“Then why are we still thinking about the past, letting school rule our decisions?” he said. “This is just about getting back at . . .”
“Don't say his name, please,” she pleaded, desperation filling her voice. “Only we exist now. It's like time has stopped, like it's only you and me in this world. Mercer's Point and its launching pad to the sea has lifted us, taken us away from all we know, and what happens next only happens now.” She paused, a hard lump caught in her throat. “Adam, I don't want to leave for Europe a girl. I want to fly away a woman.”
“Vanessa . . .”
“It's one more rite of passage. It's necessary.”
“But . . . you wouldn't . . . you know, with . . .”
“Because I knew it was wrong. Because I knew that with him, it wouldn't be special, it would be all about him and his pleasure and I would just . . . I'd barely be a part of it. You, on the other hand, Adam, you understand the universe, how it works, why things happen, why certain connections exist between certain people. That's us. That's us . . . right now. Let's take our last night as kids and grow up together. Adam, right here and now, let's stop questioning everything. I need to feel love, and I know, even in this briefest of moments, you'll indulge me.”
“Vanessa, this is crazy . . . just the other day we barely spoke to each other.”
“Like I said, the universe had other plans for us,” she said. “This place, out on this rocky pier, I would always crawl out here when the rest of my friends were swimming. I never really took to the waterâdon't get me wrong, I loved its motion, but I also respected its power. So I would come here to the edge of Mercer's Point and watch. But secretly, I'd be wishing to be somewhere else. It's my own private place.”
He leaned forward, he kissed her. She kissed him back.
“And now I'm here with you.”
“Yes, you are. And it feels right, my sharing it with you.”
And then they did as the night dictated, silhouetting their shadows with moonlight that seeped through darkened clouds. They undressed, and they touched, they felt and they explored, and finally, ultimately, she opened herself to him, and he pushed all thoughts from his mind as emotion won the night's battle, their hearts parting ways with the rational. It was wonderful and incredible, even ridiculous as he fished into his wallet for the condom that had dented a ring into the leather from years of carrying it, years of not requiring use.
He gazed at her.
She gazed back, gave a silent nod.
Passion rode the wind that night, gave its cry an echoing finish. When at last they were satiated, a deep realization set in. About what they had done, whom they had done such a thing with. But they only managed to smile at each other, kiss each other. Regrets had no place out here on this rocky shore, those would come later, when neither were a part of the other's life and the implications of their actions grew clearer. For now, they dressed as they realized the dance must have ended and the seniors would soon begin to invade Danton's Hill in droves, ready to continue the party without benefit of teachers and chaperones.
They agreed to stay behind was out of the question. They left Mercer's Point avoiding detection by bypassing the gang, Adam driving her home. In the gravelly driveway where he had picked her up just hours ago, they parted as friends, as onetime lovers who dared never speak of what had transpired between them. They were ready for the future, to move beyond the simple existence of high school life and the world they knew as Danton Hill. By car or by plane, their paths would never again cross. Separate ways they would go, it's how it was meant to be, with neither speaking a word about one day reuniting.
“Good-bye, Vanessa.”
“Good-bye, Adam. And good luck. I know you'll be a huge success.”
“And you . . . you can be anything you want to be. See the world, find yourself.”
The night of the Forever Yours dance ended with the two of them merely smiling at each other, Vanessa beneath the glow of the porch light of her childhood home, Adam leaning against his father's wheels, shaded in the dark. One last connection to the past held them before each sought out their futures, alone. Moments later, he hopped in behind the wheel and the car pulled out of the driveway, its rear taillights disappearing around the bend, car and driver mutually gone from Vanessa's life.
She sat on the steps of the porch, not sure what to think about, who to think about.
That decision was made for her.
Danny Stoker, disheveled, emerged from the darkness, into her light.
“What are you doing here?”
“How was he?”
“Danny, don't be gross. Though I have to admit, it's something you're good at.”
He grinned lasciviously, like a man unsatisfied with his earlier encounter. “That's not all I'm good at, not that you'd know. So, what's so special about that loser Adam Blackburn? You give to him what you wouldn't give to me?”
“You were watching us?”
“Gotcha!”
Vanessa stood, attempting to gain access to her house. The door was locked and the keys were inside her closed purse. Not enough time to grab them before Danny was on her, his beer-fueled breath invasive against her skin.
“Don't touch me,” she said. “I'll scream. My parents are right upstairs.”
