On Mystic Lake Part 11

By the time Nick finally got home from work-late, as usual-Annie was exhausted. She drove home and stumbled into bed. Almost immediately, she fell into a deep sleep, but sometime in the middle of the night she awoke and reached out for Blake.

Once awake, she couldn't fall back asleep again. It was an unfortunate symptom of her depression that she was tired all the time, but she rarely slept well.

As usual, she spent the hours until dawn trying not to think about the big empty house on the Pacific, and the man who had been a part of her life for so long. The man who'd said, I love her, Annie. I love her, Annie.

She went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal, then she picked up the phone and called Natalie-an unscheduled call. She listened to her daughter's stories about London for several minutes, and then quietly told her about the move to Mystic. To see Hank and help out an old To see Hank and help out an old friend, friend, she'd said. she'd said.

Natalie had asked only one question: "What does Daddy say?"

Annie had forced a fluttery laugh that sounded false to her own ears. "You know Dad, he just wants me to be happy."

"Really?"

It made Annie feel inestimably old, that single, simple question that seemed to know too much. After that, they'd talked for almost an hour, until Annie could feel bits and pieces of herself returning. It anch.o.r.ed her to talk to her daughter, reminded her that she hadn't failed at everything in her life.

At the end of the conversation, she made sure Natalie had Hank's phone number in case of an emergency, and then she hung up.

For the next hour, Annie lay in her lonely bed, staring out the window, watching the darkness until, at last, the sun came to brush away the bruising night.

It was thoughts of Izzy that gave Annie the strength to get up, get dressed, and eat something. The child had become her lifeline. Izzy touched something deep and elemental in Annie, and it didn't take a two-hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist to understand why. When Annie looked down into Izzy's frightened brown eyes, she saw a reflection of herself.

She knew the hand Izzy had been dealt. There was nothing harder than losing a mother, no matter what age you were, but to a child, a girl especially, it changed everything about your world. In the years since her mom's death, Annie had learned to talk about the loss almost conversationally, the way you would remark upon the weather. My mother died when I was young . . . pa.s.sed away . . . My mother died when I was young . . . pa.s.sed away . . . pa.s.sed on . . . deceased . . . an accident . . . I really don't pa.s.sed on . . . deceased . . . an accident . . . I really don't remember her. . . . remember her. . . . Sometimes, it didn't hurt to say those things-and sometimes the pain stunned her. Sometimes, she smelled a whiff of perfume, or the vanilla-rich scent of baking sugar cookies, or heard the tail end of a Beatles song on the radio, and she would stand in the middle of her living room, a woman full grown, and cry like a little girl. Sometimes, it didn't hurt to say those things-and sometimes the pain stunned her. Sometimes, she smelled a whiff of perfume, or the vanilla-rich scent of baking sugar cookies, or heard the tail end of a Beatles song on the radio, and she would stand in the middle of her living room, a woman full grown, and cry like a little girl.

No mother.

Two small words, and yet within them lay a bottomless well of pain and loss, a ceaseless mourning for touches that were never received and words of wisdom that were never spoken. No single word was big enough to adequately describe the loss of your mother. Not in Annie's vocabulary, and certainly not in Izzy's. No wonder the girl had chosen silence.

Annie wanted to say all of this to Nick, to make him understand all that Izzy must be feeling, but every time she started to speak, she had an overwhelming sense of her own presumptuousness. When she looked into Nick's pale blue eyes, or at his grief-whitened hair, she knew that he understood all too well.

They were still awkward around each other. Uncertain. For Annie, at least, the memory of their pa.s.sion underscored every look, every movement, and if she spoke to him too intimately, she found that it was difficult to breathe evenly. He seemed equally unnerved around her; and so they circled each other, outfitted more often than not with false smiles and pointless conversations.

But slowly, things had begun to improve. Yesterday, they had spent ten minutes together, standing at the kitchen counter, sipping coffee while Izzy ate breakfast. Their conversation crept along the perimeter of their old friends.h.i.+p, dipping now and then into the shared well of their memories. In the end, they had both smiled.

