“I have things set up so I can get away next week. If you’d like a little company.”
Annette blinked, caught off guard, momentarily at a loss for words.
“Bill,” she said, “this is personal time for me.”
“We haven’t been seeing much of each other. I thought you might like a little company out there.”
Annette didn’t want to state the obvious, didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was a nice man, a lonely man trying to rekindle something that was over months ago and shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
“I’m not lonely out there,” she told him. “I feel peace. I love the silence. I love the space. But, this isn’t my usual solo trip. I’m meeting an old college boyfriend in the park.”
Bill’s face flushed and his jaw tensed. “I can’t believe it. After all we’ve meant to each other. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s not your business. Our affair was over months ago. We never should have gotten involved in the first place. May is one of my best friends. So are you. Let’s keep it there.”
“You know she can’t . . .” Bill didn’t finish the sentence.
“I know. But that doesn’t give us the right to sneak around behind her back. She’d be devastated if she found out.”
“It’s not hurting her!” he exclaimed. “I’m still there for her. I don’t let her want for anything.”
“I know,” said Annette. “You’re a good man. The best. I just can’t do it anymore. Period. It’s over. I hope we can still be friends, but we will never be lovers again.”
Bill’s anger melted into a sadness so profound Annette wanted to hug him. He looked like a child who had just lost a parent. She understood the feeling. The Canadian Shield was the most beautiful place on earth, except when your life was out of balance. Then it was a desolate, empty land where aching loneliness stalked you through endless days in summer and endless nights in winter.
“Okay,” he said. He choked a little, then hurried from her sight so she wouldn’t see him lose control.
The metallic sound of the door latch clicking into place echoed in her mind, a door closing on the brief experiment with romance in her second life. It was the beginning of another period of aloneness. She still had Christy and Rebecca, but they would be moving on sooner or later. It would happen fast. A man would come along, a spark would ignite, Christy would have to take a chance that it was the real thing, and she’d be off to Toronto or Winnipeg or one of the cities to the south. And Annette would be left to face the endless dark winters alone. Again.
“How did he take it?” There was genuine surprise on Christy’s face as she asked the question. She was a tall, strong woman, like her mother, with large, soft eyes that spoke of compassion and a face that seemed to radiate gentle humor.
“Not well,” Annette sighed. When Christy returned home an adult woman, one of Annette’s first resolutions was to keep no secrets, even the embarrassing stuff. That included her affair with Bill and her correspondence with Pender.
“It’s not easy to accept what’s left,” Annette said. “I understand how he feels.”
“Why did you do it then? It’s not like anyone was getting hurt.”
Annette shook her head. “That’s what I used to tell myself. But that was never the real question. I was betraying a friend. And I was doing something that made me feel guilty. It had to stop.”
“Was it because you’re meeting that guy in the park?”
Annette had thought about that before. “Maybe. I hope not, but maybe,” she said.
“Why?” asked Christy. “It’s not any of his business who you’re sleeping with.”
Annette smiled at her daughter. Christy’s support was one of the few luxuries in her life. “No, none of his business at all. But I think what happened was, when we started e-mailing and decided to meet, it made me think back to those times when we were so young and life was waiting for us and I was sort of piecing together the things I believed in. When I looked at myself through that young woman’s eyes, I liked a lot of what I saw—you and Rebecca, Annie, this business. But I didn’t like seeing me having an affair with a married man. It wasn’t right, and it was . . . desperate.”
They were quiet for a while, lost in their own thoughts as they folded linens and towels for the cabins.
“I saw your little confrontation with the guy in number three this morning,” said Annette.
Christy smiled slyly. “Oh, that.”
“What happened?”
“Just what you think happened,” said Christy. “He came in while I was making the bed. I started to leave so he could have some privacy, and he tried to kiss me. He followed me out and I smacked him.”
“You sure did. I could hear it from here. What did you say to him?”
“I told him if he touched my body again, I’d rip the flesh off his face.”
“My goodness. What a violent thought.”
“It worked.”
“I guess it did,” said Annette. “I thought he was going to cry.”
“What would you have done if he kept trying to force himself on me?” asked Christy.
Annette laughed. “I would have run down there and ripped the flesh off his face.”
After another silence, Christy stopped her labors to take a sip of coffee. She glanced at her mother, still folding towels. “Are you sure about meeting that guy alone in the park?”
