The Light Before Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  “Because I know where she is. I know that she’s safe.”

  “You do?” Sharla’s entire demeanor changes, her eyes beaming with hope.

  “She’s at the old cabin, isn’t she?” Lincoln says to me with a stiff kind of anger.

  I nod.

  He lets out a long, labored sigh. “I should have known she’d try that place.”

  “The old cabin in Meadow Brook? But didn’t you call Jack? Jack, didn’t he call you?” Sharla looks frantically to her husband and then back to me, like she’ll accept an answer from whomever speaks first.

  “Yes, I did.” Lincoln’s face flushes pink, on it’s way to burning red.

  He knows, and there’s no use in lying about it.

  “I can explain,” I begin, trying to decide if there’s any way I can still honor some of the things Natalie prefers to keep secret.

  Lincoln crosses his arms in front of him. “Was it going on before her wedding? Was this the plan all along?”

  “What are you talking about?” Sharla isn’t stupid—she just doesn’t want to see what’s right in front of her.

  “He’s fucking our daughter,” Lincoln growls without a hint of indecision.

  “Jack?” Katherine says my name softly, but I don’t fully meet her eyes. This isn’t something I want to tell her on a night that is supposed to be about Marjorie, and yet I’m not going to hide what I have with Natalie.

  “I’m in love with her.” I don’t shrink away from the words I speak to Lincoln, Sharla and Katherine. I’m proud to say them. “There was no plan. My intention was to stay at the cabin by myself, get away from everyone and everything. Natalie showing up was as much a surprise to me as it would have been to anyone.”

  “You’ve known all this time?” Sharla is hurt, and I can’t blame her.

  With a sigh, I do my best to explain. “She wanted a chance to make her own way, to be independent. She wasn’t trying to upset anyone. And I’ve done my best to support her, to—”

  “While you’ve been fucking her,” Lincoln seethes.

  “Stop saying that!” Sharla raises her voice to a level where people actually do start to take notice, but I don’t think Lincoln cares about that now.

  “I’m just going to check on everyone.” Katherine grips my arm lightly before excusing herself. I’m sure it’s in an effort to take attention away from us, and I feel bad having to put her in that position.

  “You both need to understand that I love her, and I’m going to marry her. She’s already agreed.”

  “Over my dead body.” Lincoln steps closer to me, his face beet red, his arms uncrossed now with a fist balled at his side. “How the hell do you think that’s going to look? You’ll be dropping a torpedo on the clinic’s reputation, not to mention the blowback I’ll be getting from Michael and his family.”

  “She wants to marry you? She loves you?” Sharla asks, holding the tissue to her nose and ignoring everything her husband just said. “But Michael… she just didn’t give it a chance—it takes time to make yourself love someone.”

  “We love each other, and neither of us had to make the other feel something we didn’t,” I assure her. “And I don’t give a damn about what you think this might do to the clinic, Lincoln. That really all you obsess about?—but have you ever thought once about what your daughter might actually want, what might make her happy?”

  He laughs in my face. “The nerve! You think you know Natalie better than we do! You think a couple of months screwing her gives you some special insight?”

  “Lincoln, stop!” Sharla urges.

  “This won’t be the end of this, you son of a bitch.” He sticks his finger into my chest before grabbing Sharla’s hand and pulling her away, a stunned expression filling her face.

  And then, just like that, they’re gone.

  I’m fucking pissed at their reaction, but I’m not surprised. Part of me says I deserve what was just said, the other part thinking only of Natalie and wanting to warn her. I go to grab my phone out of my back pocket to call her, but before I can, Katherine reappears.

  “What just happened here, Jack?”

  A short, uneasy laugh escapes my lips. Again, no use in lying or telling half truths. “I just told them I’ve not only been hiding their daughter at my cabin in Oregon but that I plan to marry her.”

