The night before they were supposed to meet Wesley, Billy and Luke drove down to St. Paul and spent the night at her mother’s house. The next morning, after breakfast, Billy and her mom went for a walk together. Billy’s mom, in her eminently sensible way, tried to allay Billy’s fears. She pointed out that Wesley was obviously open to the idea of being Luke’s father or he wouldn’t be meeting with them today. Billy had hugged her, hard, but she was still anxious as she and Luke drove to the airport hotel where Wesley was staying. They got to the hotel coffee shop a half hour early, and they sat in an orange leather booth, Billy drinking water and Luke stirring the ice cubes in his soda, both of them feigning a calmness they didn’t feel. Billy was so nervous. Partly because Luke was so nervous, and partly because she wanted this meeting to be . . . well, to be whatever it was that Luke needed it to be.
When Wesley walked into the coffee shop, Billy recognized him immediately. He was still nice-looking, Billy saw, and still in possession of that rugged handsomeness she’d found so appealing when she was eighteen. But the years had worked their changes on him, too. He had a squint now to his eyes, and a weathering in his face that suggested how much time he’d spent on the water. Billy and Luke both stood up and met him, and there was a moment—an awkward moment—when Luke and Wesley paused there, neither of them knowing what to do. And then Wesley solved the problem by grinning, pulling Luke into a hug, and saying, “Christ, kid, it looks like you got my dad’s chin.”
Billy watched in amazement as Luke not only came into his arms but also put his arms around Wesley. And then her son did something she would never forget. He closed his eyes. Just for a second. It was such a simple thing, but it spoke volumes of the trust he already had in Wesley. And it did something else, too. It made Luke look so young, the way his long, spiky black eyelashes—Fuller brush eyelashes, her dad had called them—rested on his suntanned, freckled skin. And then he opened his eyes and let go of his father, and the moment was over. Billy and Wesley said hello, and the three of them sat down at their booth, Wesley setting a plastic bag down next to him on the seat.
For the first fifteen minutes, Billy, in her need to fill in the silence, told Wesley about Luke growing up in Minneapolis and their move to Butternut five years ago. But when she realized she was the only one speaking, she stopped abruptly. “Sorry I’m doing all the talking,” she said, looking sheepishly from Luke to Wesley. “Nervous habit.”
Wesley laughed. “You covered a lot of ground there. Thirteen years in thirteen minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “Did she leave anything out, Luke?”
“A couple things,” Luke said shyly, stirring his soda with the straw. That’s when Billy remembered something she’d noticed the first time she’d met Wesley. He had an easy way about him. He was one of those rare people who was comfortable in his own skin, and that made him comfortable to be with. Billy’s tension ebbed away after that, and she relaxed. There was something else, too. He was good at drawing people out. So while he didn’t talk a lot, he got Luke to talk a lot, which to Billy was no small feat. He asked Luke about his summer. Luke, who spoke self-consciously at first, gradually became more confident. He touched on his hiking trip, his counselor, Mad Dog, and volunteering at Nature Camp. He even mentioned a few skateboard tricks he was working on. Wesley confessed to Luke that he’d never owned a skateboard. When Luke pressed him about other sports—snowboarding, surfing, BMXing—he said his wife would probably kill him if he even suggested trying any of them. Luke looked momentarily disappointed. But then Wesley said, “Sorry, kid, the only sport that I can lay any claim to is fishing.” Luke brightened immediately. He told Wesley about fishing for smallmouth bass with his late grandfather.
While they talked, Billy compared the two of them as discreetly as possible. Funny, she’d always thought Luke had her Black Irish looks. But now she realized he looked a lot like Wesley, too, although it was hard to define their similarities. The shape of their eyes? Their chins? Their foreheads? Oh, well, it didn’t matter. It was there, and Billy felt a kind of satisfaction now in seeing it.
Eventually the three of them ordered lunch, and after the waiter had cleared their plates away, Wesley took out his wallet and showed them pictures of his daughters, Eleanor and Hannah. They were both adorable, and Billy was fascinated to see that, once again, there was a resemblance between Luke and the two of them, especially Eleanor, who had an impish quality to her that reminded Billy of a younger Luke. Wesley also told them a little bit about his wife, Erin, who was helping him design a Web site for their charter fishing boat business. He showed them a photograph of her, too. Just like in the photo that Billy had seen of her in the manila envelope, she had an open, friendly face. Billy hoped she would welcome Luke into their world, although she imagined this would not happen overnight.
“Do they know about me?” Luke asked Wesley now about his sisters.
