Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

  As quickly as the scream had come, it went away. It left her shaken and weird-feeling, standing in the middle of the principal’s office, with everyone staring at her.

  She had inched her way into the corner, wedged herself between a yucky green sofa and the window. The grownups’ voices kept going, talking about her, whispering. . . .

  Everyone cared about why she didn’t talk anymore, that’s all. That Dr. Schwaabe, all he cared about was why she didn’t talk, and Izzy heard Lurlene and Buddy. They acted like she couldn’t hear because she didn’t talk. Lurlene called her “poor little thing” all the time—and every time she said it, Izzy remembered the bad thing, and she wished Lurlene would stop.

  Then, like a knight out of one of Mommy’s fairy tales, her daddy had walked into the principal’s office. The grown-ups shut up instantly, moved aside.

  He wouldn’t have come to the school if she hadn’t started screaming, and for a second, she was glad she’d screamed. Even if it made her a bad girl, she was glad to have her daddy here.

  She wanted to throw herself in his arms, say, Hi, Daddy, in that voice she used to have, but he looked so sad she couldn’t move.

  He was so handsome; even since his hair had changed color after the bad thing, he was still the most handsome man in the world. She remembered what his laugh used to sound like, how it used to make her giggle right along with him. . . .

  But he wasn’t really her daddy anymore. He never read her stories at night anymore, and he didn’t throw her up in his arms until she laughed. And sometimes at night his breath smelled all mediciney and he walked like one of her wobbly toys.

  “Izzy?” He said her name softly, moving toward her.

  For one heart-stopping minute, she thought he was going to touch her. She wormed her way out from the corner and baby-stepped his way. She leaned toward him, just a little teeny bit, but enough so maybe he’d see how much she needed him.

  He gave a sharp sigh and turned back to face the grown-ups. “What’s going on here, Bob?”

  Izzy almost wished for the scream to come back, but all she felt was that stinging quiet, and when she looked down, another finger was gone. All she could see on her right hand was her thumb and pointy finger.

  The grown-ups talked a bunch more, saying things that she wasn’t listening to. Then Daddy went away, and Izzy went home with Lurlene. Again.

  “Izzy, sweetheart, are you in there?”

  She heard Lurlene’s voice, coming through the closed bedroom door. “Come on out, Izzy. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Izzy wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard, but she knew there wasn’t any point. She just hoped Lurlene wasn’t going to give her another bath—she always used water that was way too cold and got soap in Izzy’s eyes.

  She sighed. Miss Jemmie, we gotta go.

  She clutched the doll with her good arm and rolled out of bed. As she walked past the vanity, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. A short, skinny girl with dirty black hair and one arm. Her eyes were still puffy from all that crying.

  Mommy never let her look like this.

  The bedroom door swung open. Lurlene stood in the opening, her big feet smacked together, her body bent at the waist. “Good morning, sweetheart.” She reached out and tucked a tangled chunk of hair behind Izzy’s ear.

  Izzy stared up at her.

  “Come on, pumpkin.”

  Wordlessly, Izzy followed her down the hallway.

  Annie stood in the entryway of Lurlene and Buddy’s triple-wide mobile home, on a patch of pink carpet.

  Lurlene’s husband, Buddy—nice ta meetcha—sat sprawled in a burgundy velour Barcalounger, with his feet elevated, a Sports Illustrated open on his chest, his right hand curled around a can of Miller. He was watching Annie carefully.

  She shifted from foot to foot, trying not to think about the fact that she wasn’t a psychiatrist, or that the child’s trauma was a dark and bottomless well, or that Annie herself was lost.

  She knew that love was important—maybe the most important thing—but she’d learned in the past weeks that it wasn’t a magic elixir. Even Annie wasn’t naive enough to believe that every problem could be solved by coating it in love. Some pain couldn’t be assuaged, some traumas couldn’t be overcome. She’d known that since the day her own mother had died.

  “Nick ain’t comin’. Did Lurlene tell you that?”

  Annie frowned and glanced at Buddy. “Oh. No. I didn’t know.”

