The Lake House (9 page)

The drop in her stomach didn’t go away when the ride ended. Victoria sat in her seat, unable to move. Joseph got out of the car
and walked away, but before he left the platform, he looked back and winked. . . .

Victoria hugged her arms around the puffy blue jacket as a cold wind blew across the beach. She continued to walk, her eyes on the icy ground as she tried to push away the memories.

“Hello, Victoria.”

Victoria jumped, startled by the sound of a voice so close. She looked up and saw Joseph just a few feet in front of her.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I was out walking and it seems our paths were on course to each other.”

“I didn’t see . . . ah . . . or hear you,” she said. “I mean . . . hello, Joseph. How are you?” He looked sexier at seventy-six than Cary Grant did at thirty. In a fedora and a long wool jacket, he could’ve been a leading man from a 1950s film. She wondered if his white hair was still as thick as it was five years ago. She’d always loved the natural wave and how his cowlick made his hair stick up in the front.

“I’m feeling a bit cooped up with this weather,” he said, looking to the sky. “I thought I would go for a walk just to remind my body that it can still move. At my age, if I sit too long, I might not get out of the chair.”

“I don’t think you’re that old yet, but this weather certainly does remind one of former injuries. I can feel where I broke my hand when I was eight.” She rubbed her right wrist.

“If I recall, you broke that hand and your wrist chasing Bill and Carl through the woods.”

“Yes, I tripped over a tree root and went soaring through the air. I’m surprised I still have knees after all the times I skinned them while chasing those two for some prank they’d played.”

She let her eyes drift down his body. He’d lost weight since
the last time she saw him and he seemed strong and fit. Heat flushed her cheeks. She looked away, afraid he’d notice her staring. Butterflies danced in her belly that she had no right to feel. This man belonged to someone else.

Five years ago, after Annabelle’s death, he’d tried to hold her—to have his friendship heal the seam in her soul that had ripped when Annabelle died, but she left without saying goodbye. He deserved to know why she’d left abruptly, but shame kept her from telling him the truth.

“I don’t know where the years have gone. It seems like yesterday that we were children swimming in the lake.” He turned and looked at the house directly across from the beach—Maryland’s place.

“Molly told me that Maryland had a stroke and her children moved her into a nursing home. I wish I could’ve seen her before she left.” Victoria dug her hands deeper into her pockets.

The silence stirred between them as the wind continued to shake the tree branches.

“How are your children?” Victoria asked.

“They’re good,” he said and he turned to her with a smile. “I’m a great-grandfather now. Emily is two years old.”

“Congratulations, that’s wonderful,” Victoria said.

Joseph’s eyes became sad and the familiar look of pity crossed his face. He couldn’t return the question and ask about her family. But his pity only amplified her loss, and somehow, coming from him, it cut even deeper.

“How’s Barbara? I haven’t seen her around?” Victoria asked.

Joseph looked to the lake. “We divorced a few years ago.”

“Joseph, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Molly never said anything.”

“I asked her not to,” he said without looking at her. “Well, I should be getting inside.”

“Of course.” She wanted to reach out and hug him, but she didn’t. “I think I’ll be heading in as well. My toes are getting cold standing here.”

“It’s nice to see you, Victoria.”

“You too, Joseph.”

They smiled and parted ways like acquaintances rather than two people with more than seven decades of shared history. At her driveway she turned and watched Joseph walk into his home that she realized was now empty. Emotions swirled in her body as she continued to walk toward the main road. It was sad that Joseph and Barbara had divorced and she wondered what had happened after so many years of marriage. But she couldn’t contain the glee that he was single. Could there be hope for a second chance she didn’t deserve? The memory of how she’d rejected him returned along with her guilt.

T
he war in Europe ended May 8, 1945. By June, Bill and Carl had already returned home and proposed to Molly and Sarah. The two women were entrenched in planning their weddings. Both asked Victoria to be their maid of honor, and neither planned to return to Wellesley College for their final year as their lives became more about planning bridal showers, picking out flowers, and shopping for dresses than schoolwork. Most of their class wouldn’t return as women gave up their education to become wives.

Victoria was expected to care about seating charts, party favors, and place settings. With each decision someone would mention Joseph’s impending return and how she would be the
next to be engaged. Joseph’s letters told her that he’d be home that summer and though he hadn’t asked for her hand she knew that she’d be expected to begin her life as a wife.

But she’d seen a bigger world when she was in California. Though she pretended that her girlfriends’ life plans could be enough for her, she knew it wasn’t true. At night, while she lay in bed, she planned her escape.

In August, one month before Molly’s and Sarah’s weddings, Joseph returned home. Victoria met his ship in Boston. Soldiers made their way off the boat in a flurry of excitement. Confusion swirled through Victoria. The longing all these years to see the man she loved made every moment she searched for him intolerable, while the woman who’d planned to leave the community screamed not to be forgotten.

Tears ran down her cheeks when she saw his smile from yards away. He ran to her and before she could settle on how she felt, his arms were around her, lifting her as their lips touched. The commotion around them disappeared as her body melted into the safety of his arms.

That night, a party was thrown in Nagog. Lobsters, steaks, and champagne were served. A sixteen-piece orchestra entertained two hundred guests.

