Lakeside Cottage (31 page)

“L
ast chance to go for a swim,” Callie told Aaron. Their final chores at the lakeside cottage were done, pretty much. Kate had gone to town to reroute the mail and do some errands. It meant the world to Callie that Kate trusted her to watch Aaron. At the beginning of summer, she hadn’t wanted them to go near the water without her watching. Now that Aaron could swim and Callie was part of the family, Kate had relaxed her vigilance. She treated Callie like…a daughter.

Callie and Aaron had worked hard all afternoon. They had hosed down the kayak and stowed it in the boathouse along with the lawn furniture and picnic set. After a championship round of croquet—Callie won, hands down—they put away the equipment for next year. They brought in the flag and folded it like a holy relic, putting it in an ancient department-store box. It was so cool that Kate and Aaron belonged to a family that came back here year after year, Callie thought. The flag was so old, it had only forty-eight stars.

They cleared out every scrap of food so the local
raccoons and field mice would not be tempted to break in. Now there was nothing left to do except wait for Kate to bring home their farewell dinner in disposable containers. In the morning, they’d turn off the water to drain the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze in winter, and then they were out of here.

Callie couldn’t help smiling at Aaron’s tragic expression. “Hey, it’s not the end of the world, kid. Just the end of summer.” She didn’t try to explain further, and honestly, felt none of his despondency. She was not one of those to get all sentimental over the passing of the season. In fact, she was looking forward to the start of school. Not that she would ever be dorky enough to admit it. It just felt so good to be doing things a normal kid would do—cleaning her room, listening to music, getting ready for the first day of school. When Kate promised to take her school shopping once they got to the city, Callie felt such a thrill that she had to hide her reaction.

“I’m staying up all night,” Aaron vowed.

“Whatever floats your boat.” She knew he would never be able to do it. After swimming, supper and a few rounds of cards, he’d be falling asleep on his feet. That was something she loved about Aaron. He was totally predictable, like a little machine—eat, play, talk, sleep in a never-ending cycle.

“Race you to the water!” Still tying the drawstring of his trunks, Aaron ran across the yard to the dock.

Callie took off after him, reveling in her newfound feeling of agility. Thirty pounds ago, she barely had enough energy to walk, let alone run. She wore a black tankini and she looked…okay. Kelly Osbourne–okay, maybe.

She caught up with Aaron and grabbed his hand just as they both went off the end of the dock. Together, they
made a huge splash and came up laughing. As always, the water was numbingly cold, yet at the same time, gloriously clean. She felt weightless and sleek, darting around with Aaron, occasionally diving deep to see if she could reach the bottom. She never could, of course. The lake’s dark, endless depth was part of its mystery.

Popping to the surface, she kept an eye on Aaron, even though he needed supervision less and less each time he swam. Once he got over being afraid of the water, he grew stronger every day.

“What are you looking at?” he asked her.

“A kid who swims like an otter.” Treading water, she relished the expression on his face. Then she told him something she had never said before, though she had thought it. “I’m proud of you.”

“Hey, me, too,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

They grinned at each other for a few seconds and then it got all awkward, so she splashed water in his face and he dived for cover. Inevitably, they were overcome by the cold and had to get out. Bandit greeted them like long-lost friends while they toweled off and then lay around on the weathered planks of the dock, letting the sun dry their hair.

After a while, Aaron said, “I feel bad for Mom. She’s sad about JD.”

“Seems that way,” Callie said. “She’ll be all right.”

“I guess I’m kind of sad, too.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t sad sometimes, so welcome to the human race.”

She enjoyed the feel of the sunlight on her face. What a summer it had been. Begun in despair, it was ending on a note of hope. She had a foster family, a plan for the future. The painful past would always be there, like her
insulin resistance would always be there. She could deal with both now, she was sure of it.

A few minutes later, she was startled by the creak of a footfall on the dock and the coolness of a shadow falling over her. She sat up to look, and blinked at the light. Like a bulky, man-shaped eclipse, Luke Newman blotted out the sun as he stood there surrounded by a halo of dazzling light.

“Luke.” Aaron scrambled to his feet. “Hey, Luke. Where’ve you been?”

“Keeping busy.”

Instantly self-conscious, Callie got up, too. She was tempted to wrap herself in a towel, but resisted the urge. She was who she was, and didn’t intend to hide that from him ever again. “Hey,” she said, her voice perfectly neutral.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I’m starving,” Aaron said with startling diplomacy. “I’ll be inside. C’mon, Bandit.”

After he left, a strained silence stretched out between Luke and Callie. Finally, he said, “You look good.”

She knew that she did. His eyes were a mirror, reflecting an image that was quite different from the girl he’d first met this summer. “I feel good.”

More silence, but the question screamed inside her. What do you want from me? What are you doing back here now?