  “He don’t never show up when it matters.” He took a long slug of beer, eyeing Annie above the can’s dented rim. “You’re taking on a hell of a job, you know. That Izzy’s as unscrewed as a bum valve.”

  “Nick told me she hasn’t spoken in a while, and about the . . . you know . . . disappearing fingers.”

  “That ain’t the half of it. She’s got the kind of pain that sucks innocent bystanders under and drowns ’em.”

  In other words: you’re out of your depth here, city girl. Annie knew how she must appear to him, with her cheap jeans that still showed the manufacturer’s creases and the tennis shoes that were as white as new-fallen snow. She went to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, but there was no hair there. Embarrassed, she forced a smile. “That rain yesterday hurried spring right along. Why, at my dad’s house, the daffodils are busting out all over. I thought maybe—”

  “Annie?”

  It was Lurlene’s voice this time. Annie slowly turned.

  Lurlene appeared at the end of the hallway, clad in a neon-green sweater and a pair of skintight purple faux snakeskin leggings. She clashed with everything in the house.

  A child hung close to her side, a small girl with big brown eyes and hair the color of night. She was wearing a too-small pink dress that had seen better days. Her thin legs stuck out from the hemline like twin beanpoles. Mismatched socks— one pink, one yellow—hugged her ankles and disappeared into a pair of dirty Beauty and the Beast tennis shoes.

  A little girl. Not an assortment of psychological problems or a trauma victim or a disciplinary problem. Just a plain, ordinary little girl who missed her mother.

  Annie smiled. Maybe she didn’t know about traumatic muteness and how the doctors and books and specialists thought it should be treated. But she knew about being afraid, and she knew about mothers who disappeared one day and never came back.

  Slowly, with her hand out, she moved toward the girl. “Hey, Izzy,” she said softly.

  Izzy didn’t answer; Annie hadn’t expected her to. She figured Izzy would talk in her own sweet time. Until then, Annie was just going to act as if everything were normal. And maybe, after what Izzy had been through, silence was the most normal thing in the world.

  “I’m Annalise, but that’s a mouthful, isn’t it. You can call me Annie.” She kneeled down in front of the little girl, staring into the biggest, saddest brown eyes she’d ever seen. “I was a good friend of your mommy’s.”

  A response flickered in Izzy’s eyes.

  Annie took it as encouragement. “I met your mom on the first day of kindergarten.” She smiled at Izzy, then stood and turned to Lurlene. “Is she ready to go?”

  Lurlene shrugged, then whispered, “Who knows? Poor thing.” She bent down. “You remember what we talked about. Miss Annie’s goin’ to be takin’ care of you for a while, durin’ your daddy’s work hours. You be a good girl for her, y’hear?”

  “She most certainly does not have to be a good girl,” Annie said, winking at Izzy. “She can be whatever she wants.”

  Izzy’s eyes widened.

  “Oh.” Lurlene pushed to her feet and smiled at Annie. “God bless you for doing this.”

  “Believe me, Lurlene, this is as much for me as anyone. See you later.”

  Annie looked down at Izzy. “Well, Izzy. Let’s hit the road. I’m positively dying to see your bedroom. I’ll bet you have all kinds of great toys. I love playing Barbies.” She led the way to the car, settled Izzy in the front seat, and clicked the seat belt in place
.

  Izzy sat in the passenger seat, strapped tightly in place, her head tilted to one side like a baby bird’s, her gaze fixed on the window.

  Annie started the car and backed out of the driveway, steering carefully past a crowd of ceramic gnomes. She kept talking as she drove, all the way past the Quinault Indian reservation, past the roadside stalls that sold smoked salmon and fresh crabs, past a dozen empty fireworks stands. She talked about anything and everything— the importance of old-growth trees, the viability of mime as an art form, the best colors, her favorite movies, the Girl Scout camp she and Kathy had gone to and the s’mores they’d made at the fire—and through it all, Izzy stared and stared.

  As Annie followed the winding lake road through towering trees, she felt as if she were going back in time. This rutted, gravel road, spackled now with bits of shade, seemed a direct route to yesterday. When they reached the end of the road, Annie found herself unable to move. She sat behind the wheel of the car and stared at the old Beauregard place. Nick’s home, now.

