Chapter 16
“That has to be the Mackinac Bridge over there, right?” Rachel said, pointing off in the direction of about two o’clock. After lunch, she and Will had walked the other way out of the downtown area, following the sidewalk as it became a wooden boardwalk and started to wind past a stretch of historic homes. The houses came in an array of colors, and they had an unimpeded view of a lake that in every way resembled an ocean when you were sitting on a big white rock looking out at it, as Will and Rachel were right then.
“Yes,” he said. “I actually saw it when we were on the ferry but didn’t say anything because I thought a five-mile-long suspension bridge appearing that small in the distance would make you feel like we were farther away from land than we really were.”
“You probably weren’t wrong about that.”
“Honestly, that’s what I’m nervous about.”
“What? Driving over the bridge?”
“Yeah. The ferry goes down, you get on a lifeboat and get picked up by the Coast Guard, no problem. But if you go off that bridge, I think you’re praying for a heart attack to kill you before you hit the water.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Rachel said, nudging his foot with hers.
“Ha, what?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t expect this conversation to transition so seamlessly from ‘Hey, look at that feat of human engineering’ to you preparing yourself for entombment in a watery grave.”
High Will, seeing the concept of time, had thought his child would help him and Rachel achieve a sort of immortality. Sober Will was back to wondering how people didn’t die more often, which was not comforting at all when you were about to be responsible for someone’s survival for the next 18 years.
“Yeah, I guess that was a little bleak,” he said, thinking it best not to offer any more on the subject.
“It’s cool. When we were driving last night, I pulled over in this little lookout area for you to get some fresh air by the water, and you were convinced the waves were trying to talk to you, so this is reassuringly morbid.”
“Oh wow. I think I remember that.”
“All things considered, I think we should eighty-six the you-taking-edibles-before-your-tattoo plan.”
Will looked from the lake to Rachel, his eyebrows rising above his sunglasses, but her gaze stayed on the water.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she said. “The tattoo’s still happening. Just not the gummified weed.”
“You’re ruthless,” he said.
“You love it.”
They sat there a long time, neither feeling a need to move. The beach was rocky and not the kind you’d take off your shoes to walk along, and they hadn’t had a strong desire to keep walking in the first place. Lunch had been good—so good that they had both eaten more than they’d intended, making not moving all the more appealing. The rock wasn’t the most comfortable perch, but they had taken the souvenir T-shirts they’d bought at the pizza place and turned them into makeshift seat cushions. It would’ve been a great spot to let the rhythms of the big lake hypnotize you for a while if you weren’t waiting for a woman you’d never met to write you back about a job because she thought you were your wife.
The ferry was passing by on one of its many trips back and forth throughout the day when Rachel felt a text buzz on her watch. She was scrolling and reading for a while, and when she was done and looked back out at the water, her lips were pursed and her relaxed posture had stiffened.
Beatriz texted her instead of emailing,Will thought, only then registering that just because he hadn’t seen Rachel give Rochelle’s assistant her phone number didn’t mean Beatriz wouldn’t have it. This is it. I’m done.
“Everything okay?” he asked, working very hard at sounding unfazed.
“What? Oh yeah. Just texts from my mom and my sister. Mom sent me a link to an article about women quitting their jobs to stay home with their babies, which I know I wouldn’t be getting if she and my dad thought I had”—she contorted her face to look as repressed as her parents—“some serious career worth staying for.”
Will channeled what had been stress into righteous indignation.
“Do they also plan to give me a raise to make up for the very real lost income from your supposedly not real job?” Will and Rachel were comfortable enough financially that this trip, even with the occasional indulgences, was doable, but not so comfortable that they could just lop off one of their salaries.
“I know, right? And then my sister, she and Owen were over there for dinner, and Mom and Dad told her while it wasn’t the way they expected it, how relieved they are they’re finally going to be grandparents. You know, like if Isa couldn’t come through for them, at least derelict daughter number two could.”
“That’s pretty awful,” Will said. “Even by their standards.”
