Page 29 of It's You
“Everything okay?” Darcy asked.
“Sure,” answered Willow without looking up. “So…what’s the deal with Faith? You heard about her before now?”
Darcy set the pitcher down carefully. “What do you mean?”
“Just that I didn’t know he was dating someone. Did you?”
“Nope.” Darcy shrugged noncommittally. “But you know Amory…”
Willow’s eyes shot up and cut to Darcy’s as she continued.
“He’s sort of a serial dater. Sort of anif you can’t have the one you love, love the one you’re withdater. Just have to hope one of the ones-he’s-with doesn’t eventuallystickwhile the one-he-loves takes her sweet time getting off her ass to give him a chance.”
“Huit années,” muttered Willow in French, giving Darcy a sour look before looking back down at her phone.
Eight years.
Darcy sat down next to her and nudged her friend’s arm, ignoring the familiar refrain. “Did something happen? At the wedding?”
“No.” Willow sighed, finally looking up, a good swath of bitterness in her tone. “Nothing happened.”
“Shouldsomething have happened?”
Willow met Darcy’s eyes, and Darcy was surprised by the emotion she saw there from generally cool Willow. Was it…regret? Yes, regret. Darcy furrowed her brows. How come Willow hadn’t said anything? Had Darcy been so wrapped up with Jack and her own life that she hadn’t noticed something going on between Willow and Amory?
“What happened, Will?”
Willow opened her mouth to respond when Cassie entered, carrying a tray of lasagna, trailed by Amory and Faith. “Are we ready to get started?”
Darcy gave Willow a look as if to say,This isn’t over yet.
Willow rolled her eyes back at Darcy, signifying that it was.
Amory and Faithleft promptly after dinner, and Willow soon followed them, insisting she had some files to finish up at her office. Darcy suspected that Willow just wanted some time alone. She had kept her head down at dinner, barely saying a word, but coolly assessing Faith from under dark lashes more than once. These glowers were carefully timed to be missed by Faith, but Amory, who sat across from Willow, appeared keenly aware of her irritation, and Darcy watched his expressions range from satisfied to worried as dinner progressed. While he may have enjoyed the attention at first, Darcy wondered if he had overplayed his hand by bringing Faith. Time would tell.
Darcy kissed her mother goodbye and started her walk home, surprised by the balminess of the evening. Late April in northern New Hampshire was unpredictable, as prone to snow as sun, and just about every weather pattern in between. Darcy guessed it to be about fifty-five degrees and she breathed in deeply, enjoying the serenade of the spring peepers and the brightness of the young, waxing gibbous moon rising. Five more days until the full moon lit the night sky.
Darcy’s father, a renowned meteorological researcher who had spent more than half of his life atop Mount Washington observing extreme weather patterns at the famous observatory, had originally regarded astronomy as a hobby. Darcy remembered many evenings with her father on the high school football field, telescope pointed at the sky. But over time, Steckler Turner, better known as Doc Turner by the scientific community, had come to believe, in the manner of the Native Americans, that lunar cycles had a direct effect on weather patterns.
At first, his hypothesis was ridiculed as “superstitious hocus-pocus,” and Darcy remembered once, following a lecture by her father at UNH, a young heckler had asked her father if he also had “a Great-Aunt Betty who predicted snowfall via herrheumatism?” Her father had colored red with embarrassment as the auditorium tittered with the muffled chuckles of his peers. But Doc Turner wasn’t one to be waylaid by doubters, and what sweet vindication when it turned out that a decade of collected data supported his claims. In an article published inScientific Americanthe last year of his life, Doc Turner’s hypothesis was finally proven true. Rain and snow increased a few days prior to a quarter moon, which was roughly halfway between the full and new moons.
Darcy smiled sadly, remembering her father’s passion. It may not have been a well-read article in the non-science community, but everyone in Carlisle had tried their best to read and understand it. And practically speaking, their pride had paid off in one important way. No one in Carlisle ever planned a wedding, picnic, or BBQ anymore without consulting the almanac to check on the moon phases. And not one big event had been rained out in a decade.
Strolling through town, Darcy noted the small crowds at Mitzi’s Coffee Cup, Murphy’s Tavern, and the Live Free or Die Diner. Most of the other businesses in Carlisle kept strict nine-to-five hours, and most stayed closed on Sunday too, except for Young’s Grocery, which opened from one to four in the afternoon at a respectful distance from Sunday morning services. If you were in a bind on a Sunday morning, you could always head down to Berlin, where they had a Walmart, or North Conway, where they had just about every factory outlet store you could imagine.
Why would Jack Beauloup return to sleepy Carlisle, where he had no family, no business, no ties?
It was a question that had rolled around in her head since Saturday afternoon, and although she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was somehow part of his decision to return, she couldn’t figure out how. They had barely gotten to know one another thatsummer so long ago, and except for that one scorching moment backstage, they really hadn’t even interacted with each other. They hadn’t communicated for twenty long years. How in the world could she have anything to do with his return?
And yet, she felt more and more certain that Jack was somehow connected to her soul flight. For most of her life, she had assumed that Jack’s voice saying “It’s you” was a vestige of her obsession with him, words her own mind had kept fresh because she couldn’t bear to let go of them. But after seeing Jack again, the words had suddenly changed, and Darcy had to consider the possibility that going inside wasn’t something her brain had created to deal with the teenage heartbreak of losing Jack. Was it possible that Jack was somehow part of her soul flight, or even responsible for it? Was it possible that she and Jack were somehow connected on some otherworldly level?
And going inside wasn’t even the half of it. It was impossible that she should be able to read his mind, yet she could. It was impossible that in a standoff between a man and a riled bear, the bear would flee. It was impossible that she should lose over an hour of her life for no good reason at all.
For a woman of science, the fact that the impossible kept happeningwas extremely discomfiting, but with the benefit of knowing her brain wasn’t damaged and creating hallucinations, she had to start considering why and how the impossible seemed to be repeatedly possible for her and Jack. For the first time in Darcy’s well-ordered, grounded life, she had an idea of her father’s struggle to prove a theory that his community had regarded as quackery. She desperately hoped that seeing Jack tomorrow night might afford her some answers.
Darcy walked up the steps of her veranda and plopped down on the restored porch swing only to notice a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of yellow tulips set lovingly against the swing cushion, tied with a voluptuous yellow bow. Picking up the bouquetgingerly, she gently pulled the card from the ribbon and opened it.
Tomorrow.
