Questions, way too many of them, had begun to bubble to the surface since he’d seen Amy. He wasn’t quite sure how to squelch the wondering of what had happened to her, so he allowed the thoughts to pass through. There was one thing he had decided—he was not going to the lake house and pretending for an entire weekend that he didn’t care about Amy and what had happened between them, that there weren’t decayed years of betrayal between them.
He kicked at his briefcase, pushed it away from the spot on the hardwood floor where he always laid it, as if this would change something, anything.
Eliza walked into the kitchen, as he knew she would, and kissed him on the cheek. “How was work today?”
“It totally sucked.”
She spun on her heels. “What?”
“Nothing—it was fine, honey.”
“What are you working on right now?” The all-white, all-straight smile was back on her face.
“Candler Enterprises wants to develop that tract of land over by the plantation. We own the timber. I’m evaluating the land.” This would be enough to stop the questions; anything having to do with a prestigious company or enterprise would change the subject.
“Oh, that’s great, honey. Hopefully you can still get off early on Friday to head for the lake. I’d like to get there before the Reynoldses and clean up.”
Nick looked back down at the mail, opened a letter. “I don’t think I can get away this weekend. Y’all have a great time.”
“No way. You’re not getting out of this. I can’t entertain their entire family for the weekend without you. You know I can’t handle the boat and all that stuff. You are going. Remember, this is why you work for the family company. So you can get away when you want.” She reached over and rubbed his arm.
“That is not why I work for the family company. And I just can’t go this weekend. Too much to—”
“Do?” She lifted her palms up, raised her eyebrows. “You can do it on Monday.”
He slammed the mail on the counter. “I don’t want to go this weekend. Can’t that just be enough?”
“No, it can’t. What is your problem? You met these people for one afternoon—they couldn’t have made you mad in such a short time. Come on.”
He hadn’t thought this far ahead. Excuses—he needed them and he didn’t have them. At least not any she’d want to hear.
“Answer me. Is it the Reynoldses? I have never, ever seen you not want to go to the lake house—it’s your favorite place.”
“Drop it. Please. I can’t go this weekend. I’m buried.”
“Then bring your work with you.”
“Damn! Don’t you ever give up?”
“God, what did these people do to you? Date your precious daughter? What did you think—that she’d never fall in love?”
“Jack seems like a very nice guy.”
“Do you know something about him that I don’t?”
He picked up his briefcase, then turned to walk out of the kitchen. “What’re the dinner plans? The boys home?”
“Can’t you hear them?”
He glanced up to the ceiling. “Yeah—just wondered if they were staying for dinner.”
“Don’t you dare change the subject on me. Reynolds, Reynolds—I’m trying to place their name, figure out what they’ve done to you to make you not want to go to your favorite place.”
Nick continued walking.
“Phil Reynolds. Hmm . . . never heard of him. Jack Reynolds . . . did he get into some kind of trouble? Amy Reynolds . . . I only know one other Amy.”
He froze, but didn’t turn. Stop, he begged inside his head. Stop now. But she never did. Eliza was relentless in all she did; this single-mindedness was one of the many complex reasons he was here—carrying a briefcase down a polished pine-paneled hallway to his tray-ceilinged bedroom with the floral wallpaper.
A hand gripped his shoulder. He turned and realized he hadn’t taken another step—waiting for the revelation. There was a certain dull-edged fear in the approaching subject of why he didn’t want to go to the lake. The air was full of some magnolia-like smell not found in nature, and it was making him nauseous: some arrangement sprayed with fragrance in the foyer. “Those flowers stink.” Nick pointed to the silk flowers. Please change the subject. Please.
“Please tell me this is not the Amy. No.”
He closed his eyes.
“You would’ve told me—that day, right? You wouldn’t have waited until I figured it out for myself. There is no way my daughter is dating her son. God, no.”
He nodded.
Eliza dropped her face into her hands. “This is like having a recurring bad dream that you think has stopped and then—bam—there it is again.” She turned away from him, her shoulders dropped—her precursor to crying.
“Eliza, don’t start.”
When he reached out to touch her back, she looked at him. Her face changed immediately from brittle with threatening tears to stone-hard determination. “Okay—here’s the deal. We’ll go to the lake, have a good time, show her that we’re fine and leave. We will not discuss Costa Rica, or what happened, or where we’ve been and why. The end.”
Eliza, God bless her soul, had written the end of the story before he’d even found the beginning.
“Did you hear me?” She punctuated her question with her hands thrust forward.
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’re showing her that we are fine. If you don’t go—she’ll think she still has some . . . power over you.”
“I’m not going.”
He walked toward the bedroom. She grabbed his arm. “Yes, we are.”
“Stop this.”
Now the tears came, and the guilt surrounding his inadequacy to stop them—and his responsibility for them—passed over him.
“You have to go. And you should’ve told me, Nick. You should’ve told me it was her. I would have never invited her to the lake.”
