Lake News

by Barbara Delinsky

  Lily slept deeply and awoke disoriented. It was a full minute before she realized where she was, and seconds more before she realized why. Then everything came back in a rush—the lies, the embarrassment, the anger, the loss. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the images away, but they were an indelible part of her now, redefining her life in ways she had never envisioned. A slow trembling started inside. She tried to stay calm by reminding herself that she was safe. Only Elizabeth knew she had left the city, and no one at all knew she was here. Still, the trembling remained.

  Thinking that the images wouldn’t be as vivid if she was upright and actively looking at something, she slipped from bed and went to the top of the spiral stairs that led down from the sleeping loft—and it worked. Comfort was instantaneous. The magic, of course, was in these four walls. For Lily, this cottage was filled with warm memories. Practically from birth, she had visited her grandmother here.

  Celia St. Marie wasn’t a native of Lake Henry. She had spent her first fifty years in a remote Maine town seventy-some miles to the northeast. Widowed early, she had supported herself and Maida by doing book-keeping for a paper mill. When she wasn’t working, she was bailing out her brothers, an irresponsible lot. But Maida married well. Not only did George Blake have a successful family business that he ran for his aging father, but he had a good heart. Soon after his marriage to Maida, he bought a piece of land for Celia and built her the cottage where she would spend the rest of her life.

  It wasn’t a large cottage. Celia hadn’t wanted anything large. Having always lived in cramped quarters, she would have been overwhelmed by many rooms. It was enough to have her own home—something she had never had before.

  So when George asked, she requested a simple cottage. She felt that if she was to be a landowner, with her own beautiful lakefront, she would enjoy open space outside and be snug and cozy inside.

  Coziness was definitely what Lily associated with the cottage, which was made of dark wood top to bottom, with plenty of exposed beams, built-in bookshelves, and wide-planked floors. The ground level was a single large room divided into parts by the appropriate furniture. The living area was marked by a large sofa upholstered in a deep red floral print, a pair of overstuffed chairs in a deep orange floral, two floor lamps with yellow floral shades, and a square pine coffee table that had been battered and loved. The dining area contained a wood trestle table that on occasion had sat half a dozen grandchildren, Celia’s and those of her friends.

  The kitchen was small but surprisingly modern. Celia St. Marie might have been parochial, but she was smart. She had arrived in Lake Henry with a small savings account that grew considerably over the years, allowing her the financial freedom to upgrade as needed and add conveniences that made her little cottage absolutely perfect.

  But her savings account wasn’t all that grew. Celia herself grew, spreading out, becoming a part of the community. She made friends in town. She joined the Garden Club and the Historical Society, and played bingo Monday nights at the church. In her seventies she took to wearing baseball caps and red sneakers—respectively (she claimed) to cover thinning hair and to make her visible in the dark. But Lily suspected, as did almost everyone who knew her as she aged, that she simply had come into her own. How else to explain the wide-mouth bass she had caught in a contest on the lake, then stuffed and hung on the kitchen wall? Or, on a living room wall, the huge macramé piece that was both exquisite and remarkable, since she had taken up the craft only after moving to Lake Henry? Or the hat tree that held not only an assortment of baseball caps but a wrangler’s cap, a golf cap, and an old fashioned, wide-brimmed lady’s lawn hat?

  How else to explain, for that matter, the sleeping loft with its wrought-iron bed and profusion of birdhouses—sweet pastel ones hanging from the rafters, a diaphanous pair mounted as light fixtures on the sloping roof above the bed, a scenic one holding tissues, an oversized one used as a wastebasket? Or the political posters shellacked to wood walls, proclaiming support for Teddy Kennedy, a woman’s right to choose, and Hillary Rodham Clinton?

  In her golden years, Celia St. Marie had blossomed. For the first time in her life she had spoken her mind, and that included standing up to Maida on the matter of Lily. What little self-confidence Lily took from childhood had come from her grandmother’s ever-open arms.

