Under a Dark Sky

by Lori Rader-Day

  “She wanted to check in?” Warren said.

  Erica Ruth nodded. “The guest house was closed because of the, um, but of course it was already full anyway, and that’s when she started asking all these questions about the reservation. I thought she was with you, not— And then she asked about renting a boat, but she wanted someone to take her out, not just, you know, a rental or the ferry—I swear I didn’t know what was happening because she said the name Wallace and she had the paperwork printed out, but we know the Rynskis. They come here all the—”

  “The Rynskis?” Warren said. “The one whose daughter—” He looked at me. “Oh.”

  “Right,” Erica Ruth said. “She started telling me things about her daughter and—”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  They both turned to me.

  “About Colleen. Really,” I said. “I want to hear.”

  Warren nodded at Erica Ruth to go ahead but she didn’t want to. She put her hand to her mouth to stop the sob there. “She said her daughter had died in a car wreck, that a drunk driver caused a big accident. And she wanted to spread the”—she swallowed hard—“ashes in the lake. She said Colleen loved it here. She thought they might get—”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Engaged? Married? They might get married here someday?”

  “She said their family used to come up here all the time when Colleen was a little girl. She said it would have been—it would have been—”

  “Perfect,” I said. “It would have been perfect, except he was already married.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Warren sighed and squirmed in the Jeep’s driver’s seat. We were headed back toward his house, just a few minutes, he said. If I had anywhere else to go, I would have gone there.

  The sky had gone a leaden gray, with clouds hanging low. No stars tonight, which was fine by me. I wasn’t going to allow any star talk. Things got confusing when he started up with that. All I wanted was the guest bed, as advertised. And maybe some of that tea when I woke up. Food. I hadn’t had a meal that didn’t come from a gas station in days.

  Warren cleared his throat.

  “What?” I said, peevish. I felt beholden to Warren and mad about that, and now he had to have a word or two, elbowing his way into my renewed grief, the stoked anger. He probably wanted to tell me how great the Rynskis were.

  “People sign in under married names all the time,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You’re missing the part where he was bringing her here instead of me.” In my mind, as Erica Ruth laid out the details, I had started to connect the dots—as simple as drawing pictures of bears and cups around clumps of his precious stars to make sense where there was none. Constellations made out of the pieces Bix had left me. Why had he planned the trip so far in advance, so against his devil-may-care attitude toward the future? Why come to the dark sky park at all, when we had never been stargazers? But most of all, why had Bix’s handprint—in the system from one of his youthful dalliances with the law—been found in the guest house? Why was that woman here in town at the same time? She’d only be here if—if Colleen had been the intended guest, if this place had turned up on Colleen’s calendar, if Bix’s plans had been found among the ruins of Colleen’s too-short life, the same way they had shown up for me among his.

  It was the timing that made me understand, at last. Bix was not a natural planner. He was driven—he was Army, after all—but not pragmatic in that way, unless he was on a tear about something he wanted. Like the insurance policies he’d forced me to sell him as he tried to lure me toward a bigger career. Like the photography lessons he’d cleared my calendar for. Those hadn’t been for me. They were to build a better me. I was a project at first, his one lone troop left to train, and then I was a liability. He needed to leave me, and he wanted me viable. He wanted me standing on my own two feet—weren’t those the words he had used?

  So the reservations at the guest house had nothing to do with how difficult the suite was to obtain. He was clearing his own calendar, too, giving himself a deadline, a goal. He’d given himself a ticking clock during which I could be shifted out of his life and he’d be a man free to take his girlfriend to see the stars. Not just a free man but a man with a clean conscience, a man who had prepared his wife for life without him, for when he ditched her.

  His girlfriend, then, served as the center of this entire universe, the stargazer, the influence that had made Bix turn his eyes to the sky and bemoan the light pollution. From that, I could backtrack and find the moment when Colleen’s star became visible upon the horizon of our marriage. They had been dating for at least a year when they died, tragic lovers. In this scenario, I was shoved into the role of anvil.

  And of fool. I hadn’t fully questioned his motives at all, not the reservations, not the little stack of cash he’d been hoarding. To leave me. Such an idiot. I had, after all, shown up to the dark sky park with stars in my eyes, hadn’t I? Talking about an anniversary, stupid blushing bride. The timing had meant nothing, only that Bix was certain he wouldn’t be celebrating ten years, not with the likes of me.

  I’d played another role, too. One of failure. I hadn’t landed on my own two feet. I hadn’t launched. Instead, I’d dug in my heels. I’d refused to see because I was scared to be left alone and then—

  But I didn’t like to let my mind wander too far in that direction. There was a destination at the end I didn’t want to reach.

  “You’re missing the part where I gave him credit for being thoughtful,” I said. I’d wanted to give Bix credit, for paying close attention, for offering us a new beginning. It stung, the self-delusion. “You’re also skimming over the part where the woman who shamed me at my husband’s funeral for being cheated on is here, in town.”

  “Why do you think she’s here?” Warren said.

  “Well, it sounds like she summers here.”

  He looked away.