“Oh, I'm not going to do anything to you. You proved you didn't want me and that these years meant nothing. If you can live with your decision to go out a loser, so can I. But can you honestly say you're happy? Is this how you want to end it? Us, high school?”
“I don't even know you anymore.”
“I doubt you ever did.”
“Good-bye, Danny.”
“Good-bye to you, bitch.”
Vanessa swung at him, her fist connecting with his face. She watched as Danny's head swung upward from the impact, watched as he drunkenly lost his balance. He fell back against the decorative rocks that lined the path to her mother's rose garden. He didn't hit his head, but she heard him cry out with pain. A scrape appeared on his arms, a trace of blood bubbling out of the wound.
“You're nothing but a bastard. Evil, that's what you are. You'll never make anything of yourself, Danny Stoker. The next time I see you, I hope it's at your funeral.”
He grinned, showing a line of perfect white teeth, highlighting his dark good looks. He was at the height of his power, still the undisputed king of Danton Hill High School. “Fine by me. That means I can haunt you forever,” he said.
That's when he departed, disappearing into the shadows from where he'd emerged. And that's when Vanessa Massey realized she was truly all alone, and not just on her front porch. Her parents might be upstairs, but they wouldn't understand. Her friends were enjoying the after party up on Danton's Hill, at Mercer's Point. And Adam Blackburn and their night together were already starting to fade from her memories. She'd used him for sure, that much she knew, and it left her with an empty hole in her gut. There was not one person she could turn to, no one who understood anything anymore about the girl named Vanessa Massey. The woman, she reminded herself. She was a woman now.
Ten days later, as the plane lifted off the ground, Vanessa breathed a sigh of relief.
She had escaped, with no one privy to the secret she took with her.
Because she wasn't alone on that flight.
C
HAPTER
16
N
OW
V
anessa's surprising revelation hung between them, seemingly trapped by its own admission.
“What do you mean, you weren't alone? Who went with you?”
She didn't answer, not immediately.
They remained still, sitting across from one another on the porch as another batch of dark clouds rumbled across the sky. The chill in the air had deepened, or perhaps it was the result of the shifting mood, chill gone to frost over her freshly revealed betrayal.
“Vanessa, did you hear me?”
“Yes, Adam, I did,” she said, looking away, her face stricken. “I'm sorry, even now this is still so difficult for me to discuss. Aside from Reva, I've never told another soul.”
Adam leaned forward, searching her eyes, trying his best to understand her. He pictured the scene after he left her alone in the driveway to be confronted by Danny. She'd rejected him, but at some point must have changed her mind. That important detail she'd left out. So now he was left with the image of her and that jerk together. After what she and Adam had shared that night, just to toss away their connection with such cavalier disregard. “Why would you do that, put yourself though such an ordeal? I mean . . . after he treated you so horribly, why you would take him with you on your trip? How is that escaping?” At first he couldn't bring himself to say the name, and then finally he did. “Danny Stoker went with you to Europe.”
She couldn't help it, she laughed deeply, the sound throaty and guttural in the dark night. Hers was a laugh tinged with both irony and regret and maybe even a bit of revulsion. “No, no, Adam . . . that's not what I said. That night on my porch, after the dance, what I told Danny I meant and I fulfilled it. I never saw him again, not until he was lying inside his open casket, nine years later. There is no way in hell I would have allowed him to travel with me, if he even had the desire to leave. Danny was a Danton Hill boy through and through, so much so I doubt he ever went any further than Rochester.”
“So, then I don't get it. Who accompanied you to Europe?”
“Wow, for such a smart guy, you're playing it awfully dumb.”
“Vanessa, I think you just need to spell it out for me.”
She paused, searching for words that would not doubt pierce, but hurt him the least. If such words even existed. He obviously needed it spelled out, and perhaps she needn't be so coy. She needed to say it aloud too, directly to his face. She reached out, gently taking hold of his strong hands, caressing them, as if seeking safety from the heat they gave off, a contrast to the chill surrounding them. “Adam, here's the truth. When I left Danton Hill, I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant.” He said the word, heard how foreign it sounded on his tongue and in the air between them.
“Yeah, how about that,” she said, letting out a deep breath. “I had company on the flight, but it's not like I had to buy an extra seat.”
Realization dawned on him like waves of water, like sheeting rain assaulting his body. It awakened him, doused the fuzziness inside his brain and shook him to his very core. Finally he felt the unsettled chill of the night that had so far evaded him. That cold had previously only seemed to live inside her. He struggled to find the right words and finally said, each word laced with hesitation, “The baby . . . was mine?”
