The Light Before Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  Putting on his charm, he’d probably found a way to get out of the ticket, but he’d still been stopped from tailing me, and no doubt there’d be an enormous price to pay the day I’d see him again. It would be a price I’d have to pay to my family and all of the people I’d let down or embarrassed today too. But right now, at this very moment, I’m free, and whatever the cost, it all feels worth it.

  That freedom feels good, but it doesn’t take long before I start thinking about the fact that life isn’t free, at least not monetarily speaking. I’d thankfully taken out some extra spending money for our now derailed honeymoon—five hundred dollars to be precise—but that wouldn’t last long. I could maybe stretch it out if one or two of the friends I’d made during my three years at Stanford would be willing to put me up for a few nights though.

  I think of Katrina first. We met during freshman orientation and had spent countless hours studying together, and I’m pretty sure she’d at least be willing to offer up her couch. If she’s a no, then I decide Elle, who I’d done volunteer work with at the animal shelter and spent my fair share of nights out having fun with might have some room for me. Hopefully they’ll be able to forgive me for cutting them from the wedding, not because I’d wanted to, but because my parents and Michael’s family kept on adding new people to the guest list, people who had connections Mom and Dad said would be beneficial to all of our futures.

  Like I cared about that.

  Even my bridesmaids were culled to the point there were only two that I liked, and the rest, including the maid of honor, were either members of Michael’s family or somehow associated with the clinic. I could have protested, but when you feel like your own wedding is just some theatrical, staged event, you kind of stop caring who’s a part of it. And I felt like I was doing my friends a favor by excusing them from what was going to be nothing but a phony, shit-show of a wedding.

  I just need to have faith that Katrina and Elle won’t care at all about that and will instead remember they’d both once told me I could always come to them if I needed help.

  And I do, maybe more than ever before.

  Though I’m heading toward California, my mind conjures up an unexpected picture of two other people I’m driving further away from, two people I bet I could turn to if things were different.

  Marjorie and Jack.

  Even in the slightly manic state I’m in, trying to decide my next move as I drive down the freeway, I can’t help but see them as they were at that party the summer before I went to college. They embodied true love, offering hope to those of us who had to settle for less. And I bet they’d have taken me in if I’d asked them to, Marjorie sitting next to me on a guest room bed while I’d tell her my tales of woe, Jack standing outside the door and asking if there’s anything he could do. I almost yearn for them in this moment, wanting to be told things are going to be okay, knowing I’d have a place to finally find myself.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen them, and I now very regretfully think about the fact I never sought them out when I’d return home from Stanford each summer, each Christmas and for many of the other breaks in between. Dad hadn’t said a whole lot about Jack, or Louisa for that matter, and I was no longer expected to show up for work functions or to entertain my parents’ guests with tales of how they too could obtain the perfect nose, cheekbones or expressive eyes. My time at college—and the extra studying required on my breaks—had been my out, and I’d been grateful for that. I hadn’t wanted to press my luck in even mentioning anyone associated with the clinic, not even Marjorie and Jack. And because of that, I have no real idea of how they’re doing.

  They hadn’t come to the wedding, and I couldn’t blame them. But they’d missed something good when I’d refused to repeat my vows and then lifted my dress and took off down the aisle like the trio of brides in that old Dixie Chicks video. I can almost see the thumbs up Jack and his wife might have given me, cheering me on as I raced out of the church. In a way, witnessing their real love over the years had given me the shove I needed to run out on Michael—they’d planted a seed without even knowing it.

  I bet they’re busy starting a family now, Jack cutting back on any extra hours as they begin populating their beautiful old house with children. The thought of it makes me smile, and I promise myself I’ll ask Mom and Dad about them once things are settled, once we find a way to be on speaking terms again, whenever that might be.

