Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (22 page)

In all honesty, the puppy was merely expressing the same feelings Noah had—total exuberance at seeing Sophie again. “Didn't you know?” he asked. “It's the reason we have puppies.”

Bo took three Utica Clubs from the fridge and passed them around. “Ever had a Car Bomb?” Bo asked her.

Noah grimaced, “Come on, Crutcher—”

“I'm not a fan of car bombs,” Sophie said. Her face paled visibly.

Noah didn't think Bo noticed but he sure as hell did. She had been living overseas. Maybe in a place where car bombs were no joke.

“I mean the kind made with beer and tequila. Come here, I'll show you.” Bo paused to grab a bag of chips and a jar of salsa, two staples that could always be found in Noah's kitchen.

Everywhere Bo Crutcher went, a party ensued. It was a gift. His personality was as big as his potential as a baseball star, so when he opened up a bottle of tequila and dropped shots into their glasses of beer, Noah and Sophie drank up as obediently as children ordered to finish their milk.

“This is completely disgusting,” Sophie declared, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin.

“I've been told worse.” Bo poured a second round. “Trust me, it gets better.”

“Cheers.” Taking himself back to the days of Alpha Zeta at Cornell, Noah knocked back his refill.

“Cheers,” echoed Sophie.
“Salut, proost, amandla.”

“Whoa, did you hear that?” Bo regarded her with awe. “She knows French.”

“I recognized Dutch and…”

“Umojan,” she said. “It's an African dialect.” Sophie dispatched her drink with impressive panache, then emitted a lengthy belch.

Bo clutched at his chest. “Be still my heart.”

Concentrating on not spilling, Noah set them up again. “Yeah, take a number, buddy.”

Sophie burst out laughing. “You guys are better than my shrink.”

“You have a shrink?” asked Bo.

She laughed again. “You don't?”

“I don't.” Noah held up the bottle of Patrón. “Unless you count this.”

“I've never met anyone who didn't have a shrink.”

“Even I've got one,” Bo said. “Lately. My agent's making me see somebody. He wants to be sure I got my head on straight before the new season.”

“I've never known a baseball star before,” Sophie said.

“Oh, I'm a treat,” Bo said, refilling her glass and then Noah's. “No bout adoubt it. Or whatever.”

“Drinking away my problems,” she mused. “What a concept. Look, she's sound asleep,” she added, indicating the puppy in her lap. “I feel such a sense of accomplishment.”

“You mean you've never tried drinking away your problems?” asked Noah.

“You mean you have problems?” asked Bo. “You sure as hell don't look as if you've got problems.”

She hiccuped, and gave him a little smile. “You have no idea.” Despite her words, she spoke pleasantly, and turned the dazzling wattage of her smile on Noah. They clinked bottles.

“To your hidden talents,” Sophie said. “And we'll add skating coach to the list, along with cosmetic surgery. My knee is going to be just fine.”

“Cosmetic surgery,” echoed Bo. “That's where the money is.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Lots of women eventually go for a brow lift,” Sophie said.

“Your brows are perfect,” Noah told her. “Don't ever let anyone mess with your brows.”

“That's sweet,” she said. “But sooner or later, we all need a little help.”

She was an amazing contrast of brains, self-confidence and insecurity. He found it incredibly attractive. But challenging.

“And stud service,” Bo added. “Don't forget that. Dr. Noah Shepherd—Veterinary Medicine, Cosmetic Surgery, Emergency Medicine and Stud Service.”

“Shut up.” Noah glowered at him. Belatedly, he realized he shouldn't have said to shut up. It only egged Bo on.

“I don't get it,” Sophie said. “Stud service? Are you breeding something?”

Bo slapped his thigh and guffawed. “Didn't he tell you?”

“That's enough,” Noah said. “You turd, you said your lips were sealed.”

Crutcher ignored him. “They were, but then I drank more beer.” He turned back to Sophie. “Sockeye Calloway's daughter wants to have his baby.”

Sophie didn't need a surgeon to give her an eyebrow lift. She did a great job on her own. “Good heavens.”

“I swear, I'm not making this up,” Bo said. “Tina and her partner, Paulette—they're a couple.” He shrugged in bafflement. “Don't ask me why. That's just the way they roll.”

“I see.” Sophie took a prim sip of her beer.