“I mean, my first reaction is to be horrified for my sister. They talk about it like it wasn’t the most traumatic thing she’s ever gone through, or that it hasn’t completely screwed up her marriage. And then on top of that, it’s like ‘Praise the Lord, Rachel may be a dippy artist, but she has opened her eyes and accepted her child-rearing destiny.’ Plus, Isa was farther along than I am when she lost the baby! What if I have a miscarriage? Then what?”
The word hit Will like an icicle through his heart. He could not talk to Rachel about miscarriages. Not without telling her about the dream he’d had the night before he’d decided to paint the nursery and opening up his bigger box of fears. For that reason alone, it was a relief to have her parents’ gross insensitivity to focus on.
“I don’t think I ever told you this,” Will said, “but when I danced with Aunt Katie at our wedding, she said something about your dad’s toast, and I told her I thought your parents weren’t that crazy about me. She asked me why I’d say that, and I said it was just a vibe I’d gotten.”
Rachel didn’t try to counter him on this, and he didn’t take offense. Will knew that she loved her parents, and like everybody does at some level, she wanted their approval. But she wanted it for who she was, not for who they wanted her to be, so Will existing outside whatever straitlaced narrative they had constructed for her life was actually a source of pride for him. Especially because, in pretty much every way, he considered himself basically a run-of-the-mill, conventional person. He was an IT guy, for God’s sake.
“You encouraging me to get the tattoo probably didn’t help,” Rachel said, admiring her arm. “Or, you know, taking my virginity—outside the bonds of wedlock.”
“Uh, what?”
“Oh, they totally think you were my first.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because you were the first guy I ever lived with. That was also a strike against you, by the way.”
“So, just to be clear,” Will said, “I spent most of my weekends in high school playing Xbox while you were busy having sex with Seth on school grounds, and now your parents hate me for sleeping with you before we got married?”
“C’mon, that’s not fair. They don’t hate you.”
Rachel seemed like she had something else to say, so Will waited.
“They do still kind of love Seth, though,” she added with a laugh.
“You’re the worst,” he said, but he was smiling, and for the two of them, that combo was the equivalent of an I love you. “Anyway, when I said that to Aunt Katie, she told me everyone might be the star in their own stories, but that from what she’d observed at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, your parents wanted their own biopic. Like, it was all about them. She said that with people like that, you can never do enough to please them, so you shouldn’t waste your time trying.”
Rachel mulled that over while a pack of people heading into town passed behind them on the boardwalk.
“Sounds like she could’ve been talking about your dad too,” she said when the lap of the waves was again the only noise. “You know?”
“I never really thought about it that way. But yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Do you ever wish you could talk to her about everything with the baby? I know she didn’t have kids, but she always had such a good perspective.”
“I mean, yeah. Her dying was like losing a parent. And you’re supposed to be able to ask your parents about being a parent.”
Including about all the stuff that scares you,he kept to himself.
“And Katie would’ve been an amazing mom,” he went on. “She had this ability to cut through the noise and tell you just what you needed to hear even when you didn’t realize you needed to hear it.”
“Case in point: that dance at our wedding.”
Despite being almost right on top of the lake, they had gotten hot sitting there in the sun, and Rachel pulled out a sparkling water she’d bought in a coffee shop on Main Street. The crack of the can opening sounded especially crisp against the background static of the waves. She took a sip and then offered him one.
“Thanks,” Will said after taking a drink and passing the can back.
“So what do you think she would’ve told you?” Rachel asked once she’d taken another sip. “You know, if she were sitting here right now.”
It was a simple enough question. One that he had parried once by saying what a great mother his aunt would’ve been. But whether Rachel had seen through that or was simply that curious, she had asked again, and Will needed a better answer. He couldn’t tell her what he would’ve wanted, would’ve counted on, his aunt to say—namely, that his fears he’d take after his dad were completely unfounded. Because that kind of confession would also entail admitting how ill equipped he felt to be a dad and how scared he was that something was going to go wrong.
But that was anxiety Will was unwilling to put on Rachel, especially after she had expressed her own uncertainty about what was awaiting them once the baby arrived. He had a responsibility to build her up, not add to the things bringing her down. So he deflected in a way he hoped wasn’t too obvious.