  Celia had been dead for six years, but Lily felt those arms around her as she sat on the stairs at the edge of the loft. It helped that she wore one of Celia’s old nightgowns. It was long and soft, and incredibly, smelled faintly of the jasmine bath oil that Celia used.

  Lily wondered what her grandmother would think of the goings-on in Boston. She wondered what those goings-on would be today. There was neither a television nor a radio here, not because Celia couldn’t afford it but because she had made a deliberate choice to listen to loons rather than white noise. And in winter, when the loons were gone? She listened to records, old LPs, right to her dying day.

  Lily had much of the same music on compact discs. They were outside, locked in her borrowed car along with her CD player and her clothes. She would get them later. There was no rush. She was in hiding. She didn’t have much else to do.

  It was nine in the morning. Pale dapples of sunshine broke through the trees and spilled through the window onto the floor, a braided rug, an arm of the sofa. It was a warm, familiar sight, remembered from a childhood of overnights spent here—waking up early, legs swinging over the loft, singing softly, then a little louder, then louder still until her grandmother woke up. Lily clung to the memory as long as she could, until thoughts of Boston broke through again and brought a chill.

  Barefoot, she went down the stairs, wrapped herself in the crocheted shawl draped on the sofa, and stood where a beam of sun hit the floor. The warmth of it satisfied briefly before fading. Fall was here. Once she unpacked the car, she would bring wood in from the shed.

  Outside, a loon called from the lake. Pleased at the familiar sound, Lily opened the door to a world that glowed. With the morning sun behind her, the lake reflected the deep blue of the western sky. Those trees whose outer leaves had already turned color burned a fiery red and gold, all the more electric among evergreens of every deep, dark shade. She caught the scent of balsam, pine, the drying leaves of maple, aspen, and birch. The morning was peaceful and still, a far cry from the city in so many, many ways.

  The loon called again, but she couldn’t see it. Risking even colder feet, she darted between mossy rocks, across the pine-strewn ground, down the steps to the shore. She would have gone out to sit on the dock, but she didn’t want Lake Henry to know she had come. So she tucked herself into one of the small cubbies of exposed pine roots that were characteristic of Thissen Cove, and watched and waited from there.

  The lake was serene. From the woods behind her came the trill of a warbler, from the lake the whisper of water on rocks. When the loon called again, she focused in on Elbow Island, waited until her eyes adjusted, sorted through the water’s reflection of trees at the island’s edge until she saw it. Them, actually. Two birds were there, easily identified by their pointed beaks and the graceful sweep of their heads and necks. She wondered if there were others—perhaps the summer’s brood—but she couldn’t see clearly enough. Energized, she left her shelter, ran back to the house for Celia’s binoculars, and returned. She was at the top of the railroad-tie steps before she saw the small motorboat that had glided to the dock.

  She froze. The man in the boat wore dark glasses, but there was no question that he was looking at her. That windblown head of brown hair, a jaw so square that a close-cropped beard couldn’t hide its shape, an alertness so like that of the vultures she’d left behind—she knew who he was, oh, did she ever. She also knew that he knew her, which made scurrying back out of sight pointless.

  Appalled, heartsick, furious to have been found out so soon, and by a man she had reason to hate on two counts, she raced back to the house, pulled a kitchen chair to the front door, and snatched
Celia’s gun from the hooks above it. She reopened the door and stormed back out. By then John Kipling was halfway across the lawn. The dark glasses were gone, but he was still imposing. Large and lean, he walked like a man in command.

  She had always avoided him when she was home, but she knew where he had been and what he had done before returning to Lake Henry. Poppy had told her.

  “That’s far enough,” she shouted from the porch in a voice that shook with fury. She might have been powerless in Boston, but she wasn’t in Boston anymore. “This is my land. You’re trespassing.”

  He stopped walking. With measured movements he set a large brown paper bag on the ground not ten feet from the porch. When he straightened, he held out his hands. Slowly, not quite leisurely, he lowered them, turned, and started back toward the boat.

