Lakeside Cottage (4 page)

So, thought Kate as she put the Jeep in gear and pulled out onto the road, maybe I read him wrong. Still his image lingered in her mind as she headed west. He intrigued her, even with two days’ growth of beard. Even the sunglasses gave him an unexpected sexiness, reminiscent of that guiltiest of pleasures, Johnny Depp.

Snap out of it, Kate, she told herself. He probably had a wife and kids with him. That would be good, actually. That would be great. Kids for Aaron to play with.

Her son was turned around in the seat, watching the green truck heading back toward town. “You really think that raccoon will live?”

“It was acting pretty lively,” she said.

Around the east end of the lake, the road narrowed. Like Brigadoon, the lake community was locked in the past. Decades ago, President Roosevelt had declared Lake Crescent and its surroundings a national treasure, and designated it a national park. Only those few already in residence were permitted to retain their property. No more tracts could ever be sold or developed, and improvements were restricted. The hand-built cabins and cottages and the occasional dock tucked along the shore seemed frozen in time, and an air of exclusivity served to underscore the specialness of the summer place.

The families of the lake were a diverse group who generally kept to themselves. Mable Claire Newman’s property management company looked after the vacation homes, including the Livingston place.

Kate pulled off the narrow road and turned between two enormous Sitka spruce trees. Aaron jumped out to
unhook the chain across the driveway. Bandit leaped after him, ecstatic to finally be here.

Even this small act was the stuff of family ritual. The opening of the driveway chain had the ponderous significance of a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was always done by the eldest child in the first car to arrive. He would already have the dull, worn key in one hand and a can of WD–40 in the other, because the padlock inevitably rusted over the damp, dark winter. Aaron freed the lock and let the thick iron chain drop across the gravel driveway. He stood aside, holding out his arm in an old-fashioned flourish.

Kate gave a thumbs-up sign and eased ahead. Summer was officially open for business.

With the dog at his heels, Aaron ran ahead down the driveway. It was littered with pinecones and the occasional bough blown down by the winter storms. Kate felt a familiar childlike sense of anticipation as the property came into view. A grove of ferns, some the size of Volkswagens, filled the forest floor bordering the driveway. Speared through by sunlight, it had the look of a magical bower. In fact, Kate’s grandma Charla used to tell her that fairies lived here, and Kate believed her.

She still did, a little, she thought, watching her son and the dog do a little dance of glee.

The driveway widened and lightened as the trees thinned. Ahead, like a jewel upon a pillow of emerald silk, sat the lake house.

She loved the way the lake property revealed itself to her, bit by bit. Its charms were cumulative, from the gardening shed with moss growing on the rooftop to the boathouse that not only housed a boat, but a homemade still left over from Prohibition days. As always, the lake
water had a certain mesmerizing clarity, and indeed the drinking water had always been drawn from it.

The lawn had been mowed prior to their arrival. The house looked as though it was just waking up, the window shades at half mast. Over the eyebrow window were the numbers 1921, to commemorate the year the place was built. Godfrey James Livingston, an immigrant who had made a fortune cutting timber, had commissioned the lake house. The family, with somewhat willful naïveté, always referred to the place as a cottage because old Great-Grandfather Godfrey liked to be reminded of the Lake District of his boyhood in England.

Yet the term “cottage” was an irony when applied to this place. Its timber and river-stone facade spanned the spectacular shoreline, curving slightly as if to embrace the singular view of the long lake with the mountains rising straight up from its depths. The house was designed in the Arts and Crafts style, with thick timbers and multipaned dormer windows on the upper story and a broad porch that took full advantage of the setting.

Godfrey’s son—named Walden, with inadvertent prescience—was Kate’s own grandfather. He was a gentle soul who in one generation had allowed the family fortune to dwindle, mainly because he had the distinction of being a devout conservationist in an era when such a thing was all but unheard of. His passion for preserving the virgin forests of the Northwest had been spoken of in whispers, like an aberrant behavior. “He loves trees” had the same hushed scandal as “he loves boys.” Back in the 1930s when Grandfather was growing up, he had fought to protect the forests. Later, during World War II, he’d served as a medic, winning a bronze star at Bastogne. Having gained a hero’s credibility, he later appeared
before Congress to urge limits on clear-cutting federal lands. In the 1950s, his enemies denounced him as a Communist.

