Beside him in the tree house, she laughed about Helen, about her persistent hatred of her cousin, their rivalry for the mother Lily sometimes thought she also hated. It was confessional; her mother had pointed out just that morning that Lily seemed to have no trouble laughing at things, but was she able to take anything seriously? Lily told him this and told him the answer she hadn’t given her mother: she took seriously the business of going through life without making mistakes.
“That’s a tall order.” His long lashes blinked once, reflectively, as he watched a loon on the lake.
He told her about homeschooling Luke, about the schedule they maintained, and the fact that Luke clung to him even more than Colin did to his son.
Finally, he said, “You haven’t been married.”
It meant something, this question, from him. “Engaged. Twice.”
The twitch of the mouth. “Married to your job?”
“Not.” For the right reason, she could walk away from teaching. Not from the book she hadn’t touched since arriving in Minnesota; that was a commitment on which she must follow through.
“Do you want children?” he asked.
“I like your son.” Lily stood on the plywood roof of the tree house and stretched her arms above her head, thinking that the wind made the trees dance and trying to move like them, swayed by the wind. “Why did you name him Luke?”
“Why do you think?”
She stilled. “Really?”
Colin nodded. “Ryan was a hero. He was on his journey.” Abruptly he put a hand to his face, rubbing his jaw.
“Colin, what caused this break between you and my parents? Really.”
“Well, you know they didn’t forgive me for what happened—Ryan dying. More than didn’t forgive. You remember those few days.”
She did. Her parents had turned on him. Her mother had shouted, And what were you doing, Colin? You’re supposed to be a lifeguard, aren’t you?
“Right,” Lily said. “Did you come back here after that? Before you moved back.”
“No. I did the same as you. Avoided the place like the plague. When Marisa died—things looked different. I came back then. I think your parents resent Luke.”
Colin’s son wasn’t anything like Ryan. Ryan had been dark-haired, awkward, gifted and maniacal. Luke was blond, appealing, athletic and normal.
But perhaps the point was simply that Colin had a son. And, in her parents’ eyes, particularly her mother’s, Colin had cost them a son.
Lily stretched again, swaying like the trees. She had braided her hair before coming over, in part to look as though it didn’t matter to her that she was having dinner at his house.
Now he said, “You’re beautiful. You dance like the trees.” And when they climbed down from the tree house, he went first and then helped her as she came down, barefoot, into his arms, where he kissed her against the trunk, and she felt bark on one side and Colin on the other. He was clean from the shower, but a smell of woodsmoke and raptors lingered around him. His lips against hers said what they both already knew. “You don’t like Santa Barbara that much, anyhow.”
“DO YOU THINK Socrates would like to eat more than one rat a day?” she asked Luke. The pizza wasn’t quite done, so Colin’s son had suggested they go out to the mews to feed the owl.
“We should ask Mosi,” he answered, “but he’ll probably say no. Socrates doesn’t get much exercise, seeing he can’t fly. It changes his metabolism.”
Lily beamed down at him. They’d given Socrates his one rodent and walked down to look at Sharpe, who was Luke’s favorite. “Do you learn about raptors from Mosi? Or when you homeschool?”
“From Mosi. And I read about them.”
They fed the other raptors together, taking them rats, hamsters, mice, rabbits, and in the case of two of the eagles, chickens. Some of the raptors, Luke told her, required specially cooked food. Mosi or Colin or the volunteers fed them.
“Once,” Luke said, “one of the eagles got out and flew up in the trees and we didn’t know where she was. Her wing was mostly better but not all the way healed.”
“How did you find her?”
He walked along beside her, ragdoll-like, blond hair swinging about his elfin face. Green eyes like Colin’s, but he didn’t bear much resemblance to his father. Judging from the exquisite delicacy of Luke’s features, Marisa had been a beautiful woman.
“Well, we used binoculars. We figured she couldn’t have gone far, so we checked in all the nearby trees.”
