Chapter 2
Anne
Then
In the spring of my junior year, my best friend got married.
Her wedding day looked like a Pinterest board or an Instagram post, framed in flowers and filtered in sunlight.
Green buds veiled the trees. The lake sparkled like diamonds.
The horses were back on the island for the season, all the shops and restaurants along Main Street coming out of hibernation.
Beyond the tall windows, tulips pushed up, scarlet and gold, rolling like a royal carpet over the grass.
Inside the pavilion, you couldn’t feel the chill in the air or the breeze slicing off the water.
But as I stood to give my toast, my lips felt frozen. There was an icy lump in my stomach.
“Hi, I’m Anne.” I raised my voice over the clatter of knives and forks.
“For those of you who don’t know me”—I paused for the polite laughter, since, with the exception of the groom’s merchant marine buddies, I knew every soul at this reception—“I’ve been Daanis’s best friend since we were playing dress-up in kindergarten. ”
More indulgent smiles.
“We were wild horses and explorers, princesses and astronauts. But Daanis always wanted to be a bride.” Even then, when I was planning our adventures.
That should have been a clue. I wiped my palms on the skirt of my lilac maid-of-honor dress.
I’d put purple streaks in my hair to match.
“And now it’s her wedding day for real.”
My throat closed.
This was where a good writer—a good friend—would know exactly the right words to say.
I’d written and discarded a hundred drafts in preparation for this day.
I could point out that Daanis had known Zack almost as long as she’d known me.
They’d been together since high school. I could talk about how I’d seen their feelings grow, how they brought out the best in each other, how their love was Meant to Be.
But I wasn’t just Daanis’s friend. We were sisters of the heart, kindred spirits, like Anne and Diana in the Avonlea stories. And standing there, all I could think was our relationship would never be the same again.
Everybody was watching, waiting for me to finish my speech so they could get on with their dinner before the dancing started.
My mother, in the black pants she wore to church every Sunday, stolidly chewed her way through the chicken entree.
Next to her, my father nodded and smiled.
And there was Joe, leaning back in a spindly chair. His mouth curled as he caught my eye.
Jerk.
I looked away pointedly.
Daanis was sitting beside me, her eyes shining and full of trust, holding her new husband’s hand on the table. Choosing him over me. I couldn’t argue with that. Zack was her person now.
But how could she choose the life she’d have with him over the dreams we’d shared?
It wasn’t something I could ever, ever ask. Or say. I needed to pull myself together before I opened my big mouth and spoiled the reception the way I ruined everything else.
I took a deep breath. “Daanis has always been there for me. Like, literally. Growing up, our bedrooms were only a hundred feet apart. We measured the distance once with string. We used to signal each other at night with flashlights from our windows. We built fairy houses together in the woods. She did my nails. I did her English homework— Just kidding, Mrs. Powell!” I called to one of the tables.
My former teacher shook her head, smiling.
I cleared my throat. “My point is, Daanis and I shared everything. Lunches. Books. Secrets. Heck, I was her date to prom, until Zack showed up.” Another spatter of laughter, as my fingers tightened on my champagne glass.
“And that’s the thing. Zack will always show up for Daanis.
Daanis will always be there for Zack. Because…
Well, that’s what you do for the people you love.
She is the best friend, the kindest person I’ve ever known, and she deserves every happiness.
So…” I raised my glass. “Here’s to best friends.
To being there for each other, always. To Daanis and Zack. ”
“To Daanis and Zack,” the pavilion echoed, and I sat down with the taste of champagne in my mouth and tears in my eyes.
—
“That was a real nice toast,” my dad said later, when we were on the dance floor.
The DJ had segued from Ed Sheeran to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” “Old-man music,” my father had teased when I came to find him.
The warmth of his approval thawed the lump inside me. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Oops.” He stepped on my foot, tightening his grip as he stumbled. “Little out of practice here. Haven’t danced with you in a while.”
“Since fifth grade. The father-daughter dance at St. Anne’s.” He held me as carefully now as he did then, his big, calloused carpenter’s hands making me feel safe. “I think they were playing the same song.”
“Maybe we’ll dance to it at your wedding one day.”
I snorted. “Maybe. Like, in a million years.” Something flashed across his face and was gone.
“I mean, I’d love to dance with you,” I added hastily.
“But I’m not getting married until I finish college.
Maybe even grad school. I’ve been tutoring a kid this semester, a student at this private school in Chicago—Ravenscrest.” I didn’t talk a lot to my parents about the jobs I’d taken over the last three years.
Work-study in the library. Cleaning bathrooms at the Catholic Center.
Even with a full academic scholarship, I knew they’d sacrificed to send me to Northwestern.
“Anyway, Sarah—Sarah Thompson, his AP English teacher—she told me teachers with a master’s degree make more money. ”
“Thought you were going to be a writer. A famous one, you said.”
“Well, until I’m famous, I need a day job.”
He nodded as we shuffled through a turn. Darling Dad had never moved beyond the dance moves of his twenties. On the other side of the floor, Daanis swayed in the arms of her new husband, both of them lost in the moment and each other’s eyes.
