A Week at the Lake

by Wendy Wax

  Mackenzie sat in the front seat next to Adam drumming her fingers on her leg as Adam drove and tried to talk her through the steps they’d need to take to make the move out to LA. How the sale of the house in Noblesville would impact what they’d be able to afford in the far more expensive California, how they’d get the cars out there. He continued to talk despite Mackenzie’s somewhat lackluster responses, but whether he was trying to desensitize her to the move or simply trying to dissipate some of the tension in the car was unclear.

  Serena passed the trip alternately staring out the window and down at her damned phone while berating herself for her stupidity and for her wishful thinking. If it hadn’t been for the plans for Zoe’s birthday and cookout she would have hugged everyone good-bye outside Le Cirque and gone back to her place, where she would have gladly climbed into bed and never come out again.

  They reached the lake house shortly after seven p.m. Nadia took one look at them, said, “Holy Tamoley,” and retreated to the kitchen, where she pulled out food Martha had delivered. She then set about fussing over Emma, who appeared far more wilted than any of them felt good about. “You come with me,” the nurse tutted as she directed Emma to a seat.

  Without enthusiasm the rest of them settled around the table and helped themselves to cold meats and cheeses. Mackenzie warmed up a container of homemade macaroni and cheese and passed it around.

  “Here, Em.” Adam put a large spoonful of the cheesy concoction on Emma’s plate. “Try some of this. It’s really good.”

  Emma stared at the mac and cheese, clearly not the least bit tempted.

  “If you not eat, I make double big smoothie,” Nadia said.

  Emma managed a few bites. Zoe did the same. Only Adam consumed his food with any real enthusiasm.

  As soon as Nadia took Emma upstairs the rest of them retreated to their own rooms. Serena carried a glass and an open bottle of red wine upstairs. In her room she poured herself a generous glass and drank it down as she checked her phone for what might have been the hundredth time.

  She eyed the bottle for a long moment, considered cutting out the glass altogether. Midreach she pulled back her hand. The last thing she needed was to become uninhibited enough to drunk dial Brooks. Having one’s worst fears realized while sober was bad enough; having them come to fruition while all your defenses were down seemed downright suicidal.

  And so she paced her room for much of the night eyeing the silent cell phone and the beckoning bottle even as she willed Brooks to call with some simple explanation that she could find a way to accept.

  In the morning she watched the sunrise from an Adirondack chair on the beach, too numb and bleary-eyed to appreciate it. By seven fifteen a.m., a time when Brooks would presumably still be in his hotel room, she had had enough. This time she called the front desk at the Four Seasons and waited while the operator put her through.

  The phone rang four or five times. Serena was still trying to gather her thoughts when the ringing stopped.

  “Yes?” The word was clipped. The voice impatient. But the voice wasn’t Brooks Anderson’s. The voice belonged to someone else, someone who was pissed off at being interrupted. Someone who was female.

  Serena couldn’t speak. Nor could she decide what to do. Should she slam down the phone like some teenager? Did hotel room phones have caller ID? She dislodged her heart from her throat and said, “I’d like to speak to Brooks Anderson please.”

  “Is that right?” What the voice lost in impatience it made up for in imperiousness. “I’m afraid he’s in the shower at the moment.” The woman paused to let that sink in. “But if I should decide to let him know he has a phone call, who exactly would I tell him is calling?”

  The air left Serena’s lungs. There was no mistaking the Charlestonian accent or the inherent note of privilege wrapped up inside it. Serena searched for her backbone. “You first,” she said even though she didn’t want to hear it.

  “This is Diana. Anderson,” she emphasized the last name. “Brooks’s wife. But then I bet you already knew that.” Diana paused dramatically. “How have you been, Serena?”

  Serena remained silent as her mind raced. The knot in her stomach pulled tighter as the woman laughed softly.

  “No comment?” Diana Ravenel Anderson spoke haughtily as only a woman with the upper hand could. “Well, I have one. I don’t know what Brooks has told you, but this is not the first time this has happened. Boys will be boys and all that. Who knows? Perhaps you’re lucky he chose me instead of you.”

