Henry scratched under his nose, looking tired. I figured it was definitely past his bedtime, but he was a detective at heart and instantly read between the lines. “Those two got something to do with your arrest?” he asked.
“Not really.” That last fight, Tiffany had needed to be pushed. On top of everything else we were dealing with, as soon as she’d admitted her involvement, she’d known we were over. “You know how Tiffany is. She was hurt that I’d left, but instead of dealing with it like a normal person, she lashed out. Bucky took her to the dining hall and they called the station to report a drunk driver on the highway. They gave him the description of Vern’s truck.”
Tiffany had wanted both me and Lake to get caught red-handed, but she’d never stopped to consider the kind of trouble we’d get in. For all she knew, Lake and I were having sex, which would’ve been a noble thing to put a stop to—if I didn’t know Tiffany’s reasons weren’t exactly selfless.
“You passed the sobriety test, though,” Henry pointed out.
“Yeah, but that cop was looking for me. If he hadn’t found me on the side of the road and called it in, the police might’ve believed I’d gone right back to camp from the bar. Instead, they were able to place me at the bar, then driving around the neighborhood, and then nothing until almost two hours later, when I was pulled over.” All this was making me crave another beer, but I was already buzzed, and I had to be up early to make a big delivery in Los Angeles. I rubbed my jaw. “Nobody knew where I was from around eleven to one in the morning. Plenty of time for a robbery.”
“If not for Tiffany’s phone call, your chances of getting off would’ve been better,” Lydia said. “It’s almost like she set things in motion.”
If only Lydia understood how true that was. All of our actions over the years had changed the courses of our lives, but it was no more true than with Tiffany and me.
When the beer was gone and the moon was high, we stood and stumbled into the house. Gary and Lydia hadn’t planned to spend the night, but I had plenty of space, so I set them up in a guest room.
Once I left them, I found Henry in the kitchen, picking up. “Leave it,” I told him. “I’ll get it in the morning.”
He wiped his hands on a dishrag and looked around the kitchen. “I could use a cigar. You?”
I was exhausted from the beer, a long day in my workshop, and the time of night, but Henry definitely had something on his mind. He only spoke when he had something to say, so I’d listen. “Sure.”
Henry didn’t smoke, but since he’d been here, we’d taken to having a cigar out front some nights. I sat on a crate on the porch while Henry stood with his back against the railing and clipped two cigars. He nodded at the porch swing. “That’s new since I was last here.”
“It’s not much. Only took me a couple days.”
Some of the pieces, I hadn’t planned to make. The bench had been the result of a custom order. I’d made a crib and rocking chair for a young couple expecting their first child. The night I’d finished, I’d sat and stared at the pieces in a rare moment of pride. A woman would feed her baby in that rocking chair, put him to sleep in a crib I’d made. Not a day went by that I didn’t wonder about the child Tiffany had miscarried. She’d gone in for a doctor’s appointment, and they’d been unable to detect a heartbeat. Apparently, the baby had died weeks earlier, but it’d felt sudden. One day we were having a baby, and the next we’d lost a boy.
The same night I’d finished my customer’s nursery furniture, I’d kept building, and the result was the porch swing.
“You really put a lot of work into this place,” Henry said, passing me the lighter. “Ever consider selling it?”
“You think I should sell?” I asked.
“Not right for such a nice place to sit here empty. Unless, of course, you had other plans for it.”
I toasted the cigar, looking around the house. It meant everything to me, this place, and Henry knew it. I’d built all this with my bare hands. I’d labored over every detail from laying the foundation to installing the toilets. I’d chosen Big Bear for the space, the privacy, and if I was honest, because there was no better place to see the stars each night. “You know my plans,” I said. “You’ve spent the last three weeks here.”
“I’m not talking about your business. I see all the detail in the woodwork you’ve done,” Henry said. “I see how painstakingly you’ve built this home, throwing out anything that wasn’t perfect. It’s true what they said about Lake.”
I looked up at him, thinking I’d misheard, until it hit me that he hadn’t been asleep earlier after all. “You were awake for all that,” I said.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t news to me.” He exhaled a satisfying cloud of white smoke. “That crush, it ain’t teeny tiny, is it? I saw the way you looked at her at your wedding. You wanted it to be her.”
I let his words sink in. Lake had asked me what Henry was thinking at the altar, and now I understood better. Nobody who knew either Lake or myself had been able to ignore the connection between us, not even a man who’d been in our presence for a day. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did want that.”
“You’ve built a house for a family you don’t have, because you only want it with her. You built this house for Lake.”
I pinched my cigar with all fingers. It wasn’t a shocking realization, really, but I hadn’t had the guts to put it to myself that bluntly. Though Lake had been physically far away for a while, I’d kept her close during all of this. There was insurmountable evidence, though. It was an ugly but unsurprising truth—I’d spent my days building my bird a nest without knowing if she’d ever give me a chance to show it to her. And it wasn’t just for Lake—it was for us.
“Guess I don’t have to ask if you still love her as much now as you did back then,” Henry said.
“More.” I had to laugh at how sad it was. “So much more.”
