Return to Willow Lake (4 page)

“We’re making a huge mistake,” she said, “but I’m too…I don’t
know how to stop it,” she said.

“Then quit trying,” he said simply.

“Zach, I don’t think—”

“Exactly. Don’t think.”

He made it easy to drift away from rational thought. There was
something about the soft night and the lush leather bench seat of the vintage
boat, and him, and the two of them together again after such a long time. His
kisses tasted of champagne and chocolate cake and memories so old she couldn’t
tell if they were memories or dreams.

He pulled back and parted the coat he’d wrapped around her,
sliding it away. His hands glided over the form-fitting dress as he whispered,
“I want to take this off.” Without waiting for her to respond, he reached for
the side zipper of the silk dress.

Somewhere, floating amid the mind-fogging kisses and the
champagne and Jell-O shots, a tiny
no
formed, waving
its arms like a drowning victim. Then the
no
floated
away and disappeared, and what was left was something she had never before said
to Zach Alger in this situation, even though she’d known him all her life.

“Yes.”

Part Two

M
UST
-D
O
L
IST
(
REVISED
)

graduate
degree

win a
fellowship

find
excuse to avoid 10-year high school reunion

really
fall in love

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

—M
AYA
A
NGELOU
(
BORN
M
ARGUERITE
A
NN
J
OHNSON
, A
PRIL
4, 1928)

Chapter Three

If there was such a thing as a better day than this,
Sonnet Romano couldn’t imagine what that might look like. Brighter sunshine?
Clearer air? Theme music playing as she crossed Central Park en route to 77th
Street subway station? Street performers scattering flower petals as she passed
by?

She didn’t need any of that, not today. Her own news was good
enough. The beautiful spring weather was the icing on the cake. New York City
was at its best, crisp and clear and lovely as a fairy tale. Great things
hovered over her head like air traffic over LaGuardia.

She took out her mobile phone, because the only thing missing
at the moment was someone to share her good news with.

Great Thing #1: Her father was taking her and Orlando to dinner
at Le Cirque. Time with her father—whose senatorial campaign was now in full
swing—was precious, and she was eager to catch up with him and share her
news.

Great Thing #2: Orlando. The ideal boyfriend, the kind of guy
who seemed too good to be true. Everyone said she and Orlando were great
together, and they were only going to get better. Just this morning, he had
given her the key to his apartment. Correction: the key to his stunning East
Side pre-war co-op, which had closets bigger than Sonnet’s entire studio.
Orlando was not the kind of guy who gave out keys lightly. He’d told Sonnet she
was the first, and that had to mean something. Also, he was proof that she’d
moved on from the Zach incident, that singularly bad decision she’d made at
Daisy’s wedding last fall.

So why then, she wondered, did her finger hover over his name
on the screen of her phone, like the planchette of a Ouija board? Why, even now,
did she think of him first when she had big news?

The big news was Great Thing #3: Perhaps the greatest—the
fellowship. Out of a field of thousands of candidates, she—Sonnet Romano—had
been chosen for a Hartstone Fellowship. It was probably the biggest personal
news she’d ever had, and she was dying to share it with someone. She quickly
scrolled past Zach’s name—and why, pray tell, asked a little voice inside her,
have you not deleted him from your contact list?—and went to her mother’s
name—Nina Bellamy. As usual, her mom’s voice mail picked up. During the workday,
Nina was too busy running the Inn at Willow Lake to take a call. Sonnet didn’t
bother leaving a message; her mom tended to forget to check. They’d catch up
later.

She called Daisy next, and Daisy, bless her, picked up on the
first ring. “Hey, you,” she said. “How’s my wicked stepsister?”

“Good.
So
good. In fact, Mrs. Air
Force Babe of Oklahoma, you need to stop me from making a fool of myself. I’m in
the middle of Central Park and I’m tempted to burst into song about what a Great
Day this is. I’m about to become a one-woman flash mob. Stop me because I’m
supposed to be cooler than that.”

“You’re a New Yorker. You
know
you’re cooler than that. But it does sound like you’re having a good day.”

“I’d say so. The
best.
”

“That’s good. So, you’ve got news? What’s going on?”

“God, just…everything. I got the fellowship, Daze. I got it.
Out of everyone they could have picked, they picked me.”

“That’s great. So what does it mean? Besides more laurel
wreaths being laid at your feet? You know you’re making the rest of the family
look bad, right?”

