The Lake and the Lost Girl

by Jacquelyn Vincenta

  Lydia approached a yellow traffic light and sped up to get through it, glancing around for police cars as the light went red. House lights dimmed as the sun rose. Passing Lottie’s Bar and Grill, she noticed two or three men ambling toward the front door for breakfast. Lucky bastards. Lucky, sane, hardworking bastards and their lucky wives.

  Her thoughts darted from images of Frank’s drunken body on the bed to the shards of his latest hope in the barn. She trembled as if she’d chugged a whole pot of coffee, and she wanted to ram the Jeep into a building. On the country roads that ran toward Jack’s house, her thoughts spiraled to visions of parking the Jeep and abandoning it while she ran off into the woods. To be gone and finished with all of this. Through with Frank and all of his messes.

  Because the truth was that he would not be grateful to her for thinking about restoring the furniture. He would be angry. He would probably accuse her of having an affair with Jack, or God only knows what. Her heart rate felt dangerously fast. How could Frank do this to her? He was the deluded one, and she was just trying to keep things together, so what was she afraid of?

  She was afraid because he had convinced her, deeply convinced her, that she was constantly violating something rare and important as she failed him in ways she wasn’t even aware of until he accused her. She lived in fear of his mind and the rules that it imposed on her and her son.

  When she reached Jack’s private road, Lydia considered turning back home, but the thought was fleeting. She had no other plan, and she couldn’t think clearly enough to conjure up any other idea than to fix the furniture, starting with the simplest thing, the cloth. Surely Dolly did this sort of thing from time to time. It wouldn’t seem that strange. Lydia rolled slowly down the dirt drive and glanced at the Jeep clock—eight fifteen. A light switched on, and yellow rays cut through the shadows near the house. She rolled the window down a couple of inches, and the wind in the pine tops shushed like lake waves. There was the slam of a door, footsteps. Moments later, a light went on in the barn beside her, just fifteen feet away.

  She slid down and watched what she assumed was Jack’s silhouette moving against the pale window shade. But the thought of actually walking in there… How could she approach him with this…this pile of seat bits?

  And why was she running away? This morning, right now, she should be sitting in her own kitchen, calmly waiting for Frank to explain everything. Let him carry the weight of the disaster, not her. What was she running from, and what made her think she could or even should try to fix things?

  Frank would fix nothing. That was the fact she was running from. Again and again. That was what she couldn’t bear and what she fled: the fact that he would speak the same words he always did, brush off her confusion and fear as if she were the one who was unreasonable, and then she would join him to live in that lie, with the vague hope that the lie would eventually fade away. But life would get worse in the meantime. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel, aware of the thud of her heart in her throat as it punctuated loud, shallow breaths. When she lifted her eyes to the barn moments later, the shade in the barn window was up and no one was visible within.

  There was a tap at her partially open window, and Lydia gasped and jumped. Jack stood a couple of feet away, gazing in at her. She lowered the window with the same embarrassment she had felt doing so for police officers.

  “Hi, Jack,” she said apologetically, glancing at his concerned expression, then turning her face down. What excuse could she make?

  “Hey,” he said querulously, apparently not willing to pretend that her presence here was normal. “Is anything wrong?”

  Lydia knew she looked as if something was indeed wrong. She could feel the gummy thickness of disturbance in her features. At least she was not in her pajamas. There was nothing to do but follow through with her plan.

  “In a way,” she said, trying to meet his eyes, but only briefly glancing as high as his collarbone. “It’s been…a difficult morning.”

  Jack stood back from the door as she opened it and stepped out. “I have a problem. I was hoping your seamstress assistant might be able to help me.”

  “Oh…Dolly?”

  “Yes.” Lydia opened the back door and pulled out the chair seat. “Can Dolly sew upholstery? Things like…this?”

  Jack eyed the thing in her hand. “What is it?”

  “It’s the seat of a dining room chair.” Together they stared at it. “It’s gotten rather torn up.” Lydia attempted a smile, but Jack’s face was still troubled, and she felt her explanation die in her throat. She turned her face toward the barn.

