On Mystic Lake

Annie felt his fingertips brush her shoulders. She gazed at him, remembering how handsome he had been, how when she’d looked at him for the first time, she hadn’t been able to breathe.



“Living here with Joe was like a dream for me. Clean sheets, clean clothes, lots to eat. I got to go to school every day and no one ever hit me.” He smiled at her, and the heat of it sent shivers through her blood. “Then I met you and Kath. Remember?”



“At the A and W, after a football game. We invited you to sit with us. There was a K-Tel album playing in the background.”



“You invited me. I couldn’t believe it when you did that . . . and then, when we all became friends, it stunned me. Everything about that year was a first.” He smiled, but his smile was sad and tired around the edges and didn’t reach his eyes. “You were the first girl I ever kissed. Did you know that?”



Annie’s throat felt dangerously tight. “I cried.”



He nodded. “I thought it was because you knew. Like you could taste it in me somehow, that I wasn’t good enough.”



She wanted to touch him so badly her fingers tingled. She forced her hand into a fist. “I never knew why I cried. Still don’t.”



He smiled at her. “See? The paths are set before we’re aware. Kathy was so much simpler. I understood her. She needed me, even then she needed me, and to me that was the same as love. I just plopped into the role I knew. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Ask you to give up Stanford? Or wait for you, even though you hadn’t asked me to?”



Annie had never once considered being bold enough to talk to Nick about how she felt. Like him, she’d fallen easily—tumbled—into the role she knew. She did what was expected of her; Annie the good girl. She went away to college and married a nice boy with a bright future . . . and lost herself along the way.



“I always figured you’d be famous,” he said at last, “you were so damned smart. The only kid from Mystic ever to get an academic scholarship to Stanford.”



She snorted. “Me, famous? Doing what?”



“Don’t do that, Annie.” His voice was as soft as a touch, and she couldn’t help looking at him. The sadness in his eyes coiled around her throat and squeezed. “That’s a bad road to go down. Believe me, I know. You could succeed at anything you tried. And screw anyone who tells you different.”



His encouragement was a draught of water to her parched, thirsty soul. “I did think of something the other day. . . .”



“What?”



She drew back. “You’ll laugh.”



“Never.”



Dangerously, she believed him. “I’d like to run a small bookstore. You know the kind, with overstuffed chairs and latte machines and employees who actually read.”



He touched her cheekbone, a fleeting caress that made her shiver. It was the first time he’d deliberately touched her since that night by the lake. “You should see yourself right now, Annie.”



Heat climbed up her cheeks. “You probably think I’m being ridiculous.”



“No. Never. I was just noticing how your eyes lit up when you said ‘bookstore.’ I think it’s a great idea. In fact, there’s an old Victorian house on Main Street. It used to be a gift shop until a few months ago. When the owner died, they closed it up. They’ve been trying to find a renter. With a little elbow grease, it could make a great location.” He paused and looked at her. “If you wanted to open that bookstore in Mystic.”



The fantasy broke apart. They both knew that her life wasn’t in Mystic. She belonged in another state, beneath another sun, in a white house by the sea. She stared down at her diamond ring, trying to think of something to say, a way to brush off the silly daydream and pretend she’d never voiced it.



He said suddenly, “Have you seen Same Time, Next Year?”



She frowned. “The Alan Alda movie—the one about the couple who have an affair for one weekend every year?”



“Yeah.”



She found it difficult to breathe evenly. The air seemed electrified by the simple word: a fair. “I-I always loved it.”



“It’s starting in ten minutes. You want to watch?”



Her breath expelled in a rush. She felt like a fool for reading something into a simple little question about a movie.



“Sure.”



They settled onto the sofa and watched the movie, but all the while, Annie had the strangest sensation that she was falling. She kept glancing at Nick, whom she often caught staring at her in return. She didn’t want to consider how much he had begun to matter, but there was no way to avoid the obvious.



Last night, she’d learned that he liked chocolate chip ice cream and hated beets . . . that blue was his favorite color and professional sports bored him to tears . . . that he liked his baked potatoes with butter and bacon bits, but no salt or pepper, and that sometimes a kiss from Izzy, given as she snuggled close to him, had the power to make him cry.



She knew that often the need for a drink rose in him with such sudden ferocity that it left him winded and glassy-eyed. In those moments, he would push away from Annie and Izzy and run into the forest alone. Later, he would return, his hair dampened by sweat, his skin pale and his hands trembling, but he would smile at her, a sad, desperate smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and she would know that he had beaten it again. And sometimes, in that moment, when their gazes locked across the clearing, she could feel the danger, simmering beneath the surface.



She didn’t want to care too deeply about Nick Delacroix, and yet she could feel each day bringing them closer and closer.



