by Susan Wiggs
* * *
Sonnet changed her outfit at least four times, getting ready for a date with Zach. No, she told herself. It wasn’t a date. She simply wanted to see him. She’d sent him a text: Meet me at the Hilltop Tavern. I have something to celebrate.
Now she wondered if the cool jacket and cowboy boots were a bit much. Did she look as if she was trying too hard? Primping too much?
“You’re overthinking again,” she reminded herself as she parked and headed into the tavern. “It’s not a date.”
Yet it felt like a date. She had the butterflies, the sense of anticipation, the sweet tug of yearning deep inside, just at the prospect of seeing him. Maybe it was a date. They were getting together like two grown-ups getting to know each other, maybe even like two grown-ups falling in love.
His work van rumbled to a stop in the parking lot, so she stopped to wait for him. He got out, and he looked wonderful, his long hair shining, his shirt pressed. Pressed. The butterflies intensified, and she felt a little silly. She’d been on plenty of dates; she’d met guys who arrived in limos and sports cars, but she’d never felt this crazy melting sensation inside when she saw them.
“Hey,” he said, then stooped and gave her an awkward hug. Yes, it was awkward. “What’s up? You’re celebrating?”
“Yes, oh, Zach, yes. It’s the best news ever.”
He held the door for her. “You gonna clue me in?”
“Order me a drink first.” She took a seat in a booth. The bar was dim and familiar, yeasty-smelling, music drifting from unseen speakers.
“Oh, I like drinking with you. Beer?”
“Please. This is champagne news.”
“Let’s make it a kir royale,” he said to the waitress who approached. “Utica Club for me.”
“I’m impressed that you know what a kir royale is,” she said.
“It’s a way to make average champagne taste better.”
“I heard that,” said the waitress, serving their drinks.
“All right,” said Sonnet. “A toast.”
“Sure.” He clinked glasses with her. “What are we toasting?”
“My mom.” To her surprise, Sonnet felt a wave of emotion. “Her latest tests came back this afternoon. No further evidence of cancer.”
His shoulders sagged and he set down his beer. “Jesus, that’s…Christ, that’s the best news. I’m happy for her. For all of you.”
“It’s great. I mean, she’s not completely out of the woods. There’ll be further tests and checkups, but this is good. So good.” She studied his face, the face of a guy she’d known forever. Even in the dim light, she could see a sheen of tears in his eyes. “Zach…”
“Yeah, I know.” He wiped his eyes, took a quick slug of his beer. “It’s such a damn relief. I just…hell.” He pushed his glass away. “I just need to kiss you.”
Without hesitation, he took her in his arms and kissed her with a fervor that took her breath away. Good grief, it felt amazing. She never wanted it to stop. She kissed him back, moving against him, shamelessly forgetting they were in a public spot. He tasted like heaven, and she was swept back to the night of the wedding, the night that had changed everything between them. How was it that he had been in her life for so long, and she’d never realized they could be like this together? Her goals and ambitions had blinded her to the simple power of passion with the right guy. No wonder she hadn’t been able to make her heart fit together with Orlando. Her heart was smarter than her head; it was waiting for this.
He moved back, smiled down at her. “You’re being nice to me tonight.”
“I’m always nice to you.”
“Right.”
“Ah, Zach. What’s happening to us? Have we both gone crazy?”
“Maybe. I can’t complain, though.” He kissed her again, very tenderly. “I want you to come home with me. Now.”
“But—”
“And I want to put on some good music and fix you another kir royale, and then I want to take your clothes off, and—”
“Okay,” she said in a rush, “that sounds good to me.”
He signaled for the tab. While they waited, she got a call from her father. God, the timing. It was as if his disapproval came vibrating through the phone. Later, she thought, dismissing the call.
“Everything all right?” Zach asked.
“Everything’s fine.” She resisted the urge to check her voice mail. Her dad could wait, just this once.
Then a text came in from her mother. Without hesitation, she checked the message. I’m fine, but I need you to come home. I’ll explain when you get here.
“That’s weird,” she said to Zach after he paid the bill. “My mom needs me to come home.”
“Hey. I need you to come home. My home.”
“My mom needs me. Tell you what. I’ll go check on her, and then I’ll meet you at your place.”
“Okay, that works.”
In the parking lot, he kissed her again. His hands skimmed over her, and it was all she could do not to wrap her legs around him and never let go.
“See you soon,” she said.
One more kiss. A soft promise. She drove home, but it felt more like floating.
* * *
Sonnet sailed into the house. Her mom and Greg were waiting for her at the kitchen table. Jolie, the little dog, was curled in her nest by the stove. These days the kitchen was perpetually littered with baby things—extra bottles, toys and burp pads. She took one look at their faces and asked, “Who died?”
