A Week at the Lake (2 page)

T
he thirty-room mansion that had once stood at the center of twenty acres overlooking six hundred feet of prime waterfront along Lake George's famed Millionaires' Row was long gone. Built by a young financier named Michaels as a testament to his success and a proclamation of his love for the young actress with whom he was besotted, Valburn had once sparkled as brightly as the young Valia's diamonds. A perfect stone in a perfect setting, it had glittered in the summer sunshine and glowed under the moonlight. A beacon that attracted others with talent and/or money up from New York City.

But great houses, like great loves, don't always stand the test of time. Valburn survived fires and infidelities, but was ultimately done in by indifferent heirs. More exotic locales. Descendants who “trod the boards” and preferred spending money to sitting in wood-paneled offices making it. Over time its wooded acres were divided up and sold off until only the guest cottage remained.

Of course, “cottage” is a relative term; in certain circles it has nothing to do with square footage and everything to do with feigned modesty. The Michaels cottage, which sat atop a lush rise of land and overlooked its own small beach in a quiet rocky-edged cove, was far from tiny and it most definitely was not roughhewn. A sprawling white clapboard, it had walls of windows that framed the deep blues of the spring-fed waters of Lake George, the green tree-covered tip of Hemlock Point, and the rocky shoals that were all that remained of Rush
Island. Pilot Knob sat on the eastern shore, wrapped in soft blue sky. Its roof was pitched, its gables peaked, its shutters black. Stacked stone fireplaces rose from either end.

It had become a place of refuge for certain members of the Michaels family, whose DNA had been stamped more by the young wife's talent for acting than by her husband's for making money. They were almost never without means, but that desire for acclaim, the drive to perform ran thick through their veins for generations to come and through many branches of their family tree. The cottage now belonged to Emma Michaels, who had sought refuge there after both of her high-profile divorces. The last had taken place sixteen years before when she'd left her movie star husband and arrived with her newborn daughter in tow. The first had taken place long before that. When she was only fourteen. And the people she'd divorced were her parents.

D
uring her formative years in the booming metropolis of Noblesville, Indiana, Mackenzie Hayes never once heard the term “love at first sight.” As a member of an extended family that prided itself on practicality, she had no doubt that if such a fanciful form of affection ever presented itself, she would be expected to stamp it out.

Not that this was an issue when you were freakishly tall and skinny and shaped way more like a pillar than an hourglass. When boys called you beanpole and skyscraper, and you were expected to go out for girls' basketball or track in order to utilize the ridiculously long legs and dangling arms that you would have happily traded in or had shortened if such things were possible. When you were plain and shy, it never occurred even to those who loved you that you might love pretty things, especially pretty clothes. Or that you might desperately wish you could wear them.

Under the guise of practicality Mackenzie learned to sew. Then she learned to adapt patterns to fit and suit her. Though not strictly necessary, she began to sketch her own ideas and designs—beautiful things that flattered the figure or, in her case, created an impression of one. And while she never developed the kind of body or beauty that attracted male attention, becoming comfortable in her clothes helped her learn not to slouch quite so much and to at least pretend that her physical deficits didn't bother her.

Her parents applauded this practicality. Right up until
the moment she announced that she was moving to New York City to pursue a degree and career in fashion design.

No one scoffed at the idea of love at first sight in Mackenzie's first heady year in New York. Which might explain why she succumbed to it so quickly. Why she was struck by a lightning bolt the moment she saw Adam Russell; zapped like a too-tall tree in a low-slung field, her bark singed, her trunk split in two. How one minute she was standing in a neighbor's postage-stamp kitchen, the next she was toppling over, her entire root system ripped from the ground.

It had been glorious to surrender so completely. To give up rational thought. To be so blatantly impractical. At the time it hadn't occurred to her that love at first sight might not be mutual. That there could be a striker and a strikee. That the lightning bolt might not feel the same as the tree. That just because someone was your grand passion, it didn't automatically make you his. And that you might have to work a bit too hard for far longer than you'd ever imagined to convince him you were meant for each other.

