Jane had smiled at her friend, at a total loss.
“I’m sayin’ you look lovely, Jane. Proper Scottish.”
Jane had washed her hair then run gel through her curls, using a thin black, plastic headband to keep them back. Her diamonds glistened in her ears and Jane had put on a full face of makeup, using supplies she borrowed from Sara’s cottage yesterday with skills she’d adopted watching Ray a thousand times.
And the result was amazing. Jane didn’t know if it was quitting her job with Sara, a little magic in Maggie’s tartan, or simply putting some effort into her appearance, but she didn’t look anything like herself. She was completely transformed and stared at herself in amazement. Gone was Plain Jane Mays and in her place was someone new, someone reborn.
She breathed deeply, her heart fluttering as she remembered waking up in Lars’s bed this morning. He’d been facing her, still asleep, and she had gazed at his face for half an hour before he woke up, remembering his tenderness when he made love to her during the night. Sleeping like spoons, naked and warm, she had shifted in her sleep, rubbing up against him, stirring them both into a realm somewhere halfway between wakeful and asleep. Without a word, he had moved his hands to caress her breasts, and she had shifted her body to welcome his hardness, needing to feel him moving inside of her again.
They had peaked at the same time and as Jane had cried out in release, she felt Lars’s breath, hot and urgent on her neck, as he whispered something in Swedish.
And then she knew, staring at herself in the hotel mirror. No job, nor dress, nor makeup could have engineered such a transformation. Jane was looking at a woman in love. Desperately in love. And it was time that Lars knew.
She stared at her lips in the mirror then closed her eyes, focusing on his face in her mind, even as her body trembled with the import of the sacred words that hadn’t passed her lips in fifteen long years. Finally, finally, finally….
“I love you,” she breathed, almost a whisper at first, and then stronger, “I love you, Lars.”
She opened her eyes, her smoky eyes with long, thick, dark, made-up lashes, and said it one more time, deeper and slower, and strong: “I love you, Lars.”
And then she smiled at the girl in the mirror who looked a little like the Jane Mays she used to know.
***
With fifteen minutes left until Lars was picking her up, Jane decided to get a cup of coffee at the kiosk in the lobby and check out. She looked around the very average hotel room, and knew she would forever remember the moments she spent with Lars in this room. She felt grateful. She felt happy.
She put her lipstick and phone in the simple black patent-leather purse she had borrowed from Maggie, put her camera bag on her shoulder and locked her hotel room door behind her, a packed bag in each hand.
Her phone rang just as she had finished checking out, and her heart sank like a stone as she saw who was calling.
Don’t answer!
But she had to. Her heart may not have been tethered to Sara anymore, but there was one person in the world from whose affection and regard Jane would never be able to detach herself. She took a deep breath and pressed Talk.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, Jane.” His familiar voice made her wince with love, with longing, but her shoulders rolled forward, suspecting the reason for his call.
“Morning, Uncow.”
Jane had called her uncle “uncow” for as long as she could remember—long before her parents had passed away, when the two families spent every summer at a family resort in Cape Cod. She couldn’t pronounce the “l” sound as a child, and everyone thought her mispronunciation was so adorable, they had encouraged it long after her tongue stopped twisting. She had never called him anything else.
“How’s Montana?”
She tightened her jaw as her fingers turned cold and her stomach flip-flopped uncomfortably.
“Fine. Good.”
“I’m not going to play games with you. What happened between you and Sara? She said you quit?”
Jane’s unoccupied hand clenched into a fist, her nails biting into her palm. “Yes. I – I did.”
“Jane! What were you thinking?”
“We’re not…um, getting along that well, Uncow. It’s been a tough shoot, and I think Sara needs—”
“Jane, Sara needs you. She is your family. Practically your—your sister. Frankly, I’m shocked by this selfishness. I’m appalled.”
Jane cringed, her face contorting as she sat down on a bench outside of the lobby as he continued. The disappointment in his voice was almost unbearable.
“Family looks after each other. Family takes care of one another. I can’t believe I have to say this to you, of all people, Jane! I took you in when my brother died. I honored my responsibility to him. I cared for you like a daughter and I haven’t asked much of you in return, because family doesn’t expect payment. Family helps one another because that’s what families do. Sorry if you don’t like it, but family doesn’t quit when the going gets rough. That’s when family has to stick together, Jane.”
Her face felt hot and she knew it was red. She could feel a bead of sweat break out on her upper lip, despite the cool morning.
“Jane? Are you listening to me?”
“Y-yes, Uncow,” she whispered, her chest tight. She imagined the sick sound of metal on metal, manacles clanking shut on her wrists as he went on.
“Now, I am asking you to go back to New York with Sara and give her a little time. You are the glue that holds Sara together, and walking away from her is very cruel, Jane. Need I remind you that you had no job and no income before Sara took you on? Conversely, her career was a mess without you. You need each other. You cannot just walk away from her when it pleases you. Go back to New York and see if you two can work things out, or at least help her find a replacement—”
Jane’s heart dropped and tears bit the backs of her eyes. I’m not going. I’m not leaving him.
“Please, Uncow,” she whispered. “Please, I can’t.”
“Can’t? Mayses don’t say can’t, Jane. Can’t is just the…”
“…opening bid,” she responded, by rote, in a daze, her heart in anguish.
He paused. “Now, you listen to me, niece…I’m asking for your help. I’m asking you not to say no to me. I’m insisting on it.”
She straightened up, thinking of Lars. “But, I’ve…I’ve met someone, and he’s—”
“I heard all about that. Some tour operator in Montana? Be sensible, Jane. You’ve known him for a week. Sara is your family. You cannot possibly be choosing him over your blood. The girl I know—the child I raised—is smart and sensible, which are two of the many things about her which bring great joy to my heart, and would have brought great joy to my brother. Anyway, if your feelings for him won’t last through a few months apart, I suppose you will have learned something of value about the depth of your…feelings.”
They are not all you have…You have me.
“I already told him I’d stay.”
“Then tell him you’ve changed your mind. Tell him you are a person of character who loves her family and doesn’t let them down willy-nilly. Tell him that they took you in when you had nowhere to go and your uncow is not asking for very much.”