The Winter Lodge

by Susan Wiggs

  “What do you miss?”

  “Exactly what you’d expect—my journals, the stuff on my hard drive. One-of-a-kind photographs and mementos. Little things that belonged to my grandparents. This is not a mistake, Rourke. I have to move on with my life.”

  He picked up the suitcase. “In that case, don’t let me stop you.”

  He could, she realized with a lurch of her heart. There were things he could say that would keep her here, or at least make her listen. Now, if he’d said, “I need you,” or “There’s this thing between us,” maybe she would already be unpacking her bags. It was unsettling to admit to herself that he could tempt her to stay with just two words—don’t go.

  He didn’t say anything of the sort. He wouldn’t. They couldn’t talk about Joey. Rourke was mired in guilt over what had happened, and Jenny knew they both had the sense that it would never be resolved. It was just as well. If he asked her to stay, she might say yes, and they’d end up having some sort of drama that would end badly and ruin their newly recaptured friendship.

  They walked outside together into the cold, crisp morning. She said goodbye to the animals, feeling an unexpected tug as she petted them and rumpled their ears one last time. Rourke already had the car warming up. As they drove the short distance to the train station, she looked out at the old-fashioned, snow-topped houses and stately bare trees, the covered bridge over the river and all the quaint churches and shops. Everything was so familiar. She took a mental snapshot, replacing some of the photos lost in the fire.

  Rourke parked at the drop-off lot at the train station. They got out and he set her suitcase upright and pulled it to the entrance to the station. They stood facing each other, snowflakes flurrying around them.

  “So I’m off,” she said.

  “Good luck in the big city,” he said.

  “Thanks, Rourke. Thanks for everything.”

  “Can I say something?” he asked.

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “I’m going to miss you like hell.”

  She laughed to cover her reaction. “At least you’ll get your own bed back.”

  “Hey. I’m very attached to my sofa.”

  “Well, now you can get back to your love life.”

  “I have no love life.”

  “So what do you call all the gorgeous women you date?”

  He laughed. “Not love.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  He laughed even harder. “I’m not even going to answer that.”

  “You have to. You once said you’d tell me anything.” Which was such a lie, since he hid so much of himself. “What’s up with the supermodels, Chief?”

  “Nothing’s up. They come, they go, end of story. They’ll never be more than something to do on my night off.”

  “How can you know that? Have you ever really given some girl a chance?”

  “How can I know that?” he echoed. He stepped close to her. Very gently, with his leather-gloved hand, he touched her under the chin and tilted her face up to his. “I think we both know,” he said simply, and placed a chaste—yet devastating—kiss on her lips. “Have a safe trip to the city,” he added, and then he walked away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny had brought a book to read on the train. She had downloaded three episodes of This American Life to her iPod. And she’d brought her new laptop, which had so many bells and whistles she would take years to discover them all.

  Yet throughout the trip, all she did was sit and stare out the window. Rourke’s unexpected parting words and the way he’d looked at her and kissed her haunted Jenny as the train steamed southward, toward Grand Central Station. What was she supposed to do now? Dismiss the things he had said? The more she thought about it, the madder she got. He’d finally decided to show his hand when she was heading out of town. How convenient for him to choose a time when it was safe for him to do so, when she couldn’t stick around and force him to make a commitment.

  Then again, she was the one leaving. Fleeing, if she wanted to be accurate, fleeing a past they couldn’t resolve and Rourke’s conviction that he’d failed Joey—that they’d both failed him. The patchwork snowscape rolled by, as rural and timeless as a Currier & Ives etching. Gradually the scenery shifted. She saw less snow and more traffic. The sky felt heavier and the world appeared more dingy. Strip malls and suburbs gave way to urban high-rises.

  As she watched the changing scenery, a familiar and most unwelcome throb of panic thrummed in her chest.

  No, she thought. This can’t be happening.

  In the space of just a few minutes, the palms of her hands grew slick with sweat. Her heart rate accelerated. She shut her eyes and did the exercises Dr. Barrett had shown her. She breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. She visualized a safe place filled with golden light, where nothing and no one could harm her. She imagined a world in which there was only kindness and love.

  It didn’t work. She hadn’t really expected it to. She felt miserable and trapped, and not a little foolish. She was a practical, down-to-earth person. She didn’t go into a panic for no reason.

  Nearly jumping out of her skin, she swayed and lurched her way to the washroom. There, she blotted her hands and face with a damp paper towel. Then she swallowed half a Xanax and went back to her seat.

  The pill kicked in, wrapping a gauzy cushion around the sharp edges of the panic, and imparting the dull surrender of sleep. This, Jenny knew, was an artificial reprieve, but she would take any and all she could get at this point.

  She leaned back in her seat and stared out at the great nothingness of the world outside. She tried to concentrate on the people she saw scurrying here and there, and imagining what their lives were like. Did they have families? Laugh together? Hurt each other? Struggle with regrets?

