Starlight on Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  Did any essence of their father remain? Was Trevor Bellamy’s spirit somehow trapped within the humble-looking detritus, waiting to be set free on the mountaintop?

  He had lived his life. Left a legacy of secrets behind. He’d paid the ultimate price for his freedom, leaving his burden on someone else’s shoulders—Mason’s.

  “Godspeed, Dad,” he said. With his ski poles in one hand and the beer stein in the other, he raised his arm high and plunged down the steep slope, leaning into a controlled fall. Just for a moment, he heard his father’s voice: Lean into the fear, son. That’s where the power comes from. The words drifted to him from a long-ago time when everything had been simple, when his dad had simply been Dad, coaching him down the mountain, shouting with unabashed joy when Mason conquered a steep slope. That was probably why Mason favored adrenaline-fueled sports that involved teetering on the edge between terror and triumph.

  The ashes created a cloud in his wake, rising on an updraft of wind and dispersing across the face of Trevor’s beloved, deadly mountain.

  The things we love most can kill us. Mason might have heard the saying somewhere. Or he had just made it up.

  The faster Mason went, the less he was bothered by something so inconvenient as a thought. That was the beauty of skiing in dangerous places. Filled with the thrill of the ride, he was only vaguely aware of Adam pointing the camera at him. He couldn’t resist showing off, making a trail in a fresh expanse of untouched powder, like a snake slithering down the mountain. Spotting a rugged granite cliff, its cornice perfectly formed for jumping, he raced toward it. Lean into the fear, son. He aimed his skis straight down the fall line and launched himself off the edge. For several seconds he was airborne, the wind flapping through his parka, turning him momentarily into a human kite. The steep pitch of the landing raced up to meet him with breathtaking speed. He wobbled on contact but didn’t wipe out, managing to come out of the landing with the mug still held aloft.

  He gave a short laugh. How’s that, Dad? How’d I do? In one way or another, his whole life had been a performance for his father—in sports, in school, in business. He’d lost his audience, and it was liberating as hell. Which made him wonder why tears were fogging up his goggles. Then, as the slope flattened and his speed naturally slowed, he realized Ivy was waving her arms frantically.

  Now what?

  He raced toward them and saw that Adam had his mobile phone out.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Was my epic run not pretty enough? Or are you posting a Tweet about it already?”

  Despite the chill air, Ivy’s face was pale. “It’s Mom.”

  “On the phone? Tell her I said hi.”

  “No, dipshit, something happened to Mom.”

  2

  For Mason, money was a tool, not a goal. And when he had to get from a remote mountain town to an international airport, he was glad he had plenty of it. Within a few hours of the aborted ash-sprinkling, the three of them were in the first-class lounge at Christchurch Airport, booked on a flight to New York. From there, they’d take a private plane up to Avalon, north toward Albany, along the Hudson. He’d instructed his assistant to find an amphibious plane so they could land on Willow Lake and tie up at the dock in front of their mother’s place.

  The entire journey would take about twenty-four hours. Thanks to the time zone change, they would arrive the same day they left. The journey cost in the neighborhood of thirty grand, which he paid without batting an eye. It was only money. Mason had a knack for making money the way some guys made wooden birdhouses in their garages over the weekend.

  Adam was on the phone with someone in Avalon. “We’re on our way,” he said. Then he checked the clock in the lounge. “We’ll get there when we get there. Yeah, okay, just sit tight.”

  “Did you get more details out of them?” Mason asked.

  “She fell down the stairs and broke her collarbone,” Adam said, and zipped the mobile phone into his pocket. “It’s a miracle she didn’t crack open her head or get crushed by her motorized chair.”

  “I can’t believe she fell,” Ivy said, her voice trembling.

  “And what the hell was she doing at the top of a flight of stairs?” Mason asked. “The entire downstairs of the house has been adapted for her.”

  “If you bothered to go see her more than once in a blue moon, you’d know they finished installing the elevator,” Adam stated. He was in charge of her day-to-day care, living on the premises of the lakeside estate. Mason had taken the role of looking after provisions, finance and logistics for their mother, a role more suited to his comfort zone.

  Mason batted aside his brother’s criticism. “Screw that. I don’t get how the hell she managed to fall down the stairs. She’s a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. She’s incapable of moving.”

  “She can move her mouth and drive the chair with her breath,” Ivy pointed out. “She’s been working with her physical therapist on extending her arms at the elbow, so that can help with her mobility, too.”

  “I don’t get why she was upstairs, either,” Mason said. His heart was pounding so hard that his chest hurt. He and his mother had their differences, but when it came down to moments like this, he felt nothing but love and sorrow. And now a surge of panic.

  “You’re sure she’s all right?” Ivy asked, bringing a tray of cappuccinos and croissants to the seating area where they were waiting.

  “Other than her usual state of rage and bitterness, yeah,” said Adam. “She’s okay.”

  “Jesus.” Mason raked his splayed hand through his hair.

  “No, the caregiver on duty was named José.” Adam consulted the email displayed on his phone.

  “Fire the son of a bitch,” Mason ordered.

