by Nicole Baart
Meg smiled. “Yeah, doing fine.”
“He’s going to miss you, you know.”
“He’s going to have a wonderful new life at college,” Meg countered.
Mrs. Langbroek gave her a strange look. “That may be, Meg, but if you ask me, that boy is going to marry you someday.”
The comment was startling, unexpected, and Meg was stunned speechless. Thankfully, Mrs. Langbroek didn’t wait around for her to respond, but spun away to give her famous broccoli salad one last stir. The bowl was displayed in the center of a long strand of picnic tables, and Jess’s mom had to give her back to Meg in order to tend her potluck offering. Indebted to Mrs. Langbroek’s short attention span, Meg avoided any further conversation and simply walked away.
The evening was gently warm, as if summer had released its suffocating stranglehold just so that Jess could enjoy one last perfect night at home. Though the weather alone would coax people out of their houses on a night like tonight, Meg knew that the cul-de-sac bustled with people who loved Jess and who had come especially for him. She grinned in acknowledgment of this fact, and felt a rush of affection for her boyfriend. It erased any unease that troubled her at Mrs. Langbroek’s confident assertion.
That boy is going to marry you someday . . . People had said as much before, though it was usually behind Meg’s back and it usually drove her insane that they tried to write the story of her life without her permission. But tonight, for some reason, she didn’t mind being the future Mrs. Jess Langbroek. She didn’t mind the glitter of his ring on her finger. It will fade, she rationalized. It always did.
“You look smug.”
Meg didn’t have to turn to know that Dylan was standing at her elbow. The air around him was marked with his presence—the scent of his skin, the sweep of his shoulders, the mild aura of discontent that emanated from him as if nothing ever quite suited him exactly as it should. Meg knew every note, every nuance, though it pained her to keep a running catalog, even if it was against her will.
“I’m not smug,” she said, irritated that he had interrupted her reverie. But her skin shivered at his proximity. “I’m content.”
“You look self-satisfied.”
She tilted her chin to glare at him.
“And there’s no reason you shouldn’t be pleased with yourself.” Dylan was obviously amused. “It’s a big day for your boyfriend.”
The barbed provocation irked her. “He’s your friend,” she reminded him.
“We’re not quite as close.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Meg muttered and stepped away without excusing herself.
Dylan followed. “Hey, I was just teasing. Why so sensitive? We used to joke around all the time.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Far away,” he agreed with a glint in his eye. “But not forgotten. At least, not for me.”
It wasn’t the first such bewildering conversation that Meg had had with Dylan over the years, and she was tired of trying to read between the lines of his riddles and games. There had been times that she was sure his cunning flirtations were intended to tempt. There had been times when she almost broke Jess’s heart over the thin hope that Dylan had finally decided she could be more than a friend. But nothing ever came of their increasingly perplexing interactions, and Meg eventually gave up and settled back into the routine of remaining in motion, of following where Jess was so willing to lead, because there was no reason not to.
“Tonight is about Jess,” she said with a sigh, hoping that her tone would be enough to convey how very much she wanted Dylan to leave her alone.
He didn’t get the hint. “Then what?” he probed. “Then Jess will be gone and what will his girl do?”
“I’m not . . .” Meg trailed off because it wasn’t something she could dispute. She was Jess’s girl and all of Sutton knew it, whether or not she particularly liked the distinction. Arguing the finer points of Dylan’s connotation was futile. “You don’t understand,” she finished, narrowing her eyes coolly.
Dylan backed off, palms up and a wry smile on his face. “Chill out,” he warned her. “All I’m asking is, do you know what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
He glanced around to make sure that no one was bothering to listen in on their conversation. Satisfied, he leaned in a bit closer to Meg and said just above a whisper, “I told you to be careful with Jess.”
“And you were wrong. Jess has never been anything but the perfect gentleman. The perfect friend. The perfect boyfriend.” She drew out the final delineation, rubbing it in and hoping that Dylan was, even the tiniest bit, jealous.
