The Precious One (36 page)

I was barely listening to him because my mind was racing through all that had happened, putting piece after ugly piece together, and even though he was standing right there, Luka seemed very far away.

“It was because of the papers, wasn’t it? That’s how you knew,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He left me messages on the papers he handed back. There was one
reminding me about my first visit to his house and another one telling me what time to come for the second, the night of the fire.” My voice came out so flat, like a machine’s voice. “You sit right behind me. That’s how you saw.”

“I promise you I never saw anything like that. Willow, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Anger filled me. “What? All you’ve done is lie to me!”

Luka’s eyes were wet, turning his eyelashes to black spikes, which only made me angrier. He had no business being so beautiful. “Here’s what I did: I put the note on the whiteboard; I sent Insley a few other messages that you never knew about; I killed his grass; and—I sent the letter to Taisy.”

“I want to go home, now.”

His words came out in a rush, faster and faster. “That last thing, the letter, that’s the only part of what I did that had to do with you. It was the day of our presentation, and I don’t know if you saw Insley’s face, but it was furious. He looked like he hated us, and I was worried about you, so I wrote the letter that day, looked up your address in the online directory, and mailed it from school. Every other message was only meant for him. Because he’s a bastard, and I knew it, and I wanted to protect you. But those are the only things I did.”

“How did you know he was a bastard if you weren’t spying on us?”

Luka hesitated. “I saw how he looked at you, and—in other ways, I just knew. But I wasn’t spying on you.”

I felt so cold, but I didn’t want to shiver in front of Luka, so I held myself still. When I finally spoke, my voice was cold, too. “So you are telling me that you did all those things, but you know nothing about that fire?”

And there it was again, the flash of panic in Luka’s eyes. My heart cracked.
Oh, Luka, you are lost. You are gone from me forever
.

“Don’t ask me that,” he said. “Please.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

He made a harsh, frustrated sound, but his voice was pleading. “It’s
not what you think. I would never risk hurting you. Even if I thought Insley was alone in his house, I would never set a fire, ever.”

“Why couldn’t you have just left me alone? You’ve broken my heart.”

“Don’t say that. I love you.”

“Can you do something for me?”

“Anything you want.”

“Go inside and don’t come out until I’m gone.”

“At least let me take you home.”

“I’m calling Taisy. Please just go.”

For a moment, all he did was look at me. “I’m sorry,” he said and ran toward the house. I waited until I heard the front door slam before I called Taisy. After I talked to her, I noticed I was still holding the blanket, and because I couldn’t stop shaking, I put it around me and I waited for her to come.

AFTER I TOLD TAISY
the whole story, between bouts of sobbing my heart out, she sat for a long time, just holding me on the pool house sofa, my head tucked under her chin. When I stopped shaking, she lifted my head and said, “Let me just ask you something.”

I nodded.

“Before this happened, would you have ever said Luka was a liar?”

“No. He told me that he never lied and never told his friends’ secrets.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes, and not just because he said it, but because of everything else I knew about him. I would have said that he was honest and true to the core, which is why this hurts so much.”

“Okay, will you do something?”

“Yes.”

“Will you assume for the moment that Luka is telling the truth?”

“But he can’t be.”

“Yes, but just assume that he is, as a kind of experiment. Assume
he is who you thought he was, honest and true. Because you want to know what I find curious?”

“What?”

“That he admitted to some of the things and not others. If he did it all, why admit to the note on the whiteboard but not the one in your notebook or the one in the sandwich? And why tell you about messages he sent that you never even found out about?”

“Oh,” I said, blankly. “I guess that is odd.”

I sat, turning over everything that had passed between me and Luka and everything that had happened with Mr. Insley. Finally, I said, “That letter to you—remember how we thought it sounded kind of nice?”

“I do. It really didn’t seem like it was from someone who wanted to scare you.”

Oh, how I wanted to believe in Luka, to dive headfirst into hope, but I knew that the climbing back out afterward would be wretched, brutal.

