And Then I Found You (3 page)

*   *   *

Kate met Rowan Irving when she was on a buying trip for Mimsy Clothing. It was Rowan’s
smile that caused Kate to grin in return. This was what she’d been waiting for: an
open door that would shut all others. It had been nine years since she’d last cracked
open her heart, and it was time to try again.

When she met Rowan, she’d resolved to forget the pain of the past. Time to move on,
she’d told herself. Somewhere deep inside she’d remember what happened, but the world
would never know or see. She would make a new life starting right there, right then.
Nothing of the past would build the future.

Rowan’s eyes were brown, his eyelashes long and dark. His face was square and solid.
He seemed able to hold the weight of her world without wavering. They sat across from
each other at a bar table and laughed about the karaoke singers onstage. “Do you sing?”
he asked.

She started to answer in her usual way, which would be “Oh, no, I could never get
on that stage.” And then she remembered: Begin Again. Begin Anew.

His eyes were smiling. She’d never really seen anyone’s eyes smile like that, so fully.
“Yes,” she said. “I try.”

“Okay, go for it.” He pointed at the stage.

“You’ll go with me?”

“I don’t karaoke.”

“Tonight you do,” she said, enjoying this new self who flirted and took chances and
tried to talk a man into singing with her as if she were tasting a new flavor of ice
cream.

“No way,” he said.

She leaned toward him, making chicken clucking noises.

The chair rocked as he leaned back to laugh. He slammed his hands on the table. “Is
this a dare?”

“Just seeing if you’re worthy of my attention.”

“Throwing down the gauntlet.”

She stood. “Guess so.”

“You have no idea how awful this will sound.” He stood and took her hand as they walked
to the karaoke stage.

“See, that’s the thing with bar karaoke, the worse it sounds the better it is.”

“Then this will be the best of the night.”

Kate flipped through the songbook. When they started with Meatloaf’s “Paradise by
the Dashboard Light,” the bar was packed. By the time they got around to “Brown Eyed
Girl” by Van Morrison, the place had almost cleared out.

It was closer to morning than night when they left the bar. “Can I call you or something?”
Rowan asked.

“I live in South Carolina. That’s really … far away.”

He grinned. “Not for a phone call.”

“No, not for that.” Kate wrote down her number, then left without touching Rowan Irving.

They’d been dating four years now; their mutual love of the outdoors, rivers, and
an ever-changing landscape were the solid base for all that came after. If Kate had
ever made a list—which she hadn’t—Rowan would fill the imagined boxes of a perfect
mate. She wanted those facts to move from her head the mere twelve inches toward her
heart and settle in with deep love, something past admiration and comfort.

He was from Philadelphia, and when their long distance dating became more annoying
than romantic, he’d moved to Bluffton. He’d said it was for the job offer—landscape
architect for one of the most prestigious firms in the Low Country—but they both knew
that it was love that brought him to South Carolina and love that kept him there.
They hadn’t moved in together or even talked of engagement, but Kate understood a
commitment was close, and fear was tucked inside the beautiful possibilities.

*   *   *

The evening with the Irving and Vaughn parents went better than she’d hoped, except
for the moment when Mr. Irving, in his ascot and pressed pinstripe suit, asked why
Kate was Katie to her parents, but Kate to everyone else.

“Oh, she decided to shed her old self,” Stuart, Kate’s dad, said with a dismissive
wave.

“Why would she shed her old self?” Mrs. Irving asked, twisting a napkin in her hand.

Kate laughed, a false sound. “Oh, there was no shedding involved. One day I thought
Katie was too cutesy. That’s it.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Irving lifted her hand to twirl her pearls, and attempted to smile, but
Kate saw the underwriting:
liar.

Other than that four-sentence conversation, the night had gone well. Kate’s dad hadn’t
drunk too much whiskey. Her mother hadn’t lit a single cigarette. The steak dinner,
which Rowan had cooked to impress her family, wasn’t burnt. No one brought up The
Future or, for that matter, The Past. So, all in all, a success.