But he didn’t seem jealous. He seemed angry. “You’re an idiot, Meg,” he told her, forgetting to lower his voice like he had earlier. “I never took you for that. I thought you were smart, independent, different from other girls. But you’re exactly the same. You just took a little longer to grow into your stupidity.”
Meg lunged at him in fury and stood on tiptoe so she could look him straight in the eye. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re being a total—”
“He owns you,” Dylan interrupted before she could say the words that boiled on the tip of her tongue. “Or at least, he thinks he does. I just hope it’s not true.”
He backed away. Meg stumbled a little, losing her footing when he wasn’t across from her, holding her in place with a band of tension between them as inflexible and hard as steel.
“You’re wrong,” she said softly.
Dylan shrugged, trying to act as if he didn’t care. But Meg could see the tendon in his jaw cut a severe path along his chin and down the side of his tan neck.
“You’re wrong,” she said again.
“I know what he wrote on your ring.”
Confusion stopped Meg cold, but before she could question him, before she could make him explain what he meant, Dylan was gone. He weaved through the crowd, brushing people out of his way, and jumped in his brother’s hand-me-down truck. It roared to life and sped around the corner, out of sight.
There was nothing she could do but watch him go.
The rest of the night, Meg felt sick. Her fingers tingled, her stomach clenched, each breath she took felt hard to come by. She was grateful that nobody pressed her when she moved food around on her plate, and even more thankful that everyone gave her a wide berth. Of course, she assumed that their careful distance was maintained because they wanted to give her room to grieve Jess’s impending departure. Whether or not everyone’s impressions were true was irrelevant as far as Meg was concerned. At least they were leaving her alone.
It wasn’t until the last car pulled out of the cul-de-sac and the last porch light went off that Meg realized what had been plaguing her all night. Her throat was clenched, her jaw sore, and when Jess slipped his arms around her waist and kissed the nape of her neck through the soft screen of her hair, an unexpected sob escaped her lips and surprised her so much, she choked on the sound.
“It’s okay,” Jess murmured, turning her gently around in his arms so he could hold her close.
Meg didn’t know why she was crying, but she was too overwhelmed to be discerning. Instead of trying to gather herself, she dug her fingers into Jess’s back, clutching great handfuls of his shirt and holding on as if it was all she could bring herself to do. It was.
“Shhhh.” Jess urged. “Don’t do this now. I’ve never seen you cry before. Not once.”
“Never?” she gasped.
“Not even when we were little kids. Not when you hurt yourself or someone teased you or you were embarrassed . . . I think you’re getting softer with age.”
Meg’s tears had eased enough for her to be insulted by Jess’s blithe observation. She tried to extract herself from his embrace, but he wouldn’t loosen his arms from her waist. “I’m not soft,” she sniffed, resting her palms on his chest, her forearms snug and tight between them.
“I never said t
hat.” There was a mischievous glint in his eye. “I said softer. Like the difference between granite and slate.”
Her eyebrows lifted in confusion.
“Trust me.” Jess laughed. “You’re still hard as stone.”
She still wasn’t sure if she was being insulted or not and she expressed her displeasure by knuckling away her tears and trying to wiggle out of his grip again.
“I love you,” Jess told her, smoothing his offense with a kiss. And though it was something that he had said many times since the first night he worked up the courage to utter the words, it still sent a little shiver through Meg. But she said it back because it seemed wrong somehow not to. It seemed wrong not to acknowledge the gift of his love without reciprocating in kind.
They kissed. They held each other. They said good-bye. When Jess finally pried himself away and backed a few steps from her, moving reluctantly, slowly, as if waiting for her to stop him, Meg realized that she hung in limbo. She was suspended between a beginning and an end. A new start and a history that, if not rich, was at the very least significant, lasting. It was too much to just walk away from, and she jogged after him and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him, hard. Then she turned around and walked away, refusing to take one last look back.
