A Week at the Lake (31 page)

M
ist clung to the lake and softened the early morning sky to a pale wispy gray. Hemlock Point was only partially visible and the mountains that rose on the distant eastern bank were completely shrouded from view. It was quiet, almost mystical.

Mackenzie had woken in the predawn lying next to but not touching Adam. He slept like a man with nothing on his conscience—or possibly, no conscience at all—on his back, a contented smile on his face, his arms flung wide as if ready to embrace the world. Mackenzie had woken curled in a fetal position, her head pressed against his side. In sleep as in life they had declared themselves. It didn't take Freud to figure out where they were coming from.

The mist was not yet ready to lift when she carried a cup of coffee out to an Adirondack chair on the small sliver of beach. She swiped off the dew and settled into it, a blanket around her shoulders, the cup clasped in her hands.

She sipped the warm comforting brew and waited for the first glimmers of sunlight to pierce the grayness. It was hard to tell where the sky left off and the lake began.

She pulled her knees up as she listened to the sounds of the new day coming alive. A small splash, a quack from an unseen duck. A sound of oars in the bay though she couldn't imagine rowing blind in this mist. The sounds were muted and hushed like the shrouded sky.

Resting her chin on her knees, she closed her eyes and let
her thoughts wander. She felt slightly sore and pleasantly satisfied, something she hadn't expected. She'd been certain she could never focus given all that had worried her, but the opposite had been true. Now she needed to get her thoughts in order, to marshal her energy. She felt the urge to prepare a defense but had no idea what she would be expected to defend against.

She knew he was awake when she heard his voice out on the dining porch. Heard his laughter at something Nadia said. The porch screen creaked open. The mist made it difficult to tell the time, but she'd expected him to sleep in. He was, after all, on California time.

“Good morning.” He came and dropped down into the chair beside hers, unconcerned with its dampness. “Man, I was out like a light,” he said. “Thanks for putting me to sleep with a smile on my face.”

“Ditto,” she said, attempting to match his tone and wishing she could find another smile.

They watched the lake in silence, the bay slowly separating itself from the sky, as the shards of sunlight began to burn through the mist. The outline of the dock on the western edge of Hemlock Point became more distinct. The line of buoys surrounding the rocky remains of Rush Island appeared.

“It's beautiful here,” he said.

“Yes it is.” She kept her eyes on the bay cataloguing each discernable detail as it emerged from the mist.

“California's beautiful, too.” He turned to her.

“I know.” She waited for what would come. Braced but not necessarily ready.

“I've waited my entire adult life, and possibly most of my childhood, for this opportunity,” Adam said carefully, looking her directly in the eye. “I want to be there through production. And I want to reap the rewards that follow. If this film is well made and successful, even moderately successful, all those doors that have shut in my face for so long will finally open.”

She nodded, forced herself to not look away. Unlike her,
Adam had never given up. Somehow he'd always managed to believe in himself. It was one of the things that had first attracted her.

“Someone's interested in the theater, or at least the building,” he said. “I think we should list the house. I want to move to California. Permanently.” There it was. The vast unknown made known, which made it unavoidable.

“And what about what I want?” she asked.

“The last twenty years have been about what you want, Mac.” He said this as if she had arbitrarily bullied him into things against his will. Was that really what she'd done?

“We didn't only move to Noblesville because I
wanted
to,” she retorted, stung. “Neither of us were making it in New York. We couldn't afford to live there. We could have never raised a child there.”

“A child we never had.” It was a simple truth, delivered without heat but it still burned.

“Have you really been so miserable?” she asked.

He gazed out over the lake as if the answer might be there. She braced once again.

“With you? No,” he finally said. “With my life?” He shook his head. “I can't believe you'd have to ask that. You knew who I was when you married me, knew exactly what I wanted. You acted as if you supported that.” His jaw hardened. “I'm not going to turn my back on this chance at the life I always wanted. Don't you think it's my turn?”

Her head snapped up. Did he expect her to throw her arms around him, tell him how wonderful he was, and ask how quickly she should pack? As if all these years had been a wasteland he'd had to slog through. “And if I don't want to go to California?”

“Then maybe you should think about why you're still clinging to the place you grew up in and the small, safe life we've lived there,” he said. “The woman I fell in love with ran away from that kind of life. She even learned to trust in
love at first sight. I'm not sure what's happened to that woman. I haven't seen her for a while.

“But I'm going, Mackenzie. I love you. I'd prefer that you come with me. I hope you will. But I'm going even if I have to go alone.”

Mackenzie sat staring at the lake long after Adam had gone inside, her thoughts shrouded in a mist that seemed reluctant to burn away.

T
he torture at Bob Fortson's hands was over for the day. Emma was floating on a raft, one hand trailing in the water, a cap pulled down low to shade her face, when her cell phone rang.