“Are you ready?” Adam strode into the bedroom. Even now twenty-two years after that first strike, her husband's physical beauty sliced through her. Five years her senior, his fifty-year-old body remained firm and well toned. The blond hair that skimmed his shoulders was still thick and luxurious—a person's hands could definitely get lost in it—and only lightly threaded with gray. A spider web of smile lines radiated from the corners of the clear brown eyes that had first rendered her speechless. Adam Russell had that indefinable something that could light up a room, command complete attention, inspire adoration. To this day he looked as if he belonged on a stage or in front of a camera, not directing others or penning the words that would come out of others' mouths. Certainly not running a very small community theater in Noblesville, Indiana.

“Almost.” Butterflies flickered in Mackenzie's stomach as
she considered her slightly battered and rarely used suitcase. She was not a happy flyer, could not come to terms with the science that allowed something as massive as a 747 to reach thirty thousand feet and stay there. For a “practical” woman she had been saddled with a far too active imagination.

Determined to squelch the butterflies, she refocused on the suitcase, which sat open on the bed, then surveyed the piles of clothing she'd stacked around it. There was underwear that looked nothing like the lacy things she'd worn the first time Adam undressed her. Capris. Shorts and T-shirts. Two bathing suits and a pair of flip-flops. Several sundresses she'd whipped up the year before. A dressier pair of black pants and a lacy camisole in case they ended up at one of the fancier restaurants near Lake George that hadn't even existed when she, Emma, and Serena had first started going to Emma's grandmother's summer cottage there. A couple of long-sleeved tops. A sweatshirt.

She'd already tucked in playbills from her favorite shows that she and Adam had staged since she'd last seen the women who had once been her best friends. Along with photos of the costumes she'd designed for the two children's productions they did each year. It was, after all, Emma and Serena who had shifted her focus from haute couture to costumes. Or had it been Adam?

“Stop it.” He gave her a mock-stern look.

“Stop what?”

“Worrying. Air travel is the safest form of transportation on the planet. You'll be way safer once you're on the plane than you will be on the drive to the airport.” Now he sounded like the instructor of the fearful flying class she'd failed so spectacularly.

“Gee, thanks. I feel so much better now.”

He flashed her the dimple. “Do you remember those relaxation techniques?”

Back when they'd been with a national touring company
whose travel budget had included puddle jumpers that looked as if they were held together with bailing wire and rubber bands, she'd tried everything from alcohol to hypnosis to take the terror out of what her husband insisted was no more than an airborne Greyhound bus ride.

“Oh, I remember them all right,” she replied. “It's just hard to conjure the soothing sound of waves washing onto a white-sand beach over the whine of jet engines.” Nor could she completely banish the certainty that any mechanical sound was a harbinger of doom, that the slightest relaxing of her guard or her grip on her armrests would allow any plane she was on to slip into a death spiral.

“You'll be fine.”

“Absolutely.” As she placed the clothing in the suitcase, she let go of the wish that they were flying together instead of in completely opposite directions. Better to focus on what would happen after she landed at LaGuardia than freaking out about whether she'd ever get there. Carefully, she visualized the cab ride to Grand Central to meet up with Serena Stockton and then on to Emma's hotel for what she hoped would not be too awkward a reunion. And finally, the drive out to Lake George to the cottage Emma's grandmother Grace had left her.

She'd printed out her favorite posts from her blog
Married Without Children
to share, but would hold on to the news until she could tell them in person that she'd been approached about putting together a book comprising her best posts. She, Serena, and Emma had achieved varying degrees of success and now lived in different parts of the country, but Mackenzie could still see them as they'd once been—more different than alike, more scared than confident, determined to realize the dreams that had brought them to what all three of them were convinced was the epicenter of the universe.

Twisting her hair into a knot at her neck, she blew a stray bang out of her eye then tucked her quart ziplock bag into her carry-on. She wore little makeup and should need even less
for a week at the lake, especially since Emma and Serena, whose looks were such an integral part of what they did, would have every beauty product known to man plus a few that weren't. Even Emma's fifteen-year-old daughter would undoubtedly be far more skilled at face painting than Mackenzie, as she'd discovered the last time they'd held one of their retreats—and Zoe had only been ten then.

