John hit stride with his paddle, propelling the boat forward with a minimum of sound and effort, leaving Lily nothing to do but feel exhilarated. She raised her head, breathed in the night, and smiled. Much as she loved Boston, it didn’t have this. Albany didn’t, either. Nor, for all its own excitement, did Manhattan. Her visits here over the last sixteen years had been brief and preoccupied. It struck her that she had missed this leisure on the lake.
It also struck her that John knew that and was buttering her up for another bid for her story. If so, he was in for a grand disappointment—particularly if he ruined the night noise with his voice. That would be sacrilege, a sure sign of insensitivity, which would be a tip-off to ulterior motive.
But he didn’t say a word. Apart from the occasional wisp of his breath as he paddled and the slip of his paddle through the water, they moved in silence. Sparsely set lake homes offered gentle bits of light along the shore. There was the occasional creak of a boat against its mooring, the occasional jangle, hook against mast, but she and John were the only people out. Lily did feel safe.
They had passed a handful of small islands before John stopped paddling and let the canoe glide toward another. It was a small one, little more than forty feet long and, judging from its jagged black skyline, covered with hemlock and pine. The canoe slowed. John brought it to a standstill with his paddle.
Here the lake moved against low-growing brush, throwing off the occasional lapping sound. John put his mouth to her ear.
“The nest was over there.” He pointed to a spot, but Lily couldn’t make out much more than a wad of grass in the dark. “The big guy scouted out the spot in late April. His mate was here by the middle of May. By the middle of June, there was one egg. The next day there was a second.”
“How did you get pictures of the eggs without scaring the loons off the nest?” she whispered back. She didn’t have to turn her head. His was right there.
“Caution, and a very long lens. I sat here once for three hours waiting for one parent to relieve the other. Sit long and quiet enough, and they think you’re a tree. The one on the nest hoots to the other. They don’t leave the eggs exposed for more than a minute, while they change places. It’s a sight to see. The one going off duty slips into the water to feed or preen or sleep. The one going on lumbers up on shore to the nest, turns the eggs, shifts the nesting material, and plops right down. Then it sits. Bugs hover, and it sits. Thunder rolls, lightning strikes, and it sits. If a predator nears, it shrieks and makes a grand show of warning with its wings, but otherwise it’s like a statue. Like two statues, actually, when the lake is still and the reflection is clear.”
Lily saw the picture.
“They sit for twenty-nine days, give or take,” John went on. “Then one egg hatches. A day later, the other follows. The babies hit the water within hours, as soon as their feathers are dry. They may not touch land again for three years, until they’re nesting, themselves.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Ninety-nine percent of their lives are lived in water.”
Lily hadn’t known that.
“They have mobility there,” he explained. “They can protect themselves better there than they can on land.”
There was movement from the end of the island. One bird, then a second glided into a stream of moonlight. Then came a third, then a fourth.
She caught her breath.
His voice was even lower. “The front two are the parents, the rear two the kids.”
Keeping her eye on the birds, she turned her head just enough so that he could hear her whisper. “The kids are nearly as big as the parents.”
“They grow fast.”
“Can they fly?”
“Not yet. Give them another month. The parents leave first. They’re getting ready. Their feathers have begun to change. There’s a partial molt before the fall migration, and a total one before the spring migration. When that happens, usually in March, they can’t fly at all. Then their breeding feathers come in. Those are the brilliant ones, the ones they’re losing now. They’ll look pretty much like their kids by the time they take off and leave.”
The loons were swimming down the edge of the island, floating in and out of moonbeams.
Lily asked, “If they leave first, who makes sure the kids get airborne?”
“The Great Spirit of the Lake,” John teased. “Not to worry. It’s been happening this way for more than twenty million years.”
“No.” She didn’t believe that.
“Yes.”
“But humans haven’t been here a quarter of that time.”
“Nor have the lakes as we know them. Maybe that’s the appeal of these birds. They’ve witnessed a lot of changes on this planet.”
One of the loons released a long, arching wail.
Lily gasped.
“Wait,” John whispered.
Sure enough, an answering call came from the east. The voice was crystal clear but distant. “One lake over,” John whispered.
The Lake Henry loon repeated its call, and the distant bird answered again. The sound of it had barely died when a third call came. This one was even more distant, farther east, likely from two lakes away. But it was distinct.
For nearly ten minutes the three birds called back and forth. Lily had heard night chorusing before, but never when she was on the lake, and never when she was so close to one of the participants. It was totally eerie, totally beautiful.
When they were done and the still of the night returned, she let out a breath. John remained as quiet as she, until the loons swam around to the back side of the island and out of sight.
Still without a word, he lifted his paddle and, with a deft combination of side strokes, turned the canoe. When he set them moving again, back in the direction of Celia’s, Lily grew melancholy. She wasn’t sure why. What they had just seen and heard had pleased her so—but that was it. The beauty of the night, the lake, and the loons was a lush, tight-woven tapestry. By contrast, her life—the life John propelled her back to now—was a lone thread. She felt small and insignificant. Unconnected. Lost.
