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  “I don’t know,” he said. “I need to build a new tip-up for ice fishing. And your dad and I are already planning our hunting trip. Hoping to get a buck this year.”

  I waited, thinking there would surely be something else—something about me. But I could tell by the way his body settled and he bit into his hot dog that he’d finished.

  “What if I go back to New York?” I said. “I was hoping with summer over, you’d come visit me.”

  He chewed for a long time. “I don’t think so,” he said at last.

  “Why not?” I said. “And don’t say work or money, because I know you have time off from work and I know that after the summer you’ve saved some money.”

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “You mean you don’t want to,” I said, feeling angrier at him than I could remember ever feeling.

  He took a deep breath. “Right,” he said at last. “Don’t want to.”

  This was big. This was not only the first time Tom had said these words to me; it was probably the first time he’d said them in his entire life.

  “Is it because things are unsettled between us?” I said. “Is that why you don’t want to go to New York now?”

  “I don’t mean I don’t want to go to New York now,” Tom said. “I don’t want to go ever.”

  “Oh, come on, Tom, you never want to go to New York in your entire life?”

  I said this last in a joking way, because I couldn’t believe it could possibly be true. I knew Tom was a guy who liked fishing and hunting and trucks and being deep in the middle of an unpopulated forest, but still I thought he would be curious. And if not even curious about New York, at least curious about my life there.

  But here’s what he said: “Never. Not in my entire life.”

  “So you just want to stay right here.”

  He looked at me directly. “If I could,” he said, “I’d stay right in this very spot, forever. With you right next to me.”

  “Oh, Tom,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “We’ll always have the island. Let’s make a pact that no matter what else happens in our lives, we’ll always come back here on the weekend after Labor Day to camp, just the two of us.”

  Now I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “Not happening,” he said huskily.

  “Come on, Tom,” I said, stung that he was pushing me away. “Don’t be like that.”

  “It’s not me, Amanda. I know with all the big things happening in your life, you don’t have time to keep up with all the news in Eagle River, but this island’s been sold to a developer. They’re putting houses in here, big ones, and a helicopter landing pad. This is the last year anyone’s going to be able to camp on this island.”

  “Oh God,” I said, stunned. “That’s terrible. I know how much this place means to you.”

  He smiled sadly. “Just to me?”

  “To me too,” I assured him.

  But we both knew it wasn’t really the same for me as it was for him. Tom’s world was fixed, with this island its brightest star, while my world had expanded and was expanding still, with undiscovered stars spreading infinitely out on my horizon.

  Maybe Tom and I did not have to break up, not now. I still loved him; that hadn’t changed. But I had changed; even this beautiful place was changing. And unlike Tom, I wasn’t ready to choose the real life that involved getting a little apartment in Eagle River, working at the pie shop while Tom fished, making love and having babies sooner rather than later, scratching everything else off my list but him. No matter what happened with my so-called modeling career, there were so many things I wanted to do with my life, things that involved going places away from Eagle River, away from Wisconsin, even away from New York and America. That involved doing things that did not involve Tom.

  We finished eating and threw water on our fire, and shook the sand off the sleeping bag and stowed it in the canoe. Then we said good-bye to the island and its whisky jacks, maybe for always.

  fourteen

  Imight have set the rest of my life in motion as soon as I got back, but I arrived to find my home in a state of crisis: Tati was in labor. It was still several weeks too early, but her water had broken, and there was no delaying the birth now. We could hear the wail of the approaching ambulance even as I stood in the front hall, my pack still on my back.

  “They’re taking her to the hospital in Rhinelander,” Mom said, puffing as she rushed around grabbing her purse, keys, a paperback on childbirth that she had read avidly and Tati had ignored. “Depending on the baby’s weight and condition, they may have to airlift it to a neonatal intensive care unit.”

  “Shit fuck piss-eating shit scummer.” This was Tati, doubled over on my dad’s arm with another contraction.