“Taisy, you don’t know. You didn’t see his face when I asked him directly about the fire. You didn’t hear how he
could not tell me
that he didn’t know anything about it. He simply couldn’t do it.”

“I know. Why, though?”

“That much was obvious: because he couldn’t do it without lying.”

I heard myself say the words. I recognized them as true: it had been obvious. For a moment, I fell into total confusion, then my head shot up; my eyes met Taisy’s.

“That doesn’t make any sense, does it?” I said, softly. “If he’s a liar, he could have just lied.”

“So assume he was telling the truth, about all of it. What are we missing? What could make all of this make sense?”

“I need to think,” I said.

“And I told your mother I would help her with something in the house. Why don’t you stay here for a while?”

I nodded. After she left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I began at the beginning, with my first day of school, and tried to remember everything I could, every word, every glance from Mr. Insley, from Luka, from everyone. I felt as though I were staring into cloudy water, trying to see what was under it. Shadows. Slender, moving objects that might have been fish, glinting silver, then darting away. I couldn’t remember everything, of course. I felt that more had happened to me since September than in all my life before that, but, finally, finally, I remembered enough. The water went clear, and I opened my eyes, and fumbled in my bag for my cell phone.

“Let him answer,” I said to the empty room. “Please let him answer.”

“Willow?” he said, and his voice in my ear was the best sound I had ever heard.

“I love you, too,” I told him. “I love you so much. Will you please forgive me?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I couldn’t figure out how.”

“How to tell just your story, you mean? Just the part that was yours to tell? Because I might have asked you questions you couldn’t answer, which is exactly what I did.”

Luka didn’t say anything for one second, two, three, and then he said, “I would never hurt you or try to scare you.”

“You are such a good friend, Luka. You are honest, loyal, and true.”

Luka brushed this aside with a quick, “I try,” and then said, “I love you. I want to see you. Can I come over?”

“Actually, I was wondering if you would take me someplace?”

“Anywhere.”

BEC ANSWERED THE DOOR
. Even in the dim porch light, her beauty took my breath away. It was daunting, beauty like that. Her eyelashes alone were enough to make me want to turn tail and run, but I held my ground.

“Hi,” I said, too loudly. I swallowed. “I’m sorry to show up here, unannounced, but I wanted to talk to you. Can I?”

I half expected her to slam the door in my face, but she only glanced over her shoulder. The inside of the house was full of light; I could hear voices and laughing.

“We sort of have company,” she said, “My aunt and uncle and cousins from Massachusetts.”

“Oh, well, we can talk another time.”

“No,” she said, quickly. “I just meant is it okay if we talk out here?”

“Of course,” I said.

We stared shyly at each other.

“You know, don’t you?” she said.

I wasn’t sure what part of it she meant, but because I knew everything, or thought I did, I said, “I think so,” and then added, “but Luka didn’t tell me. He dropped me off here, but I wouldn’t let him talk to me about it in the car, and he wouldn’t have, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know. He lives by the Luka code.”

“Right. So he likewise didn’t tell you about me and Mr. Insley, but you figured it out, didn’t you?”

Her smile flickered. “I couldn’t call him ‘Blaine’ either.”

“Oh, God,” I said, with a shudder. “Not even inside my head.”

“I had just turned sixteen. I was a virgin, which of course, he really liked. And then I slept with him, so—I wasn’t one anymore.” Her gazelle eyes were bottomlessly sad.

“I could have done that, too. There were moments when I thought I wanted to. But something stopped me.”

“Luka?”

“He was part of it. There were other things, like he never listened to me. He talked and talked, but he never listened. And I never felt at ease around him. I don’t know. I just came to realize that it all felt wrong.”

“It was wrong. The guy’s a creeper, going after his students.”

There was more to it than this, I knew. As I had told Luka, I’d made
choices, but the fact remained that Mr. Insley was indeed a creeper, going after his students.

