Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

Last year’s geraniums and lobelia were still in the flower boxes, now a dead, crackly bunch of brown stalks. The grass was much too long and moss had begun to fur the brick walkway. A dirty cement birdbath lay on its side amid gargantuan rhododendrons.

  And still it was one of the most beautiful places she’d ever seen. The new spring grass was as green as emeralds and as thick as chinchilla fur; it swept away from the building and rolled gently to the blue edge of the lake. Behind the house, swollen clouds hung suspended in a sky hammered to the color of polished steel.

  Annie tucked her purse under her arm and slowly crossed the squishy wet lawn, climbing the white porch steps. At the oak door, she paused, then took a deep breath and knocked.

  No answer.

  She was just about to turn away when she heard the slow shuffling of feet. Suddenly the door swung open, and Nick was standing in front of her.

  She would have recognized him anywhere. He was still tall, over six feet, but time had whittled the football star’s muscles to a whipcord leanness. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the dark, corrugated muscles of his stomach tapered down into a pair of bleached Levi’s that were at least two sizes too big. He looked as tough and sinewy as old leather, with pale, lined skin stretched across hollowed-out cheeks. His hair was ragged and unkempt, and something—either time or grief—had sucked its color away, left it the silvery hue of a nickel when struck by the sun.

  But it was his eyes—an eerie, swimming-pool blue— that caught and held her attention. His gaze flicked over her, a cop’s look that missed no detail, not the brand-new tomboy haircut or the newly purchased small-town clothes. Certainly not the Buick-size diamond on her left hand. “Annie Bourne,” he said softly, unsmiling. “Lurlene told me you were back in town.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell as she tried to figure out what to say. She shifted nervously from side to side. “I’m . . . sorry about Kathy.”

  He seemed to fade a little beneath the words. “Yeah,” he answered. “So am I.”

  “I know how much you loved her.”

  He looked as if he were going to say something, and she waited, poised forward, but in the end he said nothing, just cocked his head and swung the door open wider.

  She followed him into the house. It was dark—there were no lights on, no fire in the fireplace—and there was a faint musty smell in the air.

  Something clicked. Brilliant white light erupted from a shadeless lamp; it was so bright that for a moment she couldn’t see anything at all. Then her eyes adjusted.

  The living room looked like someone had dropped a bomb on it. There was a scotch or whiskey bottle lying beside the sofa, a drop of booze puddled at its mouth; open pizza boxes littered the floor; clothes lay in heaps and on chairbacks. A crumpled blue policeman’s shirt hung across the television screen.

  “I don’t seem to spend much time at home anymore,” he said into the awkward silence. Reaching down, he grabbed a faded flannel shirt from the floor and put it on.

  She waited for him to say something else, and when he didn’t, she glanced around. The sprawling living room was floored in beautiful oak planks and dominated by a large brick fireplace, blackened by age and smoke. It looked as if there hadn’t been a fire in the hearth in a long, long time. The few bits and pieces of furniture—a faded brown leather sofa, a tree-trunk end table, a morris chair—were scattered haphazardly around the room, all wearing tissue-thin coats of dust. A stone archway led into a formal dining room, where Annie could see an oval maple table and four scattered chairs, their seats cushioned by red and white gingham pads. She supposed that the closed green door led to the kitchen. To the left, an oak staircase hugged the brightly wallpapered wall and led to a darkened second floor.

  Annie felt Nick’s gaze on her. Nervously, she picked an invisible lint ball from her sleeve and searched for something to say. “I hear you have a daughter.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “Izzy. Isabella. She’s six.”

  Annie clasped her hands together to keep from fidgeting. Her gaze landed on a photograph on the mantel. She picked her way through the rubble on the floor and touched the photo. “The gruesome threesome,” she said, smiling. “I can’t remember this one. . . .”

  Lost in her own memories, Annie vaguely heard him pad out of the room. A moment later, he was back.

  He came up behind her, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. “Would you like a drink?”

