A Notion of Love

  Everheart Books Edition

  Copyright © 2013 Abbie Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This edition is published by arrangement with Abbie Williams

  everheartbooks.com

  First electronic edition

  Created and distributed by Everheart Books, a division of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  A Notion of Love

  ISBN 978-1-771680-010-3

  Published in Canada with international distribution.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Michelle Halket

  Cover Photography: Courtesy & Copyright CanStockPhoto: tana

  This book is dedicated to all sisters, everywhere, but most especially my own: Emily, Marni, Sara and Kate, without whom Jillian would never have been possible.

  Part One: Jillian

  Chapter One

  August, 1984: Landon, MN

  Our new pink radio was plugged in and positioned on the back of the toilet tank, blaring my new favorite song, “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart. I swayed my hips to the beat as I carefully curled my bangs; last week I hadn’t been paying enough attention and burned the crap out of my forehead. Seconds later, my older sister Joelle came banging into the bathroom and slapped her hip against mine, grinning as she effectively bumped me over and then leaned towards the mirror to reapply her lip gloss. She’d just picked it out yesterday, on her seventeenth birthday. I watched her critically for a moment before saying, “It already looked fine.”

  Jo rolled her eyes at me, rubbing her lips together and then miming a kiss at herself in the mirror. Everyone always said we looked so much alike, and I guess we do, but I can’t help but feel like Jo, being older, has an edge on me in the looks department. I mean, I love her like crazy, and I’m happy with how I look—mostly. It’s just hard when your older sister is tall and has big boobs and you aren’t and yours are still, hopefully, growing. We both have long blond hair and good tans from being on Flickertail all summer, and I know looks aren’t that important. Gran is always telling us that it’s far more important to know how to catch and clean a fish, make a proper margarita, and be a considerate human being. And Great-Aunt Minnie says looks fade but spirit always glows. But still.

  “Happy birthday,” Jo said for the hundredth time today, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “You look so pretty. What time is Chris getting here?”

  My heart was suddenly pounding faster and I couldn’t help but grin at the mention of my boyfriend, Chris Henriksen. He had just turned sixteen in June and his mom was letting him drive their Tempo until he could afford his own car, which would probably be around the time he turned 25 or so. I shook out my hair and fluffed my bangs one last time and said, “Pretty soon. How about Jackie?”

  Jo likewise smiled at his name and replied, “Same. Here, let me fix your shirt.”

  She reached and turned my hips so I was facing her, then hiked up the bottom of my hot-pink tank top and tied it in a knot, exposing my belly just like hers. Then she tugged my jean shorts down about an inch and stepped back, satisfied.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Did Mom say anything else about the tattoo?”

  Jo rolled her eyes again, tipping forward to examine her flat brown belly. She complained, “No, still no. Even though it’s all I wanted for my birthday. I mean, it would just be around my belly button. I could cover it up anytime I wanted. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal.”

  “Yeah, but what about what Gran said about when you have a baby someday?” I reminded her, leaning to turn off the radio before following her out of the bathroom.

  Jo was pounding down the stairs but called over her shoulder, “Believe me, that’s something I’m not doing for a looooong time! Shit, Jills, can you imagine?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “Not really.”

  Outside the late-afternoon air was clear and clean and smelled of the campfire that Dodge had going over by the café. Jo, who’d spotted her boyfriend Jackie Gordon pulling into the parking lot, sprinted ahead. He climbed down from his rusty F-150 and pushed back his sunglasses as she jumped into his arms and they kissed like it had been months since they’d seen each other, instead of just a few hours.

  “Lookin’ good, babe,” I heard him say, his hands all over her.