  He was barefoot, and wore a gray sweatshirt and denim cutoffs. In other circumstances she might have admired his legs, but today she hardly noticed.

  “Stop!” she ordered. She didn’t want him there, but since he was, she wanted to know why. He was up to something. Newspapermen always were, as she had recently learned. “What’s in the bag?”

  He stopped and slowly turned, his expression wary. “Fresh stuff—eggs, milk, veggies, fruit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have nothing inside but canned goods.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The woman who keeps up this place is my assistant’s aunt.”

  “And you asked her? And she told?” Another betrayal, another fear. But this was Lake Henry. She couldn’t really expect it to be any different. “Who else diii-id she tell?”

  “Only me,” he said more gently, “and only because I asked. I was trying to think where I’d go if I were in your shoes. I figured you’d have to come here.”

  She looked for smugness, but if it was there, it was hidden by his beard. “How did you know that I had?”

  “Your lights were on at one in the morning. Hard to miss, with everyone else’s lights off.”

  “But you can’t see this place from the road.”

  “No. I live on the lake.”

  Poppy had told her that, too, but even without Poppy, she would have known. A Kipling on the lake, down from the Ridge, had been the talk of the town. “Where on the lake?”

  There was nothing evasive about his eyes. Still, he hesitated as though he was considering another answer. Finally he said, “Wheaton Point.”

  Well, at least he hadn’t lied about that. He might have tried, but he probably figured she knew the truth. “You can’t see Thissen Cove from there,” she said, not about to let him play her for a fool. “So you were out on the lake. At one in the morning?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “And now you come bearing gifts.” She felt sick. Her hideout had been breached, and by the worst of enemies. “What do you want?”

  “Put the gun down and we’ll talk.”

  She lowered the muzzle but kept it at the ready. “What do you want?” she repeated.

  He slipped his hands in his back pockets. “To help.”

  She barked out a disbelieving laugh. “You? You’re media. On top of that, you’re Dd-donny’s big brother.”

  “Yeah, well, that wasn’t my choice,” he said. “I was gone when all that happened between you and him.”

  “And if you’d been here? You’d have stood up for your brother, just like your dad did, just like your aunts and uncles and cousins did.”

  “He was a troubled kid. They were trying to help him. He already had a rap sheet. He’d have gotten twice as much time if he hadn’t said you’d egged him on. That was the story he gave my dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They believed him. They thought it was the truth.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  He inhaled deeply and stood straighter. “I know that. He told me. I saw him in the hospital the day before he died.”

  Donny Kipling had done time for his alleged theft with Lily, and time for breaking and entering two years later. Two years after that, he crashed his car during a high-speed police chase. He died at the hospital a week later, at the age of twenty-eight. That was ten years ago. Lily had been in New York then, working on her graduate degree. When Poppy told her, she had been saddened, not because she harbored feelings for Donny but because the humiliation of her experience with him suddenly seemed all the more wasteful.

  “I’m sorry,” she said now, in part because Donny had been John’s brother, but also because John had admitted the truth to her, which she hadn’t expected.

  But John seemed lost in thought. “He was a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t know what went wrong. He was fine—perfect up to the age of ten. I was the bad one. So I was sent away, and Donny stayed and took my place.” His eyes met hers. “For what it’s worth, my father hasn’t been the same since Donny died. He’s a tormented man. Hate him if you want, but he’s getting punished good.”

  I’m glad, Lily wanted to say. Only, she’d had a glimpse of Gus Kipling in town several years back. He had looked broken and old, yes, like he was suffering. She would have had to have the hardest heart to wish him even worse.

  John was something else.

  She glanced at the food. “Then this is for guilt?”

  He made a sputtering sound, more a sigh than a laugh. “That’s direct.”

  “I don’t have time to play around. I came here to hide. You’ve found me out. Now I have to leave.”

  Immediately, he sobered. “You do not. I’m not telling anyone you’re here.”