The evening was ending, coffee brewing in the kitchen. Rowan lived in a two-bedroom
guesthouse behind a much larger house in the Bluffton historic district. A landscape
designer, he lived there gratis in exchange for taking care of the yard and gardens
surrounding the house. His den was crowded with leather furniture—the complete opposite
of Kate’s cream and linen slipcovered aesthetic. She wondered how the two of them
would ever combine not only their lives but their tastes. His windows overlooked a
boxwood labyrinth with a large fountain in the center. The family gathered there as
Kate slipped into Rowan’s bedroom to catch her breath.

She sat on the edge of his bed and placed her wineglass on the bedside table. Kate
hadn’t yet told Rowan everything she needed to tell him about her history, and she
knew it was time. After the parents left, she would tell him everything, all that
was getting in the way of their future together.

What future? Kate sank sideways into Jack’s pillow. What would their future look like
together? She couldn’t imagine it. She saw their separate lives as scattered remnants,
and she wasn’t sure the pieces could ever come together to form any kind of whole.
Was wanting to want it good enough?

Dixie, Rowan’s goofy and hyper golden retriever, came bounding into the room. Seeing
Kate on the edge of the bed, the dog assumed it was playtime and jumped toward her,
knocking the red wine onto the khaki bedspread and across Kate’s pale green sundress.

“Dixie,” Kate hollered, and ran into the bathroom for some towels. Mopping up the
spill, Kate shooed Dixie off the bed and watched the wine drip into the top drawer
of the bedside table. She yanked the drawer open to shove the towel under the rim
of the table when she saw the box: a small white box with two bloodred drops of spilled
wine on its top. She opened the box a fraction of an inch to see the ring—a round
and brilliant engagement ring.

She jerked back.

“Kate,” Rowan’s voice called from the hallway.

She shoved the drawer shut. “In here,” she called. “Dixie spilled my wine.”

Her parents appeared at the doorway along with Rowan and his parents. Kate cringed.
“Sorry. I was coming in here to use the bathroom and Dixie jumped up on me and…”

All gazes moved to the bed, which was of course not a bathroom. “Let’s go have some
coffee,” Kate said, guiding the crowd back to Rowan’s den.

“Who wants dessert?” Rowan asked as they stood facing one another.

Kate felt the panic rising—a grip on her throat, a beehive in her gut. It always happened
this way. Just when she thought she could love, just when she thought a man would
be able to enter her life, she panicked. She wanted, more than she wanted anything,
to make this dread end.

She smiled past the anxiety and then lied. “I’m exhausted. I think I just need to
go home and hit the sack.”

Rowan looked at her and squinted, knowing her voice was off-kilter. “Okay,” he said,
drawing out the end part of the word into a long “eh” noise.

Good-byes were said and hugs were given and when only Kate and Rowan remained in his
den, he asked the questions she couldn’t answer. “What’s up with you? What’s wrong?”

*   *   *

Home in her loft, leaning against her bed’s padded headboard, Kate closed her eyes
and took in a long, deep breath.
What is wrong with you?
Those weren’t Rowan’s exact words, but close enough to taunt her.

The sight of that ring should have sent any girl into spasms of happiness.

What is wrong with you?

The answer to that damn question seemed as far away as the moon: inaccessible, remote,
and frozen.

She slumped down under her covers, bringing the white duvet to her chin. Maybe the
unassailable answer to what was wrong was to really and finally once and for all
talk to Jack
.

No.

See Jack.

No.

When all the mistakes had been made and all the running had been finished, a girl
does not go back to the boy to undo what can never, ever be undone.

two

ARIZONA

1995

It’s easy to find where some things begin: a fire started, a secret told, a book opened
to the first page. But Kate couldn’t understand exactly where she and Jack had gone
wrong. God, how she wanted to find that starting point and place a pin on it, a red-flagged
pin of blame and reason.

During their junior year of high school, Jack’s family had left for Birmingham, Alabama.
Maybe that’s where it started, with his parents’ decision to move. Or perhaps it all
began the month Jack graduated early from Clemson and decided to go to law school
in Birmingham, leaving Katie to finish at Wake Forest, bored, alone, and restless.
Yes, maybe she could thrust that pin into both those past events, but again and again
she believed that the beginning of the end was the day she decided to take the job
after her college graduation. No malice or meanness existed in this decision; if anything
she’d thought she was doing the right thing for both her life and their relationship.

