“I’m sure you do, darlin’.”
“I’m sure I do.”
She was lost . . . then found as she began to move in the familiar cadence of their words and speech patterns.
“It really is good to see you, Amy. I’m glad you came this weekend.”
“Me, too.” She meant it. Right then, right there, she meant it. All the years filled with wondering, and the anguish of not knowing what happened to him, momentarily disappeared. Silence rolled between them and it was all right. There was time to say whatever waited out there.
They stared out at the lake. A lone sailboat dipped and swayed in a beautiful water-waltz. Then it dipped too far, flipped over, tipping two kids in life jackets into the lake. Laughter spilled and echoed across the lake, bounced up against the pilings of the dock.
“Cute kids,” Amy said.
“They’re ours.”
“Ours?” She was dizzy.
“Jack and Lizzy.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Of course. Yes . . .”
“You okay?”
“Oh, yes.”
Nick reached to touch the side of her face, lift her chin so she looked directly in his eyes. “Amy . . .”
Whatever he wanted to say was cut short by the shrill staccato of Eliza’s call from the top deck.
“Amy, honey. Which of these grocery bags needs to go in the fridge?”
Her voice, sharp with quills at Amy’s inadequacy, slid down the stairs. The beer was gone and its warmth in Amy’s blood sent an uncommon smart-ass comment to her mouth.
“Oh, hon. I’ll get it.” The sarcasm came without forethought and her regret moved rapidly to her gut. She laughed—always a good cover—and bounced up the back steps to Eliza’s side. “I’ll do it. I just got carried away admiring your beautiful home and grounds. This is such an amazing place. It’s so peaceful I actually forgot there were things to do. Forgive me. I’ll be the consummate guest from this moment on and help with everything.”
“You don’t have to help with everything. I just needed to know what groceries to put up.” Eliza took the empty beer bottle from Amy’s hand.
Amy followed Eliza’s straight back into the house as she held the empty beer bottle out in front of her, as if it would bite. She tossed it in the kitchen garbage and wiped her hands on a dishrag.
Eliza turned to Amy. “Another?”
“No, thank you. I’ll put up the groceries.”
“When you’re done, your room is the second on the right down the hall. I believe your husband is in there unpacking.” Emphasis on the word “husband.”
“Good. I was wondering where he went. Where’s Molly?”
“She’s on the front porch, reading, I think.”
“Thank you, Eliza. For everything. For inviting us . . .”
“You’re welcome, Amy. It’ll be fun.”
Amy unloaded the weekend’s worth of planned meals into Eliza’s labeled and precise kitchen. She needed to lie down with the acidic taste of an empty stomach and the buzz of a full beer in her head.
With the last loaf of bread plopped into the labeled breadbasket, Amy walked down the hall filled with twig-framed pictures of vintage hunting-magazine covers. She pushed open a bedroom door. “Phil, you in here?”
Phil stood next to the bed, unpacking with familiar movements; he laid piles at the end of the bed, identical to the ones he’d made in the suitcase. He had his own system: shirts in a pile, briefs in a pile, shorts combined with bathing suits. These heaps would be reviewed for depth and width before he decided which drawer to plant them in.
He turned to Amy. “There you are.”
She leaned against the doorframe desperately wishing she’d eaten. She glanced around the room, squinting against the sun filtering through oak-stained shutters onto a twig bed, a plaid quilt, carved bear lamps.
“Such original decorating, huh? A lot of creative thought went into this,” she said.
“I detect some sarcasm, honey.”
“I should cut poor Eliza a break. She didn’t decorate a square inch of this place. She inherited the house, the decorator and the plaid quilts from the same place she inherited her stick-straight still-blond hair and crystal blue eyes—from good genes, great money.”
“Ame, sit down. What’s your problem?” He patted the bed.
“Where, exactly, am I to sit with all your perfect little piles?”
He threw his hands up, then picked up his toiletries kit, walked toward what Amy assumed was the bathroom, intelligently avoiding a fight.
