Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3)

by Stephanie Vercier

  Tyler’s downcast eyes lift. A smile spreads across his face, followed up with laughter.

  “Oh my goodness! How in the world did I forget that?” Mrs. Duncan shakes her head like she’d just forgotten a baby out in a hot car.

  “It happens,” I tell her, “and I don’t expect you to make something different on account of me.”

  “Nonsense,” she says, putting the chicken she’d pulled out of the refrigerator right back in. “I think I’ve got some white fish I can make. Really, we should be eating more of it. Tyler and his father haven’t had the chance to fish at all this summer.”

  “So you like fishing too?” I ask Tyler who remains amused.

  “Used to,” he says, pulling out a cutting board and a knife, as if he knows they’ll be necessary for the meal. “But with moving and stuff, Dad was just really busy this year.”

  “That’s all we ate on our family vacations,” she says, pulling a head of lettuce and some vegetables out of the fridge. “We’d hit the road, find a good place to camp near a river or a lake, and Tyler and his dad would go out and catch us fish. They’d do all the gutting and cleaning, and I’d just season them and cook them over the campfire. I miss those days,” she says with a longing look at her son.

  Tyler leans against the kitchen island, tries to shrug it off, but I bet he misses them too.

  Mrs. Duncan gives me a recipe for a marinade, which I work on while Tyler cuts up the vegetables and lettuce for a salad. His mother works on coating some small red potatoes with olive oil and spices and then sends Tyler outside to get wood for the stove in their living room.

  “You two are getting along really well,” she says once we’re alone and I’m attempting to perfectly measure out the ingredients for the marinade. “I wasn’t so sure things were going to work out there for a while.”

  “Yeah, we kind of had a misunderstanding,” I say, not really wanting to rehash everything that happened with Austin. “And, um, Tyler is great.” I’m tempted to tell her I love him, but I’m not sure how she’d take that.

  “He’s an amazing son,” she tells me, pausing her food preparations. “Always has been. He’s our only child, and I’ve always been grateful to have just him.”

  “What was he like as a kid?” I figure she’s pretty much the best person to ask.

  The question puts a light in her eyes. “Well, he was athletic for one. That boy could run around for hours with his friends. He loved sports, all of them. When we got him into pee wee and little league, he thought it was funny when the coaches and some of the parents, including his father,” she almost whispers, “would get so upset when they lost. He just loved the game. That’s what he told me one night after his team got creamed. ‘Mom, I just love the game. I don’t care that we lost.’”

  I’m loving her recollection, imagining Tyler as that little boy who played for the love of sport while I’ve always been the opposite, wanting to be the best, knowing that I have to be if I’m going to get where I want in life. I’m waiting for her to continue when I notice some moisture in her eyes.

  “I can see that,” I say, eating up the silence. Her emotions are contagious because now I’m thinking of Tyler and the fact he doesn’t play sports here, doesn’t even do PE, because he’s afraid of what people will say about him. And that just sucks because I’d seen him having fun at the lake when it was just the two of us, when he didn’t have to hide himself.

  “He’s also very considerate,” she continues, fighting past her emotion. “Some of the other boys would pick on the littler ones, but Tyler never did. He’d defend them, just like he defended that damn dog the other boys would taunt.”

  “Pepper?”

  “He told you about her mauling him?”

  I nod. “It must have been really scary.”

  She sighs with audible relief, at being able to talk to me about it I suppose. “It was awful. The kids from the neighborhood are the ones that came screaming to our door—I thought someone had been murdered. When I realized they were talking about Tyler, I just… well, I got this horrible sinking feeling in my gut, and I just ran. They’d left Tyler there to fend for himself—I’m sure they were scared, being kids and having no idea what to do except to cry bloody murder, but I still hate thinking of him there alone. By the time I got there, a neighbor was just pulling the dog off.”

  “I’m sure it was terrifying… for both of you.” It’s a horrible vision, one that I react to with my own sense of sorrow. We’ve never had a dog, but I’ve met plenty of sweet ones, including Jessup who is so docile that sometimes you barely even notice he’s around. I can only begin to imagine Tyler’s terror of facing down a dog that wasn’t so nice, that was probably big enough to kill an adult.

  “I was probably more scared than he would have been—brave little guy that Tyler was. Seeing all that blood.” She shudders. “I thought he was dead… the worst day of my life. I can only be thankful that he doesn’t remember most of it because of him being knocked unconscious when that damn dog barreled into him.”

  I reach out and put a supportive hand on her arm. I want to cry, even more than when Tyler relayed the story to me, mostly because he told it without allowing the emotion his mother is now showing to seep through.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She nods and wipes at her eyes. “Tyler hates it when I get emotional about it, but he’s been through so much, more than a kid his age should have had to endure. And then… oh, then there was the girl in Denver.”

  I’m not ready for the tightness I feel around my heart at the mention of her, the girl that must be Laney.

  “I always thought she was a nice girl, always respectful, seemed to really love Tyler. He was so happy with her.”

  I swallow hard, part of me wishing she’d stop right now, the other wanting to know more, perhaps learn from Laney’s mistakes.

