“Bronwyn,” he called out. It emerged from his lips as not much more than a croak. “Bronwyn,” he said, louder.
She stopped and turned and shaded her eyes, looking up the hill. Charles raised a hand to his mouth. He’d tried to prepare himself for this, for it really being her, but his heart still raced, his knees still trembled. Her skin was blotchy, her hair slick. There were rafts of pimples on her chin and her forehead, and her lips were cracked and dry. She met his eyes, first unknowingly, and then her eyebrows sank together. He held up one hand. She squinted, taking a few steps backward.
“Bronwyn,” he said, walking down the ravine. The wet ground seeped through his thin loafers, sending a shiver up his spine.
He stopped a few feet from her. Bronwyn’s face had gone white. She dropped her hand from her forehead. “Charles?”
He tried to smile. She was now staring at him almost angrily, as if he’d caught her doing something terrible.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. She placed her hands over her stomach. The gesture seemed vaguely protective.
“I’m the … writer. Working on the … the magazine. I’m the one interviewing you.”
“You?”
“I didn’t know it would be you. Mirabelle didn’t tell me who I was meeting with. But when I saw you here, I …”
The words tumbled out of him unwittingly. He didn’t know if lying was the right way to play this, but admitting that he’d known seemed so insidious.
Bronwyn blinked. Her eyes were cold and black. Uncomfortable. She picked at her lips with her pinkie finger, a gesture Charles recalled from when they were dating. It was like an old smell, wafting back to him. “They said the writer’s name was Charles,” she said in a faraway voice. “They didn’t give a last name. I didn’t ask.”
They stood still for a long time. There were no sounds. Charles’s gaze fell to her swollen stomach. Her thin, dirt-colored shoes looked as if they were made out of cardboard.
“Do you … like this?” He swept his arms around, indicating the woods, the solitude.
Bronwyn nodded meekly. “Yes.”
“Is it like … camping?”
“A little.”
“And you’re going to have a baby here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Please,” she said quietly, pleadingly.
He paused, grateful she’d stopped him.
She took a breath, composed herself. “This is a little unexpected, Charles.”
He placed his hand against a tree trunk, digging his nails into the bark. Her discomfort didn’t surprise him. He’d had time to prepare for this, time to gather his emotions, but he would have responded the same way if the situation were reversed, if she had ambushed him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get another writer to do this. I’ll see if we can reschedule.”
Bronwyn nodded.
“I mean, it isn’t that I don’t want to see you,” he rushed on. “I just … I want to do what’s best for the magazine.”
“The magazine,” she repeated.
Behind them, sticks crackled. Charles turned. The woman from the office was standing at the top of the hill. “Winnie?” she called. “You okay?”
“Fine, Laurel,” Bronwyn called back, her voice halting.
Laurel shrugged, remained for another long moment, and then trudged back into the cabin.
“Winnie?” Charles asked when she was gone.
Bronwyn blinked back at him.
“I’ve never heard anyone call you Winnie before.”
She jutted her chin away from him, staring at a spindly tree. Nothing had bloomed out here yet. Everything was still bare. “How do you know, Charles? Have you met everyone who’s ever spoken to me?”
Charles opened his mouth, and then shut it fast. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just … this is about the last place I expected to see you. When did you move here?”
“A few months ago. I got married. We lived in LA. But then my dad got sick, so we moved back.”
“You lived with your dad when you first moved back?”
“No, Leon and I lived here. We made this decision together. Anyway, Dad has lots of people caring for him. Round-the-clock nurses and stuff. He has Alzheimer’s.”
All the information hurtled at him too quickly. Leon. Only a few months. And her dad had been sick. Why hadn’t they lived in her family’s big, beautiful house when they moved back? Why had they chosen this instead? His eyes landed on her stomach again. Her clumsy, handmade dress. One of her fingernails was black.
“I like this,” Bronwyn said simply, as if sensing his observations. “I like what I’m doing. I’m happy.”
“But you could have been so many things,” he blurted out. He had to say it; there was no way he was leaving without saying it. “You could have become so much.”
She laced her hands over her belly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean … well, what do your parents think about this?”
“Well, my dad doesn’t have much of a grasp on it. And my mom and I don’t speak.”