That was the lake. That was what happened at the lake. It couldn’t change.
A little red Prius was parked under the portico by the kitchen door. It belonged to Leilah, her grandmother’s one full-time employee. Her grandmother’s big Lincoln was angled into a space across from the front door. A nondescript car was next to the Lincoln. Colleen didn’t know who it belonged to. She suggested Jason park next to it.
She and Amanda got out of the car, never thinking to wait for Jason to come around and open their doors. For a moment, she saw a person in one of the front bedroom windows, but whoever it might be stepped away almost instantly. Amanda had seen the figure too, and English teacher that she was, started making comparisons to Jane Eyre and the first Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman in the attic.
“That’s not the attic. The attic is up there.” Colleen pointed to the dormer windows under the roofline. “My brothers and I sleep there.” Those rooms were small, having been designed for servants, but Colleen loved them. The cozy, oddly shaped spaces seemed quaint and endearing. She had spent her Christmas vacation here this year to help her grandmother settle in. Even though only the two of them had been in the house, Colleen had slept in the attic.
She had a key to the front door, but as soon as she saw how bright the brass lock was, she knew that her key wasn’t going to fit. Another change.
Wanting to be a dutiful granddaughter hadn’t been the only reason she had spent Christmas here. Her brothers were spending the holiday with their in-laws. Her father had been going to California with his new wife to see her son and his family. Of course she would have been welcome at either place, but she would have felt like a guest. She didn’t want to feel like a guest at Christmas. As difficult as her grandmother could be, coming to the lake had felt easier.
Colleen rang the doorbell. Leilah, the house manager, opened the door.
Slender, as tall as Amanda, with the lithe, grounded bearing of a yoga instructor, Leilah was dressed in a collarless shirt and soft trousers in a wheat-colored linen. Her hair was the same light golden brown color as Colleen’s, but without Colleen’s exuberant texture. Leilah’s hair was glisteningly smooth. Everything about her seemed refined and elegant. Colleen couldn’t imagine anyone, even her grandmother, calling Leilah a maid.
When Colleen had come in December, she had been fascinated by Leilah. She was like the elegant priestess who glided across the waiting room of an expensive spa, handing you a thick white robe, escorting you to the luxurious mysteries that awaited in the dimly lit, scented rooms.
But after a while Colleen had grown uneasy. Leilah was obviously well educated. Her vocabulary was precise; her sweaters were cashmere. Why would such a woman, seemingly in her mid-thirties, take a job that had low pay and little future? There were many possible reasons—she could be a poet or an artist; she could need a year of quiet after a difficult divorce. But whatever her story was, she was not sharing it with Colleen. Colleen’s first few questions—routine questions about where Leilah was from and the like—had been so deftly evaded that Colleen stopped asking.
In fact, as she began to introduce Leilah to Amanda and Jason, she realized that she didn’t even know the woman’s last name.
“Do come in,” Leilah said graciously. “I will show you to your rooms. Mrs. Ridge will meet you in the library for cocktails.”
“Is there someone else here?” Colleen asked, wondering about the rental car.
“Yes. Mrs. Ridge is undertaking an inventory of her family heirlooms. One of her lawyer’s sons has come to supervise.”
“Her lawyer from Georgia? Mr. Healy?”
“I believe so. One of his sons.”
Tim and Marianne Healy had four sons, and the oldest, Ryan, was a lawyer in practice with his father. He would be the one who was here. That was fine. She knew Ryan; she liked him. It would be strange because he and Ben looked a lot alike, but she could handle that. No problem.
At the top of the stairs, Leilah turned right. The stairs to the attic were to the left. Colleen supposed that made sense. She wouldn’t be putting Jason and Amanda up in the attic. Once they got settled, Colleen could find the back stairs on her own.
The doorway to one of the second floor bedrooms opened. Sunlight spilled into the hallway. A man stepped out, the sunlight behind him, outlining his shape, obscuring his features.
Yes, Ryan was built like Ben…and like Colleen’s own brothers, their birth families, and all her mother’s relatives. Their shoulders were sturdy, their torsos long and lean, and they didn’t have much extension in his forearms and thighs. All these people were Irish-American with the build of people who had, for generations, trudged up and down Ireland’s green hills.
“Amanda, Jason,” Leilah was saying, “I’d like you to meet our other guest, Ben Healy.”
What? What? This was supposed to be Ryan, the older brother, the lawyer.
But Leilah had said Ben. Colleen didn’t know where to look. She couldn’t look at him.
The floorboards creaked; someone was stepping forward to shake someone’s hand. Words, accents, Maryland, central Missouri, north Georgia, and then “…how nice to see you again…”
Was that her? Had she spoken? Of course. She was poised; she was polite, and the tip of her tongue was still touching the roof of her mouth just behind her teeth, the “n” from “again.”
Nice…Had she really said that it was nice to see him again? It wasn’t nice at all, it was…She didn’t know what it was.
She had to look at him. She couldn’t resist—his hair dark and auburn-tinged, thick and rumpled; his lower lip full and soft; his eyes deeply set beneath dark eyebrows, all that wild Irish beauty. Ben.
