A Week at the Lake

by Wendy Wax

  Even Emma seemed to be keeping her distance, and Mackenzie had caught her looking oddly at both her and Adam.

  “Brooks, my man!” Adam offered a hearty handshake, any dilemma he’d felt earlier over whether to punch or embrace him clearly resolved. “If you ever come out to LA you just let me know. I’ve met lots of people through Mike Gold at Universal. He’s very well connected in financial circles, not just in the movie business. Maybe we could take a lunch.”

  It was Serena who finally stopped him. She did this by putting her arms around him and giving him a hug. “Good to see you, Adam. We’re going to run now in case the rain picks up again. Brooks has to head back to the city tomorrow. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  When they’d left and Emma and Zoe had walked the Richardses out to the boat, Mackenzie began to straighten up the kitchen. Adam leaned against the counter and watched her, taking his time with his drink.

  She puttered, keeping her hands busy, even as she tried to keep her thoughts from traveling down paths from which there might be no return. She snuck a look at her husband as he took a long pull on his drink.

  “You could have knocked me over when Serena introduced us to Brooks,” Adam said. “He seems like a nice enough guy, but I never would have figured Serena would ever forgive him or get over what happened.”

  “Me either,” Mackenzie admitted. “Not after all those years spent referring to him as ‘The Tool’ and worse.”

  So many things seemed to be out of kilter: Emma’s accident, the coma, even her slow but steady recovery. Serena involved with the man who’d scarred her so badly. Adam finally achieving his closest-held dream. The words she and Emma and Serena had hurled at each other earlier. It was as if the earth had tilted slightly on its axis turning the unimaginable into reality. It seemed to be working in everyone’s favor but hers.

  “I hate that you think I’m not excited for you,” Mackenzie said, surprising not only Adam but also herself. “Did you mean what you said to Jake?” She stopped short of asking him why he’d been so unavailable all month. There were some things she really didn’t want to know.

  “Nah,” he said. “I think I may have had one too many of these.” He handed over his empty highball glass. “And I guess I was a little surprised that you didn’t look happier to see me when I got here.”

  This, she reminded herself, was Adam. The too-charming man she’d loved since she’d first spotted him. The sometimes-unpredictable man she’d nonetheless spun her whole life around. The man who had unaccountably chosen her when he could have had almost any woman he wanted.

  “Listen,” he said. “We can sit down tomorrow and figure out our next steps. For now . . .” He gave her the sexy, impish smile that had always melted her. “Well, I haven’t seen my wife for an awfully long time.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers, turned her into his arms. “And I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to make love to her.”

  By the time he’d finished kissing her, Mackenzie’s worries had been pushed under the rug of her desire for him. That desire was a sharp keening thing that had always both shocked and delighted her. It went hand in hand with the never-spoken-of “love at first sight” that she’d discovered for herself at that first party in the ratty apartment in the Village so many years ago.

  Her hand was warm in his. Her legs trembled on the way up the stairs. Her skin tingled to his touch. By the time he’d undressed her and pushed her down onto the bed, she’d ceased to think at all.

  The rain had stopped. The dark sky had cleared and the moon shone bright and full. Its beams arrowed onto the lake’s surface and disappeared into the still-wet trees.

  “Thanks for coming.” Emma and Zoe stood in the boathouse, its doors flung open.

  Jake started the engine and let it warm up while Ryan untied the lines. “Thanks for having us. I can come early on Friday to get the ribs cooking.”

  “Sounds good,” Emma said. “I have my follow-up at Mount Sinai this week. I’m not sure who all’s going into the city but Zoe and I will be back on Thursday. Martha’s going to do the grocery shopping. I told her you’d let her know if you needed anything special to go along with the ribs.”

  “Will do.”

  Emma and Zoe stood on the dock and watched The Mohican back out of the boathouse. With a last wave Jake and Ryan headed out and rounded the shoals off Hemlock Point. The boat accelerated as it hit open water.

  “Have a good time?” she asked Zoe.

  “Yeah. I like it here. Ryan’s, you know, cool.”

  “He is,” Emma agreed. “It’s okay to have a good time without worrying too much what it might mean or develop into. That’s part of what being sixteen’s all about.”

  Zoe smiled. “And I’m really glad Serena and Mackenzie are here, too. How come we haven’t seen them in so long?”

  “Oh, you know, people get busy. Everybody’s running at such a hectic pace. Sometimes we just kind of let things slide.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” The lie stuck slightly in Emma’s throat. But she wasn’t ready for Zoe to hear what she had to share with Mackenzie and Serena. Nor did she need to know that Emma was making arrangements for her in the event of Emma’s death—not given their too-recent brush with it. Emma had given herself until after Zoe’s birthday celebration on Friday before she would come clean to Mackenzie and Serena. Something she still wasn’t quite sure how to handle. She stumbled slightly on a nail that wasn’t quite flush with a board. Zoe reached out a hand to steady her. Once she’d squared things with them, she’d find a way to explain to Zoe.

  “Thanks.” Emma laced her arm through Zoe’s.

  “You’re feeling okay, right?” Zoe asked as they neared the end of the dock. “I mean, you’d tell me if you weren’t?”