“That’s good,” he said. “Listen, Callie…” He paused and looked at her as if expecting her to rescue him.

Let him wait, she thought. She was not going to step in and make this easy for him. “Yeah?”

“I want you to know I’m sorry I treated you the way I did. Okay?”

Even though her heart soared, she made herself hold
back. “No. It’s not okay. You acted as though we were friends—
good
friends—but you kept that a secret from everybody but me.” She still cringed when she thought about that day at the shopping center. She’d been so happy to see him, so excited about meeting his friends. She could still feel the icy derision of the other kids, the terrible twist of sarcasm when he’d dismissed her. Finding out he’d kept their friendship a secret had knocked her for a loop. He was ashamed to be seen with a fat weirdo.

“That’s my loss,” he said now, “and I’ve got no excuse except I was an ass. You’re special, and you always have been. I feel like an asshole for treating you the way I did.”

“You were an asshole.” She picked up her towel, started to turn away.

“Just hear me out.” He put his hand on hers, brought her back around to face him. “I miss you.”

His words wrapped around her heart the same way his hand wrapped around hers. “You really mean it?”

“I came to ask you if you want to go bowling tonight. Some of us are meeting at Bowl Me Over later. Can you come?”

Finally, after a whole summer of waiting, he was offering to introduce her to a group of friends. But when she spoke, she said, “I’m going to stick around here tonight. We’re leaving in the morning.”

He paused, digested the news. She saw a flicker of disappointment in his face. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” She couldn’t keep from smiling when she added, “I’m going to live with Kate in Seattle.”

“You look happy about that.”

“I
am
happy.” It felt so weird to be saying that. It felt so weird that, for the first time in forever, it was true.

“I’ve got news, too,” Luke said. “I signed up for the Coast Guard.”

She couldn’t picture him all shaved and buff and in uniform, but he looked really proud and excited. “Luke, that’s so great.”

“Yeah, I’m pumped. Anyway, I just wanted to see you, see if you can forgive me.”

A light breeze lifted her hair off her shoulders. “Thanks.”

“Anyway, basic training starts after Labor Day, and after that, who knows where I’ll end up. I was thinking maybe we could keep in touch by e-mail.”

“All right. Yes, we could do that.”

“I want you to know I feel bad about what happened. It was all my fault. I was completely stupid about it, so I hope…” His voice trailed off and he looked supremely uncomfortable.

“No hard feelings.” As the words left her mouth, Callie knew it was true. They were just a couple of kids. They both had a lot to learn.

K
ate stopped at the post office to change her delivery back to Seattle. While waiting in line, she watched a couple together, teasing each other with an easy familiarity that brought an unexpected ache to her heart. Love could be so simple one moment and so complicated the next and, too often for Kate, impossible. The couple in line ahead of her magnified her loneliness, and she was horrified to feel the pressure of tears in her throat and eyes.

Get a grip, she warned herself. Hurry. Then the man turned and caught her staring at him. She glanced down at a nonexistent watch, pretending she hadn’t been watching him at all. For some reason, the threat of tears wouldn’t go away. She slid her change-of-address form across the counter, then headed for the door.

“Kate? Kate Livingston—it’s me, Sam Schroeder.” The couple now stood at the door as though waiting for her.

From somewhere deep inside, she summoned a smile. Despite the passage of years, he hadn’t changed that
much. He’d always been a sunny, uncomplicated person and he still looked that way. “My Lord. Sam Schroeder. It’s been ages.”

He held the door for her and they went outside, standing in front of the post office’s garden of prizewinning roses. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Penny. We came out to the lake for Labor Day weekend. It’s the first chance I’ve had to bring her and the kids.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kate said, though she had never felt less like meeting someone and making small talk. “You picked the perfect time of year to come.”

“Thanks. We love it here already. The boys are never going to get over having to go back and start school. And speaking of the kids,” she added, “I’d better go check on them. We’ll wait in the car.” She hurried across the parking lot, leaving Kate and Sam standing there.

It should have been awkward, knowing that Sam would surely remember their bumbling summer embraces back when they were kids, but it wasn’t. So much time had passed that it might have happened to different people, people she didn’t know anymore. Rather than feeling awkward, she felt…empty. “You have a family,” she said.

“I do. And a job and a mortgage, like a real grownup. Listen, you should come over to our place. Bring your boy—”

“Whoa. Bring my boy?”

“To meet mine. I have two kids.”

“How do you know I have a son?” she asked him, feeling suspicion prickle across her skin.

“JD told me,” he said easily. “I swear, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk, but not when it comes to you and…Adam, is it? Aaron?”

Kate’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire. “So you and
JD…you talked about me.” It felt weird to be having such a personal conversation with him after such a long time. Or maybe not. Maybe after
Us
magazine published your bra size, nothing was off-limits.