  My thoughts are tugged back to the here and now as two guys on Harley’s speed past me, their cut out mufflers offering an annoying echo I’m sure nobody except for them appreciates. I’m at least another eight hours from Stanford where Katrina and Elle are, and while I’m sure I could drive through, fueled by the adrenaline still coursing through my system, my heart crashes when I realize, seemingly for the first time since I’d run, that it’s the first place Michael and my parents will think to look for me.

  Damn.

  While I’ve been driving along the interstate thinking about how free I am, Michael has probably already booked a flight for Oakland or San Francisco or San Jose—whatever will get him to Stanford the quickest. He might even be on a flight right now, plotting to hit up every one of the friends I’d unfortunately introduced him to during his visits to me in California.

  There’s no reason for me to think that Michael would come after me because he actually loves me. If anything, it would be to save face and drag me back, to teach me a lesson. Getting my friends mixed up in that kind of drama, subjecting them to whatever might go down between Michael and I—it wouldn’t be fair. So, as much as I hate to admit it, as much as it makes me sick to my stomach, California can’t be my refuge, at least not anywhere close to Stanford.

  So what do I do now?

  I could head east to the Ivy Leagues and hope that my old friends from private school might take pity on me, which seems a better idea than anything else I can think of at the moment. Samantha Haberman and Regina Witt—studying at Yale and Harvard, respectively—were two of my closest friends in school, girls I’d been able to tell secrets to and to whom I admitted my lack of fondness for Michael. I’d actually begged them not to come to the wedding because I didn’t want them to see me marrying a man I didn’t love, and they’d thankfully RSVP’d very apologetic no’s to my parents.

  And yet I’m hit with a thud of despair when I consider how closely tied they remain to my life in Seattle. Their parents are friends with my parents, their boyfriends friends with Michael. At no fault of their own, I could imagine Regina or Samantha—but more likely Regina who isn’t good at hiding secrets—slipping during an innocent conversation and giving me away.

  I simply can’t risk it.

  So what’s left?

  Is there anywhere I can go for a few weeks of peace, a place I can take the time I need to decide what I want for my life? It’s overwhelming to imagine I have no place safe left to go, and I continue wracking my brain to think of anyone who might be out of my family’s grasp, anyone at all. But before anyone can come to mind, I see a mileage sign, denoting the distance to the upcoming towns, and a small spark of hope develops. I’d barely registered that I’d already passed the city of Eugene a long while ago and now see that Grant’s Pass, Medford, Ashland and Meadow Brook are ahead.

  And it’s the last town that really captures my interest.

  Meadow Brook.

  It’s the last decently sized place in Oregon before you hit the California border and one I’d spent several summers in as a child. Before Dad had fully immersed himself in his work, we’d spend two weeks every summer at a lakeside cabin that belonged to my grandparents on my father’s side. When they passed away several years ago, I recall an argument between my parents about what to do with the cabin. It had been willed to them, and Mom thought it should be sold and perhaps replaced with a condo up at Snoqualmie or in Maui while Dad wanted to keep it for what he said were nostalgic purposes. This was back when Dad could still be sentimental about things, and I’d thrown in my t
wo cents, siding with him and imagining us making new memories there as a family. As far as I knew, Dad had won that argument, but we’d never returned to the cabin.

  But maybe now I could.

  The idea fills me with a nervous hope, and I clutch the steering wheel tighter. It’s years now since I’ve been there, years since I’d even thought about it, but I bet I could still find it from memory alone. It would be the perfect place to find some safety if it hasn’t fallen apart from neglect by now. Perhaps unrealistically, I don’t imagine anyone would think to look for me there, not even my parents. It could offer me a week or two of solitude, time I need to figure out just what I mean to do with my future.

  I pass through Grant’s Pass, a city surrounded by so many trees and hills that I barely get to see any of it, then Medford, bigger and more sprawling, and finally Ashland, a small city that clings to hillsides and seems to want to stay as far away from the freeway as possible. It’s here where the signs for exits into Meadow Brook start appearing, causing a nervous tickle in my stomach. In the time between first seeing the sign for Meadow Brook and now being just a few miles away, I’ve settled my thoughts more. And in that settling, an anxiety about skipping out on Michael finally begins to brew, as if I haven’t understood the full gravity of what I’d done until just now.