Nice…oh, no, it was something quite different than nice.
It had started so randomly four years ago. He had happened to look at a list of Norwegian interpreters, a list that was lying on a desk in the office of the Endless Snow resort. Hey, I know that girl. I played with her brothers when we were kids. He lived with two other guys in a chalet on the grounds of the resort. Hire her. She’ll be fun to have around. So she had gone to Oregon for the summer to interpret for two Norwegian snowboard coaches.
Oh, the memories—the sun sparkling off the ice-frosted snow, the orange-red flames in the depths of a stone fireplace, chalet windows bright in the soft twilight. Ben had tried to teach her to snowboard. She fell. And fell again. Her laughter had been light and clear, his deep and throaty while he reached his hand down to help her back up.
She had known that she was more sure about the two of them than he had been, but she had assumed that it was that Irish-Catholic worldview that if anything could go wrong, it would. She had been confident that he would get beyond that.
He hadn’t. You never knew how much I loved you. I told you and told you. You never believed it.
Leilah was gesturing her into one of the lakeside rooms, saying that she hoped Colleen had everything she needed. The door closed. Colleen found herself sitting on the bed, staring at her suitcase, a quilted duffel, its fabric tumbling with sweetheart roses and blossoming peonies.
I loved you, but I hated myself.
She knew what the books said. She had read them, struggling to understand what had happened between them.
It had turned into a distancer-pursuer relationship, the books said. She was the pursuer, begging him to call her more, talk to her more. That wasn’t who she was. She was a confident, competent person. She knew that she was physically appealing, that she was smart with a gifted ear for languages. She was helpful; she was kind. People liked her.
But waiting two days for him to answer the simplest text had made her needy and desperate. She couldn’t bear to think about how pathetic she must have seemed back then. So now Ben wasn’t simply an ex-boyfriend. That she could have handled. He was the ex-boyfriend who had turned her into a person whom she could not respect.
She heard a sound, a little rap. It was a knock on the French door that led to the balcony overlooking the lake. What was she doing in this room? This had been her parents’ room.
The knock came again. She could see Amanda through the glass, waiting for Colleen to open the door. Colleen got up. She might not be able to open the door. It used to stick. Her father would have to jerk hard on it, and then it would pop open, sometimes making him almost lose his balance. She might have to ask Amanda to push from the outside. Besides teaching English, Amanda coached the girls’ field hockey and lacrosse teams. She was tall and strong.
But there was no need for Amanda’s muscle. This time the door glided open, soundlessly and easily.
“This is fun,” Amanda said as soon as Colleen let her in. “Our rooms connect through the balcony. Does this mean I can creep into your bed in the middle of the night?”
“If you want.”
“Speaking of creeping into people’s beds, I take it that that was the Ben,” Amanda said. “You never mentioned how good-looking he is.”
“Really?” She would have thought that she had told Amanda everything about him.
“He is pretty memorable. How do you feel about him being here? You weren’t expecting it, were you? It seems odd that your grandmother didn’t mention it.”
“My grandmother likes catching people off guard.”
“That sucks. But seriously, this place is unbelievable. It’s like staying in a fancy resort. I don’t think I brought the right clothes. I don’t think I own the right clothes. Do people really live like this?”
Colleen looked around the room. The walls were pristine with new ivory paint; the floors and the oak trim around the windows and doors had been newly sanded and stained. The closet was empty except for matching padded hangers and two new white bathrobes. Next to the dresser was a folding luggage rack, and on top of the dresser was a little basket of toiletries.
No was the answer. At least not anyone Colleen knew. Even in the more formal Georgia house, the closet in the best guest room was full of the family’s out-of-season clothes. This wasn’t a home anymore. It was a resort, a B&B for paying guests.
Except at a resort, she wouldn’t be expected to sit down to dinner with an ex-boyfriend and a ghost of her worst self.
“By the way,” Amanda continued, “I’m not getting a signal on my phone. Is there a wi-fi connection?”
Colleen shook her head. That was one modernization that hadn’t been completed. “You can get a phone signal at the end of the dock.”
“There was a dock out there?”
“Of course.”
They went out onto the balcony. Below them, a lawn, green with new spring growth, sloped in a widening vee to the water’s edge where the boulders protected a strip of sand big enough for children to play. Set off to one edge of the property was a two-story boathouse, sided with shingles like the house. Boats would always slow down as they passed, envying the sunlit lawn, wondering at the wealth and comfort of people who called it home.
Despite the lawn, the boulders, and the boathouse, there was no dock. “Oh, that’s right,” Colleen remembered. “It’s not going in until Monday.”
“Monday?” Amanda looked a little sick.
“This is the lake, Amanda. You don’t need the internet.”
Amanda did not look convinced.
Chapter 2
The upstairs hall smelled of lemon-oil wood polish. Colleen looked over the banister into the front hall. The house faced east, and this late in the day not much natural light came through the leaded-glass fanlight over the big front door. A small arrangement of fresh flowers sat on the round, leather-topped center table. As Colleen came down the stairs, the scent of the lemon oil gave way to the flowers’ powdery sweetness.