“He’s my best friend,” Sam told her. “I’ll say what I have to say. You mean a lot to him, Kate, and the feeling’s mutual, right?”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Nope. The look on your face did.”

She remembered something about Sam. Growing up with three older sisters, he had a rare understanding of women and an almost magical ability to read their thoughts. Apparently, that hadn’t changed. She clutched her purse securely against her. “We’re not…we never—” She stopped, horrified to feel a fresh sting of tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can see this is upsetting you.”

“It’s so stupid to be upset,” she said.

“No, it isn’t. So did you fall in love with him?”

“I’m leaving now,” she said, heading for her car.

He walked along with her, refusing to be put off. “Then be in love with him. Quit mooning around.”

“I’m not mooning. Does this look like mooning? You don’t even know me anymore, Sam. Certainly not well enough to give me advice. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“He’s my best friend. That makes it my business. Listen, every woman he’s ever known has either screwed him over or given up on him. He doesn’t really think anything else is possible.”

“Maybe it’s not.”

“You know it is.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Like I’m some expert.”

“You are.” He smiled at her, and she glimpsed the boy she had known so long ago. “You always have been.”

She smiled, hoping he didn’t notice how close she was to shattering. Sam, with his adorable wife and kids, seemed to find it easy to give out advice. “Goodbye, Sam,” she said quietly.

That night, Kate brought home pizza and salad for dinner. They toasted one another with sparkling water and played one last game of gin rummy, which lasted until Aaron nearly nodded off at the table. She sent him to bed with a promise that she’d be up to tuck him in. Callie headed to her room and was soon engrossed in the pages of a novel.

“It was a great summer, wasn’t it?” Kate said to Aaron, sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Sure.”

“You learned to swim, buddy.”

“Yep.”

“And you got bigger and stronger and you weren’t even lonely for your cousins.” She felt a need to remind him of all the good things that had happened so he wouldn’t dwell on JD’s absence.

“Maybe a little.” He was struggling to keep his eyes open.

“And Callie is coming to stay with us.” She had managed to convince the caseworker that the media would go away now that JD was gone.

“Uh-huh.” He gave up the battle and snuggled under the covers.

Kate rubbed his back for a few minutes, then slipped out of the room and went back downstairs. She wasn’t the least bit tired. The encounter with Sam today had left her feeling unsettled, maybe a little jumpy.

Straightening the kitchen cupboards for the last time of the summer, she came across a half-full bottle of red wine. It was probably spoiled by now. She held it poised over the sink, ready to dump it out, then stopped herself.

What the heck, she thought, taking out a wineglass. She’d never tried drinking alone before. She’d never tried wallowing. In the past, she always made herself face the world with a positive attitude, come what may. Yet this was different, impossible to push aside or deny. A deep ache of melancholy tugged at her, and just for tonight, she decided to let it. Why not? This was supposed to be the summer of her independence, her reaffirmation that she was perfectly content being exactly who she was—a single mother, a writer, a daughter, a sister. Back in June, she had come here determined to recover from the blow of being fired and to emerge better and stronger for her efforts.

Instead, the impossible had happened. She had met a man and fallen from the dizzying height of a precipice, plunging heart and soul in love.

She smiled at the memory, even as she flinched from the hurt.

The bottle was left over from a night she recalled with painful clarity. It was the Merlot she and JD had shared one night. She remembered sitting on the porch swing with him and watching a family of ducks as the sun went down. She remembered thinking that everything had fit together so perfectly that night. Most especially her and JD. She let her mind drift through the summer, remembering the talk and laughter they’d shared, and every intimate touch, every romantic whisper.

Her hand trembled and the bottle neck clinked against the wineglass as she poured. Then she took both the
glass and the bottle and headed outside. Two-fisted-drinking alone, she thought, walking down to the water’s edge. That had to be a first for her.

A mysterious summer moon was up. Riding the jagged shoulders of the mountains around the lake, it appeared huge, and close enough to touch.

“Here’s to you,” Kate said, sitting on the dock and raising her glass to the moon. “And to…whatever.” She couldn’t think of a single uplifting thing to say. She drank deeply, noting that one thing had gone right today—the wine wasn’t spoiled. The water lapped in gentle whispers at the shore. Across the way, she could see a few lights. There were a couple of boats out in the distance; she could see a bow lantern moving along the water.

She knocked back more wine and decided she was doing a terrible job of wallowing. She kept trying to be rational, to tell herself to snap out of it. What had happened to her was depressingly common, something that befell women every day. She had fallen in love and it hadn’t worked out. Simple enough. But there was nothing easy about the way she was hurting.

The boat with the lantern seemed to be drawing closer. She swirled the wine in her glass and stared at the lone figure silhouetted against the moon, powerful arms moving in long, smooth strokes as he rowed.

