by Ann Tatlock
A muscle tightened in his jaw; he worked his mouth a bit to loosen it. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded. “But you did tell her I was coming, didn’t you?”
He heard her sigh.
“No, I didn’t. I thought—well, I thought I shouldn’t.” He turned to her sharply. “But why not?”
“I don’t know.” Andrea looked up at him then with apologetic eyes. “I guess I didn’t want her to spend days worrying about it.” She looked away again, toward the door through which Phoebe had disappeared. “I’ll go get her. She’s just hiding under the dock, where she always hides.”
She took a step forward, but John stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Let her be for now. No doubt she needs to get used to the idea.”
He felt Andrea stiffen under the weight of his hand. He withdrew it and suddenly didn’t know what to do with it. He made a loose fist and stuffed it into the pocket of his trousers, the new pair of slacks Owen had given him at the bus station, along with a casual shirt and a pair of loafers. Andrea had sent them, wanting him to come home in something other than the telltale jeans, blue shirt, and brogans—the heavy work shoes—that prisoners were issued on release.
“She knew, didn’t she, that I’d be coming home eventually?”
“Of course, John.”
He hesitated, then said, “And she knew where I was.”
“Yes, she knew. I don’t think she really understands it all.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect her to. But she’s always known she had a father? You spoke of me?”
“Yes. I spoke of you often. You must know that, John.” He didn’t respond. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his pants, looked at it absently, tucked it away again. He was thinking of the child he had last seen as an infant, the child he had watched grow up only through photographs that came to him in letters already opened, courtesy of the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Then he asked, “What about Billy and Rebekah? Where are they?”
“They’re both at work, but they’ll be home for supper. Billy usually stays through the dinner rush, but Owen is letting him off early today.”
“That’s good of Owen.”
“Well, it’s a special occasion, isn’t it?”
Only after a moment did John realize his hands had become fists. He breathed deeply, stretching his fingers, trying to unleash his tension. “Do they know? Do Billy and Rebekah know I’m home?”
“Yes, of course they know.”
“How are they taking it?”
John and Andrea didn’t look at each other as they spoke. Instead, they both had their eyes fixed on the screen door, as though it were a third person in their conversation, a mediator of sorts, something that could keep them focused.
“It’ll be all right, John,” Andrea said. “You’ll see. They’ve grown so much since last summer, you’ll hardly recognize them.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, he thought. I don’t know my own kids anymore. The children’s annual trip from New York to Virginia was all they could afford, though Andrea made an additional solo trip each year, leaving the kids with Owen and Selene. Maybe, though, John should have had his family stay in Virginia instead of sending them up here. That way he might have watched the kids grow up. But, at the time, sending them to live in the cottage had seemed the right thing to do. Anyway, what was done was done.
“I’m making a pork roast and mashed potatoes,” Andrea told him, her tone lighter now. “I know that’s a hot meal for a summer night, but . . .”
He nodded, a small tilting of his head. Pork roast had always been his favorite, and Andrea had remembered. “That’ll taste good. I haven’t had a good home-cooked meal in—well, in a long time.”
They ventured a glance at each other.
“Um,” she said, “I’ll get started on the potatoes, then. It’ll be an hour before the kids are here. Why don’t you just”—she looked around the room, waved a hand—“well, make yourself at home.”
The irony of what she said wasn’t lost on him. This cottage had been his home long before Andrea had ever set foot in the place. Now, in a strange twist of roles, she was the hostess, inviting the stranger in. He looked toward the screen door again. He heard rather than saw his wife leave the room.
He was alone now except for a voice in his head, the voice of a man he knew only as Roach. “How many more days, Sheldon?”
Roach had asked him that question as soon as he had learned John was a short-termer. Without having to calculate, John had told him the number of days.
“Yeah?” A smirk crept over Roach’s leathery face. “Well, enjoy the taste of freedom while you can, because once it comes for real, it’s not nearly as sweet as it’s tasting right now.”
“Is that so, Roach?”
“Yeah. I ought to know.”
“You’ve been out?”
“Out and back. Out and back. It’s a revolving door, Shel.”
“Not for me it’s not.”
“That’s what you say now. Wait and see.”
“I’m not coming back. Once I’m out, I’m out for good.”
Roach had laughed, an infuriating little laugh. “Sure, Sheldon. Good luck on that one. What you don’t seem to know is once you’re in the system, there’s no way out again. Not for good, anyway. You might get out for a while, but you’ll be back. Warden’s got you on the end of a rubber band.”
John shook away the thought of Roach. He moved to the screen door and opened it. He could do that now—just open a door and walk outside into the fresh air, the sunshine. He stood on the porch and breathed deeply. The air carried the scent of lake water mingled with something sweet, maybe honeysuckle. And freshly cut grass. Yes, that too. The breeze caressing his face swept over the lawn in front of the cottage and lifted the earthy aroma to him. Billy must have cut the grass just this morning. The pattern of the mower was still evident in the neat stripes falling back and forth across their narrow property.
