Chapter Six
Jack saw something in her no one else ever had, like there was more to her than just being a Wester, more than the fear, more than the money.
Wills would always cherish the thought, but she knew her future hadn’t changed, only her present.
Jack was still leaving. And after he was gone, she would fall softly back to sleep like in a fairy tale, under the spell of the Witch of Wester House.
But for one week, she let herself be happy.
Everyone noticed, and no two people attributed it to the same thing.
Someone mentioned that Terrence must have finally proposed, but there was no ring on her finger.
Someone said her grandmother must have finally given her a car, but there was no new car parked in front of the Wester House.
She must be happy about graduation. About coming into her own.
About a good grade. No one but Dorothy knew it was about Jack.
Jani would sometimes catch her and Dorothy whispering about him, and she was seriously displeased when she asked what was going on, and they both said, Nothing.
After Jack’s very last lesson in the auditorium, Wills ran to him on the stage and pulled him behind the curtain for their last few stolen moments. Even when she knew it was time to go, she kept giving him quick kisses, one after the other, saying over and over, One for the road.
“Wills. Wills, wait a minute,” Jack said between kisses. “As much as I’m enjoying this display, I’m not actually going on the road after all.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling back. “What happened?” Principal Penwell was supposed to be driving him to Chapel Hill tomorrow to catch a bus back to LA.
“Nothing’s wrong. I just … I got a job at the greenhouse on the highway. I start on Monday.” Her lips parted in surprise. “Don’t give me that look, Wills. I know I won’t like it. But I could use more money. And then there’s you.”
“No. Don’t do this,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to. You’ll be miserable.”
“Not for right now.” He shrugged. “Not until—”
“Don’t say it.”
“My not saying it isn’t going to make it less real,” he said with a smile. “You’re still going to marry Terrence.”
She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his chest and he rubbed her back. “How much longer?” she whispered. How much longer would she be awake, happy, seen?
“Weeks? Months?”
“Promise me that when the time comes, you’ll leave and never look back,” she said against his shirt. “I want you to go out in the world and be happy, Jack. Promise me.”
“Wills?” she heard Dorothy call from the auditorium on the other side of the curtain. “Band practice is over.”
Her grandmother wasn’t home when Wills got in, which was odd.
Mrs. Orr was skulking around in her usual manner, taking every smudge on the furniture as a personal insult, and when Wills asked where Gram was, Mrs. Orr said, “She tells me what to cook and what to buy and what to clean. She doesn’t tell me her social schedule. ”
So Wills went upstairs to her room and started to study for finals, though she didn’t get far before she began to chew on her pencil and stare out the window.
Jack staying meant that things could be different for a while longer.
A temporary reprieve, yes, but she began to wonder if he stayed long enough, and if she kept putting things off with Terrence, maybe she wouldn’t have to take a stand with her grandmother.
Maybe her disinterest would make Terrence fade away.
And eventually her grandmother would be gone, too.
Then there would be no barrier to being with Jack.
She could visit him on the road any time she wanted, and he could have a home base here with her.
Maybe, Wills thought for the first time in her life, she could have it all. And without having to make a single choice.
She was startled out of her daydreaming by the doorbell chime. Her desk overlooked the street, but there wasn’t a car outside to indicate who it was. After a moment, Mrs. Orr knocked on her door. “Your grandmother would like you to join her in the living room.”
“Where has she been?” Wills asked, standing. “And who was at the door?”
“She asked me not to say.”
Wills should have seen that for what it was, a portent.
She left her room and walked down the stairs, where she could see her grandmother sitting on the couch, glass in hand.
She was looking at someone in a chair across from her.
Wills took a step into the living room but froze when the person came into view. What was he doing here?
It was Jack. Her beautiful Jack. He looked so out of place, a wildflower in a manicured garden.
“Sit down, Willamena,” Gram said seriously. Wills knew not to play her hand too soon. Not until she knew what this was about. If she went to sit beside Jack, Gram would find that telling, so she took her familiar place by Gram and waited.
“I’ve spent the better part of today going around town, asking my sources what they know.” She referred to them a lot. Her mysterious sources. “I’ve managed to piece together where you’ve been, and what you’ve been doing. Are you seeing this man behind my back?”
Wills’s eyes shot to Jack, but he didn’t so much as flinch. “You mean you don’t know all the details?” Jack asked with polite surprise. “From what I’ve heard, you’re supposed to know everything. No secret is safe from Alice Wester.”
What was he doing? Standing up to Gram was never the answer. Wills had learned that if Gram didn’t know the details, then don’t give them to her. It was the only chance they had of getting through this unscathed.
Gram sucked in her breath. She wasn’t used to people challenging her. “I know that you often walk the streets in this town late at night. And you always stop in front of my house, looking up at my granddaughter’s bedroom window.”
Wills turned to him, surprised. She didn’t know that.
“I don’t understand,” Jack said, sitting back and crossing his legs. “Is this supposed to be the frightening part?”
“Jack,” Wills finally said softly, a warning.
“And I know Willamena goes into the school auditorium while you’re giving lessons, and she doesn’t come out until well after they’re over. What are you two doing in there?”
“The logical assumption would be guitar lessons,” he said.
“I also know you left Principal Penwell’s house on Sunday night, headed toward the Holloway farm. The same night Willamena asked to stay at her friend Dorothy Holloway’s house.”
“That sounds like a coincidence.”