She called after him. “I’m sorry. I think I’m a little carsick.”
“Move my stuff and lie down. Do you want me to unpack your suitcase?” he called from the bathroom.
Amy didn’t move anything, but sank into a Blackwatch plaid easy chair and leaned back, closed her eyes.
Phil came back from the bathroom and the sound of him moving things around, opening and shutting drawers, caused Amy to open her eyes. He stood next to the bed pulling clothes out of her suitcase.
“Where is the gerbil cage?” she asked.
“What?”
“It smells like a gerbil cage.”
Phil sat at the edge of the bed and laughed. “It’s a cedar bathroom.”
He shifted to point down the hall and a pile of her clothes fell off the bed.
She stood, bent to pick up her clothes, turned to the hewn-log dresser and opened a thin drawer, laid her shorts and shirts neatly in it, then squished them down to close the drawer.
“They would fit easier one drawer down,” Phil said.
She began to tell him she knew how to take care of herself, that she didn’t need to be told what to do. And then she wondered, really wondered, if she actually did know how to take care of herself.
She looked up at him in the mirror over the dresser, glanced away then back at herself, the way her eyes squinted, the green dull and muddy compared to Eliza’s bright eyes. The neat and pulled ponytail she’d made at home sprang loose, not in sweet curls or straight pieces of golden sun like Eliza’s, but in frizzy tufts, dust balls. She smoothed her hair—a futile attempt.
It was a colossal mistake coming here. Things could only get worse, a downward spiral. She wanted to go home.
She turned to the bed then flopped facedown, half on the pile of neatly stacked clothes courtesy of Phil, and buried her face in the pillows—pure down pillows.
“Down,” she mumbled through the plaid.
“Did you bring your allergy pills?”
“I hope so.”
“I’m sure I have some.”
She turned her head. “Always taking care of me.”
He tousled the back of her already puffed hair and went to the bathroom to look for the lifesaving antihistamine that would ward off the effects of mold, mildew and down. If only it could ward off memories.
She wanted to go home. She wanted to unload the dishwasher, tidy the living room, read the paper, go grocery shopping, fold the laundry, work on her class lesson plans. The sleepless nights of the week joined with the one beer and she began to doze off, float above the room.
“Ame . . . here’s some water, your allergy medicine.” Phil rubbed the back of her neck.
“I want to go home.”
“Too late. I offered the option earlier. They’re waiting for us, and Jack and Lisbeth are here.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.” She looked at him with one eye open, the other squished against the plaid pillow sham.
He walked across the hardwood floors, kicked at the corner of a kilim rug that had folded over—fixing it, righting things as he always did.
“Take your time.” He walked into the hall and casually closed the door with his foot; it shut with a soft click into its frame. The doors in their historic home swelled and shrank without reason and never moved with the smooth slide just witness
ed. Phil opened the bedroom door again, as if to praise its actions; he appreciated efficiency and never understood her love of old and inefficient houses.
“This is a very nicely built house,” he said before closing the door again.
“For a gerbil.” Amy swung her feet off the bed and bent over her knees before she walked to the bathroom, rubbing her eyes.
She washed her face in the soapstone sink, scrubbed it to pink with the washcloth laid in perfect hotel folds on the side of the counter. Embroidered on the cotton towel were the initials MSH; Amy took some perverse satisfaction in the fact that these were Eliza’s mother’s initials, not Eliza’s.
“Pull it together,” she told the woman in the mirror.
She stroked mascara on the lashes of her puffy eyes and dabbed concealer over the translucent blue skin; the improvement was miniscule. She smoothed her hair and wrapped a few tufts of fuzz around her finger, attempting to go for the “few loose curls” effect. It wasn’t working. She turned away from the mirror—it was time to face everyone else.
She walked into the kitchen and found her son, wet and laughing, with his arm coiled around Lisbeth’s waist. His hair dripped lake water on the front of her T-shirt, over her breasts. Even as they stood and laughed, it appeared that they were in a slow dance, slightly bending as if there was a gentle wind blowing just for them. Amy’s legs felt weak, unhinged at the joints.
