throttle. I caught her by the leg of her jeans, but she yanked free, laughing and climbing higher.
At the top of the stack, I tackled her, and we both rolled, stopping just short of the edge. I straddled her, pinning her beneath me. She held the notebook up high, reading the words out loud.
“Her hair is like sunshine, her smile the brightest day of summer—”
I yanked it from her hand, but it was too late. She was staring at me, her eyes wide, her lips parting, but no sound came out.
I flung the notebook over my shoulder. It slid down the stacked hay and landed on the aisle floor far below with a thump.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked, the words soft.
“You shouldn’t have read it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, serious now. “Really, Tate. I am.”
I stared down at her, the heat that stayed on constant simmer when I was with her, now blazing high and wide. And suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about the blasted notebook anymore. Or my own embarrassment. All I could think about was Jillie and how she felt beneath me.
Every curve, every contour, and I wanted to map the feel of her in my mind so that I could remember when I was alone again, wishing I were with her.
It was one of those hot summer afternoons when the air was completely still. A bee buzzed somewhere above us, the sound amplified in my ears. Outside, the tractor was going, and in the stalls below, one of the horses thumped a wall with a shoe.
“Tate,” she said, her voice raspy.
“Yeah?”
“Would you please kiss me?”
This didn’t sound like the Jillie of a few minutes ago. Gone was the teasing, and in its place something that I’d never heard before. A yearning that echoed my own feelings.
From the first day I’d come to live at Smith Mountain Lake, my only plan had been to leave as fast as I could. A string of foster homes had taught me early on that you couldn’t count on anyone in this world except yourself. I’d been let down enough times to know my theory held water.
But Jillie was different. It was as if we’d been made to go together, like two sides of a single coin. When I was with her, the world made sense, had direction and purpose.
And somewhere along the way, I’d started to think that maybe I didn’t have to do it all by myself, more important, that I didn’t want to.
Looking down at her, I wanted to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. “Are you sure, Jillie?”
“If I get any more sure,” she said, “I’m going to die of it.”
I lowered my head then, hovered just above her mouth. She raised up, and our lips brushed. Feeling jolted through me, and I wasn’t sure who leaned in next, her or me, but suddenly we were kissing like we’d been doing it all our lives.
Instantly, I understood why people wrote songs about this, why guys in the locker room talked about it like they just discovered another part of the world where no one had ever been before.
Once, when I was thirteen, I’d kissed a girl, or more like, she’d kissed me. Poppy Sullivan had cornered me one night after summer Bible school when I came out of the church restroom. I never told Jillie about that kiss, and even now, I wasn’t sure why. Except that it ha
dn’t been anything like I’d hoped kissing would be – it was a dry, hard peck that made me wonder what all the fuss was about.
I thought maybe now I knew. If it wasn’t with someone who made you feel the way I felt around Jillie, then it wasn’t any big deal at all.
She put her arms around my neck then and pulled me down. I stretched out across her, and it felt like coming home ought to feel, that sense of being in the right place, a place of belonging.
We opened our mouths to each other, and I deepened the kiss. She made a soft, pleased sound that made me wish we could stay up here for the rest of our lives.
She put her hands on my face, and said, “You know how long I’ve been waiting for you to do that?”
“How long?” I asked, not recognizing my own hoarse voice.
“Practically since the first day we met.”
I wondered then what she saw in me, something no one else ever had for sure. Whatever it was, it made me want to move mountains for her, give her every good thing the world had to offer. “The very first day?” I said, reaching for a light note and failing.
“Very first.”
We stared at each other for a long time, maybe both of us deciding that it was okay to let the other one see what we felt.
“Jillie! You in here?”
Marshall Andrews’ voice rang out from the center aisle below.
“Your dad,” I said, dropping down beside her, my arm curved around her shoulders. I looked up at the rafters and tried counting the beams, anything to slow my pounding heart. “Shouldn’t you answer?” I whispered.
“And what am I going to say?” she whispered back.
“That you’re up here in the hayloft kissing me, and you’ll be right down?”
She bit back a giggle, and we wrestled our clothes back into place.
“I’ll go down,” I said. “You stay up here.”
I took the ladder to the aisle, feeling Jillie’s father’s eyes on my back the entire way. I dropped onto the concrete floor and tried to look surprised to see him.
Mr. Andrews stood with my notebook in his hand. “This yours?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said, praying he hadn’t read it.
“Have you seen Jillie?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, refusing to lie to him. Marshall Andrews had given me my job at Cross Country, taken a chance on me when every other place I’d applied for a summer job had turned me down as soon as they saw that I was a foster kid. “She’s around here somewhere, sir.”
Mr. Andrews handed me the notebook without letting go of my gaze. “I expect she is,” he said, and I had no doubt he knew exactly where she was. “The tractor’s got a flat. Give me a hand?”
“Sure thing,” I said, following him down the aisle.
Just before I got to the main door, I glanced back up at the loft where Jillie sat on a bale of hay, knees drawn up against her chest. And in her smile was all the promise I’d never imagined I could begin to hope for.
14
Jillie
TONIGHT IS ONE of the rare nights when I have the house to myself with the girls. Judith had left earlier to have dinner with her sister, and Angela slipped out shortly after without saying where she was going.
For the past hour, I’ve been helping Corey study for a spelling test. We sit at the kitchen table, me at one end, Corey at the corner. At the other end, Kala sits with her Algebra book open, a pencil in her hand.
I call out the next word. “Intuitive.”