  “I don’t know, um… Dolly’s here. She stayed the night. Yeah, she’s probably up by now. Let me check.” He started to turn toward the house. “Come on in. You want coffee?”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay. But, yes, I’ll come in. If you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, come on,” he said. She followed a couple of steps behind him as he crossed the yard and opened his back door. Inside, Lydia smelled coffee and other things she couldn’t identify…the odd mix of scents in another person’s house. So Dolly was there with Jack overnight, and Lydia had shown up at the crack of dawn like a crazy person, intruding on their privacy. Jack walked lightly down a hall, and Lydia stood in the kitchen, hands clenched around the chair seat, her body calmed somewhat by the distraction of other lives.

  He knocked on a door, and Lydia heard a woman’s voice. He opened the door a few inches and spoke too quietly for Lydia to hear his words. Minutes later, Dolly emerged, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her curly, shoulder-length brown hair pinned back behind her ears.

  “Good morning,” the woman said brightly, going to the cupboard for two mugs and pouring coffee. She handed one to Lydia. “Cream and sugar?”

  “Black is fine. Thanks,” Lydia said, accepting a yellow mug with a red trucking company logo on it. A semi with a smiling face on its metal grill winked a large, blue eye at her.

  “Well, you’re up with the birds, honey. What’s goin’ on?” Dolly sat down at one of the kitchen chairs and pushed another out with her foot for Lydia.

  “I have a problem,” Lydia began, but she felt as if she might cry at the understated claim. “I have…” She faltered. “Here.” She lifted the seat she’d set down beside her chair. “This is, as you can see…” She stared at the stupid thing, silenced again by her tight throat. “Do you ever sew—in this case, repair—upholstery?”

  Jack and Dolly both gazed at her and then at the object in her hand. After a weighty silence, Dolly turned her eyes to Jack, who looked down into his coffee, then moved to the refrigerator. Lydia could hear him fishing for things and setting them on the counter as she turned the seat over for Dolly to look at it.

  “It needs to be fixed, and I know that might be difficult, but I’m just hoping…” Lydia hadn’t really examined the fabric until this point as she felt Dolly doing so. It was maroon velvet with a paisley jacquard design, its threads loosening at the edges where Frank had sliced it, and the yellowed, lumpy stuffing falling out. Dolly took the seat from Lydia, running her fingers over the fabric to do what Lydia had not dared to—to attempt to fit it back together to see if it would even cover the stuffing and meet the wood.

  “Well,” Dolly said thoughtfully. Lydia could smell bacon cooking and glanced up to see Jack breaking eggs into a bowl. Dolly continued to finger the fabric. “Hmm.”

  The friendly clink of a fork on glass as Jack beat the eggs gave Lydia a spark of strength. “My husband bought the set and hopes to fix it up to sell to the family who originally owned it.” She lifted her mug, glanced at Jack’s profile as he poured the eggs into a hot pan on the stove, and went on. “This is a kind of side business he’s gotten into. He’s a professor. But if we can fix this up, we stand to bring in a profit on it.”

  Dolly nodded as Jack lifted three plates from a shelf and lined them up on the counter
. He moved quickly, opening cupboards, the refrigerator, pouring things, scooping, buttering. Lydia felt relieved and suddenly hungry. That was a good line she’d come up with about a side business. Who needed to know Frank had torn up the seats? Dolly pulled the fabric toward the edges, flipped the seat over, flipped it back, rearranged stuffing, pulled again and pursed her lips.

  “Tell you what,” Dolly said, still absorbed in her hands’ efforts. “After I grab a bite here, I’ll take this out to the workshop and see what I can do, okay?”

  “Great! That would be really great.” Lydia smiled, beginning to feel almost normal as Jack set a plate before her. “Honestly, I can’t believe I’ve interrupted you all so early. You’re nice to accommodate me.”