She was jealous of them, how they held themselves in the middle of the kitchen regaling the others with their tale of the tipped sailboat. They didn’t even notice her. The awkward parents were the free-floating planets, the kids the sun.
Eliza turned to Amy. “You okay?”
Molly, Jack and Phil turned to Amy as she ignored Eliza and hugged Jack. “I saw you flip the sailboat. Smooth move, Romeo.”
He laughed and shook his hair on her. “It was all for your entertainment, Mom.”
Phil answered Eliza. “She’s fine. She just has allergies.”
Amy glared at Phil, then smiled at Eliza. “I’m totally fine.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Eliza said. “Carsick and allergic.”
It wasn’t as if she was dying of a down allergy. “I am fine. Should we get dinner started, or stand here talking about my swollen eyes and puffy face?”
The thin ice of pure crystalline silence covered the kitchen. Amy’s children and husband stared at her with gaping mouths. Amy, the mom of love and laughter, did not freeze rooms with sarcasm and unpleasant words.
Nick stepped into the kitchen and broke the awkward standoff, melted the disbelief with his smooth voice. “Nope, Ame, it’s too early for dinner. Cocktail hour here. Let’s go for a boat ride. I’ll show y’all some of the lake.” He bent over to grab a cooler off the hardwood floor; he winked at her as he stood.
Amy was grateful for Nick just then—only grateful. Yet she also wanted to hug him, run her hand down his back and find the mole she knew rested at the base of his spine.
Chapter Seven
Amy stood on the Lowrys’ dock and, from a safe distance, watched the sun catch Nick’s curls poking from beneath his baseball cap as he walked into a boathouse at the side of the cove. She’d believed the boathouse was someone else’s cabin. She looked away when Molly called from the upper deck.
“Mom, Mr. Lowry said it’s okay to double up on the Jet Skis and follow you in the boat. I’ll ride with Alex. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No . . . go ahead. Wear a life jacket, honey.”
“Duh, Mom.”
Molly ran off to follow Alex; they ran down a dirt path toward the shingled boathouse. The shafted light of an evening sun parted to allow them through the trees. Amy sighed as she watched them; Phil came to her side.
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know, I know. Jet Skis just freak me out a little.”
“She won’t be driving. We’ll be with them the whole time.”
Amy glanced out at the lake, its surface unbroken by the wake of the boat still pulling out from the boathouse. “It’s beautiful here.”
“Amy, you’ll probably want to grab a sweater or fleece.”
“You’re right.”
“I’ll go get your pullover. You want the gray fleece?”
“That and a glass of wine.”
“At your service, ma’am.” Phil bowed, then walked back to the house.
The grind of the boat engine came closer and Amy turned to see the white and black Cobalt lurch from the boathouse and fill the satin lake with waves and white froth. Nick drove the boat, spinning in a 360-degree turn, showing off, lifting his baseball hat off his head. He pulled the boat into the notch and shouted up to her, “Come on. Jump in.”
He threw a rope to her; she caught it and wrapped it around a cleat.
“Jump in,” he hollered again, over the roar of the engine.
Waves banged against the wood pilings; she wanted to wait until the water calmed before she jumped. Nick broke the calm of the water, broke the calm of her mind. Debris rose to the surface: a Coke can, a bottle cap, memories—but she listened to him and jumped with the waves still returning to bang the boat against its slip. She mistimed the waves, and she and the waves hit the hull of the boat simultaneously. She flew into the air; Nick grabbed her arm and used his body to steady her—to keep her from plunging between the dock and the boat. He held her tight against his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist.
She knew where to rest her hands, her mouth; she knew what to hold and when. His hand pushed on the small of her back and she understood where to bend and push at the same time. But of course, she didn’t.
She laughed. “That was graceful of me.”
He didn’t laugh. Pain passed over his face—a look she recognized with acute awareness. “Did I hurt you?” she asked.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Thanks for catching me. It’s not your fault I decided to hit the boat like a whale.” Her lips shivered as her smile shook—he’d notice.