  Her eyes are inquisitive, but I don’t see judgment in them. “And just to be fully clear, we’re talking about Natalie Bouchard, the Bouchards’ daughter?”

  I nod. “Marjorie might have mentioned her to you. We’d see her for work events mostly until she went off to college, and then Marjorie…” I close my eyes for a moment, trying to regain my composure. “Somehow, someway, we found our way into one another’s lives again. And damn if I could help it, but I fell in love with her, Katherine.”

  I wait for her to tell me it’s too soon, that grief has made me weak and that this is no way to honor her younger sister’s memory. But she doesn’t say any of that.

  “From the tone of your discussion with her parents, it sounds… complicated. But isn’t love always that way?”

  I let out a breath. “You don’t hate me?”

  She brushes her hand over my upper arm. “Why would I hate you, Jack? Marjorie’s been gone for well over a year, and even before that we all started to process the grief in knowing we were going to lose her. You are allowed to be happy again, you know? It’s exactly what she wanted. She told me so.”

  At that I cry. I can’t help it. Marjorie had told me she wanted me to love again, to marry again, to have a family, but I’d always dismissed it, never having wanted to imagine there would be anyone but her.

  I find the nearest chair and sit, grateful when Katherine follows me. “I’m so sure of Natalie, but… there are times it feels like I’m shortchanging her as long as I still love Marjorie. It makes sense in my head, but can I really expect Natalie to see it that way?”

  Katherine’s comforting smile doesn’t waver. “I think Natalie is the only one who can answer that. But, as for my sister, you’ll always love her. I’ll always love her. But she’s gone, Jack. We can honor her and her legacy and we can hope that we’ll see her again when our time is up, but you know damn well this is what she would have wanted.”

  “Objectively, I know that, but there are days… days guilt comes and stabs me in the heart.”

  “Then let it, Jack, but just remind yourself you only feel that way because you’re a good man, because you wanted to give my kid sister everything, and now you want to give Natalie the world. Both of them are lucky for you coming into their lives.”

  A laugh comes out along with my tears. “You’re being way too kind to me.”

  She looks at me like a mother does a misbehaving child. “Stop it, Jack. Every word of what I said is true, and you just need to make yourself believe it when that guilt comes a calling. I just hope you’ll remain a part of the foundation. Your speech was so inspiring, and we’re doing so much good.”

  “I’d never abandon you or the foundation.”

  She smiles and slides her hand away from me. “I’m grateful for that. Now, I need to say goodbye to a few more people. Are you going to stick around for a while?”

  “I’ve got to call Natalie, and because of what happened, I’m probably going to try driving back to Oregon tonight. I won’t leave without saying goodbye to you, though.”

  “Okay,” she says, squeezing my arm before she gets up and walks over to a small group of people still gathered in the room.

  I step out into the hallway and find a quiet alcove. In dialing Natalie, I’m well aware I’ve betrayed the bargain we’d come to, and I can only hope she’ll see my side of it.

  “Hi, Jack.” She answers on the first ring, her voice light and filled with happiness.

  “Hey, babe. How are things at Melissa’s?”

  She laughs. “Mostly fine. Camille apparently has a separate entrance to the downstairs where her room is, so I don’t even have to deal with he
r. How about you? How was the ceremony?”

  “It went really well,” I say, wishing the ceremony were the only thing we needed to talk about. “I had a chance to talk with the recipients, and Marjorie’s older sister has been doing an amazing job running things, and…” I stop, gathering up the nerve to go on.

  “And?” she asks after a few beats too long of silence.

  “Your parents were here too,” I finish.

  She sighs. “I thought they might be. I’m sorry you had to lie to them, Jack, but it’s really the only way.”

  I raise a hand to my forehead. “Your mother was upset… about you. She was crying.”

  There’s a pause. “Probably just for show. If anything, she’s still crying about all the money they lost on the wedding.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it. She’s really worried about you.”