A decade later, Grandfather came into his own. The flower children of the 1960s embraced him. He and his wife, Charla, an extremely minor Hollywood actress who had once played a bit part in a Marlon Brando movie, protested the destruction of the environment alongside hippies and anarchists. To the acute embarrassment of their grown children, they attended Woodstock and smoked pot. Walden became a folk hero, and he wrote a book about his experiences.

When Kate was a small girl, he was widowed and moved in with her family. She had loved the old man without reservation, spending hours at his side, chattering on in the way of a child, certain her listener hung on her every word.

With a patience that could only be described as saintly, he would listen to her describe the entire plot of
Charlotte’s Web
or every exhibit in the school science fair. Later, when she was a teenager, it was Grandfather Walden who heard all her Monday-morning quarterbacking about the weekend football games, parties, dates. Her grandfather was the keeper of all her secrets and dreams. It was to him that she first explained her ambition to become a famous international news correspondent. He was the first one she told when she was accepted in the honors program at the University of Washington. And it was to him that she had confessed the event that had changed the course of her future. “I’m pregnant, and Nathan wants me to get rid of the baby.”

“To hell with Nathan.” The old man, wheelchair-bound by then, still managed a lively gesture with his hand. “What do
you
want?”

Her hands had crept down over her still-flat belly. “I want this baby.”

A gleam of emotion lit his eyes behind the bifocals. “I love you, Katie. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

He’d given her the most critical element of all—his wholehearted, nonjudgmental approval. It meant the world to her. Her parents were supportive, of course. It was the role they felt compelled to play. But every once in a while, Kate sensed their frustration.
We raised you for something more than single motherhood.

Only Grandfather knew the truth, that there was no career or calling more thrilling, demanding or rewarding than raising a child.

She loved her grandfather for his great heart and open mind, for his passion and honesty. She loved him for accepting her exactly as she was, flaws and all. Over the years, he gave her plenty of advice. The bit that stuck in her mind consisted of two simple words:
Don’t settle.

She wished she’d done a better job following that advice, but she hadn’t, in her career, anyway. She had settled for a popular but uninfluential newspaper that required little from her, only a clever turn of phrase, a canny eye for fashion and the ability to produce eighteen hundred publishable words on a regular basis.

This was it, then, she decided, parking near the back door. This summer was her chance to find something she could be passionate about. She would do it for her own sake, in honor of her grandfather.

Grabbing the nearest grocery sack, she got out of the Jeep and unlocked the back door. At least, she thought she unlocked it. As she turned the key, she didn’t feel the bolt slide.

That’s odd, she thought, opening the door and stepping inside. The cleaners must have forgotten to lock
up after themselves. They’d left the radio on, too, and an old Drifters tune was floating from the speakers. She would have to mention it to Mable Claire Newman. Crime wasn’t a problem around here, but that was no excuse for carelessness.

Other than leaving the door unlocked, the cleaners had done an excellent job. The pine-plank floors gleamed, and all the wooden paneling and fixtures glowed with a deep, oiled sheen. The shutters had been opened to dazzling sunlight striking the water.

Kate inhaled the scent of lemon oil and Windex and went to the front window. Everyone who came here rediscovered the old place in his or her own way. Kate always started with the inside of the house, checking to see that the cupboards and drawers were in order, that the clocks were set, the range and oven working, the bed linens aired, the hot water heater turned on. Only after that would she venture outside to touch each plank of the dock, to admire the lawn, and to feel the water, shivering with delight at its glacial temperature.

Aaron headed straight outside, the dog at his heels. He ran along the boundaries of the property, from the blackberry bramble on one end to the growth of cattails on the other. Bandit raced behind him in hot pursuit.