“So why hasn’t she seen it?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “There’s a history there. No way to explain it, really.”
“Try.” When I just looked at him, he said, “Go on, kid. Explain it to me.”
“Where do I start? I’ve hurt her. More than once.” I opened my hands. “The last time was four years ago. She and I decided to give it a shot the same week Tiffany found out she was pregnant. Then after the miscarriage and divorce, I needed time to feel like a man again. When I go back to her, it has to be as the best possible version of myself, ready to give her the best possible life.”
Henry squinted in the direction of the dying campfire, then around the property. “So what’s left?”
He was asking what else needed to be done before I offered Lake everything we both deserved? Would it ever be enough? I scratched my jaw, my beard growing in. I’d been so busy lately, I’d hardly had time to shave. “You’ve got eyes,” I said. “Part of the house is still under construction. The attic needs to be completely reorganized, not to mention I haven’t really furnished the smaller rooms the way I want to. Plus, I want to build that stable in the backyard—”
“What for? You don’t ride.”
“That’s because I don’t have anywhere to put horses,” I said, which was a ridiculous lie. Really, I just wanted an excuse to have Lake between my legs again—if that was what Lake wanted, too—and there was plenty of space here for horseback riding. I had enough acreage for all kinds of animals, and wasn’t that part of what had drawn me to Big Bear? The openness, nature, the opposite of an eight-by-six cell? The ease with which I could read the constellations each night like a good book?
Only one person could grasp why those things were important. The one who hadn’t been able to see the stars at all in New York, and who might need them to light her way sometimes. The woman who deserved all the bells and whistles of a fancy kitchen just to make killer sandwiches. So, for fuck’s sake, yeah, maybe all this was for Lake, and that was all the more reason it had to be perfect before I brought her here.
“It’ll
get there,” I said to Henry. “As a man, as a builder, I will get everything as it should be. These pieces take time because they’re meant to survive a lifetime.”
“Son, I know that. Who do you think you’re talking to? But a good amount of time’s passed since the divorce.” He chuckled a little. “Probably not enough. I doubt there’s an appropriate amount of time to wait to move in on your ex-wife’s sister. But what happens if you wait too long?”
Henry was most likely referring to someone else swooping in, but that wasn’t where my mind went first. I thought back to the morning of the terrorist attacks in New York, waking up to see the Twin Towers on fire—and the gut-bursting feeling that Lake was thousands of miles away from me. Logically, I knew she had no reason to be anywhere near the Financial District, but having just moved to wide-open Big Bear, I’d felt helpless. I was dialing Lake’s number before I’d even gotten a grasp on the morning news. I’d been too panicked to worry about the fact that someone else had picked up her phone, but it had set in quickly. Lake and I had spent five beautiful days in her New York, and now, at nine in the morning, another man was waking her up to hand her the phone. As soon as I’d heard she was safe, I’d hung up.
“I hear you,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I’d bring myself to go to Lake after all I’d put her through, but there wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t build her a home and never tell her. I couldn’t not love her. “The day the house is finished, I’ll go to her,” I said. “That day, I’ll bring her home.”
“Huh.” Henry nodded to himself. “I was wondering about that career choice of hers, thought maybe it didn’t seem right, but guess I was wrong. Maybe she needs all that extravagance to be happy, just like her sister.”
“She doesn’t,” I said quickly. Lake only needed me, the way I needed her, too.
“Then quit wasting fucking time, Manning. I’m willing to bet Lake would rather be here now, helping you turn this into a home, instead of losing another few years until you finally decide it’s good enough. Isn’t it good enough for her now?”
I shuffled my feet on the porch. Lake had never made me feel like what I could offer her wasn’t enough. All that had come from inside me, I knew that. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“You’re afraid. I get it. Love my wife, and I get scared sometimes, too. Something might happen to her, or she’ll wake up one day and realize she can do better.” He shrugged. “Hasn’t happened yet, though, and we’ve had a pretty good life together.”
Was I afraid? There was no question. I’d better have a damn good reason to ask Lake for another chance after her trust in me had splintered over the years. If I showed her all this, and she didn’t want it, I needed to know I’d done everything I could. This was my last shot. Fucking it up wasn’t an option. “I’ve run out of chances,” I said. “Our timing is shit. I can’t try to get her back and fail again—everything has to be right. I need to get this right.”
“You run out of chances when you’re in the ground, understand? There some reason you wouldn’t fight for her until the end?”
I looked over the top of the railing at the fire pit, where embers glowed orange. No reason I could think of. I’d tried to make it work with someone I hadn’t loved, with someone who hadn’t inspired in me the kind of passion that scared me, and I’d failed miserably. It was Lake or nobody. “No.”
“You’re a grown man, son. Fear’s not a good enough excuse anymore.”
Was the house enough as it was? Was I? Henry thought so. Lake thought so. I could give Lake what she’d been asking for since the beginning—us. Not knowing if she still wanted that made everything in my body hurt, but I couldn’t let that stop me if she did want it. “Yeah,” was all I said.
“Yeah,” Henry agreed.
When we’d smoked down our cigars and gone back inside, I started to turn out the lights in the kitchen.