Adam zipped the leather Dopp kit he'd retrieved from the bathroom and placed it in the elegant leather duffel that already held what she thought of as his Hollywood wardrobe. For his flight to LA, on which he would undoubtedly be not only completely relaxed, but also pampered by every available flight attendant, male and female, he wore designer jeans, a crisp white T-shirt, and a perfectly tailored navy blazer. She wore one of her own designs—a wrap dress in a supple washed denim that created the illusion of curves and showed off the long legs that had once been her best feature. For the briefest moment she wished she looked as good in clothes as her husband did. Or out of them for that matter.

She watched as he considered himself contentedly in the dresser mirror. The call from his film agent had come unexpectedly the night before and he was flying out on standby today. “So what did Matthew say?”

“He said they were crazy about the treatment. That they thought it would be a perfect vehicle for an ensemble cast.” The excitement in her husband's voice was unmistakable, despite his efforts to tamp it down. “But you know how it is out there. Great enthusiasm ultimately followed by the inability to remember your name.”

“Maybe this will be it,” she said. “Even if it just makes it to the next level that would be . . .”

“A miracle.” He gave her the self-deprecating smile that along with the smiling eyes and flashable dimple had initially knocked her bark off. Her heart squeezed in her chest. That was the real miracle after all these years. That she'd not only
managed to win him but that they'd survived so many disappointments and compromises. That their inability to have children did not define them. This was what she blogged about: How sweet a life could be even without children in it. How much more time and energy a couple could give each other when their family was composed of only two.

Adam lifted their bags from the bed and carried them out to the car while she did a last check for forgotten items. As she locked up the house she reminded herself that if they had had the children she'd once wanted so badly, they couldn't have both picked up and just left like this; that Adam couldn't have traveled back to New York as often as he did for an infusion of what they were careful not to call “real” theater. Or to LA, dressed as if he already belonged there, to pitch his latest screenplay and nurture the contacts that might help him break into the exclusive circle of successful screenwriters.

“Are you looking forward to the retreat?” he asked backing Old Faithful, their ancient but mostly reliable Ford Explorer, down the drive.

“Of course. It's just . . . you know, having to get on a plane to get there.” She reached into her carry-on to make sure the bottle of Xanax was handy. She needed the slight blur they provided to propel herself down the Jetway, onto the plane, and into her seat. “And we haven't been to the lake or anywhere else together for so long.” Her stomach squeezed this time. She turned to look out the window. They'd always been able to pick up where they'd left off. But they'd never gone so long without seeing each other before. And their separation hadn't exactly been a mutual decision.

“It'll be great,” Adam said as he took the ramp onto the highway and headed toward Indianapolis, but she could tell his mind was already elsewhere. “It probably won't even take a whole glass of wine before you're talking nonstop and finishing each other's sentences.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and smoothly changed lanes.

“No doubt.” She said this heartily, doing her best to sound as if she meant it. “And you'll be back with an offer.”

But as they neared the Indianapolis airport, her eyes turned to the planes taking off and landing, leaving plumes of white across the bright blue sky. As Adam made his way to long-term parking, Mackenzie washed a Xanax down with a long sip from her bottled water. For the first time she could remember, she wished her nervousness were only about the flying. And not how things might go after she arrived.

S
erena Stockton closed her eyes and attempted to think like an animated character. Or more specifically the cartoon version of herself that she'd been voicing for more than a decade on
As the World Churns
, a remarkably smart and astonishingly popular soap opera parody that featured animated versions of the cast coupled with their voices.

Part Miss Piggy, part Jessica Rabbit, part
Family Guy
's Lois Griffin, Georgia Goodbody wore a southern belle's dress cut low over a too-ample bosom and carried a fan that she sometimes snapped open to fan her face and bosom or snapped shut to use as a weapon on some unfortunate, albeit irritating, member of the opposite sex. Georgia spoke with New York's take on a southern accent. Which meant you would have had to be out in the back of beyond off some dusty southern road to ever actually hear anything remotely like it. Developing Georgia's character had required Serena, who had spent years eradicating her own southern accent as a student at NYU's drama department, to create an accent far more appalling than the one she'd been born with. An irony she tried not to dwell on.