Page 67 of Shifting Gears

Nora’s interest fades into something a little more antsy. Dani has inadvertently taken her to the very patch of land that Nora failed to locate at the beginning of the summer. She had meant to get back to this part of her survey after her second failure, but she’d let herself get distracted. She should be elated that she’s finally found it, but instead an uneasiness settles over her as they roll through the underbrush.

The piece of land she’s been interested in bulldozing is where the tree house is.

“Is that something people here would appreciate?” Nora tries to make out their surroundings. All she can see in the darkness are the vague shapes of trees and the dirt tracks in the truck’s headlights. The nervousness that grips her is almost enough to derail the desire. “A hotel or resort?”

Dani’s mouth twitches. It’s not quite a frown, but some of the lightness leaves her face. “No. Not really.”

Nora’s stomach sinks.

“Wouldn’t it bring tourism money? Up property values?” Nora asks, increasingly aware that she’s parroting her own report. She’s dancing a little too close to the truth yet again, but she feels a sudden need to explain herself to Dani. “It could help to revitalize—”

“Revitalize for who?” Dani says simply.

“What do you mean?”

Dani drums her fingers on the wheel.

“Some big, fancy company opening a hotel here, bringing tourists—it wouldn’t help the community. It’d make money for some company somewhere far away that buys up the land,” Dani says, unintentionally busting Nora’s proposal wide open. The uneasy feeling in Nora’s gut increases tenfold. “And maybe it would raise property values and bring tourism, but people can barely afford to buy and maintain properties as it is, with the cost of utilities and taxes and all. You could sell your house for more, sure, but that doesn’t help people who want to stay. Who have lived here their whole lives. People who grew up here and want to buy a place, only to be priced out.”

Nora hadn’t been expecting Dani to have such a polished, thoughtful answer ready that so effectively scrambles her confidence. The truck emerges from the treeline, and even from this new angle, Nora recognizes the dark shape of the tree house in the distance, lit by moonlight.

She wishes, suddenly, that Dani had never brought her here.

“What about if their bills were lower?” Nora asks, new possibilities flashing through her mind. “There’s a lot of resources out here that nobody is using. If someone invested in green energy, it could—”

“Who’s gonna do that?” Dani says, chuckling a little. “Nobody cares enough to invest in some dinky little town up north. We’re not important enough.”

Nora frowns, but Dani seems to be done with the conversation.

“I’m not saying that a little revitalization would be bad,” Dani says, finally putting the truck into park under the shadowy form of the tree house, “but not in a way that makes things inaccessible to us locals. Or destroys what we love about this place.”

Eleanor bites hard on the inside of her cheek.

The Eleanor Cromwell of two months ago might have disregarded Dani’s opinion or, at the very least, not cared so deeply about the impact of her project on the people she’s come to be so fond of. She wouldn’t have been fussed about the idea of demolishing the tree house where so many good memories are now anchored. She’d have cared above all about getting the funding she needs.

But Dani is right. Developing Riverwalk is meant to create a fund for her environmental initiatives, to drive a common good. But how good is it if it means she has to destroy something wonderful? How good is it if it torpedoes the town? Is the sacrifice worth it? Maybe Nora has been avoiding finishing the proposal in part because she’s been coming to that conclusion herself. Her old friends think she’s already practically finished, and her new friends have no idea she’s doing it at all.

Sarah said that Nora is different from most of the tourists they see in Riverwalk. In reality, Nora is far worse. She’s living a double life.

Nora should be pressing Dani for details and memorizing the location to return to later so she can finally add actual on-the-ground information to the report she hasn’t so much as glanced at since June, which she’s already starting to reassess in her head.

Caught in a sudden limbo, Nora opens her mouth.

“Dani, I—” she says, her hand clenching the truck seat’s padding. There’s no hole this time to twist her finger into, and she’s caught up in an impulse to spill every one of her secrets across the dashboard. A tidal wave of sudden guilt. “There’s something that I—I don’t think…”

“Don’t worry. I know it seems small in here, but I promise we can make it work,” Dani interrupts, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively as she pulls Nora into her lap. The steering wheeldigs into her back a little, but Dani inches the seat back enough to give her some space. “See? Plenty of room.”

The impulse to confess everything is strong, but not strong enough to overtake the comfort of avoidance for just a little longer. Instead she reaches for Dani’s hand, putting business out of her mind in favour of pleasure. Dani intertwines their fingers easily, and Nora does what she’s become so adept at doing over the course of the summer. She does the only thing that makes the unease go away: She gets lost in Dani to the detriment of everything else.

The summer isn’t over yet.

* * *

Nora’s experience of sex has historically been fairly transactional. It’s always been a physical need, easily put off and easily sated without the need for pesky emotional attachments. It’s never been a reason for Nora to lose her head. Before this summer, she’d never understood the wild, all-encompassing kind of desire that could cause people to do something so silly as to have sex in a public place.

Dani has changed all of that.

Dani seems to want Nora always, everywhere, and Nora sees no reason to contain her own desire here. She indulges herself when the whim hits her, and the whim hits her often. She distracts Dani while she’s working on her truck or after she changes the oil in Nora’s car in the empty shop after hours. She interrupts Dani’s workouts, encouraging her to abandon her free weights and exert herself in a more fun way. Dani leans into it just as much, pulling Nora into the women’s washroom at the River Run or laying her out in the truck bed under the tree house. It’s all fair game.

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