After an hour or so, she flagged the waitress and got her check. These agitating thoughts were making it hard to sit still. It had been a long time since Lydia had felt scared about the future. She needed time—time to find new subject matter, a new approach, and a new way to put it all together into novels that would extend beyond genre writing but still reach a sizable audience.
Walking back to her car in the long winter coat that covered her pajamas and an oversized pair of boots, Lydia felt tears rising. Frank would not understand her concerns; he wouldn’t get why she felt both changed and needing change. The circumstances of their lives had been the same for so long: her earning most of their income from the novels, and him playing around with minimal teaching, research, and writing while he examined antiques, fondled Mary Stone Walker’s poems and photographs, and fell in love with his visions of the girl. They had shared fifteen years of that, but it had only become clear to Lydia in the last few months that Frank’s work had slowly morphed into an off-balance obsession.
Together, they had called it dedication and determination, but the situation could be viewed from an entirely different perspective, and that’s where Lydia stood now. Additionally, the conversation with Frank about Jack Kenilworth had given life to a new concern: was he actively avoiding information, or even hiding facts he’d stumbled upon that didn’t fit his theory? There’d been something deeply unsettling about his reaction to Nicholas’s mention of the boatbuilder the other night.
She started her Jeep and headed for the pharmacy. It was time to buy a simple sleep aid and a box of chamomile tea. Theresa Evans’s potion had certainly worked, but the side effect was epic nightmares. White Hill Pharmacy was open all night, and its bright ordinariness was comforting. Lydia looked around for a while but couldn’t find the sleep aids, so she sat down in a blue plastic chair to wait to speak with the pharmacist, who was talking on the phone.
She flicked her eyes toward the man near the gum ball machine by the back door. Something about him was familiar. He had his left ankle propped up on his right knee and was thrumming his fingers in a rapid rhythm on a scuffed, brown leather work boot. His eyes were directed at some vague point directly ahead of him and midway between the floor and the pharmacy counter—as if to avoid her, Lydia felt, tearing her gaze off him.
“May I help you?” the silvery-blond pharmacist asked with head-tilting concern directed at Lydia. Lydia had seen other people at this same store who looked as she most likely did at this moment: downtrodden, homeless perhaps, squashed by life into a jumble of barely functioning body parts and random accessories.
“I’m wondering where your sleep aids are,” Lydia said with overcompensating cheer.
“They should be right down there.” The pharmacist pointed. “Aisle 8. Bottom shelf near the pain medications.”
“Okay, great!” Lydia was about to stand when she noticed that the man by the gum ball machine had turned his head toward her and kept looking. In self-defense, she met his eyes. They were light brown, and the recognition they showed was pleasantly engaging.
“Lydia Milliken? Carroll, I should say?” he asked. When she raised her eyebrows questioningly and smiled, he nodded. “Thought so. It’s been a while.” His identity floated just below the surface of her mind, and when she continued to smile uncertainly, he added, “I’m Jack Kenilworth.”
“Oh wow!” It was as if her thoughts had conjured up Jack Kenilworth’s presence. “What a coincidence!”
“How’s that?”
“I’ve been hearing about you. From my son.” She could not confess that she had been arguing about him with her husband, wondering if Jack really was a liar and what secrets he may have tried to impart to Frank, and basically thinking about Jack more in the last week than she had in all of her life up to that point. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here at the pharmacy? I could ask you the same,” he said lightly, looking at his watch, “seeing as it’s after three in the morning.”
“I’m not sure I could explain why I’m here.” Lydia attempted a friendly smile, a casual shrug. “Maybe to meet you!”
Jack shook his head, leaned back, and set his crossed foot back down on the floor.
“Whoops, what did I say wrong?” Lydia said to his profile, which was looking more and more familiar as memories came into focus. They had been in the same graduating class at White Hill High School, and even though the class size was modest at just under one hundred fifty students, they’d hardly crossed paths. She was the newspaper editor and a theater performer, while Jack was part of the stoner crowd and a state medalist on the cross-country ski team, which no one of any social standing gave a damn about.
“Nothing. It’s just…you,” he said guardedly, as if to keep their conversation from the pharmacist.
“Me? What about me?”
Jack reached inside his coat to his shirt pocket and pulled out a square package of gum. Lydia noticed the word Nicorette before he punched out a piece and slid the package back. So he was a smoker. Still.
“You’re saying one thing,” he answered, “but your eyes have little fireworks going off that suggest something else entirely is going on in your brain. Reminds me of somebody.”
“Who?”
“Your son, of course.”
“I see.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I didn’t know that about myself,” she said.
Jack gave her a brief look of doubt.
“Mr. Kenilworth,” the pharmacist said, holding a white, stapled-shut bag in her left hand as her right keyed information into the cash register. Jack stood up, took a few steps, and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. Without Lydia thinking about it, her eyes grazed slowly along his shoulders and over his back and jeans. He hadn’t changed much since high school, and this gave rise to a faint sensation of desire in Lydia’s chest. She’d seen Jack on occasion over the years but never paid attention, for reasons she could not remember at this moment.
