Friday afternoon, dust floated in the dorm’s parking lot air as cars flung gravel and sped away.
The college students who were going home for spring break had heaped their back seats with black garbage bags stuffed full of laundry. Those who were going to Lake Powell or Lake Havasu for a week of drunken debauchery on the houseboats were already wearing bikinis and swilling cocktails out of energy drink cans.
Rae Stone shoved her suitcase with all her clothes into the trunk of her Ford Taurus and tossed the plastic shopping bags with her shoes, her toiletries, and a couple paperback novels on top of that. The dust that hung in the air felt gritty on her face, and she could taste the cars’ exhaust.
She owned little. Selling her textbooks back to the bookstore for a pittance had taken minutes. Packing her car to move back to Pirtleville had taken a half hour. All her pitiful dreams had folded so quickly that Rae barely had time to mourn them.
It was better that she didn’t grieve for those stillborn dreams at all. She was choosing her family, her flesh and blood, rather than a career and a clinic that might be, maybe.
She had never had a chance for a real relationship with Wulf.
She laid the books of Shakespeare’s poetry that Wulf had given her on the passenger seat. Sunlight glinted on the gold leaf letters that spelled out Shakespear on the brown leather spines. The misspelling was weird, but she liked the books anyway. She touched the cover, and the leather was warm from the sun and her arms. At least she had something to remember him by.
Another teal-wrapped box had arrived Tuesday morning. She had dropped it off unopened at The Devilhouse with Glenda during one last furtive trip around nine in the morning, when she was sure that Wulf would be trading European stocks or something.
Glenda giggled sweetly about The Dom never showing up before two, the degenerate slacker.
Rae walked around her car and slid into the driver’s side. The seat warmed her butt, and the steering wheel bordered on being too hot in her hands. Her eyes burned.
She wouldn’t cry. She had made this decision, and she wouldn’t cry. She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, was surprised that the sweat on her forehead didn’t sizzle on the plastic, and let her eyes drip because she couldn’t drive like this anyway.
Cars swerved around her beat-up Ford that she had bought used with her own money from the summer that she worked at Dairy Queen. Maybe she could get that job back. Mrs. West was a pleasant boss, and you got one free cone per shift. She should look forward to soft-serve chocolate ice cream cones.
Thinking about chocolate made her eyes drip more, dang it.
Someone tapped her window, and she waved away whoever it was. She wasn’t going to see anyone here ever again, except for Hester, when she graduated next year and came home to Pirtleville to teach kindergarten.
The tapping intensified.
Rae waved away whoever it was harder.
“Reagan!” A man’s voice. A man’s voice with a British accent that hid German inflections breached her misery, and she turned her face away from the window because she didn’t want Wulf to see her for the last time like this.
Dieter was staring in the passenger-side window at her.
Oh, great.
His gray eyes took in her tear-streaked face, and he glanced up at Wulf behind her.
His horror must have been communicated to Wulf, because Wulf’s voice became more urgent. “Reagan, come on. It’s time to go,” Wulf called through the glass. “The plane is ready.”
Rae cracked her window. “I’m not going with you.”
“Did you not get the passport? You should have received it Tuesday.”
“It came in the mail. Thank you for that. Thank you for everything. It was sweet, but I can’t go.”
“Whyever not?”
Rae stared at the tear drops splattering her thighs. “I’m going home.”
“How can you finish your degree down there? Will this college send tutors?”
Rae glanced up at him. “I’m dropping out.”
Wulf closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass. “Have you already withdrawn?”
“I can officially withdraw online, later. I just decided this morning.”
He opened his blue, blue eyes again and, even through the window, pinned her to the seat with his stare. “The Border region isn’t safe for you.”
Rae screwed her eyes shut and repeated what her father had said to that concern: “God will provide.”
“You mustn’t do this. You mustn’t drop out of school. You’re brilliant. You can help those children.” He stood. “Dieter, some privacy, please!”
Dieter walked a few steps away and nodded to the SUV. Three other men emerged and stood at the four compass points around the car, but at a distance.
Rae rolled her window down to talk to Wulf. A wave of cooler air rolled into the car and washed over her face and shoulders, bare in her tank top. “God will send someone else. Or something like that. I can’t give up my family. If I have a chance of making things right with them, I should.”