  Serena couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her heart pounded so hard she imagined she could hear it. Was she old enough to drop dead of a heart attack? Diana Anderson would undoubtedly appreciate that. And Brooks? Would he care? He’d seemed so sincere. So finished with his marriage. Which only proved the man was a far better actor than she was. All these years of dating other women’s husbands and the first time she’d believed she wasn’t was the first time she’d been called on it.

  “This kind of sucks for you, doesn’t it?” The words were crude but the tone remained haughty.

  Once again Serena didn’t answer. But she couldn’t quite hang up, either.

  “On the bright side, you got to be the memory of his first love.” She continued in the same soft, relentlessly matter-of-fact tone. “I guess I don’t need to tell you that it’s always the one who got away that can seem the most . . . tempting.”

  Mackenzie was out of bed and looking for something that might help her blow off steam before Adam had even thought about stirring. He’d stopped trying to convince her overtly but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—stop sharing his excitement about all the changes that lay ahead. It was clear he could hardly wait to leave here and get back to LA. Something he planned to do by Monday.

  Mackenzie opened the laundry room door and set about sorting and organizing the baskets of dirty laundry that Martha had been unable to get to. As she worked and sipped coffee, she tried to make sense of the emotions bombarding her, anger at being expected to make so many life-altering changes so quickly and fear of what would happen once her decisions had been reached. She had not gone looking for a whole other life. She did not want or need to cast off the old and embrace the new. She wanted to go home to Noblesville where she could give this the thought it deserved. But what if she did this while Adam went about his new life in LA and he finally realized, if he hadn’t already, that she was no more exciting than the place he couldn’t wait to put behind him?

  As she started the first load of wash, her agitation grew. She’d sacrificed her dreams just as he had. Why was she the only one who’d thought the cost worthwhile? What about the book she’d been asked to write? The blog that had begun to feel so fraudulent. Searching for a distraction she moved through the house straightening things that were not crooked, plumping cushions, restacking magazines as she began to think about how much every one of her roles—at the theater, in her blog, in almost every facet of her life—revolved around Adam. If she was not Adam Russell’s wife, who was she?

  She saw Serena outside on the phone, but was far too agitated to consider making conversation. The next time she glimpsed her she was still in the exact same position in the Adirondack staring out at the lake. The same was true a half hour later. Mackenzie wiped the kitchen counters, rinsed dishes, realigned the dining room chairs. Serena continued to sit as still as a statue.

  Her inner turmoil spurring her outside, Mackenzie strode out onto the porch and down to the lake. “Serena?”

  There was no answer or movement. Mackenzie walked closer, knelt down next to the arm of Serena’s chair. Still Serena didn’t turn or move. Tears slid down her cheeks, skimmed down her chin, and fell unheeded on the hands clenched in Serena’s lap.

  “What happened?” Mackenzie placed a hand on Serena’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

  Serena sniffed but didn’t speak.

  “Okay, you�
�re starting to scare me now.” Mackenzie moved into the chair next to Serena and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I haven’t heard from Brooks since he left on Sunday. No calls, no messages. Nothing.”

  Mackenzie winced and waited. Had she noticed this? She’d been far too freaked out by her own situation to pay attention after her initial shock when Serena had introduced him.

  “This morning I couldn’t take it anymore so I called his hotel room.” Now she looked up. Her face ravaged by tears and unhappiness. “And his wife answered the phone.”

  “Oh, God.” Mackenzie’s stomach turned over. “I thought he was divorced.”

  “Me too. Or at least seriously separated.”

  Mackenzie had no idea what to say. Serena had been dating married men for decades. If this was the first time this had happened, she was lucky. What had she expected?

  “Aren’t you going to say, ‘I told you so’?”

  “I’m tempted,” Mackenzie admitted. “But I’m thinking that sort of goes without saying.” She thought about her marriage, the blog she wrote about it. How could she have been so judgmental of Serena when her own life seemed just as fraudulent?

