Stork (24 page)

My dad started the engine. “Babe, there’re abandoned factories all over the place. One’s as good as another. I feel good about Palmdale, but if that falls through, we have a lead on something in the Phoenix area. Minnesota just isn’t in our business plan.” As we pulled out of the parking lot, my dad added, “Besides, I told you earlier. I refuse to set up shop anywhere I can’t get a decent cup of coffee.”

“Fine,” I muttered.

He pulled onto Main Street. “Now how about some dinner? Is there anything besides the Kountry Kettle?”

“Not unless you’re willing to drive,” I said.

“Unlimited mileage, satellite radio, and GPS. We’re heading south.”

When I got home that night, my mom was watching the news. There had been an earthquake in the California desert that had been felt all the way to LA and Orange County. I sat down and watched with her for a bit. No fatalities had been reported, but a lot of damage had been done. The news reports showed everything from toppled store shelves to crumbled brick buildings to cracked road surfaces. My mom had always hated earthquakes. I was too young to remember the big Northridge shaker, but it was one of the things she often listed when asked why she left California. And even though she sat chewing her nails as she listened to CNN, I knew this wasn’t the true source of her agitation.

“Where’s Stanley tonight?”

“I canceled my date with him.” Her voice faltered a little. “I was feeling kind of tired.”

“Is everything all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said unconvincingly. “Maybe something I ate, or a touch of the flu.”

I didn’t press. I didn’t even know if my mom had tested herself yet. “Dad asked me to see if you’d like to go to dinner tomorrow night, the three of us.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a great idea.”

My dad made me promise to ask, though even then I hadn’t had high hopes. I looked at my sunken mom. Maybe I had been too hasty, too optimistic. This would change everything for her — her relationship with Stanley, her job, her energy level. I remembered then that she’d had a difficult pregnancy with me. Not that I remembered, of course, but there were stories about concerns for both of us. Remorse nagged at me. “It’s OK. I understand.”

She must have seen something register in my eyes. She hugged her arms to her sides, balling into something tight. “We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”

I took one last look at the TV screen. More reports of earthquake damage were coming in. Fire engines were rushing to the scene of a blaze started by a severed gas line. I walked up the stairs to the sound of sirens.

On Thursday my mom called in sick, something she rarely ever did. I swallowed a good swig of guilt along with my chocolate milk and toasted bagel.

My morning didn’t look much better. Jack’s truck wasn’t in the parking lot. I knew this for a fact because I circled it twice. With a sigh of resolve, I pulled into his vacant space. It felt wrong somehow, but also deliciously naughty.

I kept my head down through the parking lot; my backpack felt like an elephant catching a ride; even my hair hung in my face. I stepped out from between two cars when a truck pulled up alongside me.

“You parked in my spot.” Jack had his window down and hung his left arm along the side of the door.

The first thing that went through my head was a little mental cartwheel. He didn’t seem mad. “I didn’t notice your name on it.” I crossed my arms, hoping to still the jitters rocking me back to front.

“It’s marked,” he said, dipping his head a little farther out the window. “Not with my name so much, but it clearly states: for butt-ugly trucks only.”

I smiled and pulled keys from my pocket. “You want me to move?” I said, jangling them.

“I want you to get in.”

This caught me by surprise. “What for?”

“I want you to come for a ride.”

“Skip?”

“I’m AWOL, so I may as well take a hostage.”

I looked around guiltily. A couple of kids walked past. They looked at me and then Jack in the truck. If we were going to do this, we’d better do it before we had too many witnesses. I jogged around to the passenger side, opened the door, and jumped in. No sooner had the old door groaned shut than Jack was gunning it out of the parking lot.

I hadn’t even had time to fasten my seat belt. I ended up sliding across the wide bench-style front seat, almost landing in his lap. He steadied me with his right arm protectively.

“Sorry,” he said. He seemed to hold me like that for a moment or two longer than required, but then pulled his arm away with a kind of resignation. “Buckle up. It’s a bit of a drive.”

I scooted over to the far side near the window and fastened my belt. We drove in silence for a few minutes. I noticed we were headed north on the main highway out of town.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going? Or is this a real kidnapping?”

He looked over at me with a kind of half smile. “I’m not going to tell you where we’re going, but I’ll promise you this — you never have to worry about your safety with me.”

Wow
. As far as promises go, that was a whopper. The last thing I remembered promising was to get the clothes from the washer to the dryer. I hadn’t. They were still there. Would probably need to be rewashed at this point. “Will you at least tell me where you’ve been?”

He drummed his thumb on the steering wheel. “I had to go north for a few days. Let’s just get where we’re going and I promise to explain it — all of it.”

He turned on the radio. It was a country station. I groaned and turned the knob to an alternative rock station,
the
alternative rock station. A little grunt came from his side of the car, but he didn’t comment, on that or anything else. It reminded me of being with my
afi
. The way the two of them settled into silence like an old couch, with room for me.

The scenery changed from shops to homes to fields to woods on both sides of the highway. We pulled onto a gravel road marked with a faded sign that read
ELKHORN LAKE PUBLIC PARKING
.

I swiveled in my seat. “Is this . . . ?”

“Yes. Are you OK with that?”

I looked around. Nothing seemed familiar. “Yes. I suppose.” The narrow access road was still wooded, though now the drive was winding and pot-holed. Finally, we pulled into a paved lot with a view over a calm lake. “So this is the place,” I said once we’d parked.

“This is it.”

“What are we doing here?”

He scratched at his head. He was capless today. I liked it when he was capless. He wore an old blue T-shirt so faded whatever team or business it had supported was no longer legible. It clung to his ropy shoulders, which were taut, seemingly with purpose. “It seemed like the right place for part of what I want to tell you.”

“For part of?”

“Let’s walk.” He opened his car door, and I did the same.

