Lake News (13 page)

So she simply smiled. “I'll let you know.”

She rolled up the window and waved as Elizabeth stepped away. Backing out of the driveway, she shifted into drive, put on the headlights, and set off.

The trip took two hours. Lily spent the first hour watching her rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. Supercautious, she even left the highway once, reversed direction, went back an exit, reversed direction again, and continued on north. But no car followed.

She had escaped. She had one-upped the press in a small victory, made large by the context in which it occurred. The pleasure of it carried her into the second hour, across the Massachusetts border into New Hampshire, and steadily north, but thirty minutes shy of Lake Henry, ebullience gave way to qualms. She wondered if she was trading one set of problems for another, jumping from the frying pan into the fire—and that totally apart from the possibility that the press might yet find her here. If that happened, she had no idea what she would do, what the townsfolk would do, what her
mother
would do.

But she was committed. She checked her rearview mirror when she left the highway, and again when she drove through the center of Lake Henry, but everything was dark, closed up tight for the night, and no car followed, not then or when she turned off Main Street onto the road that circled the lake. Bumping around familiar curves, with an evergreen scent seeping into the car, she felt a mellowness that the lake always brought. Oh yes, there were qualms, but they had to do with people. Not with the lake. Never with the lake.

She turned off the loop road onto a narrower one that led to the shore at Thissen Cove. Several hundred feet from the water, she turned again, this time onto a rutted dirt path. Following it to its end, she killed the engine, then the lights.

At first glance, the lake was pitch black. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the absence of headlights, and she began to make out things. The cottage was a small structure of wood and stone on her left. On her right, tall trees were dark silhouettes against a sky that was only a tad less dark.

Slipping silently from the car, she stood and inhaled. The woods smelled of pine, of dried leaves, of moss-covered rocks and logs burning in a neighbor's woodstove. They were smells common to Lake Henry in fall, but in Lily they conjured up childhood images, good images involving her grandmother. She crossed the small clearing between cottage and lake, walking over pine needles that had been years gathering and gnarled tree roots that had been decades growing. Down a short stairway of railroad ties and she reached the water's edge.

The lake was still. She listened to the soft slap of water against shore, the faint crinkle of fall foliage in the night breeze, the distant sound of a barn owl. She made out layers of clouds in the sky, but as she watched they broke open to patches of stars and, minutes later, a crescent moon—and then—and then came the deep, hauntingly melodic tremolo of a loon.

She was being welcomed home. She felt it as clearly as she felt her grandmother's presence, and suddenly the contrast between the hell she had left and the beauty of this cottage, this lake, this town was so stark and heartfelt that she knew she was right to come.

Feeling stronger than she had at any time since before reading the
Boston Post
on Tuesday, she returned to the car, pulled the key to the cottage from her purse, climbed the steps to the old wood porch, and let herself in the door.

John Kipling sat utterly still in his canoe. The same something that had kept him from sleep had drawn him here in the wee hours, to the shadow of Elbow Island, opposite Thissen Cove. Call it instinct, a hunch, or a sheer lucky guess. Lucky? Hell, no. It was common sense. If her life in the city had become the hell he imagined, where else could she go?

Still, he didn't know for sure until the light went on in the house, but there it was. He whispered a satisfied “Yesssss.”

When a soft yodel came in response, he smiled. Only male loons yodeled. This one wasn't from the pair he called his own, but, man to man, it understood the
satisfaction he felt. He had read the
Post
story and knew firsthand how deceitful Terry Sullivan could be. He had talked with Poppy, who was dismayed at what her sister was enduring, and had talked with townsfolk, who had differing opinions on the matter. He wondered what the truth was. It was the journalist in his blood. Now that Lily Blake was back in town, right here on
his
turf, he could pursue it.

Smiling in anticipation, he drew his paddle through the water and headed home.

Lily slept deeply and awoke disoriented. It was a full minute before she realized where she was, and seconds more before she realized why. Then everything came back in a rush—the lies, the embarrassment, the anger, the loss. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the images away, but they were an indelible part of her now, redefining her life in ways she had never envisioned. A slow trembling started inside. She tried to stay calm by reminding herself that she was safe. Only Elizabeth knew she had left the city, and no one at all knew she was here. Still, the trembling remained.

Thinking that the images wouldn't be as vivid if she was upright and actively looking at something, she slipped from bed and went to the top of the spiral stairs that led down from the sleeping loft—and it worked. Comfort was instantaneous. The magic, of course, was in these four walls. For Lily, this cottage was filled with warm memories. Practically from birth, she had visited her grandmother here.

Celia St. Marie wasn't a native of Lake Henry. She had
spent her first fifty years in a remote Maine town seventy-some miles to the northeast. Widowed early, she had supported herself and Maida by doing book-keeping for a paper mill. When she wasn't working, she was bailing out her brothers, an irresponsible lot. But Maida married well. Not only did George Blake have a successful family business that he ran for his aging father, but he had a good heart. Soon after his marriage to Maida, he bought a piece of land for Celia and built her the cottage where she would spend the rest of her life.

It wasn't a large cottage. Celia hadn't wanted anything large. Having always lived in cramped quarters, she would have been overwhelmed by many rooms. It was enough to have her own home—something she had never had before.

So when George asked, she requested a simple cottage. She felt that if she was to be a landowner, with her own beautiful lakefront, she would enjoy open space outside and be snug and cozy inside.

