The Winter Lodge

by Susan Wiggs

  “I really appreciate this,” she said. “Are you sure it’s all right to take all this stuff up to Camp Kioga?”

  “Sure,” said Connor. “There’s nothing but space up there, and no one around all winter.”

  “Well, I’m grateful. I was going to move everything into the garage, but it was damaged, too, and it’s got to be torn down along with everything else.” She was still a little dazed by the concept of not having a home, no place to park her things, or what was left of them. It was agreed that Connor would drive the pickup to the camp, with Rourke and Jenny following in the panel van. They had to drive the private road to the camp at a crawl, with the plow blades producing founts of snow on either side as it cleared the way.

  “I can’t believe how nice everyone’s being,” Jenny said.

  “You’re not that hard to be nice to.”

  “Is that why you’re helping me? To be nice?”

  “I’m not nice,” he said. “You of all people should know that.”

  Both of them had made mistakes in the past. Jenny was haunted by regrets, while Rourke still suffered from an old guilt that ran bone deep. That was the reason they’d grown so distant, but since they’d been spending so much time together lately, she felt entitled to bring up old business. “You’ve never forgiven yourself for Joey,” she said, bringing up the sorest of subjects. “What’s it going to take, Rourke?”

  He kept his eyes straight ahead, on the road. “Interesting question, coming from you.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “All right, how about this. Maybe I haven’t forgiven myself for Joey because some things...they aren’t forgivable. You just try to move on and live with it.”

  And spend the rest of your life doing penance, she reflected. For some reason, she thought about Beauty and the Beast—the raging, violent French version, not the squeaky-clean Disney version. In the original, the beast’s fury was calmed by the unquestioning love of the heroine, yet the redemption came with so much pain and sacrifice from both of them that it made her wonder if it was worth the struggle.

  She stayed silent during the rest of the drive. The south end of the lake was close to town, where cozy cottages, most of them closed for the winter, huddled shoulder to shoulder along the shore. The frozen docks, piled high with snow, projected out onto the field of white. They passed the Inn at Willow Lake, a 19th century mansion rumored to be haunted. When they were young, Jenny and Nina used to ride their bikes past the place, speculating about who might be haunting it. Nina always said she wanted to own the inn one day, but after she got pregnant with Sonnet, her life shot off in a different direction.

  The lake wound through a deep valley that quickly turned to wilderness, and soon there was nothing to do but watch the winter woods slip by. The otherworldly perfection and quietness mesmerized her. The thin trees were inked upon a background of snow, which was marked by the crisscrossings of animal tracks. Chickadees and cardinals flitted in and out of the branches. The streambeds resembled small ice floes and glaciers. By the time they reached the grounds of Camp Kioga, she felt as though she were worlds away, rather than mere miles.

  An historic seasonal resort, the camp reflected the style of the “great camps” of the Gilded Age. Marked by a rustic timber-and-wrought-iron archway, the entrance to the camp was a smooth drift of snow leading to the main pavilion. There were sports courts now buried in snow, equipment sheds, a boathouse situated out over the lake, which was now frozen into a vast, flat field of white.

  Everything was in a slumberous state of hibernation. The timber bunkhouses and cottages had drifts of snow sloping up each stairway. In the lake stood an island with a gazebo hung with icicles. Jenny found herself caught by the impenetrable quiet and the spun-sugar scenery. She had never seen the remote camp in winter, and it looked magical to her.

  Connor’s truck lumbered to a halt at a storage shed. Greg unlocked it, and within just a short time, they had everything stowed in the big wooden building.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said. “I’m glad you and Olivia have decided to reopen the place.”

  “It’ll be open year-round one day,” Connor said.

  She noticed that Rourke was standing apart, looking out across the lake, maybe lost in memories. He’d spent many a summer here, he and Joey. There, ankle deep in the frigid lake water, they had stood together skipping stones, keeping score of every skip. And there at the dock, they had started their swim races. There had been a rope swing suspended from a huge tree with its branches arching out over the lake, and they had challenged each other to swing higher or farther, to dive deeper. Everything had always been a contest with them.

  She tried to remember the moment it had started, the rivalry that had torn an unspoken rift in their friendship. Was it the moment the three of them had met? Had it been invisible, like magma in an underground conduit, seeking a way to burst forth?

  Greg stood back and regarded the stacked and labeled boxes. “All set.”

  “Thanks again.” Jenny refused to think about the fact that everything she owned was in those boxes. That one day in the near future—perhaps at the spring thaw—she would have to go over every single item and decide its fate. Should she keep her grandmother’s bent eggbeater, her grandfather’s box of fishing tackle, a clay ashtray made by her mother in Campfire Girls?

  It started snowing lightly, and Jenny lifted her face to the sky, feeling the flakes touch her forehead and cheeks. Everything was going to be all right, she told herself. The world was beautiful, and she had all kinds of options open to her.

  “We’d better get back.” Connor headed for his truck.

