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  She put the earplugs in and got back into bed. Now she could only hear the banging sound, and she shuddered at the thought that children might stay in this room on family vacations while their parents were getting it on next door. What I Learned on My Summer Vacation.

  Rebecca tried to sleep, but to no avail. Kate and Jeff quieted for a few minutes, during which Rebecca took the earplugs out again and strained to hear what was going on in Jake and Marci’s room. Just as she began picking up a stray word here and there—“baby,” “our life,” and something she was fairly sure was “manipulated”—Kate began to giggle in the other room, and the sounds of passion started anew on the right side. Rebecca put the earplugs back in, this time adding the pillow over her head for good measure, and tried to think about the travel schedule to and from Cincinnati. And then San Diego, New York–LaGuardia, and Seattle. She forced herself to visualize the schedules in front of her, numbers swimming in and out of her mind’s eye as she tossed and turned and squeezed the pillow over her head.

  Nothing helped. The high-pitched breathy sounds found their way to her ears no matter how she tried to drown them out. And despite her best efforts to think of anything else, her body began to ache and throb without her permission. Are they making a porno in there or something? Rebecca knew she would never look at little Kate the same way again, and she was glad for Jeff’s sake that his brother-in-law’s room was all the way across the house, or he might be out of a job for what he was doing to Dylan’s little sister.

  Rebecca could not remember the last time anyone had made her feel the way Kate sounded right now. Maybe it had never happened at all. She had dated men, of course, and even had a few relationships that lasted several months. And like nearly everyone in the airline industry, she had to own up to a couple of careless nights with charming pilots and men she’d met in bars. But no one had ever inspired that kind of abandon. She had never been a wild girl, and always preferred what she assumed was pretty standard sex. She liked the feel of a man on top of her, in a dark, quiet room. She liked the lights off and the covers up, and soft, hot breath in her ear. Even that had been months ago at this point, the last time anyone had touched her at all. Her pulsing ache deepened, grew more insistent.

  She stood up, breathless. The purple velvet bag burned out of her suitcase in the corner as though it were on fire. “No,” she said softly, feeling giddy just at the thought of it. “Not here.”

  But why not?

  As she paced in the tiny room, she could now hear that Jake and Marci had lowered their voices, and while the sound was muffled, it was clear from the location that they were now in bed, too. Just leave, Rebecca. Go to a hotel. Does your self-torture know no bounds? Do you have to picture him naked with her?

  Suddenly she saw him, not with Marci, but back in Athens. He was twenty years old or so, peeling off a sweaty T-shirt after basketball in the intramural gym. Rebecca did not remember now why it had been only she waiting for him after his game—they were headed to some event that had long ago faded in her memory. But she could still feel the bleachers pressing into the back of her thighs as she’d watched him play—wholesome and strong and vigorous. And when he leaned bare chested toward her to throw the soggy shirt into his bag, he had given her a sheepish grin that made his perfect body even more …

  To hell with it. Rebecca stormed over to her suitcase, flung it open, and retrieved the bag. She held it in her hand, weighing it for balance the way she imagined knights had once done with fine swords.

  Why not? she thought again. “Why shouldn’t I have a good time, too?” she said out loud, at her normal speaking volume. “It’s not like they can hear me,” she said a little louder, and waited.

  Apparently they could not, because the sounds of lovers in stereo continued on either side of her walls unabated. She considered the thing in her hand, feeling a little aroused and mostly ridiculous. Did women really use these? She knew girls at work who had funny nicknames for their vibrators, and who had no more shame about them than they did a hair dryer. The one Valerie had bought her, the Goddess 3500X, was a rubbery facsimile of a penis (except translucent and hot pink instead of flesh colored) attached to a base of lavender plastic with several buttons and dials. If she held it upright, it looked like an obscene little statue on a plastic plinth.

  She paused once more to listen, and it was now clear Jake and Marci were doing more than talking. She looked at the Goddess. “It’s either this,” she said, “or go sleep on the beach.”

