9 Days and 9 Nights Page 9

  Instead I reached for his hand across the table, laced my fingers through his. “I hate this,” I told him, squeezing. “I’m sorry. Let’s just be nice to each other again, okay?”

  Ian looked at me for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s be nice.”

  In the end his mom had a conscience crisis and canceled her work trip instead of their family vacation, so Ian and his sister spent the week off the coast of Ecuador, swimming with giant tortoises in immaculately clear, blue-green water. As for me, I managed to avoid Star Lake altogether: my mom scheduled a meeting with her publisher in New York, and I took the train from Boston and met her at Penn Station, the two of us haunting museums and theaters and eating roughly six meals a day. It was a neat and tidy solution. It all worked out very well. Still, it wasn’t lost on me that Ian and I hadn’t actually solved anything, not really—it hung between us all summer, a question that hadn’t been properly answered. Coming to visit Imogen was a compromise, in a way.

  Of course, I wasn’t counting on Gabe.

  I don’t like thinking about fighting with Ian; it opens up a gulf deep inside me, a chasm I’m afraid of falling through. “Kiss me,” I order now, bumping his ankle with mine as we sit side by side on the wall.

  Ian raises his eyebrows, grinning. “Twist my arm,” he says, and ducks his head.

  He slides down off the wall to do it properly, standing between my knees and nudging them wider. “I’m really glad you’re here with me,” I tell him quietly, slipping my fingertips into the collar of his button-down; Ian smiles, pleased and maybe a tiny bit baffled, then closes his eyes and kisses me again.

  My mom calls as we’re getting back to the cottage. “Hey, world traveler,” she greets me. I hear the grumble of the ice machine in the background, can picture her standing barefoot in front of the fridge back in Star Lake. “You drinking wine and eating cheese?”

  “Some of both,” I assure her, stepping out into the plant hospital for privacy. “Just like you made me promise.”

  “Good girl,” she says, sounding satisfied. “I give pretty solid advice, I think.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, looking out at the gray horizon line; thunder rumbles in the distance, and I shiver. “You really do.”

  The night after I took my pregnancy test I shut myself in the stairwell in my dorm building, made myself as small as humanly possible, and dialed Gabe’s number, listening to the echo of the unanswered ring on the other end of the line. I waited a week for him to call me back, steadfast.

  On night eight, I called my mom.

  I was terrified to tell her what was going on, terrified that she’d be furious at me—or worse, that she’d turn around and write a book about what I’d done. Instead she stayed very, very calm. “It’s all right,” she said, once I’d finally finished crying. “That’s where we are, then. What do you want to do?”

  “I know you probably want me to think about giving it up for adoption,” I began, trying to keep my voice steady. After all, my mom would never have been my mom to begin with if some other couple hadn’t taken exactly that route eighteen years before. But for everything I’d ever been taught—everything I’d ever believed—about a woman’s right to choose, nothing about this felt like a choice to me, not really. It wasn’t something I’d consciously decided. I was a freshman in college, and Gabe hadn’t even returned my phone call. There was no way I was ready to have a kid. It occurred to me, not for the first time and definitely not for the last, how lucky I was that I had the option not to. “But I just—”

  “I want you to do whatever’s right for you,” my mom interrupted quietly. “And that’s all.”

  She came to Boston the following morning, took me to the clinic the day after that; once the procedure was over she brought me back to her hotel in Copley Square, a tall old-fashioned building with a view of the park and a fireplace in the lobby, cookies frosted with the Red Sox logo in little cellophane bags on the pillows.

  “I don’t deserve this,” I said when she brought me a hot toddy from the cozy Irish pub downstairs, setting it on the bedside table and flipping the channels on the hotel TV until she found a bright, soothing rerun. “Mom, really. After everything—I just don’t.”

  My mom’s face got very tight then, her lips disappearing and her shoulders going sharp. She grabbed the remote again and clicked the TV off, plunging the room into silence; I thought she was upset with me for being ungrateful until I realized her eyes were full of tears.

  “I never want to hear you say that again,” she told me, her voice low and urgent. It was the only time I saw her cry all weekend; it was the first time I’d seen her cry in my entire life. “You deserve everything, do you hear me? You are smart and you are kind and you are hardworking, and this doesn’t change any of that.” She sniffled once and gazed at me for a moment, waiting. “Do you understand?”

