by Susan Wiggs
“It’s complicated. And it’s not Zach’s fault. His father had this online gambling thing going, and Zach was the only one who knew. He took some money to cover his dad’s debts. Now the dad is in prison and Zach’s on his own. It’s amazing, what a kid will do for a parent. I’d never make my kid do something like that for me.”
As though on cue, a set of images of Daisy’s mother spread across the screen. Sophie Bellamy—she was keeping her married name for professional reasons, she said—was pretty, perfectly groomed and serious. Daisy sensed Julian watching her, not the slide show.
“My mom got this once-in-a-lifetime job at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She’s been working on a big human rights case.” As always when she thought of her mother, Daisy felt a mixture of love and pride, frustration and anger. Sometimes she just wanted to sit in her mother’s lap and cry. Then she felt totally selfish for wanting such a thing. Her mom was working to save helpless children from torture and starvation. Who was Daisy to stand in the way of that?
She grabbed her camera and stood up. “We need a change of scenery,” she said. “How about we go outside for a while?”
“Sure.” He got up and held open the door. “Lead the way. I’m supposed to be replacing a gutter, but I have to wait for the foreman to bring a taller ladder.” He pointed at a rusty gutter hanging from the attic eaves, four storeys up. “I offered to climb it, but Connor’s pretty picky about safety liability.”
“He’s got a lot to lose these days,” Daisy reminded him, walking down a gravel path toward the lakefront.
“Who’s that?” Julian shaded his eyes toward the boathouse.
“Nina Romano, my friend Sonnet’s mom,” Daisy said. She waved, but Nina didn’t seem to see her. They continued in silence for a bit, and finally, Daisy unleashed the crucial question. “So, do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not unless you’ve changed your mind from last summer.” He grinned at her.
Last summer, he’d made overtures, but she’d been in such a terrible place over her parents’ divorce that she hadn’t wanted to let anyone get close. Idiot, she thought.
“Very funny,” she grumbled, turning away so he wouldn’t see her blush.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” he said. “I really wanted to go out with you.”
So had a bunch of other guys, she recalled, feeling no pride in the knowledge. She had been the party girl, the easy girl, the one who was always good for a few laughs.
The one who would do anything to get the attention of her unhappy, work-obsessed parents.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” she said quietly.
“You’re still you,” Julian reminded her. He could always make her smile.
“And then some,” she said.
She gave him a tour of the property, pointing out the interesting facets of the inn, the pickle-ball and tennis courts, the bowling and croquet green. The crazy-tall structure called a belvedere. From the end of the long dock, they could pick out various local landmarks—the Avalon Boating Club at Blanchard Park, the summer cottages scattered along the shore.
“It’s really nice here,” he said.
“Uh-huh. I’m glad my dad decided to buy the place.”
“So you plan to stay here…?” He left the question open-ended.
“I plan to get from one day to the next as best I can.” Then she decided to be straight with him. “Also, even though it seems like I’m the one in trouble, my dad and brother are just…lost. Something tells me that they need me to stick around.”
“They might surprise you,” Julian said.
Daisy pictured her dad and Max, two guys struggling along. “Maybe. I’m not going anywhere for the time being, though.” She took some pictures, capturing the glints of light on the water, a family of mallard ducks drifting past. “What I’d really love,” she confessed, “is to study photography, and not just online. I’d like to turn professional.”
“Then that’s what you should do.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on it.”
He shrugged off her sarcasm. “The idea will still be there tomorrow, and next year and whenever you decide.”
She nodded. “It’s ironic that I finally figured out something I love and I’m good at right when this happened.” She took a shot of a loon landing in the water, creating a sharp white wake. “I wish I could rewind my life, you know? Make some better choices.”
“Everybody wishes that.” He shaded his eyes, watching the lake. “It sure is pretty here.”
“I guess. Sometimes when I think about spending my life right here, I freak out.”