He walked through the French doors to the bedroom, then sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen, I didn’t say anything because there was no need to dredge it all up. And I figured this guy would go by the wayside like all Lizzie’s boyfriends. I didn’t know you’d invite them to the lake.”
“God, and I really liked them.”
“Of course you did. They seem like nice people. But I see no reason to spend an entire weekend with them.”
“You’re not going because you still care . . . that she never . . .” She swiped at the betraying tears.
He touched her face and wiped a tear from her chin. “I’m not going because I don’t care, and I don’t want to spend the weekend with them.”
What he spoke wasn’t the complete truth, but there was no reason to hurt Eliza with an explanation of the hunger pangs just beginning inside him that he hadn’t felt in years—the need for something beyond what he had now. He couldn’t name it anyway—this want, this desire for who he used to be, for what he’d dreamed, for what he’d meant to do, and of course, for who he was supposed to be with. All that was stolen in Costa Rica, and looking at the past—and feeling the emotions of that loss—had little use in his present life.
“Then go for me, Nick. If you don’t care about them, at least go for me. I can’t take back the invitation,” Eliza pleaded.
Nick grasped her hand. “I don’t know. I really am buried with work and—”
She turned her back on him, mumbled to herself as she walked into the bathroom. He couldn’t understand what she said—something about paying. But he didn’t know who was paying—him, Eliza, or Amy—or what they were paying for. And he definitely didn’t want to ask.
Chapter Six
Trees flew past the car window like toothpick replicas of pines in one of Amy’s kids’ school projects. The sky was so blue, an aqua more appro
priate to summer than to late fall. The drive to the Lowry lake house passed in silence—not a normal state for the family that thrived on chatter, interruption and debate. Nothing this week had seemed normal, and Amy longed for just one moment of feeling like she had the morning she’d packed the SUV for the football game, the morning before Nick reappeared.
Molly pouted because this lake trip was causing her to miss a huge “seniors only” party that she’d been invited to. Amy had been tempted to let Molly stay home until she remembered the position she’d assumed with Eliza on the benefits of family togetherness. Phil drove the SUV immersed in his own thoughts of “something at work.” He was so preoccupied with it these days, on the cusp of earning the promotion he’d been striving toward for years, and Amy didn’t want to interrupt him. For once his distraction meant more than being ignored; it allowed her to wallow in her own thoughts without interference.
Phil turned the SUV down a long dirt road, with too-cute signs pointing the way to “Lowry Lake House.” Each sign had a fish, a hook, a fishing pole or some other lake accent etched in pine—no need for the printed directions lying on the console.
“What adorable signs,” Amy said, breaking the silence with the acidic tone of sarcasm.
“They bother you?”
She turned to see if Phil was picking a fight, if he was serious. But only the normal preoccupied sweet smile that let her know he was on her side—even when not fully there—lay on his face. Since she had no real answer, nothing to defend herself with, she only poked at his side and turned to see what Molly thought.
Molly was in the backseat, her head cocked to the left, her mouth slack in innocent sleep. The image of her as a toddler, propped in the car seat with her pacifier and stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh, brought a flash of tears to Amy’s eyes. Her beautiful family. How could she let images of Nick intrude on this? She pushed the small black button to roll down the car window, scrubbed at her eyes.
She pushed her head out the window, like their old dog, Duke, and let the pure mountain air clean her face, her eyes, her mind. Duke—what a faithful and sweet dog he’d been. Why had they never bought another? Oh yeah, Phil had said there was enough to do around the house without training another dog.
A burst of anger at Phil surprised her. It was unwarranted: an uncontrolled flash. She pushed the emotion down. She’d agreed—no more dogs. She almost always agreed with Phil. She was the one who’d given the kids the lecture about how few years they had left at home, and who would be the one to take care of the dog after that? She hadn’t been angry about it then. Or had she? Her emotions confused her, the years melding; what had she felt then? Now?
She inhaled the wet and cleansing mountain air that was thinner up here; it was weightless compared to the cloying air of the city, of the beach, of home, yet carried in it so much more. They’d discussed this once, the character of the air—why it was different and how it made them feel. She pulled her head back inside the car, pushed her hair from her mouth.
Phil looked at her. “You trying to knock yourself out on a pine tree to avoid the weekend?”
“Very funny. I’m just feeling a little carsick. Phil, do you remember when we talked about the air? How light it is in the mountains, but at the same time it carries so much more in it . . . weighty but not . . .” She looked out the window. “I’m trying to remember what we were saying . . . why.”
Phil looked straight at her; she felt his eyes on her and turned to him. She had his full attention, so she tried to string together an explanation—words that would only have made sense if one had been there for the original discussion. She wanted, desperately wanted, him to remember. It had been an amazing day. She felt it without seeing it. Cool autumn air, a tent, dew in her hair, cold noses, sleeping bags. No . . . it was one sleeping bag.
Nick. Shit, shit. It was Nick.
“What’re you talking about?” Phil turned back to the windshield.
