by Susan Wiggs
Rourke adjusted the rearview mirror. “Seat belt,” he said, and both girls complied.
Jenny kept looking over at Nina and trying to imagine what she was feeling. Nina just looked down at her lap. A moment later, she took some colorful brochures out of her purse and started looking through them. She was just fifteen. Fifteen. She didn’t even have her license yet, but before long she’d have a baby to look after twenty-four/seven, and no husband to help her with it. And actually having it—Jenny had seen the standard film in health class, and wanted no part of giving birth. The very idea that a whole baby came out down there was... Jenny resisted the urge to squirm right along with the guys. She still went to a pediatrician, for cripe’s sake, and as far as she knew, so did Nina. There was a kind of doctor called a “gynecologist,” but Jenny didn’t even know whether that was pronounced with a hard or soft “g” and was too embarrassed to ask. Not having a mother meant not having someone to ask stuff like that. At least Nina had a mom. A mom who was probably going to ground her for life when Nina told her she was pregnant.
The guys were quiet. Joey was staring out the window. Rourke was scowling at the road; she could see his frown of concentration in the rearview mirror. As always, Joey and Rourke were a study in contrasts, earning them the nickname Bill & Ted, after the goofy movie about likable boneheads who were best friends. Rourke was the blond, suntanned surfer, while Joey’s black hair, dark eyes and full mouth reminded her of Keanu Reeves. Privately, Jenny thought they were more like Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, but that reference was lost on most people.
Rourke glanced into the rearview mirror and caught her looking at him. Flustered, she shifted in her seat and turned to the window with a fake-interested look. She had to be careful around Rourke, because even though he swore Joey wanted her to be his girlfriend, she was suffering from the most unbelievable crush on Rourke. She had from the first day she’d met him, when he’d gotten into a fight to protect her.
She wondered if she would ever get used to the way he looked. Doubtful. Each summer it was the same. Kioga would open for business and she would help her grandfather with the bakery deliveries. Going up to the camp was like stepping into a different world, an idyllic place from the past. She always marveled at the people who attended the camp. She was reminded of something she’d read by F. Scott Fitzgerald—who was required reading for school but actually a pretty good writer—“The rich are different.” Much as she wanted it not to be true, it was. These people had a certain air of self-confidence and style. They knew who they were and where they belonged in the world—at the top.
And each year, she thought, this is the year Rourke will change. He’ll be geeky or have pimples or B.O. or he’ll turn into a jerk. But each year, he proved her wrong. He just got better looking and more self-confident. And nice enough that, when she told him she and Nina needed a favor today, he hadn’t batted an eye.
The truth was, she kept looking for reasons not to like him, because there were so many reasons she shouldn’t, including the fact that he would never like her back. She always failed, though. Although Rourke acted all serious and gruff, he was as kind as he was good-looking.
Enough, she told herself. Her obsessive thoughts about Rourke McKnight were getting downright scary. He was Prince Charming, too good to be true, and as unreachable as the moon. Now, Joey was the real thing: funny and down-to-earth, the son of the McKnights’ driver who dared to dream of a bigger life for himself. Joey was the kind of guy a girl could introduce to her family and it wouldn’t be awkward. If Rourke was the type a girl dreamed about marrying, Joey was the type she actually married.
She reached across the seat and patted Nina’s leg. “You okay?” she asked.
Nina looked up, pale and flustered. “I’m totally freaked out, that’s how I am,” she said. “I can hear everybody now—‘She was such a smart girl from such a wonderful family. She had so much going for her...’”
“And now you’ve got even more going for you,” Jenny said, scrambling to find something positive to say. “You’re smart, you’ve got a great family and you’re going to have a baby. My grandmother says babies are proof that God exists.”
“Listen, that’s really sweet, but I’m not kidding myself. This is not going to be a picnic.”
Jenny couldn’t agree more, but didn’t let herself say so. She also didn’t bring up the plans she and Nina had been making for years. They were supposed to see the world after high school. Then Jenny planned to get a fabulous job and a loft in the city and hang out like the Mad About You people. Nina planned to return to Avalon and buy the Inn at Willow Lake, a once-grand hotel she’d always dreamed of owning. Jenny would take all her vacations at the inn, where she would work on her novel. Now, of course, none of that was going to happen, and Jenny felt an unbidden sting of anger at Nina for messing up their plans. Then she felt disloyal and forced a smile. “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”
“I have to tell Laurence,” Nina said. “He’s going to hate this.”
Joey turned around, hooking his elbow over the back of the seat. “Want us to kick his ass for you?”
“No. God, Joey. You’d never be able to kick his ass anyway. He knows self-defense. He goes to West Point.”
Jenny had met Laurence once—a tall, broad-shouldered African-American, he was intimidating with his shaved head and military bearing.
“Then what the hell is he doing dating a high-school girl?” Rourke asked.
“He’s only seventeen, same age as you guys.”