  It’s not like me to make a commitment and then abandon it, even one as foolhardy as agreeing to marry Michael. I blame myself for putting up with him for so long, for accepting his proposal and the engagement ring that replaced the promise ring, for allowing my parents and Cynthia to plan us a lavish wedding, reorganize the guest list and send out all of the invites while I stood by and let everyone do whatever they wanted. I played the silent victim and then ran when I couldn’t handle the consequences, and I’d be facing even more now for what I’d done.

  I almost feel like one of those pre-teen runaways, so excited to get out of the house, to get away from parents that don’t understand them, before realizing the money from a broken piggy bank and the loaf of bread and peanut butter they’d loaded in their backpack won’t last more than a couple of days and that the longer they’re gone, the deeper the shit they’ll be in.

  I could go back.

  It might be the responsible thing to do.

  The day, once sunny and bright, is now dusky. Night will be here soon, and when I take the first exit into Meadow Brook, I have two choices. I can either cross the freeway, turn back onto the entrance and go north, go back to the place I’d only hours ago seen fit to break free from. Or I can choose to stay here and drive along country roads until I find one I remember, the one that will take me to the cabin, might take me to an entirely different life if I let it.

  Gliding my car up the exit, I come to the stop sign and switch on my blinker. The radio has been static for the last several hours, stuck on a station that came in clearly in Seattle or maybe Portland but isn’t anything here. But just as I turn onto the bridge over the freeway, the static ends, and a song is playing.

  It comes on somewhere in the middle of it, but the lyrics are clear.

  Even though I ain’t got money,

  I’m still in love with you honey,

  And everything will bring a chain of love…

  As if I have no control over myself, I’m overcome by emotion. I know this song—it’s called Danny’s Song, by Loggins and Messina. It’s a song I remember my grandpa playing during those summers at the cabin, a song he played for my grandmother. Even if my grandparents had been the kind of people to match their son with my mother based on professional prospects and not romance, they obviously loved one another. And one night they really showed it, dancing to that song under the moonlight while Mom, Dad and me sat around the campfire behind the cabin. Dad laughed and told them to get a room while Mom just sort of smiled, a smile I haven’t seen on her in years. And, as for me, I remember thinking that’s what I wanted someday, that closeness.

  While I’d let other people make decisions for me in the past, I’m now letting a song be the final push to make up my mind. It plays while tears stream down my cheeks, and I cross the bridge and keep on going.

  Chapter Two

  NATALIE

  I wake up in a bed I don’t know, and it takes me a moment to place myself and remember all of the events of the previous day.

  “I really did it,” I say, sitting up in the lumpy motel-room bed and shaking my head. “I really left him.”

  The memory of running out on Michael makes me smile, even if a small cringe comes along with it too. I still can’t help but to imagine what everyone must think of me and to know how many people I’ve disappointed, but I feel much more resolved this morning that it was the right choice, albeit a scary one.

  Cynthia had once told me you should do things that freak the hell out of you every once in a while, but I doubt she’d ever imagined I’d use her advice the way I had.

  I sit up in the full-sized bed and push off the scratchy sheet as early morning light pours in through the one window in the second-floor room, a room that has seen better days and has the faint odor of spoiled milk. I’d forgotten to pull the curtains last night and hadn’t managed to wash all the makeup off of my face either. When I stand barefoot on the stiff carpet and make my way to the nearest mirror, I look like I’ve just spent a night in the gutter. My mascara has run down my cheeks through the tears I’d cried yesterday, and my lipstick has spread into a lopsided smear so that it nearly meets the river of dried up cosmetic blackness.