“That’s a hard one,” Corey says, fiddling with one of her pigtails.
“Sound it out,” I remind her.
“In-tu-it-ive.”
“Good. So now spell it.”
“I n t u e—”
“You’re hopeless,” Kala says, rolling her eyes.
“Kala,” I say, giving her a stern look.
“Well, it’s true,” Kala shoots back. “You help her every night, and she still can’t spell worth a darn.” She shoves her chair back and bolts up from the table, storming out the back door of the kitchen.
I lean over and kiss Corey on the top of her head. “I’ll be right back, honey. Practice the next couple without me.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
I stop at the kitchen door, looking out across the back yard. Kala sits at the base of an old oak, arms wrapped around her knees, her head turned away from the house. I open the screen door, walk across the yard and sit down next to her.
“Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
Kala folds her arms, refusing to look at me. “Nothing, Mom.”
I pull a blade of grass, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. “You can tell me, you know.”
Kala drops her gaze, tracing a finger through the dirt at the base of the tree. “Why do we still live here?”
The question catches me by surprise. For a moment, I can’t think of a response. “This was your father’s home, honey.”
“Yeah, and he’s gone, so why do we stay?”
I’m a little taken aback by the hardness in Kala’s voice and at the same time hit with the sudden feeling that a trap door waits beneath my answer. “Has something happened, Kala?”
She bites her lip, looking down at the ground. “Nothing different.”
“What does that mean, honey?”
Another stretch of silence, and then, “It means that Grandma criticizes everything I do. My clothes are never right. My hair’s too long. I have on the wrong shoes. I know I’m not as pretty as Corey, but does she have to remind me of it every single day?”
I feel as if I’ve been doused with a bucket of cold water. The passion behind my daughter’s words gives credence to the fact that the feelings are not new. I put a hand on her shoulder, wanting to pull her into my arms, but feeling her resistance. “Honey, I’m sure she doesn’t mean—”
“She does mean it, Mom!” she says, interrupting. “Why else would she say it?” Kala jumps to her feet, running across the yard and back into the house.
I start to go after her, but make myself stay put. How can I tell her the reason? How can I risk the very real possibility that she might never forgive me?
The screen door opens, then shuts. Corey troops across the yard, plopping down on her knees beside me.
“Are you okay, Mommy?”
I reach out and smooth wavy, blonde hair back from her face. “Yes,” I say.
“What’s wrong with Kala?” she asks with unusual seriousness.
I struggle for the right words. “She’s going through kind of a hard time right now.”
“She sure is grouchy.”
“Sometimes when we’re upset about something, we act a certain way, and we really don’t mean to. Things will get better, honey.”
Corey snuggles up in my arms, putting her head against my chest. From my youngest child, I feel complete and utter trust. She believes my words, and, in that moment, I want nothing more than to prove myself worthy of this.
But the truth is I don’t know if I am.
15
Angela
AT JUST AFTER eight, Angela slides into the booth of her regular table at Miller’s, a dinner spot set in a quiet cove of the lake that draws people by both boat and car.
The place is hopping tonight. The bar vibrates with liquor bottles clinking against glasses, flirtatious laughter echoing above the Top 40 tunes playing from a set of booming speakers while the band sets up.
A young waitress with a sleek ponytail and red lipstick stops by the table and asks for her order. “Bombay and tonic,” she says.
“Be right back with that.”
Angela rarely drinks. She finds the effects of alcohol more aggravating than invigorating. But after another day of problems for which she doesn’t have answers, she feels in need of a lift. Sometimes, it seems as if her feet are stuck in quicksand, and pull as she might, she cannot free herself.
“Hey!”
She looks up to find Poppy Sullivan sliding into the booth beside her, a huge
smile on her face.
“You’re disgusting,” Angela says. “How can you look so cheerful after the day we just had?”
“I get off on problems,” she says, smiling. “You’ve got to change your outlook. Reframe it, that’s all.”
“Clearly, there’s something wrong with you.”
Poppy laughs with an elegant shrug, dropping her Kate Spade purse on the seat beside her. “So what’s new?”
It is this that Angela envies most about Poppy. They’ve been friends since grade school. Had she so chosen, Poppy could have spent her twenties on the cover of Vogue. Nearly six feet tall, she is one of those women for whom clothes appear to be made and the rest of the female population mourns their inability to wear.
But Poppy’s other asset is a keen intelligence that she puts to daily use as a vice-president at TaylorMade Industries. Angela is the first to admit that without Poppy this past year, she would have sunk beneath the weight of her own mistakes.
“So I stopped for some smokes on the way over. You’ll never guess what I ran across.”
The waitress arrives with Angela’s drink. Poppy asks for a glass of water.
Angela takes a sip of her gin and tonic. “What?”
Poppy opens her purse, pulling out a folded newspaper. She unfolds it and hands it to Angela.
Angela’s gaze falls across the front page. The photo she received by e-mail jumps out at her again, making her sit back in her seat and draw in a quick breath. The headline accompanying it sends a sick feeling trickling through her chest to settle in a solid lump at the pit of her stomach.
“Is this a joke?” she finally rasps in a voice that doesn’t sound like her own.
Poppy smiles. “Could I make stuff like this up?”
The answer is most likely yes, but it doesn’t appear to be true in this case. “Who. . .how did they get this picture?”
“You didn’t give it to them?” The question comes out sounding half like a joke, half not.
Fences: Smith Mountain Lake Series - Book Three Page 6