  She hesitates in the form of a small, strangled breath. “Look, if you’re trying to guilt me into telling them where I’m at, it’s not going to work, Jack. I told you that—”

  “They already know,” I spit out. “I messed up, Natalie. I didn’t have a choice but to tell them.”

  Silence.

  “Natalie? I know this is upsetting, but it’s going to work out. I’m driving down tonight. Just stay at Melissa’s. I don’t think your father is going to head down to the cabin and try to drag you back home, but—”

  “You told them… about us?” I’ve never heard so much anguish in her voice, and it frightens me.

  “I’m so sorry. If there had been another way, I’d have taken it, but now they know, and I’m going to be there for you.”

  “I can’t believe you! It wasn’t your place to tell them, Jack. I trusted you!”

  “Natalie, I—”

  The sound of our call disconnecting shuts me down just as easily as any words of anger might.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  NATALIE

  I haven’t been this angry in a long time, maybe not ever.

  My parents and Michael had never faced the full brunt of my wrath the way Jack just had. They’d all done far worse, but I’d never expected anything less of them. Being livid with Michael for cheating on me or at my father for insisting I marry the said cheater was just as pointless as it was to tell my mother to stop slipping into conversations that I looked great but could look so much better with a boob job or carefully placed silicone lip injections. I could have gone blue in the face telling them all just to stop, but they wouldn’t have. For as strong and mature as I wish I could have been in ending my engagement to Michael, their inability to reason with me and treat me like a true adult is why running had seemed like my only option.

  But I expected more from Jack. I expected him to keep our secret because I asked him to, because I wanted him to trust that I knew them better than he did.

  Yet I feel guilty too, guilt for yelling at him, guilt for making him feel as though he betrayed me. Maybe what I expect of him is unrealistic or just plain unfair. Hadn’t I once told him I should try to mend things with my parents? As ill-advised as I may have been in making that statement, why am I so angry with him for attempting to do just that? I should call him, apologize for lashing out at him when my real anger remains directed at my parents. But for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to do it, as if I’m overcome with an apathy I don’t want to fight against. It’s with this resignation that I turn my phone off, preferring to ignore the entire situation as if none of it had happened.

  But it did of course, and my parents will come for me now. Someway, somehow, they’ll get to me, if only just to make sure I’m punished for what I’ve done—making amends will be the last thing on their minds. Knowing this, I won’t be able to sleep, and so I crawl out of the bed in the guest room I’d hoped to settle down in after a call from Jack, a call I had imagined going an entirely different way.

  I’m tempted to take my engagement ring out of the box I have it in, safely tucked in my overnight bag, look at it, even slide it on my finger to remind me of how Jack had gotten down on one knee to ask me. He and I had decided—with my argument winning out—it was best to keep our engagement and my pregnancy a secret for a few more weeks, not because we were in any way embarrassed about either, but because we didn’t want to give Camille one more thing to latch on to, one more reason for her to piss all over our happiness. And the memory of what had happened in Ashland was still with me. Will’s demeanor had frightened me that evening, and I didn’t want our engagement to get back to him. Somehow, even the idea of him knowing felt like a violation.

  But maybe I was wrong.

  I leave the ring in its place, some shred of guilt making me wonder if I even deserve it.

  After leaving the guest room and going into the kitchen, I fill a glass of water at the sink. While I drink it, I look out the window where the porch light illuminates just a sliver of the evergreens and oaks and maples bordering the yard. There are many more beyond, their shapes more like dark shadows as they blend into thick forests that eventually weave their way to the Pacific Ocean.

  I could follow them.

  I could leave, go off running to the Oregon Coast, then down Highway 101 to California. I have just enough money and a full tank of gas. I could get into my car right this minute and start anew, just as I’d done in Meadow Brook.

  But I can’t leave.

  Of course I can’t.

  I might be angry, but I wouldn’t do that to Barbara or Melissa and leave them in the lurch. And there is no way I could do that to Jack, no way I could walk away from a man I’m so deeply in love with just because I’m angry and frightened.