At the edge of the yard was the bank and the wooden stairs, six steps down, leading to the dock. He and his brother, Jared, swam from that same dock all the summers of their childhood. Their folks brought them down to the cottage from Rochester every year as soon as school was out. This was where John and Jared passed the hot lazy days of vacation with their mother, their father joining them every weekend, driving down from the city on Friday afternoon after he got off work. To John, this was the greatest place in the world. His happiest memories had been made right here on Conesus Lake.
And now, finally, here he was again, back at the lake. How often in the past five years had he dreamed about standing right here and looking out over the water? Every day. Every single day of every single one of those years.
Roach was wrong; freedom was sweet. The late-afternoon sun hovered on the far side of the lake now as it journeyed westward, and it was sweet to stand here squinting against the blinding glare of the water’s surface. It was sweet to feel the wind, to hear the tangled song of the birds, to know he could walk down off the porch and all the way to the far end of the dock, where he could dip one hand in the cool water if he wanted. It was sweet simply to gather to himself the memories of the place that had always been more home to him than the house thirty miles away in the city of Rochester.
He moved down the porch steps and stood on the freshly cut grass. He took off his shoes, stuffing his socks in the toes of each new loafer before tossing them back toward the porch. He could do that now too. He could stand with the warm grass beneath his bare feet for as long as he wanted, and there was no one to tell him otherwise. The regimented schedule was behind him now. The bars, the single-file lines, the inedible institutional food—all gone. He was free.
A motorboat sped by close to shore, sending a ripple of waves across the surface of the water. In another moment John heard the knocking of wood against wood, just the way he remembered. Two boats were moored on either side of the dock, one a rowboat, one a small motorboat,
and as they rode the waves they bumped against the dock’s sturdy posts. John loved that sound better than any song he’d ever heard. There was a time when he’d lie awake at night on a cot on the porch, hands under his head, listening to that rhythmic lullaby drifting up from the water.
The boat he remembered was an old rowboat, long ago retired. The two boats tied up now were new to John, though hardly new in actual fact. Both had been gifts from Owen to John’s kids, in a left-handed sort of way. Owen had passed them along when he bought better boats for his own kids.
Billy was thrilled with the motorboat, according to Andrea. She’d written in a letter that while she didn’t allow Billy to take the boat out alone, he felt very confident driving his mother and sisters around the lake. He also enjoyed it when his cousins Russ and Stuart came over and helped him tinker with the engine. John tried to imagine that. He never thought his son would be capable of working with any kind of machinery. Never thought he’d be able to do something as basic as cutting the grass. But here he was—tinkering with engines and cutting the grass and even holding a job as a busboy at Owen’s restaurant.
At the same time that he marveled at the boy’s accomplishments, John felt an unexpected shiver of dread at the thought of Billy. And Rebekah. And the little girl he didn’t even know cowering down there under the dock.
“Phoebe,” he said aloud, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. He pressed his lips together, shut his eyes, opened them. Soon they would all be together, all five of them sitting around a table eating pork roast and mashed potatoes. If Phoebe’s reaction to him was any indication of what was to come, it was going to be a difficult night.
“Phoebe,” he called again, more loudly this time, but still he got no answer.
He thought of all the nights he had lain awake, not on a cot on an open porch but on a bunk in a stifling cell, listening to the cries in the dark. Tough men, hard as stone by day, reduced to pitiful creatures at night, like wounded animals. Not every night, but sometimes, especially when the new ones came in, the long corridors echoed with the unmistakable sound of weeping and men calling out the names of their children.
They were afraid their sons and daughters would forget them. Or worse, would never know who they were in the first place.
Now John knew that their cries were justified. The cottage, the dock, the lake—they were all here and hadn’t changed. He could return to a place. But his children—they had all gone on without him, had grown into people he would not know. They would be little more than strangers to him, and he to them.
The sweetness of only moments before took on a bitter edge. He was free, but he realized he hadn’t quite finished paying for what he’d done. He’d served the time, but the hardest part of the payback might be ahead.
And it would start in another hour or so, when they all gathered together as a family for dinner.
CHAPTER THREE
John carried a handful of flatware out to the table in the screened-in section of the porch. That was what his mother had most loved about this place—the wraparound porch, which was almost larger and roomier than the cottage itself. But that was the whole purpose of a lake house, wasn’t it? Not to be indoors but to be outdoors, living right in the middle of nature rather than glancing at it occasionally through a window.
John let the flatware tumble out of his hand and onto the plastic tablecloth. The knives and forks clanged noisily as they toppled onto the pattern of red and white squares. The table covering was the typical picnic cloth, and its simple familiarity looked beautiful compared to the unadorned steel tables of the prison dining hall. John ran his fingertips over the plastic covering and almost marveled, as though it were white linen. Chuckling at himself, he lifted his head, breathed deeply of the fragrant air, felt his heart tighten with gratitude.
Lord God, he thought, thank you.