Coziness was definitely what Lily associated with the cottage, which was made of dark wood top to bottom, with plenty of exposed beams, built-in bookshelves, and wide-planked floors. The ground level was a single large room divided into parts by the appropriate furniture. The living area was marked by a large sofa upholstered in a deep red floral print, a pair of overstuffed chairs in a deep orange floral, two floor lamps with yellow floral shades, and a square pine coffee table that had been battered and loved. The dining area contained a wood trestle table that on occasion had sat half a dozen grandchildren, Celia's and those of her friends.

The kitchen was small but surprisingly modern. Celia St. Marie might have been parochial, but she was smart. She had arrived in Lake Henry with a small savings account that grew considerably over the years, allowing her the financial freedom to upgrade as needed and add conveniences that made her little cottage absolutely perfect.

But her savings account wasn't all that grew. Celia herself grew, spreading out, becoming a part of the community. She made friends in town. She joined the Garden Club and the Historical Society, and played bingo Monday nights at the church. In her seventies she took to wearing baseball caps and red sneakers—respectively (she claimed) to cover thinning hair and to make her visible in the dark. But Lily suspected, as did almost everyone who knew her as she aged, that she simply had come into her own. How else to explain the wide-mouth bass she had caught in a contest on the lake, then stuffed and hung on the kitchen wall? Or, on a living room wall, the huge macramé piece that was both exquisite and remarkable, since she had taken up the craft only after moving to Lake Henry? Or the hat tree that held not only an assortment of baseball caps but a wrangler's cap, a golf cap, and an old fashioned, wide-brimmed lady's lawn hat?

How else to explain, for that matter, the sleeping loft with its wrought-iron bed and profusion of birdhouses—sweet pastel ones hanging from the rafters, a diaphanous pair mounted as light fixtures on the sloping roof above the bed, a scenic one holding tissues, an oversized one used as a wastebasket? Or the political posters shellacked to wood walls, proclaiming support for Teddy Kennedy, a woman's right to choose, and Hillary Rodham Clinton?

In her golden years, Celia St. Marie had blossomed. For the first time in her life she had spoken her mind, and that included standing up to Maida on the matter of Lily. What little self-confidence Lily took from childhood had come from her grandmother's ever-open arms.

Celia had been dead for six years, but Lily felt those arms around her as she sat on the stairs at the edge of the loft. It helped that she wore one of Celia's old nightgowns. It was long and soft, and incredibly, smelled faintly of the jasmine bath oil that Celia used.

Lily wondered what her grandmother would think of the goings-on in Boston. She wondered what those goings-on would be today. There was neither a television nor a radio here, not because Celia couldn't afford it but because she had made a deliberate choice to listen to loons rather than white noise. And in winter, when the loons were gone? She listened to records, old LPs, right to her dying day.

Lily had much of the same music on compact discs. They were outside, locked in her borrowed car along with her CD player and her clothes. She would get them later. There was no rush. She was in hiding. She didn't have much else to do.

It was nine in the morning. Pale dapples of sunshine broke through the trees and spilled through the window onto the floor, a braided rug, an arm of the sofa. It was a warm, familiar sight, remembered from a childhood of overnights spent here—waking up early, legs swinging over the loft, singing softly, then a little louder, then louder still until her grandmother woke up. Lily clung to
the memory as long as she could, until thoughts of Boston broke through again and brought a chill.

Barefoot, she went down the stairs, wrapped herself in the crocheted shawl draped on the sofa, and stood where a beam of sun hit the floor. The warmth of it satisfied briefly before fading. Fall was here. Once she unpacked the car, she would bring wood in from the shed.

Outside, a loon called from the lake. Pleased at the familiar sound, Lily opened the door to a world that glowed. With the morning sun behind her, the lake reflected the deep blue of the western sky. Those trees whose outer leaves had already turned color burned a fiery red and gold, all the more electric among evergreens of every deep, dark shade. She caught the scent of balsam, pine, the drying leaves of maple, aspen, and birch. The morning was peaceful and still, a far cry from the city in so many, many ways.

The loon called again, but she couldn't see it. Risking even colder feet, she darted between mossy rocks, across the pine-strewn ground, down the steps to the shore. She would have gone out to sit on the dock, but she didn't want Lake Henry to know she had come. So she tucked herself into one of the small cubbies of exposed pine roots that were characteristic of Thissen Cove, and watched and waited from there.

The lake was serene. From the woods behind her came the trill of a warbler, from the lake the whisper of water on rocks. When the loon called again, she focused in on Elbow Island, waited until her eyes adjusted, sorted through the water's reflection of trees at the island's edge until she saw it. Them, actually. Two birds
were there, easily identified by their pointed beaks and the graceful sweep of their heads and necks. She wondered if there were others—perhaps the summer's brood—but she couldn't see clearly enough. Energized, she left her shelter, ran back to the house for Celia's binoculars, and returned. She was at the top of the railroad-tie steps before she saw the small motorboat that had glided to the dock.

She froze. The man in the boat wore dark glasses, but there was no question that he was looking at her. That windblown head of brown hair, a jaw so square that a close-cropped beard couldn't hide its shape, an alertness so like that of the vultures she'd left behind—she knew who he was, oh, did she ever. She also knew that he knew
her,
which made scurrying back out of sight pointless.

Appalled, heartsick,
furious
to have been found out so soon, and by a man she had reason to hate on two counts, she raced back to the house, pulled a kitchen chair to the front door, and snatched Celia's gun from the hooks above it. She reopened the door and stormed back out. By then John Kipling was halfway across the lawn. The dark glasses were gone, but he was still imposing. Large and lean, he walked like a man in command.