The Forgotten Hours(91)
The back steps led straight into a large, cluttered kitchen with a potbellied stove in one corner and an enormous plank table with mismatched chairs crowded around it like passengers jostling to board a bus. Under the table was a frail dog that raised its head slightly as they entered and then put it down again on its paws, unimpressed.
“Like your hair,” Lulu said, her back to Katie. She was at the sink, rinsing something. “You color it?”
Katie’s hand reached automatically for her ponytail. “Highlights.”
“Scandinavian,” Lulu said. “Very ice princess. You didn’t tell me you were expecting.”
“I’m still kind of getting used to it myself.”
“Oh yeah?” Lulu raised her dark eyebrows. “Well, it’s sure hard to miss. When’re you due?”
“February. I’m twenty-six weeks. Got a ways to go.”
“Boy or girl?”
“We just found out. Girl,” Katie said. She surprised herself by smiling widely. “That’ll be a handful, huh? Serves me right.”
“No kidding.” Lulu reached up to get a couple of mugs from one of the cupboards and revealed a tattoo of what looked like a long black feather snaking up the left side of her back. “Trev wants kids, but I’m not so sure. Not everyone’s destined that way, you know?”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t so sure either,” Katie continued. “But I’m excited. I quit my job, and I’m starting my own business. Consulting with nonprofits on media outreach. Just getting going, but it’s great.” Her belly strained against her leggings, hard and taut. She wasn’t yet fully mobile because of the injuries to her leg and foot, but each day she exploded with energy. The doctors had told her after four more months of physical therapy she could start running again.
“You with the guy? The father?”
Katie nodded and looked around.
“That makes a difference,” Lulu said. “You need a village, right?”
Newspapers were piled high in one corner next to a stack of ancient-looking glossy magazines. The cabinets were honey-colored walnut from the seventies, the linoleum from that same era. The walls were entirely covered in postcards held up with tape.
Lulu saw her looking at them. “From the pet owners,” she said. “They send their dogs cards when they board them here. You know, ‘Frisky, we love you! We miss you so bad!’ That type of thing. Feels like they’re rubbing it in my face, their trips and stuff. Corsica and Barbados, when it’s below zero up here.” She was clanging around, picking things out of a drying rack and cleaning something. “Coffee okay? Or you want something cold?”
“You don’t have to bother.”
At this Lulu turned and put one hand on her hip. “You might as well sit down. I’m not gonna bite you.”
Katie chose a chair by the window. Lulu was not at all as she had thought she’d be—neither the way she’d been that summer they were teenagers nor the broken, damaged, vulnerable woman she had been afraid her friend might have turned into. Instead, she was just an older version of the Lulu she had known. Unchanged, and yet also utterly unfamiliar.
“So. Here you are,” Lulu said. “Now what?”
“I’m really glad you picked up. I mean, that you were willing to even listen, you know? Thank you.”
“Yeah, well. You were persuasive. And your dad, I was sorry about that. The accident and all.” Lulu scooped two spoonfuls of instant coffee into the mugs and filled them with boiling water. Taking a seat opposite Katie, she placed the mugs on the table. “You saw Jack again, huh? Boy, did I like him. I mean, really like him.”
“I know,” Katie said. “We were smitten.” It felt as though a tornado were shoving them together, Lulu’s breath on Katie’s face and in her ears and hair.
“We kissed, you know. A couple of times. Well, only once, actually, the week before he left for camp.” Lulu must have seen something on Katie’s face, because she added, “To be honest, I kissed him, really. He didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Oh, okay,” Katie mustered. So that must have been what had given Jack the courage to finally let Katie know that it was her he liked, not Lulu. “You know about the two of us, right? That we were sort of together, by the end?”
“I didn’t really want to know. I always thought I could turn things around, that things would end up how I wanted if I just tried hard enough,” Lulu said, picking at her cuticles.
“I should’ve just told you. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell you.” Katie had been thinking about that for months now: Why had she been so afraid to tell her friend about the kiss? Why hadn’t she been able to claim what she wanted? It seemed so simple now but so impossible then.
“There’s lots of stuff we could’ve said and didn’t,” Lulu said. “You know, the boys in Blackbrooke were such assholes. I’d lost my virginity, earlier—right before summer break. This guy called Tim. A total lug.”
This surprised Katie so much that she took an enormous gulp of her coffee, which scalded the roof of her mouth. All those weeks together, the countless late-night chats, the hours in the canoe and in the woods, and Lulu had never told her that she had already lost her virginity? It felt like a failing on Katie’s part that Lulu hadn’t trusted her or that she had been ashamed.