Snowfall at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  They went to the Apple Tree Inn for dinner. It was in a converted Victorian mansion by the river. At this time of year, the Schuyler River was almost completely frozen. The boulders and stones in the streambed were layered in a thick coating of ice, and there was a miserly trickle down the middle.

  “Ms. Bellamy, welcome back,” said the host, an elegant man named Miles, whom she remembered from past visits.

  “Thank you,” Sophie said, and then with a glow of pride showed off the baby. “This is my grandson Charlie, the newest Bellamy. I don’t believe you’ve met him yet.”

  Miles had the usual startled reaction to the news that Sophie was a grandmother, gratifying as it was. And of course, he took one look at Charlie and was lost. “What a handsome little fellow. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Daisy said.

  As they were shown to their table, Sophie spied someone out of the corner of her eye, a swift impression of a broad-shouldered form, thick dark hair, a ridiculously handsome face. Noah Shepherd. She did a double take, and froze in her tracks. It was indeed Noah, and he was smiling across a candlelit table at Tina Calloway, the girl with a wrecking ball of a crush on him. The girl who was barely old enough to be drinking that glass of white wine with him.

  “Mom, is something wrong?” Daisy asked.

  Let me count the ways, thought Sophie. She wanted to melt into the floor like the snow off her newly purchased boots. Even though she and Noah were nothing to each other, nothing but a couple of nights of amazing sex, she felt a sickening blow of disappointment. Like a fool, she’d let herself hope and believe in him. That he might be different. That he might not hurt her. That he might actually be someone trustworthy.

  Then she reproached herself. This guy was a stranger; she’d stupidly fallen into bed with him, but that didn’t mean it was the start of something.

  Clearing her throat, she put on a good face for the kids. “I just spotted my neighbors at the lake.” The place was too small to pretend she hadn’t seen him. Might as well get it over with. “I’ll introduce you.” The strangeness of the situation did not escape her. She was about to introduce her children to…what was Noah to her? She hadn’t even worked it out in her mind. They had made love, but that didn’t mean she had to call him her lover, did it? They had only just met, so “friends” didn’t work, either. What was amazing was that Noah Shepherd had become so many things to her in such a short time—rescuer, healer, neighbor, friend, lover…and now, apparently, liar.

  Allowing none of this to show on her face, she introduced him to Max, Daisy and Charlie. “My neighbors at the lake,” she stated, trying to appear as neutral as Switzerland.

  “Your baby is so cute,” Tina said to Daisy.

  “I hope he stays quiet during dinner,” Daisy said. “He’s pretty sleepy. He might nap.”

  “If you need someone to watch him, I’m available,” Tina volunteered. “I adore babies. I was just telling that to Noah.”

  Noah seemed distinctly uncomfortable as he stood and shook hands with Daisy and Max. In a way, he seemed as awkward and boyish as Max. Well, it was awkward, bumping into someone you’d just slept with when you were out with someone else.

  “Our table’s ready,” Sophie said.

  As they took a seat, Daisy parked the baby carrier on a window seat by their table, getting Charlie settled with a blanket and pacifier. Watching her brisk, loving gestures, Sophie wondered, where had she gotten that? Where had Daisy learned to be a mother?

  Max was chattering away about Tina. “Her dad is Sockeye Calloway, you know, from the U.S. hockey team that won the gold medal a long time ago?”

  Sophie did know. Noah had told her. What he’d neglected to tell her was that he was dating the Olympian’s daughter. She tried to listen to Max, but she was distracted. It wasn’t every day you had to introduce your children to a man you’d slept with.

  More than once.

  The kind of “sleeping with” that involved very little sleeping.

  And to be honest, she thought, that wasn’t even the worst. The worst was that he was out to dinner with Tina Calloway, mere hours after sharing a bed with Sophie.

  Sophie refused to be upset by what she’d seen at the restaurant tonight. Noah was just a guy, she thought. A guy who’d pulled her out of a ditch, stitched up her wound, brought her firewood. And all right, a guy with whom she’d had multiorgasmic sex. This was what you got for hooking up. For failing to look before you leaped.

