Lovely Wild

by Megan Hart

  Ryan’s always been the one to tell the kids about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny. Myths of childhood Mari never learned from experience and therefore couldn’t share. This is the first time she’s ever consoled them with a statement she’s not sure is true.

  “Oh, God!” Kendra bursts into sobs. “It’s bad! It’s really bad, isn’t it? Is he going to jail? Did he do something that bad?”

  Mari wasn’t terribly put off by Kendra’s bland description of the dead woman’s demise, but she is disturbed by how easily her daughter assumes her father could be guilty of something worthy of jail time. “Kiki. No. Daddy’s not going to jail.”

  “But it’s bad, isn’t it?” Kendra’s sobs taper off, and she swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara.

  Ethan’s crying silently, silver tears slipping down his cheeks. Mari gestures and he moves close enough for her to hug. She reaches to snag Kendra’s wrist, even though the girl’s not much for hugs anymore, and pulls her close, too. The three of them hug tight. Mari’s arms are still long enough to go around them both. She holds them as hard as she can.

  Her children have never really known anything terrible, and she will do whatever’s necessary to make sure they never do. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

  They both sniffle against her. They both pull away before she’s ready to let them go. Ethan rubs his nose with a sleeve while Kendra has the sense to use a tissue. Mari looks again at the ceiling. Somewhere above is her husband, the father of her children.

  “I’ll be back,” she says. “You two take some change from the jar near the phone and walk down to the Wawa for some slushies.”

  She doesn’t need to tell them twice. It’s a privilege their dad would squawk about; even though he wants them to “get out of the house and do something,” walking a few blocks to the convenience store isn’t one of them. The world’s a dangerous place, Ryan says. Mari knows he has no real idea of what that means.

  He’s locked himself in his office, where she hears the shuffle and thump of him pulling open drawers. When she peeks inside she sees he’s pulled out half a dozen file boxes from his closet. The papers are spread out all around him and he’s bent over them, studying them so fiercely, he doesn’t even notice she’s opened the door until she raps lightly with her knuckles.

  “Ryan?”

  “Yeah, babe.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead.

  The sight of him looking so rumpled when Ryan is always so put together lifts another current of unease inside her. “What are you doing?”

  He gives her a smile so broad, so bright, so full of even, white teeth, there is no way she ought to be afraid. “I’m doing it. I’m going to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “I’m finally going to write a book.”

  Mari isn’t sure she ever knew Ryan wanted to write a book. Frankly, she can’t recall ever seeing him read a book. Magazines, yes. Medical journals and Sports Illustrated and Consumer Reports when he’s on the hunt for some new toy. But books? Never.

  “What kind of book?”

  His gaze shifts just a little, cutting from hers to look over the piles of folders and papers. “A case study.”

  “So, not fiction.” That made more sense to her.

  “No.” Again, that shifting gaze, the cut of it from hers. “But that’s not the best part, babe. This is even better.”

  He holds up a folder. The front of it says Dimitri Management Rental Properties. She doesn’t know what that means, but something about it doesn’t sit well. “What?”

  “C’mere.” Ryan gestures, and Mari goes.

  He settles her onto his lap and nuzzles against her, hiding his face for a moment before lifting it. His eyes are shiny bright, his smile, too. He looks so much like his father that her breath catches. Ryan doesn’t notice.

  “You know I love you, right?”

  “I hope so,” Mari says. “You married me.”

  He laughs a little too loud for the space and for being so close to her. “And you know I’ll always do my best to take care of you, right?”

  Something twists deep inside her. “I know that.”

  His hand tightens on her while the other puts the folder on the desk. “And you trust me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “We’re going to move.”

  Alarmed, Mari shifts on Ryan’s lap to look into his eyes. “What? Where? Why?”

  “Just for the summer,” he says quickly. “Someplace that’ll be great for the kids. For us, too. A place that’ll be perfect for me to write and for you all to just get away from the city.”

  She doesn’t point out that they don’t exactly live in the city. “Ryan. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I don’t want you to worry,” her husband says. “Let me take care of this.”

  “What about our house?”

  “I’ve arranged to rent it to a psych fellow.”

  “And where are we going?” He’s taken care of everything, made all the arrangements, but she still has to ask.

  Ryan draws in a deep breath. “Pine Grove. Babe, I’m going to take you home.”

  ELEVEN

  MARI HAD MADE dinner. Nothing special. Pasta with sauce and some salad from the cold box...no, the refrigerator, she reminded herself. She’d set the table. Two plates, one. Two. She stopped herself from counting them out on her fingers. When she caught herself singing under her breath, she stopped herself from that, too. Leon didn’t like it when she sang. He said it distracted him.

  He enjoyed the food, though. “You’re becoming quite the little cook.”

  His praise, as always, warmed her. She wanted to stretch herself like a barn cat, rub herself beneath his hand. But Leon never touched her. Not since she was small.

  He asked her about her studies. What lessons she’d completed. Had she practiced her handwriting? She must get better at cursive. Had she read the book he’d left for her on the desk?

  “I tried.” Mari pushed pasta around on her plate, her belly full but appetite not sated. Sometimes, she felt like as long as there was food in front of her, she would eat it until it made her sick.