  “Yeah.” Serena snorted softly. The tears had slowed but they hadn’t stopped. She reached out her tongue and licked one out of the way. “I can’t believe this. It was like this incredible miracle having him back. After all those years of feeling second best and unwanted, he told me he’d always wondered what being married to me would have been like.” She closed her eyes. Shook her head. “It was too good to be true.”

  They sat for a few minutes staring out at the lake as the day kicked into gear.

  “Can I get you something? Coffee? A cold drink? A cyanide pill?”

  Serena sniffed but one corner of her mouth lifted in an attempted smile. “I’d rather the pill go to Brooks Anderson. And maybe one for his wife while we’re at it.”

  “Now, that’s the Serena I know and love.” Or at least a small part of her. “Why waste time on inner reflection when you can direct your aggression outward?”

  “Exactly,” Serena said, attempting and failing at her usual dark humor. “Only I don’t think I should have this phone in my hand right now. I might do something I’d really regret.”

  “Like?” Mackenzie prompted, hoping to get Serena riled enough to stop feeling so sorry for herself.

  “I don’t know. I can’t seem to jump-start enough brain cells to give that the thought it deserves.” She sighed a Grand Canyon–sized sigh that didn’t have even an ounce of Georgia Goodbody in it. “Will you stash it in my room for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mackenzie left Serena once again staring out over the lake, unable to come to terms with the teary silent version of her friend, which was a far more frightening thing than an angry verbal one. She slipped Serena’s phone in her pocket, took the clothes out of the dryer and folded them. As she placed Serena’s clothes on her bedroom dresser, Serena’s open purse went flying.

  “Crap!” Crouching, she picked up two lipsticks and a pack of gum, retrieved Serena’s wallet from under the dresser then reached for the papers that had spilled from a manila envelope. She’d begun tucking them back into the envelope when she noticed that they were on Emma’s law firm’s letterhead. Her throat tightened and her chest actually hurt as she read the legalese that named Serena Stockton as Zoe Hardgrove’s legal guardian in the event of Emma Michaels’s incapacitation or death.

  Serena? Zoe’s legal guardian? Mackenzie’s fingers turned clumsy as she attempted to shove the papers back the way they’d been. Her vision blurred and the pages trembled in her hands. She sat on the bed, staring at the words in disbelief, trying to make sense of them. Serena possessed not an ounce of maternal instinct; she was not a nurturer. Her personal life was not remotely stable. Mackenzie had always assumed that if Zoe were left parentless, she would step in. That she and Adam would become Zoe’s parents.

  Had she made a mistake in not making her willingness clear enough? She read the paperwork again, but could find no mention of Calvin Hardgrove. Why didn’t the papers say that if something happened to Emma and Zoe’s father, Serena would be legal guardian?

  Mackenzie stood and all but slapped the purse back on the dresser. She had always wanted a child and Emma knew it. She was born to be a mother. Furthermore, she was married and monogamous. She and her husband were a hundred times more qualified to raise a child than Serena ever would or could be. The injustice of it sliced through her. Any sympathy Mackenzie had felt for Serena’s heartache evaporated in that moment. If bad behavior was so rewarded, why had Mackenzie always lived by the rules, been so worried about always doing the “right” thing? She could not for the life of her understand why Emma would have chosen Serena over her and Adam without so much as a conversation. Why Emma would think Serena deserved to raise her child while Mackenzie did not.

  Fighting back tears, she flung the remaining clean clothes onto Serena’s bed and raced for her own room, more relieved than she’d ever admit that Adam wasn’t there.

  Thirty-five

  Mackenzie’s mood had not improved during the night, which had been long and sleepless. Nor had her stress level over the choices she was being forced to make lessened. Adam snored happily beside her, occasionally murmuring words that almost certainly belonged in an Oscar acceptance speech. Feeling guilty for begrudging him his happy dreams, she gritted her teeth and stared up at the ceiling until early morning light finally pierced the bedroom curtains and she heard movement downstairs.

