Lake News (35 page)

Griffin Hughes of the sexy baritone tried calling the chief of police again on Friday at the exact time he had called on Tuesday, but Poppy didn't take him for being forgetful or dense. She figured he would know that if Willie Jake hadn't been in his office at seven-thirty Tuesday, he wouldn't be there now. That meant Griffin didn't really want to talk to Willie Jake, but to her.

Or so the fantasy went.

After their last talk, that fantasy had a face. Poppy conjured up red hair, blue eyes, and neat little ears. But it was still the voice that touched her most. It was low and divine.

“Well, hi there,” she said brightly.

“Hi, Poppy. How are you?”

“Just fine. But if you're looking for Willie Jake, he's not here.”

“Home again, huh?”

“Yup.”

“That's okay,” Griffin said with admirable honesty, “I
was really looking for you. Rumor has it that Lily's back home. I thought you'd be the person to know.”

Poppy would indeed, but she didn't care
how
sexy Griffin Hughes's voice was. “Knowing is one thing, telling is another.”

“Will you tell?”

“Nope. Nothing's changed there.”

His voice fell another few notes. “I am not the enemy.”

“Any guy out to make money off my sister and this bogus story isn't good,” she said, but good-naturedly. It was hard to be any other way with so charming a guy.

“I'm out to redeem her,” Griffin argued, but before she could respond, he asked, “Are your friends there tonight?”

Poppy winked at Lily, who stood against the doorjamb. They had just finished dinner—a lemony chicken from a recipe Lily brought. It had been delicious.

Griffin, of course, was referring to her Tuesday group. “No,” she answered truthfully, “they're not here.”

“Then tell me how old you are.”

She relaxed in her chair. “Thirty-two.”

“Aye-aye-aye. Old. What color's your hair?”

“White.”

“It is not.”

“No. It's brown. And short. Probably shorter than yours.”

“Any special reason?”

There certainly was, but she couldn't imagine he knew. “Why do you ask?”

“It's one of the trick questions we journalists use that
seems simple on the surface, but can be revealing. If you wear your hair short for the ease of it, you're probably a woman who doesn't like to fuss, kind of loose and free, if you know what I mean. If you wear it short for style, you're hip. If you wear it short to show off a great-shaped head, you're vain. If you wear it short because you're just… right out there, if you get my drift, you're self-confident. Which is it?”

Poppy thought for a minute. “Mostly the first.”

“Loose and free? I wouldn't have guessed it. You're too tight-lipped. But maybe that's something you caught, living up there in that town. I keep thinking about the story you told me last time. You know, about James Everell Henry? About feisty independence? I have a question about that.”

He remembered the logging baron's whole name. Poppy was impressed. “Yes?”

“You said that the more outsiders push, the more the town will clam up. Does that mean the town believes Lily's story? Or will it clam up on principle alone?”

Poppy looked at her sister. “It means that the town believes Lily's story.” She didn't know it for fact, but she refused to say anything else. And it wasn't for Lily's sake. It was for the sake of whatever Griffin Hughes might tell a friend. “I have another story. Want to hear?”

“You bet.”

“Once upon a time,” Poppy began, “back when Lake Henry was Neweston—I told you we were called that, didn't I?”

“Yes.”

“It was called Neweston after the home port of Weston from which the original British settlers came.”

“Ahh.”

“So, back when Lake Henry was Neweston, there was a colony of polygamists who were looking for a place to settle.”

“Polygamists?”

“Polygamists. They liked the looks of our lake, so they bought a few houses and started moving in. Well, it was a little while before the towns-folk realized what was going on inside those walls, but let—me—tell—you, when they finally caught on, they didn't like it one bit. I mean, it was unanimous—rich, poor, year-round, summer, Baptist, Episcopal, Congregational—they were united as they'd never been before. They formed an association and pooled their money and tried to buy those houses back, but the colonists weren't selling. So they stared.”

“Stared?”

“Stared at those settlers at the post office, the school, the general store. They were relentless. They even lined up their boats on the water and stared from there. They made the environment hostile for the settlers without saying a word.”

“Did the settlers finally sell?”

“You bet.”

“And the message here for me is…”

Poppy caught Lily's eye. “High standards. Lake Henryites come from the kind of stock that puts certain values on a pedestal. If the townsfolk thought for one minute that Lily had truly done what your colleagues
claim, my entire
family
would be ostracized, but that hasn't happened.”

“This isn't hard on your mom?”

Distrust reared its head again. It was an interview type of question. She was on guard. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because I read that she doesn't get along with Lily, so it follows that she might be suffering.”

“I'd think a mother would suffer, regardless, in a situation like this.”

He didn't have an immediate comeback. It was a full minute before he said a quiet “Touché.”

He was thinking something. Poppy waited.

Still quiet, he said, “I have one sister. Four brothers, but only one sister. So you'd think she and my mother would have been close, being the only two girls in the house, but they weren't. They fought constantly. Cindy was headstrong and wanted to do things her own way, and after a while my mom let her. She had to. A child is only a minor for so long. Cindy moved out the day she turned eighteen and then made every mistake in the book—hooked up with lousy guys, got pregnant, had an abortion, started college, flunked out, reenrolled. My mom swore that she was on her own, but she suffered each time something went wrong. One of us would remind her of their differences, and she would nod and say we were right, but you could see that pain in her eyes.”

“Do they get along now?”

“My mom's dead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me too. Life isn't the same without her. The rest of
us are strewn all over the country, but she used to make holidays worth coming home for.”

“Is your father still alive?”

“Uh-huh. Alive and well and living it up. He married my mom when he was twenty, so he's sowing the wild oats now that he didn't sow then. He's fallen in love five times in as many years. Always a different woman. Kind of makes holidays
not
worth coming home for.”