  I’m going to own this house someday.

  It had sounded like a silly dream to Annie then, all those years ago, a bit of glass spun in a young man’s hand. Something to say on a starlit night before he found the courage to lean down and kiss the girl at his side.

  Now, of course, she saw the magic in it, and it cut a tiny wound in her heart. Had she even had a dream at that tender age? If so, she couldn’t remember it.

  She pulled into the gravel driveway and parked next to the woodpile. The house sat primly in the clearing before her. Sunlight, as pale and watery as old chicken broth, painted the tips of the lush green grass and illuminated the daffodil-yellow paint on the clapboard siding. It still looked forlorn and forgotten, this grande dame of a Victorian house. In places the paint was peeling. Some of the shingles had fallen from the gabled roof, and the rhododendrons were crying out to be cut back.

  “I’ll bet that used to be a fort,” Annie said, spying the broken boards of a treehouse through the branches of a dormant alder. “Your mom and I used to have a girls-only for—”

  Izzy’s seat belt unhooked with a harsh click. The metal fastener cracked against the glass. She opened the door and ran toward the lake, skidding to a stop at a picket-fenced area beneath a huge, moss-furred old maple tree.

  Annie followed Izzy across the squishy lawn and stood beside the child. Within the aged white fence lay a beautiful square of ground that wasn’t nearly as wild and overgrown as everything else on the property. “This was your mom’s garden,” she said softly.

  Izzy remained motionless, her head down.

  “Gardens are very special places, aren’t they? They aren’t like people . . . their roots grow strong and deep into the soil, and if you’re patient and you care and you keep working, they come back.”

  Izzy turned slowly, tilted her head, and looked up at Annie.

  “We can save this garden, Izzy. Would you like that?”

  Very slowly, Izzy reached forward. Her thumb and forefinger closed around the dead stem of a shasta daisy. She pulled so hard it came out by the roots.

  Then she handed it to Annie.

  That dried-up, hollowed-out old shoot with the squiggly, hairy root was the most beautiful thing Annie had ever seen.

  Chapter 9

  Izzy clutched Miss Jemmie under her arm; it was the best she could do without all her fingers. She lagged behind the pretty, short-haired lady.

  She was glad to be home, but it wouldn’t last long. The pretty lady would take one look at Daddy’s mess in the house and that would be that. Grown-up girls didn’t like dirty places.

  “Come on, Izzy,” the lady called out from the porch.

  Izzy stared up at the front door. She wished her daddy would suddenly shove through that door and race down the creaky old porch steps like he used to, that he’d sweep Izzy into his big, strong arms and spin her around until she giggled, kissing that one tickly spot on her neck.

  It wouldn’t happen, though. Izzy knew that because she’d been having the same dream for months and months and it never came true.

  She remembered the first time her daddy had brought them out here. That was when his hair was black as a crow’s wing and he never came home smelling like the bad place.

  That first time had been magic. He had smiled and laughed and held her in his arms. Can’t you just see it, Kath? We’ll plant an orchard over there . . . and fill that porch with rocking chairs for summer nights . . . and we can have picnics on the grass. . . . He’d kissed Izzy’s cheek then. Would you like that, Sunshine? A picnic with chicken and milkshakes and Jell-O salad?

  She’d said, Oh, yes, Daddy, but they’d never had a picnic, not on the lawn or anywhere else. . . .

  The front door creaked open, and Izzy remembered that the lady was waiting for her. She trudged reluctantly up the porch steps. The lady—Annie; she had to remember that the lady’s name was Annie—clicked on the lamp beside the sofa. Light landed in streaks on Daddy’s mess. Bottles, pizza boxes, dirty clothes were lying everywhere.

  “As Bette Davis would say, ‘What a dump.’Your father certainly doesn’t win the Felix Unger award.”

  Izzy winced. That was it. Back to Lurlene’s for chipped beef on toast. . . .

  But Annie didn’t turn and walk away. Instead, she picked her way through the junk and flung open the curtains in a cloud of dust. Sunlight poured through the two big picture windows. “That’s better,” she said, glancing around. “I don’t suppose you know where the brooms and dustpans are? A bulldozer? How about a blowtorch?”

