Lakeside Cottage

by Susan Wiggs

  Six

  When Kate and Callie went out into the yard, Aaron was running circles around JD, talking a mile a minute. JD looked a bit discomfited by the boy’s enthusiasm. Possibly he was already regretting having stopped by.

  Seeing Aaron’s efforts to get the man’s attention, Kate felt a familiar pang. Aaron wanted a father in the worst way. He always had. As a toddler, he sometimes tried to wander off in the mall or at a baseball game, and she’d catch him trying to follow random men around, imprinted like a duck.

  The way he emulated the stranger suggested just a hint of hero worship. As far as Kate could tell, JD was Aaron’s ideal in faded work pants and Wolverine boots. He had a pickup truck and a chain saw. What more could a boy want?

  She caught herself staring at his shoulders. They were broad without being bulky, and he moved with a certain athletic ease, suggesting a natural fitness rather than some kind of intensive training. There was something about JD. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. His careless choice of clothes suggested a lack of vanity, yet he bore himself with a curious dignity.

  “Hello,” she called, motioning for Callie to join her. “How is the victim?”

  JD turned to her, and her heart flipped over. It was crazy, he wasn’t her type at all, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Okay, she thought, studying his hair, so it wasn’t a mullet. Just long hair, and like Brad Pitt’s in his best movies.

  “The volunteers at the wildlife rehab place think he’ll make a recovery.” He indicated his truck. “I washed out your cooler.”

  “Thanks. JD, this is Callie Evans. She’s going to be staying with us.”

  Aaron’s eyebrows lifted almost comically, but he made no comment.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  Callie blushed and looked bashful. Kate wondered if, given her background, the girl had issues with men.

  “JD, you want to check out the dock?” Aaron had a fascination with the dock and the water. “You, too, Callie.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Is it deep enough to dive off the end?”

  “Yep. My cousins used to dive off it all the time.”

  “What about you?”

  “Nope.” Aaron’s cheeks reddened, but he didn’t explain further. Kate suspected he couldn’t. He didn’t have the vocabulary to put his emotions into words. Maybe, she thought, just maybe this would be the summer he’d finally swim.

  Callie gave the dog a wide berth. “A kayak,” she said, lifting the tarp that covered a long, narrow boat. “You ever go out in it?”

  “All the time,” Aaron said, clearly loving the attention. “It’s a two-man, see?”

  Despite his refusal to learn to swim, he loved boats and always had. The ferries of Puget Sound, a Zodiac raft, anything that would float appealed to him, bringing him close to the thing he dreaded.

  “Maybe we could take it out,” Aaron suggested.

  “Of course we’ll take it out,” Kate assured him. She was determined for this to be a fun summer for him even though his cousins wouldn’t be around.

  Aaron showed off the kayak, which had been around since powerboats had been banned from the lake years before. Kate stood back and watched him, this boy whose teachers said he was a poor student with poor skills of self-control, as he effortlessly went through the attributes of the boat.

  They had never met two strangers in one day, Kate reflected. And certainly they’d never encountered a teenage runaway and a quiet but unexpectedly interesting guy. Now she watched him next to her son, and he was patient and respectful in a way that appealed to her deeply.

  Most men she met lost interest as soon as they discovered she had a child, or as soon as they discovered Aaron’s rambunctious nature. So far, this one seemed to be all right with her son’s constant chattering. He seemed to be sensitive to Callie, too, Kate noticed. He gave the girl plenty of space, didn’t ask her a lot of questions.

  A sensitive diamond in the rough. Right here on the shores of Lake Crescent. Who knew?

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, Kate, she thought. All he did was borrow your ice chest.

  Aaron, on the other hand, seemed to have no reservations. “So you want to go kayaking right now, or after dinner?” he asked.

  “Maybe another time.”

  He was diplomatic, thought Kate. He seemed to sense that you didn’t just paddle out onto a remote glacial lake with a child you’d only just met.

  A look of disappointment clouded Aaron’s face. Then Bandit came back from some inexplicable dog’s errand. He was flecked with twigs and sticker burrs and panting hard. Callie scooted away from him again, though she tried to be discreet about it.

  “Well,” said Kate. “I need to finish putting things away…”

  JD seemed to catch her tone. “I should get going, too.”

  “Aw, come on,” Aaron said. “Stick around awhile.”

  “I’ll see you around the lake,” JD assured him. “Thanks again, Kate. See you, Callie. Take care of yourself.”

  She frowned at him suspiciously. “Sure.”

  Aaron walked with JD to his truck, bouncing along beside him as if he were a ball and JD was dribbling him. “Hey, guess what? When I was six, I walked the whole Spruce Railroad Trail all by myself.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yep. There are mountain bikes in the shed. Five of them. Want to go mountain biking?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “This is a really cool truck,” Aaron said, speeding ahead, scrambling up over the tailgate. “Is this the Schroeders’ truck?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m borrowing it for the summer. The Schroeders live on the East Coast now.”

  “Hey, my cousins moved to the East Coast.” Aaron started bouncing again. “All four of them. That’s all I have. Four cousins. No brothers or sisters. You got kids?”