“Ah, baby.” Nina offered a wan smile. “Somebody put a stupid video up on the internet to try to damage your father’s reputation.”
Her heart sank, but she wasn’t surprised. “Johnny Delvecchio’s people fight dirty. Dad’s known that all along. I’m sure he can handle it. What is it this time?”
“It’s…” Nina glanced from side to side, seeming as though she would rather be anywhere but here in her own kitchen.
“Just show her,” Greg said.
“Yes,” Sonnet said. “Show me.”
He turned the laptop toward her. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell. I wish I could make this go away.”
Sonnet stared at the screen. Horror spread over her like a sudden frost, icing every inch of her skin. She blinked at the title of the video on the site: Candidate Jeffries’s bastard daughter’s sex video.
Her mouth went dry. Despite the cold, her cheeks burned all the way up to her scalp.
“It’s staged, of course,” Nina said, her voice very faint. “Someone’s trying to pull a dirty trick.”
Her mother was wrong about that. Perhaps the most shocking thing of all was that the girl in the video really was her. Despite the darkness of the candlelit boathouse, the dashboard camera had picked up telling details of her night with Zach, right down to the whispers and giggles, the bared flesh and hands skimming, the unmistakable sounds of surprised ecstasy.
The number of views on the site was a shocking testament to the speed of the internet. Already, the pro-Delvecchio contingent had disseminated the link through every social network on the web. The scandal had made the local news. With a pinched expression on her face, Courtney Proctor narrated the “Jeffries issue,” as she called it. Besides the sex video, she managed to bring up the fact that Sonnet had made a sudden departure from her job at UNESCO and wound up in a menial role with a “shock reality show” production company, working closely with a convicted felon. T
he ace reporter had pulled together some “man in the street” interviews and aired some of the more incendiary comments: “This makes us wonder what else Laurence Jeffries is hiding.” “The video just proves it. If the guy can’t raise his own kid, how’s he going to represent a whole state?”
Regardless of the inanity of the remark, Sonnet knew the scandal had taken hold. No wonder her unread email queue was full. She dared to glance at it, and could tell just from the subject line that the word was out, far and wide. Senatorial candidate Laurence Jeffries’s illegitimate daughter was not only a reject and a slacker, hanging out with unsavory characters—she was a slut. And the damage was already taking its toll, according to the follow-up to the first broadcast. Laurence Jeffries’s numbers had slipped below his opponent’s.
“Who did this?” Sonnet whispered, horrified. “Who’s behind this?”
“The Delvecchio camp, of course,” her mother said. “Deep breath, okay?”
Sonnet rose from her chair, unable to look at her mother and Greg. “Excuse me,” she mumbled. Somehow she managed to stagger to the bathroom before she threw up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When she could manage to think straight, Sonnet called her father. “I just saw,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “It’s very damaging.”
“What can be done?”
“Orlando’s got somebody on it.”
Orlando. She hadn’t spoken to him since they’d parted ways. She could feel her father’s disappointment coming through the phone. “He’ll fix it,” she mumbled. That was what he did. He did things right, and he kept his nose clean. No wonder her father counted on him.
“Sonnet, I warned you about the company you keep,” he said, “but you didn’t listen.”
The company she kept. He meant Zach. He couldn’t even say the guy’s name. Though her father didn’t say it, he was ordering her to get back to being the good daughter he knew, or he couldn’t associate with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s all I can think of to say.”
“There’s a glimmer of good news for you,” her father said, and now his voice sounded a tiny bit less tight.
“Please, I need some good news.”
A pause. Then: “The Hartstone Fellowship is being offered to you again.”
“What?” She was dazzled. “Seriously? Dad, what did you do?”
“It’s what you did. It’s your achievement to claim,” he said. Now the disapproval was gone, replaced by a note of pride and hope.
“I thought I’d lost my shot at the fellowship.”
“You’ll get an email explaining everything, probably later today. There’s an opening for a directorship in Bhutan.”
Bhutan. She nearly reeled with excitement. Bhutan was a tiny, isolated, mountainous kingdom tucked away in the eastern Himalayas, bordered by China and India. Peaceable and impoverished, it had recently adopted a constitution and was ripe for aid. Her work there would help Bhutanese children gain access to quality education.
“That’s incredible,” she said. “Really?”
“Really. The only contingency is that they need you right away.”
“How right away is ‘right away’?”
“Does next week work for you?”