  Rebecca was not sure what all the buttons and dials did, but she figured out how to make it vibrate, and then discovered that it also spun in wiggly circles on the base, like a short, angry snake trapped in a hot-pink grocery bag. She repressed a giggle, turned off the light, and retreated to the bottom bunk. The buttons glowed! Someone had put thought into engineering this thing. She piled the comforter and every pillow in the room over her midsection to muffle the sound. The extra weight of the covers made it hard to maneuver the rubbery toy under the sheets, but eventually she worked her panties down to her knees and got it into what she assumed was the right position. She turned it on, tentatively trying different buttons and dials until it seemed to be just vibrating.

  At first, she barely touched it to the skin over her pubic bone, feeling totally absurd. She stopped and started a few times, nervous but intrigued. And aroused. It was foreign and strange against her body. After a moment or two, though, the vibrations tingled across her lower body. She began to relax, and then, even more. Soon she had abandoned herself to it, and the idea that someone might overhear and come bursting in only added to the excitement. So this is why all those girls love these things.

  Rebecca slowly began to let her mind wander until it landed on a familiar video montage—there was Jake playing basketball, Jake helping her out of a car somewhere and the way his hand gripped hers just for a moment, Jake tonight on the beach with his hand on her shoulder, and of course, the night four years ago when he had allowed himself to melt beneath her kiss. It had only been a kiss, one tiny moment. She had left his apartment minutes later, dejected and alone.

  But in her imagination, there was so much more. Rebecca had a hundred fantasies with that kiss on Jake’s couch four years ago as a starting point. And they all ended with her wrapped in Jake’s strong, bare arms. Exhausted, happy, and, most of all, safe.

  Tonight, however, Rebecca had barely gotten to the good part when she felt herself begin to climax against the weird little machine. It was intense, maybe too much so. She fumbled for the dials to reduce the vibration but just got the squirmy thing instead. Before she knew it, there were fireworks all over again.

  Except that she really was hearing fireworks, she realized. They were crackling overhead, and no sooner had Rebecca noticed them than there was an enormous explosion right over the house, a boom like thunder. She fumbled with the Goddess’s buttons and dials but could not turn the thing off. Meanwhile, the loud noise had interrupted the couples on either side of her, whatever they’d been doing when she was no longer listening. She could hear movement as people got out of bed and came out of the bedrooms. She heard conversation in the hall.

  “What was that? Kids, you think?” The sliding glass door opened to the deck.

  Rebecca pulled the vibrator up above the covers, still trying without success to find the power button. She figured out how to slow the vibration but it was still making noise. Maybe even louder. Then light appeared under the door and she heard Marci and Kate talking in the hall.

  “That really was loud.”

  “Yeah, what do you think? Maybe some teenagers or drunk college kids with bad aim?”

  “Probably. Why fireworks tonight, though?”

  “I know—it’s not the Fourth of July yet. Don’t they know people are sleeping?”

  “Well, not exactly sleeping yet, but close.”

  A slight chuckle. Awkward silence.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  �
�It’s like a buzzing sound.”

  Oh, God. Rebecca frantically hit every button on the damn thing, and none of them turned it off.

  “No, I don’t—wait, yeah.”

  “It sounds like an electric razor or … or something. Could somebody be mowing grass this late?”

  “I don’t think so. Do you think the fireworks hit something, like on the roof, or a power line?”

  “I guess. Maybe. But that really doesn’t make sense. It sounds like—”

  At this point, Rebecca was struggling blindly to get the thing open to simply take out the batteries, but of course, that wouldn’t budge either. I am going to kill Valerie, she thought. She forced herself to get out of bed, the Goddess in hand. She could think of no other options; it was clear everyone in the house was up, and they would not believe she had slept through the noise of the fireworks, especially with people talking outside her door. She reached for one of the higher baskets on the little bookshelf and tossed the vibrator inside, hoping the sound would be muffled, and then flipped on her light. She buried the velvet bag in her suitcase and grabbed a thin robe at the same time, and then emerged into the hallway, trying to look sleepy and bleary-eyed in the light. She heard Beth’s soft snores on the couch and wished she had faked sleep.