  Izzy’s heart started beating rapidly, and something felt funny in her chest.

  Annie winked at her. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried out of the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Izzy stood very still, barely breathing, listening to the rapid fluttering of her heart.

  Annie came back into the living room carrying a black garbage bag, a broom, and a bucket of soapy water.

  That strange feeling in Izzy’s chest seemed to grow bigger and bigger, until she almost couldn’t breathe. Slowly, she moved toward Annie, waiting for the lady to throw her hands up and say, It’s too goddamn much work, Nicky, like her mommy used to.

  But Annie didn’t say that. Instead, she bent over and picked up the garbage, one piece at a time, shoving it into the black bag.

  Cautiously, Izzy moved closer.

  Annie didn’t look at her. “It’s just junk, Izzy. Nothing permanent. There’s nothing done here that can’t be undone. My daughter’s room used to look like this all the time—and she was a perfectly lovely teenager.” She kept talking, and with each unanswered sentence, Izzy felt herself relaxing. “Why, I remember this place when I was a little girl. Your mom and daddy and I used to peek in the windows at nighttime, and we’d make up stories about the people who used to live here. I always thought it was a beautiful, wealthy couple from back East, who walked around in tuxedos and evening gowns. Your dad, he thought it was once owned by gamblers who lost everything in a single hand of cards. And your mama—why, I can’t recall what she used to think. Probably something romantic, though.” She paused long enough to smile at Izzy. “Maybe when the weather warms up, we could have a picnic on the lawn. Would you like that?”

  Izzy felt the weirdest urge to cry. She wanted to say, We could have milkshakes and Jell-O salad, but she didn’t. She couldn’t have, even if she’d really tried. Besides, it was just one of those things grown-ups promised even when they didn’t mean it.

  “In fact,” Annie said, “we could have a mini-picnic today. When I get the living room cleaned up, we’ll have cookies and juice outside—iced raisin cookies and Maui punch. That sounds good, don’t you think? ‘Yes, Annie, I think that would be terrrrrific.’ That’s my Tony the Tiger impression. Natalie—that’s my daughter; she’s almost a grown-up now—she used to love Frosted Flakes. I’ll bet you do, too.”

  Izzy bit back an unexpected smile. She liked the way Annie didn�
��t wait for her to answer. It made Izzy feel like she wasn’t so different, like not talking was as okay as talking.

  Tiny step by tiny step, she inched sideways. When she reached the sofa, she sat down, ignoring the dust that poofed up around her. Bit by bit, the garbage disappeared, and after a while, it began to look like home.

  Annie tapped lightly on Izzy’s bedroom door. There was no answer. Finally, she pushed open the door and went inside. The room was small and dark, tucked under an overhang in the roofline. A charming dormer reached outward, capturing the last pink light of day behind pale, worn lace curtains. The walls were done in a beautiful lavender-striped paper, and a matching floral print covered the bed. A Winnie-the-Pooh lamp sat on a white bedside table.

  Nick and Kathy had probably planned this room and saved for it, wanting to create the perfect place for their child. Annie could remember the dreams that came with pregnancy, and the endless details of hope. Much of it started with the nursery.

  Annie didn’t know much about manic-depression, or how it had twisted and changed Kathy, but she knew that Kathy had loved her daughter. Every item in this room had been lovingly chosen, from the Little Mermaid nightlight to the Peter Rabbit bookends.

  She crossed the clothes-strewn wooden floor to the bed. Izzy’s dainty profile made a beautiful cameo against a faded yellow Big Bird pillowcase. A fuzzy purple blanket was drawn taut across her shoulders and tucked gently beneath her chin. The doll—Miss Jemmie, Lurlene had said—was sprawled on the floor, her black button eyes staring up at the ceiling. Izzy’s tiny, black-gloved hand lay like a stain on the lavender lace bedspread.

  Annie hated to wake the sleeping girl, but she was a big believer in routine. Children needed to know where the limits were and what rules governed. She’d put Izzy down for a nap at two-thirty—and was surprised when she actually fell asleep. Now, at four o’clock, it was time to wake up.