“She would’ve made sure I knew that just because you’re the one having the baby, that doesn’t mean you should have to do more than me once the baby is born,” he said. He took a smooth stone sitting atop their rock and flung it toward the lake with a snap of the wrist, trying to skip it. It hit three times before disappearing below the surface of the water. “Oh, and if I ever referred to watching our child as babysitting, she would’ve dropped me like she did that sorority sister.”
That made Rachel laugh. “She would’ve been right to,” Rachel said. “Same goes for saying ‘We’re pregnant.’ But if you can figure out a way to split breastfeeding fifty-fifty, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“It really is okay if you don’t want to do that,” Will said. Seeing as it had come up several times in the last few days, he could tell that the decision was weighing on her and saw another opportunity to be for her what he couldn’t be for himself: someone convinced they had it all under control. “No one would judge you for it.”
She turned to look at him. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark lenses, but her face nevertheless managed to convey her opinion of what he’d just said.
“Have you ever talked to other women about this?” Rachel asked.
“Even if I had, which I haven’t, I really don’t think yes is the answer you want to hear there.”
“If I choose not to breastfeed,” she said, not acknowledging his joke this time, “I will be judged nine ways to Sunday. Hell, they’ll think I’m a monster if I do breastfeed but don’t do it long enough, or don’t think it’s the most magical, heartwarming experience of my entire life.”
“Well, you’re talking about people like Gwen, who, based on what we saw in that house, may very well be a sociopath.”
“It’s a lot more people than you think,” Rachel said, her tone staying sober. “Including my mother. My sister too.”
“Isa? Really?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong; she wouldn’t say anything, and she’d probably feel terrible that she was even thinking it. But she was so enamored with all things baby that there’s no way she wouldn’t feel like I was taking it all for granted or something. And honestly? There’s a part of me that feels like I need to do it for her. Like I’d be insulting her otherwise.”
“I mean, I love your sister,” Will said, choosing his words as carefully as he could, “and what happened to her and Owen was awful. I also can’t pretend I understand the pressures you’re feeling right now.
“But in the end, this isn’t about Isa. Or anyone else. It’s about us. And really, it’s about you—whatever you want to do and feel is the best decision. You’re the mom, and you’re going to be amazing at being a mom, regardless of how you choose to feed our child the first few months of their life.”
Rachel chuckled soundlessly to herself. “I wish I had your confidence.”
I wish I had it too,he thought.
“You’re pretty easy to have confidence in,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad one of us feels that way. But you know it’s okay if you want to freak out a little bit about everything, too, right? It’s pretty normal.”
Since sometime around their second date at the botanical gardens, Will had known that Rachel Armas deserved far more than pretty normal. So he said, “Thanks, babe, I appreciate that,” and squeezed her hand.
They went back to watching the water, which lasted until a college-aged guy sat down on the grassy embankment behind them to carry on a loud phone conversation. He was talking to someone named Lane, who after some unavoidable eavesdropping, Will and Rachel determined to be the kid’s significant other. It sounded like Lane was unhappy that the guy sitting on the grass had chosen to spend his summer working on the island rather than being wherever Lane was.
“God, Lane,” he barked into his phone, “you’re like ... you’re like a vending machine that only sells bullshit.”
With that, he hung up angrily and stormed back toward town.
Will and Rachel waited until he was out of earshot. “That is ... quite the image,” Will said.
“Yeah. I think we can cross Lane off the baby-name list now. I’m never going to unhear ‘vending machine of bullshit.’”
She offered him one last sip of the sparkling water, then finished what was left and dropped the empty can into her bag. They gathered up the shirts they’d been sitting on and put those in the bag, as well, and began following the college kid along the boardwalk at a respectable distance. Their plan had been to do some shopping once they’d had their fill of watching the boats go by, and the conversation about their families didn’t seem to have dulled her enthusiasm for that idea, so Will was glad he hadn’t complicated things by opening up any more than he had.
Rachel nominated the Birkenstock store as their first stop. She’d had her eye on a pair of metallic gold ones online for the last several weeks and had so far resisted buying them, but they felt like the perfect vacation purchase if they were in stock.