When the movie ended, she couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she’d see in his eyes . . . afraid of what he’d see in hers. So, she grabbed her box of tissues and her purse and ran for the door. She hardly even mumbled a good-bye.



Chapter 17



Izzy woke up scared. She’d been dreaming about her mommy . . . that was all she could remember. Her mommy had been down by the lake, calling out to her . . . crying.



She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. Without bothering to put on her robe and slippers, she crept out of her bedroom and hurried down the hall. She paused at her daddy’s bedroom, then moved past. Down the stairs and out the front doors, into the darkest part of the night.



She stared at the lake. At first it was nothing but a charcoal-gray shadow in the vee of the mountains, but after a while, she could see the glistening waves and hear the murmuring voice of the water against the gravelly shore. The mist had thickened into a gray fog spiked with black toothpick trees.



Izzy-bear, is that you?



She flinched. The screen door jumped out of her hand and banged back into place. “Mommy?”



Something white flashed beside the shore.



She glanced back at the house and saw that her daddy’s bedroom was dark. She knew she should tell her daddy where she was going, but then she saw the flash of white again and heard the sound of a woman crying, and she forgot all about it. She picked up the hem of her nightgown and hurried across the wet grass, her toes squishing in muddy ground.



There were sounds everywhere—the cawing of crows, the hooting of a lonely owl, the ribbiting of bullfrogs—and though the sounds scared her, she didn’t stop until she reached the lake.



“Mommy?” she whispered.



A fine mist rose from the water. It was in the mist that she saw her mommy. Clear as day, she was standing on the water, her hands clasped at her waist, her golden-blond hair a halo around her face. Izzy got a flashing glimpse of white wings, and she heard a rhythmic sound, like the blurring start of a lawn mower, but she couldn’t be sure of what she was seeing. There was a brightness to her mommy that hurt Izzy’s eyes, like looking right at the sun. She blinked and tried to focus, but she kept seeing a spray of black dots and stars and her mommy went in and out of focus.



Izzy-bear, why did you call me?



Izzy blinked and tried to see her mommy’s pretty blue eyes. “I didn’t call you this time.”



I heard you calling in your sleep.



Izzy tried to remember her dream, but it was just pictures and feelings and panic and it didn’t seem to mean anything at all right now. “I don’t know what I wanted.”



She felt her mother’s touch, a breeze on her forehead, brushing the hair away, a kiss that smelled of mist and rain and her mommy’s favorite perfume. “I miss you, Mommy.”



Your daddy’s back now.



“What if he goes away again?”



Another touch, softer. He won’t, Izzy-bear.



This time, when Izzy looked up, her mother was closer, and she was certain she saw dove-white wings. “I can’t follow you, can I?”



For a split second, the mist was gone, and Izzy saw her mom. There were no wings, no white brightness, no mist. There was just a sad-eyed, blond-haired woman in a pinkflowered flannel nightgown, looking down at her little girl. I’ll always be inside you, Izzy. You don’t have to disappear or follow me or reach for me. All you have to do is close your eyes and think of me and I’ll be there. You think about the time we went to the circus and I was laughing so hard at the clowns that I fell off the bench. And when you smile at that, you’ll find me.



Tears streaked down Izzy’s face, plopped on her hands. She stared, blinking, into her mommy’s blue, blue eyes. “I love you, Mommy . . .”



And then suddenly her mommy was gone.



“Izzy!”



Her father’s panicked voice sliced through Izzy’s thoughts. She twisted around and saw him running toward her. “Daddy?”



He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “Izzy.” He said her name in a weird way, as if he’d been running for miles. “Oh, Izzy . . . you scared me. I didn’t know where you were. . . .”



“I di’n’t go anywhere bad, Daddy.”



He gave her a wobbly smile. “I know, honey.”



He carried her back into the house and put her gently in bed. She scooted under the covers, but she wasn’t ready to be by herself yet. She grabbed a book off the table by the bed. It was her treasured copy of Cinderella, the one that had been handed down from Grandma Myrtle, to Mommy, to Izzy. “Could you read me a story, Daddy?”



He climbed into bed beside her. Very gently, he opened the book to the first page. He read as he’d always read to her, with vigor and gusto and lots of funny voices.



Only Izzy didn’t laugh. She couldn’t; instead, she sat propped against the bright yellow Big Bird pillow, staring at the vibrant paintings on the page. When he finished the story, she was very quiet. “What happened to Cinderella’s mommy?”



It was a minute before he said softly, “I think Cinderella’s mommy went to heaven.”



“Oh.”



“And you know what I think?”



She shook her head. “No.”



“I think she and Mommy are friends now, and they’re looking down on us, making sure we’re okay.”



Izzy thought about that. It was sort of what she thought, too. “Annie says that when it rains, it’s Mommy and the angels crying.”