A Fireproof Home for the Bride (15 page)

“I’m so sorry.” Emmy leaned forward to take the book off the desk, and he moved it out of her reach. She had been up most of the night reading and desperately needed to know what fate would hand Selena Cross.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, and then pulled the note out of the book and handed it to her. “You may keep this.” She got up to take the note from him, and then turned to leave without meeting his eyes.

“Not yet,” he said. She sat back down. He propped his fingers together and rested his bottom lip on his thumbs. “I would tell your parents about this—it’s the school policy—but I know that they’re under some strain right now, with your grandmother’s illness.”

“Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Utke, but how do you know about my family?” Emmy asked, embarrassed that her story was so pitiable.

“I grew up in Glyndon,” he said, a tiny smile finally softening his stern expression. “I need an assistant. One of my girls has had to drop out of school.” Emmy knew that the girl in question was Karla Bossert. It was common knowledge that she was pregnant and had been sent off to her grandmother in Duluth to wait out her time.

“Thank you,” Emmy said. “But I’m afraid I’m not much of a typist and I don’t know steno, so I can’t imagine how I could be of use.”

“Just show up after school and let me worry about the rest,” he said, folding the newspaper that lay on his desk and handing it to her. “Read something useful, please. Your critical thinking scores are much too high to waste on prurient pulp.”

The bell rang, but Emmy didn’t shift, confused by whether she was being punished or rewarded, yet feeling that it was a little bit of both.

“Well, go on.” Mr. Utke stood. “I’ll see you later.”

*   *   *

Bev caught up with Emmy in the hall just after Emmy had closed her locker at the end of the day, determined to try her best to accomplish whatever task Mr. Utke had in mind.

“Hey, doll,” Bev said affectionately, putting an arm around Emmy. “Why so glum, chum?”

“Mr. Utke’s put me on his after-school staff,” Emmy said, returning the hug. The girls walked down the hall. “Seems
Peyton Place
is not exactly recommended reading.”

“Oh, gee.” Bev stopped and smacked the middle of her forehead with her palm. “I’d heard they were doing a locker sweep, but I didn’t know for what. Wow.” Emmy was cheered by the warmth of her friend’s voice. She turned and looked at Bev, at the pink cashmere coat slightly open, revealing the dress that she’d recently shown Emmy in
Vogue
magazine: a bright green no-waist sack-style dress that obscured Bev’s curvy figure, in loud contrast to all the pinch-belted shirtwaist dresses and flaring poodle skirts populating the halls. Bev shrugged. “Well, it’s better than detention, though, right? What do you say I come back and give you a ride home when you’re done?”

“You’d do that?” Emmy asked.

“Of course, silly. Mother won’t mind—she wants to meet you anyway—so you think we can swing by my house first?”

“I don’t see why not,” Emmy said as they continued down the thinned-out hall and stopped in front of Mr. Utke’s office.

“See you soon.” Bev released Emmy’s waist.

“Don’t be late.” Emmy waited a moment before opening the door for the second time that day. A girl looked up from a filing cabinet where she sat with a stack of files on her lap, working her way through the alphabet.

“There you are, Emmaline,” Mr. Utke said, strolling in behind her. “Thank you, Betty, you may leave the files on the shelf until tomorrow.” The girl set the neat stack where she was told and silently left the office, eyes focused on her feet. Mr. Utke motioned to a chair set in front of a small table. “Sit down, please.”

Emmy sat, looking at the blank sheet of paper, pencil, and a book titled
The Caine Mutiny
set out for her.

“I don’t have any work for you today, so I want you to just read for the next hour. Feel free to take notes.” Mr. Utke moved to his desk and worked there quietly.

She put her hand on the top of the thick book, opened it to the first chapter, and began to read.

After what seemed like ten minutes, Emmy felt Mr. Utke’s tap on her shoulder. “Time to go,” he said.

“May I take it home with me?” she asked, not wanting to stop reading.

Mr. Utke laughed. “Sure you don’t want your other book instead?”

*   *   *

When Emmy walked out of the school doors and into the dark, frigid early evening, Bev’s car was not there. Emmy scanned the reaches of the parking lot before she realized who was standing right in front of her: Bobby Doyle, leaning against his cream-and-red pickup truck, grinning widely. She’d already started to descend the short flight of steps and caught herself, nearly tripping down the entire set. She stopped where she was, a jolt of hot energy surging through her, a warning in her head telling her to go back inside the school.

