August 1989
What she was doing was wrong. But then, everything was wrong, wasn’t it?
She was sneaking out to see Carson, even though in thirteen hours she’d be another man’s wife. Brian’s wife. Brian’s wife. No matter how she phrased the words, they hardly made sense to her, even now. They belonged to someone else’s reality. It was as if she, Meg Powell, would cease to exist at the end of the wedding ceremony, becoming some unfamiliar woman called Mrs Brian Hamilton. But maybe it was better that way.
She left her house in the dark and traced the familiar path through the pastures, toward the lake and the groves and Carson’s house. The sun would rise before much longer, and her sisters would wake, excited – Meg’s wedding day! Her parents would find her note saying she’d gone for a walk and wouldn’t be concerned. They’d know she’d be back in plenty of time; she was nothing if not reliable and responsible. A model daughter. Their deliverance.
And she was glad to be those things. If only she could shut down the Meg who still longed for the future she’d sacrificed. This visit to Carson was meant to do that, to shut it down. This part of her mission was appropriate, at least; this was the part she would explain to him. If she knew Carson – and after sixteen years of best-friendship, she knew only herself better – he would accept the partial truth without suspecting there was anything more to it.
She wanted so much to tell him the truth about the rest, to explain why she was marrying Brian. But besides jeopardizing everything, it would make him want to try to fix things. If that had been possible, there would not now be a breathtaking four-thousand-dollar wedding gown waiting in her bedroom like a fairy tale in progress. The thought of it hanging from her closet door, specter-like, made her shudder; she’d read enough fairy tales to know they didn’t always end happily.
Carson lived in a converted shed on his parent’s Florida citrus farm. The McKay farm adjoined her family’s horse farm, sharing an east–west line of wood posts and barbed wire. The fence kept the horses out of the groves but had never been a serious obstacle for Meg or her three younger sisters or Carson. When she was seven or eight years old, they’d found a wooden ladder and sawed it in half, then propped the halves on opposite sides of a post to make their passage easy. Meg wasn’t surprised, now, to see the ladder gone. Climbing the barbed wire, she took care not to get a cut she’d be hard pressed to explain tonight.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the shadows of the orange grove and stopped. In the light of the setting moon she could see the shed, its white clap-board siding and dark windows, a hundred yards to the left of the main house. She and Carson had spent most of his senior year working with his father to renovate it, creating two downstairs rooms and an upstairs bedroom loft. They’d called the shed their love nest, not only because they first made love there but also because they meant for it to become their home. Not for always, just for starters. The plan had been to eventually build a new house on the far side of his farm. On the wooded hillside where, as children, they’d hung a tire swing for themselves and her sisters. Where, years later, they had spread an old horse blanket and gone as far as they dared without protection.
This morning, she was purposely – some might say selfishly – no better prepared.
Though the day would grow hot later, the moist air and light breeze chilled her by the time she reached his door. Her feet were wet inside white canvas sneakers, her thighs hardly covered by cut-off denim shorts. She was braless beneath Carson’s John Deere T-shirt, could feel her nipples pulled in tight and small. Her gold chain, his gift to her on her nineteenth birthday two years earlier, lay cool against her damp skin.
She hesitated before putting her hand on his doorknob, imagining what Brian would do if he knew she had come here, imagining her parents’ disappointment and distress if she spoiled the plan, imagining that she might hate herself even more, later – and then she turned the knob.
The door was unlocked, as she’d known it would be. No need to lock your doors out here; everything of value was kept outside the house – for Carson or for almost anyone who made a living off the land. In the implement shed was a new pair of mortgaged tractors that had cost upward of $80,000 apiece. In the barn was a treasured thoroughbred bay – Carolyn McKay’s ‘hobby’ that helped make up for being unable to have more children after Carson. Meg knew the details of the McKays’ lives intimately. But when she left here later this morning, she would do everything possible to forget them.
She stepped inside and eased the door closed, wanting Carson’s first awareness of her to be when she slid beneath his covers. She stood and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The place still smelled slightly of cut pine and stained wood and curry, one of Carson’s favorite flavors.
When she could see, she crossed the wide front room to the stairs that divided it from the kitchen. Grabbing the railing, she pushed off her sneakers and began climbing the stairs. A tread creaked underfoot and she paused, waiting, her heart loud in her ears, then went on. By the eighth step she could see into the dark loft. She stopped and listened for the sound of Carson’s even breathing. Though they’d spent only a few nights together as adults, they had slept over at each other’s homes innumerable times as children. She knew the sound of his sleeping self almost as well as she did her sister Kara’s. Before Brian and his unexpected proposal eighteen months earlier, Carson had been the son her parents never had, and she had been Carolyn and Jim’s adopted daughter.
Straining to hear Carson, the only sound she could make out was the low hum of his refrigerator, and then the chirpee-chirpee-chirpee of a cardinal in a nearby tree, announcing the sun’s progress. She climbed the remaining steps, cringing at another creak, then stopped, trying to make out his form on the bed at the far side of the room.
‘Does this mean you changed your mind?’
Meg jumped as if stung. There was Carson, sitting in the love seat they’d once hauled away from a bankrupt orange grower’s estate sale. She couldn’t quite see his expression, but she could hear in his voice that he was wide awake.
With all her heart, she wished she could say yes, her presence meant exactly what he guessed. But softly she said, ‘No.’
‘Then why are you—?’
‘Shh,’ she said, going to him and reaching for his hand. ‘Come here.’
He stood, and before he could speak again, she kissed him hard, kissed him until she felt dizzy and brave and determined not to chicken out. She put his hands on the hem of her shirt and, with her hands on his, helped him draw it over her head. In another moment, they were undressed and lying on top of his sheets, the pale light painting them moonlit blue.
One last time. She would savor every touch, every sensation, the fullness of his lips, his squared jaw, the dark stubble as it rubbed her neck and grazed her breasts. She would not forget one moment of this, would always look back and remember how making love with him transported her. She would keep the memory like a priceless, irreplaceable jewel. She would remember how he pressed into her as if his life, their lives, depended on it, as if he could secure eternity.
Afterward, Carson lay on his side watching her, twisting a strand of her coppery hair. ‘What other proof do you need?’ he asked. His eyes shone with determination and hope, and she had to look away. Her first loyalty was to her family; how could it be otherwise? She had to marry Brian for their sake, was resigned to it, would do it and would try to never second-guess herself afterward; this she had already vowed.
‘I know how it seems,’ she said, ‘but that’s exactly why it can never work. We’re too intense. That’s what this proves.’ The lie, same as she’d told him a year and a half before, tasted bitter. Love that had grown from childhood friendship and adolescent curiosity, that had now withstood so many long months of complete separation, could never be a damaging, undesirable thing – and yet that was the story she was selling.
He