Victoria and Joseph danced on the patio under the sparkling lights. Dressed in his U.S. Navy uniform, he was more dashing than when he’d left. As the night went on, she began to forget her silly dreams of becoming an actress. As he twirled her and held her close, the idea of marrying this man seemed like the perfect life.

When the song ended, Joseph joined the men for a cigar, and Victoria walked to where the women sat discussing Molly’s and
Sarah’s wedding plans. Someone brought up a recipe she’d found in a magazine. The familiar tug to leave Nagog returned.

Joseph crossed the dance floor, held out his hand to Victoria, and whispered, “Will you walk with me?”

The wind that precedes a rainstorm was blowing as they snuck away. Victoria looked to the sky and prayed for the storm to come. She imagined lightning striking the tree by the lake, its limbs crashing to the earth before Joseph could ask the question she knew would come.

In their private spot on the beach, he hugged her. She stiffened. His uniform smelled of cigars as he nuzzled his nose in her long locks.

“I missed your hair. I told the men on the ship that you smelled like fresh-picked strawberries,” he said as he pulled her closer.

Cary Grant never told women they smelled like fruit. Women were sexy goddesses to him. They weren’t housewives. They stole cars and invited handsome men to their apartments.

As Joseph knelt in the sand, he held up a hand-carved wooden box. “The light of your eyes kept me alive during the war. Your smile is all I need in life. Victoria Rose, will you marry me?”

Black velvet lined the wooden box. In its center, the diamond sparkled in the moonlight.

His blue eyes watched her. When his smile deepened the dimple in his cheek, a well of longing for him rose up inside her, and she ached to touch his face. Victoria glanced back at the party and the family she loved.

As the wind picked up and her red dress swirled wildly around her legs, she realized for the final time that she needed freedom more than Joseph’s love. “No,” she whispered. Tears dripped from her eyelashes. “I want more than Nagog and our
families’ factories. I can’t marry you. I’m sorry. I don’t want this life anymore.” She ran from him, rushing along the path that had taken her to their special place. The high-heeled shoes sunk in the sand and she tore them off as she ran across the beach, past the music and laughter on the patio where everyone still celebrated.

In her room, the red dress was cast onto the floor as she changed into pants and a sweater. She filled a small bag with a few changes of clothing. From the bottom dresser drawer she removed her secret envelope of money and pulled out the letter she’d written earlier explaining to her parents that she was leaving and that she’d contact them in a few days. She placed this on her bed, knowing that her mother wouldn’t find it until tomorrow afternoon. No one would worry about her absence until then. It would be assumed that she was at a girlfriend’s house.

There was a late train to Boston that left at ten. It would take her almost half an hour to ride her bike to the station in the next town, but she might have enough time to make it if she rushed. If she was lucky, she’d be on a plane before anyone noticed she’d left.

Outside, she stood on her porch and stared at the party and her family. She shouldn’t leave like this. If she went inside, changed her clothing, and returned to the party as if nothing had happened, she could finish school and be part of her friends’ weddings.

If Joseph hadn’t asked her tonight, she could’ve stayed. But now the backlash of her turning down Joseph’s proposal would be unbearable. Her friends would look at her like she was a fool. Her mother would lecture that she was selfish and insist that
she marry him. Worst of all, she couldn’t bear to see the pain in Joseph’s eyes.

“Know that I love you,” she whispered to her family and friends. “And that I’m sorry.”

V
ictoria untied the hood of her jacket and walked along the main road, which, like so many in New England, didn’t have a sidewalk. She walked in the ditch to give the drivers room, mud and snow soaking her boots. Cars took wide paths around her, headlights flashing in the fog. Her watch read 5:30. People were rushing home from work.

A truck pulled into the long, winding driveway across the street. Victoria could imagine the male driver opening his front door to hugs from little bodies and smiles that peeked out from messy hair.

Victoria wanted to be in that house. She was certain every Nagog resident wished the same: to be able to say grace, hold hands with their family, and hear the children recount their tales from the day. When you were old, meals with family were limited to holidays and birthday parties. If you were alone like she was, you ate soup or a sandwich in front of the television, the news anchor your only companion.

She came to the curved metal gates of the cemetery and walked to where four generations were buried: her grandparents and parents, and her daughter and granddaughter. Unable to face her angels’ resting place, Victoria looked to her parents’ headstone and brushed away the snow. She bent down and touched her mother’s name on the cold stone.

Earlier that afternoon Victoria had noticed a smaller photo tucked behind the other frames in her mother’s sitting room. When she picked it up and looked closer, she realized the picture was actually a newspaper clipping of her and her father in Hollywood on the night of her first premiere. Could her mother—the woman who resisted every reminder of the life Victoria had chosen—have framed this memento?

After she ran away to Los Angeles, she’d sent her mother a telegram letting her know she was safe, but she didn’t include her address. It had taken Victoria two months to build up the courage to phone home.

“Victoria Rose, you will come home immediately,” her mother said in an even tone. “How do you plan to support yourself in California?”

“I have a job as a receptionist,” Victoria replied, standing erect, every muscle tight.

“You were not raised to be an office assistant,” her mother said. Over a distance of twenty-six hundred miles, Victoria felt the “look.”