“Nobody’s making you stay here.”
She thought about her dad, and Max, and how lost they’d be, just the two of them here alone. Yes, she thought. They are.
Eleven
The day after signing her agreement with Greg Bellamy, Nina arrived with the last of her belongings and a burden of misgivings. She’d lain awake all night, wondering if she’d made the right choice, or if she’d sold out. The entire property was a hive of activity, with workman crisscrossing the lawn, guys up on ladders, landscapers busy in the gardens. She glanced at the narrow, tall Victorian house at the far edge of the property, where Greg now lived, then tracked her gaze to the boathouse, a few hundred yards away, and hoped it wouldn’t be too close for comfort. In the past, whenever she’d pictured herself at the Inn at Willow Lake, that picture hadn’t included a divorced man and his two kids and, in a matter of weeks, a grandbaby. Yet her entire adult life had been about making compromises, and this was no different. Maybe she just wasn’t meant to have what she wanted on her terms. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
The thought echoed in her mind after she climbed the stairs to the boathouse and found a living, breathing fantasy in motion. Greg was standing on a ladder on the deck, washing the windows. His shirt was off, its hem stuck in the waistband of his pants. The summer sun had painted a golden tan on his shoulders. He wore a Yankees cap turned backward, and each methodical stroke of the squeegee was poetry in motion.
“To what do I owe this honor?” she asked. “The owner himself, washing my windows?”
He stepped down from the ladder. His chest was glistening with sweat, and she made a concerted effort not to stare. “I’m paying Connor’s workers by the hour,” he said, “so I don’t want to waste their talents on manual labor.”
“Ah. For that I have you, with your degree in architecture.”
“I’ll help you with your things.” He crossed the deck, stepping between her and the French doors. For a moment, she found herself mere inches from his tanned, sweaty, glistening chest. A patch of light-colored hair highlighted the center of it. A wild, male smell wafted to her. Rather than being put off, she experienced her usual undeniable, visceral response to him. Her cheeks caught fire and she swallowed hard, feeling trapped between him and the door. “Um, Greg…” She had no idea what to tell him. Thanks for doing the windows?
He pulled open the door and stepped aside with a little flourish.
She ducked her head, pretending to be unaffected by him. “That’s not necessary.”
“No, but it accomplishes a couple of things. It shows I know how to be neighborly—we’re going to be neighbors, after all—and the sooner you get moved in, the sooner we can get started.”
“I see. Well, thank you.”
“No problem.” He grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it on. Nina couldn’t help feeling the slightest bit disappointed. She eyed him speculatively, trying to figure out why he was being so blatantly sexual one moment, so kind and helpful the next. In general, this was not the way men treated her. The kind ones were rarely helpful, and the helpful ones were rarely kind.
“Thanks,” Nina said again. The ensuing silence felt awkward, so she added, “So how did you and Max like the game the other night?”
“We’re both baseball fans. Max, especially. Hockey in the winter, baseball in the summer. I signed him up for Little Leagu
e.”
“Is he liking that?”
A guarded look suddenly shuttered his eyes. “Sure,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad you came out for the game.”
“You seemed…busy.”
Good lord, did he think she was romantic with Darryl or Wayne? Or both of them? The idea made her laugh aloud. “Right,” she said.
He went to the kitchen sink, took off the baseball cap and washed up, splashing water over his face and head, drying off with what seemed like half a roll of paper towels. “Tell me where to start helping you move in, boss,” he said.
“The boxes, I guess,” she said, still in the grip of a highly inappropriate attraction. And it only got more intense from there. A curious air of intimacy seemed to hover between them as he helped her move in. Nina had spent the previous day cleaning and airing out the place, and early this morning, two of her brothers had set up her queen-size bed, aiming it toward the broad picture window in the bedroom. This was part of her dream—waking up to Willow Lake every morning.
