by Cara Colter
Mac had never heard silence like he heard in Mama Freda’s kitchen right then. The clock ticking sounded explosive.
“So I know what this thing is,” she said finally, “to kill a man. I know how you carry it within you. How you think of his face, and wonder who he was before the great evil overcame him. I wonder what his mother felt when he never came home, and if his sisters grieve him to this day, the way I grieve the brother who went to war and never came home.”
Her hand crept out from under her apron and she laid it, palm up, on the table. An invitation. And Mac surprised himself by not being able to refuse that invitation. He put his hand on the table, too. Her hand closed around his, surprisingly strong for such an old lady.
“Look at me,” she said.
And he did.
She did not say a word. She didn’t have to. He looked deep into her eyes, and for the first time in a long, long time, he felt he was not alone.
That someone else knew what it was to suffer.
Later they ate the apfelstrudel she had finished rolling out on her kitchen table, and it felt as if his taste buds had come awake, as if he could taste for the first time in a long, long time, too, as if he had never tasted food quite so wondrous.
He started, in that moment, with warm strudel melting in his mouth, to do what he had sworn he would never do again. But he was careful never to call it that, and never to utter the words that would solidify it and make it real. For him, the admission of love was the holding of a samurai’s sword that you would eventually plunge into your own heart.
But he had never altered the story he had told her that day, not even when she had said to him once, “I know, schatz, there is nothing in you that could kill another person. Or anything. Not even a baby robin that fell from its nest. I have watched you carry bugs outside rather than swat them.”
But he had never doubted that she really had killed that soldier, and she, too, carried bugs outside rather than swatting them.
Mama, with her enormous capacity to care for all things, had saved him.
And he owed it to her to be there for her if she needed him. It was evident from the state of her house that he hadn’t been there in the ways she needed. And that Lucy, the one he had called the spoiled brat, had been. He felt the faintest shiver of something.
Guilt?
“Go shower,” Mama said, and he drew himself back to the present with a shake of his head. “Nice and hot.”
She was already reaching up high into her cabinet and Mac shuddered when the ancient brown bottle of elixir came down, and he hightailed it for the tiny bathroom at the top of the stairs.
When he came down, in dry clothes, she had a tumbler of the clear liquid poured.
“Drink. It will ward off the cold.”
“I’m not cold.”
“The cold you will get if you don’t drink it!” She had that look on her face, her arms folded over her ample bosom.
There was no sense explaining to Mama you didn’t get colds from being cold, that you got them from coming in contact with one of hundreds of viruses, none of which were very likely to be living in the freezing-cold water of Sunshine Lake.
He took the tumbler, plugged his nose and put it back. It burned to his belly and he felt his toes curl.
He set the glass down, and wiped his watering eyes. “For heaven’s sakes, its schnapps!”
“Obstler,” she said happily. “Not peppermint sugar like they drink here. Ugh. Mine is made with apples. Herbs.”
She was right, though—if there was any sneaky virus in him, no matter what the source, it would be gone now.
“Homemade, from my great-grandmother’s recipe. Now, take some to Lucy. I have it ready.” She passed him an unlabeled brown bottle of her secret elixir.
“I’m not taking it to Lucy.” After that encounter on the dock, the less he had to do with Lucy the better.
He’d wanted to believe, after all this time, that Lucy, the girl who had not thought he was good enough, would have no power over him. He had seen the world. He’d succeeded. He’d expected Lucy and this town to be nothing more than a speck of dust from the past.
What he hadn’t expected was the rush of feeling when he had seen her. Even dripping wet, near frozen, seeing Lucy on the dock calling to him, he had felt a pull so strong it felt as if his heart was coming from his chest. He’d been vulnerable, caught off guard, but still, there had always been something about her.
She still had that face, impish, unconventionally beautiful, that inspired warmth and trust, that took a man’s guard right down, and left him in a place where he could be shoved into a lake by someone who weighed sixty pounds less than he did.
An old hurt surfaced, its edges knife-sharp.
I could never fall for a boy like you.
That was the problem with coming back to a place you had left behind, Mac thought. Old hurts didn’t die. They waited. And those words, coming from Lucy, the one he had trusted with his ever-so-bruised heart...
“She needs the elixir! She’ll catch her death.”
Since he didn’t want to tell Mama why he didn’t want to see Lucy—because he had fully expected to be indifferent and had been anything but—now might be a good time to explain viruses. But his explanation, he knew, would fall on deaf ears.
“She’s a doctor’s daughter. I’m sure she knows what she needs.”
Mama looked stubborn.
“Mama, it’s probably illegal to make this stuff, let alone dispense it.”
She regarded him, her eyes narrow, and then without warning, “Are you speaking to your mother yet, schatz?”