He touched her bottom lip; she pulled away.
“You still leave me weak, Amy Malone.”
“Reynolds. It’s Reynolds. Stop.” She held up her hand.
“Nicky . . . is the cooler already in the boat?” Eliza called from the top deck. Amy turned.
“Yes, got it,” Nick called up.
Amy laughed out loud. “Nicky?”
“Not funny, Ame.”
“Yes, very funny, Nicky.”
Eliza’s drawl and domestic familiarity broke the reverie as Phil walked down the wooden planks leading to the dock. He appeared, Amy thought with shame, smaller, dimmer against Nick’s magnitude and energy. She reached out her hand for Phil as he climbed into the boat balancing a glass of wine and a fleece.
Jet Skis roared up behind the boat; Molly sat behind Alex, who bore the genetic kiss of Eliza in his high cheek-bones and thin face, his flashing hair falling over his eyes. Molly arms grasped Alex’s waist. She leaned forward, yelled out, “Come on, let’s rock.”
“Whoa . . . ” Phil said. “Slow down, Mol.”
“Whatever, Dad.”
Alex yelled over the engine, “Which cove do you want to head to, Dad? I’ll meet you there.”
“Son, wait for us.” Nick leaned across the boat and pulled in a rope.
Jack and Lisbeth pulled up next to them on another Jet Ski. Lisbeth’s legs were wrapped around Jack’s’; her hands were clasped in front of his chest as she melded to his body. Amy turned from their physical contact, her limbs lazy as though she herself sat on the back of the vibrating Jet Ski.
Eliza climbed into the boat, bearing towels and plastic tumblers and Amy felt amiss with her real glass of red wine. Maybe bringing glass on board was against the rules.
Eliza dropped her load on a white seat and turned to her husband. “Honey, why don’t we head over to the large cove. We can see the sunset bett
er and the kids can drive the Jet Skis there.”
Nick backed the boat from the dock, popped open a Heineken and steered the boat with his knees. He turned and asked Phil if he wanted a beverage.
“I got it, Nick. You just drive.”
Amy scooted to the back of the boat and sat to watch the children race each other. She pulled her hair to the back of her neck and fastened it with the rubber band in her pocket. She smiled and waved at the kids. Hers. Nick’s. Impossible, but not. A hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked up at Eliza’s plastic tumbler of white wine and flawless white smile.
“You have everything you need?” Eliza asked.
“Absolutely. Look how much fun the kids are having. Thank you so much for inviting us.”
“I’m glad you brought Molly.”
Amy felt warm, sure of herself. She took another sip of wine. “Y’all are so lucky to have this place. Do you come often?”
The two women leaned into each other to talk.
“Not as much as Nick would like to. He thinks we can come anytime he wants. He doesn’t know how much trouble it is to clean it, pack. You know . . . all the stuff you have to do to open and close a lake house.”
No, Amy didn’t know, but she nodded.
After looking out at the water, then back at Nick, Eliza lowered her voice. “They just don’t understand. They throw in a toothbrush and underwear and they’re ready to go.”
“I know . . . I know. They have no idea,” Amy said, although this was not true of Phil. Particulars were irrelevant when searching for a way to talk to Nick’s wife. “They think the groceries and kids’ stuff are magically packed for family getaways.”
Eliza sighed, and it sounded very much like It’s good to have someone understand. So Amy continued. “They arrive at their destination, pop a beer and the vacation begins for them.”
Eliza exhaled. “Yes.”
None of the things Amy described were actually characteristic of Phil; he would pack, then unpack and she couldn’t remember the last time he had actually popped a beer. He would uncork a fine bottle of Merlot, but only after the contents of the bags were neatly arranged in drawers. She was pretending to be Nick’s wife. She was trying it on, a hand-me-down dress, seeing how it fit, where it would be too loose, too tight, too fancy.
Losing the Moon Page 6