Lakeside Cottage

by Susan Wiggs

  “He’s not going to stay with us,” Kate said. “Why would he?”

  “Oh, let me think. You’re a warm, wonderful, beautiful young woman with an adorable son. Whatever could a man see in you?” Mable Claire buttered a marionberry scone. “You’re already planning to let him go before you’ve explored all the possibilities.”

  “I’m trying to be practical and keep Aaron from getting his hopes up,” Kate insisted. “These things never work out for me.”

  “Just because ninety-nine percent of soufflés fall when taken out of the oven doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever bake a soufflé.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” She offered a grudging smile. “We have this unspoken agreement that we don’t talk about the end of summer. He’s from the East Coast, and he’s looking at going to UCLA for medical school. There’s no way I can leave Seattle, so—”

  “Quit thinking about how this is going to end. Try thinking about how things are right now.”

  “Things are amazing right now,” Kate admitted with a dreamy smile. JD seemed to be growing more and more at home in her company. With good-natured cooperation, he participated in some of the most ancient Livingston-family rituals—bike rides, cannonballs off the dock, hiking expeditions, games of lawn darts and badminton, ghost stories and marshmallow roasts around a lakeside bonfire. She had not told him so, but he was stepping into the breach left by her brother, bringing strength and laughter and that ineffably male jocularity to the family, the one thing she couldn’t replicate.

  “All right,” she said, giving herself a mental shake. She indicated the folder on the table. “I’m returning your photographs. They’ve been converted into digital files for the article on my grandfather. I made you a copy on a CD.”

  “He was a lovely man, your grandfather,” she said. “Aaron takes after him, doesn’t he?”

  Same red hair and twinkling eyes, thought Kate. But Walden had been a leader, some would say a visionary. She wondered if Aaron could possibly have those gifts. Your son is a gift, JD had told her. Believe it.

  “Anyway, the article is being published next February.”

  “Kate, that’s exciting.” Mable Claire beamed at her. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks.” Mable Claire made her miss her mother. “I was at such a low spot at the beginning of summer.”

  “But you kept your chin up, and look at you now.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Callie. Her birthday is coming up and I’m planning a surprise party for her. Can you and Luke join us Saturday night?”

  “Sure, I’d love to come. Luke, too, probably. He was so bored at the beginning of summer. Fortunately, he found a group of other teenagers to pal around with.”

  “He’s always by himself when he visits Callie. Maybe he could invite the others, too.”

  “I’ll ask him. This is awfully nice of you, Kate.”

  “I like doing things for Callie. Aaron’s in on the surprise. He’s beside himself.”

  “It sounds like fun. She doesn’t seem to be a girl who’s had a lot of birthday parties.”

  “I agree. That’s about to change.”

  The evening before the party, Kate left Callie to watch Aaron while she and JD went out—on a date, they said. Beforehand, they had some stops to make, choosing gifts for Callie’s birthday. Music, of course—a Jimi Hendrix collection and some new electronica that JD swore she loved, even though it made Kate cringe. She selected four new colors of nail polish, something she knew Callie liked, and then she lingered over the displays at the clothing store. “She only ever wears jeans, sweats and T-shirts,” she told JD. “I don’t want her to think I disapprove of that.” In the end, she settled on a gift card. It was uninspired but practical, she decided. Finally, at the stationery shop, she found a stock of notebooks and creamy writing paper, faintly lined, and pens in beautiful colors.

  “She’s starting to matter so much to me,” Kate told JD.

  “Lucky girl,” he said.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. Let’s go get dinner.”

  The plan was to catch a new movie at the local cinema, but halfway through the peach pie à la mode, Kate noticed him staring at her with unmistakable intensity. She fancied she could feel actual heat from his gaze.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m not in the mood for a movie.” Simple words, but they were spoken in a tone that was taut with an undercurrent she recognized, because she felt it, too.

  “Me neither. What would you like to do?” she asked.

  “Let’s go to my place.”

  Hardly a radical suggestion. But it was different now; and they both knew that. “All right,” she said.

  They didn’t speak much on the ride to the lake. A soft, slow love song drifted from the radio speakers. He helped her out of the truck and they walked together to the front porch. “You’re quiet,” he said, taking out his keys.

  She took a deep breath and decided to say it. “You haven’t kissed me yet and I want to know why. What have you got against it?”

  He fell still, his features shrouded in darkness. “Kissing in general or kissing you?”

  “You’re opposed to kissing me?”

  “Those are your words, not mine.”

  She wanted to scream in frustration. “Look, maybe I should go—”

  “Kate,” he whispered, taking her arm and pulling her around to face him. “You…” He was like an actor who had forgotten his lines, yet there was nothing gradual or tentative about his kiss. He pulled her against him and kissed her without further preamble or ceremony, his mouth open and searching. Her nerves hummed with a fine edge of desire, and she sank against him, wanting and fearing, knowing she was ready and refusing, for now, to let herself worry about tomorrow.

  He was new and exciting, yet she fit perfectly into his arms, into his kiss. The dizzily romantic thought struck her that she had been waiting for him all her life.

  “Better?” he asked, his mouth hovering over hers.