  “The ashes,” I said. “Colleen loved the place, didn’t you hear? And I suppose her mother’s been going through . . . her things the same way I’ve been forced to go through his. She probably found some piece of paper, just like I did.”

  “Why would she think the reservation would still be held? They died—months ago.”

  “Who was left to cancel the reservation? They were still living in secret,” I said. “In secret because of me, the bridge troll.”

  I regretted the troll thing as soon as I said it. He’d fed the word to me, ha ha, people who live below the Mackinac Bridge are trolls. But it was a joke for another world, another time.

  “I get to be the bad guy in their doomed romance,” I tried again. “I’m the villain.”

  “You were just living your life,” Warren said. “No one is a villain in your story.”

  “Bix—”

  “Not even your husband.”

  I couldn’t yet agree. I felt as though I had been apologizing and explaining away his behavior since his death, hiding the secrets he had tried to lay wide open. But now I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to forgive. I had no hope of forgetting.

  “I used to think he was such a great person,” I said. “Saving little old ladies in the grocery line who hadn’t brought enough change, fastest to offer jumper cables anytime anyone had a dead battery. I’ve got a story about a roof he tried to fix that would tell you all you needed to know about that man.” My voice strangled to a close. “That idiot. He was supposed to be the good one, the catch, the prince charming. And instead he turned out to be—”

  The devil, smiling.

  I clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t want to be talking about these things at all, let alone with Warren Hoyt. Too bad, then, that my life had boiled down to Warren Hoyt being the only person listening.

  I WOKE IN the dark.

  I fought out from under the heavy quilt of Warren’s guest bed and found the room around me bright. As bright as could be expected, anyway, given he only had an overhead dome light
and a small reading light clamped to the headboard. He hadn’t been expecting a connoisseur of wattage to visit.

  The window had blackout curtains, though, a nice touch. Like a promise that I would sleep the night.

  I sat up and pulled the covers up to my chest. The T-shirt, weathered and soft, from Warren’s own supply, had bunched up around my waist, and I was naked except for that and a pair of Warren’s white crew socks, which pooled around my ankles. My clothes had gone to the laundry room next door, where the gentle sounds of the washing machine had helped lull me into a deep sleep.

  The washing machine had stopped. In the silence it left, I could hear a muffled voice. Warren’s, on the phone in a nearby room. Something about it was familiar and comforting.

  I’d had a shower and a meal before falling asleep. Non-motel soap and a full half hour of hot water, and then a bowl of bachelor’s kitchen macaroni and cheese from the box, the kind with the nuclear orange cheese powder. I could have been served the sole of my own shoe and would have eaten it. And that’s how I slept, too, as though I would have dozed in any old dog’s bed in the garage. A park bench. As though I could have slept anywhere, as though I had that skill.

  But what Warren lacked in cooking, he made up for in creature comforts. The house, when we’d arrived, had surprised me somehow. It was homey, comfortable. Quaint. And, except for the pantry being a bit bare, the house was just that. Small, tidy, throw pillows at the arms of the couch, just so.

  Married. That’s what I thought as I dragged myself through the door. Hadn’t he had framed photos on his desk? He’s married. I’d misread the signals.

  And yet no wife or girlfriend appeared as Warren boiled water for the noodles, fetched me a robe, and searched for the T-shirt and socks. No pictures of such a person adorned the shelves in the living room.

  Why was I interested? I wasn’t. I had taken the fluffiest towel for my shower and hidden myself away in the steam.

  We had eaten the macaroni sitting at his kitchen table, me with Warren’s green-and-white-striped robe tied around me and the socks sliding down my legs. Afterward I’d decided to level with him. “Look,” I said. “I’m going to need to leave the lights on in the guest room while I sleep, OK? It’s perfectly acceptable for you to wonder why, but I’m too tired to talk about it now.”

  “OK,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  “So tell anyone else who lives here not to turn those lights out, even if I’m dead to the world.”

  He smiled. “No one else lives here.”

  The pillows. Well, subscriptions to Architectural Digest weren’t that expensive. You could learn as much from a single turn around a Crate & Barrel.

  “Is that something that was bothering you?” he said.

  I had not been in close quarters with a man in nine months, and now—Sam, Dev, Warren. A different kind of immersion therapy, as Dev had called it. I pictured the swimming trunks hanging wet from the newel post when I’d arrived at the guest house. A man’s territory, marked. This was a man’s territory, but unmarked—decorated, instead.

  “Where’s that guest room?” I asked.

  So I’d fallen asleep almost instantly, like a child, and now lay in bed, considering. I’d been awake for most of the last—I counted them out—three days? It was Monday, unless I had slept the entire day away. Had I? What time was it? What day?

  And what was Warren nattering on about? His phone conversation was almost constant, a monologue. Or maybe it was the radio? I tilted my head, listening.

  “. . . with everything that’s gone on out here this week, I’ve had the chance to see our community in a way I never have before. As a place where terrible things are possible.”

  I rose from the bed, giving my legs a moment to regain their battle against gravity, and reached for the robe. I peeked behind the shades to find it full daylight. Still? Again?

  Out in the hall, the voice was clearer. It was the radio, the same calming voice I’d been picking up all weekend. “. . . we want to think that darkness happens somewhere else.”