“Hardly.” She knew Daisy had to be kidding. A talented
photographer, she’d been given a citation as an emerging artist, and her work
had been in a special show at the Museum of Modern Art. She’d set the bar high.
Sonnet was just glad the two of them worked in completely different fields.
“What the fellowship does is put me in charge of a program to give indigent
children a chance in life. It’s incredible to think I could really make an
impact. I don’t know yet whether I’ll be assigned to a domestic program or
overseas, although it doesn’t matter. There’s need everywhere.”

“Wow, that’s really something, Sonnet,” Daisy said. “There was
never any doubt, not in my mind, anyway. You’re amazing. So, uh, will you be
traveling somewhere far away?”

Despite the enthusiastic words, Sonnet heard something in
Daisy’s tone. “You sound funny,” said Sonnet. “What’s up? Is Charlie doing any
better in school?” Daisy had the most adorable son, but the kid was having a
hard time with school this year.

“It’s a process,” Daisy said. “So hard to see him struggle, but
we’re working on it. It’s just… Hey, have you talked to your mom today?”

“I tried calling her but she didn’t pick up. She never picks
up. Why do you ask?”

“Oh. You should call her. She…”

“God, is Max in trouble again?” Daisy’s younger brother, now in
college, had always been something of a challenge.

“It’s just…call, okay?”

“Don’t be going all cryptic on me. I—”

“Hey, you’re breaking up.”

“Oh, you big faker—”

“Sorry. Can’t hear. And I need to check on Charlie—”

The line went dead. Sonnet instantly tried her mother again,
and then the Inn at Willow Lake, but was told Nina was out. Frustrated, she
glared down at her phone. There was Zach Alger’s name, at the top of the contact
list. Prior to the night of Daisy’s wedding, he would have been one of the first
people she would call with her news, good or bad. That had all changed, though.
She’d never call him again, not after that glorious, sweet, impossible mistake
she’d made in the boathouse six months before.

Stop
. It was a known fact that
ruminating on regrettable past events was an unhealthy habit. Better by far to
accept what had happened, set it aside and move on. Ruminating kept the incident
alive in one’s head, meaning the hurt, anger, humiliation and regrets felt like
fresh wounds, even after time had passed.

Sonnet knew these things. She’d read the self-help books. She’d
sat through college courses in human psychology. She knew the drill. Knew how to
protect her own heart. Therefore, it was disconcerting to realize she hadn’t
been able to push past what she’d come to refer to in her head as the Zach
incident.

Having sex with him had been a moment of madness. The sex had
been outstanding, but she couldn’t let herself dwell on that. In his arms, she’d
felt protected and adored and special…and she couldn’t think about that, either.
Because no matter what sort of crazy connection they’d found that night, there
was no chance for a romantic relationship for the two of them, and they both
knew it. The fellowship and her career were just too important to her; she
couldn’t compromise everything she’d worked for just because skinny little Zach
Alger had morphed into a sex god.

Particularly in light of what had happened after. The
humiliation still made her cringe. After their mad lovemaking, they’d been
lounging on the bench seat of the boat, speechless with the lush saturation of
sexual fulfillment. Finally, Zach had tried to say something. “That
was…that…God, Sonnet.”

She hadn’t done much better. “I think we’d better… I’m… Is
there any more champagne?”

He reached for the bottle. He paused, and she saw him frown in
the dim light. “Shit, it was on.”

She was still limp with pleasure. “What was on? You mean that
camera thing? No way. Oh, my God. Can you fix it?”

He laughed. “Relax, I’m a professional.” He’d popped out the
camera’s SD card. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“You totally have to erase that, Zach. I don’t care if it
recorded anything or not. You have to promise.”

“Of course I’m going to erase it,” he said. “What do you take
me for? Hey, I can do better than that.” He flicked the tiny card into the lake.
Then he had turned to her, this sexy stranger who had once been her best friend.
“Now, where were we?”

And the mind-blowing sex had continued. Dawn had crept in, and
they’d sneaked away from the boathouse, only to encounter Shane Gilmore,
president of the local bank and the town gossip, out for his morning jog by the
lake. Her mom’s ex, of all people. And there had been no mistaking the
expression on his face.

Sonnet cringed all over again as she reached the edge of
Central Park, heading for the subway to catch the train to the restaurant. She
emerged from the lush gardens of the park onto Fifth Avenue, where the sidewalk
was crammed with hurrying pedestrians who all seemed to be in a pointless race
with one another.

To refocus her thoughts, she slipped her hand into her pocket
and closed it around the key. No one else in the surging stream of humanity had
any clue what the key meant to her or even why. Despite the warmth of the day,
she felt a chill.