  I would have considered this obnoxious except that when Chris got here I planned to cover him in kisses too. My heart again fired hard and sent a rush through my veins as I thought about Chris, who’d been my boyfriend since last spring. I’d known him forever, of course, like basically everyone in Landon. I hadn’t paid any attention to him in middle school, but all of a sudden in tenth grade we’d had four classes together and he just seemed to be in my mind…a lot. A lot, a lot. I would think of him as I lay in bed with my headphones on, trying to block out Jo talking incessantly to Jackie on the phone in our room, at least until Gran would get on the extension from the kitchen downstairs and tell her it was time to quit yakking and go to bed. Gran thought that was funny, rather than just sticking her head in our bedroom door. But every song I heard as I lay there somehow reminded me of Chris. He had beautiful brown eyes with a sheen of gold behind and flecks of green sprinkled throughout. It wasn’t something you could see unless you were looking directly into his irises.

  The first time he’d asked me out had been last March, after geometry but before lunch. He was with a group of his buddies and I was walking with my good friend Jenny Hull, and he’d pushed off from the locker he’d been leaning against and followed behind us.

  “Hey, Jills,” he said. It was the nickname just about everyone in school used, but for some reason when Chris said my name I felt a little extra thud in my heartbeat. I turned and walked backward for a couple of steps so I could look at him, until he laughed and grabbed my free arm, the one not cradling a pile of books, and said, “Don’t crash!”

  We all stopped, Jenny included, and Chris shot her a slightly flustered look, but then his eyes came back to me and he asked, “Hey, you wanna swing by Dairy Queen with me this weekend?” His voice had cracked just a hair on the last word. I found myself studying the face that was so often in my daydreams. He had grown about a half a foot between the beginning of the year and March. His hair was golden-brown, cropped close to his head. He had a square jaw and the kind of laugh that made everyone around him want to laugh, too. His eyes seemed to be sparkling at me as he waited, though I could sense he was really nervous.

  “Sure,” I heard myself say, and the smile that spread over his face was surely mirrored on mine in the next moment.

  “Cool, I’ll see you,” he said.

  And we’d been pretty much inseparable ever since.

  “Hi, honey!” Dodge called as I came near. He was one of my favorite people in the world, someone who was such a part of Shore Leave that sometimes, in my most secretly-guarded thoughts, I pretended he was my dad. Even though he was married to Marjorie and had two of his own kids, Justin and Liz. Justin was in Jo and Jackie’s grade and Liz a year behind me. Dodge ran the filling station and engine repair shop about a quarter mile around the lake, but he was still around here all the time, helping out with the things Mom and Aunt Ellen couldn’t manage. He was in for coffee every morning of the busy season without fail, sometimes with Justin, who helped him in the summers. His bushy salt-and-pepper hair was held under control only by the aviat
or sunglasses perched on the top of his head. His full beard and mustache seemed like a continuation of his unruly hair.

  “Hi, Dodge,” I said, burrowing against him for a moment and squeezing. He couldn’t hug me back because he was holding his stainless steel mug in one big hand and a long, tapered stick in the other, which he was using to poke at the blazing fire. Though the sun wouldn’t set for a couple hours, the bonfire was already alive and kicking. He kissed the top of my head and I smelled his comforting scent of wood smoke, motor oil, tobacco and Jim Beam.

  “Happy birthday!” he said jovially. Truly, I’d never seen him in any other mood. And then, “Boy! What’s taking you so long?”

  “Shit, Pa, I’m coming,” Justin said, giving us a grin as he staggered up to the fire bearing an enormous armload of wood. “Where do you want this?”

  Dodge pointed with the stick and Justin grunted as he deposited the burden on the ground. He stood and brushed debris from his flannel shirt, which was flapping open over his tan, bare belly and swim trunks.