  I fisted my hands in the clean white sheets, nodded. “Yes,” I said quietly. I didn’t believe her, not really, but I wanted—in this small way, at least—to be obedient and good. “I understand.”

  My mom nodded back like the matter was settled—the terms agreed on, the contract signed. “All right,” she said. “Now drink your toddy and get some rest.”

  Almost a full year later I look out at the garden behind Imogen’s cottage, shivering a bit in the late-morning breeze. “So tell me about it,” my mom says cheerfully. “How’s the trip?”

  “Interesting so far,” I begin, tucking the phone between my ear and my shoulder and wrapping my cardigan around me like a blanket. “You have time for the long version?”

  The sky opens up as I’m saying good-bye to my mom, sheets of rain sluicing off the sagging roof of Imogen’s cottage and the fields gone soaked and squelching, the goats clustered up behind the convent and puddles half as wide as Star Lake covering the grass outside. The whole house smells like an aquarium. The couch cushions are damp to the touch. We hole up watching game shows while the boys play some weird variation on euchre with a waterlogged deck of cards and Sadie flips through an Irish tabloid, a bowl of salty stovetop popcorn on the coffee table between us. It ought to be cozy and relaxing, but instead it makes me claustrophobic to be trapped inside like this, like the forced proximity invites disaster. My eyes flick from Gabe to Ian and back again.

  “Hey, is your mom’s name Diana?” Sadie asks suddenly, tilting her head back onto the couch cushions to look at me; she’s finished with her magazine and is holding her phone aloft, cross-legged on the rag rug with an unraveling afghan piled in her lap. “I went on Amazon to look for that deforestation book Ian was talking about, but Driftwood by Diana Barlow is, like, right there on the homepage.”

  “Oh!” I blink, my heart dropping like the cables have snapped. “Ha. Yeah, that’s her. They must be running some kind of deal or something.”

  “Is it good?” Sadie asks, grinning. “Should I buy it?”

  “Um.” I panic. “I mean, if you don’t like girly-type stuff, then you probably wouldn’t really be into—”

  “You know, the internet is actually super spotty here,” Imogen jumps in, hopping up off the couch like her underwear is on fire. “You’re probably better off waiting till you get to the airport to try and buy anything.”

  “Really?” Sadie asks, squinting at the screen. “It was working fine a second ago.”

  “Yeah, it goes in and out.” Imogen waves her hand vaguely. “Hey, you wanna come help me make more popcorn?”

  She takes Sadie’s hand, pulling her into the kitchen before she can answer; when I look up Gabe is watching me, the barest hint of a secret smirk visible on his face. Oh, this is funny to you? I want to ask—would ask, if Ian weren’t sitting beside him, calmly shuffling the cards for their next hand.

  I think of what Sadie said this morning, how unhappy Gabe’s been lately. I think of what he said last night about the shop. I hate to think of the Donnellys struggling, even though it’s a pretty fair bet that the last thing any of t
hem want is my pity. Still, a part of me wants to force Gabe to tell me what’s really going on.

  I think of the hundred thousand slices I’ve eaten in my lifetime. I think about the birthday party I had there in second grade. I think of the picture of Chuck hung up in the kitchen, all beefy forearms and thick dark hair, his head thrown back laughing, and wish for the hundred thousandth time he was still around to tell us all what to do.

  Twenty minutes later I find Gabe setting out a game of solitaire on the kitchen table just like Connie, his mom, used to do after dinner when we were kids, the cards making a crisp, quiet snapping sound as he lays them down on the Formica. “What happened to Ian?” I ask.

  Gabe shrugs. “Shower, I think?”

  “Got it.” I watch his hands move as he shuffles, his long competent fingers casual and deliberate. For no good reason at all—at least, not one I’d ever be able to say out loud—my entire body goes prickly and alert. “So hey,” I announce, reminding myself firmly to stop being such an enormous creep about everything, “I was thinking about the shop.”

  That gets his attention: Gabe raises his eyebrows as he turns around to look at me, equal parts skeptical and amused. “You were, huh?” He bangs the deck lightly against the edge of the table to even it out.