Kate’s heart shifted into overdrive. She sat glued to the spot, her legs dangling off the end of the dock. And finally, at the worst possible moment, the tears she had been fighting all day slipped down her cheeks. She tried wiping them away with the tail of her shirt, but the tears kept coming, an unending stream of relief and joy and fear and anticipation.

JD rowed the wherry alongside the dock and tied onto a mooring cleat. “I’ve heard it’s rude to drink alone.”

“I wasn’t alone.” She sniffed and brushed at her face again. “I was raising a toast to the moon.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I do,” she said, and quit trying to stop the tears. Her emotions were part of who she was. No more hiding or pretending. “What are you doing here?”

“I came by seaplane from Seattle. It’s the quickest way.”

“I meant, what are you doing?”

“Callie gave me a copy of your article to read,” he said. “It’s a fine piece and you deserve to be proud of it.”

“And that’s what you came here to tell me?”

“I’ve got a lot more to say. I’m just getting started.” He stood and straddled the boat and dock, gallantly holding out his hand, palm up. “Get in. I’ll take you for a ride.”

She set aside the wine and the goblet, climbed to her feet and took his hand.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. His kiss shattered her. Not that it was particularly sexy or passionate. It was just that the feel and taste of him were so dear to her that she nearly came apart from the sheer joy of kissing him, when only a moment ago she thought she’d never see him again.

She sat down in the boat, bracing her arms on either side. He pushed off and rowed easily out onto the dark, mysterious water. The wherry was a work of art. The light and dark planks, in their distinctive herringbone pattern, dazzled the eye. She knew the perfectly smooth finish had to be the result of hours—days—of patient sanding and restoring. Every joint and curve flowed seamlessly, inviting her hands to glide along the edges.

“I need to know why,” she told him.

“Why I left, or why I came back?”

“Both. Why would you hide away, pretending it never happened?” she asked.

“Because it nearly ruined someone I care about.”

She understood now. After the flurry of attention in Seattle, she got it. “I hate that you hid the truth from me.”

“I hid it from everybody.”

“I’m not ‘everybody.’”

“That’s true,” he said quietly. “You became so much more, Kate.”

It seemed a painful admission. “You did a wonderful thing, not just by saving the President, but by giving people hope. Watching you, knowing you did that, makes people feel safe again and know there’s good in the world.”

“I don’t want to be anybody’s great white hope,” he said. “I just want to live my life.”

“And is that what you were doing? Or were you just letting the days go by?”

He rowed for a few minutes without speaking. Then he said, “I stayed because you made me feel like I was living for the first time. And then I left because I don’t want to put you in the spotlight. But…this is who I am.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Someone who loves you even though you deserve better. Someone who’ll be your best friend, your lover, for as long as you’ll have me.” He set the oars in the oarlocks and let the boat drift. “That’s the answer to the second part of your question. It’s why I came back, to do whatever it takes to be with you. I love you, Kate. I love everything about you.”

She smiled through her tears. He claimed he’d never give her hearts and flowers and fairy tales. He didn’t know that was exactly what he was doing now. “See?” she whispered. “That wasn’t so hard.”

“You’re right. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

“So…now what?” she asked.

He hesitated, and she feared he might have come back for the wrong reasons—a long-distance relationship, or one that was part-time. “JD—”

“I realized something when I was away. I don’t want to be in L.A. if you’re here. I want to do this, make a life with you, live with you and Aaron and Callie… I could forget L.A. and apply to UW. That is, if there’s a reason for me to do that.”

“Yes,” she said, gripping the sides of the boat. “There is every reason to do that.”

“You have to understand. All this—eventually, it’ll die down, but not right away. There’s a film in the works, and I can’t stop it. My only hope is that it gets hung up in development limbo. Who knows how long the nosy reporters and photographers will be hanging around.”

“Your mother couldn’t handle it. I can,” Kate said. “Callie and Aaron can, too. We’ll do it together.”

He smiled, and the moonlight was kind to his face, making him look young and idealistic and filled with hope. “Listen, if I go down on bended knee right now, this thing will capsize. So you’ll have to use your imagination.”

She was too full of everything to speak, so she nodded.

“You don’t have to imagine this.” He took out a small box and placed it in her hand. She felt the warm fur of velvet. In the moonlight, it looked royal blue. She opened it and saw the moon on a satin pillow, its beautiful white clarity reflected in every facet of the diamond solitaire.

“This is exactly… How did you know?”

“Come on, Kate. What a question.”

Oh, he knew her. He knew every dream that lived in her heart. He knew she wanted the fairy tale, and he was determined to give it to her. To have someone love her like this…she was overwhelmed.

“So will you?” he asked her. “Forever?”

She caught her breath and thought, this is it. The idea was startling and exhilarating and life-changing, not just for her, but for Aaron and maybe even Callie. And she wanted it so badly that she scared herself, but being scared was nothing new to her.