  “Hey, Jills,” he said to me, offering an easy smile. Justin was tall and lean and wiry, with wavy black hair that hung past his shoulders in back, though the sides were shorter, and a face that Gran had always said was too pretty for a boy. I was glad she’d never said that directly to him. I’d known Justin forever; the two of us, along with Joelle and Justin’s sister Liz, had played like siblings every summer as far back as my memory stretched. He treated me like a little sister, had teased me mercilessly as a kid. Since high school we’d drifted apart, but now he added amiably, “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks,” I told him and then waved at them as I practically skipped over to where Mom and Aunt Ellen were hanging Christmas lights over the picnic table in honor of Jo’s and my birthdays. I felt a rush of excitement; the café was closed for the evening, though people would be flocking out here in less than an hour to celebrate. Our birthday party was always the final send-off to summer; school would start next week already, and so I meant to enjoy the weekend to the fullest.

  “There’s my sweet sixteen,” Great-Aunt Minnie said from the porch, where she and Gran were having a smoke and a couple of beers. “Lookit you.”

  I bounded up the steps and kissed her cheek. Minnie’s hair hung in one long braid down her back, as she always kept it. My gran, her younger sister, wore hers in a similar style most days, though Gran had let her own hair go white while Minnie kept hers blonde. I was the one who helped her color it; every six weeks or so she’d tip her head back over the tin washtub and I’d use Clairol Natural Palest Blonde to counteract the gray.

  “Hi, doll,” said Gran, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth and grinning at me. “You excited?”

  “For sure,” I said, feeling tingly and happy. I plopped into the chair between them and Gran slid her bottle my direction.

  “Just one little sip, now,” she said. “And for God’s sake, don’t let Joanie see.”

  I grinned and snagged a sip. Good thing Gran figured this was the only drinking I’d be doing on my birthday.

  “Where’s Joelle?” Great-Aunt Minnie asked.

  “With that Jackson,” Gran said disapprovingly. She always said ‘that Jackson’ instead of just using his name, which drove Joelle crazy. I knew that Gran wasn’t overly fond of my sister’s boyfriend, even though everyone else seemed to love him. Especially Mom. I overheard her telling Aunt Ellen once, around last Christmas, that she hoped they’d get married someday. I didn’t mind Jackie, but I hated the thought of my sister, who was also my best friend, marrying him and moving across town to live with him. I hated the thought of anything that separated Jo and me.

  Rich poked his head out the screen door and smiled fondly before also wishing me a happy birthday. He added, “I’m gonna go get Pamela and then we’ll be back to celebrate.”

  I hopped up from the chair to hug him. Rich Mayes had worked at the café forever, as a cook, and he and his wife Pam lived just a few miles away. Pam had a grown daughter who lived in either Texas or Oklahoma, I couldn’t remember. She’d been up to visit once years before, when I was 10 or 11.

  “Oops, there’s your fella,” Minnie said, indicating Chris’s mom’s car as it bumped into the parking lot.

  “And there she goes,” I heard Gran chuckle, but I was too excited to see my boyfriend. I met him just as he climbed out of his car and jumped into his arms.

  “Hey,” he said, hugging me hard. “Birthday girl. What’s your wish?”

  “I can’t tell,” I told him as he pulled away and gave me a big smile. “Or it won’t come true.”

  Chris leaned back into his car and reached for the package wrapped in bright pink paper and tied with a shiny silver ribbon. “Well I hope this comes close, anyway,” he said, not letting me take it from his hands. When I giggled and grabbed for it, he lofted it above his head, where I hadn’t a chance of reaching. I pretended to be mad and then tickled his ribs. He yelped and almost dropped it, and finally surrendered it into my grasp.

  I shook it gently, held it to my ear.

  “You’ll never guess,” he said confidently. “And hey, I didn’t give you a kiss yet.” And so saying he slipped his arms around me and pulled me close. He tasted familiar and sweet, and of Big Red gum. Chris was the only one of our group of friends who didn’t smoke, which I admired. He squeezed me tightly before pulling back and then tipped his forehead against mine and whispered, “Love you, Jilly Bean.”

  “I love you, too,” I told him, and brushed my lips against his one more quick time.

  He stroked my hair, wrapping his fingers in it for a moment like he always did, before saying, “Let’s go celebrate.”