  But no matter how she tried to distract herself, her mind kept returning to one crazy thought. She had believed the panic attacks were over, because she hadn’t experienced one since the night at Greg’s house. Like a fool, she had believed the days of assessing her freak-o-meter on a scale of one to ten were over.

  Yet the panic had returned with a vengeance, and she had to reassess her thinking.

  Maybe the attacks had not stopped because she was finally adjusting to all the changes in her life. Maybe the attacks had stopped because she was with Rourke.

  Which was insane, because she wasn’t actually with him. Even when he kissed her goodbye at the station—oh, God, he’d kissed her and she’d nearly melted—she wasn’t with him.

  Because that would make her even more insane than the panic screaming through her. She took out her cell phone. Scrolled to Rourke’s number. Her thumb hovered over the Send button. She could call him. She needed to ask him about that kiss. Ask him what, though?

  Enough, she told herself, flipping the phone shut. Philip was waiting, a man who seemed desperate to be a father to her. To be in her life. That was something to focus on.

  She couldn’t let her irrational attachment to Rourke McKnight hold her back from this opportunity to start a new life. This was her shot. Her chance to prove herself. She wanted to stand on her own, to discover who she was away from Avalon, and the bakery, and the people who had known her as the dutiful granddaughter, the responsible business owner, the girl who had overcome a tragic past. Maybe she was running away, like Rourke said, but since when was that a crime?

  Chapter Twenty

  Greg Bellamy was mildly shocked when Daisy agreed to go cross-country skiing with him. She and her brother were diehard downhill skiers who teased their dad about his passion for Nordic skiing.

  “Too healthy,” they scoffed. “Too much work.”

  So when he invited her and she agreed to get up at 6:00 a.m., he thought he was hearing things. And then he felt a rush of gladness. Yes. He
’d hoped moving to Avalon would bring him closer to his kids. Maybe this was the first step. Max had spent the night with a friend and wouldn’t be back until afternoon. He and Daisy would have some quality time together.

  Dawn was a thin thread of light on the horizon as they layered on clothing and put their gear in the back of the truck. “I’m starving,” she blurted out a minute after they got on the road.

  “You said you weren’t hungry for breakfast,” Greg objected, still full from a big bowl of oatmeal.

  “I am now.”

  He reminded himself to be patient. “How about we stop at the bakery and grab something.”

  She smiled over at him. “Perfect.”

  The bakery was busy even at this hour. He spotted a group of downhill skiers and some early risers reading the paper. And... Greg did a double take at the woman in line ahead of him.

  “Nina,” he said, and reminded her, “Greg Bellamy.”

  She gave him a Sofia Loren smile. “I remember. How are you?” He tried not to stare, but damn. This Nina was different from the one he’d met when he’d first moved to town, the mayor in executive-dominatrix mode. This Nina wore soft blue jeans and snowmobile boots and a knitted cap that made her look no older than her teenage daughter, Sonnet. “You’re up early,” she commented.

  “I’m taking my daughter skiing,” he said. “Cross-country, over at Avalon Meadows.”

  “Sounds fun. How is Daisy, anyway?”

  He tried to read between the lines of her question. No clue. Maybe she was just being a politician. “She’s doing all right. I’m looking forward to hanging out with her today. Do you ski?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Cross-country and downhill. Both badly.”

  Good to know.

  At the counter, she ordered a single-shot espresso from the boy... Zach, recalled Greg, just in time to call him by name and place his own order—two hot chocolates and two sweet-cheese kolaches to go.

  So this is bad, he thought, unable to stop eyeing Nina. His marriage had only been over for a few months, and he was already having impure thoughts about another woman.

  He paid and turned toward the door, nearly dousing Nina with hot chocolate. “Sorry,” he said, steadying the cardboard tray. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

  “Actually, I was waiting for you.”

  Uh-oh.

  She smiled as though she’d heard his uh-oh, and handed him a business card. “No need to panic. I was just wondering...if you’d like to have coffee or...something.”

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  His mouth went dry. “That’s nice of you, Nina. Really. But, uh, probably not.” He paused and took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain.

  She didn’t give him a chance. “That’s okay,” she said brightly. “Just thought I’d ask.”

  “But I—”

  “See you, Greg.” She went over to a table crowded with locals and took a seat.

  “I’m an idiot,” he muttered under his breath. He put the card in his wallet and headed out the door.

  “Was that Nina Romano you were talking to?” asked Daisy.

  “Uh, yeah.” He put the cups in the drink holder and handed her the bag of kolaches.

  “So what did she want?”

  “Who, Nina?”

  “Yes, Nina. Geez, Dad.”

  “She just wanted to say hi,” he said.

  “What a liar.”

  “I’m not—” Yes, he was. And he was so damn bad at it. “She asked me out. There. Are you glad you asked?”

  “Oh,” said Daisy. “Ew.”

  He headed for the river road. “My thoughts exactly.” Another lie, but he wasn’t about to admit to his daughter that he had the hots for the town mayor. “Anyway, I said no, thanks.”

  Daisy nibbled on her pastry. “Was she mad?”

  “No. She was really nice about it.”