  “Breathe,” Dad said, breathing deeply, his own Lamaze perfect though Tati’s was nonexistent.

  The ambulance screeched to a halt outside the house and three paramedics jogged up the front walk bearing the stretcher.

  “I didn’t have time to pack her bag,” Mom said. “You’ll have to do it and meet us at the hospital.”

  “But…what should I pack?”

  Tati wanted to walk to the ambulance, but they insisted she lie down, and Dad stood there gripping her hand as they strapped her down.

  “I don’t know—whatever. Nightgowns. Something that opens down the front if they let her breast-feed. Underwear. Toothbrush. You’ll have to figure it out, Amanda.”

  And then they were gone, leaving the air in the house still but somehow rearranged, as if a hurricane had just blown through.

  I set down my pack and stood there for a moment, collecting myself. Tom and I had been silent during the journey home, and he’d dropped me off at the curb. Neither of us wanted to prolong our inability to say anything that might make everything okay again.

  Finally I took a deep breath and headed into the room Tati and I had been sharing—my old room in the back of the house. I’d always had twin beds so that, as an only child, I could have plenty of sleepovers. My side of the room was neat, as it always was, but Tati’s was the usual disaster, the pink flowered sheets a tangle, the contents of her suitcase strewn across the floor. And that was saying a lot: Her enormous bag was the same one she’d brought to the Bahamas, and she’d packed, it seemed, nearly everything she owned.

  I found a small duffel bag in the back of the closet and set about gathering some things of Tati’s to bring to the hospital, though the mountain of clothing was woefully lacking in any of the items Mom had mentioned. Underwear: Forget it. Tati didn’t wear any. I’d have to stop at Wal-Mart and find her some basic cotton panties. Ditto nightgowns. Tati slept nude, covering herself for modesty’s sake in our house with a vintage kimono she tied on to make her now frequent middle-of-the-night bathroom runs.

  I packed the kimono, plus a few pairs of loose cotton yoga pants, and a couple of tiny tanks. Let’s see, what else? She didn’t even have any clothes for the baby—we’d wanted to take her shopping for a layette, but she was superstitious about doing it before the baby was born—so I’d have to pay a visit to Wal-Mart’s baby department too.

  Sifting through the tangle of fabric, my hand hit on something hard: a book. No, a diary. My heart started to thump as I lifted it and considered whether to look inside. Maybe it would hold a clue to what had happened with her and Bobby. My hands trembling, I opened the book—only to find pages and pages of tiny scribble in…Ukrainian. I threw the diary in the duffel, figuring she might want to write about having the baby.

  That was it, then. Kneeling in the middle of the pile, I realized everything else—white miniskirts and sequined tops and saffron party dresses—would probably not come in handy in the hospital. I ran my hand through the tangle of fabric to make one final search for anything that might be of use, and that’s when I came across it: Tati’s cell phone.

  I should have found it earlier, especially since it was making a faint beeping noise, though that had been muffled by all the clothing piled on top of it. Message
s? I hadn’t seen Tati talking on the cell phone at all since we’d arrived in Wisconsin—even, come to think of it, since we’d left New York. I opened the phone to see if it needed charging—was the charger around here somewhere?—and that’s when I saw the message on the screen that said there were fifty-four new text messages.

  Fifty-four messages! My heart did a somersault thinking that at least some of them must be from Raquel. Very slowly, I let myself look at the list of text messages. I breathed more easily once I saw that the first few were not from Raquel. In fact, I saw with amazement as I scrolled down the list, none of them were from Raquel. They were all from someone called BobBill—who very quickly I figured out was Bobby Billings.

  “Darling,” read the first and most recent, “R told me about baby. I’m desperate. All my love. Call!!!”

  And every other message was a variation on that, starting with the casual, back in July, “C u Saturday?” through the pleading “Come on, sweetie” through the increasingly desperate and concerned “Where are you? Why won’t you call? I love you. I miss you. Marry me.”