  “Um, yeah,” I say, blushing. The house is quiet. Sadie’s asleep on the love seat out in the plant hospital, her long limbs splayed out every which way; Imogen’s in her room talking to Seamus on the phone. The rain has mostly stopped by now, a trickle instead of a deluge. I can hear it dripping off the rooftop, a steady, near-musical plink. “I have some ideas.”

  “Molly—” Gabe blows a breath out. “I don’t know if that’s really—”

  “Just hear me out, okay?” Off his dubious expression, I sigh. “Look, I know you didn’t ask me to do this. And clearly I’m not Warren Buffett. You guys have been running a business for a long time, and I’m sure you’ve already thought of a lot of this stuff. But on the off chance you haven’t, maybe I can help.” I look at him. “I want to help, okay?”

  Gabe looks at me. Then finally he shrugs, leaning back in the rickety kitchen chair and crossing his arms inside his hoodie. “Okay,” he says after a moment, chin tucked like a boxer’s. “Go ahead.”

  So I launch into my pitch for a new, improved Donnelly’s Pizza: early-bird happy hours with half-price cheese pies for families on vacation and an old-fashioned late-night speakeasy with beer specials and local bands. “You could even set up space outside in the back, like they did at the bar we were at back in London,” I suggest brightly. “Put a bunch of Christmas lights up, drag some picnic tables out there, and bam, you got yourselves a patio.”

  Gabe raises his eyebrows, smirking a bit. “Bam, huh?”

  “Yeah!” I insist, laughing a little. “Bam! Come on, these are good ideas.”

  “They are good ideas,” Gabe admits, his smile turning into something real. “You’re smart about this stuff, you always have been.” Then, presumably off my surprised expression: “What, you wanna fist-bump again?”

  “Okay, you know what?” I make a face at him. “Do you wanna fist-bump again?”

  I’m expecting a joke in return, but Gabe just gazes at me evenly. “No, Molly Barlow,” he says, and the skin on the back of my neck prickles. “That’s not what I want.”

  Imogen’s bedroom door opens then, the sound of her laughter ringing out like a school bell; I swallow my own swollen, aching heart back down where it belongs. “Anyway,” I say, wiping my suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe says, getting up from the table with no preamble, looking everywhere in the world but at me. “Maybe it is.”

  Imogen reads my cards after lunch, the two of us sprawled on her bed with her battered, beloved tarot deck spread between us. She’s been reading for me—and almost everybody else back in Star Lake—since we were in middle school, and her cards have been handled so many times that the edges have gone furry and frayed. It’s still drizzling, but barely; out the window Gabe and Ian are kicking a grimy-looking soccer ball around the yard like two little kids after school. “Where’s Sadie?” Imogen asks me, following my gaze through the glass as she sets the final card down.

  “Who knows?” I ask distractedly, peering down at the Queen of Swords with her fall of raven-black hair; Imogen’s deck is beautiful and intricate, the images all drawn in chalk pastel by an artist from California that she loves. “Building a lean-to in the woods, probably, where she can commune with the mountains and get away from bitchy drama queens.” I clap my hand over my mouth and look up at Imogen, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean that. It just came right out!”

  “Uh-huh.” Imogen laughs. “Not a fan of the new girlfriend?”

  “No, that’s horrible of me,” I protest quickly, shaking my head. “That’s gross. I like her! She’s lovely. She’s so nice.”

  “You sound like Rizzo talking about Sandy,” Imogen informs me, smirking.

  “Ugh, I do, right?” I sigh, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes. “It’s not even that I think she’s too pure to be Pink—although, okay, she does kind of seem that way sometimes, right? But it’s more that she’s, like . . .”

  “One of those girls who thinks she’s better than other girls because she doesn’t wear eyeliner?” Imogen supplies.

  “Kind of!” The truth is there’s a part of me that feels better for admitting it out loud, like the moment of shameful satisfaction after popping a pimple. Still. “I hate feeling like this. It’s so boring to not like your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. It makes me feel like a terrible feminist.”

  “Being a feminist doesn’t mean you have to personally like every woman,” Imogen points out reasonably. “Especially one who is, like, a human slice of Ezekiel bread.” Then she grins. “Just don’t have sex with her boyfriend, and you’re good.”