Tucking in her legs, she pulled her hat down, her scarf up, and her clothing closer around her, and still she felt cold. John didn’t speak. She felt very alone.
When they reached her dock, he was out of the canoe before she could get herself up. He tied the boat with a line and held out a hand. She couldn’t feel that hand through her mittens, didn’t know whether it was warm or cold, coarse or soft, but she took it and held on tightly as he helped her out of the canoe. She was about to thank him for taking her out when he put a gentle hand at the back of her waist and began walking her up toward the house—and she felt that hand. Oh, she did. Right through her parka, right through her flannel shirt and the T-shirt under that. She wondered what that meant. It was just a hand.
But it did feel good. It was gentle and supportive. It was companionable.
It seemed an age since she had experienced companionship. Hard to believe that little over a week ago, she was walking down Commonwealth Avenue with Terry Sullivan, about to say things to him that would forever change her life.
John stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. She mounted one and turned.
“Thh-hanks,” she said, despising the nervousness, but she didn’t know what to expect or whom to trust, didn’t know whether he was truly friend or foe.
His eyes held hers. In the oblique light of the moon, he looked oddly beseeching. “Thank you. I’m usually out alone. That was nice.”
She nodded, buried her hands in her pockets, and hugged her arms to her body. Go inside, dummy, a little voice inside cried, but she just stood there, held in place by eyes that were level with hers. She wanted to call him a friend but didn’t know if he would respect that.
“Life is complex,” she finally said.
He smiled. “Why do you think I love these loons? They stand for simplicity.”
She nodded. “Twenty million years. All on instinct?
”
“Animal instinct. Funny how we pride ourselves on being one step above.”
She nodded and looked away, thinking that he did understand, and how gratifying that was. Then he touched her cheek and her eyes flew back to his. His hand was already lowering and he had turned to go, but she felt something in the aftermath of that touch—a connection, a tingle, perhaps a germ of trust.
It could be real. Or deception. Or illusion. Even wishful thinking.
Not knowing which made it absolutely terrifying.
CHAPTER 14
John was out on the lake again early Wednesday morning. His mind was more filled than it had been in three years, which made canoeing now more an exercise in stress reduction than in loon watching. With a dawn mist rising, lake life was muted, almost surreal. He let the stillness of it seep in and focused on clearing his thoughts.
But they had a mind of their own. They hung on Lily the whole way out and back, and hung on her when he drove into town for the newspapers. His first memory of her in that long, flowing gown was replaced by last night’s, of her all bundled up but innocent and exposed. He liked the feel of her skin. In later fantasies, he touched more than her cheek. He was attracted to her. That complicated things.
He wanted to write a book about her, but she wanted privacy. That put them on opposite sides. His being physically drawn to her heightened the conflict.
No matter. Back home, he was standing by the phone, waiting when her call came. “There’s nothing today,” he said in response to the inevitable question.
“Nothing on the front page?”
“Nothing anywhere, in any of the papers.”
In the ensuing pause, he pictured her frowning, thinking about the retraction she wanted, trying to decide whether no news was good news or bad. Finally, sounding cautiously hopeful, she said, “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
John told her that it probably was, because he didn’t see the point in upsetting her. Yes, indeed, the absence of Rossetti-Blake news probably meant that the story had run out of steam—and yes, indeed, if the Post was going to issue a retraction, it would be done as unobtrusively as possible, preferably when no one was looking for anything more on the story.
But John knew how newspapers worked. Mistakes were rarely admitted; retractions were issued only under duress. In common practice, once a story wore out its welcome, it was dropped.
John had mixed feelings about that happening now. Lily wanted her retraction, and he wanted it for her, but it was to his own advantage to see the story die. The longer it lingered, the deeper an odd reporter might dig. John wanted the diggings for himself.
There were no diggings that day. Lake News consumed him from the minute he arrived at the office to the minute he transmitted the last page to the printer. That happened at two in the afternoon, well past the noon deadline he usually tried to respect, but there was no harm done. The printer was an ice-fishing buddy of his. The delay cost John a dinner at Charlie’s. It was a fair trade.
With six hours free before the finished paper would be ready for pickup in Elkland, forty minutes to the north, John stopped at Charlie’s for supplies and drove out to see Gus. He felt the same heaviness in the pit of his stomach that he always felt approaching the Ridge, the same dismay that even at foliage time the place could look bleak, the same revulsion when it smelled of garbage, rather than pumpkin, cider, or pine. And he felt the same tugging at his heart when he entered his father’s home.
Any evidence of Dulcey’s neatening that morning was gone. The table in front of the sofa was pushed crooked and a lampshade was askew. The sofa itself was covered with remains of the morning paper. What might have been breakfast—a plate with pieces of egg and torn-up toast—was on the floor.
“Dad?” he called as he always did. Scooping up the plate, he went on through to the kitchen. Gus was there, a hunched figure at the table. He was pressing against a fork with hands that were gnarled and chapped.
“What are you doing?” John asked kindly.
Gus’s unruly white hair shook a little, but he didn’t look up. “Straightenin’ it out. She bends ’em.”
“Dulcey?”
