Free It Happened One Night by Lisa Dale Page A

strangeness of the evening, of his relationship with her. She could take off all her clothes
     and stand entirely naked before him, and he still felt as if there were a hundred layers between them, as if the air itself
     obscured them one from the other.
    She didn’t hesitate. She ran off the edge of the cliff into the dark, where she hung suspended for a brief moment like a slant
     of moonlight before she fell into the blackness, into the water far below.
    Eli sat down on a rock at the top of the cliff and waited. He’d swallowed his own desires so deeply and efficiently that he’d
     once believed them to be gone. And he’d suffered rejection—humiliation even—when he’d offered everything in his heart to her
     all those years ago, and she’d turned him down. He’d allowed himself to be relegated to the sidelines, and he told himself
     he could be content. But the plain fact was, he wasn’t.
    He heard Lana swimming in the water at the bottom of the cliffs. The rocks weren’t impossible to climb, but they were treacherous
     even during the day. He could picture her down there in the darkness, her skin pebbling in the cool air, her hair ropy and
     clumped about her shoulders like some Grecian naiad as she began to hunt among the rocks for the best route.
    He stood to peer over the edge, wondering if this time she would let him help her climb back up.

July
    Queen Anne’s lace (also known as wild carrot):
Some say the white flower was named because the purple center represents when Queen Anne pricked her finger while making
     lace. Some say that purple mole is the queen and the “lace” is her collar. Some say Queen Anne challenged her ladies to see
     who could make lace as lovely as the wild carrot; the queen won.
    Queen Anne’s lace has reportedly been used as an abortifacient.
    July 4
    L ana stood with her hands on the railing overlooking the lake from the vista of Battery Park. On the grass far behind her,
     Karin, Gene, Eli, and Kelly were sitting together on a picnic blanket. The twilight sky was a deep, wide azure, and the horizon
     had been tinged a yellow so soft a baby might grab a corner and use it like a blanket.
    She could remember the exact moment she first thought she didn’t want children. Karin was downstairs preparing a meal for
     the boarders, and Lana was sitting cross-legged in the locked attic, a consignment-store baby doll in her arms. The doll had
     a smooth bald head like a newborn and a soft cotton body that was stained yellow in spots. She had been cooing and cuddling
     the baby in a way that made love bubble up in her heart, when she heard her father come into the house. His footsteps were
     as heavy as an executioner’s. She paused a moment to listen. Then she returned to the doll on her lap, searching out that
     feeling of love once again.
    But it was too late. The feeling was gone. Unrecoverable. Eventually, she put the doll back in a milk crate in the corner
     and didn’t take it out again.
    Of course back then she’d been only vaguely aware of the connection between the sound of her father’s return and the doll.
     And certainly the change hadn’t been instantaneous—probably, it had been building up for some time, and that moment in the
     attic was the last straw. But whatever the chronology was, from that moment on she knew she would never want a baby of her
     own. She wanted an adventure—to come and go as she pleased just like the boarders did. The stories all those men told her
     had fired her imagination. She had no patience for just sitting home.
    A handful of skinny, elementary-school kids ran past her, cackling and playing tag. Children were everywhere, flailing and
     wiggling and squealing. Parents pushed strollers, chased down wayward toddlers, and wiped dirt from their children’s hands.
     Some of the families looked happy, but some did not.
    Lana dropped her head in her hands.
    “What are you doing over here by yourself?” Karin asked.
    “Huh?” Lana