“But if he's happy…”

“None of them's my mom.”

Poppy couldn't say anything to that, but there was no need. He hurried on, actually sounding embarrassed. “Why am I telling you this? It has nothing to do with anything.”

“It has to do with you.”

“Which has nothing to do with you or with your sister. You won't tell me anything?”

“About Lily? No.”

“About you, then?”

“I've already told you stuff.”

“One thing more. Tell me one thing more. Anything you want.”

She thought of telling him that she had half a degree in forestry, but she feared he would ask why she worked inside. She could tell him that she liked the outdoors, but then he might ask about sports. She considered saying that Armand Bayne, who bankrolled
Lake News
and knew everyone of any stature in publishing, would have Griffin Hughes black-balled if he tricked Poppy into saying something revealing. Except that name-dropping worked two ways. Griffin might have the gall to call
Armand, who wouldn't know not to mention, even in passing, that Poppy Blake couldn't walk.

So she told him, “My house is on the lake. I'm looking out at it now. It's a beautiful night here—not too cold. The weekend's supposed to be sunny and warm.”

“I was thinking of driving up. I'm in New Jersey. I could do it easily.”

Her heartbeat sped. “Not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“The crowds. The traffic. Foliage is near peak. There'll be buses all over the place. And RVs, and motorcycles. One accident and the highways are backed up for miles. It's like a
zoo
here this time of year. Besides, I'm not going to be here, and no one else will talk with you, so there's no point in your coming.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away,” Poppy said. It was the smallest lie she could think of.

Griffin said, “That's too bad. It might have been nice.”

Yes,
Poppy thought moments later when he was gone,
it might have been nice
. But might-have-beens did her no good, so she let it go.

Only, the fantasy lingered.

Lily was free of fantasies that night, sitting again in the pine root cubby at the edge of the lake. Being with Poppy was fun but sobering. Listening to her talk on the phone—listening to her flirt—she had seen fleeting glimpses of a sorrow that Poppy kept out of her voice. Lily couldn't begin to fathom that sorrow. It cast her own life in a different light.

Or maybe it was working at the cider house. Or planning a birthday party with Hannah. Or hiring Cassie. Or dealing with John.

Maybe it was simply the passage of time. The shock was over. The upheaval in her life wasn't as new or abrupt. Oh, she was still angry. But she didn't feel as lost as she had.

Poppy was right. It was a beautiful night. A robust moon hung over the center of town, making an elegant white wand of the church steeple before shimmering gently out over the lake and its islands. The occasional window held a light along the water's edge, but that was the only sign of humanity.

Softly, the lake brushed the shore. The earth under her fingers was rich. The air smelled of wood smoke, and was comfortably cool. Celia's baseball jacket kept her as warm as she needed to be.

Lily had loved Manhattan at night, especially at year's end, when the city glittered under holiday lights. She had loved Boston nights more in summer, when the colors had to do with the crowds on Newbury Street, and the smells were old and European. Lake Henry nights were… they were primal.

She waited and listened intently but didn't hear a loon this night. So she began humming her own song, a chant, actually, Celtic in origin. Melodically simple, it captured the haunting quality of the lake at night, and it took on a life of its own, evolving into soft words whose meaning she didn't know. She hugged her knees and rocked gently, feeling a deep reverence as she sang. Her thoughts flashed on childhood Sundays when she had sung in church. The feeling was much the same.

She was connected to this place. She didn't know whether it had to do with growing up here, having a mother and two sisters here, or having a father and countless other relatives buried out there under the moon, in the graveyard beside the church. But she felt peaceful here. Oddly content.

Then again, maybe the peace and contentment had to do with nothing more than the song. Nine days was a long time to go without singing, but it hadn't occurred to her to sing before. Her mind had been too filled with dissonant things to even think about it.

Now that the thought had taken root again, it hung on.

John spent a good part of Saturday at the office. Every so often he took breaks by walking up to the post office, over to Charlie's, or across to the crafts fair set up at the town center. There were booths of baskets, balsam wreaths, hand-dipped candles, locally woven scarves, and booths of wood carvings, small paintings, rock creatures—much to see, but John was more interested in the people around him. He knew most. Others were foliage freaks, buying mementos of their trip.

Then there were the questionables. He recognized a newspaper reporter from Concord and thought he recognized one from Springfield. He was willing to bet that another pair of strangers were in television. They were a little too coordinated in their L. L. Bean outfits to be real, plus they were being given cold shoulders by the locals.

Satisfied that Lily was being protected, he returned to the office with the small bits of news he collected and
added them to the file for the next week's paper. He worked for a while on the cover story, which was the accidental shooting of a three-year-old child in Ashcroft the day before and, legislatively, the use and abuse of guns. Mostly, though, he researched Terry Sullivan. He wanted to find out why the guy moved so much.

With the windows wide open, the office smelled of the candied apples that the Garden Club was making in a huge pot hung over a wood fire on the town beach. The weather was perfect for it—cold enough to set the candy coating, warm enough for people to linger for second helpings. He might have gone down there himself if he hadn't been intrigued by the information coming up on his screen.

He moved from one link to the next and made phone calls in between. Quitting at seven, he drove home with a mind to writing some of his thoughts out by hand. As the sun grew low and amber over the woods, though, he was drawn to the lake. Pulling an old sweater on over his T-shirt and shorts, he unbeached his canoe. He slipped inside, picked up the paddle, and set off.

He had barely reached the island where his loons swam when they emerged from the shadows. The two juveniles were there, but only one parent. He guessed that the other was out visiting and would be back, standard behavior for adult loons at September's end. No matter that the weather was milder tonight than it had been earlier in the week; fall was deepening. The adult that remained was duller in color than it or its mate had been even two days before.