Lakeside

by Davis, Mary

  Garth smiled. “That’s the plan.”

  He could imagine his mom singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” in her pause.

  “I love you, son.”

  “Love you, too. Give Dad my love.”

  Garth hung up the phone and leaned back on the couch. His mother raised a question he had not thought of. What if Lorelei wasn’t a Christian? It troubled him to consider it, but after a moment he jumped to his feet. “Then I will have the honor and privilege of introducing her to the Lord.”

  I wonder what she’s doing right now. Lord, whatever she is doing, please be with her and soften her heart toward You if she doesn’t know You. And if she does know You, soften her heart toward me.

  The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows, when he stepped outside. The water lapped gently against the shore. He drank in the heady scent of the pines and the less potent poplars. He turned toward the Davenports’ property. Surprised to see Lorelei sitting at the picnic table on the beach, he ducked behind a familiar tree. He felt seventeen again. He looked around the tree. She seemed so delicate in her white blouse and floral print skirt. The setting sun set her hair ablaze as she wrote in a spiral notebook.

  Miss Lorelei Hayes, are you merely a vision I conjured up from years of longing? Or are you real?

  The breeze that rippled her shirt blew a strand of her shoulder-length hair across her face. Her pen continued to scratch on the page. He wanted to brush the errant strand back for her. Not until she finished did she remove the lock from her face. She closed her notebook and stood slowly. Rubbing her right hip, she looked around, her gaze headed in his direction. He ducked behind the tree and held his breath. He was seventeen again and a sorry case, at that. After a moment he ventured a peek.

  She struggled up the incline to the cottage with her notebook under one arm and a hand cradling her hip. Was that a slight limp he detected? Probably stiff from sitting on the hard bench. He could relate.

  “Good-bye, Lorelei. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  Three

  On Monday Lori sat at the large oak table, turning her now-empty mug around and around.

  Garth Kessel.

  The man’s name as well as his face drifted in and out of her thoughts. She couldn’t shake him. It was a nice name. She liked it. It fit him. His strong jawline on his slightly baby face. But his eyes. She had to force herself not to look at his eyes for fear of being sucked into their blue depths with no idea of what he was saying.

  She shook her head. Just the thought of them drew her in. Perhaps a walk would clear her mind of him. She trotted off to the bedroom and slipped on her white canvas sneakers then tucked her keys into her pocket. Out the door and up the hill to the road.

  At the top of the driveway she stopped. Left or right? Left went down to the little store and gas station on the corner. She wanted a longer walk than that, so she turned right and started the three-mile hike around the lake. She had done it many times the summer she visited up here, and Josie had refreshed her memory on how easy it was.

  The poplars and the maples rustled in the breeze. Not far up the dirt road a wooden sign caught her attention, and she stopped. The Kessels. Her heartbeat quickened. Like most of the people who had summer cottages up here, the Kessels had their territory staked out. Gretchen had told her it was her parents’ place, but Garth had taken it over year-round. She didn’t realize he lived so close. She strained to look down the long, grassy driveway with tire trails. That was the cottage with the small peninsula. Shadows blanketed the building below, obscuring her view. He wasn’t there, of course; he was at work.

  A car kicking up dust on the rutted road startled her and quickly put her legs in motion. She let out a puff of captive air when she realized the vehicle was not turning down the Kessel drive and it was not Garth.

  That was close.

  What if he had been coming home after a forgotten lunch bag or students’ papers and caught her snooping around his place? She stepped around a flattened snake in the dirt and picked up her pace to put some distance between her and the Kessel place.

  Why do I keep thinking about that man? I try so hard to think of anything and everything except him. But, to no avail, my thoughts return to him.

  Was it because his was the face she had clung to when the physical pain got to be too much after the accident? Or could it be the mystery and romance of that kiss so long ago? But now that the mystery was solved, shouldn’t she be able to forget him? Had he become so much a part of her thoughts that he was a permanent fixture? Was there anything that would dispel him from her brain? Did she want that to happen?

  With so many confusing thoughts bombarding her, she longed to be back at the cottage with her journal. She could sort things out so much better if she could write them down and see them.

  One good thing that had come from her preoccupation with Garth Kessel was not thinking about the fire and the double funeral. She wasn’t wallowing in her grief. She looked forward to each new day. In hopes of seeing Garth Kessel? No, it couldn’t be. But she had to admit, she couldn’t remember the last time she didn’t have to work hard to climb out of bed in the morning. It was probably the fresh northern Michigan air that stirred the life back into her.

  She did have a nagging feeling of some unfinished business with the man. What could it be? She had met him twice and only talked to him once. What dealing could she have with him? Was she supposed to tell him she knew who he was? Not in a million years!

  Three quarters of the way around the lake, she put her hand to her right hip. “I know—I know—I haven’t forgotten you’re there.” The pain wasn’t enough to inhibit her walk yet—just enough to remind her she was the sole survivor of a deadly accident and her life would never be the same.

  She’d heard that people with head trauma, especially as severe as hers, usually had no memory of the accident. Why was she stricken with every last detail of the horrific event? Her mother’s scream. The car rolling. The searing pain. The blood. The deadly silence. The utter darkness.