  “Meet me at the bakery,” Jenny suggested. “I need to get some work done in the office. I’ll give you a cup of coffee and any pastry you want.”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” Connor said. “I need to get back to work.”

  “Same here,” said Greg. “But I’ll see you Saturday, right? For dinner?”

  “Of course.” Her father, Philip, was coming up from the city to see her. She’d told him she didn’t need anything, that she would be okay, but he’d been insistent.

  After Connor and Greg left, Jenny and Rourke followed more slowly, lingering for one last look at the lake. “It’s beautiful here,” she said. “I feel...nostalgic. Don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “A little.” He quickened his pace, and she felt him shutting down. It was probably just as well, she decided. They had never been good at talking about the things that really mattered.

  Chapter Nine

  Jenny was finishing up at town hall after spending a seemingly interminable afternoon filling out forms to replace lost records. The process was less tedious because Nina Romano took time out to visit with her. “So be honest,” Jenny said. “How many tongues are wagging because I’ve been staying at Rourke’s?”

  “Would you believe none at all?”

  “In this town? Hardly.” Jenny signed her name to the tenth page of a title-to-deed request.

  “Trust me, people have bigger worries than that.” Nina held out her hand for the forms. “I’ll file these with the city clerk for you.” They walked together through a hallway lined with municipal offices.

  “What kind of worries?”

  Nina waved a hand. “City-finance stuff. I won’t bore you with the details. I’d rather hear about you living with Rourke.”

  “See?” Jenny snapped. “I shouldn’t be there. It’s crazy.”

  “I’m teasing. Listen, we still don’t know what happened at your house,” Nina pointed out. “You should stay with him at least until they figure that out.”

  “Oh, God. A conspiracy theory?”

  “No. I’m just being practical. And if it’s that big a deal, move into my place.”

  “I might take you up on that.” Je
nny knew she wouldn’t, though. Nina and Sonnet didn’t have room. “What I really need to do is figure out a permanent arrangement.”

  “Don’t rush into anything. Remember what the adjuster said—don’t make any major decisions right away. And the most major of all is where you’re going to live, spend the rest of your life.”

  Just hearing the words caused Jenny’s heart to kick into high gear, warning her that a panic attack was always lurking just beneath the surface. It was the strangest feeling to wake up in the morning and not know what your life was going to be.

  Nina must have read the worry in her face. She gave Jenny a reassuring pat on the arm. “The last thing you need to be worrying about is what people think. Just take your time, okay?”

  Jenny nodded and bundled up for the cold, and headed back to Rourke’s house. Three grateful dogs burst from the mudroom into the yard, and Jenny headed inside with a sack of groceries and a stack of books from the library. Eventually, of course, she would need to buy new copies of all those precious volumes she’d lost in the fire. There were childhood favorites, mercifully still in print—Charlotte’s Web, Harriet the Spy, The Borrowers. Others, the town librarian had warned, might be out of print, but she promised to track down a copy of You Were Princess Last Time, a tale of two sisters Jenny had wept over countless times when she was little. Then there were books she returned to again and again—a collection of essays on writing by Ray Bradbury. Tales of escape and reinvention, like Under the Tuscan Sun, and stories about food by Ruth Reichl. But those were the books Jenny remembered. One of her greatest regrets was that she had no record of the many books she wouldn’t remember.

  Slowly peeling off her gloves and parka, she wandered to the living room and looked at the bookshelves there. She caught herself doing this often—searching Rourke’s house for evidence of who he was. Maybe, she admitted to herself, she was looking for who he used to be. People’s books said a lot of about them, but Rourke’s choices were as impenetrable as he was—police procedure, old textbooks, repair manuals. There was a big collection of well-thumbed action-adventure paperbacks with titles like Assault on Precinct 17 and Murder Street, which probably depicted a very different style of police work than Rourke did in Avalon. Some books, probably gifts from frustrated ex-girlfriends, appeared to be pristine and unread—relationship manuals doubtless intended to show him the error of his ways. She counted at least three separate editions of Relationship Rescue. The Relationship Rescue Workbook was still in its shrink-wrap.

  Dream on, she silently told the women who had given him those books. She seriously doubted it was in any man’s nature to read a book like that and think it applied to him.

  She went back into the kitchen to put away the groceries. She had never lived with a man before, so she didn’t know if Rourke was typical or not. She had been so used to taking care of her grandmother, rising early, getting her ready for the visiting nurse. It was a revelation to simply wake up on her own, to go through her day without planning it around Gram’s needs. After just a few days at Rourke’s house, a rhythm established itself. He got up early and fixed his amazing coffee. She would drink a cup while he showered, and then they switched. They had breakfast together—she quickly broke his habit of eating second-rate grocery-store pastries—and went off to work.

  And at the end of the day, sounding hopelessly domestic, she found herself fixing tuna sandwiches and asking, “How was your day?” How was your day, dear?

  She couldn’t help it. It felt perfectly natural. As did the subtle lift of her heart when she heard him come through the back door, stamping the snow from his boots and whistling to the dogs before stepping into the warm kitchen.