“No one else's.”
“Oh, oh . . . wow . . .”
“Yeah, that was kind of my reaction, except back then I was just some dumb high school graduate who was headed to Europe for a year before coming back for college. Let's see, my ex-boyfriend had proved to be a total jerk, and I was pregnant thanks to an impulsive decision and I guess one really old condom. That night on Mercer's Point, weâAdam Blackburn and Vanessa Masseyâmade a baby, created a life. And I know how shocked you must be right nowâAdam, it's okay, whatever you're feeling, I'll understand. If you want to run, like I did, like I always do . . . I've had twenty years to process this fact and you, you're hearing it for the first time all these years later. But whatever you're feeling, please don't hate me, because right now I know I couldn't handle that. Right now I need your understanding and . . .”
“The baby. What happened to . . . ?”
“Her,” she said, softness in her voice.
“Her, right. Wow, her . . .” Adam repeated, his voice just as soft and wistful as a summer breeze. “Where is she?”
“Adam,” Vanessa said, holding his hands still, squeezing them as though to make the two of them one, to share together the sad truth of yesteryear. “She didn't live.”
He visibly blanched, like his body had suffered a small stroke. A child had been given to him and just as quickly had been torn away from his embrace. His mind couldn't absorb all she had revealed. But he had to know more. He had to know every damn truth that lay deep inside her. Every detail. “You miscarried? Like you did later, with Dominick's baby?”
Vanessa, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, shook her head. “Not that time, no. I carried her to term, went through childbirth, the whole awful, screaming deal.”
“You went through this alone?”
Again, she nodded. This time she wiped away the tears, wiped away the memory.
“In a hospital in London. To this day, Reva is the only person I ever told the whole story to. Not Dominick, not my parents, and not my friends, and certainly I couldn't tell you . . .”
“Why not?”
“Oh Adam,” she said, hands cupping his face, absently scratching at the dark stubble on his chin. “Let's not do this right now, these questions and answers. If you really think about it, you'll know that I couldn't do that to you. You'd already left Danton Hill by the time I found out weeks later, you'd taken your first step toward your future. You were summering in Princeton, you'd been given your one chance to escape the world that was Danton Hill Highâhow could I spoil your dream with news that I was having a baby? We barely knew each other; we certainly didn't love each other. We were young and stupid and that night I wasn't making the most informed decisions. We let one night of teenage drama transform us into the adults we weren't ready to be, and the result was something . . . someone neither of us was prepared for. There was no magic that night on Mercer's Point, it was just two dumb kids angry at the world. A cruel twist of fate, made even crueler by the fact that she didn't live beyond her birth.”
“Can I ask, did you get to hold her?”
“Hold her, yes, I got to hold her, briefly. Feed her, no. She just lay so silent in my arms, an angel in every sense of the word. I touched heaven when I touched her. I never felt closer to another person, and I still never have.”
“You named her, of course?”
She nodded, this time with a smile. “Yes. Elizabeth Grace.”
Adam could find no more words, ask no more questions. In his mind he pictured a very young, lost, and innocent Vanessa Massey, alone and scared in a foreign country, dealing with the complications of a teenage pregnancy she'd endured by herself. Giving birth, crying out in the hospital room when she began to realize that all was not right with the baby, with the birth. He could picture her holding the still form, envisioning endless tears as she embraced a baby who would never smile, never cry, never find laughter in the simplest of things.
At last, he said, “Elizabeth Grace. That's the most beautiful name ever.”
“Adam . . . I'm sorry,” she said, still stroking his cheek. She leaned in, and despite the tears that still fell from her eyes, from his, she kissed him gently, tenderly. It was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he couldn't reject her, not during such an intimate exchange. He responded in kind, grateful for the sweet gesture, the offer of comfort. The connection they'd forged earlier still existed between them. What had happened today had served to strengthen a bond that kept them tethered, even if neither had known about why it was happening. Now, with the unexpected news of lovely Elizabeth Grace's existence, they were forever linked. By life and by death, by tragedy, and yes, by grace.
“So, what happens next?” he asked.
“I don't understand, what are you asking?”