It had given Annie a new strength, that single moment of renewed friends.h.i.+p, and so, today, she pulled into the driveway a half hour early. Grabbing the bag of croissants she'd picked up from the bakery and the bag of surprises she'd bought for Izzy, she climbed out of her car and went to the front door, knocking loudly.

It took a long time, but finally Nick answered, wearing a pair of ragged gray sweatpants. Swaying slightly, he stared down at her through bloodshot eyes.

She held up the bag. "I thought you might like some breakfast."

He stepped back to let her in, and she noticed that he moved unsteadily. "I don't eat breakfast, but thanks."

She followed him into the house. He disappeared into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later, dressed in his policeman's uniform. He looked sick and shaky, with his silvery hair slicked back from his face. The lines under his eyes were deeply etched, as if they'd been painted on.

Without thinking, she reached for him, touched his forehead. "Maybe you should stay home . . ."

He froze, and she could see that he was startled by the intimacy of her touch. She yanked her hand back, feeling the heat of embarra.s.sment on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't-"

"Don't," he said softly. "I have trouble sleeping, is all."

She almost went to him then, almost started a conversation that wasn't for her to begin. Instead, she changed the subject. That was always the safest thing-to keep it strictly about Izzy. "Will you be home for dinner?"

He turned away, and she knew he was thinking about the last two nights. He'd been too late for dinner both nights. "My schedule-"

"It would mean a lot to Izzy."

"You think I don't know that?" He turned to her, and in his eyes was a bleak desperation that wrapped around her heart. "I'm sorry-"

He shook his head, held a hand up, as if to ward her off. "I'll be home," he said, then he pushed past her and left the house.

Their days together followed a comfortable routine. Annie arrived early and spent the day with Izzy, playing, reading, walking around the forest. In the early evening, she made a hot dinner for the two of them, and afterward, they played board games or watched videos until bedtime.

Every night, Annie tucked Izzy into bed and kissed her good night.

Nick consistently missed dinner, forgot to call, and showed up around nine o'clock, smelling of smoke and booze. Even when he promised to be home, as he did almost every night, he didn't make it.

She was tired of making excuses for him. Once again, it was bedtime and this beautiful child was going to have to go to bed without a kiss from her father.

She glanced at Izzy, who stood now at the big picture window, staring out at the falling night. She'd been stationed there for almost thirty minutes, no doubt listening for the quiet purr of her dad's patrol car.

She went to Izzy and knelt beside her on the hardwood floor. She chose her words with care. "When I was a little girl, my mom died. It made my daddy and me very quiet for a long time. When my dad saw me, all he could think about was my mama, and the hurt made him stop looking at me."

Izzy's brown eyes filled with tears. Her lower lip trembled and she bit down on it.

Annie reached up and caught a single tear on the tip of her finger. "My daddy came back to me, though. It took a while, but he came back because he loved me. Just like your daddy loves you."

Annie waited for Izzy to respond-so long the waiting became noticeable. Then she smiled and pushed to her feet. Her knees popped and cracked at the suddenness of her movement. "Come on, pumpkin. Let's get you to bed." She started to walk toward the stairs.

Izzy fell into step beside her. Annie slowed her steps to match the child's as they climbed the stairs. Halfway up, Izzy inched closer and slid her hand into Annie's. It was the first time Izzy had touched her.

Annie clung to the tiny fingers, squeezing gently. That's That's it, Izzy . . . keep reaching out. I won't let you fall. it, Izzy . . . keep reaching out. I won't let you fall.

Upstairs, after Izzy brushed her teeth, they knelt beside the bed together. Annie recited the "Now-I-lay-me" prayer and then tucked Izzy into bed, kissing her forehead. After a quiet moment, she went to the rocking chair by the window and sat down.

The chair made a soft ka-thump, ka-thump ka-thump, ka-thump on the wooden floor. Her gaze moved from Izzy to the window. She stared out at the glittering moonlit lake, listening to the slow evening-out of the girl's breathing. on the wooden floor. Her gaze moved from Izzy to the window. She stared out at the glittering moonlit lake, listening to the slow evening-out of the girl's breathing.