  She wished she had lost her memory entirely, except one that involved a certain blond-haired blue-eyed bandit and a floating dock. She smiled. Yes, she always wanted to remember Garth.

  She’d had a long road of countless surgeries and hours of therapy to regain what function she could of her body. A journey, if given the choice, she would not have made.

  She never really said good-bye to her parents. The fact she was comatose and hooked up to external plumbing seemed to warrant the doctors’ keeping her from attending her parents’ funeral. Then she was whisked away to Florida to her only adult living relative to finish her recovery. No wonder she felt compelled to come back to Michigan to say her final farewell at their graves. At last she was closing that chapter of her life.

  But it wasn’t enough. She had too many unfinished chapters. She’d needed to return to this cottage on the lake, too. Now she had come full circle and could go on. Where would she go from here? Her life had no direction. The future seemed unimportant. It was almost as if this was her destination, which made no sense at all. This was where she would stay—for now—until the Lord gave her direction and moved her on.

  She arrived at the little grocery store down the hill from the cottage and limped in for an ice cream cone—a humongous scoop of Rocky Road—and a rest for her hip. When she finally straggled into the cottage, the pain had reached epic proportions. She should have known better than to overdo it after being so inactive the last three months. She took one of her prescriptions. She wished she didn’t need them, but nothing else relieved the severe pain. She had asked the Lord many times to take it away, but He had not done so yet. Accepting that the Lord knew best, she had learned to live with it. She sat down with her journal to organize her thoughts.

  Lord, what do You want me to do? What kind of future have You left me? I know You have my best interests in mind, and I’m trying to trust You, but I’m confused and scared. I don’t like being so alone. I have no one left
in this world. Why couldn’t You have taken me home, as well? You have left me with the one thing I wish You had taken—my life. I have no one to cling to but You. Was that Your plan all along, to bring me closer to You? Here I am, Lord, at least what’s left of me. What now?

  She sat quietly for a few minutes. Then her thoughts shifted, as they often did, and she continued to write.

  Oh, Doug, I miss you so much. I knew I depended on you far too much, but I didn’t realize to what extent I used you as a crutch.

  You would love it here. To see the changing seasons. The leaves are about to turn color. It has been so long that I hardly remember what fall was like. I look forward to the first downy flakes. What? You say I’m a glutton for punishment. I know my hip will hurt in the cold, but if I stay inside I can watch the little diamonds drift to the ground.

  She closed her notebook and turned to the window, yawning. Overdoing it on her walk had drained the energy from her. With nothing pressing to do, she gave in and lay on the couch. She sent up a quick prayer that the nightmare wouldn’t visit her and dozed off.

  ❧

  It was Tuesday when Lori found herself in desperate need of a handyman. The operator hadn’t been any help at all. The woman informed her she was not a referral service and didn’t know every little dot on the map claiming to be a town.

  Everyone who had been at the lake over the weekend was gone now except Garth Kessel. She stared at the number on the gum wrapper. What was the big deal? He had offered to help, and she was definitely in need. He seemed nice enough at the beach fire and wasn’t exactly a stranger. Exactly.

  So why couldn’t she bring herself to dial the number after twenty minutes of holding it? It wasn’t as if he were home. He was at work. She had folded it up several times and put it on the counter. She’d even thrown it away once.

  “Get a grip, Lori,” she finally said aloud. “He’ll probably just give you the name of a plumber. Then his civic duty will be done.”

  She grabbed the phone. His answering machine picked up. Garth’s smooth, baritone voice floated through the line. She could picture his deep blue eyes studying her again. The twinkle in them as he told her about the fairy breeze.

  Startled by the beep, she quickly hung up. She tried twice more but couldn’t bring herself to leave a message and tossed the paper on the counter.

  She looked up the Davenports’ home number in her address book and left a message on their machine. She would just have to wait to have hot water on the weekend when Mr. Davenport could come up. Her shower this morning had started out lukewarm and become steadily colder.

  She received a call around four thirty from Mr. Davenport. He was going to call around and see if he couldn’t get someone to come over that evening to look at it. If not, he would be up on Saturday to take care of it.

  Twenty minutes later Garth showed up in worn jeans and a white T-shirt. Was he so muscular three nights ago? She supposed he was. She hadn’t noticed in the twilight.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He raised the toolbox in his right hand, causing the muscles in his arm to flex. “The water heater. Mr. Davenport called and said there was a problem with it. Didn’t he call to tell you I was coming over?”

  Lori shook her head. Whew! It was getting warm all of a sudden. Maybe he should check out the furnace, as well.

  “He said he was going to.” He stood there looking at her for a few moments. “May I come in?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lori stepped aside. Garth filled the room with his very presence.

  “This is a nice place.” His gaze swept the interior. “I’ve never been inside before.” He looked down at her and raised his eyebrows as if he wanted something. She had no idea what and stared back at him.

  “Where’s the water heater located?”

  Of course! The water heater. “Uh, the bathroom, behind the door.” She pointed to the first door on the left.

