Gun Lake (26 page)

“Hi there,” a voice said, a voice he recognized, a female voice.

He looked and saw the dark-haired beauty he had seen a couple times now, the waitress at Lakeside Grill. Women that gorgeous didn’t drive around in beat-up Mazdas, did they? They were supposed to be driven around. And they never, ever stopped to talk to strange men.

“Need a lift?” she asked him.

He looked at her, and the anger and the fury inside of him evaporated. He was once again out of breath, surprised by the greeting and stunned by the offer.

For a moment he didn’t know if he’d say anything. But then he nodded and smiled and said, “Yeah, that’d be great.” And thought that the chances of God coming down to the earth with all of his angels were better than the odds of being picked up by this woman here

“I’m Norah,” she said.

named Norah who gave him a nervous but friendly smile.

He told her he was just going a few miles down the road. And that she didn’t have to worry, that he wouldn’t harm her. She told him, “I know,” and he wondered how she could have said that, how she could know that. She didn’t know him outside his visits to the restaurant.

“I saw you come out of the chapel,” she said.

Surprised, he wanted to explain why he was there. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about him. But of course he couldn’t tell her the real reason he had been in church.

“I sat in my car for almost an hour, thinking about going in,” Norah told him. “In the end, I couldn’t.”

He nodded.

“And I saw you come out, walking back home …” She shrugged.

Kurt nodded.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

A shrink might have told Norah this was exactly the kind of behavior that ended up getting her in trouble. Offering to pick up strange men.
Literally
picking them up, even when they weren’t asking. Sure, she might have seen the dark-haired, bearded guy a few times and made casual talk with him, and sure, she might have seen him come out of the Sunday morning service she was too afraid to go into, but come on. What was she thinking? Anybody would have told her this was not right. This was not safe. Men were trouble and bad news and she needed to use better common sense. Her track record at picking good ones was not so great.

I need someone to talk to
.

So far, there had been hardly anybody. The other waitresses at the Grill weren’t very accepting of her. She knew they might be jealous, but the joke would’ve been on them if they only knew how frightened and insecure she was. At the Joint, she was often the only waitress besides Kay, and even she could tell that the drunks who hung out there were not good prospects as friends or anything else. One thing was becoming clear to her—she had to get to know more people around here. It was either that or get lost in a black hole of oblivion.

And this man couldn’t be all that bad. He was friendly and courteous and a very nice tipper—though she knew that said little about his character. She knew the first time they met that he had been at a loss for words—something that occasionally happened when guys met her. Again, if only he knew. They saw the outward part of her, and that threw them. She sure didn’t feel beautiful, but sometimes men didn’t know any better. A shapely figure and long legs, no matter how well hidden, would do amazing
things to them. And Kurt, instead of trying to make a pass at her, had just become politely flustered. She liked that about him. He seemed cute and a little shy.

What really did it, though, was seeing him exit the chapel. He
had
to be an okay guy. It wasn’t like she was picking him up at some seedy saloon in the middle of the night. It was almost noon on a sunny Sunday with families all around. And this guy had just walked out of church.

And I just want a friend
.

“I’m, uh, David,” he said to her.

“Nice to meet you, David.”

“Not working today?”

“No. Not today.”

He nodded. She could tell by his body language and voice that he felt a little awkward, nervous about talking.

She felt the same.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What?” she asked, not understanding his tone and answer.

“Oh, I mean—I’m not thinking. Sorry—I’m staying over close to the Yankee Springs area. We’re in a cabin over there.”

“I—I have no idea where that is.”

He smiled. “You not from around here?”

“Actually, I lived near here when I was a kid, but I’ve been gone for a long time. Just got here a few weeks ago.”

“Really?”

She nodded, wondering how much she’d tell him.

“Where are you from?”

She couldn’t remember the lies she had told earlier. She needed to get a story and stick with it.

What if you told the truth?

But she couldn’t. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

She had told him her name. Why couldn’t she say a little more?

“I’m from up north.”

The vague reply, the body language in saying it, probably sent this man a message. He nodded, not saying any more.

“How was it?”

“What?” David asked.

“The service.”

“Oh. Fine, I guess.”

There was another awkward, silent moment. Norah wasn’t sure what to say. She kept her eyes on the road and pulled up at a stop sign.

“You can turn right here,” he said.

“Okay.”

As she did, she tried to figure out something to say, a subject she could talk about without giving anything away.

“Would you like some lunch?” the bearded man with the deep-set eyes asked her.

She looked at him and thought that underneath the beard he might be quite attractive.

What are you doing, Norah?

“I know it’s only a little after eleven, but I was thinking maybe we could—I don’t know—maybe go to Lakeside Grill.”

Again, she didn’t reply, so he avoided another awkward silence by quickly adding, “I know you work there and all, so we don’t have to—”

“I’ve never actually eaten there,” Norah said.

“You haven’t?”

She shook her head. “On breaks I’ll get a Diet Coke.”

“Seems like you need to sample the food, see if us patrons are getting our money’s worth.”

“I think I get a discount too.”

“That’s actually the reason I’m asking,” the man said, his lips curling in a friendly smile.

She suddenly pictured a giant juicy burger, the kind she often served for lunch and dinner. A burger with thirty or forty fat grams, at least, and who knows how many calories. The kind she would have never ordered and eaten in her former existence.

“I’d kinda like to get a hamburger,” Norah said.

“I’ve heard the hamburgers there are pretty good.”

Norah smiled at his comment.

“So, you’ll go to lunch with me?” David asked, sounding surprised, delighted, and nervous at the same time.

“Sure. Just don’t make me get you any coffee.”

“It’s a deal,” he said.

The longer they talked, the easier it became.