Now, as she and Greg unboxed her things—linens and keepsakes, lamps and books—she felt completely torn between attraction and contention. She hadn’t asked for his help, but he’d dived right in. Helping her move allowed him to dig into her life, to discover the things that were important to her. Shouldn’t she resent that? Did she? If not, why not?
He opened a large box containing framed pictures and memorabilia. Nina caught her breath, mentally sifting through the contents of the box. Was there anything too personal, anything she didn’t want him to see?
“Hey, Greg.” Her voice sounded hollow in the sparsely furnished space. “Um, about this…arrangement. I really think we should set up some boundaries here.”
He laughed, which was not the response she’d expected. “What kind of boundaries, Nina? To keep you in, or to keep me out?”
“Seriously,” she said. “When people work together, they need boundaries.”
“All right. You got it. Boundaries. I guess you’ll let me know if I’ve strayed over the line. Of course, that means you’ll have to explain where the line is.”
She sensed an undercurrent of anger beneath his humor, and was alarmed to realize that made him more interesting to her than ever. “It’s something to talk about,” she said. “Where to draw the line. I mean, I’m grateful that you’re helping me move in.”
“But you don’t want to see my sweaty chest while I’m doing it.”
“It’s not that—”
“So you do want to see my sweaty chest.”
Yes.
“No.” She folded her arms across her middle. “Listen, neither of us was born yesterday. We both know how to be professional in business. That’s all I meant.”
“Done,” he said. “I’ll leave my shirt on.”
“So will I,” she said. “Now, I’d better get to work.”
“All work and no play,” he said.
“That’s me.” Good lord, was he hinting at some kind of friends-with-benefits scenario? No, he couldn’t be. She shied away from the idea and went back to work. While she was trying to recall what she’d packed in the box he’d just opened, he pulled out a framed photo that had been wrapped in a tea towel. The shot depicted Nina in her fifteenth summer—just weeks before everything had happened. Maybe that was why she liked the picture. She was still so young and innocent in it. She and Jenny were sitting on the city dock in town, their arms around each other, their faces full of possibility.
“You were a cute kid,” he commented.
Nina bit her lip. She glanced at him, then back at the photograph. Who knew that within weeks of that photo, she would have careless sex with a West Point appointee and wind up in trouble?
“You don’t even remember me, do you?” she asked Greg, thinking of that pivotal summer.
“Remember you from what?”
God, was he pretending ignorance? Or protecting…what? Her? Himself?
“From the past,” she said. “Our paths crossed several times. My mom used to work in the kitchen of Camp Kioga in the summer. I used to go up there all the time.” She didn’t remind him about his wedding. He might be her adversary, but she wasn’t going to play dirty.
“And you think I don’t remember you,” he stated.
“I figured you’d say something if you had.” Nina tried not to dwell on all those times she’d fantasized about him and it turned out he wasn’t even thinking of her. She tried to feel insulted. Instead, she simply felt wistful.
“Christ, Nina, you know I remember,” he said with sudden intensity. “You know damn well I remember it all, including that night at the country club. I can safely say that West Point cadet is the only guy I ever hit over a girl.”
Oh. Crap. That was one detail she wished he’d forgotten. “Sorry. Since you didn’t say anything, I assumed…” She didn’t know what she assumed. For some reason, she was having a hard time being coherent when she was around him.
“Just because I had other stuff going on in my life doesn’t mean I have amnesia.”
“Me, neither,” she admitted. It was a relief, in a way, to have it out in the open.
“One thing I remember is staying right here at the Inn at Willow Lake,” he said. “We’d come up for a family reunion. The kids were little, and my wife didn’t want to stay up at Camp Kioga. I guess it was a bit too rustic for her. Sophie was worried that if something happened, we wouldn’t be able to get help fast enough.” Greg shook his head. “We stayed less than a week, because that’s all the time we had to spare. I was busy with my firm and Sophie was putting in long hours practicing law. I wish I’d taken things slower. I lost whole years of my life back then, and never even noticed.”
