Page 12 of The Cadence
“Really?” The baker’s question had dripped with doubt. “Will Bodine. You’re working for Will Bodine?”
“I know him from high school,” I said, and they allowed that it might have been true, given that our ages were only a few years apart. “He’s a really nice person,” I’d continued, and they had totally dismissed that and everything else I had told them after. Because everyone knew about the Bodines, even those women who had never met a single member of the family. They knew enough that they didn’t believe me.
I couldn’t blame them. If the girl who worked the register had told me this story, that she had secretly known the most famousperson from our town and that shortly, she was going with him to a different state, to live as his guest, and to help him with his new company…well, I wouldn’t have said it to her face, but in my mind, I would have called her a liar. I would have thought it was an empty boast, and that was what they thought about what I’d said, too.
The ladies at church were equally disbelieving, but not of the idea that Will and I had a relationship. They were distrustful of the nature of our relationship and distrustful of him in general. Because of that, they had assembled at my grandmother’s house to share their opinion of what I was doing. They’d perched on the boxes, sat on the dining room chairs, and got right into it.
“We don’t know him personally, so we’re not going to criticize him personally,” Miss Mozella had begun diplomatically, but it had gotten worse from there. They certainly knew about his father, by reputation. The man had been born into a family that gave him every opportunity, with a name that opened doors all over the state—all over the South! And what had he done?
“He lost it all,” Miss Theresa had reminded me, and they’d nodded together. “His poor wife…”
“Will and his father share a last name, but he’s a different person,” I’d stated. “He’s very serious and steady. He graduated from college and he’s getting his MBA. He’s starting a new business and that’s what he needs help with.”
They’d looked at each other.
“Bug, you know how we feel about you,” Miss Lisa had said. “You’re a beautiful, smart girl, and you’re generous, too. You did so much to help your grandmother when she needed you.”
“Not as much as she helped me,” I’d answered, and we’d all taken a moment to dab our eyes. I had a lot of tissues left from Will’s multi-pack.
“You’ve got gumption, but what you don’t have is experience or an advanced degree of your own,” Miss Mozella had continued. “What exactly will you be doing for him? What’s so specialized that he can’t hire someone where he lives up north? Why would he need you to leave your home to go work for him?”
“First, y’all know that I have to leave this home anyway,” I reminded them, and we’d re-dabbed. “Second, I’m sure that he could easily hire someone with a lot of professional experience and an education to match. But he’s doing me a favor because he knows that I need a good job and a fresh start. He’s flying me up to Michigan. On an airplane!”
“That makes more sense than an enchanted carpet,” Miss Theresa had said dryly. She was always inclined to sarcasm. “The question, Bug, iswhy.”
They thought they knew the answer, and it was sex. Miss Valerie beat around the bush, talking about seduction, until Miss Theresa spelled it out.
“S-E-X,” she announced. “That’s what this is about.”
“Do you really think a man that good looking, famous, and rich would have to fly in a woman from another state in order to havesex? No,” I said. “There are probably local women who would pay him instead.”
They were a little taken aback by my logic. With S-E-X ruled out and with no other explanation that they could imagine, they warned me to be careful and said they were always here if I needed them. They were still very, very concerned, and Miss Mozella grabbed my arm and also said that she loved me.
The reason behind Will’s behavior made no sense to them, but I understood. So when he’d presented this plan, I’d told him that I appreciated it so much—but he didn’t have to. He had no responsibility to me, none.
“I didn’t expect this,” I reminded him now. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“I’m not doing anything special.”
But he was, because here we were in this plane that was just about to fly through the air to a place that I had only seen in pictures on my phone. Most of my grandma’s stuff was in a storage space that Will had rented and then he’d hired guys with a truck to haul everything over there. He’d done it on his own dime, and had told me that I didn’t need to worry about it.
“I’ll work it all off,” I said now. “I’ll make us even.”
He didn’t acknowledge those statements. “Is your seat belt fastened?”
It was, because I’d listened attentively to the flight attendants and had consulted the safety instruction card in the seat pocketin front of me. It was a long way away because there was a lot of space between the rows, due to us sitting in first class.
“You think you owe me,” I told him, “but you don’t.”
“I think you were going to go live in your car and have to give away your grandmother’s prized possessions,” he answered. “Now it’s fixed.” He took out his phone and looked at his emails.
“That should be in airplane mode,” I reminded him, and he glanced at me and then put it away. “What was that noise?”
“The pilot is powering up the engines so that we can take off. Remember what I said about thrust and lift?”
I did, and I had the diagram he’d sketched tucked into my carry-on bag. He’d also had to explain about a carry-on bag, and then I’d gone online and read all the requirements and restrictions so that I was ready. I had prepared as much as possible in the two days before I’d left my home of the past seven years, saying goodbye to the place where I’d felt settled and secure for the first time that I could remember.
We started to move very fast down the runway, very fast. Then there was a thudding sound—