“He really is,” I said.

She smiled a smile so full of regret that it was out of place. Her face was too young to smile that way. “I only figured that out recently, though. Luka tried to tell me. He didn’t know what was going on until right at the end, but he kind of begged me to break it off. I wish I’d listened, instead of getting mad at him. But I was stupid enough to think I was in love. So Insley’s the one who ended it. He said he had to because I was his student. I was crushed. But I could live with it because it was like a tragic love story.”

“Star-crossed,” I said, “in a narrow-minded world.”

“Yep. Except that then, I saw him going after you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So it wasn’t because he was my teacher. He just got tired of me. It’s why I was so mean to you.”

“Please. It doesn’t matter now.”

Bec’s eyes brimmed with tears. “No, it does. I spied on you. And worse.” Her voice broke. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth for a few seconds. “I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did.”

“I thought not.”

“I’m not a firebug. I don’t even like to light candles, but I’d lit some that day because it was my mom’s birthday. The matches were still in my pocket. And there was all that varnish and that damn, piece of shit boat that he said he wanted to sail away with me in, to see my dark hair streaming in the wind. I lost my head, but I swear to God I only meant to burn the boat up.”

“You didn’t imagine that the shed would fall.”

“No! I guess I should have thought of that. I couldn’t believe it when I heard he took the blame for it.”

“He probably didn’t want anyone looking into the matter too closely. They might find out I was there. Some of his neighbors might have seen me when I came out of the house.”

“And maybe he suspected that I did it,” said Bec. “If they somehow traced it to me, then everyone would know that he’s a disgusting predator who screws his students. Or tries to. But remember that part of the rumor that said he was so dumb that he thought, because the boat was in the shed, the fire would just burn itself out? I spread that part. Because that’s what I was dumb enough to think, as much as I was thinking at all that night. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Not even him. I only came there to spy on you two, which was bad enough. And I’m in therapy, now. I know I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“I believe you,” I said, and then, suddenly, I was hugging her, and she was hugging back. I had my arms around Bec Lansing, my enemy, my comrade in trouble and truth, and it felt right and good. It felt like justice.

“I wish I could do something for you,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Maybe we can do something for each other,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, just a little warily. “What are you thinking?”

“Will you go talk to Ms. Shay with me? Not to tell her anything about the fire, of course. But just about Mr. Insley. Because he needs to be stopped.”

“The thing is that he didn’t really do anything wrong, technically. He was twenty-nine with me, and, let me tell you, he had that law down pat. And with you—”

“We only kissed. I can’t think that’s a crime. But maybe at the very least, we can make sure that something goes into his record that would make it hard for him to teach kids anymore.”

“He might deny it all,” said Bec.

“I suppose he might, but I think Ms. Shay will believe us.”

“And I have some, uh, proof, I guess you’d call it. Evidence. Notes he wrote me, stuff like that. I almost threw them away, but I decided not to. I’d kind of hate to drag it all out, but I will, if we need it.”

“Good.”

Bec nodded. “Okay. I’m in. Let’s nail the bastard to the wall.”

“I’m afraid it will mean we’d have to tell our parents, though.”

“Which will, without question, suck. But I’ve been kind of thinking about telling them anyway.”

We were back to staring shyly at each other. Oh, the two of us. Caught together in that gossamer porch-light moment, Bec and I were so honest I hurt for us. We were bruised in the same places, but we were also flowery and hopeful eyed, as though everything we’d said to each other had pared us down to the little girls that lay inside us still, just under the surface.

“I should let you get back to your guests,” I said.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“No, I’ll call Luka. He’s probably parked fifty yards from your house.”

She smiled. “No doubt.”

I turned and started down her front walk.

“You know, I bet he didn’t even build that boat,” she called after me.

I smiled into the crisp, winter-smelling dark. “He doesn’t seem like the boat-building type,” I called back. “I bet the damn boat came with the house.”