“The Nats could do with some of the Braves’ hitters, that’s for sure.”
It was Jason. Colleen couldn’t see him. He must be at the far end of the front hall.
“Yes, but the pitching staff could use a better closer.”
Ben. That was Ben, a hint of a north Georgia accent warming his voice.
He had an effortlessly attractive voice. It was low-pitched and confident, expressive and resonant, rich in the undertones. It had served him and his sponsors well.
She had a nice voice too. She was going to need to use it. She was going to have to talk to him, make conversation, be polite, gracious, welcoming, all that. She was at the base of the stairs now. She took a breath and turned.
Suddenly a memory—a bed and a room lit by scented candles, their swirling fragrance encircling her and him, shutting out the world. All that mattered, all that existed, was the graceful movement of his body as he raised and lowered himself above her. Their breath, his and hers, was the only sound. His breath had grown richer and slower, coming from deep within him; then it would quicken, becoming shallow and catching in a sharp gasp.
What was she doing remembering how he breathed during sex? It had been four years. She should have forgotten. There hadn’t been that many other men, but she couldn’t remember how any of them breathed.
Only Ben.
“Has my grandmother emerged yet?” she asked them. Amanda was with the two men. Clearly they had all been waiting for her.
“No,” Jason said. “But Leilah said that the drinks are in the library and we should help ourselves.”
Along the front of the house, the side that faced the road, were the formal living room, the spacious front hall, the dining room, and the kitchen. Across the back of the house were the room her grandmother now used as a bedroom, a long sitting room, and a paneled library. These rooms faced the lake, and the sitting room, with its three sets of glass-paned French doors, was washed with the late afternoon light. The library was a darker, wood-paneled room. A minute later Colleen’s grandmother swept into the room.
No one could make an entrance like Grannor. She was always perfectly groomed, and her posture was nearly as good as in the portrait from her presentation at the Christmas Cotillion nearly seventy years ago.
Colleen hugged her and gestured for Jason and Amanda to come nearer. Colleen and the others in her generation called their grandmother “Grannor,” a combination of Grandmother and Eleanor, but Colleen introduced her as “Mrs. Ridge.” Probably no one under the age of seventy called her by her first name.
A rimmed silver cocktail tray was on the mahogany center table set with mixers, bottles of spirits, differently shaped glasses…and wine. Knowing that she alone could tease Mrs. Norton W. Ridge IV, Colleen said lightly, “Wine as a cocktail, Grannor?” Her grandfather would not have approved. Wine was to be enjoyed with a meal and only with a meal. Cocktail hour required spirits. “What has happened?”
Grannor waved a hand. “Oh, your grandfather and his rules. Aren’t we women supposed to think for ourselves these days?”
“When have you ever not thought for yourself, Grannor?”
Grannor found that amusing. “I am afraid that your uncle Norton does not value my independent thinking. Now, Colleen, go over and make dear Ben feel welcome while I become acquainted with your two friends.”
“Dear” Ben was in front of the window bench, its worn tapestry cushion newly re-covered in a sage-green chintz. He nodded politely as she approached but said nothing.
He really was an exceptionally good-looking man. She had gotten used to it during their summer together; she had loved him, not his looks. But his etched cheekbones, his thick coppery-black hair, his deep-set green eyes…
Four years ago, the gang at the resort had been playing around with an app that split photos of people’s faces and then mirrored each half so you could see yourself as if you had two right sides or two left sides. One of Colleen’s eyes was slightly farther from her nose than the other, something that no one had ever noticed before or since.
When it was Ben’s turn, everyone tho
ught that the app wasn’t working. It turned out that his face was as perfectly symmetrical as the gorgeous movie stars in the sample photos. No wonder he got more endorsement deals than some of the guys who had many more medals than he did.
Those perfectly spaced eyes seemed cool now, not really looking at her. He was always comfortable standing quietly, but she was not good at silence.
She took a breath and reminded herself that they had more in common, more shared history, than that one summer. Their families were friends. The Healys lived in a slightly larger town ten miles from Carlsville, Grannor’s former home. Ben’s grandfather, father, and now brother had done much of the Ridges’ legal work. The two families didn’t socialize except when Colleen’s family visited from Chicago, and Grannor wanted Colleen’s high-energy brothers slamming doors at someone else’s house.
Their mothers, Mary Pat Ridge and Marianne Healy, had only seen each other once a year, but both had had hearts as warm as their red hair. Colleen’s mother had grown up in a big, noisy Irish-Catholic family, and that was the kind of home Marianne Healy had created for her family. The eight Healys ate in the kitchen, consuming platters of soda bread and lamb stew, big pots of potato soup, and barge-like cuts of corned beef. Mary Pat Ridge was happy to drive the ten miles to the Healys’ rather than have her children spend too much time entombed in a home where there was still a bathroom in the garage for the help.
“It was good of your parents to come to Chicago for my mother’s funeral,” Colleen said to Ben now. We still have this, families who go to each other’s funerals.
Autumn's Child Page 2