  Marry me. Had Tati known about this? I doubted it. She’d continued to insist that Bobby was only interested in her for sex, that he didn’t love her and didn’t take her seriously.

  But he obviously took her most seriously. He even knew about the baby and was more determined than ever to see her, to be with her.

  And what if things weren’t okay with the baby? It was awfully early: The baby was sure to be tiny, to have trouble breathing. What if Tati herself had problems, physical or emotional?

  I knew Tati had said over and over she didn’t want to get in touch with Bobby Billings, but it seemed clear to me now that he deserved to know that Tati was in the hospital, that the baby was coming early, to be with her and to see his newborn child. If he showed up and Tati didn’t want him then, she could tell him. But I suspected she’d be thrilled to have him at her side.

  I’d never sent a text message before, but given that I didn’t know Bobby Billings’s number and it wasn’t in the phone, I’d better learn fast.

  “Dr BB,” I typed. “T in hpital Rhinelander, Wisconsin. [I figured I’d better spell that all the way out.] Baby cming erly. Hrry. Amanda.”

  Then I threw the phone in the duffel and headed to the hospital to do what I could.

  I was amazed, on arriving at Rhinelander hospital, to find Bobby Billings already there. He was pacing in the hospital lobby, his starched white shirt open at the neck, his gray suit pants as rumpled as his blond hair.

  “How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

  “I took the company chopper to the airport as soon as I got your message,” he said. “I flew the jet here myself. I landed at a little airport just down the road.”

  “I know, but it’s been only…” I looked at my watch. Less than three hours. Between navigating Wal-Mart and finding parking at the hospital, it had taken me longer to drive from Eagle River than he’d made it from downtown Manhattan.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “I’ll take you upstairs to find her,” I said. “But I have to warn you. She doesn’t have any idea I got in touch with you, and she’s been saying she doesn’t want to see you.”

  I hesitated, but decided this was no moment for hedging. “She doesn’t think you really take her seriously, that you really love her, or that you’d want the baby.”

  Bobby groaned. “That’s my mother’s fault,” he said. “I invited Tati to the Vineyard one weekend, and my family was horrible to her. But that’s not me. What can I do to reassure her?”

  I smiled and patted him reassuringly. “You may have already done it.”

  I filled him in, on the way to the maternity ward, about all that had happened in the Bahamas, about how Mom and Dad had taken care of Tati, about how the baby was still way too early, how Tati and especially their child might be in serious danger.

  When we got up to the ward, they’d already taken Tati into the delivery room. Because the baby was so early, they were going to do a C-section to minimize the stress on its underdeveloped lungs. My mom was with her.

  “I have to be in there,” Bobby said, looking around to find the door.

  “Sorry, son,” said my dad. “You’d have to be scrubbed and gowned first, and it’s too late for that. Besides, this isn’t the time to spring anything new on her.”

  Dad had such quiet authority that Bobby accepted that. The three of us sat in the waiting room, like nervous fathers in an old sitcom, but we didn’t have to wait long before a nurse emerged, eyeing us with confusion.

  “I’m looking for the Tatiana Gudonov family?” she said.

  “That’s us,” the three of us chimed, all standing up.

  “Who’s the father?”

  “Me,” said Bobby, swallowing hard and stepping forward.

  The nurse consulted a paper in her hand. “Are you Duke?”

  “I’m Duke,” said my dad. “I’m the, uh, grandfather.”

  The nurse looked at me.

  “I’m the aunt,” I said. “And the godmother.”

  “Well, congratulations, all of you,” she said. “It’s a boy. And he’s much bigger than anyone expected—over four pounds. He’s breathing fine on his own, though he’ll have to spend some time here at the hospital.”

  Bobby practically collapsed on the floor, as if he were the one who’d just given birth. Though I supposed he’d spent the past few months laboring under a torment of his own.

  The nurse told us she’d let us know when the baby would be cleaned up and ready to be “viewed,” and when Tati could receive visitors. Dad put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder and began talking to him in a low voice. This was my chance, I figured, to duck away.

