On Mystic Lake

“Come on, Katie Sarah. Let’s go.” She picked up her almost-sleeping daughter and strapped her into the car seat in the back of the Cadillac. Then, throwing her clunky diaper bag onto the passenger seat, she climbed into the car and started the engine. Before she even pulled out, she flicked on the radio and found a station she liked. Humming along with Mick Jagger, she maneuvered onto the highway and nudged the engine to seventy miles per hour.



What will you do now?



She still had months of responsibilities in Southern California. Closing and selling the house, packing everything up, deciding where she wanted to live and what she wanted to do. She didn’t have to work, of course, but she didn’t want to fall into that life-of-leisure trap again. She needed to work.



She thought again about the bookstore in Mystic. She certainly had the capital to give it a try—and that Victorian house on Main Street had plenty of room for living upstairs. She and Katie could be very comfortable up there, just the two of them.



Mystic.



Nick. Izzy.



The love she felt for them was as sharp as broken glass. Sometimes, when she woke in the middle of the night, she reached out for Nick—only he wasn’t there, and in those quiet moments the missing of him was an actual pain in her chest.



She knew she would go to him again when her life was in order; she had planned it endlessly in the past few weeks.



She would buy herself a convertible and drive up Highway 101 along the wild beaches, with her hair whipping about her face. She would play show tunes and sing at the top of her lungs, free at last to do as she pleased. She would drive when the sun was high in the sky and keep going as the stars began to shimmer overhead. She would show up without warning and hope it was not too late.



It would be springtime when she went to him, in that magical week when change was in the air, when everything smelled fresh and new.



She would show up on his porch one day, wearing a bright yellow rain slicker that covered most of her face. It would take her a minute to reach for the doorbell; the memories would be so strong, she’d want to wallow in them. In her arms would be Katie, almost crawling by now, wearing a fuzzy blue snowsuit—one they’d bought just for Mystic.



And when he opened the door, she would tell him that in all the long months they’d been apart, she’d found herself falling, and falling, and there’d been no one there to catch her. . . .



Ahead, the road merged onto the interstate. Two green highway signs slashed against the steel-gray sky. There were two choices: I-5 South. I-5 North.



No.



It was crazy, what she was thinking. She wasn’t ready. She had oceans of commitments in California, and not even a toothbrush in her diaper bag. It was winter in Mystic, cold and gray and wet, and she was wearing silk. . . .



South was Los Angeles—and a beautiful white house by the sea that held the stale leftovers of her old life.



North was Mystic—and in Mystic was a man and a child who loved her. Once, she had taken love for granted. Never again. Love was the sun and the moon and the stars in a world that was otherwise cold and dark.



Nick had known that. It was one of the last things he’d said to her: You’re wrong, Annie. Love matters. Maybe it’s the only thing that does.



She glanced in the rearview mirror at her daughter, who was almost asleep. “Listen to me, Kathleen Sarah. I’m going to give you lesson number one in the Annalise Bourne Colwater book of life. I may not know everything, but I’m forty years old and I know plenty, so pay attention. Sometimes you have to do everything right and follow the rules. You have to wait until all your ducks are in a row before you make a move.” She grinned. “And other times . . . like now . . . you have to say ‘what the hell’ and go for it.”



Laughing out loud, Annie flicked on her turn signal, changed lanes—



And headed north.