When she had made it to the shelter of her bedroom, Meg shut and locked the door behind her. The bed was rumpled and inviting, the wingback chair she had stolen from the basement appealingly draped with pillows. But Meg sagged with her back against the closed door and slid all the way to the ground, pressing her knees into her chest. She wasn’t crying, not anymore. And yet, she trembled as she slipped off Jess’s ring.
In the four months that she had worn his token of appreciation, his thank-you, she had never once taken it off. From the moment he placed it on her finger, it remained untouched. It had never crossed her mind to look at it, to turn it over in her hands.
Now, with Dylan’s words humming in her ears and her lips still warm and bruised from Jess’s insistent kisses, she studied the gold band as if it contained every secret she’d ever longed to know.
I know what he wrote . . .
She studied it from every angle. Tried it on every finger so she could see how far it would slide down. Felt it over and under, letting her fingertips explore every edge and smooth place, every angle. And finally, when there was nothing else left to discover, she held it up to peer inside the band.
One little word made her feel both cheated and beloved. One word changed everything.
MINE.
13
LUCAS
Lucas stayed at work later than usual, scrolling through dozens of pages of missing women reports. He started out reading them all, but by the time he had swallowed a handful of horror stories like bad medicine, he started to create a sort of method to tame the madness. Though he didn’t know an exact height, Lucas had seen the body and was sure the woman in the barn had been fairly tall. Therefore he only read profiles that matched a specific height—between five-six and five-ten. The woman had also been wearing a dress, so it was easy to rule out the countless entries that documented blue jeans or skirts or shorts. Or swimming suits or pajamas. And there was a record for a missing woman in a sheet, swept from the earth like a fallen angel found. The thought made Lucas feel scalded and violent. Like he could atone for all that had happened with the righteous vengeance of his own misplaced wrath. He was angry. But he didn’t know who to be angry with.
By the time he gave up and put his computer to sleep, Lucas had a scribbled list of nineteen women that matched his rather vague criteria. They ranged in age from fifteen to forty, and they were, sadly, just the very tip of the iceberg. He had also managed to spare a few moments to research the ring, and while he was almost certain that the distinctive leafed design was a Black Hills gold creation—a style that was both ubiquitous and immediately recognizable in his corner of the Midwest—there was no company with the initials MKD that dealt in Black Hills gold.
After the last few days, he had to admit that going home to Jenna and Angela felt like a mild form of torture. He wanted to call Alex and disappear in the bottom of a glass. Lucas wasn’t sexist and he wasn’t much of a drinker, but he needed his friend and he needed a beer. There was no way around it.
As he made the short drive home, Lucas planned to pop into the house, quickly change his clothes, and then take off under the premise that he wanted to give the girls some time alone. Girl time. They liked that, right? It sounded good, even to him. It would seem gentlemanly, when the truth was, chivalry was the last thing on his mind.
But when he pulled into his long driveway, his house seemed fuller somehow, bursting at the seams, from the uneven patchwork of windows to the crooked screen door, and bustling as if a party was going on inside. All the lights were on in the kitchen, and through the frame of the leaded picture window in front of the table, he could see Jenna and Angela silhouetted inside. The fall evening was already darkening, and although a cool breeze made him zip up his light jacket, the transom was open above the sink. Music poured out from beneath the whitewashed sash.
Music?
And laughter, Lucas realized as he approached the back door. He turned the handle carefully, but he didn’t need to be wary of disturbing anyone. The beat that danced from the sound dock on the kitchen counter was loud and frantic, and his wife’s laughter was pitched to match.
“You’re crazy!” Jenna shouted over the din.
The music was definitely not from the Hudsons’ collection, and from his vantage point in the mudroom, Lucas could see that the iPhone plugged into the sound dock was hot pink. Obviously Angela’s. If he was right, the melody was Latin, and the sway of Angela’s hips betrayed a pretty fantastic attempt at salsa, even to the untrained eye. The two women bopped and shimmied around the kitchen, apparently in the throes of a one-on-one lesson.