  Dolly’s smile was oddly intense and sympathetic when she reached over to squeeze Lydia’s fingers. Jack, too, turned his gaze onto Lydia as he lowered himself to his chair, and something in the look—was it pity?—unnerved her. She forced her eyes down to the yellow eggs, brown toast, and bacon, her appetite gone in one self-conscious instant. Woodenly, she picked up her fork and speared a piece of egg, raised it to her mouth, and chewed slowly, passing another bite onto her tongue before she’d swallowed the first. Three, four bites, and she lifted her coffee to her lips, feeling as if every move she made was testimony to the transparent lie she’d just told and the thoughts she couldn’t bear to even acknowledge.

  Lydia focused studiously on the food and gradually relaxed as Dolly and Jack discussed an article in the newspaper about lakeshore erosion. She forced herself to ask with detached composure if either of them had been to the park written about in the article. Jack said that he’d seen most of Michigan’s shoreline from the water, as well as Illinois’s and Wisconsin’s, and that there was plenty of erosion everywhere. But the conversation didn’t last, and after a minute or two of silence, Jack shoved his chair back, cleared his place, and said he had to get to work.

  “Thanks for the breakfast, Jack,” Lydia said with as much cheer as she could muster.

  “Anytime.” He threw a half smile to the general area of the kitchen table and left the house.

  “Well!” Dolly said. “Shall we see what we can do with your chair?”

  “Yes.” Lydia’s plate was half full, but she had stopped eating. “Jack was so nice. To cook breakfast.”

  “He’s a good one.” Dolly stood up and ran her hands through coats and sweatshirts hanging by the door, apparently looking for something of her own among them.

  “You’re lucky! I can’t remember the last time a man cooked breakfast for me.” Lydia rose also.

  “I am lucky,” Dolly said, pulling an orange sweatshirt over her head, then tossing her hair free of the hood. “Most employers don’t keep a spare room for you and make meals for you when you’re a wreck. But he knows I don’t cook worth a damn and probably wouldn’t eat if I stayed home every night. My husband did all that. The household stuff. Craig. He was another good one.”

  Dolly moved to the kitchen counter and refilled her coffee mug. “More?” She held the hot carafe up toward Lydia, whose eyes grew teary. She shook her head lightly, and Dolly set the pot back, then put her hands on her hips.

  “You’re sad for me now? Hey, he’s been gone a while, my husband. Two years and four months. Colon cancer. I’m finally starting to find some peace.”

  Lydia turned her gaze toward the small window that faced a patch of lightening grass and fiercely bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. This irrepressible, bold thing, love… Considering the fullness of her heart, how could she have woken up this morning to a marriage that love seemed to have no part in?

  Dolly put her hands on Lydia’s shoulders as Lydia looked down at their feet on the wide pine boards of Jack’s kitchen. Dolly’s, in blue-and-white-striped canvas tennis shoes, were even smaller than Lydia’s.

  “Lydia,” Dolly said. “I don’t know what’s in your head, but I do know this. There’s only one person you can save in this world…one person you’re left with when all is said and done. And there are people who want to make you completely forget that.”

  “I’m okay,” Lydia said with rapid shakes of her head and a small wave of dismissal. She started to glance up but stared instead at what suddenly seemed to be childishly small hands as she opened them, then partly clenched them shut.

  “Of course you are. Strong as ever, right? Well, maybe I’m out of line. But the thing that made you rush over here this morning… It gives me a bad feeling. Like you did it because somebody’s got a fix on your mind. I’ve seen that kind of pain before. Grew up around it. Now, my marriage was different. Craig spoiled the hell out of me. But I think I did to him what my father did to my mother—tried to control him. And now look… I’m alone. Maybe I’m even part of the reason he got sick. I’ll never know.”

  Lydia met Dolly’s eyes. They were green, and Lydia noticed strength in them that she hadn’t before.

  “Come on.” Dolly opened the door and picked the seat up from the floor. “Marriage is crazy and really shouldn’t be discussed before noon. For now, we’ll see if we can at least do something about this little problem.”

  “But…” Lydia began. The words clawed at the walls of her mind: There’s no way out.

