by Ann McMan
“At least not until we can figure something out.”
Abbie took hold of Grace’s hands. Grace was surprised at how warm her touch still felt—even after their seek-and-rescue mission in the rain. “You think we can figure something out?”
“I’m counting on it, Grace.”
“I wish I shared your optimism.”
“It’s not really optimism. It’s more like—determinism.”
Grace laughed. “Now you sound like CK. ‘Dam the torpedoes’ has always been her mantra.”
“I knew that coming out here was wrong of me—that it was totally selfish.” Abbie squeezed her hands. “But I couldn’t stop myself.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
From her corner in the living room, Grendel began to whimper. The sound was soft and sad, and it perfectly matched how Grace felt in that moment.
“I guess we’d better feed her,” Abbie suggested.
“Probably.” Grace kissed Abbie’s neck before releasing her. “Then what?” she was brave enough to ask.
Abbie turned around to face her. “Then you take me to bed, and we make this night last a thousand years.”
Grace was not inclined to argue with her.
Chapter Five
The storm blew itself out sometime during the night. Grace wasn’t sure exactly when because she was too preoccupied with trying to memorize every detail of her waning hours with Abbie.
They didn’t sleep much.
In the end, Grendel wound up making a nest out of a couple of old quilts they’d piled up on the floor in the corner of the bedroom. Once the tired dog had eaten and taken another trip outside for a bathroom break, she trotted over to her makeshift bed, curled up in a ball, and never made another sound. Grace was incredulous. To be fair, she had never really paid attention to where Grendel spent her nights—but it seemed apparent that she was used to being inside.
It also seemed apparent that the jittery little dog was more than slightly attached to Abbie.
“You may end up having to adopt her,” Grace pointed out, after the pair returned from their respective trips to the outhouse before bed.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Abbie bent down and scrubbed the top of Grendel’s head. “I think she’d be a lot happier living with you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because you have a fenced yard and a perfect back porch. And I have a life and a ridiculously overwrought new home—both filled with contradictions and uncertainty.”
Grace narrowed her eyes. “Almost thou persuadest me.”
Abbie smiled a bit rakishly. “Spoken like a woman accustomed to running around in a toga.”
“I only did that once.”
“I know. As I recall, it made undressing you a whole lot easier.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “I would’ve packed it for this weekend if I’d known I’d have occasion not to wear it.”
“About that.” Abbie stood up to face her. “Got anything I can borrow to sleep in?”
“Sorry.” Grace did her best to sound sincere. “I appear to be fresh out of sleepwear.”
Abbie raised an eyebrow. “Why do I think you’re lying?”
Grace took a step closer to her. “Beats me.”
“Well. When in Rome . . .” With one smooth gesture, Abbie shed Grady’s oversized hockey shirt.
She wasn’t wearing anything beneath it.
Grace’s spring-loaded inner Catholic reared up to remind her that a God-fearing, decent person should look away. But she wasn’t feeling particularly decent right then, and, although she certainly did fear God, she didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to aspire to anything approximating behavior sanctioned by the Church. All she wanted was to collapse into a heap and stare stupidly at the beatified vision before her.
But that wasn’t going to happen, either. Abbie had other ideas. Before she could concoct something pithy to say, Grace was flat on her back with Abbie’s face hovering above her.
“I think I remember this part.”
“Do you?” Abbie asked. “Then maybe you’ll remember this, too.” Abbie kissed her.
As they dissolved into each other, Grace understood with a hazy kind of clarity that her doleful memories of this amazing night would always be wrapped in the sounds of Grendel’s soft snores and the gentle patter of a waning storm.
When she woke up in the morning, Grace was immediately aware of two things—Abbie and Grendel were nowhere to be seen, and the air was rife with the intoxicating aroma of coffee.
She threw on her discarded clothes and headed out to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a pot of coffee. It was about half full, so Grace surmised that Abbie had been up for a while. She poured herself a generous cup and headed outside in search of her companions. She found them sitting together in the same spot where she’d fallen asleep yesterday. Abbie didn’t hear her approach, but Grendel, who was dozing in the scrap of shade beneath Abbie’s chair, lifted her head like a prairie dog and stared as Grace drew closer.
Abbie was wearing her own clothes. Grace figured they must’ve dried out overnight. Her hair was loosely knotted on top of her head. One hand held a coffee mug; the other held a stack of papers. She looked fabulous. But Grace was learning that Abbie tended to look fabulous in anything—or nothing.
Seeing her sitting there against the backdrop of the lake and the distant, smoky-blue contours of the Green Mountains seemed . . . right. It was like she completed the landscape—a final flourish at the end of a near-perfect composition.
Grace could have stood there all day.
Abbie seemed particularly engrossed in whatever she was reading. As she drew closer, Grace felt a jolt of panic when she realized that the stack of loose-leaf papers balanced on Abbie’s lap were pages from her manuscript.
Oh, holy fucking shit . . .
She cleared her throat.
Abbie looked up at her. “Good morning.” She smiled. “I see you found the coffee.”
“Oh, yeah.” Grace took a healthy sip. “It’s good, too. You’ve managed to capitalize on another weakness of mine.”