  “What do you mean, you tried?” Leon’s fork spattered red sauce on his white shirt, which Mari will put in the laundry later to soak so that it doesn’t stain. “I expect more from you than trying. You can do better than that. It’s not too difficult for you. You’re a smart girl.”

  She has explained in the past, or tried to, that it wasn’t that the books he chose for her were too difficult. She could read the words. She could understand the meanings. She simply couldn’t understand what they were about.

  “Anne of Green Gables is a classic,” Leon continued. “All girls your age should read it.”

  Anne of Green Gables was about a girl with red hair who is adopted by a family who really wanted a boy. Mari supposed Leon thought she might be able to identify with the concept of being adopted, and in a way she did. But the rest of it, the talk of clothes and school and friends and love...that, Mari did not comprehend.

  She said nothing. She ate her dinner and packed away the leftovers carefully, letting her fingertips dance over the plastic containers stacked in the refrigerator when Leon couldn’t see and tell her to keep her hands still. She washed the dishes and put them away, and she remembered not to sing under her breath.

  “My son,” Leon said from the kitchen doorway. “Ryan. He’ll be here in about an hour.”

  Leon had spoken many times of his son. He’d shown her pictures and video movies of Ryan as a child. Leon had even given her some of Ryan’s old things, not like they were hand-me-downs but as though they were precious gifts she should be honored to claim.

  In fact, a few of the things he gave her were precious to Mari. Not the cast-off football jersey that didn’t fit and still smelled slightly of sweat. And not the boxes of plastic bricks she’d never really learned to put together to make something bigger. But the stuffed bunny, fur worn off on the ea
rs and the tail entirely lost—that she loved. That she still slept with next to her at night though at fifteen she had abandoned all her other dolls and stuffed toys. Leon, who hadn’t asked her to call him father but encouraged the use of his first name, had given Mari that toy when she was much younger and had nothing left of her life before. Later, there were fancy toys and brand-new dresses, brought by well-meaning people who had no idea of what she held as valuable. But the bunny that once belonged to Ryan was something Mari would forever hold precious and dear.

  In the year and a half since she’d been living here, she’d never even known Ryan to call the house. There’d been some trouble with Leon’s wife when he decided to give Mari a permanent home. Mari didn’t know the whole story, had only caught bits and pieces overheard in shouting conversations on the phone late at night when he thought she was asleep. She knew the doctor’s wife didn’t want to become a mother to some random, cast-off girl nobody else wanted, and she couldn’t say she blamed the former Mrs. Doctor Calder. After all, Mari’s own mother hadn’t wanted her, either.

  It might’ve been the trouble with Ryan’s mother that kept him away, or something simpler. He’d been in college, then med school. He was a grown-up. With a girlfriend, Leon said with a small curl of his lip that told Mari exactly what he thought of that. And though Leon had kept many of Ryan’s things and felt free enough with them to give them away, he’d also been honest about the fact he wasn’t very close with his son.

  Mari, Leon often said, was a second chance.

  Since Leon Calder was the only father Mari had ever known, he was her only chance.

  But now Mari stood in the kitchen, in shadow, watching Ryan come in from the outside. He stamped his feet to get the snow off his boots. Brushed it off his shoulders. It was melting in his blond hair, leaving rivulets of water trickling down his temples and making puddles from the hems of his pants on the floor.

  He didn’t see her, and she didn’t want him to. Mari went quiet; she went still. She was silence. Not a breath, not a sigh, not a blink. And Ryan passed by her little corner of shadow and headed for the living room, calling out for his dad.

  She had time to run upstairs and hastily comb through her hair. Put on clean clothes. She didn’t have many pretty things. Leon preferred her to dress in something like a uniform. Appropriate clothes, he said, because he wanted nobody to say there was anything inappropriate going on. People already had enough reason to whisper, he said, though he’d never explained exactly what that meant. Mari didn’t like the plaid skirt, the white blouse, the saddle shoes and knee socks. She’d rather have the sorts of clothes she’d seen the kids on TV wearing. Jeans and sneakers. Now, though, she wished she had something pretty. Flowy. Something soft, like a princess would wear.

  For the first time, she understood why Anne cared about what dress she wore to impress Gilbert Blythe.

  When she crept down the stairs again, her heart pounding, Mari saw Ryan in the living room with his dad. They were drinking from glasses filled with Scotch. Ryan didn’t look very much like his father, but they both turned at the same time and she saw there was something very much the same in their smiles.

  “Ryan,” said Leon, “this...is Mari.”

  “Hey, little sister,” Ryan said. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing,” Mari answered and was confused when Ryan choked with laughter. “What?”

  “She doesn’t know Billy Idol, Ryan.”

  “Oh. Right.” Ryan nodded like he understood, but the quirk of his smile said he didn’t. Not really.

  He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He was her brother, Leon said, but there was nothing brotherly about the way he looked at her.

  Mari wanted him like some girls wanted rock stars or movie stars or TV celebrities.

  Later, when Leon had gone to bed and Mari was still in the kitchen scrubbing the floor because of the mess Ryan’s shoes had made, he found her. “Hey. What are you doing?”