  The laundry room door was open. Another door a few steps down the hall was pulled tight. I put my ear to the door.

  “. . . if we don’t find a way to live under this dark sky together, how do we live with ourselves in the daylight?”

  I opened the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Warren ripped the headphones off his ears and reached over and hit a button on the laptop open on his desk.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear you knock.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He was alone. The room was windowless, dark, spare. Acoustic tiles lined the walls and ceiling. I noticed three, no, four light sources, only one of which he had bothered to turn on. My eyes went back to the laptop. “Are you talking to someone, or—”

  “Ah,” he said, blushing. “I do a little radio spot on the local airwaves about the park. You know, talk up our programs and that kind of thing. Talk about the stars.”

  I hadn’t wanted to let him star-talk, but maybe that’s all he had to say. “Every night?”

  “Most nights,” he said. “Not that I think anyone is listening. The diner down near Pellston keeps this station on pretty much all the time, but the show doesn’t run until late. Not sure who’s out there at that time of the night. If they’re up, they probably have a better reason than looking at the stars. Or talking about looking at the stars.”

  “You work a lot, early and late.” I stepped into the room and hit the light switch I found on the wall. A low-yield, pale yellow light came on overhead. Not enough.

  He watched me ease inside, toward the next lamp. “It’s a night shift kind of job, the stars.”

  “But you work during the day, too.” I reached for the pull on a floor lamp. Also dim.

  “I like to be at the park. I just—take a lot of naps. That’s a three-stage bulb,” Warren said as I started to walk away.

  I went back and tugged twice more on the chain. Better.

  “I enjoy my work,” Warren said. “So maybe I take on more hours than absolutely necessary. How about you? What do you do?”

  The full answer was too complicated. I had stalked the third lamp, the desk lamp that sat within reach of Warren’s right hand. His hand caught my attention again, as it had earlier on the steering wheel. Tan, with twisting veins, high knuckles and fine hairs to the wrist. I stared at his hand transfixed—I had just realized that Warren Hoyt would hear what had happened—didn’t happen, but looked as though had happened—with Dev. There was something terrible about the truth, but also about the truth getting out and around to—Warren Hoyt? And then Warren’s hand reached for the button on the desk lamp and pushed it for me. “OK if I do it or do you need to?” he said.

  He thought I was some kind of obsessive-compulsive. Fine by me. This took it out of the realm of odd and into the realm of clinical. Whatever Hoyt wanted to believe about me was fine. I was not embarrassed by my fear anymore, just tired of it. Could I lose the fear itself just as easily as I had the shame of discovery? Could I slip from it like a snake from its skin? I had to hope it was possible. But Warren Hoyt would hear the truth about my indiscretions, and all this openhearted sincerity would be wasted on me.

  “I have to go.”

  He looked away. “Your clothes are still in the washer. To be honest I thought you’d sleep through the night after the last few days you’ve had. It’s only been a couple of hours. I think they’ll want to see you again soon. Are you sure you don’t want to lie down and— What’s wrong?”

  A part of me had forgotten it all. Being in Warren’s house was like living in a storybook from childhood. Wolves at the door, though.

  “Has anyone heard about Dev?” I said. “Is he— Has anyone—”

  “No word yet.” His eyes dropped to where I fiddled with the long belt of the robe then to my feet, in his own socks. I was aware, suddenly, of my bare legs, of my nakedness under the robe and long T-shirt. He looked away. “I’l
l put your clothes in the dryer now. Did you need anything? I’ve got some wine open if you wanted—”

  I nearly gagged.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I should go try to sleep more. It’s only . . .”

  I searched the room and found the time, at last, on the watch on Warren’s wrist. Afternoon, only a few hours. Monday, then. Tomorrow was the anniversary I wouldn’t celebrate, the deadline I had set for myself to decide which way life went from here. Warren let me stare at his watch as long as I needed, and then stood and pushed the button on the desk lamp. I went to the door but turned back. In the reverse pattern I had turned on each lamp, he turned them off. I watched, noticing now a few things I had not taken the time to notice before about Warren Hoyt. I pulled the lapels of the bathrobe together at my neck.

  “What were you saying on your broadcast?” I said.

  He stood at the doorway gazing down at me. Hungrily. I had not misread any signs, not these. “About . . . how the night sky is elegant with or without our crude drawings connecting the stars. About how it goes on with or without us.” He thought for a moment. “About the total accident of human existence and the eventual blaze-out of life on Earth as we know it.”

  He certainly knew how to talk to women.

  “Nice bedtime story.” I turned for the guest room before I could say anything else. I had made enough miscalculations already this week. One more was one too many.

  BACK IN THE guest room, I let the robe fall to the floor and slipped back into the cool sheets. I pulled the blankets all around me, tucking them under my legs and around my arms as best I could until I was cocooned.

  I was wide awake.

  The trouble with subsisting on so little sleep for so long was that I had no talent for sleep when I had the chance. It was like an atrophied muscle.

  I threw back the covers and studied the bruises on my hand. The swelling had gone down. I stretched my fingers, tested my grip, studied the creases that cut across the palm of my hand, supposedly unique.