“Yeah, it's a crying shame, if you ask me.” Bo shook his head tragically, his lion's mane of hair shimmering with the movement.

“Nobody asked you,” Noah said, but he knew it was already too late. The cat was out of the bag and would not be going back in any time soon.
I'm an idiot,
Noah thought. Stone-cold sober, Bo would take a secret to the grave. However, with a few beers in him, all bets were off.

“So you're saying these women want to have a baby together?” Sophie asked Bo.

“Yep.”

“And they want Noah to…”

“Yep.”

Sophie gazed at him with eyebrows raised sky-high. He was quick to say, “Not going to happen, of course. Nothing against Tina and Paulette. I just…when I have kids, I want a little more involvement.”

“It's amazing, the lengths some women will go to in order to be a mother,” Sophie said, then turned to Bo. “I have two children and a grandson.”

“Wait a second.” Bo blinked like an idiot. “Two kids and a grand—what?”

“A grandson.”

Bo gave one of his low whistles.

Noah sent him a look that promised dismemberment. If Bo mentioned the age difference now, he was dead meat. Fortunately for Bo he merely lifted his glass in a toast.

It
was
kind of mind-blowing, the idea of her being a grandmother. On some level, her situation appealed to Noah. She was at a place in her life that, to him, seemed like a distant, nearly unreachable future. Now he could look at Sophie and see the future as something real and possible. Although divorced and alone, she was the connective tissue in a family, whether she realized it or not.

She took another drink. “My kids and grandson are the whole reason I'm here. For the first time in my life, I'm going to be a full-time, stay-at-home mom. This is a second chance for me, and I'm going to be the best mom ever. I'm going to make the mom Hall of Fame. I'm going to be such a good mom, I'll be scary.”

“The Mominatrix.” Noah clinked glasses with her.

“I swear, I'm going to be supermom and supergrandma all rolled into one.”

Bo took a thoughtful sip of his beer. “Yeah. Well, good luck with that.”

O
n her first day of classes, Daisy kept feeling as though something vital was missing. And it was, of course. Charlie, and all that he entailed. Since the moment he was born, she hadn't even drawn a breath without taking him into account: Charlie. His diaper bag. His binky. His favorite cuddly toy. Teething gel, diaper cream, baby wipes, change of clothes. Was he awake or asleep? Hungry? Content? Crying? Doing something that made her dive for her camera? Studying his own hands as though they were the lost Ark of the Covenant?

It was amazing how one tiny being, approximately the size of a football, could consume her entire life.

And of course, thoughts of him caused her to have an inevitable physical reaction. She felt a tingling in her breasts, followed by the warm release of milk. Her boobs didn't distinguish between Charlie and the thought of Charlie. Fortunately, she was prepared with round disposable pads tucked into her bra.

A whole industry had grown up around the fact that mothers left their babies. There were monitors to transmit every sound they made. Web cams offered a glimpse of exactly what was going on at any given time. There were toys that would play back the sound of your voice for your baby, books to advise you to leave behind a blanket with your scent, a picture of your face. There was a whole support system and industry behind the phenomenon of leaving your baby.

Daisy made use of a lot of them, from the superabsor-bent breast pads to a mobile phone with her mother's number on speed dial. Daisy had already called. Twice. Still, she walked around the campus feeling as though she had forgotten something.

And she felt lighter than air.

She had forgotten what it was like to go anywhere without Charlie and all his gear. Here on this campus, it was just her, a backpack and shoulder bag with her camera. She felt like the old Daisy, worrying only about herself. She hadn't liked that Daisy much but liking herself wasn't such a big priority anyway. She knew she was going to like school, yet that made her feel guilty. How could she like something that took her away from her baby? Did that make her a bad mom?

Looking at the other students, she felt like an observer. A misfit.

In high school, she'd been the popular one. The party girl. Everyone thought she partied because it was such fun. They didn't realize she did it to bug her parents. She didn't love having them pissed off but at least they were thinking of her. Otherwise, they were focused on other things, such as getting a divorce.

It had all ended predictably, with her parents' marriage over and everybody miserable. She'd moved with her dad from Manhattan to Avalon, a backwater town she'd been prepared to hate.

She didn't hate Avalon. Okay, she didn't exactly love it, but it was a safe place to live. Then she discovered she was pregnant, and then there was no question of leaving. This was a good place to raise her child.

And now Mom. How surreal was that?