  He gave her a crooked smile that lit his eyes and sent her heart racing. Good thing he turned down the hall before she embarrassed herself. He certainly had better things to do than play fix-it man while she gawked at him.

  She felt fidgety standing around waiting for him, so she returned to preparing dinner. She had already coated the chicken and put it in the pan. She was frying all the pieces so she could feast on cold chicken and not have to cook the rest of the week. She had enough if Garth wanted to stay and eat. She shook her head at the ridiculous notion.

  As the rice simmered, she pulled fresh vegetables from the fridge: zucchini, mushrooms, onion, and carrots. She washed them and began cutting them.

  It would be the nice thing to do to invite him to eat after the work he was doing for her. It was the least she could do. But was it smart? She hardly knew the man. Would Mr. Davenport have sent him over if he didn’t trust him? But then Mr. Davenport wasn’t a single woman alone in a remote cottage with a man a good eight inches taller than she was, outweighing her by at least seventy-five pounds with muscles popping out of his well-sculptured body.

  No. Dinner was definitely out. So why was she still cutting veggies, enough for an army? She put away the small frying pan and replaced it with the biggest one she could find. After sliding in the cut roughage, she set it aside and placed the refrigerator biscuits on a cookie sheet.

  She jumped at the phone ringing and felt silly for it. It was Mr. Davenport.

  He explained that he had been held up on the phone and Garth Kessel was on his way over to help. He apologized for not letting her know before Garth arrived. “May I speak with the handyman?”

  Handsome man? No. He said handyman. “I’ll get him.”

  Garth’s conversation was brief, as well, mostly about the water heater, a couple of comments about the weather, then a “good,” “I think so,” and “I will” before he hung up. She had the feeling the last comments were referring to her, but she couldn’t be sure—just an odd pang in her stomach.

  He turned to her. “The water heater needs a part. I’ll pick it up tomorrow after school on my way out of town and fix it. I’m sorry you’ll be without hot water for another day.”

  “That’s okay. It beats waiting until the weekend.” She appreciated his willingness to help her.

  He looked at her for a moment, as if debating what he was going to say, reminiscent of the look ten years ago.

  She gave him a questioning look in return.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” He pointed to the wrapper on the counter. “You have my number.” His voice held a hint of amusement.

  The buzzer on the stove sounded. She gladly turned to retrieve the biscuits.

  “Saved by the bell.” He chuckled.

  “Well—I did think about calling you.” She turned on the veggies. “But I didn’t want to bother you, Mr. Kessel.”

  “Please call me Garth. Only my students call me mister. And how am I supposed to be neighborly, Lorelei, if I don’t know how I can help you? You don’t mind if I call you Lorelei, do you?”

  She was about to tell him most people called her Lori, but the way Lorelei rolled off his tongue like a melody prompted her to say, “Lorelei’s fine.”

  “Please feel free to call if you need anything, anything at all. There aren’t many people around here during the week this time of year. If you have any questions about living up here, please ask me.” He cocked his head and squinted slightly. “Is there anything else?”

  He reminded her of a chivalrous knight who needed a distressed damsel to help. “There is one thing.”

  In her moment of hesitation he looked at her, silently insisting she ask.

  “Do you have a phone book I can borrow? I can’t find one around here.”

  He held out his hands from his sides and smiled. “Just call me the walking, talking yellow pages, at your service,” he said with a bow. “What do you want to find?”

  “You’re the local phone book?”

  “I’ve lived up here year-round for the past five years. To be honest, there is
n’t much around here to know. The best man for the job won’t necessarily be listed in the phone book. If you need a plumber, I know whom to call. If there is a problem with your gas line, I know whom to call. If your roof leaks—”

  “You know whom to call. I get the point. It’s nothing so grand as any of that. I just need to find a Laundromat.”

  “That one’s easy.” He gave her clear, precise directions into Mancelona, even writing them down for future use. “I do have a washer and dryer over at my place if you ever need them and don’t want to drive into town.”

  “Thank you.” But I think I’ll use the Laundromat.

  “Anything else?”

  “Well. . .”

  “Come on, out with it. If I can’t answer your question, I’ll know who can.”

  A self-conscious smile tugged at her mouth. “I wanted to look up churches. I would like to find one to attend while I’m here.”

  “Churches, hey?”

  Ha! She had stumped him.

  “There are only three to speak of in Mancelona. St. Peter’s run by Reverend Shaw. He’s a tall, wiry fellow, a bachelor in his sixties. Pastor Stuart over at First Church is medium height, balding, but his wife and their five children don’t seem to mind. And a small group meets in Dotty Fuller’s house. She’s eighty-seven and always glad to give you her opinion. She’s really a sweet lady.”

  Then he went on to tell her about seven different churches in nearby Kalkaska and the pastors of each, only one of which he claimed not to know much about.

  “You’re making this up,” Lori said.

  “I’m wounded.” He clutched his chest. “The maiden doth think I lie.”

  He did seem like a chivalrous knight. “How do you know so much about everyone?”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  “And teachers know everything?”

  He shook his head. “Over the past five years I have taught a lot of the area’s children. There probably aren’t too many families around with at least one child I haven’t taught or soon will.”

  After a moment he said, “So, what will it be?”