It was a chill of excitement. Of anticipation. The key had been
given to her by Orlando, aka the ideal boyfriend. He was one of those guys who
really was as good as he looked on paper—background, education, career path,
manners, looks. And because her father had introduced them, Orlando had arrived
in her life preapproved. And he said he was in love with her.

He was the first man to say so. Hearing the declaration hadn’t
been the exhilarating free fall of emotion she’d imagined as a girl. It was
better than that. He was mature, he knew what he wanted, and he wanted to share
his life with her.

As the crowd on the sidewalk halted for a traffic light, she
gave a couple of bills to a guy strumming “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on a
ukulele. A block farther, she played a secret game of peekaboo with a toddler
being jiggled on his mother’s shoulder. Oblivious, the mother gabbed away on her
phone about a fight she was having with her boyfriend. The baby had cheeks like
ripe apples and eyes that looked perpetually startled, and a wisp of blond hair
rising from his forehead like the flame of a candle.

He looked like half the dolls Sonnet used to play with when she
was a little girl. The other dolls looked more like the little African-American
girl in the umbrella stroller a few feet away. When Sonnet got older, her mom
had explained that baby dolls who looked like Sonnet were hard to come by.
Santa’s elves, apparently, had not caught up with the times. Mixed race babies
were common enough; dolls that resembled them, not so much.

The light changed and she walked on, her fingers clenched
around the key until its teeth bit into the palm of her hand. She wasn’t so sure
herself. The way her career was going at UNESCO, there was scarcely time to
squeeze in a trip upstate to see her own mom, let alone raise a kid.

On the other hand, her twenty-eight-year-old body was awash in
hormones raining from an invisible emptiness inside her, just begging to
procreate.

She wondered what Orlando would say if she brought it up. He’d
probably bolt for the nearest exit. They were still too new, key or no key. He
had told her long ago that he wanted to postpone having kids. There would be
plenty of time for that unspecified “someday.”

As far as she was concerned, nothing could dampen her spirits
today. She had the ultimate good news to share, and she was about to share it
with the two people who would totally get how cool it was.

She’d been racing around madly all day, trying to get ready for
this new chapter in her life. A Hartstone Fellowship. She, Sonnet Romano, from
the tiny town of Avalon on Willow Lake, had been chosen for the honor. People
who won the Hartstone Fellowship tended to change the world. She’d always been
eager to measure up to her father’s expectations. Personal accomplishments were
so important to her father. She could understand that. They validated you, told
the world you did things that mattered.

As usual, she was in a hurry. It was her normal mode. She had
hurried through school, graduating with a 4.0 GPA and zooming ahead to her dream
school, American University. From there she’d pursued a double major in French
and international studies, then raced ahead to grad school. Sometimes she asked
herself what the hurry was, but mostly, she didn’t slow down long enough to
wonder.

And it was working well for her. The letter in her satchel was
proof of that, for sure.

As she hurried down the stairs to catch the train—she was on
the verge of being late, an unforgivable offense in her father’s book—her phone
chimed, signaling an incoming text message, sneaking in just before she lost the
signal underground. At the same time, she heard the train rattling into the
station. She rushed to slip her pass through the turnstile and proceed into the
fecund heat of the underground station.

The train’s moon-yellow headlights were filmed with the
ever-present dirt of the subway, and its brakes gave a tired-sounding squeal.
The doors clanked apart, disgorging streams of passengers. Just as quickly,
people on the platform boarded. She paused and bent down to help a woman with a
stroller over the gap between the platform and the train car.

At the same time, she thought about the text message that had
come in. She didn’t know what made her grab for her phone just in that moment;
she got text messages all the time. Habit, probably. Or it could be Daisy’s
cryptic comment about checking in with her mom.

As Sonnet stepped across the gap and took out her phone.
someone jostled her from behind. Both the phone and the key dropped from her
hand. She saw a coppery flash as the key disappeared onto the tracks, and her
heart sank along with it. The phone screen stayed lit momentarily. Before it
slipped from her hand, she saw the name of the sender of the incoming message:
Zach Alger.

A crush of passengers pressed in from behind. The doors clanked
shut, and the train lurched away.

Sonnet grabbed a safety pole and clenched her jaw. Her stomach
turned to a ball of ice.
You made me drop the key
,
she silently seethed.
Prepare to die
.

His name on the screen reminded her that she should have taken
him off her contact list months ago. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean she could
erase him from her mind. She used to look forward with pleasure to his text
messages, but now the thought of him made her shudder.