  Fine, she thought. We’re better off as neighbors. She was here to focus on her family, anyway. And in that respect, the evening had gone well. Her children seemed excited to have her living so close to them. Charlie was a gift—no, a blessing—and she looked forward to watching him grow, to being part of his life.

  It was enough, she told herself. After what she’d survived, her children and grandson were enough. Eventually, she would make friends here in Avalon. She’d make a life here. The interlude with Noah Shepherd would simply fade away.

  She’d make certain of that. Picking up her phone, she checked the time and then scrolled to Brooks Fordham’s number in New York.

  “I hope it’s not too late to call,” she said.

  “Absolutely not. I’m dying to see you, Sophie. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “We do. But mostly, I want to see for myself how you’re doing.”

  “I can take the train up any day you like,” he said. “Name it.”

  “Let’s get through this patch of bad weather.” She paced as she spoke with him, flinched at one point at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t him specifically, but memories darting in and out of her consciousness. It had started out such a special night, punctuated by rare snowfall as if to underscore the magic. The terror and violence that followed had imprinted themselves on her.

  “All right,” he said. “But in the interest of full disclosure, I have an ulterior motive. I’m doing a piece about what happened for the New Yorker, and I hope to expand it into a book.”

  Sophie was silent for a moment. He was a writer. It was what he did. Then she said, “I’ll help you in any way I can, Brooks.”

  Fifteen

  “Man, that’s some nasty-ass shit,” Bo Crutcher remarked helpfully as Noah wheeled a teetering barrow of horse manure past him in the barn.

  “Yeah, thanks for pointing that out,” Noah said over his shoulder. “I mean, otherwise I might not have noticed.” He maneuvered the wheelbarrow down the ramp, out of the barn and along a much-traveled path to the heap at the edge of the paddock. In the cold air, the manure pile steamed like a geyser.

  Bo stood watching from the doorway of the barn. He was clad like Nanook of the North in a down jacket, snow boots, insulated gloves and a plaid hat with earflaps that, amazingly, did not look dorky on him. Having grown up in the muggy climes of the Texas Gulf Coast, he made no secret of his unabashed horror for the cold and snow. As the star pitcher of Avalon’s professional baseball team, he spent most winters on the beaches of Texas, working in the oil fields and partying like a just-released convict until his agent made him go to spring training.

  This winter was different, though. Prior to spring training in Florida, he’d decided to spend some time in Avalon because, he’d explained, he needed to put some distance between himself and his ex-girlfriend. One of his exes. Crutcher had a lot of exes.

  He blew a plume of smoke into the air from the skinny cigar he was smoking.

  “Now that,” Noah remarked, “is nasty.”

  Bo took a slender flat box out of his pocket. “Want one?”

  “Right. I’ve always had a death wish.”

  “I don’t inhale.”

  “Then you’ll still be alive to see your mouth rot.”

  “Don’t start sounding like my mother,” Bo said, leaning back against the wall, his foot propped like the Marlboro man. “Not that I have a mother. And I only smoke in the off-season, anyway.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Then you turn into a health nut and swit
ch to chewing tobacco.”

  “Dip. It’s called dip. As in dipshit.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Noah studied his friend. They had met three years ago after Bo had just signed on with the Hornets, a professional independent baseball team in the Can-Am League. Not long afterward, Bo joined Noah’s garage band as bass player.

  “Seriously, man,” Bo said, standing well out of the way as Noah hosed down the barrow and the sloping concrete floor of the barn, “don’t you have someone to do this shit for you?”

  “Sometimes,” said Noah. “Girl down the road, name of Chelsea, helps out in the clinic three days a week, but horse manure is kind of an everyday event.”

  “Wonder why,” Bo muttered, pushing away from the wall.

  “It’s not so bad,” Noah pointed out. “Back when my family had the dairy, I was dealing with cow manure, which was a lot nastier and there was a lot more of it.” With practiced routine, he scooped feed from the bin, filling four pails.

  “Take the bucket to that one, will you?” He handed Bo a galvanized pail of feed deeply scented with molasses.