“It’s all in your hips,” Angela coaxed, grinning so wide that Lucas was sure he could have counted each ivory tooth. “You have to swivel them. Try figure eights. Draw figure eights with your hips.”
Apparently Jenna wasn’t catching on, because Angela threw up her arms, sashayed over to the dark-haired beauty, and put her hands on Jenna’s waist, coaxing her to swing in rhythm to the music. They stumbled and giggled and tried again.
And then, against all odds and against her very nature, Jenna gave in for a moment. It was almost as if Lucas could see an invisible weight slide off her shoulders like a heavy garment. The dark cloud of her worries pooled around her feet and she closed her eyes. For a handful of seconds in the warmth and harmony of the kitchen, she danced. She really danced. Like no one was watching her. Like she didn’t have a care in the world.
A lump rose in Lucas’s throat, and though he tried to swallow it away, the thickness remained. It filled his chest and bubbled up against his tongue, where it threatened to suffocate him with the beautiful understanding that the wife he loved still existed. She was spinning before him.
All thoughts of running away with Alex for the night evaporated. She was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere. “Thank you,” he breathed. And then he did the unthinkable. He clapped.
The sound of his heartfelt applause didn’t carry in the noisy room. But after a few particularly enthusiastic spins, Angela suddenly looked up and gasped. The smile melted off her face and her arms dropped ungracefully against her sides. Jenna froze, too, her hands raised above her head and one hip cocked at an angle. She stared.
“What in the—”
“You caught us,” Angela chirped, interrupting Jenna and bounding over to the iPhone to kill the music. She forced a slight smile, and though she seemed flippant about Lucas’s abrupt appearance, he could tell by the set of her jaw that she was still angry with him. The nonchalance was for Jenna’s sake.
And Jenna? Lucas’s gaze shot to her. She was straightening out her shirt, pulling at the tails of the gray cotton blouse and refusing to meet his eye. The apples of her cheeks were stained pink.
Making Jenna blush was no small feat. In another world, Lucas would have laughed and leaped into the kitchen. He would have caught his wife around the waist and kissed each of her rosy cheeks in turn. But she was already turning away from him, and the line of her shoulders seemed to underscore the distance between them.
“You snuck up on us,” Jenna said, clearing her throat almost shyly.
Lucas shook his head. “I did no such thing. All I did was come home.”
“You’re early.”
“Actually, I’m late,” Lucas said, pointing to the clock on the stove.
“Oh, no!” Jenna threw herself across the room and yanked open the oven door.
For the first time since he entered the house, Lucas became aware of something other than his wife. The air was filled with the scent of garlic and onion, olive oil and tomato sauce. “Smells fantastic,” he murmured. “What are you making?”
“Burnt garlic bread,” Jenna sighed, setting a tray with two long loaves of crusty French bread on the counter.
“It’s not burnt,” Angela consoled her. “It’s toasty.”
Jenna handed Lucas a wooden spoon. “Give the sauce a stir,” she said, and turned back to the bread.
Standing between Jenna and Angela, Lucas wondered how much the younger woman knew about the battleground that was his marriage. It hadn’t occurred to him until he was lifting the lid off a pot on the stove that maybe his presence was unwelcome in his own home. It wasn’t a very nice thought.
But the aroma of Jenna’s homemade sauce made his mouth water and slowly erased any thoughts of Alex and a numbing drink or two. He even found it hard to care whether or not Angela could see how far his relationship with Jenna had unraveled. The marinara was bubbling and hot, dotted with yellow cherry tomatoes that she had left whole. As he stirred the wooden spoon through the thick contents of the oversized pot, he wondered: When was the last time they had enjoyed a meal together? When was the last time it was homemade? He almost said something about the irregularity of their family meals and how nice it was to come home to a from-scratch supper, but he changed his mind at the last second. “How about I set the table?” he offered instead, replacing the lid and reaching for a stack of plates from the cupboard.