In a
Twilight Zone
episode, this would be a first date for Kurt.
We’ve all heard of the last meal
, Rod Serling would say,
but for one escaped convict running for his life, this is a last date
. There’d be some bizarre twist at the end. Perhaps Norah was really an undercover officer, wanting to get information from him. Perhaps she was FBI or CIA. Perhaps his mind wasn’t used to spending time around a woman, a beautiful woman at that, and was thus doing somersaults in his head.

The more he talked, the more truth he told her. He had to skip over the here-and-now facts about being an escaped convict and, of course, his name, but Kurt realized he could still tell her a few real things. Like when she asked him where he was from.

“I was born and raised in Kentucky,” he said. “You ever been to Corbin, Kentucky?”

Norah shook her head.

“You’re really missing something. It’s beautiful down there. Home of Cumberland Falls and Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. The Colonel started out right there in Corbin. They’ve even got a museum and stuff.”

“So how’d you end up in Michigan?” Norah asked.

Kurt smiled, taking another bite of the barbequed chicken he’d ordered at Norah’s suggestion.

“That’s a good question. A little too difficult to easily answer.”

“Your folks still live in Kentucky?”

Kurt shook his head. “My father died when I was seventeen. My mother—she passed away not long ago from cancer.”

Norah stopped still and appeared to not believe his statement.

“I’m—sorry,” she said.

“Yeah, me too.”

A look washed over Norah, and Kurt couldn’t tell exactly what it was.

“What are the odds?” Norah said.

“For what?”

“My parents are both—they are both deceased as well.”

“Really?”

“My father—he was killed in a robbery. Shot several times. My mother died of cancer too, actually. While we were still living around here.

Kurt looked at her and smiled. “How’d we end up crossing paths? Someone decide we needed to meet?”

“Maybe that church service you went to helped.”

“No,” he told her. “That’s not it. I
know
that’s not it.”

“So, you’re from Kentucky?”

“In a roundabout way. I’ve been a lot of places since then.”

“Do these questions bother you?”

Kurt began to shake his head no, but she obviously could see otherwise.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” he admitted.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I haven’t been exactly—forthcoming.”

“You’ve said less than I have.”

“I know.”

“I don’t need to see your resume, Norah.”

“That’s probably good, since I don’t have one. I wouldn’t have much to put on it.”

He smiled. “So why don’t we just continue to enjoy our lunch? No pressure. No heavy personal questions.”

She smiled. “Sounds okay to me. Sounds good, in fact.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded.

“Can I tell you something?” Kurt asked her.

“Sure.”

“I was pretty stunned to see you come up to me that first morning. Do you remember that? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“I think so,” Norah said.

“I thought, how in the world could I get so lucky, having
someone this—having someone like you wait on my table? I’ve not always had the best luck.”

“I don’t think either of us have. But thanks for the compliment. That’s nice.”

“You coming to take my order,” Kurt said, “and then asking me for a ride. For some reason, I think my luck has suddenly changed.”

Norah smiled at him. She had only been able to finish half her cheeseburger, and the fries had gone mostly untouched. She took a sip of her soda and appeared to be lost in thought for a minute.

“That’s why I came back here, you know,” Norah said. “I wanted to see if my luck could change.”

“Think it will?”

“It already has,” Norah said.

Kurt wondered what she meant by that but decided to ask more when the time was right.

GRACE HAD BEEN HIS CHANCE. Not a second chance. He’d had far too many second chances in his life. This had been a genuine chance to start over again, to start fresh, to try and change.

He’d blown them all before. But then Grace had come along.

She did not know the man and the history and the awful legacy he’d left behind. She told him she didn’t need to know, that the past remained in the past. He liked that about her. And Grace had surmised quickly that he had lots of baggage from the past. But traveling through life with her meant he only needed a backpack, a briefcase. Small enough to hold in his hand, hold out and let her see. The rest was all left behind.

The lake had comforted Paul after her death in a way he didn’t think anything could. The peace and tranquility, going
out early morning to placid stillness, the sun and the open skies, the friendly people, the slow calm of vacationers and locals.

Since he had actually moved here, he had hoped to enjoy that peace all the time. Instead, the longer he remained around here, the more he felt like he was losing his mind.

Glimpses of the past haunted him. Things were suddenly showing up in his cottage, seemingly in his lap. Maybe he was really going batty.

The photo he found on the bedroom dresser—where had that come from? A family portrait, father and mother and child. It was an old, tattered print, in color but dull with age, bent in the middle so that the mother and the father were divided. He would have liked to say he didn’t recognize the people in the shot, but that would have been a lie. He could lie to the rest of the world, lie to everyone around, and even try to outrun the truth, but deep down he knew.

Where’d you go? Where have you been all this time?

Paul had wondered that years ago, but as the years piled up higher and higher like building blocks, he’d found himself forgetting even to ask the question. And for him, now, the question had changed. He used to ask
where
. But that was a question that assumed somebody could be found, so it didn’t really apply anymore. The question now was
why
—and
why
was a good question. Especially now that things had started showing up unannounced.

First, there was the
USA Today
in his living room—no big deal, but he knew, he swore, he didn’t buy it. A newspaper just showing up—that was sort of weird.

Then the photo—where had that come from? He supposed he could have brought it with him from the house in Illinois, but he didn’t remember packing it. He thought he would have remembered that.

And now this. Lying on his bed in plain sight.

His old forty-five.

He knew he hadn’t brought
that
with him. He hadn’t seen it in years.

I’m losing it because I’m alone here and someone’s playing tricks
on me and I don’t know who, but I don’t care because it’s not funny anymore
.

Loaded. Heavy. Ready. The forty-five felt odd in his hand.

I’m different, and this has no part in my life now
.

He held the gun in the silence of his family room and felt guilty, like someone who had just shot innocent strangers and now was hiding out.