“As long as you come home sometimes,” my father said.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I will. That’s the great thing about being a teacher. I’ll have summers off to write. And, you know, help out Mom in the shop. If she’ll let me,” I added.
“Course she’ll let you. She loves you. Besides, she’s always shorthanded in the summer.” He cleared his throat. “So…a teacher.”
“Since I can’t be a wild pony.” I grinned. “Or an astronaut.”
He chuckled.
“I’ve already talked to Sarah about student teaching with her this fall.
I still want to tell stories,” I added. “To be that voice that maybe somebody needs to hear. But teachers make a difference, too, to the way you see the world, the way you see yourself. Like Mrs. Powell.” I glanced at my old English teacher being friendly—almost flirty—with the curly-haired blond woman sitting beside her.
I slanted a look up at my dad. “You’re not disappointed, are you? ”
“In you?” He squeezed my hand. “Never.”
Love for him flooded my heart.
Joe was standing alone by the buffet table in a collared white shirt and dark jacket.
The unfamiliar outfit made him look like Mr. Darcy at the Meryton assembly, all dark curls and brooding eyes and attitude.
Which was stupid, because anyone less like a book boyfriend than Joe Miller was hard to imagine.
Dad followed my gaze. “Shame Brittany couldn’t come with Joe today.”
“They’re still together?” I asked and then kicked myself.
“On and off,” Dad said. “Mostly on, now she’s back working at the hotel. Joe said they were looking at rings.”
That flat taste was back in my mouth. Joe and Brittany, another high school relationship that had dragged on into adulthood. My chest felt tight.
“I think…I’m going to get some air,” I said to Dad when the dance had ended.
I kissed him on the cheek and hurried outside to the patio. White clouds billowed in the blue sky like laundry on a line. The bright horizon curved and broadened like the future, glittering with promise.
I rubbed my arms, shivering in the wind off the lake.
“You okay?” Joe asked behind me.
I jumped and turned, wiping hastily at my eyes. I was not crying. “What are you doing here?”
He stood framed by the tall, elegant windows, his hands in his pockets ruining the line of his pants. He arched one eyebrow, an affectation I’d tried to copy (unsuccessfully, alas) for years. “I was invited. Along with half the island.”
Right. He’d been years ahead of Daanis and me in school. But there were only six hundred people living year-round on Mackinac. Now that Daanis was stuck here forever making her home here, she could hardly leave him off the guest list.
“I meant”—I flapped my hand—“out here. Outside.”
He shrugged. “I saw you leave. You looked upset.”
There was a certain relief in not having to pretend. Joe had already seen me at my worst. It’s not like anything I said was going to lower his opinion.
“Of course I’m upset. My best friend just got married. How am I supposed to feel?”
“You could try being happy for her.”
“I am. It’s just…”
He waited, that aggravating eyebrow curved like a fishhook, and everything I hadn’t said all day came boiling out. “I always dreamed we’d be doing things together, going to school, traveling to Europe, living our best lives. And instead, she’s settling for Zack.”
“Everybody settles,” Joe said. “It’s called growing up.”
“Giving up, you mean. She’s only twenty-one.
” My age. “The only reason to settle is if you believe you don’t deserve any better.
Daanis was going to be an artist. She was supposed to move to New York with me and sell her paintings on the sidewalk, not get a stupid associate’s degree in accounting and work in her parents’ gift shop for the rest of her life. ”
My words hung hot in the air and were blown away on the breeze. I gulped.
Joe watched me, a surprisingly sympathetic gleam in his eyes. “Feel better?”
“Maybe. A little,” I admitted reluctantly. “You’re like a counterirritant. Like, stubbing your toe and forgetting about your broken leg.”
The gleam turned into a full-on knee-weakening grin. “Nice talking to you, too.”
“Such a jerk,” I said.
Which didn’t explain why I was smiling as I slipped back inside.
“Anne!” Daanis grabbed me as I skirted the dance floor. “I’ve been looking for you all over!”
I hugged her back hard, closing my eyes against sudden tears.
She drew back to arm’s length. “Have you met Zack’s friend Kyle?” she asked. “They were plebes together.”
My heart sank. “Another one?”
“I thought…” Her dark, liquid eyes searched mine. “You said you weren’t seeing anybody since Brandon.”
The hipster English major who’d ghosted me after I slept with him. I shrugged. “I’ve been kind of focused on classes.”
We’d be college roommates, I’d declared, once upon a time.
When I got into Northwestern and Daanis went to North Central, I’d told her—I told myself—that her credits would transfer.
But then Zack got out of the merchant marine and went to work for the ferry line, and Daanis moved home and started taking night classes in Cheboygan so she could be with him.
“You’re so smart,” she said.
“Ha. I used to think so.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
You could try being happy for her, Joe said in my head.
“I am happy.” I squeezed her hands. “You look so beautiful. It’s a beautiful wedding.”
She beamed. “Isn’t today the best day? I can’t wait until it’s your turn. I just know you’ll find true love one day, too.”
I nodded without speaking. I wasn’t looking for love. I had Plans.