By the Time You Read This

41

WENDY MERRITT PUT THE last of the dishes in the dishwasher, loaded the little compartment with detergent and slammed the door shut. The timer was set to start after midnight. It was noisy, but it used energy when it was cheapest. She was very energy conscious, especially since she and Frank had started living together.

What a huge decision that had been, and only a year and a half after her husband’s death. He had died of a heart attack after running a marathon in Toronto, and the shock had left her stunned and weeping for two months solid. After that, she was just stunned. Without Tara, she would have almost certainly settled into the long decline of the dedicated alcoholic, but she pulled herself together in order to look after her little girl, eventually even beginning to appreciate the sweeter moments of life as a single mother.

But Wendy did not want to be single forever. She took to eyeing the personal ads, and went to church functions where there were likely to be single men. She even went out to the pub occasionally with her friend Pat to size up “the local talent,” as Pat called the men who hung around the Chinook Tavern and the Five Bells.

The cliché had proved sadly true: the best men really were married or gay. Honestly, the single men in this town are just pitiful, she and Pat used to say. They’d have their two beers at the bar, talk to whoever talked to them and then head off to their separate homes faintly depressed by the whole exercise.

Lots of the men who spoke to them seemed to be outright crazy. It wasn’t that they had outlandish hobbies or that they behaved in a threatening manner, although some of them were pretty rough around the edges. No, for the most part it was just that these lonely men were vacant, like abandoned houses. You just had the sense that there might have been a person in there a long time ago, but then something had happened and that person had never developed. Instead you got the guy who bought you a drink and then stared at the bottles behind the bar, saying nothing. Then, just before it was time to leave, he’d put a hand on your leg as if you’d been having the most intimate, exciting conversation of your life. Most of them hadn’t read a book in ten years, never read the newspaper except for the sports pages and had no opinion on anything that mattered—because there was no one living behind their blank eyes to take an interest. Even if Wendy had been interested in sleeping with any of them, or befriending any of them, which she had not, there had not been a single man among them whom she considered worth introducing to her six-year-old daughter.

Tara had weathered her father’s death as well as could be expected. At first Wendy had thought the tears would never end. But gradually Tara had got used to their new life, and eventually stopped asking about her father. In a way, that had made Wendy even sadder.

So, a year and a half of single motherhood. Her love for Tara became a golden bridge across a dark chasm, the thing that kept her alive. And although she would never have thought it possible, it seemed her love for her daughter grew deeper. She worried about it sometimes, that her daughter had become almost too important to her, as if she were becoming a surrogate for the missing husband. That was one of the reasons she had so wanted to find a man, and had been so dismayed with the local talent—until she met Frank Rowley.

Wendy liked to say that Frank had flown into her life like somebody out of a movie—a white knight wafting out of the sky to save her and Tara—but the truth was much less interesting. She and Tara had been just ahead of him in the checkout line at the No Frills. He had made some sort of inconsequential comment, and she hadn’t thought anything of it, beyond thinking he was cute for a bald guy. (These days she thought he was super cute, and she thought his bald head was one of the sexiest things about him.)

Afterward, she and Tara had been in the parking lot, about to drive away, when Tara said, “Here comes that man, Mommy.”

“What man, sweetheart?”

“The man in the store. He’s running.”

Wendy had turned to look and he waved at her and came up puffing. A grin. The window rolling down, the bag handed over, the thanks. It all took less than a minute, and she would not have given it another thought if it hadn’t been for their next encounter.

And this time he was a white knight.

She and Tara had gone out in a boat on Trout Lake. She had rented a small motorboat from the marina, just a fifteen-horse on the back. They’d had a wonderful day, putt-putting around the tiny islands near Four Mile Bay. Wendy had beached the boat on a sandy point, and the two of them had become absorbed in a game of “Indians.” Mostly it was a game of hide-and-seek, but it stretched on and on and Wendy had not noticed the storm clouds coming up.

They were only a few hundred yards from the island when the motor quit. Wendy tried and tried to start it, until her arm was just about falling off, but she found a bad rip in the fuel line and knew they wouldn’t be going anywhere unless it was by rowing.

But the oars turned out to be heavy and unwieldy, and they hurt her hands. She simply could not get the boat moving with any speed. The air grew thick and dark and there were flashes of lightning beyond the hills. Pulling with all her strength on the oars, Wendy overbalanced and fell backwards in the boat. Both oars came out of the oarlocks and went into the water. She and Tara were paddling after them by hand. Tara’s efforts were more counterproductive than useful, and Wendy was becoming genuinely frightened. In a matter of minutes the wind had blown them a long way from shore, there were few houses visible and there wasn’t another soul on the lake. Everyone else had had the sense to clear off.

She heard it before she saw it. A low roar, louder and louder. She looked up and there was nothing but the grey and purple turmoil of clouds. Then the plane dropped through them and nearly deafened them as it flew by. It disappeared to the north between two more islands, and Wendy had a faint hope that he would report their marooned “vessel” to someone at the marina who could come and get them. By the time she had retrieved the drifting oars and put them into the locks, raindrops had begun pelting down—heavy drops the size of marbles.

“Wow,” Tara said, over and over again. “I’m not scared, Mommy. Hey, Mommy, I’m not even scared.”

“That’s good, honey,” Wendy had said, although she considered it more rational to be frightened at this point, both of them soaked through, lightning pogo-ing over the hills toward them, and their aluminum boat the highest point on a flat surface.

Blisters were stinging the palms of her hands when they again heard a motor, much quieter this time.