  “No really, I couldn’t have done it without my . . .”

  Mackenzie grasped Adam’s shoulder and shook hard.

  “What?” he asked groggily. “What is it?” One of his eyes opened warily.

  “Time to get up.” She let go of his shoulder. “It’s time for Zoe’s birthday cake and presents.”

  He yawned, stretched contentedly, sat up slowly. With his tousled hair and his face covered in familiar morning stubble, he was once again the man she’d woken up next to for twenty years. Would he still be this man if they ended up together in Los Angeles? Or would he wake up each morning pressed and polished with that sharp-eyed excitement he’d acquired in LA?

  He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, followed her downstairs, and added his “Happy Birthday, Zoe!” to hers as she set Zoe’s present in front of her. She watched him hug Emma and drop a kiss on Zoe’s head. Before she could stop herself she was imagining what their daughter would have looked like. Given both their heights she would have been tall and rangy like Zoe; she might even have had Zoe’s wide-set eyes, which were not dissimilar to Adam’s. Only their daughter would have had blond hair and brown eyes like them.

  Mackenzie pulled her bathrobe tight and moved to the coffeemaker as the familiar ache spread in her chest. If she hadn’t lost their baby, their daughter would have been here right now, only a month or so older than Zoe, and maybe one of Zoe’s closest friends as she had been Emma’s. They might have celebrated both birthdays together.

  She took her time with the coffee, her mind thick from lack of sleep, her fingers fumbling with the creamer and the sugar. The birthday cake sat on the counter, the candles ready to be lit, but she could no longer imagine eating it.

  “Mornink,” Nadia said. “We waiting for Serena. You hear her upstairs?”

  “No.” She’d barely glanced at the closed bedroom door other than to be glad she hadn’t had to speak to her yet.

  As she set Adam’s coffee in front of him and settled in a vacant seat, Mackenzie noticed Emma’s eyes trained on her daughter and Adam. The ache in Mackenzie’s chest intensified. Emma not only had the daughter she didn’t, she’d chosen to entrust that daughter to Serena—a woman who tromped through life saying whatever happened to be on her mind, and taking pretty much anything she wanted re
gardless of whom it belonged to. Yesterday Serena had gotten dumped on, but would she learn anything from it? Unlikely. By tomorrow she’d have her eye on someone else’s husband. Mackenzie’s jaw tightened in anger even as she fought back tears.

  “Are you all right?” Emma asked. The concern (or was it pity?) in Emma’s eyes hit Mackenzie like a slap in the face. How could Emma be so sensitive to Mackenzie’s feelings and still have chosen Serena instead of her and Adam?

  Zoe stole a glance toward the stairs, undoubtedly looking for Serena. Who in addition to her other sins, apparently couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.

  “I’ll get her.” Mackenzie stomped up the stairs and pounded on Serena’s door.

  When she got no answer, Mackenzie pounded harder.

  “What?” Serena opened the door. Her face was haggard, her eyes red.

  “Everybody’s waiting for you.” Mackenzie steeled herself against Serena’s ravaged face.

  “Sorry. I was just wrapping Zoe’s present.”

  “Is there some reason you waited until now?”

  Serena’s head shot up at her tone. “I only fell asleep around six and then I couldn’t get up when my alarm went off.”

  “Zoe’s waiting.” She would not be sucked into Serena’s drama. She had more than enough drama of her own. “Do you need help?” she asked, though she could not hear even a note of helpfulness in her voice.

  “Wouldn’t want to keep you from your cake,” Serena bit out.

  “Yeah, well not everybody can have their cake and eat it, too,” she snapped back, apropos of nothing except the anger and hurt bubbling inside her.

  “I don’t think we have time for you to deliver a frickin’ lecture.”

  “Then just hurry up!” Mackenzie stood in the doorway. Glowering.

  Serena swore under her breath, but belted a robe over her pajamas and grabbed the present.