  Grumbling, Bo went to tend to the big roan quarter horse. Friendly as a Labrador retriever, it sidled right up to him. “Jesus, he’s stampeding me,” Bo said, nearly spilling the bucket as he plastered himself against the side of the stall.

  “Nah, he’s just glad to see you,” Noah called, feeding Alice in the next stall. “Relax, buddy. I thought guys from Texas were all cowboys who liked horses.”

  “That’s what everybody who’s not from Texas thinks. Closest I ever got to a horse growing up was watching old Bonanza reruns on a TV I stole.”

  “Hang on a second while I take out my violin.” Noah pantomimed drawing a bow dramatically across the strings.

  “I’m just saying.” Bo finished emptying his bucket and moved back as the horse went to the trough.

  Noah knew Bo hated pity. He would rather be made fun of than pitied for the way he’d grown up, raised by his older brother. The Crutcher boys had lived in a trailer park in East Houston, with a yard that backed up to a ship channel so polluted with petroleum products that it regularly caught on fire.

  “Anyway,” Bo continued, “you’re the one shoveling stalls while I’m fixing to head down to Florida to work on my tan.”

  Noah reeled in the hose and put up the equipment. “Okay, we’re done here.”

  “Finally,” Bo said. “Remind me next time to drop by after chores, not before.”

  “You sure complain a lot,” Noah said as they crossed the compound, the twilight throwing long shadows across the snow-covered yard.

  “I do, don’t I, Tom Sawyer?” Sometimes Bo called him Tom Sawyer, because he was convinced that Noah’s idyllic small-town boyhood was the kind of thing that only happened in fiction. Bo himself was more of a Huck Finn, unattached and rambling wherever he pleased. Self-educated, Bo had read more books than anyone Noah had ever met, and loved to sprinkle his conversation with both literary references and obscenities. “I reckon,” he went on, “it’s because I haven’t been laid in a while. Tends to get a guy down, feeling sorry for himself. I reckon you know that.”

  Noah didn’t say anything, which was a mistake. Even after slamming a couple of beers, Crutcher had a sensitive radar for that kind of thing.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, slugging Noah on the shoulder. “You got yourself laid—finally.”

  Noah kept walking.

  “Who is it?” Bo demanded. “Out with it. Come on. I just froze my nuts off keeping you company in the barn. Practically got stepped on by a horse. You owe me, man.”

  Noah found himself curiously reluctant to talk about Sophie Bellamy. At the same time, the thing that had happened with her was so…unexpected. And intense, like nothing else he’d ever experienced.

  Crutcher, despite his flaws, was a good listener, so Noah slowed his step and said, “It was kind of a…spontaneous thing. Nobody you know.”

  And as far as he knew, it was over. When he stopped by Sophie’s place, she was either gone or claiming to be busy. Just the other morning, he had dropped in to bring her more firewood and brought up the topic of Tina, telling Sophie that what she’d seen at the Apple Tree Inn wasn’t a date. She had brushed off the explanation, telling him he didn’t owe her one. To top it all off, some guy had shown up from the city, a visitor from her past, as far as Noah could tell. He’d seen them having coffee in the bookstore, and just seeing them made him feel like a complete stalker, so he’d been forcing himself to mind his own business.

  It wasn’t working. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  Bo regarded Noah with deep concentration. “Well, this is serious, then. I can tell by how quiet you are.”

  “I just said it was—”

  “You seriously like this girl,” Bo said with a laugh. “Come on, bud. Spill.”

  “There’s nothing to spill.” Yeah, sure. Noah took the path that forked downhill and to the right. “I need to finish up a couple of things in the clinic. Come on, you can give me a hand.”

  “So long as it’s nothing gross.”

  Noah shouldered open the back door of the clinic. He currently had several patients staying over, dogs and cats crated in a darkened room with slow jazz playing on a radio.

  “Now this is more like it,” Bo remarked, carefully removing Samson the miniature dachshund from his cage. “But how the hell did a wiener dog break its leg?”

  “It’s not a fracture. Dew claw injury.”

  “I didn’t forget that you got laid and haven’t told me about it,” Bo reminded him. “Come on, man, give me something.”

  “I got nothing.” Noah checked the chart of Mr. Tibbs, a big yellow Persian with a hernia.