While she went in there, Will hit up a nearby bookstore. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular but soon found himself lingering at a display devoted to the latest Emily Henry novel. Her books were often categorized as romance, which did make him a little self-conscious. However, when you’d watched your mom have her life blown up by your dad—not to mention your sister- and brother-in-law’s marriage hit the rocks and your wife’s parents harbor a low-level loathing of joy in general—a well-delivered happily ever after was one of the greatest gifts a book could give you.
“Ooh, what’re you getting?” Rachel said, appearing next to him at the cash register, new sandals already on her feet.
“D-Day, Concussions, and Other Manly Things: A Retrospective,” he said as the woman behind the counter handed him his bag. Rachel gave him a quizzical look and pulled out the brightly colored paperback.
“A new Emily Henry? I didn’t even know there was a new Emily Henry!”
“I know. You’re slipping.”
“Apparently,” she said, reluctantly giving the book back to him. “It’s a little disturbing. Like, that-thing-you-called-a-beard-during-the-lockdown disturbing.”
“Disturbing? I thought it was rugged.”
“Was it?” she said, playfully shrugging her shoulders. They left the bookshop and reentered the interior corridor lined with stores. He hung back behind her a few steps and then rejoined her when they got to the street.
“Dammit,” he said after they’d gone about 20 feet.
“What?”
“I texted Ali and asked him to tell you that my pandemic beard was not disturbing.”
“And?”
“He says, ‘You’re right. I would’ve called it more appalling than disturbing.’”
This time Rachel’s laugh was more of a chortle.
Despite the lockdown, Ali had seen that beard a lot. It had started over Zoom, first with him and Will watching movies together and eventually, when the truncated Big Ten football season started, watching Michigan. Will was grateful to have the games to think about, but seeing them played in largely empty stadiums was an uncomfortable reminder of how upside down the world felt right then. But Ali, still laughing and joking with him like he always had, had reinjected some normalcy. Ali had even driven to Chicago to spend that Thanksgiving with them, observing a strict two-week quarantine beforehand. He’d said it was because it didn’t make sense to fly home given the circumstances, but Will was pretty sure Ali had wanted to reconnect with him and Rachel in person. Although they’d hardly left the apartment, the five days they’d spent together had seemed to make everything a little less heavy for all three of them.
Whether Ali knew it or not, his texts were doing the same now, helping to relieve, perhaps only momentarily, some of the pressure Will felt to get this all right.
Enough time had passed since he and Rachel had eaten that pizza, so they decided they were ready to be around massive quantities of fudge. They picked the first place they came to of the many they’d seen. The little shop smelled like the olfactory embodiment of dessert, and they were quickly overwhelmed by the options inside the glass display case. Chocolate. Chocolate peanut butter. Peanut butter with chocolate chips. Just peanut butter. Something with caramel and sea salt. And on and on, all sliced in large, roughly semicircular chunks.
There was a sign advertising a special: FREE TOTE BAG WITH $50 PURCHASE. Such a sum initially seemed like an extravagant amount to spend on fudge, but the longer they agonized over which slices to buy—Rachel in particular did not like the idea of leaving any of the peanut butters behind—the more rational the 50-dollar threshold became, especially since the extra bag would help with the purchases they were accumulating. Five slices and a bag of saltwater taffy later, they had their tote.
“This might sound perverse,” Will said once they were back in the afternoon sun, “but after seeing all that fudge, I could really go for some ice cream.”
Rachel stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “That is the single hottest thing you’ve said to me on this trip.”
Ice cream on a summer day was a popular idea, so by the time they navigated back to a shop that had caught their attention earlier and made their way through the line, 40 minutes had passed. But when you’re on vacation time and the reward is black cherry (her) and rocky road (him) in a waffle cone (both), you hardly notice.
They found a spot to eat outside, sitting on a small concrete ledge beneath one of the building’s windows, and traded bites of each other’s choices before digging into their own with purpose. The ice cream was good, but the cones were better, and considering the noises they both periodically made while chewing, Rachel may have been right that it was the steamiest part of their week to date.
Will was done first, and he sat back against the window with a sigh. They were in the shade, and Rachel had her sunglasses up on top of her head.
“How’d you get ice cream in your hair?” he asked.