“Does it help to look back with all these regrets?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“Then don’t do it, Greg. Look ahead.” She bent down and unwrapped a collage of matted prints, smiling at the images, most of them of Sonnet at different ages. “The nice thing about the past is that you get to choose the memories you keep close to your heart. The rest, you can just move on from them.”
His smile faded and he lowered his voice. “Thanks, Nina.”
“Don’t thank me.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t do anything.” She bit her lip and busied herself looking for picture-hanging wire. She turned to ask him to pass her a hammer, and saw him staring out the window. His daughter Daisy was seated in an Adirondack chair, facing the lake. Despite all the bustling activity around her, she looked very much alone.
As if he felt Nina watching him, Greg seemed to give himself a mental shake. “Sorry. Just checking up on Daisy.”
“Don’t apologize for that.”
“I wasn’t. It’s just frustrating, you know, trying to talk to her. Half the time, I’m walking on eggshells around her.”
“Try not to take it personally. Even the most talkative kids in the world tend to give their parents the silent treatment.” Nina paused, then added, “Maybe she’s trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
She didn’t want to point out that Greg, like many suddenly single guys, had an air of vulnerability about him. “Some people say expecting a baby can bring out a woman’s protective instincts. It might just be her nature, though. Or the way she was raised. Protecting those you love isn’t a bad thing.”
“Agreed.” He studied her with a curious expression on his face.
For no reason she could name, Nina felt a beat of sympathy and in the next moment, tried to deny it. Don’t bring me your problems, she thought.
The irony was, it was already too late. She hadn’t even spent one night on the premises, yet she felt as though their lives were twining together in ways she hadn’t anticipated. She should have known better, should have realized it simply wasn’t in her nature to ignore Greg’s concerns. As mayor, she used to take on the problems of a whole town. No wonder she felt compelled.
Thoughts about Daisy too
k Nina back to her own youth. Although Nina’s situation had brought on all the expected reactions—shame and worry and sorrow—it also brought out Nina’s inner resources. Perversely, after being a mediocre student in school, she found something she was good at—teenage pregnancy.
Instead of letting it defeat her, she had set about to prove her independence. The baby was the motivation she needed to finally do well in school. She went from pulling a C average to making A’s and B’s in all her classes. She got herself elected to student council because she wanted a say in how the on-campus daycare program was run. She went dutifully to all her doctor appointments, memorizing a thousand aspects of fetal development and self-care during gestation. She listened with hard-won patience to Father Reilly, who admonished her to give the baby up for adoption, though she knew that would never happen. In the first place, she would need consent from the baby’s father, and she didn’t want to go there. In the second place, she felt an almost spiritual sense of possession over this child. She had never been in love, but she knew this was love in its purest form, and she would never let it go. But she gave serious attention to the school guidance counselor, Mrs. Jarvis, who talked about budgets and schedules and the frighteningly awesome responsibility of being in charge of another human being.
Despite the fact that she had flourished, Nina still suffered the pain of the incredible sacrifices she’d made, missing out on dating and dances, the senior trip, graduating with her class. The senior trip had been to Washington D.C., which was why it had been so important for Nina to take Sonnet there.
Nina had tried not to listen to the gossip and ignored the speculation about who had fathered her child. She refused to give credence to the naysayers who loved to explain how difficult raising a child was, even for grown-ups who were married. For a teenager alone, it was impossible, or so people said.
But for Nina, this baby became a goal, a mission, something that gave shape and purpose to her life. Sure, she felt a twinge when she saw her friends all heading off to school dances or the movies, but she powered through the moments of regret by teaching herself something useful, like how to chart a baby’s immunization schedule. She put together a crib all by herself. She learned to install a car seat even before she could legally drive. She studied finance and social policy because suddenly these things mattered to her. She was bringing a child into the world, so she wanted the world to be better than it was.
