by Mary McNear
“What is it?” Billy asked, disappointed that the kiss was over almost before it had even begun.
“It’s the northern lights,” Wesley said, making room for Billy at the window. “You don’t always see them at this time of year.” She looked outside. Bands of green light were shimmering in the night sky.
“Have you seen them in Minnesota?”
“Yes, but not like this,” Billy said as a red band now shot across the sky.
“Come on,” he said. He bundled her back into his coat and took her outside to get a better look at them. The bands of light, now green and red mixed together, rippled and swayed against the night. “They’re amazing,” Billy breathed, tipping her chin up toward the sky.
“They’re putting on this show for you,” Wesley commented, and while this might have sounded corny coming from anyone else, it sounded just right coming from him. She smiled at him, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She’d been kissed before, a couple of times, but not like this. Her first kiss, in the hallway outside the gymnasium at a high school dance, had been especially disappointing. The boy’s tongue, heavy and damp, had lain on the bottom of her mouth like an old rug that Billy had longed to push out of the way. And another, more recent kiss, this one at a party, had been with a boy who’d thrashed his tongue around in her mouth so relentlessly that in the end it had felt more like an assault than a kiss. This kiss was different; this kiss was perfect.
“Do you want to come back to my room?” Wesley asked finally, looking down at her. Billy nodded. At this point, she probably would have agreed to go anywhere with him, including the waters of the icy river.
On the narrow bed in his cabin—his roommate was blessedly absent—he stopped kissing her long enough to ask, “You’ve had boyfriends before, right?”
“Right,” Billy said. Wrong. She’d had crushes, flirtations, and a short relationship carried out almost entirely through text messages, but she’d never had an actual boyfriend before. She understood, though, that that wasn’t the real question that Wesley was asking her. He was asking her if she was a virgin, and while in old-fashioned novels, a young woman’s virginity was often a gift to be given away to the man she loved, Billy suspected this was one gift Wesley might not particularly want.
“I’ve had a couple of boyfriends,” she said softly as he eased her bulky sweater off.
“Are you . . . on the pill or something?” he asked hopefully.
Billy nodded yes. What? She was most assuredly not on the pill. So why hadn’t she told him this? And since she had no protection, why hadn’t she asked him to use some? These were only a few of the questions she asked herself in the days and weeks and months that followed. Sometimes she blamed her pregnancy on her Catholic education. Thirteen years of school and not a sex ed class in sight. But she’d known better. Of course she’d known better. She just hadn’t wanted him to know she was a virgin, hadn’t wanted him to know she wasn’t on the pill. If he’d understood the truth, the night’s momentum would be interrupted, and this thing, this amazing thing, would never happen. After all, she’d read enough novels to know the night’s narrative was moving forward; it had a logic and a momentum of its own. She shouldn’t interfere with it or change it or, worst of all, end it. She was meant to lose her virginity tonight, and she was meant to lose it with Wesley.
Later, of course, when she told her parents, when she postponed college, when she went shopping for maternity clothes while her friends were going to fraternity parties, she felt more than a little overwhelmed and more than a little critical of her own judgment that night. She’d made her choice, though. And comforting to her, in those often lonely months after her friends had all started college, was the image she remembered seeing outside Wesley’s window as they made love. Through the opening in the tacked-on red-and-white-checked curtains, the northern lights, magical and mysterious, were still visible. That must have been a good sign, she told herself. Her child was conceived under the northern lights.
In any case, after the night was over, Wesley walked her back to the lodge and up to her floor. He’d kissed her good-bye since she and her dad were leaving early the next morning, and waited while she let herself into her room. It wasn’t until Billy was right on the edge of sleep that she remembered her copy of Wuthering Heights. She’d left it at the party.
She went home without the book, and her dad left empty-handed, as well; the arctic graylings they’d fished for were catch-and-release only. But he did have an unexpected souvenir from this trip. Eight months, two weeks, and three days later, he had a grandson who weighed in at seven pounds, eleven ounces, and who had a dramatic thatch of black hair that the maternity nurses couldn’t help but admire.
