I drove to the Sears outside of Burlington, where I was meeting Gavin, confident that I had dodged a bullet and not overdressed, but worried (not for the first time) that I was not as beautiful as my mother. I had neither her height nor her hair, that incredible blond mane. My blond? Mousy and thin, I fretted. My mother was forty-seven the summer she disappeared, and her hair was as lush and luminescent as ever.
Originally I had chosen a pair of high heels, black with a strap around the ankle, but the temperature was supposed to flirt with the lower thirties tonight, and I didn’t have the right tights to accessorize them. And so instead I had gone with my brown Frye boots, which meant changing from a skirt and a blouse to a white-and-gold wrap dress—the gold was fiddleheads and ferns—that fell almost to my knees, and my leather jacket. But in between my first and my final choice, I had run through easily a third of my wardrobe, scattering the mix-and-match ensembles on my bed and the floor. I had agonized for easily ten minutes on my lingerie, even though I had no plans to sleep with Gavin that night. But what if? I recalled my conversation with Paige. Our mother had secrets. Our father had secrets. I myself now had secrets.
When Paige had strolled past my bedroom and spied the disarray—the dresses waterfalling off the side of the bed, some still on their hangers, the underwear and shirts and socks rising like bread from the open drawers, the shirts and jackets now throw rugs on the floor—she had shaken her head and said, “Yeah, you’re going to Montreal with a girl. Uh-huh.” I had defended myself by saying that I was hoping I might have the chance to meet the magician after the show and needed to look professional and mature, but Paige was having none of it.
I arrived in the parking lot where I was meeting Gavin before he did and once again checked my lipstick and hair. The irony that I was checking them in the mirror behind the visor in my mother’s car was not lost on me. I took comfort in the fact that today, unlike the last time I saw Gavin, I was not wearing one of her sweaters.
He arrived in a red Acura, the vehicle still dripping from the car wash, and hopped out quickly to open the passenger’s-side door for me.
“I don’t know much about cars,” I said, “but I didn’t expect a Vermont cop to drive an Acura.”
“Entry level,” he said, smiling. “But clean.”
“And red. Isn’t that a magnet for speeding tickets?”
“Only if you speed—or you don’t have connections. You know, I still feel a little guilty about meeting you here. I really could have picked you up.”
“That was so not happening.”
“Still haven’t told your dad about me?”
“Nope.”
“Probably wise. I’ll bet you haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“Not a soul.”
He shook his head. “Playing with fire. Isn’t this how pretty girls disappear?”
“I don’t expect to disappear,” I told him, sitting down and adjusting my seat belt.
Once he was inside the car, I could see his eyes behind his sunglasses. He stared at me for a moment, appraising me, and then said, “Well, you look great. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Next stop? Montreal. You’ll love the restaurant.”
And then we were on the highway, heading north, and I gazed up at the few clouds in an otherwise cerulean sky and at Lake Champlain when the interstate neared the water. I watched the mountains to our east and our west recede as Canada neared and the topography flattened. Most of the time, though not always, I was able to push from my mind sleepwalking and my mother and the questions I hoped I would have the courage to ask Gavin. I told myself that I was in the midst of a love story, not a mystery. Not a murder mystery. I tried to read nothing into his car or his relationship with my mother or the way he was attracted to me. The way I was attracted to him. I was—and the realization surprised me—happy.