“Where was she?”
“Right on the tree outside the tree house. We looked all over the place, and that’s where we found her.”
Marisa, Colin had said, had been searching for an escaped bird when she was caught in a flash flood and drowned.
Lily and Luke went outside into the whine of mosquitoes.
“I beat Mosi at chess,” he said. “I’m really good at chess. Sometimes I beat my dad.”
“You’re good at a lot of things.”
“Did you know a boy died in the lake by my tree house there? He drowned. My dad told me.”
The shade from the trees, and that mop of hair, hid his face. They walked back toward the cabin, both barefoot. Lily thought, Colin’s right. I won’t go back to Santa Barbara to live. This is where I belong. These are my people. This is my world. I never want to leave.
“The boy who drowned was my brother. He was two years older than you.”
“Couldn’t he swim?”
“He could swim. I don’t know what happened.” What had Colin told his son about Ryan’s death? “I think he tried to take the canoe out by himself. He must have fallen in the water. I don’t know why he drowned.”
“My dad said his parents were really sad.”
“That’s true.” They still are.
A bell rang—an old-fashioned dinner bell.
“Dinner’s ready,” Luke said. “That’s how he calls me—when I don’t help make dinner, that is. I help lots, especially after we go fishing.”
“Do you like fishing?” Silly question. Everyone in Minnesota liked fishing. That was the point of living there.
“Yeah. I like it when my dad and I get up real early in the morning and go fishing.”
Lily wondered how old Luke had been when his mother died. Three? Four?
“Some night I want your dad to bring you to my parents’ house to meet them.” It was the only way. Because if they spent time with this child they could neither dislike nor resent him.
“I don’t think he gets along with them,” said Luke. “Once your mom and my dad got in a big screaming fight.”
This was the first Lily had heard of it, but she wasn’t surprised.
“What about?”
“Well, your mom was yelling mostly. She said why couldn’t we live somewhere else, and this place smells because of all the birds.”
A valid observation, Lily agreed, but it wasn’t as if her parents could smell the Aerie from their house.
Inside the house, Colin was putting plates on the table. He’d set the table with place mats in earthy colors, mismatched silverware and dish towels for napkins. Lily felt at home. Her own apartment in Santa Barbara was simple. Her things did match. Glasses she loved, heavy light-green glasses, and cotton sheets from Spain. Luxuries that would make her mother sneer. But Colin’s style suited him and the cabin.
“The pizza smells incredible,” she said.
He gave her a quick grin from beneath those bushy eyebrows. His hair still had plenty of wave, which was what she remembered from when they were teenagers together.
Mosi, whistling, glanced between the two of them. “I promised Luke I’d read to him after dinner.”
“And I’m going to read to Lily,” Luke said. He looked up at her. “Can you sleep over?”
“Yeah, can you?” echoed Colin.
Lily bit back a smile. Both invitations touched her. Luke must get lonely. Did he have friends? Someone needs to make sure he has kids to play with—fri
ends his own age.
How strange that Socrates had brought her back to Colin Gardner—and to Luke, who was motherless.
Could I be a stepmother?
She could be this child’s stepmother. She could love him as her own, and in some way she already did.
Colin sat across from her at the table, Luke beside her, Mosi across from Luke. She had the feeling that the vet was an honorary family member.
She asked Colin, “How are you going to do homeschool later on? Could you teach trig? Or chemistry?”
“He’ll probably want to go to school when he gets older.”
Luke shook his head. “No. I want you to teach me, Dad. I always want to be homeschooled.”
Colin smiled and slid another piece of pizza onto Lily’s plate.
WHILE MOSI AND Luke went into Luke’s room to read, Lily filled the sink with warm water and started on the dishes.
Colin, drying beside her, said, “He’ll be out cold about two pages into the chapter they’re reading.”
Lily understood, felt, knew.
She couldn’t look at him.
Mosi emerged from the bedroom. “The sleep of the just. I’m taking off.”