So here she was, scoping out her new school, dealing with a kind of culture shock she hadn't anticipated. She did what she often did, viewed it through the lens of her camera. It was a cold day, but not a frostbite day. Students walked in groups, laughing and chattering, making Daisy conscious of her aloneness. There were couples, too. Tons of couples strolling with their arms around each other or holding hands. Some of them, in the new ecstasy of discovery, stopped every few steps to make out and then continued walking in a daze. And of course, there were the loners, plugged into their iPods, lost somewhere in the middle of a playlist. Daisy noticed girls on their cell phones. She figured some of them were having fake conversations just for the purpose of looking busy so people wouldn't think they had no friends.

Daisy wasn't sure where she would ultimately fit in here. This was a state college so it had all kinds, from full-time students living in dorms or in the big boxy Victorian houses along fraternity row to commuters who had jobs and families. Logan lived in the Chi Theta Sigma house. She had never visited him there. This part of his life was separate. Best to keep it that way.

She missed Charlie but, at the same time, knew these few hours away were an incredible gift. Maybe she should go to the student union, get a cup of coffee and talk to other girls about shopping, celebrity gossip, the day's headlines, last night's campus performance of
Antigone.

Maybe she would do that after class today instead. Her mom had assured her that she would take good care of Charlie. Of that, Daisy had no doubt. One thing about her mom: she did everything—whether it was bringing down a foreign dictator or picking out a grapefruit—with complete competence. Daisy thought about her mother and what she'd endured. A security situation, she'd called it, and she had totally downplayed her role in the drama. She didn't like talking about it, though she implied she had merely been an observer. Daisy suspected her mom had been more than that, though. It must have been really bad to make her move to Avalon. For Daisy, the timing couldn't be better. A thought that made her feel totally selfish.

Daisy took a few pictures. She always liked the way the snow illuminated faces, stark but with a peculiar clarity that lent honesty to features and expressions.

She panned the camera around the quadrangle, an oblong yard surrounded by tall, bare trees and stately brick buildings, one of the prettiest and most traditional of college campuses in the state college system. Her viewfinder touched on a boy with shoulder-length white-blond hair, walking with a stack of books propped against his hip.

She nearly dropped the camera in surprise. Could it be…? Zach.

Daisy started to call his name but decided against it. If she was mistaken, she'd look like an idiot. She tucked her camera away and hurried toward him, passing some students putting up a banner for a rally and a professor surrounded by adoring protégés.

Maybe she was wrong. A whole year had passed. But no, she would know Zach Alger anywhere. She and Zach and Sonnet—her best friend, and now her stepsister—had been through so much. Some of the finest pictures Daisy had ever taken had been of him. Not model-ish shots or poses, just studies of his remarkable, oddly compelling face. The pictures had been taken last winter, studies in black and white of a striking young man hiding a world of pain. When she'd taken the photos, she hadn't known about the pain or its source, and perhaps that lent an air of mystery to the shots.

As she drew closer to him, there could be no mistake. Everyone had a unique way of carrying himself, and when you had viewed a person through a camera lens the way she had Zach, you recognized his particular posture and movement.

“Zach,” she said when she was a few yards behind him. “Hey, Zach.”

He stopped immediately as though someone had jerked an invisible chain, and turned to face her. It was the same Zach she had known…but different. Same remarkable face with its prominent bone structure, Nordic features, amazing cornflower-blue eyes beneath pale brows, hair so light that people asked him if he bleached it, or if he was an albino. And yet there was something different about him. A distance. A hard shell of wariness.

“It's me,” she said. “Daisy.”

He smiled briefly, a social reflex rather than a reaction. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“So, how are you?” She felt totally awkward. They'd been friends once. Close enough to tell each other their secrets. Together with Sonnet Romano, they'd been the three musketeers, all for one and one for all. Inseparable.

Until, of course, they'd been ripped apart by scandal.

“I'm okay,” Zach said. “You?”

“Fine,” she said. “Great.”

“That's good.”

Uncomfortable silence. Crunching of snow underfoot, babble of voices around them.

Daisy didn't know where to began. “I'm sorry,” she said, “this is weird. I didn't mean for this to be weird.”

Her admission seemed to help a little. He glanced at the clock tower. “Are you on the way to class, or…?”

“Not for about thirty minutes.”