We came to the edge of the parking lot and crossed a small grassy area. Several benches lined the edge of the small clearing with a view out to the lake. He sat, as did I.

“I had to go away for a few days,” he said finally. “To sort a few things out.”

“Oh.”

“It’s just . . . after the whole thing with Wade, I didn’t trust myself.”

“Or me?”

He turned to me quickly. “Is that what you think?”

“You made it pretty clear.”

He lowered his head into his hands. “No. I didn’t. I screwed it all up. Would still be screwing it up, if it wasn’t for Pedro.”

“Pedro?”

He lifted his head and dropped his hands to his lap. “Stubborn bastard. Wouldn’t stop calling my house. Finally showed up last night, uninvited. Wouldn’t leave until I saw him. Wouldn’t leave until he put my cap in my hands.”

“Your cap?”

“You called it lucky.”

A light flutter began in my chest. “I did. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it was.”

“You don’t know how much that meant to me. I’d been convinced of the opposite.”

“The opposite?”

“Yes. Of being some sort of curse.”

“How could you think that?”

“Because ever since you’ve come back, I’ve been half-crazy: confused, distracted, and a mess of emotions. And you have to admit, when we’re together, wild things happen. So when the whole thing with Wade came up, the fact that his hatred of me was all the more reason to hurt you, it was some sort of last straw. And I just couldn’t stand the thought of him touching you, hurting you. I lost it. I’m sorry, but I did. I snapped.”

“I thought you were mad at me. For lying.”

He spun wildly to face me. “Mad at you? No. I was mad at him, and myself, but not you.”

“But you just took off. You could have called or something.”

He placed a hand over mine and traced light circles with his thumb. “I was in a bad place. I needed to sort some things out. Besides, I’m not really a phone guy.”

“I’ll say.” I felt suddenly dizzy, and a small spasm racked my shoulders.

“I made things worse. I know that now. And I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. For lying. I was ashamed of my behavior. I made a big mistake and I just wanted to bury it.”

“Not such a big mistake,” he said, dropping his other hand over mine. “Wade has a way of manipulating people. You figured him out a lot quicker than most. I’m just sorry he hurt you.”

“For the record, Wade didn’t hurt me; I hurt him. Got him good. It stopped there.”

“That’s my girl.” He pulled me into a hug. “I knew it. Anyone who could survive what we did could take a punk like Wade.”

“He apologized, you know. He now says there never were any pictures.”

Jack ground something at the base of his throat.

“He says you’re on his sorry list, too.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Jack said.

I didn’t want to talk about Wade, or think about Wade. I settled into Jack’s embrace. He held me like that for a little while, and then pulled me to my feet.

“Come on, let’s go down by the lake. I’m not done yet.”

There were a dozen or so wooden steps leading down to the water’s edge. He held my hand as we crossed a muddy flat area adjacent to the beach. It was mostly a pebbly shore with several large rock formations to our left. A wooden pier, now vacant for the season, led out to the tinny gray waters. Jack led me to one of the larger rocks, which provided a flat surface and view. We both sat for a few moments taking in the scenery. I closed my eyes and could picture it cloaked in snow, the lapping waves frozen in time, and the chill air ringing with the voices of skaters and the slap of hockey sticks.

“You wore a red coat,” Jack said, pulling me from my reverie.

“You remember?”

“I remember everything. All of it. I want to tell you, if you think you could stand to hear it.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He looked at me with an odd expression, tentative and probing. “You might think I’m crazy.”

“Trust me,” I said. “I’m not one to throw stones.”

He hunched his shoulders and looked out to the water. “I’d never seen you before, but the moment you stepped onto the ice, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I’d never seen hair so blond, or skin so white, or any girl so pretty, ever.”

I gulped. It was wake-the-baby loud, but Jack just continued.

“I was twelve and had never really taken an interest in girls before, but this hit me like a bolt of lightning. I followed you around the ice for a good half hour, but you were completely oblivious. When you skated off to be on your own, it felt like you’d taken the sun from the sky.”

Oh, my
. His voice was intense and he was still looking out over the water and away from me, as if he couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. “I didn’t notice you,” I said honestly.

“I know. It didn’t matter. I was smitten.” He rolled his eyes and looked at me sheepishly, obviously embarrassed by his word choice. Then he just kind of shook it off and continued, “I stayed on the side of the lake closest to where you had gone off to twirl and jump. My friends were angry that I’d left our hockey game. I didn’t care. I heard the ice crack and knew immediately what it was. You were gone in an instant. Nothing but a vertical slab of ice bobbing in your place.”

I scooted closer to him and put my hand in his. It was warm. He wore no jacket, as usual, and I felt the heat of his body as I drew myself next to him.

“I was to the spot where you’d last been in a dozen strides. I could see your red coat deep under the surface. You were thrashing underwater. I dove headfirst without thinking of anything but staying close to the girl in the red coat. I got to you in just a few kicks. I was upside down, just as I’d dived, and I’ll never forget the look of panic on your face as I drew near. I righted myself next to you, which was right when it started to feel like my chest was going to explode. I took your hand. You’d lost your gloves, and your skin was so cold I almost thought it was too late. We kicked to the surface. I held your hand as tight as I could, pulling you up with me. When we got to the top, we hit solid ice. We’d drifted from the hole. I had no idea which way to go. I felt along the ice for what seemed an eternity, but it was frozen solid. There was no sign of movement above. I didn’t even know if anyone had seen either of us fall in. And then we started to sink. You were so still and resigned, but your eyes held on to mine with such intensity. I thought my lungs were going to explode. I thought we were going to die. I thought we were going to go to heaven together. I remember thinking that you looked like an angel with your hair fanned out around your face.” Jack turned to me and stroked upward from my chin, tracing the line of my jaw.