He glared at her stonily.
“Nearly Mother’s Day. Just two weeks away. She must be lonely for you.”
The only thing his mother had ever been lonely for was her bank account. But he wasn’t being drawn into this argument. And he could clearly see Mama had grabbed on to it now, like a dog worrying meat off a bone.
“How many years?” she asked softly, stubbornly.
He refused to answer out loud, but inside, he did the math.
“It’s time,” she said.
On this, and only this, he had refused her from the first day he had come here. There would be no reconciliation with his mother.
“Just a card, to start,” she said, as if they had not played out this scene a hundred times before. “I think I have the perfect one right here.”
It was one of Mama’s things. She always had a cupboard devoted to greeting cards. She had one suitable for every occasion.
Except son and mother estranged for fourteen years.
Without a word he picked up the bottle of homemade schnapps and went out the squeaking door. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Mama had her back to him, rummaging through the card cupboard, singing with soft satisfaction.
He noticed how hunched she was.
Frail, somehow, despite her bulk.
He noticed how badly the house needed repair, and felt guilty, again, that he had somehow let it get this bad.
Mac was not unaware that he had been back in Lindstrom Beach all of half an hour and all these uncomfortable feelings were rising to the surface. He didn’t like feelings.
Lucy had been here when he had not. Well, he’d take over from her now.
It occurred to him that this trip was probably not going to be the quick turnaround he had hoped for. Still, a few days of intense work, and he’d be out of here, leaving all thes
e uneasy feelings behind him.
“Make sure she drinks some,” Mama shouted as the screen creaked behind him. “Make sure. Don’t come back here unless she does.”
And much as he didn’t want Lucy to be right about anything, and much as he didn’t like the unexpected feelings, he realized, reluctantly, she had been right to insist he come back here.
Mama needed him.
And yes, the time to honor his foster mother was definitely now. But he would leave the gala to Lucy, and honor his foster mother by making sure her house was livable before he left again.
CHAPTER FOUR
MAC CROSSED THE familiar ground between the two houses. He noted, again, that Lucy’s property was everything Mama’s was not. Even with the lawns melting together, the properties were very different: Mama’s ringed in huge trees—that were probably hard to mow around—the Lindstrom place well-maintained, oozing the perfect taste of old money.
From the tidbits of information dropped by Mama, Mac knew Lucy had taken over the house from her mother a year or so ago. Hadn’t there been something about a broken engagement?
How did she find time to do the work that it used to take an entire team of gardeners to do?
Unless she doesn’t have a life.
Which, also from tidbits dropped by Mama, Lucy didn’t. She ran some kind of online book business. A life, yes, but not the life he had expected the most popular girl in high school would have ended up with.
I don’t care, Mac told himself, but if he really didn’t, would he even have to say that to himself?
He debated going to the front of the house, keeping everything nice and formal, but in the end, he stayed in the back and went across the deck. He stopped and surveyed the house. The stately white paint was faded and peeling; a large patch of a sample paint color had been put up.
It was a pale shade of lavender. Several boards underneath it had samples of what he assumed would be trim color, ranging from light lilac to deep purple.
The paint color made him think he didn’t know Lucy at all.
Which, of course, he didn’t. She was no more the same girl she had been when he’d left than he was the same man. He became aware of the sound of water running inside the house, assumed Lucy was showering and was grateful for the reprieve from another encounter with her.
He wasn’t a little kid anymore. And neither was Lucy. He respected Mama, but he couldn’t take her every wish as a command. Make sure she drinks it. Lucy could find the bottle and make up her own mind whether to drink it.
He would take his chances. If he didn’t return for a while, Mama might not question how he had completed his assignment. And, hopefully, she would be off the topic of his mother by then, as well.
Mac set Mama’s offering at Lucy’s back door, and then strolled down to her dock to look over the canoes. They weren’t particularly good quality—different ages and makes and colors. Then he saw a sign, fairly new, nailed to a wharf post like the one that had broken at Mama’s.
Lucy’s Lakeside Rentals. It outlined the rates and rules for renting canoes.
Lucy was renting canoes? He really didn’t know her anymore. In fact, it almost seemed as if their roles were reversed. He had arrived, he knew every success he had ever hoped for, and she was mowing lawns and scraping together pennies by renting canoes.
He thought he should feel at least a moment’s satisfaction over that. A little gloating from the kind of guy Lucy could never fall for might be in order. But instead, Mac felt oddly troubled. And hated it that he felt that way.
He looked at the house. He could still hear water running. He eased a canoe up with his toe. The paddles were stored underneath it.
Then Mac maneuvered the canoe off the dock and into the water, got into it and began to paddle toward the other side of the lake.