A vision of her own disheveled appearance returned to Lydia’s thoughts. She looked down at her flannel-covered lap and drew her jacket more tightly around herself, just as Jack turned and gave her a two-fingered salute, his body aimed at the exit. She felt a wave of dismay that in a few seconds he would be gone.
“Good to see you,” he said.
“One thing.” She spoke hurriedly, sliding forward on the folding chair. “I want to tell you that Nicholas so enjoys the work you’re having him do.”
“He’s good. Talented.”
“It’s just great for him at this time in his life,” she improvised. “His self-esteem and all… He’s quiet and alone so much these days that I get concerned…” Lydia had no conclusion to this sentence. She tried again. “I mean, I hope…”
Jack crossed his arms and settled back on his right leg, giving a couple of nods. After a moment of silence he said, “Sure. Sure. He’s a good kid.”
“Frank was afraid he might not be up to the task. You know, that Nicholas would disappoint you maybe. And then get disappointed himself.”
Jack seemed to consider this possibility for the first time.
“Frank’s my husband,” she added, half hoping to see an expression on Jack’s face that would indicate he didn’t know him. “Nick’s father.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Do you? Know him?”
“Little bit.”
“How?” The word came out too quickly, too eagerly. Jack gazed at Lydia, and she felt exposed.
“Most people in town know Frank Carroll, or they know of him,” Jack said casually.
Lydia knew this was true but blurted out, “Really?”
“Sure, it’s just…common knowledge. He’s taught, lectured, all that. As you know.” His expression softened. “Most people in town know you, too. You are prominent citizens of White Hill, Michigan.”
/> Lydia’s shoulders relaxed as she laughed, then she slumped back against the hard chair, suddenly tired. “So you don’t really know him, I guess. ‘Know of him’ is what I should have said.”
“Hmm. Maybe I’m starting to see what you mean about coincidence,” Jack said in a more careful tone. “Nicholas and I were just talking about this recently. Did he say something to you?”
Lydia pretended to try to remember, then shrugged and lied. “Don’t think so.”
Jack shifted his jaw and looked at her closely. “Okay. I was, uh”—he laughed—“uncertain about the significance to Nicholas of a few conversations between me and his dad. I don’t want any part in making him uneasy.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Lydia said. So there had been several meetings. “Nick’s always trying to figure out things that…that maybe don’t matter that much. Being an unusually sensitive kid.”
“Guess so. Glad it’s okay, anyway. Catch you later.” His eyes flashed toward the door, then back at Lydia. “You know, you’re welcome to come out to the workshop with your son one of these days. See where he works, what he’s up to.”
“I will.” Lydia smiled at him, stood up, and on an impulse strode to him and stuck out her hand. “Good to see you.”
Jack squeezed it, tipping his head forward. “Get some sleep,” he said in a low voice, pushing open the pharmacy’s back door and turning out into the night.
• • •
In his truck, Jack paused for a moment in the private silence and took a deep breath. “Jesus,” he said. He turned on the ignition and swung around with his arm along the top of the bench seat to back out of the parking space. His eyes searched the narrow lit door of the pharmacy for Lydia, but she was out of view.
It had been some time since he’d been so vividly reminded of the pathetic shyness that had dominated his high school personality, and it irritated the hell out of him. He was a grown man, but a little woman in pajamas with crazy red hair could discombobulate him. He’d fought it, talked when he didn’t want to, while his body pleaded for him to just go outside and wait for his muscle relaxant in the parking lot. After three in the morning, he’d had to run to the drugstore because of the worst back spasms he’d had in years, and Lydia Milliken was there? What were the odds? Reflexively, his hand went to his chest pocket for a cigarette, and he found the Nicorette gum that was supposed to change his life.
“Shit.” He reached the open street and jammed down on the accelerator. It wasn’t as if he’d ever had a thing for her—not really. That is, not obsessively. Although she had certainly caught his eye now and then. Over the last couple of decades when he’d seen her on occasion, she was usually with her lummox husband, and it had been even easier to dismiss observations of her unusual good looks and that intensity she exuded. She was married and thus a nonissue, just like other married women; that was an easy one for him. And Jesus, could the guy she married be any more unlike himself? Jack chuckled and shook his head. So there was no issue, no real issue at all.
He noticed a deer at the side of the road and glanced at the truck clock, then back at the deer, murmuring, “A little early for breakfast, Lady.” His eyes caught the whites of the doe’s eyes as she curled her legs, pulled back her head, and wheeled away from the road into the dark woods. “Good choice.”
Of course Jack knew in his heart that Lydia had not been completely left out of the equation when he’d been trying to decide whether to attend one of Frank’s lectures to talk to him about that search he’d been on for years for Mary Stone Walker writings. Jack had been warned numerous times by other Kenilworths that Mary Stone Walker’s life was no one’s goddamn business, and he agreed.
He respected the local poet for what she had been: a young woman with plenty of talent, a heavy dose of early attention and ego, and her share of problems. An ordinary person, and a dead one at that, so just leave her alone; don’t participate in postmortem gossip. That’s how Jack justified keeping the knowledge he possessed about the poet to himself. The truth would shake things up, make people mad, and then be sensationalized and misused. It would definitely bring new problems to his life.