When they pounded out to the end of the dock, Kate bit her tongue to keep from calling out a warning. It would only annoy Aaron. Besides, she didn’t need to caution him to stay out of the water. He would do that on his own, because the fact was, Aaron refused to learn to swim.

She didn’t know why. He’d never had an accident either boating or swimming. He didn’t mind a boat ride or even wading in the shallows. But he would not go in over his head no matter what.

Kate felt bad for him. As he got older, he suffered the stigma of his phobia. Whenever one of the boys at school celebrated a birthday at the community pool, Aaron always begged off with a stomachache. When invited to try out for the swim team, he managed to lose the forms sent home from school. Last summer, he spent hours sitting on the end of the dock while his cousins—even Isaac and Muriel, who were younger than him—flung themselves off the dock and played endless games of water tag and keep-away with the faded yellow water polo ball. Aaron had watched with wistfulness, but the yearning to join them was never enough to motivate him to give swimming a try. She could tell he wanted to in the worst way. He just couldn’t make himself do it. He had to be content standing on the dock or paddling around in the kayak.

Don’t settle, she wanted to tell him. If she did nothing else this summer, she would help Aaron learn to swim. She suspected, with a mother’s gut-deep instinct, that learning to overcome fear would open him up to a world of possibility. She wanted him to know he shouldn’t make do with less than his dreams.

There. The thought had pushed its way to the surface. Aaron had “problems.” According to his teachers, the school counselor and his pediatrician, he showed signs of inadequate anger management and impulse control. A battery of tests from a diagnostician had not revealed any sort of attention or learning disorders. This had not surprised Kate. She knew what Aaron wanted—a man. A father figure. It was no secret. He told her so all the time, never knowing that each time he mentioned the subject, it was a soft blow to her heart. “You have your uncle Phil,” she always told him. Now that Phil had moved away, Aaron’s behavior in school had worsened. She’d
missed one too many deadlines, attending one too many parent-teacher conferences, and Sylvia had shown her the door.

Her throat felt full and tight with unshed tears. Really, she thought, she ought to feel grateful that her son was healthy, that he loved his family and most of the time was a great kid. But those other times…she didn’t always know how to deal with him.

Maybe that was why parents were supposed to come in pairs. When one reached her limit, the other could pick up and carry on.

Or so she thought. She didn’t know for certain because she’d never had a partner in parenting Aaron. She’d had a partner in making him, of course, but Nathan had disappeared faster than the Little Red Hen’s friends in the old bedtime story.

Kate went outside and grabbed another sack of groceries. “How about a hand here?” she called to Aaron.

He turned to her and applauded.

“Very funny,” she said. “I’m letting your Popsicles melt.”

He sped across the lawn, his face flushed. Already he smelled like new leaves and fresh air. “All right already,” he said.

Kate set the sack on the scrubbed pine counter. In the sink was a tumbler half-f of water. She dumped it into the drain. The cleaners had probably left it. She put things into the freezer, then opened the fridge and found a covered disposable container with a plastic fork.

“What the…?” Kate murmured. She removed the container and put it straight in the trash. Lord knew how long it had been there.

“What’s that?” Aaron asked.

“Nothing. The cleaners left a few things behind. I’ll
have to speak to Mrs. Newman about it.” She finished putting away the perishables and let Aaron go outside again to toss a stick for Bandit.

Then she grabbed two suitcases, heading upstairs. Since it was just her and Aaron this summer, she decided to take the master bedroom. It faced the lake with a central dormer window projecting outward like the prow of a ship. She’d never occupied this room before. She’d never been the senior adult at the lake. This room was for couples. Her grandparents. Then her parents, then Phil and Barbara. Well, she’d have it all to herself, all summer long, she thought with a touch of defiance.

Juggling the suitcases, she pushed open the door. Another thing the maids had forgotten—to open the drapes in here. The room was dim and close, haunted by gloom.

With a frown of exasperation, Kate set down the luggage. Her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the dimness. When she straightened up, she saw a shadow stir.