“Far less, I’m afraid,” Will says, taking a sip of his martini, his expression turned impenetrable. He doesn’t sound sad exactly. Maybe a bit wistful? I want to know why. I want to know why this Will Baxter is so different from my Will Baxter. He’s still the most fascinating person I’ve ever met, only now he’s a complete mystery.
Mrs. Rose clucks. “Young people don’t know how to have a good time anymore,” she says, then launches into a story about Christopher Plummer, a cast party, and a marriage proposal I’m almost positive never happened.
Soon talk turns to Will’s vacation. “What are you going to do to keep yourself busy for four whole weeks?” Mr. Rose wants to know.
“I’ll be working most of the time. It’s easy to do my job remotely.” He looks at me as if to ask permission, and I nod. I don’t mind if the Roses know why he’s here.
“I was going to do a bit of work with Maggie, help her with some ideas for the resort,” Will says. Hearing him call my mom Maggie is jarring. “I hadn’t heard the news before I arrived.”
“What do you mean, you were ‘going to’?” Mrs. Rose asks. Nothing gets by this woman. She lasers her eyes on me. “You need all the help you can get, my dear. And that’s not a slight against you.”
I know she’s right. Only I’m not sure I can keep it together for an entire month. Just sitting beside him makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Or onto his lap.
“And what about that young woman you had with you last summer?” Mr. Rose asks as he tops up our glasses. Will has a girlfriend? A familiar squeeze of envy cinches around my ribs. “What was her name?”
“Jessica,” Will tells him with a quick look in my direction.
This is good. This means any possibility of crawling onto his lap has been removed from the equation once and for all. This is great, I tell myself, even though it feels almost cruel that, when Will finally came here, it was with another woman. I take a long sip of my cocktail.
“Jessica, that’s right. A real looker, that one.” I can feel Will watching me as Mr. Rose makes a little whistling sound through his teeth. “We taught them how to play cribbage,” he tells me. I smile in reply, but it must look as false as it feels.
“And where is Jessica? Is she joining you later?” Mrs. Rose asks Will.
“No,” he says, and I’m sure I feel his elbow press into my arm, just a little. “We broke up.”
* * *
—
Dusk has fallen when the Roses kick us out. Will and I amble along the gravel walkway, and each cabin we pass has its own soundtrack—the slap of screen doors, the clatter of dinner dishes, a tumble of dice and a cheer of victory. The house and Cabin 20 are the farthest from the lodge, and as we walk, the woods grow denser. The path is lined with ferns and begonias planted in old logs. It’s hard to tell, but I think Will’s tipsy. I know I am.
“I think my blood is two parts gin,” he says, eyes glimmering in a way they haven’t since he arrived.
“That’s probably a conservative estimate.” I feel buoyant. It’s the booze, absolutely. But it’s more than that. It’s quitting my job and the beautiful summer night and the feeling of taking back some control for the first time since Mom died.
I blame the martinis for allowing me to reach out and touch his arm. “Hey, Will?”
He stops walking.
“Thanks for redirecting Mrs. Rose earlier. It’s not my favorite story.”
“I know it’s not.” We watch each other, the lamplight casting Will’s face in shadow.
“Did you mean what you said—about that day being the most exciting thing that happened to you?”
“I did,” he says. “I don’t spend much time in that part of the city, but when I’m downtown, I always think of it.”
I blink. “You live in Toronto?” I don’t know why I hadn’t guessed that before.
“I do,” he says slowly.
“For how long?” I ask, my pulse quickening.
Will’s eyes dart to the trees. He doesn’t want to answer.
“Just tell me.”
“A long time.”
I stare him down. That’s not good enough.
“Almost ten years,” he says quietly.
I nod once, but it’s mostly for the purpose of making sure my head is still attached to my neck. I didn’t think the great ghosting of Fern Brookbanks could get any worse.
“Wow.”
“Fern,” he says, and I wave my hands, hurt and disappointment rising up my throat.
“Don’t.”
“Fern.”
“Listen, I gotta go. I’m drunk. And you’re”—I study him—“too tall.”
I leave Will there, on the path, standing among the pines and poplars.
* * *
—
That night, the dream starts the same way. I can smell the pancakes before I go downstairs, but when I get to the kitchen, Will is at the stove instead of my mother. He’s wearing a dark blue suit, his back turned to me. His hair is past his ears, like it was when he was twenty-two, and when he looks over his shoulder, his face breaks into the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen. I pull him to the table and peel his jacket off slowly. His grin turns wolfish, his eyes hungry. I reduce my speed as I unbutton his shirt, watching him starve, then I press my teeth to the skin over his heart while the pancakes burn.
8
June 14, Ten Years Ago
Will and I stood in the narrow mouth of a lane, rainbow brick walls stretching before us. Graffiti Alley was the city’s most famous display of legally sanctioned street art.
“Have you ever been here?” he asked.
“No.” I’d heard about it, but I didn’t know the exact location. “It’s basically Frosh Week 101: Don’t leave your drink unattended; don’t pet the raccoons; don’t traipse through alleys, even beautiful graffiti-covered ones.”
“You think it’s beautiful?”
I nodded as I looked at the bright orange lettering next to us. I reached into my tote and pulled out my Ziggy Stardust coin purse, jiggling it in the air. “I know what would make it even more beautiful.”
Will grinned. “Oh yeah?”
We walked deeper into the lane to where we were wedged between two buildings. Even in the shade, it was hot. Everything around us was coated in spray paint—walls, grates, garage doors, dumpsters. There was a rickety wooden bench that looked as though it were fashioned out of oversized Popsicle sticks covered in swirls of blue and yellow. It was also covered in a crust of dried bird droppings, so we tucked into a corner beside a dumpster, and I lit the joint, inhaling deeply before passing it to Will. He took a long pull, eyes half-closed, hand wrapped over the top of the joint, and I thought it was probably the sexiest thing I’d witnessed.
“So what’s so great about Toronto?” he asked when he came up for air.
“What do you mean?” I took a hit before passing it back.
“I get the impression you’re not exactly pleased to be leaving.”
I leaned my head against the wall and stared up at the runway of clear sky above the alley. I could already feel the pot moseying through my bloodstream, a loosening lull. I was an easy high. I snuck a peek at Will as he inhaled, then I gazed back at the sky, thinking about his question. There was so much I liked about living here, but there was one big reason.
“Back home, everyone knows everything about me,” I said, tilting my head toward Will. “In the city, I can disappear.”
Will’s eyes flickered over me, and my skin went tight. “I find that hard to believe.”
I took one last puff and stubbed the joint out on the wall. “There’s a freedom that comes with being in the city. I’m no one here.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
We started walking slowly, the sun in our eyes.
“Yeah. At home, I’m Fern Brookbanks.”
Will smirked. “Aren’t you Fern Brookbanks here, too?”
“I am, but it doesn’t mean anything. Back home, I’m Margaret Brookbanks’s daughter.” Resort brat. Screwup. Reformed business grad. “I’m making it sound like I’m important, and I’m not. It’s more like who I am is already determined—small communities are kind of like that, and the resort is its own tiny empire.”
“Got it. You’re Princess Fern.”