Lake News (28 page)

“Lots of people around here do, since Lily's a native.”

Gus raised his eyes slowly, insolently.

John weathered his stare for a minute before gesturing toward the sandwich. “Eat.” He took another bite of his own, chewed, swallowed. Then, because his father wasn't biting at gentle bait, he sharpened it. This was his own need, he knew, but it was a big one. “She was innocent in that business with Donny. You know that, don't you?”

Gus dropped his eyes to the sandwich. It was the only sign he gave that, yes, he did know and, yes, he wasn't proud of it. At least, John interpreted averting his eyes as being a sign. He didn't want to think that the man had no conscience.

“I've often wondered whether things wouldn't have been different if I'd been here,” John said.

“You'da saved us all from behavin' like fools?” Gus asked.

“No. I might have saved Donny from whatever it was that he felt he needed to do. He was okay before I left. When I was the bad boy, he was the good. What happened after I left?”

Gus picked up the sandwich. A chunk of tuna fell back to the plate. He turned the bread and studied the empty spot.

“Maybe if I'd stayed,” John said, “he'd have been all right.”

“But you'da gone to hell. So I saved one.”

“Why me? Why not Donny?”

“She had to have one.”

She. John's mother—who was alive and well, happily remarried, and living in North Carolina. “But why me?” he asked.

“Ask her.”

“I did. A million times.” He got along well enough with his mother now, but back then their relationship had been precarious. He had always suspected Dorothy would have preferred to take her youngest—had often suspected that Gus had ruled it the other way around precisely because he knew that. She had mourned Donny long and hard. But she had never answered John's question. “She always said to ask you. I'm doing that now.”

Gus shot him as much of a level gaze as he could, with one eye lower than the other. “She's the one wanted outta the marriage. I said fine, shoo-uh, go ahead. Jus' leave me the good one, an' she did.”

The good one
. “You didn't really say that.”

“Yes suh.”

John was hurt enough to lash back. “Looks like you didn't have much insight.”

Gus pushed himself to his feet and tottered for an instant, but that instant was long enough for John to feel remorse. He was up in the next breath, pushing his father back down. It was frighteningly easy.

When he was sure that Gus would stay put, he returned to his own seat. “Sorry. That's a sore point with me. I always felt sent away. Exiled. Punished.”

“You was,” grumbled Gus.

John bit into his sandwich and chewed with some force. By the time he swallowed, he realized he was getting
no further than he ever did. So, again, he changed the subject. “You knew George Blake pretty well, didn't you?”

“I did not. I only weuked f 'him once.”

John knew for fact that it had been far more than that. Gus had done stonework in both the big house and Celia's. John had firsthand knowledge of it. He had watched, albeit from a distance. “What did you think of him?”

“Think a who?”

“George.”

“Didn't know Geawge. Maida's the one I was dealin' with. Prissy little thing,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “Cold as a bass outta the lake in Mahch.” With a grunt, he turned his head and scowled at the yard. “Somethin' strange about that lady.”

Casually, John asked, “What was it, do you think?”

Gus's eyes met his. “How the hell do
I
know? I can't figyuh out my
own
life, let alone someone else's. But that woman wasn't right from the minute she came to town. Too smiley. Too uppity. Always expectin' somethin'. No
wunduh
the daughtuh's in trouble.” The wider of his eyes narrowed on John. “She'll be back.”

“Lily? You think?”

Gus mimicked him. “ ‘Y'think?' Whadda
you
think, smaht man? You got the big-city education. You otta know.
You
think she'll be back?”

John wanted to tell Gus that Lily was already back. He wanted to share the news as a gesture of goodwill, a show of trust.

Only, the trust wasn't there. Three years of regular visits, and John still didn't know what made his father tick. He didn't know how a man could send away a son and not care what happened to him, but that was just what Gus had done. He hadn't called or written once—not on a birthday, not on Christmas. Dorothy, who did write and visit Donny, had called Gus an emotional dwarf, and John had gone along. Deep inside, he had dreamed that his father thought about him a lot.

He didn't know how a man could be as angry and unfeeling as Gus seemed to be. He figured there had to be something softer inside—figured that if they saw each other enough it would come out, figured that if John could prove his worth, Gus would confess.

So when word came that Gus was failing, John had returned to Lake Henry. He envisioned a reconciliation, a meeting of minds, a détente. He imagined their talking about Donny, and about Dorothy, and about where Gus had built his longest, most beautiful walls and what stories John had written that made him the most proud. He had imagined finding a father. What he found was a man as hard and unyielding as those long, beautiful stone walls that he built.

John had no idea whether Gus liked him even the littlest bit. Without liking, there wasn't apt to be respect, and without respect, if John shared the secret of Lily's return, Gus might well turn right around and tell it to the first person he saw. That would be Dulcey, who would tell her mother, who would tell her sister, who would tell her husband, who would tell the woman who kept his meager carpentry books, along with those of half the
other small businessmen in town—and
that
woman was the biggest gossip around.

John couldn't do that to Lily.

The postmaster was another matter. Nathaniel Roy liked and respected John. He made that clear soon after John's return to Lake Henry, and their daily chats at the post office had grown in depth and openness. John often sensed that Nat placed greater value on what he had to say precisely because of the years he had spent away from Lake Henry. Given that John played down his past with the rest of the town, he could be more himself when he was with Nat. The man was seventy-five if he was a day, but they were good friends.