  She turned away from the fireplace and found him directly behind her, holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. For a second, it startled her, then she remembered that they were grown-ups now, and offering a glass of wine was the polite way to entertain a guest. “A drink would be great. Where’s your daughter? Can I meet her?”

  An unreadable look passed through his eyes. “She’s staying with Lurlene tonight. They’re going to see some cartoon at the Rose theater with Buddy’s granddaughters. Let’s go sit by the lake.” He grabbed a blanket from the sofa and led her out of the house. Together, not too close, they sat down on the blanket.

  Annie sipped at the glass of wine Nick had poured for her. Twilight slipped quietly through the trees in blood-red streaks. A pale half moon rose slowly upward, spreading a blue-white veil across the navy-blue surface of the lake. Tiny, silvery peaks rippled against the shore, lapped against the pebbly ground. Memories sifted through the air, falling like rain to the ground around them. She remembered how easy it had once been with them, as they sat together at sporting events, watching Kathy cheerlead at the sidelines; how they’d all squeezed together in vinyl booths to eat greasy hamburgers and fries after the games. They’d known how to talk to each other then—about what, she couldn’t recall—but once she’d believed she could tell him anything.

  And now, all these years later, with the bumpy road of their separate lives between them, she couldn’t think of how to weave a fabric of conversation from a single thread.

  She sighed, sipping her wine. She was drinking more than she should, and faster, but it eased her awkwardness. A few stars came out, pinpricks of light peeking through the purple and red twilight sky.

  She couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “It’s beautiful—”

  “Nice stars—” They both spoke at the same time.

  Annie laughed. “When in doubt, mention the weather or the view.”

  “We can do better than that,” he said quietly. “Life’s too damned short to spend it making small talk.”

  He turned to her, and she saw the network of lines that tugged at his blue eyes. He looked sad and tired and infinitely lonely. It was that, the loneliness, that made her feel like they were partners somehow, victims of a similar war. So, she put the small talk aside, forgot about plundering the shared mine of their teenage years, and plunged into intimacy. “How did Kathy die?”

  He sucked down his glass of wine and poured another one. The glittering gold liquid crested at the rim of the glass and spilled over, splashing on his pant leg. “She killed herself.”

  Chapter 7

  Annie stared at Nick, too stunned to respond. “I . . .” She couldn’t say the pat I’m sorry. The words were too hollow, almost obscenely expected. She gulped a huge swallow of wine.

  Nick didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t spoken—or maybe he was grateful for it. He stared out at the lake, sighing heavily. “Remember how moody she used to be? She was teetering on the edge of despair even then—her whole life—and none of us knew it. At least, I didn’t know it . . . until it started to get bad. The older she got, the worse it became. Manic-depressive. That’s the technical term. She started having episodes right after her twentieth birthday, just six months after her folks were killed in a car accident. Some days she was sweet as pie, then something would happen . . . she’d cry and lock herself in a closet. She wouldn’t take her medication most of the time, said it made her feel like she was breathing through Jell-O.” His voice cracked, and he took a huge, gulping swallow of wine. “One day, when I came hom
e from work early, I found her standing in the bathroom, crying, knocking her head against the wall. She just turned to me, her face all smeared with tears and blood, and said, ‘Hi, honey. You want me to make you lunch?’

  “I bought this place to make her happy, hoping maybe it would help her remember what life used to be like. I thought . . . if I could just give her a home, a safe place where we could raise our kids, everything would be okay. Christ, I just wanted to help her . . .”

  His voice cracked again, and he took another drink of wine. “For a while, it worked. We poured our hearts and souls and savings into this old mausoleum. Then Kathy got pregnant. For a while after Izzy was born, things were good. Kathy took her medication and tried . . . she tried so hard, but she couldn’t handle a baby. She started to hate this place—the heating that barely worked, the plumbing that pinged. About a year ago, she gave up the medications again . . . and then everything went to hell.”