“They do. They sure do. They’re already fighting over which one of them gets to talk to you first,” Wesley said. Luke’s eyes widened, and Billy wondered how this only child would negotiate two sisters who apparently already had a rivalry for Luke’s affection.
Later, when Luke left to go to the restroom, Wesley opened the plastic bag he’d brought and extracted a book from it.
“I think this belongs to you,” he said, holding it out to her. Billy took it from him, astonished. It was the copy of Wuthering Heights she’d left at the fishing lodge in Alaska over fourteen years ago.
“Why . . . ?”
He shrugged. “By the time I realized you’d forgotten it, you and your dad had already left. When I left a couple of weeks later, I took it with me. I think I felt guilty about it. I figured you must have really loved it. That night I saw you reading it in the lobby, you were so into it.”
Billy smiled. “I’d probably read it at least five times by that point.”
“Really? Well, I kept carrying it around with me from place to place. I think I had some idea of mailing it to you, but I didn’t have your contact information, and I didn’t think the lodge would give it to me. And then I thought maybe I should read it myself since you’d thought it was so good.”
“And did you?”
“Eventually.”
“What did you think?”
“I didn’t like it,” he said bluntly. For some reason, this made Billy laugh. “I mean, what the hell?” he said, smiling. “What was Heathcliff’s problem? Was he just straight-up crazy or what?”
“He was pretty crazy,” Billy agreed cheerfully. “But at eighteen, I found his obsessive love for Catherine very attractive.”
Wesley shook his head. “Well, I’m glad I held on to it. I’m not usually a big believer in fate, but in this case . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe I knew I’d see you again.”
“Maybe,” Billy said, sipping her water.
“Can I tell you something? Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“Before today, I wanted . . . I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt about Luke. But I also wanted to . . . you know, to be sure he was my son. I was going to ask that we have a paternity test done, but after I saw him . . .” He shook his head again. “He’s definitely my son. It’s a little bit like looking in a mirror. Not that there’s an exact resemblance. It’s the little things . . . and it’s not just me he reminds me of, either. It’s my family members, too. I mean, Luke’s never met my brother, Nick. But he has so many of the same mannerisms. It’s strange, but it’s strange in a good way.”
“I’m glad.” Billy smiled.
“He’s um . . . he’s a nice kid, isn’t he?”
“He’s an amazing kid,” Billy said honestly. And at that moment, she caught sight of Luke coming back into the room.
A little while after that, Billy found an excuse to leave them alone together. She ended up browsing in the hotel’s little gift shop and buying a few things she didn’t really need. She wanted to give them time, though, and when she came back to the coffee shop, she was glad she had. They were talking about fishing again, which, thanks to Pop-Pop, was a subject Luke could hold his own on.
“Hey,” Billy said, sliding into the booth, but the two of them, deep in conversation, only nodded. She smiled, sipped her iced tea, and kept an eye on the time. She had to be at work tomorrow morning, and Wesley, she knew, had a flight later tonight. Finally she reminded Luke gently about the four-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of them, and Wesley walked them out to their car to say their good-byes.
They stood beside Billy’s car, a little tentative, not quite sure how to end this. Wesley asked Billy about the drive up north. Billy asked him when he’d get back to Port McNeil. Luke stood there quietly. Billy was wondering how to broach the subject of future communication. Should Wesley and Luke play it by ear? Should they set up a time to talk by phone?
“I’m not sure how this works,” Wesley said, obviously thinking the same thing as Billy.
“I’m not sure, either,” Billy said with a little laugh.
“What do we do next?” Wesley asked Luke. “Do we talk on the phone? Or Skype?”
“How about both,” Luke said with a smile.
And then Wesley gave Billy a polite kiss on the cheek and Luke a bear hug. “Be good, kiddo,” he said before he headed back into the hotel to arrange for a taxi to the airport.
An hour into the drive home, Billy asked Luke if he was hungry. He’d been quiet, watching the farmland rolling by out the window.
“What did you say?” Luke asked, turning to her.
“I said, are you hungry? We can stop whenever, provided you don’t want anything too fancy.”
Luke shrugged. “A little,” he said.
“What did you think, Luke?” Billy couldn’t resist asking now. “Was he different than you thought he would be?”
“Kind of.”
“Did you like him?” Billy asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“He liked you, too,” Billy said.
“You think so?” Luke asked, turning to look at her.
“Definitely. And it sounds like your sisters do, too, even though they don’t know you yet.” And then Billy hesitated, wanting to say once again—the same thing she’d been saying, and thinking, ever since she’d told Luke that she’d heard back from Wesley—We’re going to have to take things slowly. See how they go. But she didn’t say it this time.
Luke was the next one who spoke. “Actually, I’m kind of starving,” he said with a smile.