  “I thought I heard something.” Melissa’s sudden reflection in the kitchen window frightens me, and I nearly drop the glass into the sink.

  “Oh, I was just thirsty,” I say, catching my breath, turning toward her and settling the glass down properly into the sink. “Did I wake you up?”

  She shakes her head, opens the refrigerator and pulls out some creamer. “I’m not much of a sleeper, and this thing with Camille isn’t helping. Would you like some coffee?” She sets the creamer down and opens the cupboard over the coffee maker.

  “I can’t do caffeine at night, especially not this night.”

  “And what’s on your mind tonight?” She takes out a can of coffee, measures it, scoops it into the coffee maker and turns it on.

  Leaning against the counter, I sigh. “Jack called earlier, and I was kind of awful to him. I think we just had our first real fight.”

  “Well, fights do happen in relationships. You want to tell me about it?”

  The coffee maker makes a hissing sound as heated water presses against the ground coffee and drips into the pot below.

  “I don’t want to weigh you down with it. You’ve got enough to deal with. How was your day in Redding?”

  She laughs softly while she pulls a coffee mug down from the cupboard. “Redding was… okay, but I don’t really want to talk about myself or think about Camille. You’d be doing me a real favor if you just spilled your guts to me.”

  I can’t help but to laugh.

  We end up sitting together at the dining room table, her with her cup of coffee and me with some Chamomile tea she talked me into. After the first sip, I’m ready to unburden myself.

  “Well, you know that Jack went to Seattle for the night.”

  “I do,” she says, adding more sugar to her coffee. “Did something happen up there?”

  I nod.

  “Oh, dear,” she says. “He hasn’t gotten himself into trouble, has he?”

  Her mind could go to all sorts of places in thinking of what Jack might have done to upset me, and I don’t want her to be thinking the worst of him.

  “I’m not sure if he’s ever told you, but he used to be married. His wife died last year, and they set up a foundation in her memory, to give out scholarships.”

  She nearly freezes what she’s doing, a frown tugging at her lips. “He was always tight lipped abou
t his past when he’d come into the diner. I had no idea.”

  “That’s why he came here, to get away, to give himself extra time to heal.”

  “Makes sense. Meadow Brook can be a place to get your bearings again, not that it works for everyone.” With a slight raise of her brows, I think she’s talking about Camille.

  “Anyway,” I continue, sure she doesn’t want to start ruminating about the problems with her daughter again. “He was in Seattle for a ceremony to present the scholarships, and some of the money that supports it comes from the surgery clinic he partially owns.”

  Melissa holds her cup just below her lips. “I didn’t realize he owned his own clinic.”

  “He does. He’s a partner. His father was actually the founding partner, but Jack just needed to get away from everything and everyone. That includes my dad.”

  She lifts her eyebrows. “They know one another?”

  “My father is one-third partner at the clinic. He’s a plastic surgeon too.”

  Her eyes go wide now. “And you’ve been keeping all of this to yourself? I could use a few nips and tucks, you know?”

  “You really don’t,” I tell her quite seriously, thinking of all the people who’d show up at those parties, some of whom stopped looking human and more like aliens. “It’s all so superficial. Everything is just about image and nothing else… no substance at all.”

  “Jack doesn’t seem superficial.”

  “He’s not. He’s nothing at all like my parents or the man they wanted me to marry.”

  “So, you knew Jack before you came here to Meadow Brook. Did you choose him over that man you were supposed to marry?”

  “No, it wasn’t anything like that.” But I can see where that would make the most sense to her. “The cabin I’m staying at was once owned by my family. I didn’t know, but Jack bought it, and I’d just come here looking for a place to lay low.”

  She purses her lips and tilts her head, appearing to take everything in. “I see. Well, it’s all beginning to make sense now. So what is it that Jack did tonight to make you so upset with him?”