“Yeah, and you don’t see us knocking you up,” Joey said, cluelessly trying to be helpful and earning a slug on the arm from Rourke.
“It’s his first year at the Academy. And besides, I told him I was eighteen,” Nina said.
Jenny could easily see how Laurence Jeffries had been duped. Nina, with her dark-eyed beauty and killer figure, had a knack for making herself look older than her age. To his credit, Laurence had immediately dropped her when he found out how young she was.
“If I tell him about this,” Nina said, “and he abides by the honor code, he’ll have to tell his superiors and then he’ll be expelled. So maybe I won’t say anything at all.”
The suggestion sent a chill through Jenny. “All my life, I’ve wished my father knew about me. I keep thinking everything would be different if my mother had told him.” If, in fact, that was the case. She didn’t know for certain. Maybe she had a father somewhere who did know about her but didn’t care enough to step forward.
“Why would you want anything different?” Rourke asked.
Good question. It was funny, how he looked at her and thought she had the perfect life. “I’d just like to know, is all,” she said.
“So am I driving up to West Point now?” he asked Nina.
“No,” Nina said. “I need to go home. I’ve got some thinking to do.” She was quiet the rest of the way, idly paging through the information they’d given her at the clinic. Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” drifted from the radio now.
Before long, they reached a sign marking Avalon city limits near the covered bridge.
“You’d better pull over,” Nina said. “I’m going to puke.”
She staggered out of the car but she didn’t puke. She took a deep breath and made a visible effort to conquer the nausea.
“Are you all right?” asked Jenny, getting out of the car.
“Yes.” Nina collected her bag and a packet from the clinic. “I want to walk the rest of the way home.”
“I’ll drive you,” said Rourke.
“It’s just a few blocks,” Nina pointed out. “I need to clear my head before I drop the bomb on my parents.”
“Fair enough.”
Nina looked pale but resolute. “You guys are the best friends ever. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
&nbs
p; After she left, Jenny, Joey and Rourke lingered by the river. It was one of the prettiest spots in Avalon, an old-fashioned covered bridge with weathered siding spanning the Schuyler River.
“It’s peaceful here,” Joey said. “You’re lucky to live in a place like this.”
“Huh. I can’t wait to get out of here,” Jenny said.
“Why would you want to leave?” asked Rourke.
“Because it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve always wanted a chance to go someplace else. Live a different life. Find out who I am besides Jenny the bakery girl.”
Though Joey seemed to understand, Rourke stared at her oddly. “What’s wrong with being Jenny the bakery girl? People like her.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t like her.” She sighed and stared down at the clear water rushing over rocks. “Nina and I had big plans. We were going to move to the city after high school. Get jobs. Go to college. Now she’s going to have a baby, so it looks like I’ll be on my own.”
She regarded Joey and Rourke, both so handsome, so comfortable with who they were. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt compelled to tell them things. All kinds of things. “If I tell you something, do you promise never to say a word?”
Rourke and Joey exchanged a glance. “Promise.”
“When Nina came out of the clinic today and said she was keeping the baby, I had a moment when I felt—this is crazy—I felt jealous. I mean, I know having a baby is a scary thing, especially when you’re a kid, but all the same, I couldn’t help what I felt, and it was ugly.”
Rourke shrugged. “People think ugly thoughts all the time. It’s only a problem when they act on them.” He spoke with a casual air, yet she suspected there was some sort of powerful knowledge behind his words.
“So what did you think?” she asked him.
“About her having a kid?” He pressed his lips together, shook his head. “Like she said, it’s her choice. Man, I’ll never have kids.”
“All guys say that,” she pointed out. “I bet in ten or fifteen years, you’ll be pushing a stroller, or maybe you’ll be walking around with one of those baby carriers—”
“Not Rourke,” Joey said.
“Right,” he agreed. “Some people shouldn’t ever be parents.”
She stared at him. “You mean your father.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Jenny found it quite startling, the contrast between Senator Drayton McKnight’s public persona and his private. Sometimes even she didn’t believe it, although Joey assured her the guy was a bastard of the first order. When the senator made a public appearance with his family, they looked wonderful together—the sincere public servant, his lovely wife, his handsome, well-groomed son. But over the years, Rourke had given her glimpses of the turmoil behind the polished facade.
“I’ve made a decision, too,” he said.
Both she and Joey leaned forward, listening.
“I’m going to break with my father.”
“What do you mean, ‘break with him’?” Joey asked.
“I’m going to be on my own.”
His father had big plans for him. He was supposed to go to Columbia or Cornell. Graduate with honors. Carry on the family tradition. It all sounded great to Jenny, but clearly Rourke had other ideas.
“This is all about what you don’t want,” she pointed out. “You don’t want kids, don’t want to go to Columbia, don’t want to follow in your dad’s footsteps. So what do you want?”
“I’ve got some ideas, none of which will thrill the old man. And that’s all I’m going to say about it for now.”
“What about you, Joey?” she asked, noticing that he had gotten very quiet.