  “God, you look terrible,” I tell myself, moving toward the bathroom next, taking a thin white washcloth, dousing it with water and then scrubbing at my face.

  It feels good to get all of the muck off of me, to undue the layers of foundation and be able to see the light dusting of freckles over my nose that I’m not sure Michael has ever noticed. He probably doesn’t know that my eyelashes are thick and long enough to not need mascara, but I put it on anyway because Mom can always tell the difference.

  “Not putting on your mascara is rather remiss, cutting corners and all,” she’d like to say. “Without it, you aren’t complete.”

  To think that my mother didn’t consider a person was whole without an extra layer of makeup was ridiculous and perhaps a tad bit obsessive, but that’s who my mother is. And Michael isn’t much different from her. If I’d gone through and married him, I didn’t doubt he’d already be finding yet undiscovered flaws about me.

  I move to the shower next, shuddering in even thinking about the honeymoon I’d be on now if I hadn’t run. Sure, I’d have woken up next to Michael in a five-star hotel in Maui instead of my current, dumpier accommodations, but I’d also be finding myself de-virginized by a man I had no real interest in having sex with. No doubt Michael would have taken great pride in that, in knowing he’d been able to sleep with god only knows how many women during our relationship, the duration of which I’d remained chaste. It’s not that I’m a prude or have any inkling to live the life of a nun, but I didn’t much like the idea of having sex with someone I wasn’t in some sort of relationship with, and that was pretty much impossible for as long as I had to be Michael’s dutiful fiancé.

  Gliding my own hands over the curves of my body, lathering myself and cleaning off all traces from the day before, I’m thankful that Michael’s hands aren’t on me. If he has his way, they will be… eventually. But I don’t think I can allow that to happen now, and so I’ve got to be smart. I’ve got to figure out a way to remain hidden, at least until things settle down and I can build up the strength I’ll need to face everyone again.

  I hadn’t been able to find the cabin last night, and after driving around for a couple of hours, I’d had no choice but to head back into town and find a place to sleep. I’d settled for this cheap, run-down motel just north of the city limits, and I’d thankfully still had a fresh change of exercise clothes and a pair of running shoes in the hatch of my Subaru. I’d changed into them in the car because nothing would be more memorable than a l
one woman walking into a motel lobby in a wedding dress, and memorable was the last thing I wanted to be.

  I probably hadn’t needed to bother. The woman who checked me in barely looked at me, not noticing—or not caring—about my face full of smeared makeup. Instead, her attention had been on a TV behind the counter, barely even looking up as she took the cash I handed her before providing me with a key that dangled from a plastic chain.

  Dressed in my exercise clothes and with my dark blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail, I find the same woman in the office when I come to return the key and check out. She mumbles something, takes the key, then points across the room and says, “Coffee if you want it.”

  I turn to see a half empty coffee pot sitting on a warmer, some Styrofoam cups and a tin full of those tiny sugar packets and dried creamers with several other packets already opened, their contents spilling all over the counter.

  “No thank you,” I say, but she doesn’t reply. She just turns back to the TV and the morning talk show that fills the screen.

  Without anything but the clothes on my back and my purse, I head to my car, open it up and slide into the driver’s seat. In the light of day, the motel looks even more run down than it did last night, and I’m pretty sure my mom would hunch over and vomit if she’d even had to enter the room I’d spent my first real night of independence in. I’m not especially anxious to have to spend another night in a place like this if I can’t find the cabin, but for the first time in my life, I can’t afford to be picky about what kind of roof is over my head.

  My stomach rumbles as I turn on the ignition. I’m anxious to find the cabin or get on the road again if I can’t, but I decide I’d better eat first and deal with the hunger that’s started to settle in. I’d barely touched my breakfast yesterday morning or dinner the night before that, so I head south toward town, hoping to find a grocery store where I can load up on inexpensive and easy to eat snacks like apples or oranges or those protein bars that I can take along with me.