The next evening Cal stretched out on his couch. He had worked all day—probably for the last time—with Jack on the White Pines cottage. He hadn’t worked with him since before he’d left for Seattle. He’d gone over to see Jack this morning to tell him about moving to Minneapolis, and he’d ended up helping him put in the new front porch. But despite his tiredness now, when he heard a car pull up outside, he sprang up and opened the door before his guest had even gotten out of the car.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, when he saw it was Allie. He leaned in the doorway as she climbed the steps carrying a foil-wrapped casserole dish.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said, mildly offended. “I brought you leftovers, which I am now seriously considering taking home with me again.”
“No, don’t do that,” Cal said, kissing her on the cheek and relieving her of the dish at the same time. “Is this what I think it is?” he asked, peeling back a corner of foil.
“Yep. Shepherd’s pie,” Allie said, of her housekeeper’s famous dish. “Lonnie Hagan made it for you,” she added, coming into the cabin and closing the door behind her. “And when you told me you were too tired to come over tonight—”
“—you got in the car after dinner and drove it over to me,” he finished for her. “Like the amazing sister you are. And I’m going to eat it, too, all of it,” he said, setting it on the kitchen counter. “Eventually.” He went back and lay down on the couch.
Allie followed him, a quizzical expression on her face. “You’re too tired to eat? Jack must be working you hard,” she said, sitting down on the end of the couch as he moved his feet up to make room for her.
“No, it’s good,” Cal said, stretching luxuriantly. “I feel good.” And he meant it. It had been this way ever since he’d gotten home from the cottage today; he’d been acutely, but pleasantly, aware of his body’s every physical sensation. The ache of his muscles, the heat of the water pulsing over him in the shower, the softness of the flannel shirt and faded jeans against his skin. He wondered how much of this had to do with Billy. Since he’d gotten back from Seattle yesterday, he hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her, unless he counted sitting on her back porch last night. It didn’t matter, though; he was still hyperaware of all the feelings—physical and otherwise—she called up in him. In fact, the best thing about working with Jack today might have been that it had taken the edge off his need and desire for her. Not in any permanent or meaningful way. Just enough to allow him to think that he could wait a little longer for their relationship to find a balance of its own that would include all three of them—him and Billy and Luke—and perhaps, now, even Wesley. He smiled to think of Billy’s concern about all of the convoluted storylines in their future.
Allie, watching him, misunderstood. “You’ve liked working with Jack, haven’t you?” she asked, grabbing the throw off the couch and wrapping it around herself. It had been sunny, but still cool, these last couple of days.
“I have liked it,” he said. “He’s not a trained architect, obviously, but like most builders, good builders, he’s very intuitive about design. And he’s a good worker, too. A fast worker.” This was all true, but sometimes Cal thought he valued Jack’s camaraderie as much as his work ethic. This had been especially true in the earlier days of the summer, before he left for Minneapolis and Seattle. They hadn’t talked a lot as they’d worked, but when they’d finished at the end of the day, they’d often sat on the back porch of the cottage. As the breeze blew in off the lake and the smell of sawdust hung in the air, they’d drunk a couple of the sodas that Jack kept in his cooler. It had reminded Cal, sometimes, of his first construction job, the summer he was sixteen, the summer he worked with one of his dad’s crews at the cottage on Cedar Lake. The details were different, of course, but there’d been the same sense of satisfaction at the end of a day, of pride in a job well done.
He told Allie about this now, about how these two jobs, separated by almost twenty years, still had this in common. She listened, in her slightly proprietorial older sister way. He wanted her to know this, partly because their time together so far this summer had brought them closer together, but partly, too, because he wanted her to understand that what he was going to tell her next hadn’t simply come out of nowhere. This summer, in its way, had been a lead-up to it. “Remember when I drove down to Minneapolis last month?” he asked her now. “To see Steve Landau?”
“I do. But you left for Seattle so soon afterward, you never told me how it went.”
“It was good. Good enough for him to offer me a job.”
“Working for him?” Allie asked, sitting up straighter on the couch.
“Working with him,” Cal corrected her. “He’s looking to expand.”
“Cal, are you thinking about moving back here?” she asked, sitting very still. She looked like she didn’t quite know if she trusted herself to believe what he was telling her.
“I’m looking at an apartment in St. Paul on Monday,” he said.
“Why am I just hearing about this now?” she objected, but when Cal started to explain that he hadn’t wanted to get ahead of himself, she waved his words away and instead flung herself down onto the other end of the couch to hug him. “Never mind. I don’t care. I just want you to be close by. Or closer than Seattle, anyway.”
“I will be,” he said, hugging her back. “Can I tell the kids, though?”
“Absolutely. They will be ecstatic. They’ve loved having you here this summer.”