  An hour later the sun was setting like honey spilled on a pale blue tablecloth. Christmas lights were glowing and lanterns burning, everyone eating, talking, drinking, laughing. Eddie Sorenson and Jim Olson were playing their guitars, like they always did for parties in the Landon area. Rich’s wife Pam had joined them with an accordion. It certainly wasn’t Top Forty music like we normally listened to, but I couldn’t imagine loving what they played any more than I did; it was the music of my childhood. And no one could sit still. Pam was laughing about something as she played, her long hair caught up in a barrette. People were crowding the makeshift dance floor. My sister and Jackie were locked in each other’s arms, even though the song was not a slow one. Everyone came to our end-of-the-summer birthday bash, and most years the weather was fantastic, like it was tonight. The air was calm and Flickertail glimmered navy blue as the sun sank and stole the color from the far shore. Stars were beginning to spangle the darkening sky, and I was sixteen.

  Chris and I took a break from the dancing after the next song; I grabbed his hand and we ran down the hill to the dock, our favorite place to sit and talk. Sometimes we had to fight with my sister and Jackson for the space, though. They thought they were so sneaky having sex after they’d go skinny-dipping. I couldn’t believe they were that brave; Chris and I at least waited until we could be totally alone, and we hadn’t even gone all the way yet. I was terrified of getting pregnant, despite Jo’s promise to take me to an appointment to get on the pill, like her.

  “Here,” he said as we claimed our spots on the glider. “Open your present.”

  He’d grabbed it from the stack of gifts on the cake table. I was too excited to open it to do anything but rip the paper away. Inside was a white gift box from the local drug store.

  “A Precious Moments figurine?” I asked skeptically, holding it up and inspecting the side.

  “No, silly,” Chris said. “I just used the box. Open it.”

  I did, struggling with the tape he’d applied industriously to each edge. But at last I managed and reached inside, extracting a small blue velvet…ring box? My heart just about stopped, but Chris laughed again, totally at ease. He said, “It’s not an engagement ring, Jilly. Don’t look so freaked out.”

  I regained my voice and argued, “I’m not freaked out. But if it’s not
…”

  “It’s a promise ring,” he said, all traces of teasing suddenly vanished. His eyes were intent upon mine in the starlight. I felt my heart slam into my breastbone and then begin pounding as though I’d just jogged from downtown. He swallowed and caught my free hand between both of his. His hands were big and all knuckles, and I loved them. I loved everything about him, and honestly, if he’d asked me right at the moment to be his wife, my answer would have been yes.

  “A promise ring?” I repeated carefully, cradling the box in my cupped palm.

  “Here, open it,” he said, and freed my hand so I could.

  “Oh,” I said, my eyes stinging with tears as the little box opened with a click and there on the velvet was a simple gold band with a heart in the middle, set with a tiny stone.

  “It’s a peridot,” he explained, and his voice was very soft. “For August. It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

  “I love it,” I whispered, my lips trembling. “Oh, Chris…”

  He plucked it out and looked into my eyes a long moment before gently taking the third finger of my right hand into the tips of his and sliding the ring over my knuckle. It fit perfectly and he smiled in triumph.

  “I had Joelle help me with the size,” he said.

  “I love it,” I managed again, but tears were spilling over my cheeks. I had felt a shift in my belly when he’d put the ring on my finger, a gut instinct that I’d long ago learned never to ignore. I knew in that moment that he would be my husband someday. Not because of the ring and what it implied, but something much deeper, some instinct that kicked at me sometimes, usually when I was sleeping but occasionally in the waking world, too. And right then, without a doubt, I knew that he belonged to me and I would bear his name. And for a split second I’d felt a third presence, just a flash that disappeared almost instantly. But it had been there.

  He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it, gently. I lunged into his arms and heard the ring box and gift wrap plop into the lake. But I didn’t care at the moment; the ring was safe on my finger. Chris gathered me close and kissed me, sweet and tenderly, like he did just about everything.