I still wore the black T-shirt I had slept in and an old pair of faded jeans I had stuffed in my suitcase at the last minute. When Nick wasn't looking I performed the stealth move known to men and women worldwide. I tucked my head and raised my arm. I thanked God and Taylor Swift that I didn't smell bad. Still, I wished desperately that I had taken time to put on makeup instead of simply washing my face and sticking my hair in a ponytail this morning. I could feel the loose ends hanging against my neck and I suspected I looked a bit like a zombie at the wheel.
Nick found a station that played classic rock and I racked my brain for the name of the band, but I was always bad at telling the difference between Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Ian was mortified that I was so uneducated about rock. He made such a big deal of it that I purposely sang the wrong words to songs just to annoy him.
Nick pulled out his phone and checked a few messages while the lead guitar played a riff that rose and fell over and over. The low sun was shining through the side window now, and I lowered my side visor to avoid the glare.
“Are you ready to switch drivers?” he asked, turning off his phone and putting it in the front pocket of his shirt.
I was getting tired, I had to admit. We were only about three or four hours from Detroit and I still had to drive several hours on my own from there.
Nick pointed to an exit. “There's a decent rest area up ahead. I used to exit there when I drove back home. Let's stop.”
I pulled into the right lane and tried to picture a younger Nick driving back to Michigan. For some reason I had trouble with the image. I couldn't remember a time when Nick had come home on a regular basis. But then again, I had been in school in New York for some of those years. And we had both been busy dealing with the death of our fathers. I suppose I blocked out that time period.
Ten minutes later I stared at myself in the restroom mirror. I had combed down my bed head and fixed my ponytail and looked less like the walking dead. But the harsh overhead lighting made me feel washed out and pale. An older woman walked up next to me and lifted a little girl with spiky lashes and pudgy pink cheeks up to the sink to run her hands under the water. I dug my makeup out of my purse and the little girl stared at me as I attempted to apply mascara to my eyelashes. I tilted my head from side to side, making sure I hadn't left clumps of black on my lower lids.
“What is that lady doin' to her eyes, Gamma?”
“She's making them pretty,” said the lady, smiling at me.
“But why? Aren't they already pretty?” the little girl asked.
“Why yes, honey. I believe they are.”
The little girl kept her eyes glued to me as her grandma walked her over to the hand drier. I sent a tiny wave and she laughed.
“The pretty lady waved at me, Gamma!”
Like a fairy godmother and her little sprite, the two fellow travelers were a balm for my insecurities. I kept telling myself that it didn't matter how I looked. Nick had seen me from crooked teeth to braces and all the awkward stages in between. He had spent the night at the inn dozens of times and I had a vivid memory of him in sweatpants and a T-shirt, hunched over the breakfast table next to Ian. They would eat Frosted Flakes and roll Matchbox cars across the table while I sat in my pajamas watching
Scooby-Doo
on the couch. I hadn't given a thought to my looks back then. But that was before I had made a connection between personal hygiene and attracting boys. By the time I was a preteen I would shower and dress before coming to the breakfast table when Nick stayed over. Not that he ever noticed . . .
Deciding there was nothing else I could really fix, I followed the little girl and her grandmother outside and watched them absently as the older woman settled her granddaughter into a car seat in the back of the late-model sedan. I looked around for Nick, but he wasn't near the car.
I strode along a path from the rest area's main building to a picnic area out of sight of the highway. It felt good to stretch my legs after the long car ride and I spent several minutes walking farther down the paved path, past empty picnic tables, abandoned for the season. The scent of leaves and dried grasses lingered in the air. At the edge of the clearing I spotted a trailhead. A clump of tall grasses, their long blades faded to yellow, waved in the wind, and I tucked my hands in my pockets as a brisk breeze pulled at my jacket. The wind was the only thing that hinted of a storm farther south. If we hadn't come from that direction, I'd have thought this was typical August weather, not the remnants of a hurricane.
“There you are.”
I turned to see Nick strolling down the paved path from the parking lot. My heart did its usual somersault when I spotted him, and I realized all was business-as-usual in my body's reactions. Nick carried my camera case and I raised an eyebrow as he approached.
He nodded toward the trail. “There is a path over there that leads down to a little pond. I thought you might want this,” he said with a grin, holding up my camera.
I hesitated. “We'll see.”
He lifted his shoulders and turned toward the path. I followed him as we walked along a bed of pine straw that cushioned our steps. We took several turns and passed a row of dogwood and crooked cedar trees before coming to a clearing. The sun flickered off ripples in a small lake in front of us. An old swim raft rested on the far shore and a family of geese basked in the evening light on the graying lake surface. On the far shore maple trees shimmered in the wind and the light reminded me of the trees I had photographed near Nick's mother's house just a few weeks ago. Those trees back home were getting ready to change color, but these were still as green as they had been in June, as the lowering sun made streamers through their branches.
Nick turned and looked at me like a little boy who hoped he had pleased me.
“Here,” he said, holding out my case.
I sighed and handed him my purse so I could pull out my camera from the bag. A beautiful view, my trusty camera, and Nick. What else could a girl want?
“What happened to that old film camera you used to use?” Nick asked with surprise.
“I still have it. My dad gave it to me when I was ten. My favorite pictures have always come from that one. It's at home.” When I finished switching lenses I looped the strap around my neck, handed him the bag, and turned back to the pond. It was like an empty palette, waiting for my brush to begin.
For the next few minutes I walked around the shoreline, trying to capture the beauty from as many angles as my imagination would allow. At one point, I followed one of the last dragonflies of the season to a cattail, and photographed its silky wings glimmering in the sunset.