  “I do. And I would.” She’d heard the tremor in Zoe’s voice. All the more reason to get things settled.

  They walked through the wet grass toward the front porch, where the light twinkled like a beacon. Upstairs, Emma noticed that Mackenzie’s bedroom door was closed. She kissed Zoe good night, her thoughts once again turning to all that lay ahead.

  Nadia was waiting for her in her bedroom, the bed turned down, the drapes pulled closed. “Come,” she said. “I tuck you in.” The nurse’s gruffness no longer hid the warmth at the woman’s center. Her large solid presence radiated comfort. Nadia yawned. “Head hurt from so many words. That Tolstoy need editing.”

  Emma’s dreams could have used some editing, too. They were long and drawn out. Each image overflowed with foreboding. In one she lay in a small wooden boat that was taking on water. Heavy winds howled overhead. Waves smacked against the hull and spilled inside. She cowered in the boat, drenched and weeping.

  Really, darling. These drowning metaphors are exhausting.

  Gran.

  You are lucky to be alive. You do not need to explain. Just change the paperwork and be done.

  The boat began to sink taking her with it.

  But the truth. It’s important.

  In my experience, Gran’s voice said, the truth is highly overrated.

  The boat settled on the bottom. Emma did not turn into a fish. She did not sprout gills. As she opened her mouth to protest, her lungs slowly began to fill with water.

  Thirty-two

  Mist clung to the lake and softened the early morning sky to a pale wispy gray. Hemlock Point was only partially visible and the mountains that rose on the distant eastern bank were completely shrouded from view. It was quiet, almost mystical.

  Mackenzie had woken in the predawn lying next to but not touching Adam. He slept like a man with nothing on his conscience—or possibly, no conscience at all—on his back, a contented smile on his face, his arms flung wide as if ready to embrace the world. Mackenzie had woken curled in a fetal position, her head pressed against his side. In sleep as in life th
ey had declared themselves. It didn’t take Freud to figure out where they were coming from.

  The mist was not yet ready to lift when she carried a cup of coffee out to an Adirondack chair on the small sliver of beach. She swiped off the dew and settled into it, a blanket around her shoulders, the cup clasped in her hands.

  She sipped the warm comforting brew and waited for the first glimmers of sunlight to pierce the grayness. It was hard to tell where the sky left off and the lake began.

  She pulled her knees up as she listened to the sounds of the new day coming alive. A small splash, a quack from an unseen duck. A sound of oars in the bay though she couldn’t imagine rowing blind in this mist. The sounds were muted and hushed like the shrouded sky.

  Resting her chin on her knees, she closed her eyes and let her thoughts wander. She felt slightly sore and pleasantly satisfied, something she hadn’t expected. She’d been certain she could never focus given all that had worried her, but the opposite had been true. Now she needed to get her thoughts in order, to marshal her energy. She felt the urge to prepare a defense but had no idea what she would be expected to defend against.

  She knew he was awake when she heard his voice out on the dining porch. Heard his laughter at something Nadia said. The porch screen creaked open. The mist made it difficult to tell the time, but she’d expected him to sleep in. He was, after all, on California time.

  “Good morning.” He came and dropped down into the chair beside hers, unconcerned with its dampness. “Man, I was out like a light,” he said. “Thanks for putting me to sleep with a smile on my face.”

  “Ditto,” she said, attempting to match his tone and wishing she could find another smile.

  They watched the lake in silence, the bay slowly separating itself from the sky, as the shards of sunlight began to burn through the mist. The outline of the dock on the western edge of Hemlock Point became more distinct. The line of buoys surrounding the rocky remains of Rush Island appeared.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said.

  “Yes it is.” She kept her eyes on the bay cataloguing each discernable detail as it emerged from the mist.

  “California’s beautiful, too.” He turned to her.

  “I know.” She waited for what would come. Braced but not necessarily ready.

  “I’ve waited my entire adult life, and possibly most of my childhood, for this opportunity,” Adam said carefully, looking her directly in the eye. “I want to be there through production. And I want to reap the rewards that follow. If this film is well made and successful, even moderately successful, all those doors that have shut in my face for so long will finally open.”

  She nodded, forced herself to not look away. Unlike her, Adam had never given up. Somehow he’d always managed to believe in himself. It was one of the things that had first attracted her.

  “Someone’s interested in the theater, or at least the building,” he said. “I think we should list the house. I want to move to California. Permanently.” There it was. The vast unknown made known, which made it unavoidable.

  “And what about what I want?” she asked.

  “The last twenty years have been about what you want, Mac.” He said this as if she had arbitrarily bullied him into things against his will. Was that really what she’d done?

  “We didn’t only move to Noblesville because I wanted to,” she retorted, stung. “Neither of us were making it in New York. We couldn’t afford to live there. We could have never raised a child there.”

  “A child we never had.” It was a simple truth, delivered without heat but it still burned.

  “Have you really been so miserable?” she asked.

  He gazed out over the lake as if the answer might be there. She braced once again.

