He watched her head back to the house and waited until she mounted the deck steps and disappeared inside before he turned back to the fire.
* * *
So many memories...
Gabe pulled the quilt closer to the fire. Mosquitoes really weren’t a problem tonight, but it didn’t matter. He’d be out here for a while, mosquitoes or no mosquitoes.
He watched the flames flickering against the night sky, but his mind was in the past.
He was seventeen again, aching to get out of Knights Bridge, knowing it meant leaving behind all he knew—the people, yes, but he’d see his family and friends and stay in touch with them. It was the day-to-day life of his small hometown that he’d be giving up forever. Pieces of it, anyway. Hiking and fishing in Quabbin, swimming in the river, ice-skating on the ponds and the rink on the town common, watching the holiday parades. He’d wanted a different life from the one he had, but what that life looked like had been unformed, based more on hope and dreams than firm goals and plans.
Too much like his father.
Gabe remembered figuring that out, deciding to get serious about specifics, dates, actions, deadlines. He wasn’t going to drift through life, always dreaming. He’d also known he’d do just that if he stayed in his small, out-of-the-way hometown.
He’d come out here to the river on a cool late-summer night before his freshman year in college. He got a fire going in the fireplace. Felicity stopped by, sat on his blanket with him, chatting about her plans. She already had everything set for her departure for college in upstate New York. He’d been procrastinating, which he’d done with college applications, too. He hadn’t applied to a single college early, in part because he’d known college—whatever one he ended up attending—would be a stepping-stone, not an end in and of itself, and he hadn’t had any patience with steps. He’d wanted to get where he was going even if he didn’t know exactly where that was.
He’d been driven, no question. Still was.
He’d known whatever he ended up doing, it wasn’t going to involve remaining in Knights Bridge. That was for the Sloans, the Frosts, the O’Dunns, if not all of them, most of them. It wasn’t for him. Mark had already left town, and Gabe wasn’t going to get sucked into staying.
He still could smell the fire that night. He’d gone swimming in the river and he’d been enjoying the heat of the flames on his bare feet. Even now, years later, he could feel the contrast of the chilly night air and cold grass as he’d considered his future. His parents hadn’t provided any wise counsel—any counsel at all. “It’s your life, Gabe,” they’d tell him. “Do your thing.”
He’d seen their laissez-faire approach as disinterest, an abdication of their parental role, even selfish. Why take the time and trouble to engage with him on his plans for his future when they could just indulge whatever they were up to at the moment?
Gabe bit back a wave of emotion. What he wouldn’t give now to have his mother go on with him about her latest craft project. She’d always had something in the works that was bound to make her “good money.” She loved starting new projects but she’d inevitably lose interest and rarely completed one. They were all, at best, a wash financially and, at worst, a money pit. But he’d never known anyone more cheerful or filled with life.
She’d never talked to him about the cancer that would take her life. “I want you to remember the good times, Gabe,” she’d told him. “My smile, my laugh, my love for you and your brother. If I don’t beat this—this beast...” She’d paused, getting a faraway look. “Never mind. I will beat it.”
But the fight wasn’t in her. It was playacting, as if she was reciting certain prescribed lines—as if it’d be wrong to accept she was at the sunset of her life. She hadn’t wanted her sons to think she was giving in, somehow hastening her departure from them.
She’d loved this camp, too. Money had always been tight for his parents, and they’d come out here, pitch a tent and enjoy themselves, never mind they lived a few miles up the river. For them, their times there were a break from their day-to-day routines, a low-cost vacation. They’d cook over the open fire, swim in the river and not go anywhere near town.
Now Felicity MacGregor owned it. What would his mother say about that?
She’d be fine with it, Gabe knew. His mother had liked Felicity. “She’s focused and direct,” she’d say, eyeing him in her knowing way. “You could do worse, you know.”
Gabe had never seen Felicity as particularly focused. Direct?
He smiled. Yeah, she could be direct. No one gave it to him straight the way she did.
No question he could do worse—and he had. At the same time, he’d resisted any romantic impulses toward her.
Mostly resisted, anyway.
Felicity had joined him that night in front of the fire, out of the blue. Her impending departure had been on her mind. “We’ll stay friends,” she’d told him, her words perhaps a cover for the uncertainty bubbling inside her. “We’ll always be friends, won’t we, Gabe?”
“Always, Felicity. Always.”
“Good. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I wish we were going to the same college, but we’ll only be a couple of hours apart, and we’ll see each other when we come home.”
“Yeah, that’ll be great. It’ll all work out.”
He’d watched the flames flicker in her wide, luminous eyes, and for the first time, he’d thought about what it would be like to make love to her there in front of the fire—what their lives would be like if they were more than friends. Gabe Flanagan, son of a fun-loving pair of flakes, and Felicity MacGregor, daughter of a small-town banker and an accountant.
He’d glanced at Felicity, who had been clearly