“I get.” Nadia, who had avoided the sun like a vampire since that day on Jake's boat, was seated in an Adirondack chair she'd dragged beneath the stand of trees. She'd eyed the nearby hammock only briefly, having discovered early on how hard it could be to fight one's way out of it.

Emma's eyes drifted shut as the nurse answered the phone. The day was warm, the breeze gentle. The whine of a boat motor carried across the water.

“Nyet. No. Not available.”

Emma smiled sleepily. There was no longer much need for Nadia's nursing skills, but she'd proven adept at screening calls, and with her boulder-sized body with its muscled arms and legs, she could run interference as well as any bodyguard. And whether or not she meant to be she was highly entertaining, provoking smiles as she reenacted scenes between Tolstoy's Pierre and Natasha, or extolled the many virtues of the librarian they had yet to meet.

“Sorry,” Nadia was saying now. “I tell you. Emma nyet available.”

Emma smiled at the determination in Nadia's voice. And yet when she opened one eye to see what was going on, Nadia
still had the phone to her ear and appeared to be listening unhappily.

“Who is it?” Emma paddled closer, her eyes now on the nurse.

“Is Eve.” Nadia put a hand over the mouthpiece. “I tell her no. She threaten fire me.” Her face contorted. “I think tell her go ahead. But words get stuck. Is not money. I just . . . I not ready leave you.”

Emma waved an insect away and reached for the phone. Nadia placed it in her hand and mouthed a final apology.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“I just called to check on you.”

“Thank you,” Emma said politely. “I'm fine. Now if you'll excuse me . . .”

“Wait.”

“Please,” Emma said holding on to her temper. “Just tell me what you really want.”

“All right.” Eve's voice was tight. “I understand you're coming into the city and I'd like to take Zoe to lunch so I can give her her birthday present.”

Emma closed her eyes. Her free hand trailed through the water in what she hoped would prove a soothing motion. “I thought we agreed you were going to choose something you could send to her.”

“No. You told me I wasn't welcome and that I should find another way to deliver her gift. We're both going to be in the same city at the same time. And it's too late to mail anything anyway.”

Emma flashed back to the birthday celebrations she'd looked forward to as a child, which had always turned into photo ops and acting out her role in her famously happy family. “I'm not sending Zoe alone.”

“Then join us.” The trap snapped shut. “Bring whomever you'd like. I'm certain I can get a private room or a quiet unobtrusive table somewhere.”

Experience told Emma this was highly unlikely, but Eve was Zoe's grandmother. Wanting to see Zoe, wish her a happy birthday, and give her a gift wasn't exactly a hanging offense.

“All right,” Emma said. “But no photographers. No media. And no acting.” This last was even more unlikely, but she tacked it on anyway.

“Darling. I understand perfectly,” Eve said. But she sounded frighteningly satisfied. As if she'd offered an apple and seen it accepted and was now just waiting for the right person to bite into it. “I'll send you a text to let you know what I've arranged.”

E
ven as Emma tossed her phone back to Nadia, Serena stared stupidly down at hers. It was receiving a signal. It had not been dropped on pavement or fallen into the lake, or any other wet place. No matter where she stood, there appeared to be plenty of bars and a decisive dial tone. And yet her phone had not rung for almost thirty-six hours. Not, to be precise, since she'd kissed Brooks good-bye and watched his rental car drive off for the return trip to Manhattan Sunday morning.

He's busy. He just hasn't had time to call
, she told herself. But he'd been busy since he'd arrived in New York, sometimes rushing from one meeting to the next, but he'd always made time to at least call. Or text. Or even send some random picture captioned with some wry, witty observation.

A small knot of dread tightened in her stomach.
Too good to be true was too good to be true.

No.
If he hadn't had time to call her that didn't mean she couldn't call him. Women called men all the time. Before she could talk herself out of it, she hit redial for his cell phone and waited, barely breathing as it rang. She began to breathe again as the ringing stopped and Brooks's voice came on the line. “Hi.”

Oh, thank God
. “Brooks,” she began in a relieved rush. “You won't believe what I . . .”

“This is Brooks Anderson. Please leave your name and number at the tone and I'll get back to you.”

She waited through the tone, her heart thudding in her chest, her face flushing with embarrassment. She did not leave a message.
Get a grip,
she instructed herself. She'd try him again before they left for the city if she hadn't already heard from him.

A small desperate part of her wanted to call her mother in Charleston and ask if she'd heard anything about the Andersons or his marriage. Except that would be even more humiliating than the sinking sensation she was currently feeling, that she had somehow been “had.” Right now she was the only one who knew anything might be amiss. And that was the way she planned to keep it.