But there was no reason to do that any longer.
“Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?” she said, mirroring his curiously formal style of speech.
“Not at all.”
“When did you first know that you were in love with Abigail?”
As soon as she said Abigail’s name, a tenderness came over him. “Last year,” he said, leaning back into the cushions of the love seat. “Not long after I graduated. We’d gone out four or five times, and she wanted me to meet her parents. Anyway, we were driving to Waterloo, just the two of us. We’d stopped for something to eat, and on the way out, she decided she wanted an ice cream cone. It was scorching outside and unfortunately, the air-conditioning in the car wasn’t working that well, so of course it started to melt all over her. A lot of people might have been upset by that, but she just started giggling like it was the funniest thing ever as she tried to eat it faster than it could melt. There was ice cream everywhere—on her nose and fingers, in her lap, even in her hair—and I remember thinking that I wanted to be around someone like that forever. Someone who could laugh at the inconveniences of life and find joy in any occasion. That’s when I knew she was the one.”
“Did you tell her then?”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t brave enough. It took me until last fall before I could finally work up the courage to tell her.”
“Did she say that she loved you, too?”
“She did. That was a relief.”
“She sounds like a wonderful person.”
“She is. I’m very lucky.”
Though he smiled, she knew he was still troubled.
“I wish there was something I could do for you,” he said, his voice soft.
“Working here is enough. Well, that and staying late.”
“I’m glad to be here. I wonder, though…”
“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing with the smoothie. “You can ask whatever question you’d like. I’ve got nothing to hide anymore.”
“Why didn’t you ever get married? If you thought you would, I mean?”
“There were a lot of reasons. When I was just starting out in my career, I wanted to concentrate on that until I established a foothold. Then I started traveling a lot, and then came the gallery and…I guess I was just too busy.”
“And you never met someone who made you question all that?”
In the silence that followed, she unconsciously reached for the necklace, feeling for the small shell-shaped pendant, making sure it was still there. “I thought I did. I know I loved him, but the timing wasn’t right.”
“Because of work?”
“No,” she said. “It happened long before then. But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been good for him. Not back then, anyway.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You don’t know who I used to be.” She put down her cup and folded her hands in her lap. “Do you want to hear the story?”
“I’d be honored.”
“It’s kind of long.”
“Those are usually the best kind of stories.”
Maggie bent her head, feeling the images begin to surface at the edge of her mind. With the images, the words would eventually come, she knew.
“In 1995, when I was sixteen years old, I began to lead a secret life,” she started.
Marooned
Ocracoke
1995
Actually, when I’m being honest, my secret life really began when I was fifteen and my mom found me on the bathroom floor, green in the gills, with my arms wrapped around the toilet bowl. I’d been barfing every morning for the past week and a half, and my mom, more knowledgeable about such things than I was, raced to the drugstore and made me pee on a stick as soon as she got home. When the blue plus sign appeared, she stared at the stick for a long time without saying a single word, then retreated to the kitchen, where she cried on and off for the rest of the day.
That was in early October, and I was a little more than nine weeks along by then. I probably cried as much as my mom that day. I stayed in my room clutching my favorite teddy bear—I’m not sure my mom even noticed that I hadn’t gone to school—and stared out the window with swollen eyes, watching buckets of rain pour onto foggy streets. It was typical Seattle weather, and even now, I doubt there’s a more depressing place to be in the entire world, especially when you’re fifteen and pregnant and certain your life is over before it even had a chance to begin.
It went without saying that I had no idea what I was going to do. That’s what I remember most of all. I mean, what did I know about being a parent? Or even being a grown-up? Oh, sure, there were times when I felt older than my age, like when Zeke Watkins—the star player of the varsity basketball team—spoke to me in the school parking lot, but part of me still felt like a kid. I loved Disney movies and celebrating with strawberry ice cream cake at the roller rink on my birthday; I always slept with a teddy bear and I couldn’t even drive. Frankly, I wasn’t even all that experienced when it came to the opposite sex. I’d only kissed four boys in my entire life, but one time, the kissing went too far, and a little more than three weeks after that awful barfing-and-tear-filled day, my parents shipped me off to Ocracoke in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a place I didn’t even know existed. It was supposedly a picturesque beach town adored by tourists. There, I would live with my aunt Linda Dawes, my father’s much older sister, a woman I’d met only once in my life. They’d also made arrangements with my teachers so I wouldn’t fall behind in my studies. My parents had a long discussion with the headmaster—and after the headmaster spoke to my aunt, he decided to trust her to proctor my exams, making sure I didn’t cheat and that all my assignments were turned in. And just like that, I suddenly became the family secret.