They had rounded the point that took them into the main bay when they saw the plane ploughing its way toward them, pontoons sending up white frills on black water. It came within twenty yards of them, propellers roaring. The plane seemed to pivot on one pontoon, then the tiny side door opened and a man leaned out.

“Storm’s gonna break any minute, and it won’t be pretty. You better let me tow you in, all right?”

In no time at all he had tossed them a tow rope that Wendy tied to the metal ring on the prow. They were no more than twenty feet apart when she did this, and she could feel Frank staring at them.

“Do I know you?” he said. “Have we met somewhere?”

“Possibly. It’s not that big a town, is it.”

He snapped his fingers. “The No Frills. You were ahead of me at the checkout line. You forgot one of your bags.”

“I remember you,” Tara said. “You brought our bag.”

“That’s right,” Frank said. “I remember you, too. Are you ready for a tow?”

“I am!” Tara said. “Are you going to take us up in the air behind you?”

“No. I’m just going to drive across the bay here on the pontoons.”

“Oh.” Tara plunked down on the aluminum seat, disappointed. The rain made her hair cling to her perfectly round skull.

“We’re ready,” Wendy said.

Frank closed the door, the propellers roared again and soon they were following along in the V of his wake. The wind from his propellers competed with the winds of the storm, whipping wet strands of hair across their faces. It was nearly as dark as night. Along the shore, photosensitive dock lights winked on.

“I wish he’d fly up in the air,” Tara said. “That would be awesome.”

“I don’t think the plane’s strong enough for that, honey.”

“We could fly over the hills and all the way home in the boat.”

It took less than fifteen minutes to cross the bay, a distance that would have taken them an hour of rowing. Frank hooked his plane onto his buoy at the marina, then hauled their tin boat in.

“Can you make it to the dock from here?” He had to shout over the thunder. “I have to take my little painter in, or I’ll have no way of getting to the plane next time.”

“I think we can make it,” Wendy said. “Thank you so much!”

He hauled them toward the plane as he coiled up the rope. Wendy untied it and he reached down to shake her hand.

“Frank Rowley,” he said.

“Wendy Merritt. And this is Tara.”

And that was how Frank Rowley had flown into their lives.

Wendy started scouring a pot that was too big for the dishwasher. Frank came in wearing his wig. His sixties tribute band was playing the Chinook this week, and he liked to wear his John Lennon wig onstage. That was how his hair had looked before he lost most of it at the early age of thirty; he’d shown her pictures.

“Are you off to your gig?” Wendy said.

“In a minute. Stuff’s already in the car. I want to show you something.” He pulled two coupons out of his back pocket. “Bob Thibeault gave me two free passes for WonderWorld next weekend—well, actually Friday and Saturday.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Wendy said. “I can’t go next weekend. It’s the conference.”

Wendy had the autumn teachers’ conference coming up. On Friday the schools would be closed for a professional development day.

“I know, honey. But I wanted to run something by you. I’ve been thinking—we’ve been together eight months now, and I think Tara and I are getting along pretty well.”

“More than pretty well, honey. She’s crazy about you.”

“Do you think?” Frank said, visibly pleased.

“She always wants to know where you are. Always asks when you’re coming home. I think she still doesn’t quite believe you’re real. And she thinks maybe you’ll disappear like her other dad did.”

“Well, that’s kinda what I was thinking. Tara and I haven’t had a chance to really do any bonding stuff, just the two of us, you know?”

“Well, you’ve taken her up in the plane, you’ve done a couple of hikes. And you took the cruise on the Chippewa Princess.”

“That’s true. But those are just a couple of hours. I think it would be really great to spend a couple of days together. I think it might really make us a unit, you know? A real dad and daughter.”

Wendy leaned back against the counter, arms folded. The thought of Tara going away for a couple of days—to another town—made her nervous. Her daughter had been to day camps. And she’d slept over at friends’ houses. But she’d never gone out of town without Wendy. And WonderWorld was two hundred miles away, almost in Toronto. She said as much to Frank.

“Well, okay,” he said, disappointed. “If you feel she’s not ready. I just thought it was a great opportunity. But hey, I can give these away, no problem.”

“No, no, don’t do that.”

“Well, if we’re not going to use them.”

What am I worrying about? Wendy chastised herself. Frank’s the most responsible guy I’ve ever met.

“I’m just being silly,” she decided. “Of course she can go. I think the two of you would have a great time. Except—are you willing to spend two days at an amusement park?”

“I have to admit, it wouldn’t normally be my idea of a good time. But it seems like such a great opportunity for me and Tara to get to really know each other.”

The television went off in the living room. Tara came in, clutching a stuffed lion. She laughed when she saw Frank. “You’re wearing your hair!”

Frank primped a little. “How do I look? Ozzy Osbourne?”

“I love it,” Tara said, tugging at it.

“Oops, careful, honey. It’ll fall over my face and I won’t be able to see where I’m driving.”

“Mommy, can I get a cellphone? I want a Harry Potter cellphone.”

“No you don’t. You’ve just seen a commercial.”

“I do! I do! Then I could call Courtenay and Bridget.”

“You can call them now.”

“It’s not the same. Mommy, please, can I?”

“Actually, Frank has something better. You want to tell her, Frank?”

Frank crouched down to be on Tara’s level, the way he always did when he spoke to her. “How would you like to go to WonderWorld this weekend, just you and me?”

“WonderWorld? Are you serious? That would be triple awesome!”

“Well, think about it a second,” Wendy said. “Would you be okay just going with Frank? Mommy can’t go, because of work.”

“I wanna go! I wanna go! When? Tomorrow?”

“Friday,” Frank said. “We’ll have all day Friday and all day Saturday together. Won’t that be fun? Maybe I’ll even wear my hair for you.”