As so often happened, the nightly ritual made Annie remember. When her own mother had died, she'd been much too young to handle her grief. All she knew was that one day her world was bright and s.h.i.+ning and filled with love, and the next, everything fell into a gloomy, saddened, tear-stained landscape. She could still recall how much it had scared her to see her father cry.

That was when the blueprint of her life had been drawn. She'd become a good little girl who never cried, never complained, never asked uncomfortable questions.

It had taken her years to grieve. Her first year away from home had been incredibly lonely. Stanford was no place for a small-town millworker's daughter. It had shown her-for the first time-that she was poor and her family uneducated.

Her love for Hank was the only reason she stayed at that big, unwelcoming school. She knew how much it meant to him that she was the first Bourne to attend college. And so she kept her head down and her shoulders hunched and she did her best to fit in. But the loneliness was often overwhelming.

One day she started her car, and the sound of the engine triggered something. The memory was as unexpected as a snowstorm in July. All at once, she felt her mother beside her in the car, and Annie's Volkswagen "Bug" had become the old station wagon they'd once had, the one with the wood-grain strip along the side. She didn't know where they'd been going, she and her mom, or what they'd talked about, and she realized with a sharp, sudden pain that she couldn't recall the sound of her mother's voice. The more she tried to slip into the moment, to immerse herself in the memory, the more flat and one dimensional it had become.

Until that moment, she had actually-naively-thought she'd overcome the death of her mother, but on that day, more than ten years after they'd placed her mother's coffin in the cold, dark ground, Annie fell apart. She cried for all the missed moments-the nighttime kisses, the spontaneous hugs, the joy that would never be as complete again. She grieved most of all for the loss of her childhood innocence, which had been taken on a rainy day without warning, leaving behind an adult in a child's body, a girl who knew that life was unfair and love could break your heart, and mostly, that nothing was worse than being left behind by the one you loved.

It took her several days to master her grief, and even then control was tissue-thin, a layer of brittle ice on a cold, black body of water. It was not surprising that she fell in love almost immediately after that. She had been a walking wound of loneliness, and caretaking was the only way she knew to fill the void in her soul. When she met Blake, she showered him with all the pent-up longing and love that was inside her.

Annie slowly got out of the rocker and tiptoed to the bed. Izzy was sleeping peacefully. Annie wondered if the child was blessed with dreams in which Kathy appeared; Annie herself was rarely so lucky.

She was halfway down the stairs when the phone rang. She jumped down the last few risers and dove for the phone, answering it on the third ring. "Nick?"

There was a moment of silence, then a woman's voice said, "Nick?" "Nick?"

Annie winced. "Hi, Terri."

"Oh, no you don't, don't you dare act like this is a normal conversation. Who in the h.e.l.l is Nick and where are you? I called Hank and he gave me this number."

Annie sank onto the sofa and tucked her knees up underneath her. "It's nothing, really. I'm baby-sitting for an old friend and he's late getting home."

"I had hoped hoped you'd changed. A little bit, at least." you'd changed. A little bit, at least."

"What do you mean?"

"You just spent twenty years waiting for a man to come home-now you're waiting for another man? That's insane."

It was was insane. Why hadn't Annie seen that on her own? It made her angry suddenly, both that she'd lost the ability to really get mad, and that she'd allowed herself to take from Nick what she'd spent a lifetime accepting from Blake. Excuses and lies. "Yeah," she muttered more to herself than to Terri. "I only have to take this kind of s.h.i.+t from men I'm in love with." insane. Why hadn't Annie seen that on her own? It made her angry suddenly, both that she'd lost the ability to really get mad, and that she'd allowed herself to take from Nick what she'd spent a lifetime accepting from Blake. Excuses and lies. "Yeah," she muttered more to herself than to Terri. "I only have to take this kind of s.h.i.+t from men I'm in love with."