He indicated the student union, a blocky building with a figured concrete entryway. “Want to get a cup of coffee?”

“I'd love that.”

They moved through the line side by side, getting coffee. Zach picked up a fat cellophane-wrapped cinnamon roll, then put it down again. “Just the coffee,” he said. “Working at the Sky River Bakery turned me into a baked-goods snob.”

His mention of the past broke through another section of ice between them.

“Me, too,” she agreed. They had both worked at the bakery in Avalon last winter. Seeing so much of each other had made them fast friends. Zach and Sonnet had rescued Daisy from feeling like an outsider when she'd moved to Avalon.

They sat together at a Formica-topped table by the window. “It's good to see you,” Daisy said. “I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, after what happened—”

“You don't have to dance around it,” he said. “You mean, after my dad got caught ripping off the city of Avalon.”

Zach's father, Matthew Alger, had been the city administrator under Nina when she was mayor. When funds mysteriously went missing from the city coffers, Nina was blamed but ultimately, the theft was traced to Matthew. Everything unraveled from there. It was discovered that Alger had a massive online gambling addiction. To make matters worse, Zach tried to cover it up by stealing from the cash register of the Sky River Bakery, where he worked. Now Matthew Alger was doing time. With no other family or ties to Avalon, Zach had left town. And even though Nina wasn't directly responsible for the loss to the city, her term in office had ended under a cloud of scandal.

“Yes,” Daisy said. “After that. You quit school, quit the bakery and took off before I could even tell you I was sorry about everything that happened. Before Sonnet could say goodbye.”

“You mean good riddance. My dad screwed over her mother. I didn't think she'd be too sad to see me go.”

“We were both sad, Zach. What your dad did wasn't your fault, and I'm glad I found you again. And FYI, I'm telling Sonnet. I ought to text her right now.”

He was finally relaxed enough to almost smile. “Still your same bossy self.”

In the silence that followed, she could sense his unspoken curiosity. She folded her arms on the tabletop and looked at him. “It's all right to ask me about the baby,” she said.

“Yeah, I was kind of wondering.”

The last time Zach had seen her, she was just a few months' pregnant and everything was up in the air.

“I didn't want to ask in case, you know, something happened,” he added.

“I had a little boy in August,” she said. “Emile Charles Bellamy. He's amazing.” She pulled a photo out of her wallet. “We live in Avalon,” she explained. “So I'm a commuter student here. Today is my first day.”

“Wow.” Like most guys, he didn't have much to say about the baby pictures. “I bet you're a great mom.”

“I try.” She asked Zach about his life. He was living near campus and working in a local bakery; unlike most people, the crazy hours suited him. Here at college he was studying, he admitted, accounting.

As she listened to him talk, it struck Daisy how much she liked Zach and how much she missed having him as a friend. She had so few friends these days. Most of those she'd known in high school had gone away to college or moved to the city for jobs. The ones who were left settled into an uncomfortable combination of preadulthood, getting unexciting jobs and going drinking on the weekends, drifting from day to day with nothing better to do. Daisy was desperate to avoid slipping into that kind of existence. It was why she insisted on having a home of her own instead of living under her father's roof. It was why she stayed up late working on her commercial photography and why she was in college right now. She didn't want her life to be something she endured. She wanted it to be something more.

She told Zach about the bit of progress she'd made with her fine art photography—her prints were on display at a few local businesses and she made the occasional sale. She had also found more steady work doing commercial photography for a local graphics firm, and posting her stock online.

“So my pictures pop up in surprising places,” she told him. “Like in an ad for sliding glass doors. And gardening supplies and cold sore medicine.” She finished her coffee, stuffed a napkin in her cup. “Some of the best pictures I've ever taken are of you,” she told him.

“Yeah, well, I hope my face doesn't pop up in some ad or brochure.”

“Number one, I would never do that. Number two, I can't without a signed model release.” She handed him another picture from her wallet. This was one she had taken last winter with her shutter on timer. It showed the three of them—her, Sonnet and Zach—in the snowy woods, and it captured the friendship they'd once shared. None of them knew, in the picture, that just a short time later, Daisy would be taking pictures of something very different, something they'd discovered in an ice cave in the hills where they were hiking. They had set out that day to go snowshoeing, and they'd come across the remains of a woman who had been missing for twenty-five years. Not only had Zach's father known the victim. He'd been the last person to see her alive.