“Glad you came.” Colin stepped away from the sink briefly to embrace Mosi. “Thanks for everything.”
Lily and Mosi said good-night, too, and then she and Colin were alone, with Luke asleep in his own bedroom.
Colin’s arms circled her, enclosed her, his mouth against hers, wanting like hers, exploring like hers. His eyes asked. His eyes knew her answer. Entwined, they stumbled, hugging, never stopping, to his bedroom and to the soft depth of the flannel-covered bed.
AFTERWARD, AFTER THEY’D MADE LOVE, they played a game of chess on the bed.
“Your parents will never accept me,” Colin said. “Or Luke.”
“They will. Eventually. It might take some time to sort out. That’s all.”
“If you had to choose, what—who—would you choose?”
Lily was her parents’ last remaining child; much as her mother liked to pretend that Helen was the perfect daughter, she wasn’t Marie’s daughter at all. Lily was. “I don’t think I’ll have to choose.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to. I’ve never wanted to marry again because I knew I’d never love someone as much as I love my son. But I feel differently with you. You feel more like—part of the family. Part of me. Maybe part of him.”
“I don’t like the idea of people needing to choose between people they love.” She imagined her mother demanding that she choose between the Morans and the Gardners. The scenario was so plausible that it sent a chill through her. “Love is bigger than that. If love is big enough that I’d be willing to risk sharing my life with a child who swings around in trees—a child as fragile as any human—” as fragile as Ryan “—then love is big enough that I’ll never have to choose between my family of origin and you and Luke.”
Colin didn’t answer, but his eyes were so steady she knew they saw her mother more clearly than she, Lily, ever had.
CHAPTER FIVE
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”
It was two in the morning. Lily thought she’d been quiet entering the house, carrying treasures from Colin: a volume of his poetry entitled Skywalker and a photograph of Luke. The light over the stove was on, and she’d assumed her parents and Helen and Bert had gone to bed.
So her mother stepping out of the shadows at the foot of the staircase startled her. Marie wore a pair of loose cotton pants and a flannel shirt with the tails out, probably what she’d worn to bed. She looked as though she hadn’t slept. Her gray hair was down, and her feet were bare and looked like an old person’s feet, the nails yellowed. She reminded Lily of the raptors.
“I was at Colin’s.”
“I don’t need to ask what you were doing there till two in the morning.”
Good. Don’t. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Wake me? I haven’t slept. Is this what’s going to happen for the rest of the only visit you’ve made to Camp Boreal in twenty-five years? Going out to dinner with him and coming back at two in the morning or not at all? Helen and Bert wanted to spend time with you,” she hissed, “but you didn’t think about that.”
The onslaught of words seemed endless. Her mother talking about her “visit” on top of a different picture painted by Colin. How would Marie react if Lily told her she was considering spending the rest of the summer at the lake, to finish her book, not at Camp Boreal but at the Aerie? Add her own doubts about being a suitable guardian for Luke—not doubts that she could do it but a sense of vigilance that overwhelmed her. She could be a good stepmother. When, in twenty-five years, had she ever glanced away from duty? No accident would befall Luke on her watch—if Colin let her rewrite the rules of the Aerie.
She and Colin barely knew each other, yet they seemed to have known each other forever. Lily had never felt so comfortable with another person.
But the biggest issue, the greatest barrier, to her happiness with Colin and Luke was her parents.
They’ll never forgive us. Colin and her together.
“Whatever you do,” her mother said, “don’t bring him over here.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
Marie stared. “You don’t have to be sorry for me. I just don’t care to see the person who’s responsible for Ry—it took a lot of nerve for him to move up here, as though we wanted him. He had to know we didn’t.”
“How could he know that when you continue to live here? Isn’t the lake itself reminder enough? And does he remind you of Ryan’s dying any more than you’re reminded every morning when you wake up? I know you never forget, and you shouldn’t. You can’t. I know you can’t.” It was too late at night. I shouldn’t be saying these things.