“All day, it's been one trip down memory lane after another. We can't keep dwelling on the past . . . eventually tomorrow will come, and with its arrival all of our secrets will be laid bare. Think about it. We've reminisced, we've remembered. We've had our reunion, unlikely as it is, and like all such events, they end with promises made and seldom kept, we just move on. We go back to our own lives and tuck these memories in some place we don't need ready access to. If not for the car accident, our day here, would you have ever told me about the baby? Would we even have had time to talk amidst the swirl of classmates to finally get to know one another? Would we have explored the possibility that our encountersâboth at Mercer Point and in New York, that they really did mean something beyond foolish youth or being drunk? Maybe the world was telling us something that neither of us was ready to hear.”
“What's thisâmore of your past-life stuff, Adam? Destiny?”
“No, that's just ridiculous speculation. I can't explain why this is happening.”
“I can. It's why I came back. Why I wanted to go to the reunion.”
“To tell me all of this?”
She nodded.
“But how could you be assured I'd be there?”
“I couldn't be. I just knew I had to try.”
“See, destiny at work again.”
“Adam, you've really got to stop with all this crazy talk,” she said, looking suddenly to the sky, as if seeking from hidden stars some kind of acknowledgment. Life didn't work the way Adam implied, it held no magic other than the kind you conjured inside yourself. Drive, energy, ambition, power, the world fed off of you, not the other way around. But the sky provided neither agreement nor disagreement, leaving only darkness swirling all around them, cocooned beneath clouds. Like the world had trapped them in this farmhouse, allowing no other soul able to sneak through. It was only the two of them, and at last there lay no further secrets. The past existed where it should, buried inside them.
“Vanessa, do you believe in second chances?”
“Second chances? How about third? Four . . . what does it matter? We make mistakes, we have to move on from them or they'll define us . . . consume us. So, no, I don't believe in second chances. What I know is that I betrayed youâbetrayed your faith in me, in myself as well. I'll heal, because I always do. Or at least, that's what I tell myself. What about you? Have I just given, then taken away, something you always wanted?”
She got up from the porch, pacing back and forth, her words more directed at the universe than at Adam. Still, he felt the brunt, he absorbed them as he listened.
“Who knows, maybe my entire life has just been about hidingâhiding from real truths, from fabrication, from what could have been and what might have been. Things happen in life, sometimes awful things, and you just have to move on. When you start to think in absolutesâor worse, in hopeâyou're set up for nothing but disappointment. I don't get why you're still being so nice to me. I don't deserve it. You should be screaming at me, telling me how much I screwed up your life. That stupid prom, why did people think it was so important? Like your world would crumble if no one asked you and you stayed home. Sometimes disappointment is a good thing, it's the kind of thing that makes you stronger. Adam, I took a part of you away, and worse stillâI didn't even give you a choice in the matter. I made up your mind for you . . . about the baby. I set you free when you didn't even know you were trapped. You should hate me, and instead you're . . . what? Reminding me of Valentine's Day cards you left for me? Finding wine bottles that don't exist, only to seduce me beside a roaring fire? Make up your mindâwhich deity do you want to be? Cupid? Sling your arrow at me and I fall prey to your charms? Or maybe you're Apollo, waiting for the sun to come out so you can take me for a ride on your chariot. Show me the world from Mount Olympus? Myths, that's all they are. I'm mortal, an imperfect being. There's nothing special inside this body, no power to take us beyond today, just one crazy, mixed-up mess. Happy fucking twentieth reunion.”
Adam still said nothing. He wasn't convinced she was finished, but the way she had just punched the column of the porch, he gazed upward to make sure the structure wasn't going to collapse on them. Just then Vanessa turned to him, eyeing him with newfound suspicion. She couldn't find another word to say, though. Adam was convinced she'd used them all up.
“You done?” he asked.
“I . . .” she said, seemingly wanting to vent still but realizing the futility of the situation. Was she even angry at himâfor being nice, for understanding? Or was she finally just letting it all out, the emotions and the frustrations and the failed dreams, railing at the world for its cruel twists and unfair turns? At last, she let out the deepest breath, and rather than the porch dropping on them, Vanessa did, plopping onto the wood boards with exhaustion.
“Yeah, I'm done.”
“Good. Can we focus on what's important now?”
“Which is what?”
“Us. Now. There's nothing we can do about the past, and at the moment we don't seem to be able to do much of anything about the future. All that exists is this moment. So why not try and make the best of it.”
“Adam, what are you getting at? Where is this going? What is âthe best'?”
“Everything is out in the openâat least, I think so.”