  Lily rolled her eyes.

  “Why would I?” he asked.

  “You’re media. Media’s job is to air the news. This is news.”

  “It’s between you and me.”

  “You, me, and who else? The Post? Cityside? Or are you hoping to get a foot in the door again through something bigger, like a national wire service? Write one article, get it into dozens of papers.”

  John stood his ground and shook his head.

  “There won’t be an article in Thursday’s Lake News?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe him for a minute and told him as much with a stare. Holding the stare, she drew the shawl in tighter. The shotgun remained in the crook of her arm.

  “Good God,” he said, exhaling loudly. “You’re hard.”

  Dropping her guard for a minute, she cried, “Do you know what I’ve been through in the past week?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” His eyes were dark and troubled. “I’ve been there, Lily. I’ve seen what journalists do.” There was a pause. “I’ve done it myself.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Good.” Those eyes held sudden challenge. “Then let’s put it all on the table. What you probably know—what Poppy probably told you, or Maida, or anyone else in town—is that I ruined a family. I did a story on a Connecticut politician who entered the presidential primary and failed to reveal that he’d once been involved with a prominent married woman. The affair had ended years before, when he got married himself, but there was the stink of adultery and the lure of lascivious details that were sure to sell papers. The man had enemies, and I loved talking with them. So the story broke, and thanks to a goody-two-shoes hypocrisy, the party withdrew its support. His political career ended, right along with his marriage and his relationship with his kids. They wanted to distance themselves from him. The public humiliation was too painful.” He paused. A tic pulsed under his eye. “Did I get it all?”

  “You missed the part about his little blond aide,” she prompted.

  “Didn’t miss it. Repressed it. Turns out it wasn’t true. There was no affair with a little blond aide, but that fact only came out later. By then, the wife and kids had bought into the story hook, line, and sinker.”

  “You left out the part about the guy’s suicide,” she added, intent on not sparing him a thing.

  The tic pulsed again. “Yeah, well, that’s what I’m living with now. If you think that suicide
didn’t affect my life, think again. It’s haunted me since the day it happened. Afterward, when I went back to work, I was crippled. Couldn’t do the hard stuff the paper wanted, because I was paralyzed by ‘what if’s’ and ‘then what’s.’ So I left. Let me tell you, I think about that suicide, think about it a lot. It’s the single greatest influence in the work I do now.” He pursed his lips, then let them go. His eyes held hers. “I do know what you went through, Lily. More than anyone else in town, I know.”

  She stared at him for a moment, wanting to believe him. Again she let her guard fall. “I didn’t want to come back here. If I’d had anywhere else to go, I would have.”

  “I figured that. But people will find out you’re here without my saying a word. They’ll see a light, like I did. Or see smoke coming from the chimney. Or see you on the porch or down by the water.”

  “Or see you buying groceries and bringing them here,” she charged. Even as she said it, she was startled by the way her mind had begun to work. The most innocent of acts was suddenly suspect.

  But he was shaking his head. “I’m at Charlie’s all the time buying stuff like this for my dad. Charlie didn’t think twice when I bought these things this morning. So you don’t have to worry about me. But Lake Henry is Lake Henry. You won’t stay a secret for long.”

  “That’s fine,” she announced with a show of bravado. “I won’t be staying for long. Once the story dies, I’m going back to Boston.”

  He gave her a doubting look, his brow arched subtly.

  “Or somewhere else,” she said, though Boston remained the goal. It wasn’t fair that she should be banished for good. It wasn’t believable. Besides, she couldn’t see herself spending the rest of her life in Lake Henry. Celia was dead, Poppy was her only sure champion, and even aside from the long-ago business with Donny, there were too many heartaches for her here.

  But if not here, where? she wondered, suddenly frightened. “Oh God,” she murmured, beginning to feel over-whelmed by the predicament again.

  Correctly reading the emotions in her face, John said, “I have today’s Post in the boat. It isn’t as bad as it’s been.”