“Nothing . . . nothing. It’s colder up here, isn’t it? I hope I brought enough sweaters, sweatshirts. I packed for the weather at home . . . not here.” She was talking too fast.
“Ame, are you okay?”
She grasped the directions from the console and used them as an anchor to the present, yanking herself away from the memory. “Phil, whoa, stop. There it is. The house on the left.” She held up the detailed directions, the paper the most important thing now. “Turn there. It’s that house, there on the left.”
Phil stopped the car, stared at her.
“We don’t have to go, Ame. We can call and tell them Molly’s sick. Anything. We don’t have to go.”
“We don’t?” She laughed, pointed to Eliza in her jeans and white cotton blouse waving them down. “She’s making sure we’re punctual.”
Eliza looked light enough to be blown off the porch by the slight wind shivering the trees, sending the last of the reddened leaves to the ground.
Molly awoke in the backseat. “Mom, Dad . . . hello. That lady is waving at you.”
“We know, baby. Back up, Phil.”
Nick appeared on the porch in a pair of jeans standing with his legs spread wide as if he were straddling something. A beer bottle dangled from his left hand as he attempted to button a flannel shirt and hold the beer at the same time. He looked like a frat boy at a party after the alumnae had left. He closed the last button of his shirt and waved, but not before Amy noticed the cleft of his chest that had once been her pillow.
Phil backed up, then pulled into the driveway. Three cars stood parked in the pine straw: a Dodge pickup splattered in mud and leaves, a white Mercedes without even a pinecone to mar its surface, and Jack’s red Jeep off to the side under a shedding oak. Amy had no problem guessing which car was Nick’s and which was Eliza’s.
She waved to Nick and Eliza on the porch through the protection of her car window. Eliza pushed Nick’s beer down and gestured for Amy and Phil to come up to the porch. Nick wouldn’t tolerate Eliza pushing down his beer, would he? Amy waited for him to dump the beer on Eliza, to entangle the barley and hops in her pencil-sketched ponytail; but of course he didn’t.
Phil turned and smiled at her. “And the weekend begins.”
She grabbed Phil’s hand. “It’s only two days. Come on. At least we can spend the weekend with Jack. Let’s have fun.”
Phil leaned across the console and kissed her—a totem, she hoped, against evil.
Molly opened the car door. “Gross . . . Dad. Let’s go.”
Amy turned and smiled at Molly. Parental affection was high on the disgusting factor for her, but Amy knew it made Molly feel protected and part of a family.
The Lowry house curled to the left and right in cedar-shake nooks and dormers on a lot nestled at the end of a cove, a coveted spot on the lake. The porch wrapped around the house from front to back, the sides screened in for the mosquito-laden summer afternoons. Phil, Amy and Molly climbed the steps to the front porch, then appropriately greeted and hugged everybody, curt embraces of uncomfortable unfamiliarity. Amy did not look directly at Nick—at all.
The men descended the steps to retrieve the bags and Eliza walked Amy through the house, giving her a tour.
Amy stopped in the living room with the hand-hewn beams running across the vaulted ceiling. “Eliza, this house is just gorgeous, but I’ve got to get some fresh air—those winding roads kill me. I get so carsick.”
Eliza held her hand over her stomach. “Oh, I’m so sorry—I don’t get motion sickness, but I hear it’s a lot like morning sickness, which I had with all three of Nick’s and my children.”
“Oh.” Amy’s nausea increased.
Eliza pointed to the French doors that ran along the back of the living room. “You can go out to the deck—walk down to the lake if you want. I’ll show you the rest of the house later.”
“Thanks, Eliza. I’ll be right back.” She walked past Eliza and out to the back deck, down the st
airs to stand on an elaborate dock system that stretched across the water—a sprawling monstrosity that loomed over the cove with a slide, a diving board, Jet Ski and boat notches.
She lifted her face to the sun, let its warmth ease her receding headache. Nick appeared on the upper deck of the back porch; he stared down at her, his beer poised on the edge of the cut-log railing, his smile aimed at her.
“What?” she said, suddenly self-conscious, girlish. She almost giggled, wondering where all the anger she once felt toward him had gone.
“I knew you’d love it here. You love the mountains.” He descended the stairs to the lower deck. She heard the unspoken, I know what you like. I know you. His bark-colored hair was too long and it rode the waves of the breeze as he came near her. It sent shivers of more than the coming wind down her legs. Her body moved, swayed to the old rhythm: the dance begun without the touch. She looked for Phil, for Eliza—for some hope of being saved from this uncontrollable movement.
“Where are the kids?” she asked. “And where is my beer?” Step one, move two in the dance.
Nick laughed, full, head back. Amy’s stomach rolled with the familiar sound of joy.
“The kids are out on the lake and . . . voilà.” He pulled an Amstel Light from the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Yours.”
“Thank you, sir.” She smiled; her lips shook.
“Hmm. You don’t look like you mean that.”
Amy damned her quivering smile.
“I’m fine. I just got a little carsick on the way here . . . need some fresh air.”
Losing the Moon Page 5