Needing a friendly face now to fill the emptiness he felt leaving Gus, John headed back into town for his mail.

The post office was a pretty, single-story brick building. To step inside was to be enveloped in the smell of advertisement circulars and, more faintly, if remarkably, the cherry pipe tobacco that Nat had sworn off years before.

Nat looked up from reading a magazine and immediately lit up—quite a feat for a man whose full smile was as spare as his face. He was long and narrow, a Yankee from his thinning gray hair to his wire spectacles to his baggy cardigan, tweed pants, and worn deck shoes. He continually chewed on his unlit pipe, and rarely minced words when he spoke.

“You don't have much,” he said around the pipe stem as he handed John a small, elastic-bound pack. “A few
bills, a few ads, new L. L. Bean catalogue. There's a postcard from your mother. She and the hubby are in Florida. Sounds like they're buying a place.”

John had known they were looking. He pulled out the card and read the back. It described a cottage in Naples four blocks from the beach. “Sounds good.”

“She's excited. Nice lady. Even when things were rough, she was always polite, always smiling. Sorry to say this, but we never could understand what she saw in Gus.”

“He was taller then,” John said. “Very good looking.”

Nat took the pipe from his mouth. “Looks fade. Then what's left? She came from away. That didn't bode well.”

“Maida Blake came from away,” John pointed out. “She and George were married for more than thirty years. Do you think they were happy?”

“Actually,” Nat said after a moment's pondering, “I do. Of course, George was never good looking the way Gus was, so it wasn't like she lost something when he got older and wider. I have to hand it to her, though. She stepped right in and took over when George died. Didn't miss a beat.” Clamping the pipe in the corner of his mouth, he leaned sideways, produced someone's new
People
magazine from a stack there, opened to an exact page, and pushed it toward John.

John skimmed the article. It was about the Cardinal and Lily, written prior to the apology to the Cardinal.

“She's famous,” Nat said. “Can't imagine Maida liking that much. She never did approve of Lily going off to New York. Far as she was concerned, that was the worst den of iniquity on this earth. Not that I could
fault the girl for wanting to leave. She got a lousy shake in that business with your brother.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice, as though there were others around, which there weren't. “Think she'll be coming back here?”

John was tempted to tell him but refrained, and it wasn't a matter of trust. John had tested Nat a time or two. He could be closemouthed when asked. But something else pulled John from the other side. “She may.” He saw an opening. “Does she ever write to Maida?”

“No. But then, Maida never writes to her. She isn't the kind who does that. Never did. When she first moved here, there was no mail a-tall back and forth to the old hometown.”

“Where was that?”

“Linsworth, Maine. It's a little logging town northeast of here. Celia used to send and get, but not as much as you'd expect, and after a while that ended, too. They cut their ties.” He frowned. “So maybe there was unpleasantness left behind. Maybe they just wanted to start over fresh.”

“Was there no family back there?'

“If there was, they didn't write. I was new to the job back then, and people were asking who they were—Maida and Celia—so I kept an eye out. But there was no mail coming from anyone by the name of St. Marie.” His voice sharpened. “Not that I told that to the fellow who was nosing around here yesterday. Two-bit reporter from Worcester trying to look like one of us, trying to sound like one of us, trying to make like he's on Lily's side, but he wasn't. I could see the slyness in him, asking question
after question. I kept wondering why he came to me. Because I handle the mail? Like I'd tell him what I see. That'd be wrong. A violation of the trust the gov'ment puts in me. Almost a federal offense, like tampering with the mail.”

John grinned crookedly.

Nat took the pipe from his mouth and pointed its stem at John. “You're different. You care. It's one thing for
us
to know who we are and where we come from. It's something else entirely for
them
to know it. We like each other, and even if we don't, we recognize that we're all in this together. People from the outside don't understand that. They don't know squat about community.”

Had John not missed the paper's noon deadline, he would have been on the road to Elkland when Richard Jacobi called. With two hours to kill, though, he had returned to the office and was rereading files, making notes for himself, thinking about possibles and probables, when the phone rang.

Richard was interested. Several questions later and he was very interested. Several more questions and he was so interested that he offered John a large amount of money to settle the deal there and then. No need for an agent, he said. The issue is speed and surprise, he said. I can get your book out in six months, I can publish it well, you
know
the reputation of this house, he said.

What John knew was that the house was a David among Goliaths. It was small but hungry. When it aimed at the best-seller lists, it often hit its mark, and it was due for another big one. The advance being offered
John was large enough to suggest that his book might be it.

He hung up the phone ten minutes later feeling breathless. Richard wanted an outline and introductory chapters as soon as possible. That meant organizing his thoughts fast.

At the same time that John was pondering his options for literary intrigue, Lily left the cottage and drove around the quiet end of the lake. She bypassed the narrow road that led to Poppy's, taking the wider one that led up the hill toward Maida's, but she soon turned off onto another. Rose lived at its end with her husband, Art Winslow, and their three daughters.

The house was barely a dozen years old, built as a wedding gift from the senior Winslows to complement the gift of the land given by the senior Blakes. That Rose had chosen its design was obvious to anyone who knew Rose as Maida's clone, which meant anyone who knew Rose at all. This house was a smaller version of the one on the hill—the same fieldstone, the same porch, the same eaves. The implications of that notwithstanding, Lily thought it a beautiful house. It was particularly so now, with gaslights framing the drive and lighting the porch.