Page 3 of Knot the Plan
He makes it almost all the way past. Then his hand comes up off the wheel. Barely. Two fingers.
Twelve kids lose their minds.
Grumpiest man in Huckleberry Hollow. Waves anyway. Every time.
He also happens to owe me a favor he's been hoping for two months I forgot about. But that's neither here nor there, and for one more hour my life stays exactly the size of this room, which is the size I like it.
I hold out until lunch. Barely.
I get through snack, where I negotiate a cracker-based trade agreement. I get through circle time, where we learn that the opera child's saga has a sequel. I get the room down for rest, lights low, white-noise machine doing its ocean impression, and the whole time my phone sits in my bag, ticking. I tell myself I'm not going to call her back at lunch. I'm absolutely going to call her back at lunch.
Then Lily takes the room, and I carry my phone out to the gravel lot behind the building where the cell signal lives.
Calling her back is self-defense. If I don't, she'll keep trying the school until somebody worse at lying than me picks up, and there is nobody in the entire state of Montana worse at lying than me. It's not a moral stance. I'd lie constantly if I could. The equipment just isn't there. My voice goes up, my ears go red, my scent does something tragic. Small children have caught me pretending the class fish “went to live at the lake.”
She answers before the first ring finishes. “There she is.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“I tried the school.”
“I know. I was up to my elbows in finger paint.”
“I have wonderful news.”
She announces it the way she'd unveil a cake, and my scent goes sharp out in the cold air before the rest of me catches up. My body has known this woman for twenty-eight years. It recognizes the sound of an ambush.
“You remember Sandra. From book club. Her nephew just moved back to Pine Valley. Settled, lovely, an alpha, runs his own accounting firm. His own firm, Josie. And single.”
“Mom—”
“He's a little quiet, but you talk plenty for two.”
“I'm at work.”
“It's one dinner. I already told Sandra you'd say yes, so it would be quite awkward now if you didn't.”
“You told Sandra?”
“His name's Gerald.”
I take the phone away from my ear and look at the mountains for a moment. Two hours ago I stood in my classroom and told Lily his name would not be Gerald.
It's Gerald.
A magpie lands on the fence post and stares at me.
“Josie? Are you still there?”
“I'm here.”
“He could just meet us at the reunion. It's perfect. The whole family around, nice and casual, no pressure at all.”
No pressure. From the woman who's spent my entire adult life applying it with both hands and a warm smile.
The whole reunion plays out in my head while she talks. I've lived it a dozen times, so every detail is accurate. The long table. The kids' end, the couples' end, and then my end, down between the coleslaw and Aunt Deb's sympathy.
Every settled pack leaning in over dessert to ask, so kindly, when it's going to be my turn, while my own scent announces to every alpha in a half-mile radius that I am, biologically speaking, extremely available.