A mosquito buzzed in Billy’s ear now, bringing her back to the present. The mosquitoes were out in full force. She considered going inside and making dinner. She’d offered to do this earlier for Luke through his closed bedroom door, but he’d called back to her that he wasn’t hungry. He should have been hungry, and so should she. The last time she’d eaten was at the wedding, and even then she hadn’t had more than a few bites. Oh, that food, she thought now. That must be the food they served in heaven. As delicious as it had tasted, though, it hadn’t been the best part of the wedding. That was the ceremony—so simple, but beautiful and heartfelt at the same time. Remembering it, she allowed herself a moment of wistfulness, but only a moment.
Now Murphy raised his head off his paws and, suddenly alert, growled low in his throat. It was probably Mrs. Wheaton’s orange tabby in the next yard over. Billy petted Murphy again and tried to think of something pleasant and upbeat to talk to him about since she’d been such poor company tonight. Oh, I know, Murph. I met someone at the wedding. Cal. Cal Cooper. He gave me a ride to the police station. He’s from Seattle, though. He’s just passing through. In a Porsche, no less. She gave Murphy’s ears a final rub.
CHAPTER 9
When Billy was a child, she wanted to be a librarian because she assumed she would spend her days reading. Experience had long since relieved her of this idea. But every once in a while, her job struck her as very nearly perfect. She was having one of those moments—or rather, she should have been having one of those moments—on Monday morning. During a lull in activity, she was sitting at the checkout desk, sipping her latte and perusing a copy of Publishers Weekly for ideas on new books to order for the library. Ordinarily this was one of her favorite things to do, but today she was having difficulty concentrating on the page in front of her. Instead she kept seeing a picture of Luke hanging off of the edge of that bridge, the river’s boulder-strewn rapids rushing beneath him. She shook her head a little now to dislodge this image from her mind and tried to refocus her attention. But there was something else bothering her, something other than Luke’s recklessness. She stood up and, coming out from behind the checkout desk, walked over to the windows that faced Main Street. There, three bicycles idled, unlocked, on the sidewalk in front of the library. The boys were still here. She’d forgotten about them. They’d been so quiet—too quiet, she realized now. She headed back to the computer area, passing Rae on the way.
“Everything all right?” Rae asked, looking up from the books she was reshelving. Billy had debriefed her that morning about the incident with Luke on the bridge, and Rae, who’d been thoroughly exasperated with him, seemed especially sensitive to Billy’s mood now.
“It will be,” Billy said under her breath, walking faster. She turned right after the last aisle of books and saw the boys grouped around a computer, their urgent whispers punctuated only by the occasional guffaw.
“Oh my God, she’s so hot,” Billy heard Joey Stengel say as he pointed at the screen. “I would totally go out with her.”
“Yeah, right. Like she’s going to go out with an eleven-year-old,” his friend Clay Lewis said.
“Hello, boys,” Billy said, coming up behind them. Joey and Clay and Clay’s younger brother, Theo, all jumped. Joey hurried to close the page, b
ut not before Billy had a chance to see what they were looking at: a suntanned and windblown woman in a lace-up pale pink teddy, a come-hither expression on her face. Billy recognized a Victoria’s Secret model when she saw one.
“That’s it. No more lingerie Web sites for the three of you. And Theo,” Billy said, “you are nine years old. You are way too young for this.”
“Sorry, Ms. Harper,” the boys all mumbled more or less in unison.
“Now, outside, all three of you,” she said, shooing them away. “Go get some sunshine and fresh air.” And as they shuffled out she wished, not for the first time, that the library’s Internet filter, which screened out pornography Web sites, would also screen out lingerie catalogs. She made a mental note to speak to Anton, the high school student who was their unofficial tech support, about this.
She started to push in the chairs the boys had been sitting on, then changed her mind and sat down on one herself. With a quick glance behind her to make sure no one was watching, she reopened the web browser and typed “Cal Cooper Seattle” into the search bar. Five minutes later she was still skimming over web pages, so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t even notice Rae come up behind her.
“What are we looking at?” she asked Billy.
“Nothing,” Billy said guiltily, closing the web browser. “Is anyone else here?”