“Another?” Abbie’s face relaxed into a long, slow smile that made Grace go weak at the knees. “Do tell. What was the first?”
“It was . . . um . . . you know . . .”
Abbie raised an eyebrow. She lifted the pages from her lap. “Richly crafted descriptions like that would seen to cast doubt on the authorship of this stunning prose work.”
Stunning prose work?
“Um . . .” Grace waved a hand at the pages. “So, you’re reading something . . . interesting?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been reading for more than two hours now. It’s one of the best novels I’ve picked up in a very long time.”
Grace did her best to feign calm. “Do tell. Where’d you find it?”
“On your sofa.” She smiled again. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“In our haste, we did knock a few pages onto the floor. It took me a while to get them back into their correct order.”
Grace pulled another battered Adirondack chair over so she could sit beside Abbie. “Scrambling up the page order could only improve the narrative.”
“I disagree. This narrative flows superbly.”
Grace extended a hand toward Grendel, who inched forward on the grass to sniff at her palm. “I guess I should be grateful that at least one narrative in my life is flowing superbly.”
“Meaning?” Abbie asked.
Grace shrugged.
“Grace?” Abbie leaned forward and rested a hand on Grace’s knee. “Not talking about it won’t help either of us.”
Grace met her eyes. Today, they looked as blue as the lake, shimmering beneath the morning sun.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to pretend that right now is our new normal.”
Abbie sighed. “I do, too. But we can’t, and it isn’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” Abbie squeezed her knee. “I didn’t mean fo
r this to happen.”
“Define this.”
“Coming out here the way I did. It was a reckless impulse. I should never have given in to it. I just couldn’t . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
“Couldn’t what?” Grace prodded.
Abbie sighed. “Couldn’t stop myself. I had to see you again. Just once more—as me—not as the new president of St. Albans.”
“Is there a difference?” Grace wondered if she sounded as morose as she was beginning to feel.
“You know there is.”
“Yeah,” Grace said with resignation. “I do know.” She rested her hand on top of Abbie’s. “I’m sorry, too.”
Abbie bent forward and kissed her on the temple. The gesture was soft and slow—and its sweet simplicity was the most deeply romantic thing Grace had ever experienced.
“So,” Abbie said, after sitting back against her chair, “how about I ask you some questions about this book of yours while we enjoy what’s left of the morning?”
Grace gazed out across the water. A couple of small fishing boats were visible—both idly drifting along over the usual favored spots. She watched the dark silhouettes of the standing fishermen as they cast their lines and slowly wound them back in. Over and over they repeated the practiced maneuver—as if they had all the time in the world to wait for the sleepy fish to rouse and decide to take their bait.
She looked back at Abbie. What did they have? Another hour? Maybe two? Then she’d take Abbie back to Burton Island, so she could catch the ferry to retrieve her car. And that would be that—an ellipsis at the end of their unfinished sentence.
No. Not an ellipsis. A period.
“Sure.” Grace took another sip of her coffee. Why not answer questions about another thing in her life that was going no place? “Fire away.”
# # #
Grendel accompanied them on the boat ride across the lake. Grace didn’t question it when the odd little dog trotted along behind them as they descended the path to the dock. She was surprised, however, when Grendel leapt from the dock onto the pontoon, where she quickly took up residence on a padded seat in front of the helm. Grace wasn’t sure if the dog was used to boats, or whether she simply feared being ditched . . . again.
Abbie followed along more sedately, and soon they’d pushed off and were underway.
Abbie sat just behind Grace and inconspicuously held her hand as they made their way across the lake. The winds were calm today so they didn’t get bounced around too much. As they drew closer to land, increasing numbers of recreational boaters slowed their progress.
They didn’t talk much. That didn’t really surprise Grace. What, after all, remained unsaid?
Not much.
It was all pretty straightforward. Once Abbie returned from North Carolina, she’d be inaugurated as president. That, as they say, would be that.
End of story.
At least, it would be the end of their pathetic little story.
Burton Island was hopping when she slowed the pontoon to search for a place to dock. The harbor was choked with boats. People crawled all over the waterfront and clogged the paths that led to campsites and the public restrooms. Grace began to think that coming here wasn’t the brightest idea. She’d thought most people would be heading out of town for the long holiday weekend. She didn’t count on the legions who would opt to stay around at the public parks.
She rummaged in a compartment beside her seat.
“Here.” She handed Abbie a pair of oversized sunglasses and a ball cap emblazoned with a Bass Pro Shops logo. “Put these on.”
Abbie took the items from her. “Why? Are we gonna knock off that hotdog stand?”
“Yes. That’s precisely what I had in mind. And after that, we can dance topless on the boat and try to draw even more attention to ourselves.”
Abbie laughed. “Feeling a little paranoid?”
“Aren’t you?”
Abbie adjusted her cap. “Not particularly. I don’t think I’m especially recognizable around here.”
Grace thought about telling Abbie she was nuts—that she’d be a standout even if she tried to hide behind a gang of mummers, sashaying down Two Street in Philadelphia. But she didn’t. Besides, maybe Abbie was right, and Grace was just being paranoid.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
“I guess you’re right,” she apologized. “I didn’t want you to have to endure the fallout if anyone saw us together.”