Even more than Mama’s embrace, the silent canoe skimming across the water filled him with what he dreaded most of all—a sense of having missed this place, a sense that even as he had tried to leave it all behind him, this was home.
An hour later, eyeing Lucy’s house for signs of life and relieved to find none, Mac put the canoe back on the dock. He felt like a thief as he crept up to her back door. The elixir was gone. He could report to Mama with a clear conscience. Still, the feeling of being a thief was not relieved by sticking twenty bucks under a rock to cover the rental of the canoe.
“Hey,” Lucy cried, “Wait!”
He turned and looked at her, put his hands into his pockets. He looked annoyed and impatient.
“What are you doing?” Lucy called.
“I took one of your canoes out. There’s rental money under the rock.” This was said sharply, as if it was obvious, and she was keeping him from something important.
“I never said you could rent my canoe.”
“I have to pass a character test?”
Below the sarcasm, incredibly, Lucy thought she detected the faintest thread of hurt. After all these years, could it still be between them?
I could never fall for a boy like you.
No, he was successful and worldly, and it was written in every line of his stance that he didn’t give a hoot what she thought of him.
“I didn’t say that. You can’t just take a canoe.”
“I didn’t just take it. I paid you for it.”
“You need to tell me where you’re going. What if you didn’t come back?”
“I’ve been paddling these waters since I was fourteen. I’ve kayaked some of the most dangerous waters in the world. I think I can be trusted with your canoe.”
Trust. There it was again. The missing ingredient between them.
“It’s not the canoe I’m worried about. I need to give you a life jacket.”
“You’re worried about me, Lucy Lin?” Now, aggravatingly, he was pulling out the charm to try to disarm her.
“No!”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You should have asked.”
“Maybe I should have. But we both know I’m not the kind of guy who does things by the book.”
Again she thought she heard faint challenge, a hurt behind the mocking tone.
She sighed. “I don’t want your money, Mac. If you want to take a canoe, take one. But let someone know where you’re going. At least Mama, if you don’t want to talk to me.”
She was unsettled to realize now she was the one who felt hurt. Not that she had a right to be. Of course he wouldn’t want to talk to her. She’d pushed him into the lake. Though she had a feeling his aversion to her went deeper than that recent incident.
“I don’t need your charity,” he said, “I’d rather pay you.”
“Well, I don’t need your charity, either.”
“You know what? I’ll just have my own equipment sent up.”
“You do that.”
She watched him walk away, his head high, and felt regret. They needed to talk about Mama, if nothing else. But he hadn’t returned her calls, and he didn’t want to talk to her now, either.
Lucy picked up his twenty-dollar bill, stuck it in an envelope, scrawled his name across it. Not bothering to dress, she crossed the lawns between the two houses in her housecoat, but didn’t knock on the door.
She followed his lead. She put the envelope under a rock and walked away. When she got home, she inspected the canoes, saw which one he had been using, and shoved a life jacket underneath it.
* * *
“What’s this?” Mama said, handing him the envelope.
Mac looked in it and sighed with irritation. Trust Lucy. She was always going to have the last word.
Except this time she wasn’t, damn her. He folded the envelope, tucked it in his pocket and went out the back door. The last person he would ever a
ccept charity from was Lucy. He owed her for the canoe, fair and square, and the days of her—or anyone in this town—feeling superior to him were over.
He lifted his hand to knock on her back door to return the money to her. Raised voices drifted out the open French doors and he moved away from the paint and peered into Lucy’s house.
“You’re wrecking the neighborhood!” someone said shrilly.
“It’s just a sample.” That voice was Lucy’s, low and conciliatory.
“Purple? You’re going to paint your house purple? Are you kidding me? It’s an absolute monstrosity. When Billy and I saw it from the boat the other day, I nearly fell overboard.”
Lucy had a perfect opportunity to say, too bad you didn’t, but instead she defended her choice.
“I thought it was funky.”
“Funky? On Lakeshore Drive?”
No answer to that.
Mac tried the door, and it was unlocked. He pulled it open and slid in. After a moment, his eyes adjusted to being inside and he saw Lucy at her front door, still wrapped in a housecoat, her hands folded defensively over her chest, looking up at a taller woman, the other woman’s slenderness of the painful variety.
Now, there was a face from the past. Claudia Mitchell-Franks. Dressed in a trouser suit he was going to guess was linen, her makeup and hair done as if she was going to a party. Her thin face was pinched with rage.
Lucy was everything Claudia was not. Fresh-scrubbed from the shower, her short hair was towel-ruffled and did not look any more sophisticated than it had fresh out of the drink. She was nearly lost inside a white housecoat, the kind that hung on the back of the bathroom door in really good hotels.
Her feet were bare, and absurdly that struck him as far sexier than her visitor’s stiletto sandals.