Free Under the Light by Laura Whitcomb

Cathy.
    Jenny looked proud. “We did this together?”
    Cathy handed her a scrub brush and a spray can of spot remover. “We need to make it right before anyone sees it,” she said, pulling on a pair of yellow rubber gloves and kneeling in the Prayer Corner.

CHAPTER 10

Helen
    H IS CHEEKS WERE PINKED FROM the wind and his hair ruffled. A strand stuck to his forehead in a curl that made my heart ache.
    “Hey.” He smiled, hands in his pockets.
    “Hey.” Jenny moved back, swinging the door wide, and he stepped in.
    She had rescued his note from the kitchen sink, where her mother had thrown it, unfolded the page that was covered in running ink, and managed to read his phone number. She called him in secret that night. She told him what time Cathy was planning to meet a friend’s divorce lawyer the next morning. It was understandable that Jenny and Billy wanted to be alone—they may not remember becoming a couple, but they were bound by the union all the same. I had planned on guiding Jenny away from this entanglement, but I couldn’t help having a fondness for Billy even though he was not James. If I didn’t keep them apart, I wasn’t sure he would make Jenny happy for long.
    After glancing to see if anyone outside had seen Billy arrive, Jenny closed the door. Perhaps Billy had walked. Mitch didn’t drop him off and the rusty car was not parked outside.
    Billy took his hands from his pockets, but didn’t know whether to embrace her. Jenny was blushing.
    “I don’t really remember you,” she told him. “I mean, I know who you are from school.”
    “Me too.” He shrugged. “It’s weird.”
    Not as simple as it looked, this meeting, for most young men and women who begin a courtship do not have a forgotten history between them. They seemed like such children. Her hands were smooth, with rounded fingertips like a little girl’s.
    “Are you sure that’s me in that picture?” Jenny asked him. They stood in the foyer.
    “I wondered that too,” said Billy. “Why would a girl like you go out with someone like me? But Mitch says it’s you.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way.” Jenny reached out to touch his arm but never quite got there.
    He shrugged. “Okay.”
    “Want to see the house?” she asked. “I mean, the rest of the house. You probably remember my bathroom.”
    This made him smile.
    Jenny and Billy were dressed like opposites, from two sides of the chess board. He wore faded black pants and a dark gray sweatshirt turned wrong side out. She wore light cotton pants rolled up at the ankles and a long white shirt. They were lovely, awkward creatures.
    She led him into the kitchen and I followed at a respectable distance.
    “It’s really . . . clean,” he said.
    Each room reminded me of another problem I had caused: the dining room table where I had pretended to do Jenny’s homework—I had been a shameful student and completely abandoned her studies for a week; in the living room nearly a dozen family photographs had been taken down, which reminded me that I had taken photographs with Jenny’s camera without permission—she had gone to a great deal of trouble to keep her picture-taking a secret. It was sacred territory, and I should not have trespassed.
    Billy stopped by the living room sofa, stared at the carpet, the ceiling, in wonder. “It’s huge. You could set up a skateboard pit in here.” Then he homed in on the one unsmashed frame left on the wall. It held a picture of Jenny taken at perhaps one year old. The baby girl was standing beside a rubber wading pool, holding a beach ball, wearing a one-piece daisy bathing suit bulging with built-in lifejacket floats. Her wet hair made her appear nearly bald, and her tiny round ears stuck out like handles. The camera had caught her in a giddy laugh.
    I knew exactly what she felt like on that afternoon fourteen years before, though that was impossible, of course. Yet I remembered the squirmy weight of her and the cool damp skin with the