Henry stopped and turned around in the doorway. “You never really had a fair shot at the family thing,” he said. “Everything that happened with Madison and your parents messing you over, it’s tragic, Manning. Really unfortunate. And then the miscarriage. It really breaks my heart.”
My throat got dry enough to make me cough into my fist. Henry had lived all that with me. He didn’t need to acknowledge it, but hearing it from him struck something deep in me. I could comprehend now, as an older man, that a lot of that stuff had happened to me—not because I’d done something wrong. If I’d lost a son years ago when I’d constantly blamed myself for things out of my control, I wasn’t sure I’d have recovered. “I know.”
“You deserve a family, and you shouldn’t have to wait anymore.”
I couldn’t answer him for the lump in my throat. My last contact with my dad had been the letters I’d received in jail a decade earlier. Henry was the only person looking out for me. I didn’t have to tell him he was my family, so I just nodded.
“I want to see you as a husband and a father as much as I want my own kid’s happiness. Stop punishing yourself, and stop punishing Lake. You go be the man she needs, you hear?”
Between Lake’s age and my marriage and prison and losing a son and Corbin—there’d been a lot in our way, but Henry was right; it’d stolen the spotlight for too long. Our timing had never been right, so why not now? I looked up at the roof I’d built to put over Lake’s head, at the dining chairs I’d constructed out of reclaimed wood from this very forest where I’d fallen in love with her, and at the countertop I’d sanded and smoothed until it was just the perfect height for Lake to sit and have me stand between her legs. And I finally made the decision.
I wouldn’t wait any longer to find Lake and bring her home.
6
Lake
My agent did her best to chase me down the studio lot. June McPherson was a powerhouse, barely five-foot-four in her highest heels, but she couldn’t compete with my trusty old Converse. I slowed to let her catch up.
“You’re making a mistake,” she panted, doubled over to catch her breath. “Just like running in these shoes was.”
I looked down at her. “I told you my plan before we entered the meeting.”
“And I told you the producers would throw more money at you. I thought once we got in there, you’d cave, not turn it down.” She squinted up at me, hand on her side, then rose to her full height. “The salary wasn’t life changing, I admit, but you can still do lots with it. And the real money comes later.” She dug around in her purse and pulled out her compact as she added, “You’d be able to find homes for all those scrappy dogs and cats you’re always talking about.”
Thinking I could raise awareness was partly how I’d gotten into this mess. I’d been able to work the animal shelter into my “storyline” on the reality show, and get photographed there by the press, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to stay beyond my contractual obligation. “I’ll find other ways to help,” I said.
“You’re sure?” She checked that no strands had come loose from her sleek ponytail, then snapped the mirror shut. “You’re really going to let something like job satisfaction get in the way of fame?”
She was teasing, but I knew this wasn’t easy for her to joke about. I was becoming one of her most sought-after clients, and I was about to flush it down the toilet. Or I already had. “I’m sorry, June. I’m just not cut out for reality TV.”
She nodded a little. “Then I’ll find you something else. Something better. You’ve got a special quality, Lake. You deserve a movie deal, today’s hottest director, top billing …”
I stopped listening, because I’d heard all this from her before, and it still didn’t excite me. Being on stage back in New York was the closest I’d come to feeling like a true actress. From auditioning to improv classes to mounds of rejection, I’d been forced to come out of my shell, grow up, and start making decisions for myself. And my decision was that I needed more than the network had to offer—and maybe even Hollywood in general. I hadn’t felt as
if I’d done anything meaningful since I’d left New York. Even in high school, I’d belonged to clubs and extracurricular activities that’d given me a sense of purpose. I wasn’t sure if I was done with acting forever, but as far as Hollywood was concerned, once my contract with the show was up, I’d be grounding a career that hadn’t even launched.
I started for the parking lot again. “I’m going to take a step back from all of it,” I told June. “Not just the show.”
Her Jimmy Choos clacked along the faux cobblestones of a movie set modeled after New York. “Good. Go up to Napa Valley for a few weeks—take some time for yourself. I don’t want you to get overwhelmed. You saw what happened with Sean. Thank God you’re no longer associated with him.”
Sean and I had broken up months ago, right before he’d gotten caught wasted on camera leaving a club on his motorcycle. The American public had not taken kindly to his drinking and riding, and he’d been shipped off to Arizona for rehab.
Celebrity gossip had become an industry unto itself. Paparazzi was expected at movie premieres and outside of the clubs we frequented, but extravagant cameras had been popping up during my morning run or while doing mundane things like getting coffee. I didn’t understand the fascination but some magazines, and even a few websites, were solely dedicated to celebrity culture.
As June and I neared the edge of New York and headed toward what looked like a set for a Louisiana swamp, I looked across the lot and just like that, there he was—Manning unloading furniture from the back of a truck. He was so familiar yet so out of place that I stumbled and June had to steady me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping as I did.
Manning lifted what looked like a blanketed loveseat from the bed, carried it onto a soundstage, and returned with two other men, who helped him with a long wooden table.
“Lake?” June asked, craning her neck to see what I was looking at.
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