Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

  Annie remembered, even though she wished she didn’t. Terri used to be a sweet little Pollyanna; that’s why they’d become best friends. Terri had stayed innocent until the day her first husband, Rom, had come home and told her he was having an affair with their accountant’s daughter. Terri had had twenty-four hours’ notice, and then wham! the checking account was gone, the savings had been mysteriously “spent,” and the medical practice they’d built together had been sold to a buddy for one dollar.

  Annie had been with Terri constantly back then, drinking wine in the middle of the day, even smoking pot on a few occasions. It had made Blake insane. What are you doing still hanging around that cheap wanna-be, anyway? he used to say. You have dozens of more acceptable friends. It had been one of the few times Annie had stood up to Blake.

  “You stayed with me every day,” Terri said softly, slipping her hand into Annie’s and squeezing gently. “You got me through it, and I’m going to be here for you. Whenever you need me. Twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I didn’t know how much it hurt. . . . It feels like . . .” The humiliating tears burned again. She wished she could stop them, but it was impossible.

  “Like your insides are bleeding away . . . like nothing will ever make you happy again? I know.”

  Annie closed her eyes. Terri’s understanding was almost more than she could bear. She didn’t want her friend to know so much; not Terri, who’d never held a marriage together for more than a few years and couldn’t even commit to owning a pet. It was terrifying to think that this was . . . ordinary. As if the loss of twenty years was nothing at all, just another divorce in a country that saw a million breakups a year.

  “Look, kiddo, I hate to bring this up, but I have to. Blake’s a hotshot attorney. You need to protect yourself.”

  It was bruising advice, the kind that made a woman want to curl up into a tiny, broken ball. Annie tried to smile. “Blake’s not like that.”

  “Oh, really. You need to ask yourself how well you know him.”

  Annie couldn’t deal with this now. It was enough to realize that the past year had been a lie; she couldn’t fathom the possibility that Blake had become a complete stranger. She stared at Terri, hoping her friend could understand. “You’re asking me to be someone I’m not, Terri. I mean, to walk into a bank and clean out the money, our money. It’s so . . . final. And it makes this about things . . . just things. I can’t do it to Blake. I can’t do it to me. I know it’s naive—stupid, even—to trust him, but he’s been my best friend for more than half my life.”

  “Some friend.”

  Annie touched her friend’s plump hand. “I love you for worrying about me, Terri. Really, I do, but I’m not ready for this advice. I hope . . .” Her voice fell to a whisper. She felt hopelessly naive when she looked into Terri’s sad, knowing eyes. “I still hope I don’t need it, I guess.”

  Terri forced a bright smile. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just a midlife crisis and he’ll get over it.”

  They spent the next few hours talking. Time and again, Annie pulled a memory or an anecdote out of the black hat of her marriage and tossed it out, as if talking about her life, remembering it, would bring him home.

  Terri listened and smiled and held her, but she didn’t offer any more real-world advice—and Annie was thankful. Sometime around noon they ordered a large lamb sausage pizza from Granita’s, and they sat on the deck and ate the whole thing. As the sun finally set across the blue Pacific, Annie knew that Terri would have to go soon.

  Annie turned to her best friend. Finally, she asked the question that had been hovering for the better part of the afternoon. “What if he doesn’t come back, Terri?” She said it so quietly that, for a moment, she thought the words were buried in the distant sound of the surf.

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  Annie looked away. “I can’t imagine my life without him. What will I do? Where will I go?”

  “You’ll go home,” Terri said. “If I’d had a dad as cool as Hank, I would have gone home in an instant.”

  Home. It struck her for the first time that the word was as fragile as bone china. “Home is with Blake.”

  “Ah, Annie.” Terri sighed, squeezing her hand. “Not anymore.”

  Two days later, he called.

  His voice was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. “Blake . . .”

  “I need to see you.”