  I found the pay phones in the hospital and dialed Tom, telling him what had happened. An hour later, he was there too, just as the nurse announced that Tati was ready to see us.

  I was about to head in, but Dad touched my arm to hold me back. He put his fingers to his lips to signal that we should be quiet.

  Mom had broken the news of Bobby’s arrival to Tati. Rather than resisting or arguing, as I had feared, Tati had been so impressed that he was there that she couldn’t wait to see him. She did, however, make Mom bring her a brush and a lipstick so she could fix herself up before she saw Bobby.

  Through the crack of the door, I could see Tati sitting in bed, looking even more gorgeous than she usually did. In my brief experience of modeling, there were some girls you might walk right by on the street who looked amazingly more glamorous in pictures. And then there were some girls, much fewer, who were spectacular whether they were in full makeup wearing Balenciaga or snoring in the middle of the night or lying in a hospital bed directly after surgery. Tati was one of these.

  Bobby walked slowly to the bed. He hesitated for a moment, and then he leaned in gingerly and kissed her on the cheek, whereupon she threw her arms around his neck and, crying out, pulled him close to her. Now they were both clinging to each other, both crying, stopping only to kiss.

  “Oh my darling,” Bobby said.

  “My Mr. Billings,” said Tati.

  “I love you I love you,” said Bobby.

  “I love you,” said Tati.

  “Oh,” said Bobby. “Marry me. Marry me now.”

  I turned away, feeling that I’d already watched and listened too long. Tom walked down the hallway with me.

  “Pretty romantic,” he said.

  “Very.”

  “Maybe that’ll be us someday.”

  I smiled at him. “Maybe. Someday.”

  “I know you have to go, Amanda,” he said softly. “It’s okay.”

  I put my hand on his strong arm. “And I know you have to stay.”

  We kissed then, there in the hospital corridor, and it was as sweet and romantic, in its own way, as what had happened between Tati and her Mr. Billings. Nearly, anyway.

  It was Dad who, ironically enough, negotiated my return to Awesome Models and my
trip to Paris with Raquel. All those years of haggling over worms and minnows had, it turned out, made him a great negotiator.

  Not only did he get Raquel to take me back, but he convinced her that she had to win me back, and give me a raise to do it. And he got me a suite at the Crillon in Paris, not just for the duration of the shows, but for two weeks before, nominally for fittings, but really because he knew I would love it—and he knew it would give me time to look for Jean-Pierre Renaud.

  I invited Mom to come with me, but though she was tempted, she said she needed to stay around to help Tati with the baby. Maybe in the spring, she said. Maybe you and Dad can both come then, I countered.

  I wanted to ask Tom to join me, but I knew he’d say no, and then I’d just feel worse, so I decided to leave it.

  Alex had come to seem more like an imaginary figure during my time in Eagle River, but I suspected once I got to France he would once again be very real. More real, even, than I’d let him be in New York or the Bahamas.

  And as nervous as I was about going to Europe for the first time by myself, I felt better once I called Desi to tell her all the news.

  “You’re going to Paris?” she said. “I’m going to Paris!”

  “What? How?”

  “Jonathan Rush wants me to go,” she said. “To research next season’s line.”

  “Oh my gosh! We’ll be there together!”

  “I’m scared shitless,” said Desi. “What if I get lost on the subway and nobody speaks English? What if I need to go to the bathroom and don’t know how to ask?”

  “I’ll help you,” I assured her, though the only thing I’d have on her was a week in Paris before she arrived and a little extra confidence. That, however, might be enough.

  Everyone went with me to the airport, even Bobby and Tati and their baby, newly released from the hospital. Tati had, in the end, wanted to name him Bobby Jr., though Bobby said his real name was Robert, and the baby should really have a Ukrainian name. So he was called Boris Robert Duke Patty Billings, and got his picture on the front page of the News-Review for being the longest, thinnest baby ever born in Vilas County.