  She cleared her throat and heard a strange version of her own voice ask, “Would you ask Jack if I could store a few things here? Just for a little while. I would ask him myself, but I don’t want to put him on the spot. He might… Well, my husband… I probably won’t actually need to do it—”

  “Don’t worry. Jack’s barn has a huge storage area for special items,” Dolly said, gazing at Lydia while her fingers fiddled with the ragged edge of the seat’s fabric. “So does his heart, for that matter.”

  18

  White Hill, Michigan—April 1999

  A bright spark

  where black ashes are;

  in the smothering dark

  one white star.

  ~ Elinor Wylie (1885–1928), “Incantation”

  In the barn, Jack pulled out his list of tasks for the day, but his mind hadn’t left the kitchen. So the crazy professor had been tearing furniture apart again. And now Lydia was here before sunrise trying to put things back together? What went on between those two? Angrily, he sharpened a pencil and sat down on a stool to make notes.

  Nothing Jack had ever seen in Frank inspired his respect, and he did have respect for other professors, so it wasn’t the academia that pissed him off. No, it was the arrogance he’d picked up on immediately and which had been confirmed by the man’s refusal a few years before to hear the information that Jack had finally convinced himself he should share. He’d deliberated about it for years, finally choosing to attend one of Frank’s readings, where he’d waited around afterward while Frank played up to a covey of college girls for what seemed like hours.

  At last, the group dispersed, and Jack was alone with Frank in the room. He’d approached the professor, introduced himself, and gotten straight to the point, but the experience had been humiliating. Jack told Frank his grandfather had known Mary Stone Walker.

  “Did he now?” Frank said, gathering his papers.

  “Yes,” Jack answered. He had expected more initial interest, but maybe the man had heard this sort of thing a lot. “He was fond of her.”

  “Ah yes, so many were.” Frank stood up, and he was a tall man. He’d peered over his glasses at Jack with an attitude Jack could only call condescending. “One of those who claimed to be a lover of hers, perhaps?”

  “No. Not at all.” Jack recalled that Frank’s expression had seemed more tolerant than curious. “He was a fisherman. Happily married, by all accounts.”

  “Isn’t that what men say when they’re married? They’re all happily married.” Frank had chuckled. “Especially when they’re talking to their grandsons, I’d imagine.”

  The comment had angered Jac
k. It was just the sort of asinine remark he’d expect from someone like Frank Carroll, who spoke about the romantic love of poets as if it were sacred, but couldn’t imagine love between a fisherman and his wife. Jack had almost left right then, especially because his grandfather would have predicted just such a sentiment from a professional dreamer. Keep what you know to yourself, Jack heard in his head.

  But his grandfather was dead, long gone, and so was the woman in question, and Jack had come to the conclusion that he himself, being alive and part of this community, might owe the truth. He mustered up the patience to try once more.

  “No, I don’t think that was the case, Mr. Carroll.”

  Frank gave a plastic smile. “I’ve been investigating Mary Stone Walker’s life for years now, Mr. Kenilworth.”

  “Well, then you may have heard some of this already. My grandfather, Robert Kenilworth, knew Mary Stone Walker as a troubled young woman. He assisted her at a difficult time.”

  “I see. So that was his tale. I’m sorry, Mr. Kenilworth. I guess I’ve just heard too many false claims.” Unbelievably to Jack, Frank walked toward the door, essentially dismissing him. Could this really be the man Lydia Milliken married? he remembered thinking. Poor kid.

  “Mr. Carroll, speaking honestly, that’s disrespectful.” Jack didn’t follow Frank, who stood by the door with his hand on the light switch. “I’m a serious man. If you decide you’d like to hear more of what I know, I’d be willing to talk to you. Here’s my number.”

  He handed his business card to Frank and nodded as he passed him to leave the room.

  “It probably won’t be necessary, Mr. Kenilworth,” Frank said to his back. “I’ve researched her life exhaustively through her own words. There’s no mention of your grandfather or any meaningful problem she might have received a stranger’s assistance for in any of her writings. And the woman was, as you may have gathered, a prolific journal writer.”