Yes, I’ve knocked fate in the past, but lying next to Skye, I came to understand that our affair has happened for a reason. That the plan forming in my head during dinner at Le Bernardin has legs. The irony is this: Skye, with her soft skin and hopeful eyes and pharmaceutical fortune, may just be the ticket back to my wife.
Chapter Nine
Heather
JANUARY 1990
Burke had been sending me love letters.
After his initial period of anger when I broke things off in October, he turned into a sad, sulking puppy who was willing to take the blame for everything wrong with our relationship. He wrote in one of his letters:
I know this is all my fault, Bones. I see that now. I need to be more driven and better at planning for the future, like you are. I need to lay off the drugs, and I’m not just saying that. I promise you, Heather Price, if you give me another chance, I’ll prove I can be the man you need me to be. We’ll apply to college together, we’ll get the hell out of Langs Valley just like we always planned. I love you more than anything in this world and imagining a future without you is devestating. Your breaking my heart. Please give me a call.
Poor Burke. I wasn’t surprised he missed me; Burke could have any girl in Langs Valley, but I was the only one who was going to get him out of our dumpy little town and he knew it. With anyone else, his future would be a bleak blur of dead-end jobs and drugs and raising kids in the same shitty way our parents raised us.
Ever since we first got together freshman year—that frigid night in December when he offered to give me a ride home from the hockey game—Burke had been mine. He’d put the heat on full blast and pointed all the vents in my direction, and when we pulled into my driveway, he leaned across the center console and brushed my cheek with the back of his hand.
“You’re perfect, Heather,” he’d whispered before he kissed me. He tasted sweet and minty, and our lips fit together like puzzle pieces, and that had been that. Something easy and good in my life, for a change.
Of course, I missed Burke. I missed his adorable dimples. I missed collapsing into his strong arms at the end of a long day, the way he made me feel tethered to something real. Aside from Gus, Burke was the only home I’d ever known, and I could never say that we didn’t love each other.
But he couldn’t spell devastating, and when I showed Libby the letter, she rolled her eyes.
“Another one?” She took the paper from my hands, scanning the words. “If he can’t use the proper form of you’re in a sentence, he’s not the guy for you.
“I’m serious, Heather,” Libby continued, watching me think. “I have no doubt Burke is a decent guy, but you need someone a million times smarter than he is, someone on your level. You’re going places. And Burke … Burke is an addict. He’s only going to bring you down.”
It was the first time I’d heard anyone say it out loud, but I knew instantly that Libby’s words were the truth. Burke was an addict.
“I know, Lib.” I sighed, wiping coffee grinds from the kitchen counter into the sink. “Believe me, I know.”
I smiled at the sight of Nate and Gus crouched on the floor, intensely focused on Nate’s vast collection of toy trucks. It had been nice bringing Gus with me to Libby’s. The boys played together well, and I felt far less guilty now that I didn’t have to leave my brother at the Carsons’ for so many hours. My father, whom I crossed paths with less and less, hadn’t said a word to me about Gus’s whereabouts. When I asked Gus about Dad, he shrugged his little shoulders. “Haven’t seen Daddy. Where’d Daddy go?”
The boys loved when I read to them, and Libby and Peter had shelves and shelves of children’s books that I’d never seen at the local library. Gus’s favorite was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, a book about a boy who explores his neighborhood in New York City the day after a big snowstorm. Gus was enamored of the pictures of the snowy city setting—so different from the rural life he knew—and he’d flip through the pages for hours, long after Nate had grown bored of our reading session. Eventually Libby told Gus he could keep The Snowy Day, and his eyes lit up in delight.
Libby adored Gus, but Peter wasn’t around enough to give him much notice. I’d become wildly curious about Libby and Peter’s marriage, especially with Libby’s constant advice about choosing a partner carefully. Peter spent almost all hours of the day working out back in his artist’s studio in the barn. Whenever he did come through the house for lunch or a snack, dried paint smudging his jeans, he’d wrap his arms around Libby lovingly and cover the kids with kisses. But he left his studio so rarely that I couldn’t help but wonder if their marriage wasn’t as perfect as Libby wanted it to seem.
I wondered if they had issues regarding money. As Libby and I had gotten closer, she’d revealed enough for me to confirm that Peter’s art wasn’t the reason for their family’s deep pockets, but the source itself was never specified.
The night I aced my first SAT practice test—thanks to Libby and her SAT prep books—we celebrated with some of her favorite red wine. We were having one of our long, easy chats and had already polished off a full bottle when she mindlessly mentioned not wanting to travel with her parents and the kids to Vail over Presidents’ Day weekend.
She immediately placed a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m an insensitive, privileged fool, being so cavalier about a trip like that. I do realize I’m … lucky.”
I paused before responding, “To be honest, I don’t even know where Vail is.”
Libby hesitated, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s a ski resort in Colorado. I’m sorry, Heather. I must sound like an entitled brat.”
Though I lived in the mountains, I’d never been skiing and didn’t know a thing about it, but flying to a ski resort in Colorado sounded nothing short of glamorous. Nevertheless, I shook my head.
“I don’t think you’re insensitive, Lib.” I touched my nose to the rim of the glass and inhaled the earthy, oaked scent of the wine. “You’re definitely not an entitled brat. You’re generous and you’ve been so kind to me. You’re probably the closest friend I’ve got these days.”
It was true. Burke was out of my life, and with all the extra time I’d been spending on homework and SAT prep and babysitting at Libby’s, I hardly hung out with my girlfriends at all. Kyla was pissed; she told me she was sick of my Pollyanna act and didn’t know who I was anymore and had stopped bothering to invite me to parties.
I knew I was being a bad friend, but I was determined to keep my eye on the prize. More than anything else, I knew I had to get out of Langs Valley. Once Peter was finished with his Adirondack Mountains study, likely in May or June, Libby would move back to the wealthy coastal town where she was born and raised. That, too, was where I imagined myself one day: an affluent suburb of New York City where people drink wine spritzers and play golf, where someone else mows your lawn and there isn’t a trace of crack cocaine for miles.
I didn’t want a career so much as I wanted a vessel toward that life, the life Libby led in which she didn’t have to think about work or money, where the carefree possibilities of each day made her fingertips tingle. Getting into a good college was my ticket to meeting a wealthy man, or a man who would be wealthy, and that was what I needed. Gold diggers aren’t vacuous; they work hard for the life they get. I’d begun to understand that Peter painted all day because Peter could paint all day.