Rae shook her head. “Just you, me, and the mice. And speaking of the mice, it might be time to call pest control again.”
“Here, have a seat,” Billy said, indicating the chair next to hers. “I want to show you something.”
Rae sat obligingly. Billy relaunched the browser, opened the history, and clicked on a site. “What’s ‘Forty under Forty’?” Rae asked of the article Billy had pulled up.
“It’s Seattle Magazine’s annual ranking of the most influential young people in the city,” Billy said, clicking through the slideshow. She stopped on number seventeen, Cal Cooper. In the photograph, he was dressed in a crisp blue shirt and suit pants, and standing in a glassed-in corner office, a view of downtown Seattle behind him.
“Very nice,” Rae said. “He’s got a killer smile. I definitely approve of”—she leaned closer to read his bio—“Cal Cooper. But why are we looking at him?”
“Because he’s the guy who was driving the Porsche. Remember? The one Officer Sawyer pulled over on Friday afternoon?”
“That’s him?” Rae said. “Okay, yeah. I can see a resemblance. I mean, I didn’t have a great view of him from across the street.” She shook her head. “Jeez, he’s even better looking than that car of his. How did you know who he was, though? You wouldn’t even come to the window to see him.”
“I met him on Saturday,” Billy explained, “at Daisy’s wedding. He’s Allie Ford’s brother. And . . .” She hesitated, but only for a second. “I’ve been in that car, too. He gave me a ride in it.”
“And you’re just mentioning this to me now?” Rae said accusingly. “After we’ve been here for two hours?”
“I know. But . . . nothing happened. We had a five-minute conversation at the reception, and then, when Officer Sawyer called about Luke, I told him—Cal—that my car was in the shop. He gave me a ride. That’s it. End of story.”
Rae raised an eyebrow. “If that’s ‘end of story,’ why are you Googling him?”
“Because . . . I was curious, obviously,” Billy admitted. “And because . . . he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring,” she added. “At least, not at the wedding.”
Rae started to say something, but Billy held up a hand to silence her. “No, it’s not what you think,” she said, returning to the browsing history and opening another web page. “See?” she said, gesturing at the screen. “He’s married. He’s very married.”
“‘Beauty and the Builder,’” Rae murmured, reading the title of the feature in Seattle Met Magazine, and studying the photograph that accompanied it. In it, a barefoot Cal, wearing a crisp white shirt and impeccably faded blue jeans, was sitting on a white couch next to his wife, a petite blonde in a sleeveless white dress with an asymmetrical neckline. The apartment was also white—white rugs, white couches, white coffee tables—with only a few hints of subtle color in it, mainly grays and sea foam greens. What would it be like to live someplace like that? Billy wondered. Someplace that perfect? And her mind went, involuntarily, to the state of her own house when she’d left it that morning. Breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink with congealed egg yolk on them, a hamper in the laundry room overflowing with dirty clothes, a chewed-on bone of Murphy’s that she’d almost tripped over in the hall on her way out the door.
“That’s his apartment?” Rae asked in disbelief.
Billy nodded. “And that’s his wife,” she said. “Meghan Mills-Cooper. She’s an interior designer. They work together sometimes, according to this article. The rest of the time, apparently, they’re just wearing their perfect clothes, sitting on their perfect furniture, living their perfect lives.”
“Any children?” Rae asked.
“No, or at least not when this article was written. But he says somewhere that he wants them. I’m sure they’ll be perfect, too.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about that apartment, though,” Rae said doubtfully. “I mean, you couldn’t drink a glass of red wine in that living room, much less have a child running around in it.” Rae was very fond of red wine, less fond of children.
“Wait until you see this,” Billy said, clicking on the browser history again and pulling up another photograph. This one had been taken at the American Institute of Architects Seattle Honor Awards reception in 2015. In it, Cal wore a suit and his killer smile. His wife, standing next to him, wore a silver cocktail dress that probably cost more than the twelve most expensive items in Billy’s closet combined. “Look at her,” she said, pointing to Meghan. “How is it even possible for someone to have a waist that small?”
“Photoshop?” Rae suggested.