Local men at the barbershop and the Backroads Bar had described Frank’s protracted quest as “stealing the work of a local girl.” Jack didn’t see it that way, but it still struck him as unseemly somehow. The manner in which the professor talked about Mary Stone Walker and her poetry made Jack suspect that the man was in love with the dead girl, more or less. His idea of her anyway. And therefore mostly interested in his own stories and the way those stories made him feel.
In fact, Frank Carroll’s “passion” was part of his popularity as an interpreter of the poetry. That’s what Jack had heard anyway—that Frank was well known around the state for his “emotional interpretations,” or whatever they were called, and as Jack thought back to the first reading he’d attended, he agreed that the guy was entertaining to watch. He’d also published essays that Jack found faintly interesting, although they contained more speculation than actual knowledge. But bottom line, it was a little weird, being in love with a dead person you’ve never met—more than weird, Jack thought. Fucked up, really. And the guy was married; how’d that square with his wife?
Who cares? he asked himself. Who gives a damn about the fantasies that circulate at Carson Community College, whether they concern inventors, explorers, or poets? Who cares? People conjure shit up if it makes them happy or serves their ends to do so. That’s a fact of life.
But then there was this odd juxtaposition of earnest, hometown Lydia being stuck onto the silly enterprise. She was a better poet than Mary Stone Walker anyway, in Jack’s opinion. He’d read several of her poems at the emotionally raw age of seventeen when they were printed in the school newspaper, and he was so moved by their vividness, particularly the images of Lake Michigan, that he’d thought about telling her. But that was an impulse he’d killed easily enough. At that age, he’d had good instincts and knew he could not afford to get attached to someone like that.
So who was he, Jack Kenilworth, morosely inarticulate, reclusive boatbuilder, to try to correct any notion in the man’s romantic noggin? Who appointed him special guardian of the Truth? Now Nicholas and Lydia were both raising the issue, as if Jack had violated something by trying to talk to the bastard years ago, when he’d only done it out of a sense of…well, pity. He rolled down his driveway, shut off the truck, slammed the door shut behind him, and entered the house.
Okay, fine, he thought, going to the kitchen sink and filling a glass with water to swallow two of the new pills. Mom, Dad, Granddad, they all said to keep your business to yourself, don’t be talking around town about anything unless you wanted it twisted into something else, so fine. Let Frank Carroll and his fans have their version of reality without any input from the people who’d actually known Mary Stone Walker, like the Kenilworths. It works better for them, and the past is dead, so why not? He shook his head wearily, went to bed, and set his alarm clock for six thirty a.m.
“That’s what I get for going into town in the middle of the night,” he said conclusively, as if this admonishment would dismiss the other issues at hand. He lay on his back, staring into darkness as minute after minute turned into an hour and a half. At last, he threw back the covers and turned off his alarm. “Fuck it,” he said, and shoved his legs back into his jeans, pulled on a shirt, went to the kitchen where he started coffee, and left the house.
In the barn, he vigorously swept up sawdust from the board cuts he’d made earlier. When he reached the worktable, next to which hung several photos of family boats from different eras, he stopped and stared for over a minute at the yellowing black-and-white photograph of the Fata Morgana fishing yacht. It was an eight-by-ten glossy print of a shot that his grandfather had taken, and Jack kept it up because the old man had been so proud of that early chapter of his life.
Jack and his father had spent hundreds o
f days helping Granddad with the boat’s maintenance. His father and grandfather could work for sixteen hours straight, stopping only to light cigarettes or swig the thick, black coffee Granddad percolated at dawn. These were three habits—the work, the cigarettes, and the pitch-black caffeine brew—that Jack had picked up by the age of fifteen.
When at last the day’s work was dropped for the night and the men switched from coffee to whiskey, Jack was allowed to break out the sticky, dog-eared deck of cards at the little galley table in the boat, but the longer the night and its whiskey drinking went on, the more they just talked, about everything from boats to White Hill politics.
And Granddad always said, “Folks know they can trust a Kenilworth, boys.” Then he’d add, “But we don’t trust anybody without good reason, Jack. We don’t tell anybody what we say privately, or where to fish or how to think, because people will believe what they want to believe. They will get angry if you try to take their stories away from them because those stories are their personal maps of the world.”
Still, though, why shouldn’t the truth matter? If he was a “trusted Kenilworth,” then how was it right, year after year after year, to allow silly tales to masquerade as reasonable theories, when he—and in this case, he alone—knew they were impossible?
He clipped the broom back into its spot on the cleaning rack, chuckling bitterly. He wanted a cigarette. And he wished he could sit on the deck of the Fata Morgana, heading out into a cold, black predawn world of water with plenty of sleep behind him and those old men to listen to. Hell, the stupid cigarettes were all he had left of them. He gave the fading photograph an accusing glance and sat down to list his tasks for the day.
The Lake and the Lost Girl Page 9