  “What was that noise?” she said, somewhat convincingly.

  “Which one?” Marci said with the trace of a smile.

  Thankfully, the guys emerged from the back deck at that moment. “Yep, just a bunch of drunk kids,” Jeff announced. “Did Dylan and Suzanne come out?”

  “No,” Kate said, grinning. “I guess they’re assuming we’ll come get them in an emergency. Since this is not an emergency, however…” She took Jeff’s hand and led him back to their bedroom, shooting an impish look over her shoulder as she went through the door.

  Now alone with Jake and Marci, Rebecca was beyond uncomfortable. She tugged at her robe, which was already closed, trying to cover herself more.

  “Cold?” Jake asked. Then before she could answer, he said, “What is that sound?”

  Rebecca tried to look around so that he and Marci wouldn’t see that she was now bright red. “Do you hear it, babe?” he said to Marci. “Like a weird kind of buzzing?”

  “Oh, that?” Marci said, tossing a glance at Rebecca. “That’s just the power lines or something. We heard it last night, too. The landlord says it’s normal.”

  “Normal,” Rebecca echoed. She thought there was still a question on Jake’s face, but he allowed his wife to lead him back to their room, and Rebecca nearly collapsed in humiliation and relief.

  She went back into her tiny cell and stared at the vibrating basket on the bookshelf, regretting ever taking the damn thing out of the bag. When the conversation seemed to have died down in the other rooms, she retrieved the vibrator and located the power button. She had not been imagining things after all. It didn’t work. So she pushed, cursing, on the battery panel until it came off its hinges with a snap of breaking plastic. Only then did she notice a tiny release lever on the bottom, now cracked from her efforts. Thankfully, she did not hear any reaction to the end of the buzzing in the other rooms.

  For a few minutes, she lay on the bottom bunk, tossing and turning as the house grew quiet around her. She checked her phone—it was 3:45, the time she normally had to get up on workdays, and she could feel her body’s energy rising as she lay there. Three years of training for early starts were overriding how tired she felt now. In a way, Rebecca wished she were going back to work today, instead of Tuesday. Between the obnoxiously happy couples flanking her tiny room and tonight’s humiliation, there seemed little to look forward to with sunrise and morning coffee.

  Rebecca flung the covers off, felt around on the sandy floor for her slippers, and padded to the light switch. It took her only a few minutes to pack and scrawl a note for her friends. “Work called—sorry—catch you guys later!” She sneaked past the sleeping Beth on the couch and was out the front door. She found a cab company on her smartphone and within half an hour, she was sitting in a relatively clean, coconut-scented backseat on the way to the airport. She called the Charleston flight desk and wheedled her way onto the standby list for a five-thirty flight to Atlanta, and then stared out the window at the inky black, dotted with yellow mercury streetlights. It was the same view she’d had on the drive to the beach house with Marci, two nights before.

  9

  Hours later, Rebecca was walking through the D terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, wondering what she would do with a couple of free days all to herself, when she remembered the call from her mother. She rode down the escalator and boarded the tram behind a group of teenagers in matching tracksuits before pulling out her phone to see if her mother had called again. She had not. A little surprising, but maybe, Rebecca told herself, the mistake had been cleared up. Maybe Daddy had called the power company and sorted things out. Or perhaps it had not been the power company but just a mortgage payment that got misdirected. Rebecca had heard a horrible news story about a family whose house had been foreclosed because the bank had been applying their loan payments to the wrong account. But surely this would not be the case? Daddy would definitely know. At least, as long as he had been able to disconnect himself from Sonia long enough to pay attention.

  “She doesn’t need me,” Rebecca whispered. “She’s fine.”