  He finished his second glass of wine and poured another. Shaking his head, he said softly, “And still, I didn’t see it coming.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. “Nick, you don’t—”

  “One night I came home from work with a quart of butter brickle ice cream and a rented video and found her. She’d shot herself in the head . . . with my gun.”

  Annie’s fingers spasmed around the stem of her glass. “You don’t have to talk about her.”

  “I want to. No one else has asked.” He closed his eyes, leaning back on his elbows. “Kathy was like the fairy tale—when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, you wanted to be in Nebraska.”

  Annie leaned back beside him, gazing up at the stars. The wine was making her dizzy, but she was glad; it blurred the hard edges of his words.

  He gave her a tired smile. “One day she loved me with all her heart and soul, and the next day, she wouldn’t even speak to me. It was worst at night; sometimes she’d kiss me, and other times she’d roll toward the wall. If I even touched her on those nights, she’d scream for me to get away. She started telling wild stories—that I beat her, that Izzy wasn’t really her child, that I was an imposter who’d murdered her real husband in cold blood. It made me . . . crazy. The more she pulled away, the more I reached out. I knew I wasn’t helping, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I kept thinking that if I loved her enough, she’d be okay. Now that she’s gone, all I can think about is how selfish I was, how stupid and naive. I should have listened to that doctor and hospitalized her. At least she’d be alive. . . .”

  Without thinking, Annie reached for him, touched his face gently. “It’s not your fault.”

  He gave her a bleak look. “When your wife blows her brains out in your bed, with your baby daughter just down the hall, believe me, she thinks it’s your fault.” He made a soft, muffled sound, like the whimpering of a beaten pup. “God, she must have hated me. . . .”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “No. Yes. Sometimes.” His mouth trembled as he spoke. “And the worst part is—sometimes I hated her, too. I hated what she was doing to me and Izzy. She started to be more and more like my mother . . . and I knew, somewhere down inside, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to save her. Maybe I stopped trying . . . I don’t know.”

  His pain called out to her, and she couldn’t turn away. She took him in her arms, stroking him as she would have soothed a child. “It’s okay, Nick. . . .”

  When he finally drew back and looked at her, his eyes were flooded with tears. “And there’s Izzy. My . . . baby girl. She hasn’t said a word in months . . . and now she thinks she’s disappearing. At first it was just a finger on her left hand, then her thumb. When the hand went, she started wearing a black glove and stopped talking. I’ve noticed lately that she only uses two fingers on her right hand—so I guess she thinks that hand is disappearing, too. God knows what she’ll do if . . .” He tried to smile. She could see the superhuman effort he was making simply to speak, but then he failed. She could see when the control slipped away from him, tearing away like a bit of damp tissue. “What can I do? My six-year-old daughter hid under her bed one night because she heard a noise. She wanted to go to her mommy and get a hug, but thank God, she didn’t. Because her mommy had put a gun to her head and blown her brains out. If Izzy had walked down the hall that night, she would have seen bits and pieces of her mommy on the mirror, on the headboard, on the pillow. . . .” Tears streaked down his unshaven cheeks.

  His grief sucked her under, mingled somewhere in the darkness with her own pain. She wanted to tell him that it would all be okay, that he would survive, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Nick gazed at her, and she knew he was seeing her through the blur of his tears. He touched her cheek, his hand slid down to coil around her neck and pulled her closer.

  She knew that this moment would stay with her forever, long after she wanted to forget it. She would perhaps wonder later what had moved her so—was it the shimmering of the stars on the lake, or the way the mixture of moonlight and tears made his eyes look like pools of molten silver? Or the loneliness that lay deep, deep inside her, like a hard square of ice pressed to her broken heart.

  She whispered his name softly; in the darkness it sounded like a plea, or a prayer.

  The kiss she pressed to his lips was meant to comfort; of that she was sure, a gentle commiseration of understood heartache. But when their lips touched, soft and pliant and salty with teardrops, everything changed. The kiss turned hot and hungry and desperate. She was thinking of Blake, and she knew he was thinking of Kathy, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the heat of togetherness.