  “Then make something up. Or else I’ll start a rumor about you and…let’s see…Didn’t you go out with Nina Romano last summer?”

  One humiliatingly boring night, Noah recalled. In the aftermath of Noah’s breakup with Daphne, he’d asked Nina out. She’d practically fallen asleep on the ride home. “Don’t be a turd,” he said to Crutcher. “Okay, it’s someone I just met. It’s still new and probably won’t amount to anything.” As he spoke, it struck him that he was hoping for more from Sophie Bellamy. But she was skittish as hell in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. And now, Noah had a secret from her, too. He couldn’t very well explain the real reason for the not-really-a-date with Tina Calloway, not if he wanted to respect Tina’s privacy. Of course, she hadn’t sworn him to secrecy. In fact, she’d asked him if he knew of any other “potential candidates.”

  Bo opened the fridge, scrutinizing the contents. “Got any more beers in here?”

  “That fridge is for medicine. And don’t even think about the horse tranquilizer.”

  Bo held the tiny dachshund in his big hands, looking like King Kong. “I’m only allowed to drink beer in the off-season,” he pointed out. “I like to get a nice slow, enjoyable buzz, not knock myself out.”

  “You end up the same anyway,” Noah pointed out.

  “Okay, now you’re starting to piss me off. Not only do you refuse to tell me anything about the momentous occasion of the end of your celibacy, you start ragging on me about my drinking.”

  “Tough job, but someone’s got to do it.”

  Bo put the dachshund back and studied Duchess, a shih tzu with a chip on her shoulder. As he peered through the mesh of her crate, she rolled back her lips and showed her tiny, sharp teeth. “So is she a local girl or—”

  “Jeez, enough already.” Noah decided a diversionary tactic was in order. Sure, he had gotten laid, but that wasn’t the only interesting thing that had happened to him. From a gossip standpoint, anyway. “This is strictly confidential but I’ve got to tell somebody.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Bo promised.

  “You know who Tina Calloway is?”

  Bo gave a low whistle. “Are you kidding me? She’s your new girlfriend? Of course I know who she is. Her old man and I are drinking buddies.
Damn, Noah. Way to go. She’s unbelievable. Is she legal age?”

  “Screw you, Crutcher.” Noah was already regretting his decision to confide in his friend.

  “I thought she liked girls,” said Bo.

  “She did,” Noah said. “Does.”

  “Son of a bitch. You mean she wanted a threesome—”

  “I like the way your mind works, but that’s not it.” Noah was still a little shell shocked from Tina’s request. “Okay, so she invited me to dinner at the Apple Tree Inn.” Everyone in town knew what that represented. Candlelight, soft music. Seduction—that was generally the purpose of a date at a place like the Apple Tree. “So I figured she wanted something.”

  “A three-way. Son of a bitch.”

  Noah should his head. “Not that. I told you.”

  “Then what?”

  Noah put aside the IV tubing. “Remember, not a word of this to anyone.”

  “I told you, man. We’re in the confessional. Hell, what’d she do, propose?”

  “Yeah, but not marriage. She and her partner want to have a baby.”

  Bo gave another whistle, this one loud enough to make the dogs yap at him. “You have got to be shittin’ me.”

  Noah said nothing. The moment Tina made her request had been completely and utterly surreal for him. Even the memory of it felt surreal. It was a crazy, cosmic joke, even a cruel one, although Tina couldn’t know that. One woman had left him because she didn’t want kids. And here was another who wanted the kids, but not him.

  “I swear, if it had been anyone but Tina, I would’ve started looking around for hidden cameras,” Noah admitted. “It felt like either a joke or some social experiment.”

  Bo gave a laugh, shaking his head. “You the man,” he said, then clapped Noah on the back. “You the man.”

  “Come on.”

  “I assume she wasn’t proposing artificial insemination.”

  Tina had blushed furiously when she’d come to that part of her proposal. She and Paulette didn’t have the money for artificial insemination.

  When Noah didn’t answer, Bo ripped off his hat and clutched at his hair with both fists. “Damn. Damn. Some guys get all the luck.”