He took a step forward, squinted against the sun. His eyes swept over the lake again, this time settling on the massive stone structure that had been an object of intrigue around Conesus for decades. Once a private residence, the place was deserted now, left empty and crumbling after the untimely death of its owner, Arthur P. King. The man had been something of a wealthy scoundrel, as well as a womanizer and a drunk, and yet the locals had dubbed him King Arthur and looked with awe and envy on the mansion they called the Castle. In its heyday, during the years of Prohibition, the Castle had been the site of notorious parties for the residents of Conesus Lake. Large crowds of dandies and flappers drank home brew and danced by the water to the music of jazz bands, while every summer some drunken sod fell off the end of the dock and drowned. It got so that bets were placed as to who might be lost before the season was over. Oddly enough, in the summer of 1929, it was King Arthur himself who hurled headlong into the lake and didn’t come out again—at least not on his own.
John assumed the property was still in the hands of the family, though they hadn’t put in an appearance since the death of King Arthur, and nobody seemed to know who they were. Still, the parties went on without them, year after year, mostly for young underaged drinkers who brought their own booze. John and Jared had been among them once, years ago, when the brothers were teenagers. The Castle, rumored to be both cursed and haunted, was the perfect place for young men to display false bravado while dabbling in forbidden wonders. It was there John had his first drink while listening to a boom box blaring the music of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. . . .
But he didn’t want to think about that right now. That was another life. Things were different now. Everything.
He moved the knives and forks around to form five settings, then realized there weren’t enough chairs around the table. Only four when there should be five. He’d have to find another.
In the kitchen Andrea stood over a boiling pot on the stove, poking at something inside with a fork. She looked up at John when he came in and smiled weakly. She laid the fork aside and rubbed her palms against the skirt of her bibbed apron. He noticed how, in spite of the oscillating fan on the kitchen table, her bangs were plastered to her forehead with sweat. He had almost told her earlier that her hair looked nice, but for whatever reason he hadn’t moved the words from his mind to his tongue. Chiding himself, he decided it was too late now.
“The potatoes are almost ready to mash,” she said, “so I hope the kids will be here soon.”
John nodded, unsure of how to respond. Stepping to the table, he picked up a chair. “We need one more,” he explained.
She looked stricken, her eyes moving from the chair to his face. “I meant to do that. I’m sorry—”
“It’s all right. I’ve got it.”
He carried the chair to the porch and made room for it at the table. Andrea’s mention of the kids had triggered a wave of fear somewhere inside of him. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but even before he could exhale, a car pulled off the road and came to rest in the gravel drive. A young girl with long blond hair sat behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Jetta that was long past its prime.
Rebekah.
He took a step forward, stopped. He waited. She seemed to take forever to open the door and get out. When she did, he could see that her eyes were fixed on him.
He had loved her more than all of them. She was the one who had given him his greatest measure of joy. Ten years ago, when she was a golden-haired child just Phoebe’s age, she had been a daddy’s girl and had given him something to come home to at the end of the day. But over the years he had watched her grow not only older and less childlike but, to him, achingly more distant each time Andrea brought her and Billy down for their annual visit.
Now she was almost grown up; he could see that as she walked toward him, tall and lithe and confident. His little girl was a young woman now, coming into her beauty.
Andrea appeared in the kitchen doorway just as Rebekah moved up the slanted walkway to the porch. The girl stopped when she became level with her mother. For a moment the three of them looked at one another, sayi
ng nothing. John wondered whether anyone else could hear the pounding of his heart and the hollow sound of blood rushing through his ears.
“Your father’s home,” Andrea said quietly.
“Yeah,” the girl responded. “I can see that.”
John felt his daughter’s eyes on him like burning coals. The heat of her stare left his mouth dry, his tongue like sandpaper. He tried to moisten his lips discreetly before saying, “Hello, Beka.”
Andrea wiped her palms against her apron again. “Well, Rebekah,” she said. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“Hello.”
The word was as lifeless as tumbleweed. John felt it roll through him, snagging his heart on the way.
He fumbled for something to say. In his nervousness, he found himself echoing Andrea’s comment to him earlier. “You’ve grown so much since I saw you last summer, I hardly recognize you.”
John watched the blue eyes narrow. “Yeah?” she said. “Well, it’s hard to keep track of things when you’re not around, isn’t it?”
“Rebekah!”
“It’s all right, Andrea. I—”
Mumbling something John couldn’t hear, Rebekah pushed past her mother. Ducking into her bedroom off the kitchen, she shut the door heavily.
John and Andrea avoided each other’s gaze. At length John said, “Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?”
“You’ll have to give her time, John.”
He nodded, drew in a deep breath.
Andrea went on, “It hasn’t been easy for her these past few years, growing up without her father around.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“We’ll have to be patient. But she’ll come around.”
He took a step backward, stopped again. “I’ve missed so much.” He looked up at his wife. “I’ve missed too much. Maybe there’s no way to come back now—”
“No,” she said quickly. “No. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”