  “I know it isn’t fair of me to bring her up to you, but I can’t see him hurt like that again. She couldn’t take his differences. Sometimes people say they can, think they can, but at the end of it, it’s just too much for them, even something as simple as a body that was broken and stitched back together again.”

  She’s calling my own loyalty to her son into question, calling my ability to look beyond what others might see as flaws. I could be angry or offended, but I’m not. I know what she’s telling me is out of love and concern for her son, a preemptive warning. It’s probably the same thing I’ll tell any future suitor of Kate’s who I think might end up breaking her heart because she won’t be able to produce children.

  I get it.

  “None of it bothers me,” I tell her, wanting to say just the right thing to make her understand my feelings. “I’ve tried to make Tyler believe that, but I’m worried he still thinks he isn’t enough.”

  “I was afraid of that. Laney really did do a number on him.”

  “I’m going to be a doctor, you know?” I continue. “Tyler is afraid that means I’ll look at him like he’s a specimen or something, but I just don’t. Things that make some people cringe don’t affect me, not that I think anyone should cringe at Tyler.”

  She raises her eyebrows and nods.

  “And I’ve read lots of stories about people who have been disfigured and end up being loved regardless,” I add.

  “I don’t see him as disfigured,” she says, picking that one word out of what I’d been trying to tell her.

  “I don’t either.” I don’t want to be misunderstood. “But he does. That’s what he thinks about himself.”

  She lets out a long sigh. “I’m so sorry. Here I am projecting all of my worries and fears on you when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

  We both turn at the sound of the front door opening, Tyler coming through and carrying a load of cut wood in his arms.

  “We can talk about this again if it would make you feel better,” I tell her in a low voice. “I know it’s important to you.”

  “I’d like that,” she says and squeezes my h
and before I scurry out to help Tyler.

  “So, you and my mom talked.” Tyler is driving me home, and we’re just about to my street.

  “We did,” I reply, putting my hand on his thigh. “She loves you a lot, you know?”

  He laughs dismissively. “Too much sometimes. It’s like she doesn’t want to let me grow up.”

  “I think it’s just she’s worried about you. Isn’t that what moms do?”

  He turns his Jeep down my street, and I catch the slight clenching of his jaw in the light of a street lamp. “It can be suffocating to have someone worrying about you like that.”

  “Yeah, I can see that too.”

  When he pulls into our driveway, he turns the ignition off and turns to me, dragging his hand along my cheek. I close my eyes for a moment, then lean in and kiss him. He kisses me back, softly, but with a gentle passion that makes me wish I were back in his bed and not in his Jeep outside my family’s house.

  We go on like that for a little while until we both realize going further is only going to make us ache for something we can’t do tonight.

  After pulling away and catching his breath, he asks, “Did you get all your college applications in?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, letting myself cool down. “That’s one less thing to worry about, except that now I’ll just worry about whether I’ll get in or not.”

  “I’m sure… no, I know you will.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  He smiles. “I still need to get some applications in—I guess I should look into that, huh?”

  I nod. “Yeah, you really need to.”

  I avoid telling him that he should apply to the same schools I have because of how tricky that can get. I’ve always sworn I’d never let a boy change the school I go to or what dreams I follow, but that’s hard to practice when you feel this close to someone. But I still hope that Tyler will figure something out that won’t involve either of us giving up our dreams, even if I’m really hoping it’s somewhere within easy commuting distance of me.

  “Maybe you can help me out with it this weekend?” He lifts his brows in anticipation.

  “Of course I can,” I toy with the buttons of his shirt, tempted to undo them. “I’d love to help.”

  “So, this Saturday?”

  “Yep. Definitely.”

  We stare at one another for a minute before we finally give in and spend the next five or ten minutes making out. It’s not easy to stop, but we do, and he walks me to the porch, offering a chaste kiss just in case someone might be watching.

  “I’ll see you at school,” he says, holding my hand until I’m walking through my front door and he has no choice but to let it slide away.

  “See you,” I tell him, slowly closing the door and finding myself glad that nobody is in the living room because I just need a minute. I stand against it, feeling so full of love, feeling grateful that I’d met a boy as sweet and special as Tyler. The feeling is perfect because it’s filled with hope and the idea of a future, no matter how messy or complicated it might be.

  And yet, there is a nag deep within me, not about my feelings for him, but about his feelings for himself and the fears his mother has that I’ll be like his ex, Laney. And I’m still scared he isn’t really over her, the girl that hurt him. People can hurt you, and you can still love them, and I just hope that if that’s true of Tyler and Laney that the longer he and I are together, the further from her he’ll feel.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CLAIRE

  “I feel horrible asking you,” Mom says to me in the dining room after her request that I drive Kate to her counseling appointment in Spokane.

  “It’s not your fault you have to do a parent-teacher conference.” I’m already dressed and just finishing up my homework on the dining room table.

  “You know how much I hate you having to make that drive on your own. Maybe I can get Clark to do it.”

  “Mom, you have to have faith in my abilities at some point. I’m really not a bad driver, you know.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “I know… it’s the other drivers. I’ll be extra careful.”