  “Hey,” she said, “how was—” oh, God, she was doing it again “—your day?”

  “Busy.” He didn’t seem bothered by the familiar tone of the question. “We had thirteen traffic incidents, seven involving alcohol, all of them involving slippery road conditions. A domestic disturbance, a check-forging scam, kids defacing school property and a woman who left her small child home alone while she went to work.”

  “How do you stand it?” Jenny asked. “You see people at their worst, every day. It must get depressing.”

  “I suppose what makes it okay for me is that I try to make things better. Doesn’t always work, though.”

  “You mean sometimes you have to let the bad guys go?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes. If there isn’t enough evidence or somebody screwed up, or because we have bigger fish to fry and can’t spare the manpower. Lots of reasons.” Before she could ask another question, he waved a hand. “Some of the stuff I do during the day, it’s not good dinner conversation.”

  Like everyone, he brought home an invisible burden from work every day. But for most people, the burden didn’t consist of the petty crimes and cruelties of small-town police work. “Our lives are so different,” she said. “You go to work every day and see people behaving badly.”

  He laughed. “No one’s ever put it quite that way.”

  “And at the bakery, I see people who only need a cup of coffee and a fresh cruller, and they’re happy.”

  “I should retire from the force and buy a hairnet,” he said. He gratefully ate half his sandwich, and she could see him visibly relaxing. Was it her, she wondered, or simply getting to the end of another day?

  She suspected she had her answer when she glanced across the table and caught him staring at her with the most unsettling, smoldering look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You’re staring.”

  “I like looking at women. So shoot me.”

  She ducked her head to hide a smile. They were taking tentative steps toward each other, yet proceeding with caution. By the time dinner ended—and bless him, he cleared the table and did the dishes—Jenny was ready to admit it. She was a goner.

  Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice this troubling new development. “I need to go out tonight,” he said.

  And—fortunately again—he didn’t seem to hear the thud her heart made when it fell. “Oh. Um, okay,” she said. What else was she supposed to say? She was a visitor here, someone passing through. He didn’t owe her any explanations.

  He grabbed his cell phone and slipped on his shoulder holster. Jenny pretended not to watch, but she couldn’t help herself. It was intriguing—maybe even sexy—to contemplate the idea that he wore a concealed weapon.

  He caught her staring and grinned. “Want to come?”

  “Come where?”

  “To the indoor range,” he said. “Shooting practice.” He was a stickler for training in his department, and he practiced what he preached, explaining that he went to the indoor range at least once a week.

  Shooting practice? “Maybe I will,” she said. “I’ve never thought about what it would be like to shoot a gun.”

  “I’ll teach you,” he said easily.

  She hesitated a moment longer. Did she want to learn, or was it just something she’d said so he wouldn’t think she was as boring as she actually was? And did he want to teach her because he liked her, or because he thought she should learn self-defense? She told herself to quit looking for reasons to turn him down. “I’ll get my things.”

  It was a short drive to the indoor shooting range. The facility had two buildings, one with the range and the other with a classroom. In the classroom, he helped her gear up and showed her the gun she would be firing.

  “This is a .40-caliber Glock,” he explained, and guided her through the way it worked. “Stance is the key to hitting what you aim at.” He lifted the gun two-handed in a movement that looked perfectly natural. “Now you try.”

  All right, thought Jenny, feeling the powerful heft of the black, angular gun in her hands.

  “Watch out for the slide
when you hold it. How does this feel to you?”

  “You’re going to think I’m one sick puppy—but it feels...sexy to me.”

  He grinned. “That’s a good sign. It’s good for your confidence.”

  In her Avalon P.D. sweatshirt, earmuffs and goggles, she didn’t look nearly as sexy as she felt.

  “Close your eyes and raise the gun.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded. You need to raise the gun with your eyes shut so you’ll learn what your natural arm position points to.”

  She lifted the gun, opened her eyes and found herself looking at a big X on the classroom wall. He was incredibly fussy about her posture and position, adjusting the level of her extended arms, the angle of her chin, the placement of her feet, her grip, until she nearly burst with frustration.

  “I feel like a poseable Barbie doll.”

  He chuckled as he adjusted her stance again. “Firing Range Barbie. The all-American doll. I like it.”

  He fussed some more, going over the trigger squeeze and the natural respiratory pause, which he said was the ideal time to squeeze the trigger, because she would be at her most relaxed. She tried to remember everything he was telling her. It seemed that shooting a gun required doing at least a dozen things simultaneously and well. “I’ve never had to work this hard to satisfy a man,” she said.

  “It’s nice to know you’re willing to work at it. Now, quit flirting with me and concentrate.”

  “I’m not flirting with you,” she objected.

  “I feel flirted with.”

  “Then it’s your imagination. I know better than to flirt with you. Now, show me how to shoot something.”

  “Fine. Rule number one, you want to be a little more specific about what you’re going to shoot. ‘Something’ is too vague.”

  “Whatever. I want to shoot one of those cutouts of a bad guy.”

  “Then let’s go into the range.”