  “She’s really nice, period. That’s probably how she got to be mayor.”

  “So you think she’s nice but I shouldn’t go out with her.”

  “Honestly, Dad, it’s your choice. But I think it would be bizarre. Completely and totally bizarre.”

  “I told her no. End of story.” It wasn’t, of course. It felt more like a beginning.

  The parking lot at Avalon Meadows Golf and Country Club was nearly empty, though recently plowed. The course had an agreement with the city that during the winter it would be groomed for cross-country skiing. He parked and went around to get the gear out of the back of the truck—skis and poles, backpacks with bottles of water, a bag of trail mix and Daisy’s camera. Greg looked out over the snow—the smooth knolls and slopes of the golf course, and a wave of nostalgia engulfed him. The sensation was as sharp and sweet as the cold winter air. This was a place where time stood still, where the passing of the years left no mark. It looked exactly the same as it had when he was a boy, the colonial-style brick clubhouse, the beautifully sculpted landscape of tree-lined fairways, ponds fringed by cattails, dramatic rolling slopes and preternaturally flat greens, which were now white disks crowning each hole.

  As a kid, Greg had always been as taken with the landscape itself as with the sport of golf. It didn’t matter to him whether he was driving a golf ball or simply standing in the hush of the forest where it was so quiet he could hear the falling leaves as they hit the forest floor.

  Just for a few seconds, it was possible to stand here and be that kid again, filled with wonder and at ease in the world. Just for a few seconds, he wasn’t a confused thirty-eight-year-old guy trying to start all over again, juggling family and work and life and a new town.

  “Let’s go this way,” he said to Daisy, and they glided along a marked path, their narrow skis entrenched in the tracks formed by the early-morning groomer.

  It felt good here in the quiet outdoors, alone with Daisy. The only sound was the rhythmic swish of their skis on the trail and the accompanying cadence of their breathing. Gliding along, he disappeared into himself and didn’t think. After a while, they were both sweating with exertion.

  Daisy said, “I feel like taking some pictures. Do you mind if we stop for a break?”

  “Not at all.”

  She had chosen a spot where a grove of birch trees bordered a small stream, which in turn emptied into a pond, now a field of snow-covered ice. A man-made footbridge arched over the stream. In warmer weather, there would be parties of golfers everywhere. Now the whole place was empty of everything but chickadees and snowshoe rabbits.

  “How are you doing?” Greg asked her.

  She leaned back against a fence rail. “I’m okay.” Her cheeks were rosy red, and yet there was something in her eyes, a flicker of trouble.

  “You sure?” He handed her a bottle of water from the backpack.

  She twisted off the top and took a long drink. “Sure.”

  The old Greg, the one who hadn’t spent enough time with his kids, would have taken her reply at face value. One thing that came of the divorce was that Greg had become friends with his own kids. What a concept. Now he knew “Sure” didn’t necessarily mean she was fine. Judging by the look in her eyes, it meant, “Dig a little deeper, Dad. It won’t take long to figure out what’s going on if you just ask the right questions.”

  “How are things at school?” he asked.

  She smiled briefly as if he’d said something ironic. Maybe he had. In the past, he’d asked the same question, accepting her reply that all was well. Then one day she came home and said, “I’m failing four classes.”

  “All right,” he said, “moving right along. How’s work? You like working at the bakery?”

  “The bakery is fine. I’ve made two friends—Zach and Sonnet, and they’re fine, too. And it’s fine to be working for my long-lost cousin. See? It’s all
good.”

  Another thing Greg had learned in his crash course in fatherhood was the power of silence. Sometimes if you kept your mouth shut and waited, a kid would come out with things. He was amazed more adults hadn’t figured that out. So many people he knew who were parents tended to fill every silence with talk, talk and more talk. Greg’s kids had taught him that sometimes the important things came out in the middle of a long silence, after sitting in a boat for an hour or two, trying to catch a fish. Or standing in the middle of a quiet snowscape.

  It took some discipline, but he simply waited. Shook the snow off one of his skis and took a ChapStick from his pocket and smeared it on his lips. Squinted at the sun. There was a peculiar quality to the blue sky, a hardness that contrasted sharply with the white of the snow and the bark of a grove of birch trees. And for the time being it was easy to stay quiet. He could hear sounds undetectable in the city—the burble of a creek choked by ice except for a single trickle down the middle. The rustle of the wind through dried cattails fringing the pond. The trill of a chickadee in the bushes.

  It was, he decided, a perfect moment, standing here in the middle of this empty, gorgeous spot with his adored daughter who had suffered through such a miserable time during the divorce. And now, at last, things seemed to be looking up for her.

  She got out her camera, the new one he’d bought for her last September. Daisy had always had a quirky, creative eye for a photograph. Now, with a camera that actually matched her skills, her talent shone through. The images she came up with never failed to surprise him.

  Greg watched her with appreciation. She worked with self-assurance and a natural instinct to find the best angle for each shot. Her facility with the camera had emerged...when he thought about it, her passion for photography coincided with his and Sophie’s decision to separate.