“Anyone else comin’ in hee-uh?” Gus barked.
The fork didn’t look crooked to John. But he wasn’t arguing. Rather, he put the plate in the sink, which was otherwise clean. Disconcertingly so. “Have you had any lunch?”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
John suspected he hadn’t had the strength to make anything, and felt another tug inside. He put ice cream in the freezer, and milk, cream, eggs, and a rotisserie chicken, cut into quarters, in the fridge. He took out half a loaf of the bread that he had brought the weekend before, opened a can of tuna, and mixed it with mayonnaise. When three sandwiches were made, he refrigerated one for a later meal for Gus. After putting the other two on plates, he poured two glasses of milk and sat down to eat with his father.
“The paper just went to the printer,” he said conversationally. “It’s a good issue, I think.” He took a large bite of his sandwich, not so much out of hunger as to suggest to Gus that he should eat, too.
Gus continued to fight with the fork.
“The lead is about new families moving to town.”
“We don’t need ’em.”
“They need us. That’s the point of the piece.” When Gus didn’t respond, John said, “It’s about quality of life. That’s a buzzword these days.”
Gus snorted. “Up hee-uh?”
“The Ridge is better than an urban slum,” John said, but he knew enough not to pursue that line of thinking. Inevitably it led to Gus calling him a snooty big-city man who thinks he knows so much. Wisely, he changed the subject. “Armand and I had a disagreement about how much to write about Lily Blake.”
Gus set down the fork and stared at his food.
“About Lily Blake and the Cardinal in Boston?” John reminded him.
“Am I s’posed ta cay-uh?”
“Lots of people around here do, since Lily’s a native.”
Gus raised his eyes slowly, insolently.
John weathered his stare for a minute before gesturing toward the sandwich. “Eat.” He took another bite of his own, chewed, swallowed. Then, because his father wasn’t biting at gentle bait, he sharpened it. This was his own need, he knew, but it was a big one. “She was innocent in that business with Donny. You know that, don’t you?”
Gus dropped his eyes to the sandwich. It was the only sign he gave that, yes, he did know and, yes, he wasn’t proud of it. At least, John interpreted averting his eyes as being a sign. He didn’t want to think that the man had no conscience.
“I’ve often wondered whether things wouldn’t have been different if I’d been here,” John said.
“You’da saved us all from behavin’ like fools?” Gus asked.
“No. I might have saved Donny from whatever it was that he felt he needed to do. He was okay before I left. When I was the bad boy, he was the good. What happened after I left?”
Gus picked up the sandwich. A chunk of tuna fell back to the plate. He turned the bread and studied the empty spot.
“Maybe if I’d stayed,” John said, “he’d have been all right.”
“But you’da gone to hell. So I saved one.”
“Why me? Why not Donny?”
“She had to have one.”
She. John’s mother—who was alive and well, happily remarried, and living in North Carolina. “But why me?” he asked.
“Ask her.”
“I did. A million times.” He got along well enough with his mother now, but back then their relationship had been precarious. He had always suspected Dorothy would have preferred to take her youngest—had often suspected that Gus had ruled it the other way around precisely because he knew that. She had mourned Donny long and hard. But she had never answered John’s question. “She always said to ask you. I’m doing that now.”
Gus shot him as much of a level gaze as he could, with one eye lower th
an the other. “She’s the one wanted outta the marriage. I said fine, shoo-uh, go ahead. Jus’ leave me the good one, an’ she did.”
The good one. “You didn’t really say that.”
“Yes suh.”
John was hurt enough to lash back. “Looks like you didn’t have much insight.”
Gus pushed himself to his feet and tottered for an instant, but that instant was long enough for John to feel remorse. He was up in the next breath, pushing his father back down. It was frighteningly easy.
When he was sure that Gus would stay put, he returned to his own seat. “Sorry. That’s a sore point with me. I always felt sent away. Exiled. Punished.”
“You was,” grumbled Gus.
John bit into his sandwich and chewed with some force. By the time he swallowed, he realized he was getting no further than he ever did. So, again, he changed the subject. “You knew George Blake pretty well, didn’t you?”
“I did not. I only weuked f ’him once.”
John knew for fact that it had been far more than that. Gus had done stonework in both the big house and Celia’s. John had firsthand knowledge of it. He had watched, albeit from a distance. “What did you think of him?”
“Think a who?”
“George.”
“Didn’t know Geawge. Maida’s the one I was dealin’ with. Prissy little thing,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “Cold as a bass outta the lake in Mahch.” With a grunt, he turned his head and scowled at the yard. “Somethin’ strange about that lady.”
Casually, John asked, “What was it, do you think?”
Gus’s eyes met his. “How the hell do I know? I can’t figyuh out my own life, let alone someone else’s. But that woman wasn’t right from the minute she came to town. Too smiley. Too uppity. Always expectin’ somethin’. No wunduh the daughtuh’s in trouble.” The wider of his eyes narrowed on John. “She’ll be back.”
“Lily? You think?”
Gus mimicked him. “ ‘Y’think?’ Whadda you think, smaht man? You got the big-city education. You otta know. You think she’ll be back?”
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