She forced one foot down in front of the other, hoping to make her descent without further gracelessness, keeping her eyes glued a few inches in front of her feet. She knew she looked a fright. It was the night she usually washed her hair, which meant it was slightly too limp under her brown cloche hat. Beneath her battered but trustworthy coat she had on a heathered sweater that her mother had knit. As the most comfortable thing she owned, it was the least flattering. Her mother had attached the wrong cuffs to the wrong sleeves and so it would occasionally twist under a coat, which was happening now as Emmy tried to pretend that the sight of Bobby meant nothing more to her than a worn-out piece of scribbled-on notepaper.

“Hello,” she said, walking slowly up to Bobby and lifting her eyes to his face. He was even more handsome than she remembered, with a brimmed baseball-style cap that folded down to cover his ears and most of his hair. One small curl had snuck out and down his forehead, and Emmy wished she could spin the hair around her index finger. “Why are you here?” she asked, letting her hand drop to her side. Impossible, but his smile grew wider. His teeth were perfectly aligned and shone brightly in the glow of the parking lot lamps.

“Bev thought you might be mad,” he said, his hands jammed deep inside the pockets of his red letterman’s jacket. “But it was all my idea.”

“Mad? No.” Emmy walked to the passenger side and waited for Bobby to open the door. He laid a hand on her back and once again she felt that curious warmth. She stepped up into the truck and leaned against the seat while she waited for Bobby to get in his side. The engine was running and the cab was warm. This had always been her favorite part of winter: the immersion in a well-heated car right after absorbing the chill of an icy night wind.

“I’m not the type to take no answer for an answer,” Bobby said, putting the truck in gear and driving slowly out of the parking lot. “And even though Bev tells me you have some sort of fella out there, I’m still not giving up hope. In fact, I’m just going to drive you home, because Bev couldn’t make it, and she asked me to do her the favor. But don’t expect me to do it without trying to convince you that I deserve a shot.”

“You are some talker,” Emmy said, laughing. “And don’t tell me it’s because there are eight kids in your house.”

“Funny thing about that. My mom had me when she and Dad were eighteen, so they’re kind of kids, too. Which makes ten of us. You can see my problem.”

“Oh, I can see your problem just fine.” Emmy reached to turn up the radio, and Bobby grabbed her hand without taking his eyes off the road. She pulled against his grasp slightly before letting her arm go weak, and he rotated it slowly, circling his thumb and index finger delicately around her wrist before letting her have it back. She closed her eyes briefly, as though to blink away her betrothal, if only for the instant.

“Do you need to go straight home?” he asked, turning the wrong way on Main. “Or can I steal you away and show you something?”

Emmy looked at her watch, feeling the burn of his fingers to the right of the band. “I have time.”

He grinned. “You could come sit over here, where I can hear you better, you know.”

“Or I could stay here, where it’s safe from boys like you,” she said, the state of her hair and clothing making her more nervous than she liked.

He widened his eyes. “You know a lot of boys like me?”

“Not one,” she admitted, unable to resist moving toward him, a foot closer and yet still a foot away. It was either a mistake or a very smart decision, but in either case, the way he smelled like vanilla and peppermint drew her over another inch.

“See that parking lot?” he asked, after they had crossed the Main Avenue Bridge and reached Broadway.

“The one that looks like a parking lot?” she said.

“You’re a laugh riot. Yeah, that one. Doyle and Sons concrete, all of it.”

“That’s very impressive.” She laughed.

“There are more where that one came from,” he said, starting to poke fun at himself. “But even more exciting is our new contract, to build the new interstate highway from here to Bismarck.”

“The tavern or the city?” she said as they cruised past the neon sign of the former.

“I have half a mind to take you straight home,” he said.

“What about the other half?” She was surprised by her ability to be so light in the presence of a boy.

He snagged her hand again and pulled her closer. “You really like this other guy?”