Wulf rested his arms on the window sill. With his arms like that, she couldn’t roll it up, and she couldn’t drive away. He said, “If you don’t want to come to Paris with me, I understand. I won’t pressure you, but Rae, you mustn’t give up on your clinic. It’s a brilliant idea. It’s needed, dreadfully needed, from what I’ve read.”
She tried an end run because she should just drive away, back to Pirtleville, in a plume of dust and regret. “You’re going to be late for your flight.”
“It’s my plane. If I’m not on it, it won’t leave. I can stand here and argue with you for six days and still attend Flicka’s wedding. If you haven’t changed your mind in six days, I’ll skip the wedding and argue with you some more.”
“You can’t do that.”
“My father would assure you otherwise. We had a running blowout for a month when I was fifteen. I can and will keep you in college, no matter the cost.”
“I have to go home. I can’t throw my family away.”
“I have never wanted to say anything to your family’s detriment, but I saw how they treated you. Your family doesn’t recognize the love in your heart. That sect would steal your passion.”
“Please, Wulf. Just let me go.”
“You’re making it very difficult to keep it all British, here, but I’m good at business, Rae. I’ll help you make A Ray of Light a reality. I took a million dollar swindle and turned it into a profitable enterprise in five years and more than doubled my investment in my spare time. My father lived like God in France as a young man and squandered a good portion of our family’s holdings, and I rebuilt it all in eight years.”
Even with her window down, the blazing sunlight heated the air in the car. Warm sweat misted her scalp. “You must work really hard.”
“Work makes life sweet.”
“I have to go home.”
He spoke over her, “You can finish your education anywhere in the world: Yale, Princeton, Oxford, the Sorbonne. Wherever you want, I can arrange for your matriculation. You can attend a graduate program or medical school. We can put a Ray of Light clinic in every town in the world. Instead of helping hundreds of children, you could help millions. Come with me, Rae. You’ll have the resources and the connections to develop your clinic. You can do everything you want to, and I will support you. I will help you.”
Her family hadn’t offered to help her.
“I implore you, don’t give up on yourself!” His desperation in his voice shocked her.
“But what use is it to gain the whole world but lose my family?”
“If your natural family can’t be what you need, if they can’t love you for who you are, then build a family who loves you. I’ll do anything for you, including give you the money and walk away, if that’s what it takes, if that’s what you want.” He reached in the window and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pressing his forehead to hers. “Don’t give up on yourself.”
Her chest pressed in on her heart until she couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know what to do, Wulf.”
“Come with me to Paris.” His blue eyes were closed, like he couldn’t bear to see her, and his golden eyelashes and his hand on the back of her neck trembled. “If you want, I’ll send you back. Your text said that they demanded that you return home over spring break. That’s this whole week.”
“That’s true.” In the letter of the ultimatum, but not the spirit of it.
“We’ll establish a safe word. If you say Macbeth, we’ll stop whatever we’re doing, no matter what it is, and I’ll have them fuel the plane and fly you back. I won’t argue. I won’t debate. Please, give me the chance to show you the world before you retreat to that church that would crush you.”
That wasn’t what her mother had negotiated for, Rae knew, but her heart leapt up at the thought of a few more days with Wulf before she was forced back to Pirtleville. “You promise?”
“I would never violate my word. I’ve never lied to you.”
He had never lied to her. Major omissions, yes, but he had slowly, eventually, told her truth and all the truth, she thought. “Okay.”
“Just get in the SUV. I’ll buy whatever you need.”
He wasn’t taking any chances that she would change her mind.
She said, “My stuff is all in the trunk. I’ll just grab a few things.” Her purse held her brand new passport, so she took it and the book of Shakespeare’s poems from the passenger seat.
He stroked her back the whole time that she threw some clothes, pajamas, and toiletries in her backpack, not letting her farther away than an arm’s reach. Her stomach clenched as he led her to the SUV and helped her inside because she was positive that she was doing the wrong thing.
Yet, as Dieter drove the SUV down the freeway and climbed the overpasses to the airport, Rae felt like she was flying and finally free.
She twined her fingers in Wulf’s strong hand and held on.