She ran her hand through it, and her fingers came back with a dark-red residue. “Artistic license. The little dribble on your shirt is far more conventional.”
He saw the spot she was talking about and licked his index finger to try to rub it off. “We make quite the pair.”
Rachel nodded while taking the last bite of her cone. “You know,” she said when she’d finished it, “even before we covered ourselves in ice cream, I was thinking we might be underdressed for the Marquise.”
They both had on T-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes in anticipation of a day of walking punctuated on either end by ferry travel. Those choices had served them well, but they were not the things one wore when impersonating fellow diners at a midscale restaurant.
“What do you suggest?” Will asked.
“It’s three thirty now, and ‘our’”—she put the possessive pronoun in air quotes—“reservation is at five o’clock. I think we should each take the next hour to shop and buy ourselves something that is classy, beach dinner appropriate, and then we meet back here fully changed, ready to go.”
“You trust me to purchase classy, beach-dinner-appropriate attire on my own?”
“Only partially. But I saw some cute stores I want to check out, and you’d be bored out of your mind waiting for me. Just remember: simpler is better. There should be no, like, still life depiction of a beach scene across the back. And no silk.”
“Got it. What about an airbrushed seagull?”
Rachel pulled her sunglasses back down and stood. “Ha ha ha. I’ll see you at four thirty.”
“Is that a no to seagulls specifically, or to birds generally?”
“Depends on whether you want to sit at the same table with me or not.”
“Hmm. Okay. I’ll have to get back to you after I see these shirts.”
She waved goodbye to him over her shoulder without looking back, but he could tell how much fun she was having with this—with the shopping, with the island, with everything. He didn’t get up right away, watching her until she disappeared into the crowd and thinking he was even more in love with her now than when they’d gotten married, as impossible as that seemed.
Will was so caught up in the good feelings and the carefree nature of his surroundings—replacing cars with horses really did do wonders for your nerves—that he didn’t realize until he’d walked a way down the street and was about to try his luck in a store with a miniature lighthouse in the front window that he hadn’t checked his email in a while.
He stepped through the doorway and off to the side before opening the app.
There it was, sent 15 minutes earlier.
Hi, Rachel—
Good news: We are all set! Below, I’ve put proposed flights from Nashville to LAX and then back to Chicago (which is where I’m assuming you’ll be headed after?). You’d be with us all day Tuesday.
Let me know if these will work for you, and I’ll go ahead and book them.
Thank you!
Beatriz
Will moved his attention down to the flight times, noting the Monday-morning departure and the Wednesday-morning return. As much as he had built up the moment of responding to Beatriz when he’d been in the Milwaukee hotel, this was the true point of no return. The first time she’d written back, she’d been confident but not certain she’d be able to make the interview work, and he, as Rachel, had not officially agreed to flying anywhere. Nothing had been booked.
Even now, he could write back and say something, anything, had come up, and Rachel couldn’t fly out after all. It would all be over, just like that, just like he’d imagined when he’d briefly thought about coming clean to Rachel earlier. Do that, and there’d be no ticking clock counting down to when he’d have to tell her what he’d done.
And if everything that had brought him to this moment was as simple as all that, and if it wouldn’t have made Rachel look like an absolute flake who kept changing her mind, he very well may have done it. But it wasn’t that simple, and embarrassing her in front of these people was even more unacceptable to him than the idea of her being furious about what he’d done.
Thanks so much, Beatriz—this looks great. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.
Rachel
His finger was literally moving to send when he stopped himself.
By the way, we’re on the road at the moment, and my cell service is inconsistent, so if you need anything else, please just continue to use this email address.
Sent.
Will felt like a poker player who had just gone all in, except he wouldn’t be seeing how the hand played out right away. Simultaneously nervous and amped up, he knew he was in an odd state of mind to be surrounded by so much casual wear and distressed wood, but he was glad to have the next hour to calm himself back down before seeing Rachel.
He was near that window with the lighthouse, looking at shirts, when he heard from Rachel about something else.
So I don’t forget—Isa just asked me to go with her to the fertility doctor the week after we get home. Owen’s being an ass.
What day?Will typed, his stomach sinking as he awaited her answer. He didn’t have to wait long.
Tuesday.