  My jaw drops. “Mean!” I exclaim, sitting upright.

  “I’m kidding,” Imogen says. Then she makes a face. “I mean, kind of. Seriously though, don’t.”

  “Is that really what you think I’m going to do?” I ask, stung. “Because it’s not. I’m not like that anymore, Imogen. I don’t—” I break off, weirdly afraid I might be about to cry all of a sudden. It feels very, very important that she believes me.

  Imogen can tell. “No no no,” she amends quickly, “hey, I’m just playing. I’m sorry.” She reaches and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing; I can tell by the stricken look on her face that she really was just kidding around. “Some things aren’t for joking, I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head again, pulling it together. “No, you’re fine,” I promise, tucking my hair neatly back behind my ears. “Clearly I’m wound a little tight about the whole thing, is all.”

  “All of us being cooped up in my fucking dollhouse isn’t helping, probably,” Imogen says. She looks out the window: it’s stopped raining, clouds breaking up and buttery-yellow sunlight spilling through. “You know,” she says thoughtfully, twisting a strand of her hair around two pale fingers, “There is actually one thing to do here, if you’re looking to blow off some steam.”

  “Oh yeah?” I raise my eyebrows with some trepidation, thinking of last night’s game of Never Have I Ever. “What’s that?”

  Imogen grins. “How do you feel about skydiving?”

  “You guys are ridiculous,” Sadie says an hour later, standing in the tiny front office of the County Kerry Parachute Club with her arms crossed inside her Outward Bound hoodie. “I’m just saying, if you’ve got a death wish, I’m sure there are easier ways to go about it.”

  Gabe is grinning at her. “So I take it you’re not going to go up, then?” he teases.

  Sadie shakes her head. “I’ll stay down here and hold purses, thanks. And call your moms to tell them we had to scrape your flattened bodies out of a field somewhere.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it will come to that,” says Ralph, one of the instructors, slightly built
with friendly blue eyes and a sandy-blond beard, oddly normal-looking for a person who makes his living plummeting through the atmosphere at breakneck speed. “We hardly ever have two calamities in one week.” Then, off Sadie’s horrified expression, “I’m joking, love.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sadie nods, profoundly unamused. “Right.”

  “I’m surprised this isn’t your kind of thing, actually,” Ian tells her. “Outdoor girl, all of that.”

  Sadie waves her hand, dismissive. “Hiking is totally different,” she points out. “No matter how high you’re climbing, you’re still technically on the ground. Give me a dozen kids to take out on trail, I’m good. This nonsense, on the other hand . . .” She shakes her head ominously.

  “I’ve actually always wanted to try it,” Gabe puts in, skimming the release form before signing his name with a flourish and handing it over to Ralph. “My brother did a smoke-jumping thing last year in Colorado. Well, he started doing a smoke-jumping thing, I guess. Then he punched a kid in the nose and got kicked out of the program.”

  “Can we all go up together?” I ask Ralph, blurting it out before Gabe can say anything else about whatever physical altercations he or his brother might have gotten into last summer—or my involvement therein. “I mean, can you take all of us at once?”

  Ian looks at me with interest as he hands his credit card over to the woman behind the counter. “You’re in?” he asks, sounding surprised.

  I hesitate. I don’t know if I’m in, actually; I was undecided on the drive over here, close to an hour in Imogen’s ancient clunker. “Um,” I hedge, “potentially?”

  “Oh, come on,” Gabe says. “You love an adrenaline rush.”

  Ian laughs out loud. “Molly?” he asks, incredulous. “Molly—and I say this with love—is probably the least adrenaline-seeking person I’ve ever met in my life.”

  Gabe looks confused. “I mean, fair enough,” he says after a moment. “I guess you’d know better than me.”

  I cringe. There’s something in Gabe’s tone I don’t like—a faint whiff of goading, maybe. But I also get why he thinks of me as someone who’d be up for something like this. There was a time I was game for anything, skinny-dipping in Star Lake or a middle-of-the-night road trip or a clandestine make-out in the woods behind the Lodge. But I learned my lesson. All too often adrenaline really meant bad decisions, fire-breathing dragons woken from slumber. All too often adrenaline meant me left holding the bag.