And behind me, on the porch, Bec laughed.

H
E ASKED ME THIS
time because he said it was his turn. On his father’s front porch on New Year’s Eve, but it was snowing instead of raining, so the yard was luminous and full of whispering.

“I know I should have asked you during a hurricane, with a hundred-fifty-mile-an-hour winds,” said Ben, “but I didn’t want to wait.”

“I know we should do it in October, when we met, and I should carry a gourd,” I said. “But I don’t want to wait, either.”

We did it in June, when hurricane season technically begins, but one didn’t hit. Mr. Ransom made my bouquet, peonies with one sprig of purple freesia at its heart in honor of our eighteen-year-old selves, who had made mistakes but had the right idea to begin with.

We did it in the garden of our new house, which was close to Willow’s and to my old house and to Mr. Ransom’s but was in a new neighborhood altogether. Our garden was beautiful because I had the best gardener in town.

I was twelve weeks pregnant, a source of joy so piercingly sweet, so holy that we didn’t consider for a second keeping it a secret. We told
everyone the day we found out. Trillium shouted, “Glory Hallelujah!,” and Willow said, “Oh, Taisy, can this please mean that you’ll wear an Empire waist wedding dress just exactly like Elizabeth Bennet must have worn?”

During the reception, she came up to me, my maid of honor, looking like a flower with her narrow celadon green gown and bloom of auburn hair. Her handsome boyfriend was at her side. He carried Pidwit. She carried Roo.

“
This
is why those books always end with a wedding,” she declared. “Not because marriage is the foundation of society or because marriage is the only practical happy ending for a woman.”

“Wait,” I said. “Is that new English teacher having you read Marxist and feminist literary theory? In the eleventh grade?”

Willow smiled sheepishly. “No, I’ve just been doing it on my own for a while, dabbling, if you will. Those theorists try their damnedest to wring the romance out of Austen and Eliot, but do you know what? The romance is still there.”

Luka grinned, shook his head, and said, “‘Dabbling, if you will.’”

She elbowed him, and he kissed the side of her head.

“So why
do
the books end that way?” I asked her.

“Because of this.” The sweep of Willow’s arm took in the entire garden. “Because everyone is here!”

Everyone was.

And everyone was at their best, even Wilson, although even at his best, he was still Wilson.

He did not walk me down the aisle. I did not ask him to. My mother and Marcus did, one on either side of me.

At the reception, Wilson did not end up in a fatherly conversation with Marcus, although I did see him talking to Barbara’s oldest grandchild, who had just finished his freshman year at Brown in neuroscience. At one point, Wilson boomed, “Good man!,” and clapped him on the shoulder.

I spent the evening dancing with my husband, and Wilson did not
cut in, which was fine by me. Willow spent the evening dancing with Luka, and Wilson did not cut in there, either, which was even finer.

Trillium spent the evening dancing with Mr. Ransom.

“I think your dad’s in love with Trillium,” I told Ben.

“Who isn’t?” said Ben. “I think Trillium’s in love with my dad.”

“Who isn’t?” I said.

Marcus spent the evening dancing with everyone, especially Ben’s mom, who cut a rug in her electric wheelchair like nobody’s business. When he wasn’t dancing, he talked to Caro, and I’m almost positive he wasn’t even hitting on her.

Of course,
everyone was there. I could not have had it any other way, and neither could Ben.

When you say those wedding vows at eighteen, you are committing yourselves—with all that you are and all that you have—to only each other because you are young and wreathed in glory and take up all the space there is.

When you say them at thirty-five, you are signing on for something wider: a whole garden full of people to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in wheelchairs and sleepwalking and heart attacks, in arrogance and graciousness, stubbornness and forgiveness, stumbling and wisdom, in meanness and in kindness that falls like snow and shines brighter than the Dog Star.

To love and to cherish, yes. Like a tiger. A hurricane. A family. Relentlessly.