  She looked up at him. “Cleaning. I don’t like it to be dirty.”

  “My dad makes you clean like that? Doesn’t he have a housekeeper?”

  “I don’t mind.” It had never occurred to her that it was something to be ashamed of, taking care of Leon. After all, he’d taken care of her.

  “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be up late scrubbing the floor. You should be out having fun.” Ryan’s gaze had cut away from her before sneaking back like a dog looking to steal from the table.

  The next time he came home with a pink T-shirt with a unicorn covered in sparkles on the front of it. It wasn’t a princess dress, but Mari would eventually wear it to shreds. He took her to the movies, which she hated, too dark, too loud, the chemical scent of the popcorn butter distasteful. He took her to a restaurant, and she liked that much better, especially when she got a giant sundae for dessert. Three days he spent at home, three days he spent teasing her into laughter and making her shine.

  “You take care, kid,” he told her on the day he left and chucked her under the chin.

  She watched him walk to the car, her hand raised in a half wave that was the best she could muster, considering the thought of him leaving her so soon was enough to make her want to curl in a ball beneath the blankets and cry.

  A day later, he called the house to talk to her. Not to his father, who handed her the phone with a raised eyebrow, but no comment. Mari took the phone curiously, uncertain, but the moment she heard Ryan’s voice, everything that had seemed dark became light.

  For two years, Ryan was there when she needed someone to talk to, though in truth she often did more listening than speaking. He taught her how to drive. Ryan was there when Leon didn’t understand what a young girl needed—pretty clothes, not dowdy uniforms. Trips to the park and the zoo and the mall instead of being kept at home and out of sight. Ryan was the one who told his father that Mari needed to be allowed to wear mascara, get her ears pierced, if she wanted to. To look and act like other girls her age, even if she’d grow up to be a different sort of woman. He was her champion, her advocate.

  He was her prince.

  And then, Leon died.

  She was not surprised when it happened, though it was sudden. One moment he was sitting in front of the meatloaf she’d cooked for dinner, asking her about her studies—she was a month from finishing the homeschooling courses that would give her a GED—and the next he was facedown in the mashed potatoes. A few hours after that, the man who’d given her a life had lost his.

  Death was nothing new to her. She’d seen it on the farm with chicks and puppies and kittens, and her grandmother, too. Some part of her had been waiting for Leon to abandon her since the day he’d taken her home. She wept, of course, at the loss. Leon had saved her...but he’d never been her savior, had he? Not really.

  She had a prince for that.

  The night before Leon’s funeral, Ryan came home late. Mari was waiting for him in the living room in front of the fireplace. She didn’t know about seduction, but it turned out she didn’t have to. She wanted him and now she had him.

  Eight months later, they were married.

  * * *

  Beside her sleeping husband, Mari thinks of all this now. How some choices were made for her and some she’s made for herself, but that the whole of her life has led her to this man, this house, this space. This life. And it’s a good life, full of love and so much more than she’d ever have guessed she could have.

  If Ryan says they need to go back, he must have a good reason. And if she trusts him, as she’s always done, then she also has to trust that everything will be all right. When he tells her he’s taking her home, he has no real idea of what that means to her and never has. She doesn’t want him to know. But she trusts Ryan as much as she loves him, and that means Mari will follow him wherever he thinks he needs to go.

  Ryan is not the first man to rescue her, but Mari has always believed he would be the last.

  TWELVE

  IT WOULD’VE BEEN a total cliché
for Kendra to hate her parents for this. They’d taken her away from her friends, the pool, all the stuff she’d been looking forward to this summer. Her riding lessons. She’d been planning to do the adult summer reading program for the first time, and it was a better one, because the little kids get stuff like coupons for Rita’s Italian Water Ice and Subway, but when you did the grown-up program you got entered for gift certificates to Amazon.com and places like that. She’d already put together her reading list, and though her dad had promised there’d be a library where they were going, Kendra knew it wouldn’t be the same.

  She totally should’ve hated them. Her dad, because it had been his stupid idea. Her mom for going along with it the way she always did, not even asking any questions. Not even complaining. It would’ve been too easy to blame her parents for ruining her life when all it really meant was she had to spend a few months in some country town while her parents got their act together. That wasn’t life. That was just the summer.

  It could’ve been worse.

  Or maybe not, she thought as her mom at last pulled up in front of a peeling, white-painted farmhouse with a sagging front porch and windows like dead eyes. This looked pretty gross. They got out of the car at the same time as her dad and Ethan got out of his. Dad gave her and Mom a gigantic, toothy grin.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think it stinks.” Ethan put a hand to his nose. “Pee-yew.”

  “It’s a skunk,” Mom said in a quiet voice. “That’s what they smell like.”

  “Smell that, kids? That’s a skunk!”

  “Dad,” Kendra said, “you don’t have to sound so excited.”

  Her dad grabbed her mom’s hand. Then he kissed her. Kendra turned away.

  Still couldn’t hate them.

  Across the raggedy field that could hardly be called a yard, in the woods, something moved. The leaves, mostly green, turned pale sides up like the wind had ruffled them, but the weeds and grass were barely moving.