  Way to go, Aaron, thought Kate, holding her breath as she waited for his answer.

  “Nope,” JD said easily, taking his keys out of his pocket.

  “You married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Seeing anybody special?”

  “Aaron.” Kate couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I was just trying to figure out all the stuff you’d want to know anyway,” Aaron said, then turned again to JD. “If we were in the city, she would Google you on the Internet, but there’s no Internet here.”

  “All right, buddy,” she said. “Why don’t you go make yourself useful and stop embarrassing me in front of company.”

  He saluted her and sped off, waving to JD.

  “Sorry about that,” she said as he got into his truck.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He propped his elbow on the window frame. He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but he stayed silent for a few beats, staring out across the lake. His arm still rested easily on the edge of the window as though he was in no hurry to leave. “Do you really do that, look people up on the Internet?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “I figure if I need to know something about a person, I just ask.”

  “What a concept.”

  “Like what about Aaron’s father?”

  “I beg your pardon?” She’d heard him perfectly well, but she needed to stall and reel in her thoughts.

  “How does he fit into the picture?”

  Oh, gosh, she thought. This is Date Talk.

  “He doesn’t,” she replied. “Never has.” Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “Why do you ask?”

  “Why do you think I asked?” He still hadn’t smiled at her, but she caught a glint of humor in his eyes. At least, she thought it was humor.

  When he looked at her like that, she felt a tug of…she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Recognition? How could that be? They’d never met before. Had they?

  She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. What was it about him? Besides the fact that underneath the scruffy exterior, he had definite potential.

  “I think you asked because you’
re interested in me,” she said. “Am I right?”

  “Lady, a guy would have to be comatose not to be interested in you,” he said, sounding annoyed. Then he started up the truck. The radio station—KXYZ out of Seattle, the only one that came in reliably at the lake—blared news at the top of the hour. He shut it off, gave her a wave and drove away.

  She stood looking after him for a long moment. “Then why don’t you look happier about meeting me?” she asked no one in particular.

  Seven

  Each year after she got to the lake, it always took Kate a few days to decompress. She still tended to wake up and spring out of bed, already making a mental to-do list. Back in the city, it was likely to be a lengthy one: her deadlines at work and any number of errands, appointments and notes to herself about Aaron. Looking after her son meant checking his schoolwork, making his lunch and organizing his backpack, driving carpool. After school, the schedule was packed with karate, Cub Scouts, homework and playdates.

  Playdates. Now there was a concept, she thought. Sadly, Aaron’s dating life was more successful than her own. Other kids liked him even if their mothers thought he was a terror.

  On their third morning at the lake, she got up and put the kettle on for tea. No coffee here. Coffee meant rush hour and work and stress. Tea meant serenity.

  She was determined not to rush or to allow herself to get frantic about being jobless. She had a decent income from the Seattle properties. Her father had left her a wonderful legacy. If she was careful, she could get by for a long while without her salary from the paper. What she missed, though, was her identity. Writing defined who she was. She wanted to feel like herself again, producing copy, getting it published.

  Stop, she told herself. You’ve got the whole summer to figure this out. Taking a deep breath, she looked out at the lake. Just the sight of it calmed her. Clear and flat as a mirror, the surface of the water reflected the surrounding mountains covered in evergreens, some with tiny veins of snow hiding in the topmost crevices. She checked the temperature—51 degrees at 7:30 a.m. Perfect. Maybe she’d take Aaron and Bandit for a hike later.

  As they had so often over the past few days, her thoughts drifted to JD Harris. Thinking about him was probably a bad idea, yet that was exactly where her undisciplined mind went. At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, she was still softhearted and romantic, capable of imagining what it was like to have a love affair or even a full-blown relationship, to plan a future with someone. While her friends at college had partied, falling in and out of love with the seasons, Kate had gestated. After Aaron was born, she’d lactated. She’d been much more productive than her friends. But she had never flung herself into an affair. As a single mom, she didn’t have time for that.

  Still, a girl could dream, and Kate did. She wondered what was going on with JD Harris—who he was, how he had come to be here at the lake. She had definitely sensed a spark of interest between them. He’d said so, though she couldn’t be sure whether he was joking or not.

  Though he’d made no promises, she’d half expected him to come calling.

  But when in her life had she not been disappointed by a man?

  The kettle rattled on the burner, and she turned off the flame before the whistle blew. A few minutes later she settled down with her tea and opened her laptop at the old-fashioned desk in the corner. Yesterday she’d composed a note to an old friend. Tanya Blair was a friend from college, a resounding success story from the UW’s School of Communications. She worked as an editor at Smithsonian Magazine, and she was Kate’s first and best prospect. It was quite a leap from local weekly to a national magazine, but Kate decided to think big. In the past, she’d tried thinking small, aiming low, and look where that had landed her.

  She read over the note, and when she was satisfied with it, she printed out the letter, folded it and put it in an envelope. She felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Though she’d told Tanya her pen was for hire, she had no material to offer. Not yet, anyway. She needed to write, that was true, but she wasn’t sure what to write.