“I’ve loved it, too,” he said, thinking especially of two-year-old Brooke, with whom he’d bonded lately. Brooke was going through what Allie referred to as “a Band-Aid phase.” The last time Cal had come over, he’d brought her a box of Finding Dory–themed Band-Aids and then spent half an hour helping her put all of them on imaginary boo-boos she claimed to have suffered.
When Allie was done hugging him, she said, “You know, this place”—she made a gesture that included the whole cabin—“will always be here when you need it.”
He smiled his thanks at her, but she seemed suddenly pensive. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just glad the mediation between you and Meghan is over. I know it’s been hard for you, Cal. I still can’t quite believe what Meghan did.”
He’d told Allie, the day after he’d told Billy, the reason he and Meghan were divorcing. She’d been shocked at first. And then, once her sisterly instincts had kicked in, she’d been angry. Later, though, once she’d had time to digest it, she’d been more baffled than anything else. Why hadn’t Meghan told him the truth about not wanting children in the first place? Cal didn’t have an answer to this question, and he’d refused to speculate with Allie about Meghan’s motivations. In the end, though, Allie had agreed the important thing was for them to move forward with the divorce.
Now he sighed and rubbed his temples. There was something else he’d been meaning to discuss with Allie: Meghan had not been the only one at fault in their relationship. Yes, she had lied to him, but he, in a sense, had been complicit in the lie. He’d refused to see what was right in front of him. He tried to explain this to Allie now, but she was reluctant to find fault with him.
“No, it’s true, Allie. I shouldn’t have needed a file folder to tell me what should have been obvious to me from the start: Meghan didn’t ever like or want children. She was never interested in other people’s children when we went out in public. She never wanted to hold our friends’ babies. And once, after we’d left one of my coworkers’ apartments—it was a little chaotic because she and her husband had a new baby and a toddler—she said in the elevator on the way down, ‘Oh my God. What a nightmare.’ And then, of course, there was your family’s visit last year. She was so tense the entire time because of Brooke and Wyatt. She called Brooke”—he hesitated—“a ‘crumb magnet.’ I think Meghan thought I’d find it funny, but I didn’t.” He’d thought Allie would be appalled when he told her this now for the first time, but she only laughed.
“That’s not totally inaccurate. She does leave a little trail of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish behind her wherever she goes. But seriously, Cal, you shouldn’t blame yourself for not seeing that about Meghan. Lots of people aren’t interested in children until they have their own. Who’s to say Meghan wasn’t one of them? And who’s to say that you should have known the difference?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was just . . . so lazy.”
“You were never lazy,” Allie objected.
“Or complacent, anyway. I told you I didn’t see the things I didn’t want to see. But I didn’t want to see them because Meghan made everything so . . . so easy for me. And I let her do that. She took care of everything. I’d come home from work, or home from the session with the personal trainer Meghan had scheduled for me, and I’d reach into the fridge, which was stocked with my favorite coconut water, and then I’d take a shower, which always had the shower gel in it that I liked, and then I’d towel myself off and change into clothes just back from the French laundry Meghan used, and then we’d go out to dinner at the restaurant she’d made us a reservation at—you know, the new restaurant where no one could get a reservation. Except Meghan. Of course Meghan could. And here was the thing: she liked doing all of this. She loved it. If I tried to do any of it, she got annoyed. So I didn’t even have to feel guilty about it. She managed all of it: our apartment, our social life, our travel, even my public relations. I mean, my firm had people doing PR, but it turned out Meghan was better at it then they were. Meghan was good at everything she did. Except for being”—he shrugged—“an honest person.”
Allie got up and went into the kitchen. Cal heard her opening cupboards and drawers and heating something in the microwave. When she returned, it was with a plate of shepherd’s pie, a napkin, and a fork. Cal hadn’t realized how hungry he was, but he dug in now. Allie watched him with a gentle amusement.
“Lonnie always tells Wyatt and Brooke that life feels better on a full stomach,” she remarked when he’d finished.
“Lonnie’s right,” Cal said, setting his plate on the coffee table. And because he wanted to focus on something positive, he told her about Billy. She’d known they had “a thing,” but he wanted her to understand it was more than a thing. He told her about their phone conversations when he was in Seattle, meeting Luke last night, and the three of them beginning, tentatively, to explore a future. He told her about Wesley, too, a piece of information Allie met thoughtfully.
“This is going to be complicated,” she said finally.
“You sound like Billy,” he said. “You like her, though, don’t you?” he asked, already knowing that she did.
“Of course. Everyone likes Billy. I just wish things could be simpler, I guess.”
He shrugged, thinking that with Meghan, things might have been too simple. Too easy. And look where that had gotten him. “I like a challenge,” he said now to Allie. “And besides,” he added, thinking of Billy’s love of novels, “it’s kind of like a good book, right? You don’t know what will happen next. You keep reading because you want to find out.”