  “You get an A+.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “But maybe we shouldn’t…I can’t…”

  “Come on, Kate. I know you’re a responsible mother, like you once told me. But you’re also responsible for your own happiness.”

  “And you think…” She paused, tried to organize her thoughts. “You think making love with you would make me happy.”

  “I don’t think that. I know it.” He grinned. “I promise.”

  And then he picked her up as though she weighed nothing and pushed open the door with his shoulder. When he set her down, she felt the edge of the bed pressing against the backs of her legs.

  He still didn’t stop kissing her, not until he stepped back to turn her, gently lifting her hair away from the nape of her neck. He unzipped her dress, skimming it from her shoulders. Drowning in sensation, Kate kept her eyes shut, though she tried to picture what she’d worn tonight for underwear, because she had some real doozies from Ooh-La-La. It was all right, she recalled. Basic tasteful cherry red was always appropriate. Even if it was a thong.

  She was on fire when she opened her eyes to face him, and she was gratified by the speed with which he shed his jacket and shirt. The only light in the room came from the moon, a clear pale glow highlighting a physique that, she strongly suspected, would cause women’s jaws to drop.

  Deep shadows dappled his chest, and with a shock, she realized he was scarred—and not just a little. Thick, shiny tissue scored his chest and lower rib cage. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “I was in the service.”

  “What, last week?”

  “I signed up right out of high school, and stayed in until last spring.”

  “And you were a medic,” she said, “like Sam.”

  “That’s right.”

  She gently traced a scar with her finger. “I thought medics helped the wounded.”

  “Sometimes you put yourself in harm’s way to do that.”


  “You act like it’s such a simple thing, putting yourself in harm’s way.”

  “In the service, that’s your job, whether you’re a truck driver, a cafeteria worker or a sniper. It’s not simple. It’s the job.”

  “Where were you in harm’s way?”

  “Konar Province in Afghanistan. That’s where I first met Sam.”

  “I’m waiting for you to elaborate.”

  “Honey, you’re standing there in a thong. The only thing I want to elaborate on is what I’m going to do to you.”

  His words melted her resolve to take this slowly. Yet, while a part of her was ready to jump into bed with him, another part held on to caution. With an almost painful reluctance, she pulled her dress back up.

  He groaned as though she’d wounded him.

  “I told myself I need to get to know you,” she explained, though she felt his pain.

  “You know me, Kate,” he said. “You know what’s important.”

  “You never talk about your life. Your family. Your past—”

  “I have a crappy apartment in D.C. and I’m a paramedic. Growing up, I just had my mother. Closest thing I have to family is Sam.”

  “What were you doing in Afghanistan?”

  His jaw tightened with a slight tic, but she held her ground. Finally, he gave a sigh of resignation. “We were medics in two different units. There was a sort of rough brotherhood made up of Northern Alliance Uzbeks and Tajiks, and a handful of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. They sent us down one night into a valley where a recon unit had been ambushed. Our job was to evacuate the wounded.”

  It sounded surreal to her, particularly rendered in his matter-of-fact tone. “I have a feeling you’re making this sound easier than it was,” she said.

  “I never said it was easy. That night, we hit the UXO jackpot.”

  “UXO…”

  “Unexploded ordnance. There was a world of it littering the field.”

  “Is that how you got those scars?” she asked, feeling a bit queasy.

  “No, but it sure as hell made things interesting. And I met my best friend that night, so it wasn’t a total loss. And now…” He slid the dress off her shoulder, bent to kiss her there. “About that thong…”

  She considered struggling, but his mouth on her just felt too good. “Finish the story,” she said weakly.

  “It’s over. Tell me about you.” He bared the other shoulder and kissed her there, too.

  “Oh, right. Like I can top yours. I wish I’d done something more with my life.”

  “You’ve done plenty.”

  She rested her forehead against his chest. Having a nine-year-old made her feel so ancient compared to her childless girlfriends. “It’s a conundrum. Nathan was a huge mistake, but if I hadn’t met him, I wouldn’t have Aaron.”

  He touched her hair. “Did you love him?”

  “I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t love him.”

  “Does that mean you don’t sleep with anyone unless you love him?”

  “Are you trying to get me to say I love you?”

  “Only if you mean it.”

  Oh, she was close. He had no idea how close she was to letting the dam burst. “I know what love is,” she said. “And what it isn’t.” She smiled up at him but remembered the old Kate, pregnant and abandoned by a boy she had adored and trusted. “These things happen in their own time.”

  He nodded, and very deliberately reached around and unhooked her bra. She reveled in the fire of his touch, all her reservations receding to a far corner.

  “This is going to change everything,” she whispered in a voice she didn’t recognize.

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “You do?”

  He traced his finger around the band of the thong. “Hell, yes.”

  She was mesmerized by the movement of his finger. “What was wrong with the way things were before?”

  “Nothing, but…we weren’t like this.”

  She caught her breath at the way he touched her. “That’s true,” she whispered. Then, because she knew in a few moments she would not be able to speak at all, she spoke the truth. “I’m afraid.”

  He pulled her closer, threaded his fingers into her hair. “Afraid of what?”