"Well, that answers my next question. But what-"

"I've got to run, Terri. I'll call you later." Annie could still hear Terri's voice as she hung up the phone. Then she punched in another number.

Lurlene answered on the second ring. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Lurlene? It's Annie-"

"Is everything all right?"

"Fine, but Nick isn't home yet."

"He's probably down at Zoe's, havin' a drink-or ten."

Annie nodded. That's what she'd suspected as well. "Could you come watch Izzy for a little while? I want to go talk to him."

"He ain't gonna like that."

"Be that as it may, I'm going."

"Give me ten minutes."

After she hung up, Annie went upstairs and checked on Izzy again, then she hurried back downstairs and paced the living room. True to her word, Lurlene showed up in ten minutes, wearing a puffy pink chenille bathrobe and green plastic clogs.

"Heya, honey," she said quietly, stepping into the house.

"Thanks for coming," Annie said, grabbing her purse off the coffee table. "This won't take long."

Chapter 11.

Annie stood on the sidewalk below a c.o.c.keyed pink neon sign that read: Zoe's Hot Spot Tavern Zoe's Hot Spot Tavern. It sputtered and gave off a faint buzzing sound.

Clutching her handbag, she went inside. The tavern was bigger than she'd expected, a large rectangular room, with a wooden bar along the right wall. Pale blue light shone from tubes above a long mirror. Dozens of neon beer signs flickered in shades of blue and red and gold. Men and women sat slumped on bar stools, drinking and talking and smoking. Every now and then, she heard the thump of a gla.s.s. .h.i.tting the bar.

Way in the back were two pool tables, resting beneath pyramids of fluorescent lighting, with people bent over them, and others standing alongside, watching. Someone broke up a rack of b.a.l.l.s and the sound was a loud crack crack in the darkness. in the darkness.

Keeping her back to the side wall, she edged deeper into the place, until she saw Nick. He was at a table in the back corner. She pushed through the crowd.

"Nick?"

When he saw her, he lurched to his feet. "Is Izzy-"

"She's fine."

"Thank G.o.d."

He was unsteady on his feet as he backed away from her. He stumbled and plopped into his chair. Reaching out, he grabbed his drink and downed it in a single swallow. Then he said softly, "Go away, Annie. I don't . . ."

She squatted beside him. "You don't what?"

He spoke so quietly she had to strain to catch the words. "I don't want you to see me here . . . like this."

"Did you know that she listens for you every night, Nick? She sits beside the front door for as long as her little eyes can stay open, waiting to hear your footsteps on the porch."

"Don't do this to me . . ."

Her heart went out to him, but she didn't dare stop, not now when she'd finally found the courage to begin. "Go home to her, Nick. Take care of your little girl. This time you have with her . . . it goes away so quickly, don't you know that? Don't you know that in a heartbeat, you'll be packing her bags and watching her board a plane for somewhere far away from you?"

The look he gave her was sad and hopeless. "I can't take care of her, Annie. Haven't you figured that out? Christ, I can't take care of anyone." In an awkward, jerking motion, he pushed to his feet. "But I'll go home and pretend. It's what I've been doing for the past eight months." Without looking at her, he tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table and walked out of the bar.

She rushed after him, trying all the way through the crowded bar to figure out what to say to him. At the curb outside, he finally stopped and looked at her. "Will you do me one more favor?"

"Anything."

A quick frown darted across his face, made Annie wonder why he'd expected to be let down. Why was it so hard for him to believe that she wanted to help him?

"Drive me home?"

She smiled. "Of course."

The next morning, Annie arrived at Nick's house an hour early. She slipped through the unlocked door and crept up the stairs. She checked on Izzy, found her sleeping peacefully, then went to Nick's bedroom. It was empty. She went down the hall to a guest room and pushed the door open.

The curtains were drawn, and no sunlight came through the heavy Navajo-print drapes. Against one wall was an old-fas.h.i.+oned four-poster bed. She could just make out Nick's form beneath a mound of red wool blankets.