  “With you? No,” he finally said. “With my life?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d have to ask that. You knew who I was when you married me, knew exactly what I wanted. You acted as if you supported that.” His jaw hardened. “I’m not going to turn my back on this chance at the life I always wanted. Don’t you think it’s my turn?”

  Her head snapped up. Did he expect her to throw her arms around him, tell him how wonderful he was, and ask how quickly she should pack? As if all these years had been a wasteland he’d had to slog through. “And if I don’t want to go to California?”

  “Then maybe you should think about why you’re still clinging to the place you grew up in and the small, safe life we’ve lived there,” he said. “The woman I fell in love with ran away from that kind of life. She even learned to trust in love at first sight. I’m not sure what’s happened to that woman. I haven’t seen her for a while.

  “But I’m going, Mackenzie. I love you. I’d prefer that you come with me. I hope you will. But I’m going even if I have to go alone.”

  Mackenzie sat staring at the lake long after Adam had gone inside, her thoughts shrouded in a mist that seemed reluctant to burn away.

  The torture at Bob Fortson’s hands was over for the day. Emma was floating on a raft, one hand trailing in the water, a cap pulled down low to shade her face, when her cell phone rang.

  “I get.” Nadia, who had avoided the sun like a vampire since that day on Jake’s boat, was seated in an Adirondack chair she’d dragged beneath the stand of trees. She’d eyed the nearby hammock only briefly, having discovered early on how hard it could be to fight one’s way out of it.

  Emma’s eyes drifted shut as the nurse answered the phone. The day was warm, the breeze gentle. The whine of a boat motor carried across the water.

  “Nyet. No. Not available.”

  Emma smiled sleepily. There was no longer much need for Nadia’s nursing skills, but she’d proven adept at screening calls, and with her boulder-sized body with its muscled arms and legs, she could run interference as well as any bodyguard. And whether or not she meant to be she was highly entertaining, provoking smiles as she reenacted scenes between Tolstoy’s Pierre and Natasha, or extolled the many virtues of the librarian they had yet to meet.

  “Sorry,” Nadia was saying now. “I tell you. Emma nyet available.”

  Emma smiled at the determination in Nadia’s voice. And yet when she opened one eye to see what was going on, Nadia still had the phone to her ear and appeared to be listening unhappily.

  “Who is it?” Emma paddled closer, her eyes now on the nurse.

  “Is Eve.” Nadia put a hand over the mouthpiece. “I tell her no. She threaten fire me.” Her face contorted. “I think tell her go ahead. But words get stuck. Is not money. I just . . . I not ready leave you.”

  Emma waved an insect away and reached for the phone. Nadia placed it in her hand and mouthed a final apology.

  “What is it?” Emma asked.

  “I just called to check on you.”

  “Thank you,” Emma said politely. “I’m fine. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Wait.”

  “Please,” Emma said holding on to her temper. “Just tell me what you really want.”

  “All right.” Eve’s voice was tight. “I understand you’re coming into the city and I’d like to take Zoe to lunch so I can give her her birthday present.”

  Emma closed her eyes. Her free hand trailed through the water in what she hoped would prove a soothing motion. “I thought we agreed you were going to choose something you could send to her.”

  “No. You told me I wasn’t welcome and that I should find another way to deliver her gift. We’re both going to be in the same city at the same time. And it’s too late to mail anything anyway.”

  Emma flashed back to the birthday celebrations she’d looked forward to as a child, which had always turned into photo ops and acting out her role in her famously happy family. “I’m not sending Zoe alone.”

  “Then join us.” The trap snapped shut. “Bring whomever you’d like. I’m certain I can get a pri
vate room or a quiet unobtrusive table somewhere.”

  Experience told Emma this was highly unlikely, but Eve was Zoe’s grandmother. Wanting to see Zoe, wish her a happy birthday, and give her a gift wasn’t exactly a hanging offense.

  “All right,” Emma said. “But no photographers. No media. And no acting.” This last was even more unlikely, but she tacked it on anyway.

  “Darling. I understand perfectly,” Eve said. But she sounded frighteningly satisfied. As if she’d offered an apple and seen it accepted and was now just waiting for the right person to bite into it. “I’ll send you a text to let you know what I’ve arranged.”

  Even as Emma tossed her phone back to Nadia, Serena stared stupidly down at hers. It was receiving a signal. It had not been dropped on pavement or fallen into the lake, or any other wet place. No matter where she stood, there appeared to be plenty of bars and a decisive dial tone. And yet her phone had not rung for almost thirty-six hours. Not, to be precise, since she’d kissed Brooks good-bye and watched his rental car drive off for the return trip to Manhattan Sunday morning.

  He’s busy. He just hasn’t had time to call, she told herself. But he’d been busy since he’d arrived in New York, sometimes rushing from one meeting to the next, but he’d always made time to at least call. Or text. Or even send some random picture captioned with some wry, witty observation.

  A small knot of dread tightened in her stomach. Too good to be true was too good to be true.

  No. If he hadn’t had time to call her that didn’t mean she couldn’t call him. Women called men all the time. Before she could talk herself out of it, she hit redial for his cell phone and waited, barely breathing as it rang. She began to breathe again as the ringing stopped and Brooks’s voice came on the line. “Hi.”