“What other guy?” she sighed, wishing Bobby would stop making her remember Ambrose. She took off her hat and ran a hand through her unwashed hair as Bobby pointed out a Doyle concrete building going up at the college, and a plan for Doyle affordable housing along a strip of tornado-flattened property in the Golden Ridge section of North Fargo. Emmy listened to the simmer of his deep voice, comparing it to the reedy tones of Ambrose’s. Bobby turned the truck down a bumpy lane on the outskirts of town.

“Another Doyle and Sons road?” she asked, the headlamps illuminating a rutted dirt path lined with a few other cars, all pointed in the same direction. Bobby parked the car in a space along the row and turned off the lights.

“Hector Field,” he said, just as a long vehicle dotted with lights sped in front of their view, lifted at an angle, and took flight. He looked at his watch. “That’s the 6:10 to Minneapolis. We poured that runway.”

“It’s so pretty.” Emmy laughed, nervous in the quiet car.

“You might find it funny,” he said, all his mirth leveled. “But I know what I’ll be doing in five years. And ten. Mom wants me to be a priest, but Dad sees my potential.”

“I didn’t mean to make fun,” Emmy said, abashed. “I wish I had potential.”

Emmy tipped her face up to Bobby’s and looked into his eyes, the pupils so large in the dim light of the dashboard that the blue irises seemed gone. He stared back, and her mouth fell slightly open in a way that made her painfully aware of how much she wanted him to kiss her. A thrill started low in her spine and moved both down and up rapidly, simultaneously. He leaned toward her, and like magnets turned the wrong way, she pressed apart from the current she felt between them.

“Wow,” he said, low and dry. “Did you—”

“I should get home,” she said, afraid of how good this all felt, certain that there would be some kind of punishment awaiting her if she went too far.

He acquiesced and the raw relief inside of her sunk like an anchor without a boat to secure or a silt-thickened river bottom to settle into. It was agony. Uninvited longing held through their small talk, and when they got to the top of her street, she was startled out of her daze by a light on in the house.

“Quick,” she said, pulling on her hat. “Leave me here. I have to pretend I’ve walked.”

When Bobby brought the pickup to a stop, he took her by the shoulders and steadied his gaze once more. Her breath came in tiny whimpers until she broke free, out of the truck, her head pounding with the effort of not looking back.

“Wait,” she heard him call from the cab, but she refused again to turn, even as his footsteps hit the pavement and rapidly approached.

“Emmy, stop,” he said, directly behind her. She obeyed, wanting the weight of his hands on her, but instead he moved as close as he could to her without touching.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered next to her ear, a moment so perfect that Emmy tried hard to suspend herself within it.

“I hope you do,” she replied with the half hope he wouldn’t. There was no future to be had with Bobby, and so she folded the memory into her heart and gathered her courage to go. She walked briskly up the street, toward the cold reality of her foreseeable future.

Seven

A Delicate Web Unwoven

Days flowed into weeks as Emmy’s life returned to a deceptively normal state. Grandmother Nelson regained enough strength for Birdie to go back to school, Karin resumed her Glyndon schedule, the Branns ate Sunday dinner at the farm with the family after church each week, and Emmy worked an hour after school every day in Mr. Utke’s office with the blessing of her parents. Birdie had matured considerably the three weeks she had lived out on the farm, and seemed determined to take over Emmy’s after-school chores. Birdie was an adequate cook, but Emmy found she often had to secretly make modifications to the dishes, as the younger girl frequently neglected important ingredients, usually salt.

The one thing that set Emmy adrift in her once comfortable habits was the scissor cut of Bobby’s failure to reappear. No matter how many times she told herself that it didn’t matter, that a chance with Bobby was never meant to be, an unreasonable part of her longed for a note or a hint, anything that would crack into the tedium of her slow march forward. The night in his truck had become an unwelcome shadow dream to Emmy, his “I’ll find you” darkening her movements and haunting her skin where he had touched her. The few times the telephone had rung, she thought she would become ill waiting for the voice on the other end, which was invariably her mother’s from out at the farm, since Karin was the only person who ever called.

Emmy was stunned by the betrayal of her aching fingertips, and how in her heart there was a constant, throbbing twist. At first the feeling had been excruciating, as she imagined him around every corner—each truck that passed her on the street, every blond-haired boy in the school hallways. Within the first week, her uncontrollable anticipation had turned into a desperate thing, howling inside of Emmy up in her cold room on windburned nights.