When I had captured my fill I turned to look for Nick. He leaned against an old picnic table behind me. Nick had no idea how gorgeous he looked. I wanted to take a picture of him with his arms resting behind him and his legs stretched out. But I didn't. It might have changed the way he was looking at me. And the way he was looking at me made me feel warm all over.
I walked slowly toward him until I stood just a few feet away.
“Why didn't you stay in New York? You had that great scholarship to NYU. I always wondered what made you give up your photography and return to Truhart.”
I went stone cold.
He didn't say it rudely. In fact, he said it so gently a person might have thought he was talking to a child. But still it was jarring. I didn't like talking about those days. I looked down at my camera and tried to think of a reason to avoid answering him. But something in the sound the wind made through the trees and the way he waited so patiently for my response gave me courage to start talking.
“It wasn't really one big thing . . . well, it was, actually. But I guess . . . well, I guess you could say I couldn't handle New York.” I looked up at him and pressed my lips together before continuing. “I don't know, maybe I'm just not cut out for cities. You saw how I reacted to Atlanta. And that isn't even half as crowded as New York.”
He nodded but said nothing.
He lifted my camera bag from the seat of the picnic table and I tucked the camera inside. Then I moved to sit next to him, putting one foot on the bench and propping myself up on the table. It was easier to look out at the pond instead of at him.
“From the very beginning I felt out of place. Everyone in the art program was really talented. They were so worldly and hip, and I was justâjust so countrified. They weren't mean about it or anything, but I was this token Midwesterner and they teased me for my accent and . . . well, I didn't wear the right clothes. I didn't know the latest trends. They actually made fun of me out of fondness, I'm sure. But that wasn't a big deal.
“My second year at school, a bunch of us lived in tiny apartments near the East Village. It wasn't the cool area most people know about. It was the kind of place where the convenience stores run twenty-four hours and the hookers come out at night. When they weren't in class, my roommates liked to party. They were into raves and Ecstasy, partying in a way that I couldn't relate to. They weren't that bad the first year, so I didn't think anything about it when we decided to room together. But the second year was tough. That was the year my father got sick, remember?”
Nick nodded and I felt his hand on my back, gently stroking. I clasped my fingers together and took a deep breath. I don't know if I ever really told anyone the full story. Pieces. But never the whole thing.
“I started staying in our apartment when they went out, telling them I had to study, or I wasn't feeling well . . . I made up any excuse I could. Somehow it just seemed so stupid. I mean, every time I went home I watched my dad wither away under the chemo and the radiation. The doctors were doing everything to poison away the cancer that was invading his body. And then there were my friends in New York, partying with other kinds of poison and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. They told me I was no fun. And then my photos started to suffer. Nothing was interesting. Everything my professors were enthusiastic about seemed stupid and contrived to me.
“After about six months, right around the time the doctors stopped my dad's treatment and sent him home to hospice, I returned from a pretty bad weekend home. He had lost so much weight and was in and out of consciousness. I'm not even sure he knew I was home that weekend.
“My roommates had planned a party on the roof of our apartment building. They convinced me that I should go . . . told me it would be good for me. Since it was right there in our building, I couldn't find an excuse to say no. But I wish I had. It was wild. The drugs were everywhere, the music was insane. I drank but declined whatever drugs they were passing around.”
I took a ragged breath. I hadn't talked about it in years, but that didn't mean I had forgotten. I thought about it almost every day of my life. Not consciously, just in short flashes that I banished to the back of my mind. But now, the images burst across my memory as strong as photographs.
“Sometime in the night . . . or maybe the early morning, I'm not sure which . . . a young woman, I didn't know her very well . . . she was a third-year student, super smart, really talented. She stood up on the ledge of the rooftop. She was dancing . . .”
Nick's hand stilled on my back.
“I was the only one who saw . . . everyone else was laughing and lost in their own high. But I watched her standing on that ledge and I knew what was coming. It was like watching something in slow motion. I was just a few yards from her and I reached out to grab her . . . but her hand slipped away. Her eyes met mine and I saw her expression change when she realized what she had done. It was like she couldn't believe it. And neither could I. We stared at each other for a split second. And she just went over.
“The police and the fire trucks were there in minutes. I was the main witness. I stood out on the curb with them for the next hour while the other students walked around, trying to shake off their highs.
“I heard later that her parents were completely broken when they came to pick up her body from the morgue and take it back home . . .”
I exhaled a couple of times, trying to release the tension. My hands were still in my lap, but my knuckles were white.
“My father died the next week. Then Mom . . .” I didn't want to share how Mom fell apart. Not even with Nick. “No one even asked why I dropped out. They just thought I wanted to be closer to home.”
Nick rose and moved to stand in front of me. I looked up, but the setting sun's rays were behind him. I couldn't see his face. He raised his hand and caught a tear that was running down my cheek. I hadn't even realized I was crying.
“I sound like a wimp, don't I?”
“No. You sound like someone who needed to come home to people you loved.”
“Yeah, but I gave up . . . I couldn't handle New York after that. I mean, I know in my mind it's not a bad city. But I couldn't get past that. I tried once, and I swear I had a panic attack just riding in the cab from the airport.”
“Maybe it was just the wrong place for your dream.”
I looked up at him and laughed a little. “Maybe.” Forgiving myself for giving up my dream had taken a while. But I was fine with it now. Well, mostly.
Nick placed his hands on my shoulders, rubbing them gently as they traveled down my back. He pulled me closer into the circle of his arms and for several minutes we stayed like that. I could feel his heart beating and his breath along my neck.
I said in a muffled voice against his chest. “Don't tell my family . . .”
“I won't.”
He leaned back to get a look at my face. “So, what do you do with all these beautiful pictures you take?”