  “I didn’t have to,” Adam said. “He quit. They all quit. None of her home health aides have lasted more than a few weeks.”

  “He couldn’t have stopped it,” Ivy pointed out. “According to Mrs. Armentrout, Mom took the elevator upstairs without telling anyone.”

  “Armentrout? The housekeeper?” asked Mason. “Then she should be fired, too.”

  “You’re the one who hired her,” Adam pointed out.

  “My assistant hired her. With my approval.”

  “And she’s terrific. Besides, it’s the caregiver’s job to look after Mom. Not the housekeeper.”

  “She needs assistance, not to be under surveillance,” Ivy said.

  “Maybe she does, if she’s sneaking upstairs.” Mason spent more time than anyone imagined thinking about their mother. On that day a year ago, their father had suffered the ultimate tragedy. Everyone—himself included—said their mother was lucky to be alive.

  She didn’t consider herself lucky, though. From the moment she had been told the spinal injury meant she would never walk again—much less ski, salsa dance, cliff dive, run a triathlon or even drive a car—she had raged against her fate. Anyone who dared to mention to her face that she was lucky to be alive risked a tongue-lashing.

  After multiple surgeries, drug therapies and intensive rehab, Alice had agreed to move to Avalon to settle into her new life as a widow and a quadriplegic, determined to find what independence she could. Avalon was the town where Adam lived, on the shores of the prettiest lake in Ulster County, just a couple of hours by train from New York City.

  Each of the three Bellamy offspring played their part. Adam, a firefighter with training as an EMT, now lived over the boathouse on the property Mason had bought for their mother after the accident. Adam was hands-on when it came to caring for people, and it was a relief to have a family member on the premises for their mom.

  Mason was responsible for making sure their mother had everything she needed to create her new life in Avalon. He had provided her with a sprawling lakeside estate, the house and grounds adapted to her needs and large enough to a
ccommodate a staff. The historic compound, on the sun-drenched shores of Willow Lake, had been remodeled and retrofitted for his mother’s motorized wheelchair, with ramps, wide doorways and an elevator, an intercom system and a network of graded pathways outdoors. There was a private gym equipped for physical therapy, a heated pool, sauna and spa, and a dock and boathouse with ramps and hoists. She had a full staff, including a Balinese chef with Cordon Bleu credentials, a driver, and living quarters for a resident home health aide.

  Everybody had a role. Mason thought it was working. But apparently, there was now no resident caregiver.

  “What did you mean when you said they all quit?” he asked Adam.

  “Like I told you before, you’d understand if you’d go see her. Ivy lives on the West Coast and she manages to visit more often than you do, and you’re just down in the city.”

  Ivy’s role was more amorphous, but just as vital. Sometimes it seemed to Mason that she did her part by simply being adorable and loving and supportive. Ten years younger than her brother, she was the kind of person who could walk into a room and fill it with light. During the early days after the accident, Ivy was as vital to their mother as pure oxygen.

  “Mom doesn’t need my company,” Mason pointed out. “I set her up in the best house we could find, hired a full staff, had the place retrofitted for her and the chair. I don’t know what the hell else I can do.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have to do anything,” said Ivy. “Sometimes just being there is all she needs.”

  “Not from me.” He checked the calendar on his phone. “So she’s already had the surgery to fix her collarbone. How long will she have to stay in the hospital?”

  “Probably not long,” Adam said. “We’ll know more when we meet with the doctors.” He sat forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees. “Listen, I was going to tell you this over dinner tonight. You’re going to be in charge of Mom for the next few months—maybe longer.”

  Mason dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “I can’t even stay a few hours. I’m supposed to go to LA with Regina the day after tomorrow,” he said. “She set up a meeting with a major new client.”

  He didn’t deem it prudent to mention at this time that he and Regina—his colleague as well as his girlfriend—had built a few days of surfing in Malibu into their work schedule.

  “You’re going to have to cancel it,” Adam said simply. “You need to stay with Mom.”

  “What the hell do you mean, stay with her?”

  “Live at the lake house. Make the place your base of operations.”

  Mason recoiled. “What’s this about?”

  “I have to go away for a while,” Adam said. “Special training. For work.”

  Mason immediately turned to Ivy.

  She put up both hands, palms out. “My fellowship in Paris, remember? The one I’ve been working toward for the past five years? It starts next month.”

  “Postpone it.”

  “Right. I’ll just tell the director of the Institut de Paume to keep a slot open for me.” Ivy raised her sunglasses and fixed him with an intense glare. “You’re up, bro.”

  “Okay, fine, but I’m not moving up to the Catskills. I’ll have my assistant find another live-in aide.”

  “Damn it,” Adam said. “Mom needs family. She needs you.”

  Mason had provided a lengthy roster of hired help, material things and creature comforts for their mother. He had spared no expense—elevators, adaptive devices—nothing was too good for Alice Bellamy.

  Thanks to Mason, she wanted for nothing.

  Except the one thing no one could give her, and all of Mason’s millions could never provide.

  Some troubles could not be solved by throwing money at them.