  She fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and pressed her hands beneath the worn flannel as quickly as she could, sliding her open palms against the coarse wiry hairs on his chest. Her hands moved tentatively across his shoulder, down his naked back. Touching him felt secret and forbidden, dangerous, and it made her want . . .

  With a groan, he wrenched his shirt off and tossed it aside. Annie’s clothes came next. Her gray sweatshirt and bra sailed across the wet grass like flags of surrender.

  Cool night air breezed across her bare skin. She closed her eyes, embarrassed by the intensity of her desire. His hands were everywhere, touching her, rubbing, stroking, squeezing, sliding down the curve of her back. In some distant part of her mind, she knew that she was getting carried away, that this was a bad idea, but it felt so good. No one had wanted her this badly for a long, long time. Maybe forever . . .

  They became a wild, passionate tangle of naked limbs and searching mouths. Annie gave in to the aching pleasure of it all—the hard, calloused feel of his fingers on her face, her breasts, between her legs. He touched her in places and ways she’d never imagined, brought her body to a throbbing edge between pleasure and pain. Her breathing shattered into choppy, ragged waves, until she was gasping for air and aching for release. “Please, Nick . . .” she pleaded.

  She clung to him, feeling the damp moisture of tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t know if they were his or hers or a mingling of the two, and when he entered her, she had a dizzying, desperate moment when she thought she would scream. . . .

  Her release was shattering. He clung to her, moaned, and when she felt his orgasm, she came again, sobbing his name, collapsing on his damp, hairy chest. He gathered her into his arms, stroking her hair, murmuring soft, soothing words against her ear. But her heart was pounding so hard and her pulse was roaring so loudly in her ears she had no idea what he said.

  When Annie fell back to earth, amid a shower of stars, she landed with a thud. She lay naked beside Nick, her breathing ragged. Overhead, the sky was jet-black and sprinkled with starlight, and the night smelled of spilled wine and spent passion.

  Very slowly, Nick pulled his hand away from hers. Without the warmth of his touch, her skin felt clammy and cold.

  She grabbed one end of the blanket and pulled it across her naked breasts, sidling away from him. “Oh, my God,” she whisp
ered. “What have we done?”

  He curled forward, burying his face in his hands.

  She scouted through the wet grass and grabbed her shirt, pulling it toward her. She had to get out of here, now, before she fell apart. “This didn’t happen,” she said in a whispery, uncertain voice. “This did not happen.”

  He didn’t look at her as he scooped up his clothes and hurriedly dressed. When he was armored again, he stood up and turned his back on her.

  She was shaking and doing her best not to cry as she dressed. He was probably comparing her to Kathy, remembering how beautiful his wife had been, and wondering what the hell he’d done—having sex with a too-thin, too-old, too-short-haired woman who had let herself become such a nothing. . . .

  Finally, she stood. She stared down at her own feet, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. “I better get—” She’d been about to say home, but she didn’t have a home any more than she had a husband there waiting for her. She swallowed thickly and changed her words. “Back to my dad’s house. He’ll be worried—”

  At last, Nick turned to her. His face was lined and drawn, and the regret in his eyes hit her like a slap. God, she wanted to disappear. . . .

  “I’ve never slept with anyone but Kathy,” he said softly, not quite meeting her eyes.

  “Oh” was all she could think of to say, but his quiet admission made her feel a little better. “This is a first for me, too.”

  “I guess the sexual revolution pretty much passed us by.”

  Another time it might have been funny. She nodded toward her car. “I guess I should get going.”

  Wordlessly, they headed back to the car. She was careful not to touch him, but all the way there, she kept thinking about his hands on her body, the fire he’d started deep inside her, in that place that had been cold and dead for so long. . . .

  “So,” he said into the awkward silence, “I guess Bobby Johnson was lying when he said he nailed you after the Sequim game?”