“Gabe Pender?” replied Annette. “Why not?”
“Well, he sounds kind of violent. And you’d be out there all by yourself.”
Annette stopped folding. “The Gabe Pender I knew had trouble with authority. If you told him he had to do something, he’d rebel. If you gave him his space, he gave you yours.”
“So you don’t think he’s dangerous?”
“No. In his e-mails he sounds a lot like the guy I knew in college.”
“You haven’t seen him in forty years. He could be psychotic. He could be a rapist or a dope addict.”
“Do you think we change so much between twenty-one and sixty?”
“He’s divorced. Do you know why his wife left him? Maybe he beat her.”
“I know what he said. He said they just drifted apart. Different interests, different values.”
“What wife beater ever said the marriage ended because he liked to beat the crap out of women?”
Annette sighed. “I just can’t picture Gabe Pender hitting a woman.”
“He hit his boss, didn’t he? And he accosted those guys in the canoe race.”
“I can see him hitting his boss, especially if the guy was as much of a jerk as Pender said he was. And I’ve thought about the thing with the canoeists. You know, if they knocked someone over in one of our races, chances are they’d need medical attention at the ER. Pender just broke their paddles.”
“I bet he wanted to break their noses.”
“He probably did.”
Christy stared at her mother. “You two didn’t just date in college, did you?” She said it suspiciously, more statement than question.
“What else do you think we did?” Annette responded flippantly.
“I mean, he wasn’t just another guy you dated. He was special.”
“I guess he was, in a way.”
Christy cocked her head and smiled. “Come on,” she said.
“He was special. Of the men I knew in college, your father and Pender are the only ones I remember.” Annette glanced away, deep in thought. “We argued a lot. Sometimes he’d argue the other side even when he agreed with me. He could be really frustrating, but it was always interesting with him.”
“He sounds like one of those people who likes to hear themselves talk.” Christy wrinkled her nose when she said it.
“No. That was your dad. Pender liked to engage me in debate. He was showing off, but he respected my intellect, too. Sounds passé to you now, but back then a lot of men didn’t like women who had opinions and smarts. He did. That’s why it was so exciting being with him. One reason.”
“Were you involved with him sexually?”
Annette frowned, trying to decide how much she should share with her daughter. “Yes,” she said, finally.
“And?”
“And we enjoyed each other. And that’s as far as I’m going with this.”
Christy laughed. “I believe you’re actually blushing!”
“Believe what you want.”
“Still,” said Christy, “I’d feel a lot better if someone was going with you. Just in case. I can get away for a few days, just to make sure he’s okay . . .”
“That’s sweet of you, honey,” said Annette. “But no. I’m going alone. I can handle whatever comes along. Goodness knows I’ve dealt with men when I had to.”
“What if he, you know, wants to have sex?”
Annette laughed. “Christy,” she exclaimed, “I’m sixty years old. So is he. If he wants to have sex and has the erection to prove it, let’s just accept it for the miracle it is.”
“Does that mean you’d say yes?”
“That means I’d make up my mind when it happens, which it won’t.”
As they labored in silence, Annette’s mind filled with college memories.
“You got the same grade I did and you don’t have a single footnote!” She wasn’t just angry, she was pissed. She didn’t like him anyway. He argued every point in every discussion, always had a different point of view on every book and character. He didn’t socialize with anyone. And he got an A on a paper that contained no research.
“Footnotes aren’t important. They just mean, instead of thinking for yourself, you copied down what a bunch of self-important assholes said about something.”
She flushed and fumed. It would have felt good to slap him. So disrespectful. And yet, as she locked eyes with him, he wasn’t sneering. He didn’t seem disrespectful.
“You’re too smart to settle for being a parrot,” he said.
“How do you know?”
He blushed and fidgeted. All her anger and resentment evaporated as she realized he couldn’t find words. He was interested in her, and he was vulnerable. The two thoughts came to her simultaneously and rocked her. She blinked. He was kind of handsome. His face was expressive. There was fire in his eyes.
“It’s obvious.” He was still beet red.
She didn’t know what to say. She’d know what to say if she just wanted to leave him there, but that’s not what she wanted. The silence got uncomfortable. He shuffled his feet and locked eyes with her again.
“Could we have coffee sometime?”
So began the most intense love affair of her life.