  She swallowed hard, felt the sudden sting of tears. Thank you, God. I knew he’d come back. “Now?”

  “No. My schedule’s kind of tight this morning. As soon as I can break free.”

  For the first time in days, Annie could breathe.

  When Blake stared at the soaring white angles of the house, he felt an unexpected pang of loss. It was so beautiful, this home of theirs, so stunningly contemporary. A real showpiece on a street where teardowns routinely cost five million dollars and nothing was too expensive.

  Annie had conceived, created, and designed this place. She’d taken the view—sea and sand and sky—and translated it into a home that seemed to have grown out of the hillside. She’d chosen every tile, every fixture; all through the house were incongruous little items of whimsy—an angel here, a gargoyle there, a ratty old macrame plant hanger in the corner of a room with thousand-dollar-a-square-foot wooden paneling, a family photo in a homemade shell frame. There was no place inside that didn’t reflect her bubbling, slightly off-center personality.

  He tried to remember what it had felt like to love her, but he couldn’t anymore.

  He’d been sleeping with other women for ten years, seducing them and bedding them and forgetting them. He’d traveled with them, spent the night with them, and through it all, Annie had been at home, baking recipes from Gourmet magazine and picking out paint chips and tile samples and driving Natalie to and from school. He’d thought sooner or later she’d notice that he’d fallen out of love with her, but she was so damn trusting. She always believed the best of everyone, and when she loved, it was body and soul, forever.

  He sighed, suddenly feeling tired. It was turning forty that had changed his outlook, made him realize that he didn’t want to be locked in a loveless marriage anymore.

  Before the gray had moved its ugly fingers into his hair and lines had settled beneath his blue eyes, he thought he had it all—a glamorous career, a beautiful wife, a loving daughter, and all the freedom he needed.

  He traveled with his college buddies twice a year, went on fishing trips to remote islands with pretty beaches and prettier women; he played basketball two nights a week and closed the local bar down on Friday nights. Unlike most of his friends, he’d always had a wife who understood, who stayed at home. The perfect wife and mother— everything that he thought he wanted.

  Then he met Suzannah. What had begun as just another sexual conquest rolled into the most unexpected thing of all: love.

  For the first time in years, he felt young and alive. They made love everywhere, all times of the day and night. Suzannah never cared what the neighbors thought or worried about a sleeping child in the next room. She was wild and unpredictable, and she was smart—unlike Annie, who thought the PTA was as vital to world order as the EEC.

  He walked slowly down to the front door. Before he could even reach for the bell, the hand-carved rosewood door opened.

  She stood in the doorway, her hands clasped nervously at her waist. A creamy silk dress clung to her body, and he couldn’t help noticing that she’d lost weight in the past few days—and God knew she couldn’t afford it.

  Her small, heart-shaped face was pale, alarmingly so, and her eyes, usually as bright and green as shamrocks, were dull and bloodshot. She’d pulled her long hair into a tight ponytail that accentuated the sharp lines of her cheekbones and made her lips look swollen. Her earrings didn’t match; she was wearing one diamond and one pearl, and somehow that little incongruity brought home the stinging pain of his betrayal.

  “Blake . . .” He heard the thin lilt o
f hope in her voice, and realized suddenly what she must have thought when he called this morning.

  Shit. How could he have been so stupid?

  She backed away from the door, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from her dress. “Come in, come in. You . . .” She looked away quickly, but not before he saw her bite down on her lower lip—the nervous habit she’d had since she was young. He thought she was going to say something, but at the last minute she turned and led the way down the hallway and out onto the huge, multitiered deck that overlooked the Colony’s quiet patch of Malibu beach.

  Christ, he wished he hadn’t come. He didn’t need to see her pain in sharp relief, in the way she kept smoothing her dress and jabbing at her hair.