“Well, it’s easy to see where your sympathies lie,” her mother remarked dryly.
“With you. Not just because you lost your little boy, my brother, but because you’re choosing not to forgive Colin, and it wasn’t even his fault. It was mine. It was entirely mine.”
“And I forgive you, Lily, and I forgive him. I just don’t like him. And that’s my prerogative. His poetry’s terrible, and so are his photographs.”
Neither Colin nor Luke had mentioned photographs, but one of the volumes in Luke’s room had included some, and she’d seen others at Colin’s house. He must sell those, too.
“It’s just self-serving,” Marie continued. “Supposedly he puts out those little books to benefit that place, but they probably cost more to publish than he makes from them. Tourists are the only ones who buy that stuff.”
“I like them.”
Her mother stared. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you? After using two wonderful men, promising to marry them and breaking the engagement and their hearts—yes, Drake called and told us how you’ve treated him. He’ll still have you back. Now, you’re going to do something absurd like marry Colin Gardner.”
She’d said his name, but it didn’t sound like progress. A twinge of hurt gathered in Lily’s heart. “Wouldn’t you like to have me closer?”
In the midst of her own bitterness, Marie saw her daughter’s face. She put a hand to her own. “Yes. Yes. Yes, I would. But why him, Lily? Why are you doing this to us?”
“I didn’t mean it to happen, and I didn’t expect it to. And maybe it’ll come to nothing.” But she knew the lie as she uttered it. Because she could still see Colin’s open face, his pure eyes beneath bushy eyebrows. She remembered the easy comfort of lying beside him, and she’d seen winter nights ahead spent the same way. And snowshoeing and cross-country skiing and ice fishing and reading with Luke, teaching Luke math, shining light on the wonder of numbers, illuminating learning for him.
Her mother studied her face. Unexpectedly, she turned and held the end of the mast that served as the staircase railing.
Lily waited for her to speak.
“I suppose next thing you’re going to ask if he can come tomorrow.”
&n
bsp; To scatter Ryan’s ashes.
“No. I wasn’t.” It felt like a lie. Lily swallowed, then stepped forward and hugged her mother. “Mom, I wish Ryan hadn’t died. I keep remembering things about him…. I’m so sorry, Mom. I failed. I’m never going to fail like that again.”
“I know that. It’s not a worry I have.” Her glare was unutterably weary and bitter as an ax blade. “He’ll never be part of our family, so don’t even try. If you want to be involved with him, that’s up to you, but I’ll never accept him. If not for him, Ryan would still be alive.”
There was a nasty truth in it, a selfish truth, but it wasn’t a selfishness Lily could deny her parents. Still, she pointed out, “If not for me, Ryan would be alive.”
“I wish his aunt and uncle had never brought him here.” Her mother went on as though she hadn’t heard. “He was a troublemaker, kicked out of one school one year and another the next.”
“Mom, he’s forty-one years old.”
“Character is formed early.”
Lily hitched her purse over her shoulder and made a movement to start up the stairs.
“Of course, he may never marry again,” Marie said. “She was the mother of his child, after all. On the other hand, he may be looking for a woman to raise his son.”
“No, he’ll just sell us both into slavery, Mom.” Satisfied with the sarcasm of her parting words, Lily did mount the stairs.
“He’ll never be welcome under this roof,” followed her up.
When Lily reached her room, the room with the photograph of Ryan and her in the fall leaves, she shut the door and sank down on the bed in tree-shaded moonlight.
It came before her eyes so strongly it was almost as though it was happening again. Her mind, that seemed to have completely forgotten details, suddenly saw the house as it had been twenty-five years before, heard Ryan yelling, I don’t want to go.
Go with your sister.
And Lily had said, Mom, I told you last night that Colin asked me to go across the lake.
And why can’t you take your brother?
25 Years Page 14