“I got a plan,” he said. “I’m going to enlist in the army.”
She frowned. “The army? Like boot camp and all that?”
“Sure,” he said. “Starting next fall.”
She knew nothing about the military except through the “be all you can be” TV commercials that promised you’d get an education and see the world. She was pretty sure there was a catch somewhere. Like you had to go to dangerous places where hostile people were trying to kill you. She turned to Rourke. “What do you think of his plan?”
“I think Joe should do whatever he wants.”
“So do you want it?” Jenny asked him.
Joey looked at her for a long time. They weren’t touching or even standing that close, but she felt that look coasting over her like a warm breeze. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I want it. I want a lot of things.”
His infatuation—or whatever it was—felt palpable, as though he’d caressed her. Jenny couldn’t help smiling. He always made her smile. “Like what?” she said, and hoped he knew she wasn’t teasing or flirting. “I really want to know.”
“I want to go to college, so serving in the army’ll earn me that.”
“Why college? I thought you hated school.”
“I do, but it’s the best way to make something of myself. I want to be able to get married, support a family. You know, the whole happily-ever-after thing.” He elbowed Rourke and mimicked his friend. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it for now.”
Food for Thought
BY JENNY MAJESKY
Starting from Scratch
Lots of people use this phrase and understand perfectly what it means, although few know its origin. To start from scratch is to begin from the beginning, from square one. It’s to start with nothing, no odds in your favor, no head start or advantage. It is ground zero, which is another phrase that needs explaining, but maybe not here.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, “starting from scratch” was a sporting term. It referred to a starting line, usually scratched into the dirt with a sharp stick. In cricket, “scratch” is the line in front of each stump where the batsman stands. And finally, in bare-knuckle boxing, a line was drawn across the ring, and the boxers would come “up to scratch” to begin their bout.
Nowadays, starting from scratch is synonymous with starting from nothing, and in baking, something made from scratch is generally presumed to be excellent. You can add flavor with a pinch of herbs, and don’t forget—lavender is an herb. Make a batch of lavender sugar and keep it on hand.
SCRATCH BISCUITS WITH LAVENDER SUGAR
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, cold and sliced into about a dozen pieces
¾ cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon melted butter
sprinkle of lavender sugar
Heat oven to 450°F. Combine dry ingredients and cut in butter with two knives or pastry blender until crumbly. Stir in buttermilk just until moistened. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; knead about 10 times or until smooth. Roll out dough to ¾-inch thickness. Cut with a 2-½-inch biscuit cutter, or use a juice glass. This makes about a dozen biscuits. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet. Brush biscuits with melted butter and sprinkle with lavender sugar. Bake for 10-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm with butter.
LAVENDER SUGAR
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, halved and snipped into pieces
1 tablespoon dried lavender buds
In a spice or coffee grinder, pulse 2 tablespoons sugar with vanilla beans. Transfer to a jar. Then pulse the lavender with 1 tablespoon of the remaining sugar until finely ground. Combine everything in the jar, cover tightly and let stand for about 5 days.
Chapter Fifteen
Jenny’s plan to move to New York still didn’t seem quite real to her. One reason, she conceded, might be that she was having a hard time actually leaving. There were a thousand details to
take care of, matters that had to do with her grandmother’s property, and the house and bakery. It was amazing how long it took to figure out how to go about replacing all the items she never thought about, like her birth certificate and social security card, all her banking and finance information. She felt as though she had a permanent crick in her neck from being on hold with people who were not terribly eager to help her.
In her office above the bakery, she had separated things into neat stacks. For some reason, the neatness of the stacks pleased her and made her feel less anxious. And definitely caused her to worry that she was turning eccentric.
And of course, Jenny knew she wasn’t turning eccentric at all. She was stalling. She was putting off everything—even her dreamed-about trip to New York—because she’d been avoiding something.
No more, she thought, grabbing her jacket and purse. There was something she needed to do, and putting it off was not going to make it any easier. Fifteen minutes later, she was knocking on the front door of the Alger house. It was a big ranch-style home with a view of the river. From a distance, it appeared grand and imposing, pretentious, even. Up close, she noticed peeling paint on the trim and crumbling brickwork—an air of neglect. Perhaps it had started when Matthew’s wife had left, suddenly and without explanation, years ago. This was one of the reasons Jenny felt a connection to Zach. Both of their mothers had walked away.
When no one came to the door, Jenny felt both frustrated and relieved. This was a reprieve. She didn’t have to do it today. She gave one last knock and leaned on the bell. Nothing. There was no one home, and here it was dusk, the windows all dark. As she was turning to go back to her car, the front door cracked open.
“Jenny?” Zach Alger looked as though he’d just rolled out of bed, with rumpled hair and flushed cheeks. He was wearing an oversize plaid hunting jacket. “Is something the matter?”
All right, she thought. Let’s get this over with. “I need to talk to you, Zach.”
“Sure. I can come by the bakery—”