  She crossed to the table, where a pitcher of lemonade— his favorite—and two crystal glasses sat on an elegant silver tray. “Natalie’s settling in well. I’ve only talked to her once—and I was going to call again, but . . . well . . . it’s been hard. I thought she might hear something in my voice. And, of course, she’ll ask for you. Maybe later . . . while you’re here . . . we could call again.”

  “I shouldn’t have come.” He said it more sharply than he intended, but he couldn’t stand to hear the tremor in her voice anymore.

  Her hand jerked. Lemonade splashed over the rim of the glass and puddled on the gray stone table. She didn’t turn to him, and he was glad. He didn’t want to see her face.

  “Why did you?”

  Something in her voice—resignation, maybe, or pain— caught him off guard. Tears burned behind his eyes; he couldn’t believe this was hurting. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the interim settlement papers he’d drafted. Wordlessly, he leaned over her shoulder and dropped them on the table. An edge of the envelope landed in the spilled lemonade. A dark, bubbling splotch began to form.

  He couldn’t seem to draw his eyes from the stain. “Those are the papers, Annie. . . .”

  She didn’t move, didn’t answer, just stood there with her back to him.

  She looked pathetic, with her shoulders hunched and her fingers curled around the table’s edge. He didn’t need to see her face to know what she was feeling. He could see the tears falling, one after another, splashing on the stone like tiny drops of rain.

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Annie hadn’t meant to say anything, but the words formed themselves. When he didn’t answer, she turned toward him. Sadly, after almost twenty years of marriage, she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. “Why?”

  That’s what she really wanted to understand. She’d always put her family’s needs above her own, always done everything she could to make her loved ones feel safe and happy. It had started long before she met Blake, in her childhood. Her mother had died when Annie was very young, and she’d learned how to seal her own grief in airtight compartments stored far from her heart. Unable to comprehend her loss, she’d focused on her grieving father. It had become, over the years, her defining characteristic. Annie the caretaker, the giver of love. But now her husband didn’t want her love anymore, didn’t want to be a part of the family she’d created and cared for.

  “Let’s not rehash it again,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  The words were like a slap. She snapped her head up and looked at him. “Rehash it? Are you joking?”

  He looked sad and tired. “When did you ever know me to joke?” He shoved a hand through his perfectly cut hair. “I didn’t think about what you’d . . . infer from my phone call this morning. I’m sorry.”

  Infer. A cold, legal word that seemed to separate them even more.

  He moved toward her, but was careful not to get too close. “I’ll take care of you. That’s what I came to say. You don’t have to worry about money or anything else. I’ll take good care of you and Natalie. I promise.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “February nineteenth. You remember that date, Blake?”

  His million-dollar tan faded to a waxen gray. “Now, Annalise—”

  “Don’t you ‘now, Annalise’ me. February nineteenth. Our wedding day. You remember that day, Blake? You said—you vowed—to love me till death parted us. You promised to take care of me on that day, too.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “You think a promise like that has an expiration date, like a carton of milk? God . . .”

  “I’ve changed, Annie. Hell, we’ve been together more than twenty years; we’ve both changed. I think you’ll be happier without me. I really do. You can focus on all those hobbies you never had time for. You know . . .” He looked acutely out of his depth. “Like that calligraphy stuff. And writing those little stories. And painting.”

  She wanted to tell him to get the hell out, but the words tangled with memories in her head, and it all hurt so badly.

  He came up beside her, his footsteps clipped and harsh on the stone flooring. “I’ve drafted a tentative settlement. It’s more than generous.”

  “I won’t make it that easy for you.”

  “What?”

  She could tell by his voice that she’d surprised him, and it was no wonder. Their years together had taught him to expect no protest from Annie about anything. She looked up at him. “I said, I won’t make it easy for you, Blake. Not this time.”

  “You can’t stop a divorce in California.” He said it softly, in his lawyer’s voice.

  “I know the law, Blake. Did you forget that I worked beside you for years, building the law firm with you? Or do you only remember the hours you put in at the office?” She moved toward him, careful not to touch him. “If you were a client, what advice would you give?”