“Then they’ve photoshopped all of her.”
“Oh, please,” Rae said dismissively. “She looks like a milk-fed calf. And don’t think for one minute that men find that attractive, either. They don’t. They like a woman with a little extra flesh on her,” she added, poking at her own waist. “Really. It’s because of evolution. They did a study on it.”
“I’ll have to remind myself of that the next time I get on the scale. Right now, though, we need to get back to work.”
“Indeed, we do,” Rae said, but when Billy started to get up, Rae stopped her.
“Billy?”
“Yes?”
“I’m proud of you.”
“For what? Surfing the Internet during working hours?”
“No, for noticing Mr. Porsche. First you checked to see if he was wearing a wedding ring, and then you Googled him. Even if he is married, I’d say that’s progress. You were interested. That’s a good thing.”
“I guess,” Billy said noncommittally.
“Of course . . . he’s no Beige Ted,” Rae drawled.
Billy rolled her eyes, but as she went back to the checkout desk, she thought about Beige Ted. His real name was Ted Whitaker, and Billy had dated him, briefly, two years ago. She’d met him at the library. He was an accountant whose office was down the block, and whose hobby of growing bonsai trees made him a frequent visitor to the library’s gardening section. (Who knew there were so many bonsai books? Certainly not Billy.) The two of them had struck up a casual friendship, and when he’d asked her out, she’d thought, why not? She hadn’t dated much since she and Luke had moved to Butternut three years before, and given her public role in the community, she was determined to date only someone she considered a safe choice. Ted was safe. He was a respected, if forgettable, figure in town. He was attractive, too, although in such a bland way that when Billy wasn’t with him, she could rarely hold a clear image of him in her mind.
They’d gone out on a few dates, and they might have gone out on more but for one thing: Billy introduced Ted to Luke. She’d been w
arned about how difficult it might be to introduce a prospective boyfriend to her son, but in this case, it had been anticlimactic. Ted had come to pick her up for dinner, and she’d brought him into the den, where the babysitter was reading a magazine and Luke was working on an elaborate Lego construction.
“Luke, this is Ted,” Billy had said brightly. “Ted, this is Luke.” Luke had looked up and, leaning back on his heels, given Ted a thorough once-over. What Billy had seen in Luke’s expression was not anxiety or jealousy or any of the other things she’d thought she might see, but instead, a complete and total lack of interest.
“Hi, Ted,” Luke had said dismissively, and he’d gone back to his Legos.
It was right around this time, too, that Rae had started referring to Ted as Beige Ted. Billy couldn’t remember now if it was because he often wore beige clothing, or his sandy hair and light brown eyes could be construed as beige, or his personality was somewhat colorless. In any case, the nickname stuck, and after Billy heard Luke—who must have heard it from Rae—refer to him as Beige Ted, she knew it was time to break things off.
Billy was settling in again at the checkout desk when the front door opened, and Maggie Donahue, a pretty, blond mother in her early thirties, came in with her three children, all of whom were under the age of six. Maggie always seemed a little frazzled—and who could blame her?—but this morning she seemed exhausted. “Hey, what’s going on?” Billy asked, coming to meet her.
“Nothing. We just had a bad night,” Maggie said, barely suppressing a yawn. “Bella’s teething,” she added of the eleven-month-old she was holding, “and she was up and down every few hours.”
“Here, let me take her,” Billy said, reaching for Bella and settling her on her hip. Elliot, Maggie’s five-year-old, scampered off now. Billy knew where he was going: to the children’s area, to pull out all the books on airplanes, and then to lie on his stomach and stare at the pictures in them. Ian, Maggie’s three-year-old, was shier. He hid himself partially behind his mom and looked up at Billy with a gentle curiosity. “I remember when Luke was teething,” Billy said now, looking down at Bella, whose fuzzy blond hair called to mind a dandelion in bloom. “My grandmother kept telling me to let Luke suck on a dishcloth dipped in bourbon, and I kept thinking, ‘Thanks, but I’d rather not have a drunken baby on my hands.’ Have you tried the teething necklaces, though? They can be helpful sometimes.”