* * *
Only a couple of hours earlier, Sonnet had envisioned quite a different night with Zach. She’d been thinking about wine and kisses, deep sighs of contentment as he took her in his arms. That was a fantasy; she should have known better. Now she had to force herself to go and see him. She knocked once and let herself into his little bungalow on Spring Street. He was standing at the kitchen bar. He wore the same face as her mom—slightly nauseated, helpless, frustrated.
“You saw,” she said.
“I feel lousy about this. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“It’s too late to do anything. I look like a complete slut, and my dad’s opponent is broadcasting it all over the state. He’s already slipped below Delvecchio in the polls.”
“To be honest, I’m more worried about you.” He took a step toward her.
Just a short time ago, she would have fallen into his arms, at his feet, wherever. Now she just felt…violated. Betrayed.
“How could you let this happen?”
“I didn’t let anything happen.”
“You were supposed to make sure that…that thing on the camera was deleted.”
“I thought I had. I took out the SD card. I didn’t think about the camera having a memory backup. Jesus, I wasn’t thinking of anything that night, Sonnet. Anything but you.”
“Oh, God.” Her skin crawled, and she wrapped her arms around her middle. Whether or not Zach was to blame wasn’t the issue. A wedge had been driven between them—or maybe it had been there all along. Even if he’d made an honest mistake, the damage was done, and it was clear they were on different paths. The scandal had blown through her like a storm, and she was no longer blinded by his kisses and her emotions.
The two of them…she couldn’t imagine how they could make it work.
“The Hartstone Fellowship is back on the table for me,” she said. “I’m going to Bhutan next week.”
“What? Next week? Sonnet—”
“It’s for the best. I can’t turn it down again.” She felt hollow, but determined. She would give up the fellowship to help her mother through cancer. But to give it up because of a wild night of sex…no. That was too transitory.
“I have to go,” she told Zach. “I have to go, and you have to stay, and it’s crazy to pretend there’s anything in our future together.”
His eyes, too blue and too beautiful to look at, turned dark with anger. “I’m not pretending a damn thing, but whatever. Go. Do what you have to do. Marry Rivera. Tell him you want him back. Turn yourself into something respectable so your dad can get elected.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.”
“I’m not going to marry Orlando, which you would know if you’d been listening. I’m not marrying anybody.”
“Fine with me. Look, I’m not going to stand in your way or try to talk you out of anything.”
This was what she had asked of him all along, to step aside and let her forge ahead with her plans. Now he was doing just that. He had dreams and plans of his own; he couldn’t simply follow her around the globe, carrying her bags for her or taking pictures. And she couldn’t bring herself to let this opportunity slip by a second time.
There was a catch, though. She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sonnet returned to the world she knew best, back to Manhattan. Everything about it felt familiar—the traffic sounds, the smells of exhaust and garbage and sizzling street food, the press of crowds, the bustle…yet it was a life that didn’t seem to fit her anymore. She couldn’t imagine going back to the way she’d been…before. Before her mom got sick, before the baby had been born, before she’d returned to Willow Lake.
Before she’d looked into the face of her best friend and realized she’d fallen in love with him.
She could not deny the power of what had happened there. She was a different person now.
From the bottom of her heart, she believed she had found something rare and special with Zach, a deep and abiding passion fueled by a kind of love she’d
never felt before. Yet despite what her heart knew, she questioned whether or not it would endure. She and Zach both understood the price of being together. The cost of being with him was the plan she had for her future. The life she’d always dreamed about beckoned, even though it meant leaving everything, including Zach, behind. For a while, at least.
She found herself completely alone, packing her bags and getting things boxed up for storage or charity. She missed the kids at Camp Kioga and worried about some of them returning to a life full of danger and risk in the city. She missed Jezebel and working with the rest of the crew. She missed her family and couldn’t stop thinking about Zach.
Despondent, she went to see her father, hoping for a word of encouragement and wisdom from him. He invited her to his home for a farewell dinner, a rare opportunity for Sonnet. His wife and daughters showed her the same cordial welcome they’d always extended to her, none of them bringing up the ugliness of the scandal. Now Sonnet realized she would always be the outsider, no matter how big she dreamed and what she achieved. Her own family wasn’t here in the opulent, comfortable home. She belonged to Nina, the mother who had sacrificed everything in order to give Sonnet a good life. Her father had sacrificed nothing for her sake, and his regard for her was tied to her performance.
After dinner, Sonnet opened up the box of Godiva chocolates she’d brought to share.
“So are you excited about Bhutan?” asked Layla.
“Totally. I feel really lucky that the opportunity is still there for me.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
“Ah, thanks. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“That’s not what I was talking about. I mean, you’re totally smart and all, but the luck? That came from Daddy.”
A small chill touched the back of her neck. “Did he tell you that?”
“Nope. Just overheard him talking about it to Orlando.”
Orlando?