  Her sigh is part relief, part worry. I know that because I’ve heard it a thousand times before.

  “This won’t interfere with you and Tyler getting together today, will it?”

  I shake my head. “That’s not until later. I think his dad wanted him to help around the yard for a while.”

  “In this weather? It’s freezing out there.”

  I shrug. “That’s what he said. Anyway, we’ll be back in time.”

  “So, you’re driving me?” Kate asks, having just dragged herself down the stairs and apparently overhearing our conversation.

  Her hair is newly shorn, the shortest that it has ever been except for maybe when she was a baby, and it’s taking more getting used to than it did when it was black and still long. But she’d given up on growing out her hair with two tones and refused to try to get the black bleached out. She just had most all of it cut off.

  “I just don’t care,” she told me. “And it’s easier like this anyway.”

  “If you don’t mind,” I say to her, though she doesn’t have much of a choice even if she does.

  “I guess not,” she says, sounding entitled and bothered before disappearing into the kitchen for some breakfast.

  After dropping Mom off at the high school for the parent-teacher conferences that Anna Parker’s parents could apparently only make on the weekend, Kate and I are on the road with strict instructions not to go over the speed limit or try to sneak in between two big rigs and end up getting turned into bloody accordion pancakes.

  “Once I drop you off at your counselor, I’m going to run up to see Margaret at the nursing home,” I tell her, not wanting her to freak out that I won’t be in the waiting room the entire time she’d be in her session.

  “Fine. Just be back in time.” She says it like there will be hell to pay if I’m not.

  “I will. I already did the math. If I pop in to see Margaret, I should still get back to you with like ten minutes to spare.”

  “Great,” she says with the enthusiasm of a slug.

  “Are these appointments helping? I realize you don’t like to talk about them much, but I’m curious if you’re getting anything out of them.”

  She shrugs. “I guess. The lady keeps telling me there are lots of women that can’t have kids. Last time I told her to name one she knew in her real life.”

  “And?”

  “She couldn’t.”

  “Maybe that’s not the best way to look at it,” I say, having to keep my eyes on the road.

  “There is no best way to look at it. No guy will marry me if he wants his own kids.”

  “Would Mom have married Dad if she knew he’d get MS?” I ask her, thinking not only of Dad but also of Tyler, thinking how it would suck to write someone off just because of a perceived deficit.

  “Mom might have,” Kate says. “But guys aren’t like that. They just want a kid that looks like them. I know. I watch plenty of videos about it online.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that. I mean, everyone has a different experience, and—”

  “Can we please just not talk about this? I’m going to have to talk about it for an entire hour with my fucking doctor.”

  “Okay.” Having only heard Kate say the word fuck two, maybe three times tops in her entire life, I know she’s serious.

  The rest of the ride is pretty much silent, and once I walk her into the office and wait for her name to be called, I get back into Mom’s car and drive north to Margaret’s nursing home. It’s not my usual Saturday, so I’m hoping to surprise her with a little stuffed reindeer I’d gotten for her.

  The nursing home is decorated for the season, and I can hear some sort of musical group playing in the activity room when I walk in. I head to the desk and start to sign in.

  “Hey, Diane,” I say, scrawling out my signature.
/>   “Hi, Claire. Were you coming to see Margaret by chance?”

  I nod, finish signing and set the pen down. “She’s probably at the music thing with her husband, huh?”

  Diane offers me an empathetic look, and it sends a chill down my spine.

  “I’m really not supposed to say… you know, privacy laws and all? But Margaret is in the hospital. They brought her up there on Monday.”

  “Is she all right?” This isn’t the first time Margaret has gone to the hospital, and she usually comes back after a week or two, fixed up and back to her old self, but people don’t always get better—my dad didn’t.

  “I can’t say for sure because I simply don’t know, but I think it’s serious… been almost a week. If you wanted to see her, she’s at Sacred Heart.” She offers me a strained look of sympathy.

  “Okay, thank you.” I cross my name out on the sign-in sheet and then head back out to the parking lot. I’m dejected and worried and just really sad that Margaret has to endure what she does, but I also remind myself she might be okay. She’s always been okay in the end before.

  I kind of space out thinking about Margaret on my way back to the counselor’s office, having to backtrack twice, but I still get there with plenty of time to spare. I sit down and wait for Kate, the classical music playing in the background doing nothing to soothe my mood.

  When Kate comes out of her appointment, she eyes me sharply, and she looks to be in a worse mood than when she’d walked in. She says absolutely nothing, and I should just drive her home silently and not risk upsetting her more. But once we’re in the car, I take a chance.

  “So, Kate, my friend Margaret from the nursing home… well, she’s in the hospital, and I’d really like to see her. I was wondering if you’d mind us stopping by before we head home?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Kate says without much interest. “I’m not in any rush to get home and have Mom grill me about my appointment.”

  “Are you positive? Hospitals can be a little PTSD for us.”

  “Yeah, it’s like… whatever… I mean, I barely remember going to see Dad, and Grandma was only in that one time, so we might as well go.”