  “Of losing you as a friend.” She tilted back her head to look up at him and was struck by a wave of dizziness. Good Lord, he was incredible. “That’s what will happen, you know. Once we sleep together, we won’t be friends anymore.”

  “No,” he said softly, whispering against her mouth. “We’ll be closer.”

  Eighteen

  On her birthday, Callie felt like an old woman with an aching back and bad knees. She had spent a rotten afternoon cleaning up a party house on Lake Sutherland after the vacationers had gone back to the city. The place was designed to sleep six, but clearly, they’d had twice that many drinking, eating junk food, using every dish and utensil in sight, littering the decks with cans, bottles, wrappers and spent fireworks.

  To top it off, Yolanda had bugged out early, leaving Callie to finish up and walk the half mile back to the Livingstons’ house. Actually, Callie didn’t mind the walk and she knew she could use the exercise. It was the best part of a crappy day.

  The road was empty of cars as usual, dappled by shifting patterns of sunshine and shadow. Through the trees, she glimpsed the lake, not Sutherland with its buzzing Jet Skis and pounding ski boats, but Lake Crescent, pristine and protected, home to only a privileged few. It was kind of amazing that she had wound up here, as if it was meant to be. Sometimes she imagined the lake was part of an enchanted world, protected by an invisible bubble. When she was there, with the Livingstons, she belonged in that world, safe and protected.

  The lake itself was the center of the world. She loved the water. She always had. She loved holding her breath and sinking under, into the darkened silence. In that silence, she could forget about her own screwed-up life for whole minutes at a time.

  She turned up the volume on her Discman and let the cool music of The Visitors fill her up, until she was drowning in the smooth notes and lyrical poetry about someone else’s hurt, which somehow made her own fade away, just for a few blessed minutes. That was why she loved music. She wished she could disappear into the sea of notes, sink underneath them and never come up for air, never again break the surface and see what a mess she had made of her life.

  She wasn’t stupid enough to believe she could actually do that. She was stupid, though. This was something she had to quit hiding from herself, because she couldn’t any longer. Her mistakes were part of her and she couldn’t get away from them. She tried running, but here was the problem. You couldn’t run away if the thing you were trying to escape was your own self. She would forever be California Sequoia Evans, raised on a loony farm, then shuffled from house to house by folks who saw foster kids as an extra check from the state every month.

  Not all of them, though. She had to be fair. The first family she’d been placed with as a scared, surly misfit had been kind enough. The Clines. She still remembered the wonder she’d felt at the simplest things—a mother helping with homework, Saturday-morning cartoons. The relief of feeling normal had been strictly temporary, though. Just when she was learning to like her life again, she had been reassigned to a different family, this one tense and restrictive, and when she broke too many of their bullshit rules, she’d wound up with the Coldwells, a well-to-do family made up of a bitter, suspicious mother, a critical, demanding father and their nineteen-year-old son, still living at home.

  And now here she was with Kate and Aaron at their house at the lake. She’d never known anybody like them. Kate was kind and funny and caring, and Aaron was a doll. A little freaky sometimes, but what kid wasn’t? Callie shouldn’t let herself get too involved. Summer would end and they’d go back to their lives in the city. Knowing Kate, she’d probably try to help Callie out, but Callie wouldn’t take advantage of her anymore. She’d figure out…something. She had no
idea what.

  She rotated her shoulders as she walked, trying to ease the cramping there. Yolanda was always advising Callie to try yoga, which was a nice way of urging her to do something about being so fat, like yoga would actually help at this point. Shaking her head, Callie rubbed the small of her back. Nothing would help. She had read somewhere that time heals all wounds, but by now she knew that was a crock of shit.

  She was having depressing thoughts on her birthday. Big deal. This was a depressing birthday. Here she was, marking the day she was born, and all she could do was think about how much her life sucked.

  “Snap out of it,” she muttered, stopping to take a bottle of water out of her tote bag. Kate fixed her a sack lunch every day and always included a chilled bottle of water. Callie took a long drink and sprinkled the last drops from the bottle onto her overheated face. She was sick and tired of dragging herself around every day, tired of wearing fat-girl clothes and acting all normal.

  Honestly, she didn’t want anything for her birthday. She wanted something for her life. To be normal. To laugh and have fun and not worry about the future. To have a best friend. A boyfriend.

  “Yeah, sure,” she muttered, but even in the middle of nowhere, she automatically straightened her shoulders and strutted like a beauty queen down the middle of the road. Just the thought of Luke Newman did that to her, made her want to stand up straight and face the world with a smile.

  It was the freakiest thing. He liked her. He didn’t seem to mind her looks or the fact that she hadn’t been to school since before Christmas or that she dressed like a bag lady. He didn’t judge her. It was so weird that she had met him now, right after meeting Kate and Aaron. Just when she didn’t think she could get any further down on her luck, she’d lucked into all these people here at the lake. After a lifetime of having no one, she suddenly found herself with people who actually gave a hoot about her.

  Which made her feel lousy about lying to them, but she didn’t quite know what to do about it at this point. Except to keep lying.

  She felt an echo of the dizziness that had been bothering her all day, and stumbled in the road.