  A few minutes later, Callie came shuffling out, dressed for the day in her customary sweats. Her face was puffy from sleep. “Morning,” she said, stifling a yawn.

  “Hi,” said Kate. “Tea?”

  “I think I’ll go straight for breakfast,” Callie said, helping herself to a bowl of Total. She held out the box to Kate, who shook her head.

  “I’ll wait for Aaron,” Kate said.

  Callie indicated the window. “He’s been waiting for you.” On the lawn, he and Bandit were playing tug-of-war with what she hoped was an old towel.

  “I didn’t even hear him get up.” Kate shook her head. “So what’s on your agenda for today?”

  “Yolanda is picking me up. We’ve got three houses to do on Lake Sutherland.” She grimaced. “I so don’t feel like working.”

  She looked a bit peaked, Kate observed, though there was nothing wrong with her appetite. Teenagers, Kate thought. They stayed up too late, no matter what time they had to get going in the morning. Kate had no complaints about the girl, though. She helped around the house, Aaron adored her and she seemed to be behaving herself.

  She poured a second helping of Total and noticed Kate watching her. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “I’m getting fat as a pig.” But she added milk and sugar anyway. “What about you? Do you have plans today?”

  “I might take Aaron hiking up to Marymere Falls. Have you seen it?”

  “No. I’ve heard it’s pretty up there. Maybe I could go on my day off.”

  “I should also get some work done,” Kate said, glancing at the silent black rectangle of the laptop.

  “Have you figured out what you’re going to write yet?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas.”

  “I still think you should do Walden Livingston,” Callie said. “He’s like, this totally famous cult guy.”

  “I know. He still gets mail from some of his fans,” Kate said. “Just a few, every year.”

  “He’s the reason I picked this house to stay in, you know,” Callie said. “When I saw the Annie Leibovitz photo of him and figured out that this was his place, I was totally blown away. His books are, like, sacred to people who care about the earth.”

  Kate never failed to be startled by this girl. She was a combination of streetwise runaway and naive idealist, incredibly well read in some areas and completely ignorant in others. “Not many young people are aware of Walden Livingston. How did you hear of him?”

  “I was placed with a couple who made environmentalism, like, their whole life, and old Walden was their number one man. They had a signed copy of the book he wrote and a book of his collected quotations. You know, ‘Leave no trail for a future traveler, let him find his own way’ and all that. Did he really talk like that?”

  Kate rested her chin in her hand and studied the Leibovitz portrait, which hung on the wall by the door. The picture captured the twinkle in his eye, the dramatic sweep of his snowy hair, which he’d told her was once as red as her own. His face had a geography as distinctive as the land itself, and Leibovitz’s eye brought that out. I miss you, she thought, then turned to Callie. “I’m not even sure he said all those things.”

  “Did he seem, like, completely different from other people, in real life?”

  “Good question.” Kate smiled, remembering. “Maybe he did. To me, he was just Grandpa. That’s about as special as it gets for a kid.”

  “I’ve only met my grandparents one time.”

  “Do you think you’d like to visit them again one day?”

  Callie took a big bite of cereal and regarded Kate with wariness.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Kate said.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I’m curious, I admit it. I want to know about your life.”

  Callie considered this for a moment. She set down her spoon and pushed the bowl away. “Here’s what I know about my grandparents, the ones on my mother’s side. They never did
find my dad, so his parents were out of the question. When Brother Timothy got busted and the commune broke up, my mom and I came to Washington. She was so broke, she went to her folks in Tacoma and just ditched me there. Didn’t even say goodbye or say where she was going.”

  Kate ached for her. “I’m sorry, Callie.”

  The girl shrugged. “No big deal. I’m totally over it. Anyway, they called CPS—Child Protective Services. They said they couldn’t take me. I bet your grandfather wasn’t like that.”

  “No,” Kate said. “He was…magical. I feel so lucky to have known him.”

  “Did you know he was different?”

  “I don’t think I really concerned myself with his life’s work. I know he had a lot of demands on his time. He traveled pretty much all during the school year.” She went to the bookcase and got a leather-bound album, the one devoted to her grandfather’s career.

  Together, she and Callie perused the photographs, magazine clippings and newspaper articles. There was an entire page devoted to pictures of Walden posing or shaking hands with U.S. presidents, from Lyndon Johnson through Ronald Reagan. He had managed to get each one to sign some sort of legislation to help the environment.

  “Man,” said Callie, “I wonder what it would be like to do something so big, so important with your life.”

  “I don’t think he could imagine doing it any other way.” Although Walden had always been beloved by activists concerned with saving the earth, he had disappointed his parents by failing to take up the reins of the family business. When the family business was timber, and the eldest son’s passion was conservation, it must have made for some unhappy times, especially when he spent most of the family fortune on his cause, but all that had happened before Kate’s time. She studied Callie, whose coloring looked better now that she’d eaten. There was a question beneath Callie’s question about Walden— Am I anybody? Do I matter?

  “Callie, what’s your mother like?” Kate knew it was risky to broach the subject, but she sensed that it was at the heart of the girl’s troubles. “That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”