Susan Wiggs - Return to Willow Lake

Sonnet knew these things. She’d read the self-help books. She’d sat through college courses in human psychology. She knew the drill. Knew how to protect her own heart. Therefore, it was disconcerting to realize she hadn’t been able to push past what she’d come to refer to in her head as the Zach incident.

Having sex with him had been a moment of madness. The sex had been outstanding, but she couldn’t let herself dwell on that. In his arms, she’d felt protected and adored and special…and she couldn’t think about that, either. Because no matter what sort of crazy connection they’d found that night, there was no chance for a romantic relationship for the two of them, and they both knew it. The fellowship and her career were just too important to her; she couldn’t compromise everything she’d worked for just because skinny little Zach Alger had morphed into a sex god.

Particularly in light of what had happened after. The humiliation still made her cringe. After their mad lovemaking, they’d been lounging on the bench seat of the boat, speechless with the lush saturation of sexual fulfillment. Finally, Zach had tried to say something. “That was…that…God, Sonnet.”

She hadn’t done much better. “I think we’d better… I’m… Is there any more champagne?”

He reached for the bottle. He paused, and she saw him frown in the dim light. “Shit, it was on.”

She was still limp with pleasure. “What was on? You mean that camera thing? No way. Oh, my God. Can you fix it?”

He laughed. “Relax, I’m a professional.” He’d popped out the camera’s SD card. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“You totally have to erase that, Zach. I don’t care if it recorded anything or not. You have to promise.”

“Of course I’m going to erase it,” he said. “What do you take me for? Hey, I can do better than that.” He flicked the tiny card into the lake. Then he had turned to her, this sexy stranger who had once been her best friend. “Now, where were we?”

And the mind-blowing sex had continued. Dawn had crept in, and they’d sneaked away from the boathouse, only to encounter Shane Gilmore, president of the local bank and the town gossip, out for his morning jog by the lake. Her mom’s ex, of all people. And there had been no mistaking the expression on his face.

Sonnet cringed all over again as she reached the edge of Central Park, heading for the subway to catch the train to the restaurant. She emerged from the lush gardens of the park onto Fifth Avenue, where the sidewalk was crammed with hurrying pedestrians who all seemed to be in a pointless race with one another.

To refocus her thoughts, she slipped her hand into her pocket and closed it around the key. No one else in the surging stream of humanity had any clue what the key meant to her or even why. Despite the warmth of the day, she felt a chill.

It was a chill of excitement. Of anticipation. The key had been given to her by Orlando, aka the ideal boyfriend. He was one of those guys who really was as good as he looked on paper—background, education, career path, manners, looks. And because her father had introduced them, Orlando had arrived in her life preapproved. And he said he was in love with her.

He was the first man to say so. Hearing the declaration hadn’t been the exhilarating free fall of emotion she’d imagined as a girl. It was better than that. He was mature, he knew what he wanted, and he wanted to share his life with her.

As the crowd on the sidewalk halted for a traffic light, she gave a couple of bills to a guy strumming “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on a ukulele. A block farther, she played a secret game of peekaboo with a toddler being jiggled on his mother’s shoulder. Oblivious, the mother gabbed away on her phone about a fight she was having with her boyfriend. The baby had cheeks like ripe apples and eyes that looked perpetually startled, and a wisp of blond hair rising from his forehead like the flame of a candle.

He looked like half the dolls Sonnet used to play with when she was a little girl. The other dolls looked more like the little African-American girl in the umbrella stroller a few feet away. When Sonnet got older, her mom had explained that baby dolls who looked like Sonnet were hard to come by. Santa’s elves, apparently, had not caught up with the times. Mixed race babies were common enough; dolls that resembled them, not so much.

The light changed and she walked on, her fingers clenched around the key until its teeth bit into the palm of her hand. She wasn’t so sure herself. The way her career was going at UNESCO, there was scarcely time to squeeze in a trip upstate to see her own mom, let alone raise a kid.

On the other hand, her twenty-eight-year-old body was awash in hormones raining from an invisible emptiness inside her, just begging to procreate.

She wondered what Orlando would say if she brought it up. He’d probably bolt for the nearest exit. They were still too new, key or no key. He had told her long ago that he wanted to postpone having kids. There would be plenty of time for that unspecified “someday.”

As far as she was concerned, nothing could dampen her spirits today. She had the ultimate good news to share, and she was about to share it with the two people who would totally get how cool it was.

She’d been racing around madly all day, trying to get ready for this new chapter in her life. A Hartstone Fellowship. She, Sonnet Romano, from the tiny town of Avalon on Willow Lake, had been chosen for the honor. People who won the Hartstone Fellowship tended to change the world. She’d always been eager to measure up to her father’s expectations. Personal accomplishments were so important to her father. She could understand that. They validated you, told the world you did things that mattered.

As usual, she was in a hurry. It was her normal mode. She had hurried through school, graduating with a 4.0 GPA and zooming ahead to her dream school, American University. From there she’d pursued a double major in French and international studies, then raced ahead to grad school. Sometimes she asked herself what the hurry was, but mostly, she didn’t slow down long enough to wonder.

And it was working well for her. The letter in her satchel was proof of that, for sure.

As she hurried down the stairs to catch the train—she was on the verge of being late, an unforgivable offense in her father’s book—her phone chimed, signaling an incoming text message, sneaking in just before she lost the signal underground. At the same time, she heard the train rattling into the station. She rushed to slip her pass through the turnstile and proceed into the fecund heat of the underground station.

The train’s moon-yellow headlights were filmed with the ever-present dirt of the subway, and its brakes gave a tired-sounding squeal. The doors clanked apart, disgorging streams of passengers. Just as quickly, people on the platform boarded. She paused and bent down to help a woman with a stroller over the gap between the platform and the train car.

At the same time, she thought about the text message that had come in. She didn’t know what made her grab for her phone just in that moment; she got text messages all the time. Habit, probably. Or it could be Daisy’s cryptic comment about checking in with her mom.

As Sonnet stepped across the gap and took out her phone. someone jostled her from behind. Both the phone and the key dropped from her hand. She saw a coppery flash as the key disappeared onto the tracks, and her heart sank along with it. The phone screen stayed lit momentarily. Before it slipped from her hand, she saw the name of the sender of the incoming message: Zach Alger.

A crush of passengers pressed in from behind. The doors clanked shut, and the train lurched away.