“Fallout? Is your reputation that toxic?” Abbie donned the enormous sunglasses—a castoff pair of Karen’s. They were absurdly large and made her look ridiculous. “To whom did these horrible things belong?” she asked. “Jackie O.?”
Grace was on the verge of delivering a snappy reply when she saw someone she recognized.
Fuck. Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
It was Brittney—her fucking, starry-eyed stalker. Of course. She was standing near the water’s edge with another girl Grace didn’t recognize. They both were eating ice cream cones.
“Sit down,” she barked at Abbie. “Now.”
Grace couldn’t read Abbie’s expression because of the plate-sized lenses that covered most of her face, but she complied immediately. “I assume you’ll tell me why you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“In a minute,” Grace replied. She navigated the pontoon around an enormous motorboat that had stopped to off-load a couple of jet skis. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Okaayyy . . .” Abbie sat back against the side of the boat and refrained from comment while Grace steered them out of the harbor. Once they had safely returned to open water, she got to her feet and took off the sunglasses. “Care to tell me what that was all about?”
“I’m really sorry.” Grace looked at her sheepishly. “I saw someone I knew . . . a student of mine.” She rolled her eyes. “An overly-attentive student of mine.”
“Young love?”
“You might say that. She drives me crazy.”
“She?” Abbie raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” Grace held up a hand. “Don’t worry—it’s not what you think.”
“Really? How do you know what I think?”
“I can imagine.”
Abbie squinted her eyes. “I’m not sure you can, actually.”
“Forget about Brittney. We’re gonna have to drop you off back at Kamp Kill Kare.”
Abbie looked confused. “Won’t that increase the likelihood that we’ll run into other people you know?”
“Probably,” Grace agreed. “At this point, it doesn’t much matter. If Brittney saw us, the news will beat us back to the mainland.”
“Grace?” Abbie took hold of her elbow. “I’m sorry about this. And I’m even sorrier that all I can manage to do is keep repeating the same pitiful phrase.”
“It’s okay. No pain, no gain—right?”
“If you say so.”
“Besides, I need to hit a store in town to get some food for this damn dog.”
Grendel’s head whipped around as soon as Grace uttered the words, “damn dog.” Grace had a sudden, uncanny sense that Grendel possessed highly developed language skills. Either that, or she was used to hearing the phrase “damn dog” a lot. Knowing her former neighbors, she opted for the latter explanation.
“Where did you leave your car?” Grace asked.
“In the main lot near the park entrance.” Abbie hesitated. “Thanks for the curb service.”
Grace gave her a rueful smile. “I’d say ‘my pleasure,’ but I’d be lying.”
Abbie smiled, too. “I’m glad.”
They approached the boat landing at Kamp Kill Kare in silence. This time, Grace didn’t have any trouble docking—although there were a lot of families scattered about, and hordes of free-range kids splashing in the shallow water and racing across the sandy beaches. This was the last big weekend of the tourist season—and the final one in which camp visitors could hike, picnic, swim or paddle about in the Kamp peninsula’s clear,
blue water. Grace loved this place, which had been an elegant and sought-after tourist retreat in the late 1800s before its decades-long tenure as a summer boys’ camp. The park’s stately, three-story Rocky Point House now stood as a monument to the elegance of traditional lakeside architecture. Grace thought it was the best of Vermont—and when she couldn’t get out to Butler Island, her favorite pastime was to pack up a book and spend an afternoon or early summer evening out here—sprawled across a blanket in the long shadows cast by the former hotel.
“I love this place.”
Grace looked at Abbie with surprise. “You must’ve read my mind.”
“I seem to be making a habit of that.”
“Yeah. Go figure.”
Abbie sighed. “No use putting it off. If I leave now, I can try to make it as far as Harrisburg before stopping for the night.” She walked toward the bow to give Grendel a few pats and quick kiss on the head. “You be a good girl and don’t run off.”
Grace thought she heard a faint keening sound from the dog when Abbie turned away. She didn’t blame her one bit.
Abbie was certainly agile enough to not require any help getting off the pontoon, but Grace hopped onto the dock and reached down a hand to her, just the same. She knew the phony act of courtesy was nothing more than a flimsy excuse to touch her again before they said goodbye. If Abbie guessed her real motivation, she didn’t seem to mind it. She took hold of Grace’s extended hand and climbed up to stand beside her. She didn’t let go right away and the two of them stood together, stupidly holding hands for what felt to Grace like both the longest—and the painfully shortest—moments of her life.
“I’ll miss you,” Grace whispered.
Abbie squeezed her hand before releasing it. “Not as much as I’ll miss you.”
Grace closed her eyes. When she opened them, Abbie had turned away and started walking toward the parking lot where she’d left her car. With each step she took, Grace felt another leaf of hope wither and die on the vine inside her.
When she was nearly out of sight, Abbie stopped abruptly and turned around. She raised a hand to her head.
“The cap,” she called out. “I forgot to give it back.”