“And she’s been more buoyant than I’ve ever seen her this week.”
“There you have it. Something must be wrong. Because she has no right to be that happy.”
“Stop this right now, young man!” Gram said sharply.
Jack shook his head. “I know a con when I see one.”
“As do I.” Some of Gram’s gin sloshed out of the glass as she set it aside and got up.
She nearly tripped over the hem of her caftan as she went to the rolltop desk and removed her checkbook.
She scribbled something and tore out a check, extending it to Jack.
“This, in exchange for you leaving town right now and never saying a word to anyone about what you and Willamena have been doing.”
He stared at the check in Gram’s hand for a moment, then looked at Wills for the first time. Several seconds passed. He finally stood and crossed the room to take it.
Wills could feel the blood leave her extremities. Her hands went numb in her lap. “Jack?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Are you?” she said incredulously. “Because this is the best possible ending for you, isn’t it? You make out like a bandit.”
“No, this isn’t the best possible ending.” He looked at her with intensity, trying to communicate something.
This went on for too long. Gram finally said, “Go.”
But Jack kept staring at her.
“Your time is running out,” Gram snapped.
Jack turned and walked out of the room. She heard the front door click shut softly behind him, but she winced as if it were a gunshot.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d simply left.
He’d built her up, and then let her down in a way that couldn’t possibly have made her feel more insignificant.
Not even her own mother taking Gram’s money had hurt this much.
Her mother, after all, hadn’t pretended to love her.
Gram turned to her. “Tell me if you find out you’re pregnant, and we’ll arrange something sooner with Terrence. If not, there’s no reason for him to know.”
“I don’t want to marry Terrence,” Wills said tonelessly.
“What other options have you given yourself? This was a very poor power play.”
“It wasn’t a power play at all.” Wills finally stood. “At least, not on my part.”
“And that was your first mistake. The real world will eat you alive and spit out your bones, Willamena. I’m only trying to protect you. This is the safest place for you. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Never, ever give them your heart. And never, ever trust your friends.”
Wills had started out of the living room, but that made her pivot sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You were very good at hiding it, a little too good. I never would have suspected.” She took something out of a letter cubby in the desk and handed it to Wills before going to the couch and clicking on the television.
“I received that in the morning post. No note. No return address,” she said, taking a very long sip of her drink.
Wills stared at the Polaroid of her and Jack outside the gym at prom.
She knew in an instant who had sent it. She ran to her room to immediately call Dorothy, her whole body now shaking with anger.
It took everything she had to keep her voice calm, to chitchat with Dorothy’s mother for a few moments before her mom called to Dorothy and she came on the line.
“Hey, Wills, what’s up?” she asked.
“You told Gram about Jack! You even gave her a photo! I trusted you!” she yelled, and then she slammed down the phone.
Later, Wills was on the floor in front of her stereo with her headphones on, staring up through the window as silver storm clouds gathered in the sky.
There was a knock at her bedroom door. It could only be one person, because her grandmother never knocked, so she called, “Go away, Mrs. Orr. I’m not coming down to dinner. ”
The door opened and Dorothy stuck her head in.
“How dare you show up here.” Wills sat up and pulled off her headphones. “Get out!”
Dorothy stepped in anyway and closed the door behind her.
She set some papers on Wills’s desk. “Your grandmother is asleep on the couch. I told Mrs. Orr I needed to give you something for an assignment due tomorrow,” she said.
“I didn’t tell your grandmother, Wills. I told Jani.
Yesterday. She was the one with the Polaroid camera at prom, remember?
She’s had it in for you ever since her brother died and your grandmother came to visit them. ”
Wills knew what a powder keg Jani had become, so she had been on her guard with her. But she thought she could trust Dorothy. She thought Dorothy understood. “Why?” Wills demanded. “Why would you tell her?”
“She already had the photo and was connecting the dots. And I didn’t have a choice. Jani knows something about me.”
“What does she know?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, no,” Wills said with a harsh laugh. “You don’t get to keep this from me. You owe me.”
Dorothy sat on the bed and stuffed her hands under her knees. “She was at my house a lot after her brother died. Your grandmother didn’t want you around them while they mourned, remember? That’s when Jani found some letters from my mother’s old high school boyfriend.”
“She found letters that were decades old. So what?”
“They weren’t decades old. They were recent. They broke up when she moved from Lumberton to Hen Town. She got married here and had my brothers, but then she went back for a high school reunion eighteen years ago and saw him again. She came home pregnant with me.”
Wills didn’t know what to say.
“She didn’t tell me until last year that the man I always thought was my dad wasn’t.
He always knew, though. Apparently, my birth father’s hair is red, too.
He made my mom stay, but she’s leaving when I graduate, which is why she told me I had to have a plan.
If Dean finds out, he’ll call off our engagement.
His grandparents are conservative. They think I’m from a good family.
I’ve put too much time into this. I can’t start all over.
I’ll have nowhere to go. Not everyone’s life is as easy as yours.
” She looked at Wills, pleading. “If I thought for a moment Jack was permanent and you were finally taking the reins in your life, I never would have said anything. That way at least one of us would be happy. But Jack was leaving anyway. What have you really lost?”
So because Wills was unhappy before, it didn’t matter that she was unhappy now? How easily the people around her justified hurting her.
“Among other things,” Wills said, going to the door and opening it, “I lost my best friends.”
“Are you going to say anything?”
She pointed for Dorothy to get out. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”