Age of Consent Read Online Free PDF Page B

little too much décolletage. It is not only that June has aged—of course she has aged—but that everything about her is different. Her hair is fuzzy and short and redder than Bobbie ever remembers it. Her makeup is more daring, inexact. The look is meant to be carefree—Bobbie can see that much—and while it is not artless, it is shocking to Bobbie, who remembers her mother using safety pins to fasten her blouses so they did not bow loose between the top few buttons and reveal too much cleavage.
    “Bobbie,” June says, and Bobbie hears the voice of her childhood. For a moment she wants to sink into her mother’s arms, to hold this woman whose love she has cosseted in her memory—stubbornly, secretly—refusing to recognize its enduring quality, even to herself. “I don’t believe it,” June says, “you’re finally here.”
    “Mom,” Bobbie says. The word is so unfamiliar to her it sounds wrong from her mouth.
    She is aware of a pressure in her head that comes from too much emotion, of her mother’s small hand clasping her own, squeezing, then letting go. Also, of Mrs. Campbell, standing in the doorframe.
    June says, “It’s fine, Mary, thank you,” then smiles at Mrs. Campbell, who slips through the door and disappears, her footsteps making clacking noises in the hallway.
    Clearly, the two know each other. Bobbie wonders if this was why the innkeeper had seemed so nervous earlier, because she knows exactly why Bobbie is in town. She knows about the trial and that Bobbie is the other “girl” who has raised a charge against Craig Kirtz, a local celebrity whom she is testifying against. The public has mixed feelings about people like her. She has heard that a radio station conducted a phone-in on the subject, the public calling in to state how they felt about bringing charges against someone for a crime committed so many years ago and for which, as one listener correctly remarked, “there was no body.” She’s been called an opportunist. She’s been called a “middle-aged woman with a vendetta.” She has been accused of waging war against her family, especially her stepfather. For that is what Craig is now—her stepfather.
    “I’ll just close the door,” June says, and now it is only the two of them, standing together in the small room. “Oh Bobbie—”
    Bobbie can see that her mother’s eyes are filling, that June is as overcome as she is. During the decades she has been away, Bobbie has wondered what it would be like to meet her mother once again. She never imagined it would be quite like this, that she would feel the connection so urgently, or that there would be so great a sorrow for all the lost time.
    “You look good,” she tells her mother. She thinks she ought to say this, ought to say something anyway.
    “They tell me you are testifying against our Craig. I can’t understand this,” June says.
    All at once, Bobbie feels a combination of tenderness and rage—that her mother could command such love from her, that her mother could sully that love by talking about Craig. Talking about Craig
now
. Over the years she has convinced herself that her mother had made a mistake. That was all, a simple mistake that had cost more than it ought to have. But if June’s effort to track her down before the trial is about him, then it is a mistake she is still making.
    “Don’t say his name,” she tells June.
    “Don’t say his
name
?” June is astonished.
    Bobbie looks at her mother’s left hand and sees a gold band. The sight of the ring infuriates her, as though Craig has branded her mother with an iron. “It’s not my fault you married him,” she says.
    “What kind of thing is that to say?
It’s not my fault…
You were invited, you know! Not that we expected you’d show up. If we’d known where you were, we’d have sent an invitation!”
    “I wouldn’t have come.”
    “Can you imagine what it was like for me, living in that house without you? Getting married without you? I