  He tugged at his starched collar. “This isn’t relevant.”

  “You’d tell yourself to wait, spend some ‘cooling off’ time. You’d recommend a trial separation. I’ve heard you say it.” The words tripped her up in sadness. “Jesus, Blake, won’t you even give us that chance?”

  “Annalise—”

  She kept tears at bay one trembling breath at a time. Everything hung on the thread of this moment. “Promise me we’ll wait until June—when Natalie gets home. We’ll talk again . . . see where we are after a few months apart. I gave you twenty years, Blake. You can give me three months.”

  She felt the seconds tick by, slicing tiny nicks across her soul. She could hear the even, measured cant of his breathing, the lullaby that had eased her into sleep for more than half her life.

  “All right.”

  The relief was overwhelming. “What are we going to tell Natalie?”

  “Christ, Annie, it’s not like she’s going to have a heart attack. Most of her friends’ parents are divorced. That’s half of our goddamn problem, all you ever think about is Natalie. Tell her the truth.”

  Annie felt her first spark of true anger. “Don’t you dare make this about motherhood, Blake. You’re leaving me because you’re a selfish prick.”

  “A selfish prick who’s in love with someone else.”

  The words cut as deeply as he intended them to. Tears burned behind her eyes, blurred her vision, but she’d be damned if she’d let them fall. She should have known better than to fight with him—she had no practice, and hurtful words were his profession. “So you say.”

  “Fine,” he said in a clipped, even voice, and she knew by the tone of it that this conversation was over. “What do you want to tell Natalie and when?”

  This was the one answer she had. She might be a complete failure as a wife and lover, but she knew how to take care of her daughter. “Nothing for now. I don’t want to ruin this trip for her. We’ll tell her . . . whatever we need to . . . when she gets home.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll send someone over tomorrow to pick up a few of my things. I’ll have the Cadillac returned on Monday.”

  Things. That’s what it came down to after all these years. The bits and pieces that were their life—his toothbrush, her hot rollers, his album collection, her jewelry
— became just things to be divided up and packed in separate suitcases.

  He picked up the envelope from the table and held it out to her. “Open it.”

  “Why? So I can see how generous you’ve been with our money?”

  “Annie—”

  She waved a hand. “I don’t care who owns what.”

  He frowned. “Be sensible, Annie.”

  She looked at him sharply. “That’s what my dad said to me when I told him I wanted to marry a skinny, dirt-poor, twenty-year-old kid. Be sensible, Annie. There’s no rush. You’re young. But I’m not young anymore, am I, Blake?”

  “Annie, please . . .”

  “Please what—please don’t make this hard on you?”

  “Look at the papers, Annie.”

  She moved closer, stared up at him through her tears. “There’s only one asset I want, Blake.” Her throat closed up and it became hard to speak. “My heart. I want it back in one piece. Have you given me that in your precious papers?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I should have expected this from you. Fine. I’ll be living at Suzannah’s house if there’s an emergency.” He pulled out a pen and wrote on a scrap of paper from his wallet. “Here’s the number.”

  She wouldn’t take the piece of paper from him. He let go and it fluttered to the floor.

  Annie lay perfectly still in her king-size bed, listening to the familiar sound of her own breathing, the steady rhythm of her own heart. She wanted to pick up the phone and call Terri, but she’d already leaned on her best friend too much. They’d talked daily, for hours and hours, as if talking could ease Annie’s heartache, and when their conversations ended, Annie felt more alone than ever.

  The last week had passed in a blur, seven endless days since her husband had told her he was in love with someone else. Each lonely night and empty day seemed to hack another bit of her away. Soon, she’d be too small for anyone to notice at all.

  Sometimes, when she awoke, she was screaming, and the nightmare was always the same. She was in a dark room, staring into a gilt-edged mirror—only there was no reflection in the glass.