Wendell looked up, his gaze so intent that Ginny felt her cheeks warm. She shook her head.
Wendell kept his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear, but his message was clear. “Ginny, he’s still my best friend.”
Ginny blinked. It was not what she’d expected. The words coming out of his mouth did not match the look in his eyes.
“Got it.” Mortified, she stood up. It was no consolation that she could feel his eyes on her back as she walked away.
Bored and embarrassed, she convinced her friends to leave. “It’s early,” Kristen complained.
“I’m tired,” Ginny lied. What she was really tired of was pretending to have fun. They climbed the steep lakeside hill to the road above, where everyone had parked. They were almost to the top when she heard someone call her name. “Ginny, wait!”
It was Wendell. She stopped, letting her friends go ahead as he caught up.
“Don’t go.” He was out of breath, having sprinted all the way up the hill.
“Why not?” The sound of Kristen’s Jeep purred from up the street. Ginny had already made a fool of herself; she wasn’t going to miss her ride, too.
“I thought about what you asked,” Wendell said, standing to his full height. “If I thought you made a mistake breaking up with Evan.”
Ginny crossed her arms. “Like you said, it was a while ago.”
Wendell looked so uncomfortable that she almost caved right there. “You only made one mistake,” he said. Then he reached for her hand.
Ginny felt herself soften. “What was that?”
Instead of answering, Wendell leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. He pulled away slowly. “What took you so long?”
Up to the day they left for their respective colleges, they were inseparable. Nights they skinny-dipped in the lake at the town beach, and days they worked summer jobs, counting the hours until work ended and they could be together. Wendell’s father, who had little patience for teenagers and certainly didn’t know what to do with a teenage girl, took to Ginny right off the bat. By August, he was setting a fourth place for her at the dinner tableeach night. Wesley, who spent all his time on the sports fields and who’d paid zero attention to any girl Wendell previously liked, also took notice. Suddenly, Wesley was home all the time. He hung around telling bad jokes, sitting with them in the den watching movies, and trying to impress her with his basketball skills in the driveway. It got to the point where Wendell half-jokingly told Wesley to bug off and find his own girl.
Wesley punched him in the arm. “I don’t like her likethat,” he said. “It’s just nice having her around. Kind of like before Mom died.”
It was true. Ginny brought something back to the Combs’ household that had been missing. Wendell only wished his mother had met Ginny; he was sure she would’ve loved her.
By the time they’d packed their suitcases for college, neither was sure what would come of the relationship. Ginny went off to study business at Providence, while Wendell attended University of Vermont for biology and environmental studies. They stayed together all four years, visiting when they could and spending holidays and summers back in Saybrook, like the old days. By the time they graduated, they didn’t just talk about a future; they talked abouttheirfuture.
By then, Wesley had graduated from high school. Still wide-eyed and hungry for adventure, he couldn’t settle on a college despite his father’s insistence. He’d been a varsity-letter athlete all through school but was just as devoted to his social life. Wesley’s grades weren’t great; he partied too much. Alder Combs worried about his younger son. Unlike Wendell, Wesley always seemed restless for more. Saybrook had never seemed enough for him, a longing Alder feared he’d inherited from his mother. Perhaps it came from losing his mother at a young age. Perhaps it ran in his veins.
When Wendell and Ginny graduated, they returned for thesummer but planned to move to Boston together at summer’s end. Wendell had a contact at an environmental law firm and wanted to save money for law school. Ginny had a degree in business and wanted to try her hand at corporate real estate. But that summer they noticed Wesley was in trouble. He’d deferred college a year earlier and was home pumping gas at the local station. Wendell gave him a hard time about the late hours he kept, partying like he was still in high school, the kinds of company he was keeping. “They’re losers,” Wendell confided in Ginny after he bailed Wesley out of a bar fight one night and picked him up from a DUI another night. “Wesley’s going nowhere if he sticks around much longer. He’s going to hurt someone. Or himself.” It was true. Wesley seemed depressed, a washed-out version of his bright and funny old self. The final straw came when he lost his job and Alder kicked him out of the house. It took Wendell two frantic weeks to track his little brother down; he was living in someone’s basement, drinking through the days. Though she loved him, Ginny worried. Wesley’s problems were becoming theirs.
But everything came to a halt the day Wendell shared Wesley’s big news. He’d come back home, and he’d sworn off drinking. It seemed too good to be true, but Wesley insisted he had a plan. He was not going to college. Nor was he going to A.A., which they all thought he needed. Wesley had enlisted in the National Guard.
No one was more surprised than Ginny. But it was what Wendell told her next that came as a bigger surprise: “I have to go with him.”
“Are you crazy?” Ginny asked. Wesley was starry-eyed and silly. He couldn’t possibly understand the kind of commitment the Guard was. He’d never left Saybrook for so much as a week away at Scout camp. He was too sheltered to grasp it. But Wendell? He knew better!
“I know,” he said, his voice already full of regret. “But Wesley is a loose cannon. He needs help and he needs structure. If I go, too, I can keep an eye on him.”
“And what? Protect him? You can’t protect him from himself, let alone from combat.” Then, “Oh my God, Wendell. What if you two get sent overseas?”
“No, Ginny, it’s nothing like that. It’s just a two-year commitment,” he reassured her. “We’ll do basic training and probably never leave the Midwest.”
“But why?” she pleaded. “We have plans together.”
“We still do! As soon as I get back, we’ll go to Boston. And this will help me pay for law school. Besides, I feel like I sort of left Wesley behind when Mom died. I wasn’t there for him. Now I can be.”
None if it made any sense to her. Wendell had never shown any interest in the military beyond respect for those who enlisted and served. This was Wesley’s doing. This was Wendell’s guilt. And this drastic change in plans would keep them from starting the future they’d talked so much about.
“It’ll go by so fast,” Wendell promised her. “I’ll be home for breaks. We’ll write and call. This doesn’t change anything between us.”