  One of the tracksuit kids glanced up at Rebecca, who gave an embarrassed smile in return. She rode back to the main terminal in silence and wheeled her carry-on to the restroom, checking her makeup and washing her hands even though she had not used the stall. She looked in the mirror. “You are entitled to live your own life. Your family’s problems do not have to become yours.”

  But before she was even finished saying the words, she knew they were as hollow and empty as the industrial tile walls around her. She exited the bathroom, waited for the shuttle to her car, and waved her employee pass at the exit gate. The blue interstate signs for the 75/85 connector pointed home to her quiet apartment, soft clean bed, and forty-eight hours of rest before she had to be back here for work.

  It was no use. She followed the frontage road around to the signs pointing toward I-285 and then I-20 West. Toward Birmingham, Oreville, and the sinkhole that had once been her whole wide world.

  * * *

  Her phone buzzed loudly at ten thirty, breaking her out of an interstate reverie just as she crossed into Alabama and the Central Time Zone. Jake’s name flashed up at her from the passenger’s seat, and her cheeks burned. For once, she could not bring herself to answer his call. Either she’d forgotten something, which was unlikely, or he didn’t believe she’d been called in to work. Maybe no one else did either. She would need to excuse herself; at some point she would have to explain, but not yet. It was all too fresh and confusing.

  As miles and miles of I-20 slipped unchanging beneath her Honda Civic, her mind drifted back to Jake and that night four years ago. They had been sitting on the couch together in his apartment, just the two of them. Rebecca had been unbelievably nervous but Jake seemed not to notice, since he was busy grieving for what seemed to be his lost relationship with Marci. He was nursing a bottle of Scotch, and she, her ever-constant desire for him. They were watching The Philadelphia Story. Rebecca had known he was in mourning, and that at best she would be his second choice. But he had looked so vulnerable and sad that night, the cloud of anger on his face making him look tortured and—if it was possible—even sexier. His cheeks had been ruddy with booze and the effort of holding back tears, his breath sticky sweet, and his hands lay lifeless on either side of his lap. It was so sad. And so strangely inviting.

  She followed the impulse without thinking, downing the rest of her Scotch in one fiery gulp and hoisting herself onto his lap. She stroked his hair somewhat tentatively and he smiled weakly at her. Behind her, the credits were rolling. “It’s over,” she said softly.

  “Yes, it is,” he had said. “I think it really is.”
r />   Rebecca had leaned forward then, and kissed him. Lightly at first, testing. This was dangerous ground. But then Jake Stillwell had done what she had not dared to hope. He had leaned forward, not to push her away, but to pull her toward him. He had put one hand on the back of her head and the other around her waist, kissing her with desperation, which Rebecca allowed herself to pretend had everything to do with her. He moved one hand beneath her shirt and stroked her bare back, giving her goose bumps. It was this sensation Rebecca had replayed over and over in both memory and fantasy ever since.

  In real life, that’s where it had ended. “I can’t,” he’d said, pushing her gently aside and stumbling to his bedroom to close the door without another word. In real life, she had turned off the TV and stared panting into the darkness of his apartment before eventually letting herself out. In real life, he was back with Marci a few months later, and he and Rebecca had never spoken of that moment again.

  10

  It was after noon when Rebecca pulled into the gravel driveway of the white cinder block house where she had grown up. A quick glance at her cell phone confirmed that there were four voicemails waiting for her. She had put the phone on silent after ignoring the first call from Jake, and she could only assume the others were from some combination of Suzanne, Marci, and Beth. Of course they hadn’t believed her note. Who would?

  Still, she couldn’t deal with the questions now. Not yet. There was too much to explain about the house in front of her, and the woman who lived there. It had been years since she had visited, she realized with shame, and the house seemed smaller than she remembered. The green painted shutters were faded and peeling, and the yard grew high with weeds. There were red-and-black NO TRESPASSING signs nailed to a couple of the trees of what used to be a welcoming, homey yard. Who had posted those? How had her father let the house get this way?