That last semester of college, Katie missed Jack fiercely, knowing their time apart
during college would soon be over. Distracted and detached, she wandered the University
gymnasium during a job fair and weighed her options: move to Birmingham and get a
job while Jack was consumed with law school or find a summer job that wasn’t permanent
and wait for Jack’s schedule to slow down. She imagined her loneliness in a city she
didn’t know, and in which she had no friends.

In the muggy gymnasium, a job fair had been set up. Tables were lined up like multicolored
dominoes, one after the other with tall signs stating what company or employer was
represented. Balloons meant to attract were wilting in the heat, drooping pitifully.
Students milled around after scribbling their names on the sign-in sheet to prove
to the academic advisor that they’d showed up as promised. Katie wandered past the
secretarial jobs, the nursing home employer, and the trucking company where the man
behind the table spit dark liquid into a plastic cup while grinning at her. “Missy,
you want a job that’ll take you on the open road for the summer?” Katie laughed, shook
her head.

Katie turned her back on the trucker to see the Winsome Wilderness sign. Two girls
Katie knew from her Adolescent Psychology class—Jeannie and Meg, both pegged “granola-girls”—were
standing behind the table. These girls were not quite hippies and not quite ragged
stoners either. They wore cutoffs and cute embroidered tops, and considered ChapStick
to be makeup. They were beautiful though, with their long hair, and they were always
smiling. That was the main thing Katie had noticed about them.

Photos, feathers, and bundles of sage were scattered across the red-clothed card table.
Twig frames showcased pictures of smiling young girls looking over their shoulders
as they wound their way through red rocks. Other photos showed girls gathered around
a campfire, the glow of the fire reflected in their young faces. Katie picked up a
speckled brown feather lying on the edge of the table.

“Hawk,” one of the girls said.

“Huh?” Katie looked up at Meg and Jeannie.

“That’s a red-tailed hawk feather. Means wisdom.” Meg, or the girl Katie thought was
Meg, said.

“Okay.” Katie smiled at both girls.

“I’m Meg,” she said. Yes, Katie was right. “We’re in Psych together, right?”

“Yes,” Katie said and glanced at the other girl. “And you’re Jeannie, right?”

They both nodded.

“Are you looking for a summer job?” Jeannie asked.

“I am,” Katie said and lifted a sheet of paper with typed facts and an attached application.
“What is this?”

“A wilderness program. Aren’t you a social work major like us?”

Katie nodded.

“This is sort of like Outward Bound, but for kids who need more help and therapy and
like that.”

“And like that?” Katie asked. “Like what?”

“You don’t have to do the counseling or anything crazy. You get to camp with them
for weeks. You’re called a field guide.” Meg smiled and gazed past Katie as if she
was imagining heaven during a frenzied religious tent revival.

“Well, then what do you
do
?” Katie placed the application back on the table. She was being polite. She’d already
decided that this hippie-fest was not for her. Sure, she’d studied social work and,
sure, she loved the outdoors, but talking to troubled kids over bonfires was not for
her. Singing koombaya and sleeping on the dirt was for someone else entirely.

Katie’s mind was set until Jeannie spoke. “It’s a miracle what happens out there,”
she said. “You’ll never be the same.”

Katie wanted to be something and someone different than she was—someone who didn’t
sit around and wait for Jack to finish law school and pay attention to her. She wanted
to be a girl with purpose and a meaning. And the words—
you’ll never be the same
—were a siren call.

“How so?” Katie asked.

“We’re shutting down for the day. You want to go get a beer with us?” Jeannie asked.

“Sure,” Katie said, without any nudge, whisper, or thought that this might be the
very moment she thrust the pin of change into her own life.

*   *   *

It wasn’t until after she took the job at Winsome that Katie remembered an afternoon
with her mother, a hazy afternoon that began her essential desire to be in the wild,
to refuse to give in to the demands of others, or even the demands of love.