  Yet he couldn’t imagine anything worse than being trapped in a small town with his bitter, wounded mother with whom—unlike his brother and sister—he’d had a rocky relationship since he was a teenager.

  And now he was expected to move in with her.

  Oh, hell, no, he thought.

  “What kind of special training?” he asked Adam.

  “I’m getting certified in arson investigation. I’ll be up in Albany for twelve to sixteen weeks.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He’s having girl trouble,” Ivy said. “It’s the geographic cure.”

  “Shut up, brat. I am not having girl trouble.”

  “Okay, let’s call it lack of girl trouble.”

  “What? Come on.” To Mason’s surprise, Adam’s face turned red. “It’s complicated. And speaking of complicated, exactly how many frogs have you kissed this year alone?”

  Ivy often bemoaned the state of her love life, and Mason had no idea why. She was gorgeous, a total sweetheart, a little bit nutty, and everyone loved her. Just not the right guy, he supposed.

  “You shut up,” she retorted, and Mason heard loud echoes of their childhood years seeping into the exchange.

  “Both of you shut up,” he said. “Let’s focus on what to do about Mom.”

  “Ivy’s going to Paris to get laid—”

  “Hey.” She punched him in the arm.

  “And I can’t change the dates of the training course to suit your travel schedule. You’re up, Mason.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. It’s your turn to step up.”

  Mason scowled at his brother and sister. It was hard to believe the three of them shared the same DNA, they were all so different. “Not a chance in hell. There’s nothing my being there can help. No damn way I’m moving to Willow Lake.”

  3

  “I’d kill the fatted calf for you, but I’m a bit indisposed at the moment,” Alice Bellamy said when Mason arrived at the estate on Willow Lake.

  “That’s okay. I’m a vegetarian anyway.” Mason wondered if his mother realized that he had not eaten meat since the age of twelve.

  Crossing the elegant room to where she sat near a window, he bent down and brushed his lips against her cheek. Soap and lotion, a freshly laundered blouse, the smells he had always associated with her. Except in the past, she’d been able to offer the briefest of hugs, to reach out with her hand and smooth the hair back from his brow, a gesture that had persisted since his childhood.

  Concealing a wrenching sense of sorrow, he took a seat across from her. He studied her face, startled at how little she had changed—from the neck up. Shiny blond hair, lovely skin, cornflower blue eyes. He’d always been proud to have such a youthful, good-looking mom. “You broke your collarbone,” he said.

  “So I’m told.”

  “I thought you’d be in a cast or a sling or something.”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s not as if I need to keep my arm immobilized.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Since the accident, he didn’t know how to deal with his mother. Who was he kidding? He’d never known how to deal with her. “Are you in... Does it hurt?”

  “Darling boy, I can’t feel anything below my chest. Not pain or pleasure. Nothing.”

  He let several seconds tick past while he tried to think of a reply that didn’t sound phony or patronizing or flat-out ignorant. “I’m glad you’re all right. You gave us a scare.”

  More silence echoed through the room, an open lounge with a massive river-rock fireplace, fine furnishings and floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books. Everything was spaced and arranged to accommodate his mother’s chair. There was a corner study with a big post office writing desk and another corner with a powerful brass telescope set on a tripod. The baby grand piano, which had occupied every house the family had ever lived in, was now a resting place for a collection of photos.

  The ever-present view of Willow Lake was framed by French doors, which could be operated by a switch. “So anyway,”
he said, “we’ll get you fixed up with a new helper right away. My assistant is working with a couple of agencies already.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got plenty to keep us busy for the day. The lawyer is coming in half an hour. Are you up for that?”

  “Lawyer?” She frowned, then took a sip through a straw from the coffee mug affixed to the tray on her chair.

  “My attorney in the city recommended someone local, from here in Ulster County—”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To deal with the negligence suit against the caregiver who let you fall down the stairs, and the outfit he works for.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. It was just a stupid accident,” she said. “Nobody’s fault.”

  “Mom, you fell down a flight of stairs with a three-hundred-pound motorized chair. It’s a miracle you weren’t crushed. Somebody was negligent—”

  “That would be me,” she stated. “I leaned on the control and drove myself off the rails.”

  “Then the chair manufacturer is at fault.”

  “No lawyers,” she said. “What I— What happened was no one’s fault. There will be no lawsuit. End of story.”

  “Mom, you’re entitled to a settlement.” If there was one thing Mason couldn’t stand, it was people failing to take responsibility for their actions.

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “I won’t hear another word about it.”

  He sent Brenda a text message to cancel the lawyer. “Whatever you say. That gives us more time to meet with potential new caregivers.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Adam warned me that you were going to be a sourpuss.”

  “I bet he didn’t say sourpuss. He’s a firefighter. I’m sure he has a more colorful term for me, like hell-bitch.”

  Adam is a saint, thought Mason. St. Adam. He silently cursed the saint for having left already. Adam and Ivy had stuck around until their mom was discharged, then they both had to leave; Adam to his training and Ivy back to Santa Barbara to prepare for her move to Europe.