Starlight on Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  The investors, company officers, board members and support staff all stood and lifted a glass. Mason, who had put the deal together, savored the moment. Bondi’s method of collecting solar energy had enormous potential to do a lot of good in the world. With the infusion of cash from the investor group, the potential now had a shot at being realized. The investors were equally happy to be in on the ground floor of a vibrant new enterprise and stood to make a fortune.

  And Mason would collect a hefty commission for putting the deal together. He made a mental snapshot of the occasion—smiles all around from colleagues and associates. The windows of the boardroom on the sixtieth floor framed a view of Lower Manhattan, with New York Harbor in the distance. The streaming sunlight glanced off the crystal champagne flutes, adding sparkle to the celebration.

  Some days, he thought, life was just good.

  “Mr. Bellamy?” His secretary came in, her normally calm, crisp demeanor agitated. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but she says it’s urgent.”

  “What is it?” He set down his champagne flute without having enjoyed a single sip.

  “She says her name is Faith McCallum.”

  Damn. What the hell was she doing here? He turned to his clients, who regarded him in bewilderment. “Excuse me. I need to step out for a moment.” He left the conference room, shutting the door behind him. Faith was waiting in the reception area, looking wildly out of place in faded jeans and sneakers, a gray hoodie and a backpack. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” she said without preamble.

  “I’ve been in meetings all morning. I never take my phone into meetings.”

  “I know. Your assistant told me that, and she refused to interrupt you unless it was an emergency.”

  “So there’s no emergency. Thank God.”

  “No, but there’s something urgent.”

  His gut twisted as he imagined all kinds of issues with his mother. Thinking of the succession of caregivers they’d gone through, he dreaded losing another one—particularly this one. “What’s going on?”

  She wrapped the strap of her backpack around her finger. “I don’t know where to start, even though I thought about it all the way down here. I took the express train.”

  “Damn it, just tell me.”

  She hesitated, glancing at the various doors that were open to the corridor.

  “This way,” he said, picking up on her cue. He strode to his corner office.

  Her gaze flicked over the spectacular view from the floor-to-ceiling windows, but she focused on him. “As I said, it’s not an emergency, but this can’t wait. Your mom is with Lena today until we get back there.”

  We. Had she said we?

  “Whoa, slow down. You took the train all the way from Avalon—”

  “I wanted to see you in person.”

  He felt a thump of panic in his chest. “Why in person? Jesus, just tell me.”

  “It’s about your mom’s fall down the stairs.” She paused, and her eyes softened. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “What the hell was it, then?” He was annoyed now, his heart pounding with trumped-up panic. “A murder attempt?”

  “No,” she said, and her face turned soft with sympathy. “Mason, it was a suicide attempt.”

  Though he didn’t move a muscle, he felt everything drain out of him. The feeling echoed the moment he’d gotten the call about his father’s death—incomprehension, and then a rush, as if he were being scoured from the inside. After the draining, there was nothing. No thought or emotion. Just an empty, ice-cold ache.

  “That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re full of shit.”

  She didn’t even wince. It was as if she’d been expecting—maybe trying—to get a rise out of him. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “So very sorry. It’s a shock, for sure, but she’s safe for now, with Lena and the others.”

  “How the hell can you come down here, barge in and say something like this?”

  “I didn’t want to have this conversation over the phone.”

  “I’m at a loss here. This is... Jesus Christ.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Wait a second—whoa.” The words tasted like poison in his mouth. He felt a ball of ice forming in his gut. “You’re saying my mother tried to kill herself.”

  Faith nodded, her face soft with sympathy.

  “By driving her wheelchair down the stairs.” His mind reeled with the news. Without thinking, he grabbed her hands and stared into her eyes for a moment. He saw nothing but genuine concern there. She was so different from any woman he’d ever known. Wise and compassionate. “You’re serious.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and gently removed her hands from his.

  “What gave you the idea that she tried to kill herself? She’s been getting used to her new life—finally. It makes no goddamn sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said softly. “Not for Alice. And yet...”

  He studied her eyes, noting for no particular reason that they were a soft, misty shade of gray. And that they were filled with a sorrow that felt as deep as his own.

  “Your mother needs you,” Faith added. “I haven’t contacted your brother and sister. I thought you’d want to do that yourself.”

  “Who’s with her now?” he asked, feeling a thud of panic in his gut.

  “Lena and Phil. I left strict orders that she wasn’t to be left alone until—”

  “Until what?”

  “How quickly can you be ready?” she asked.

  “Ready for what?”

  “To go to Avalon.”

  “Now?” His head was spinning.

  She nodded again. “Thank God she survived. But there’s a lot of work to do. We have to figure out why and make sure there are no further attempts.”

  He mentally regrouped his day. He had a conference call and a business lunch on the agenda, a meeting at the bank, drinks with a client, and then he was meeting Regina for sushi afterward.

  But when he looked at Faith, he had only one thought. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

  * * *

  Mason’s car glided through the prepaid toll lane and then shot ahead, leaving all the other vehicles in the rearview mirror. He tried not to be that pathetic cliché, the guy who was in love with his car. But sometimes he couldn’t help himself. He deeply loved this car.

  In the passenger seat beside him, Faith looked around the cockpit of the Tesla. “This car is really something,” she said. “It’s really all electric?”

  “Yep. Never needs a drop of gas or oil.” He couldn’t help showing off the neck-snapping acceleration. The car leaped forward, then glided like a pat of butter across a hot skillet.

  Faith gave a little squeal. “Okay, that was fun.”

  “You squealed. I haven’t made a woman squeal in a long time.”

  “But you have a girlfriend.”

  “Regina.”

  “And you’ve never made her— Never mind.” Her cheeks flushed red. “Don’t answer that. Just drive. And know that inside, I’m squealing.”

  “I used to think guys who were into their cars were douchebags. Then I fell in love with this one.”

  “You couldn’t help yourself. One smooth ride, and you were a goner.”

  “Exactly. Sorry.”

  “Never apologize for falling in love.”

  “I like the way you think.” He liked a lot of things about her—except the fact that she had come to deliver this nightmare news to him. He focused on navigating to the throughway. Then he set the cruise control and turned down the stereo. “Start talking,” he said. “I need to know what’s been going on. A suicide attempt? I can’t even get my head around that.”

  “I can only imagine how frightening it must be for you. But there’s a way thro
ugh it.”

  “There damn well better be.” His hands on the steering wheel felt cold. There was a ball of ice in his stomach, too. And in his chest, where his heart was supposed to be.

  He glanced over at Faith. She was staring straight ahead, watching the road. “When did she tell you?” he asked.

  “Tell me what?”

  He ground his teeth together. “That she tried to kill herself.”

  “Oh. Well, she didn’t tell me.”

  “Then how the hell—”

  “I figured it out. And she denied it.”

  “Whoa, hang on for a second. She denied it?”

  “She said I’m completely wrong.” Her voice softened, and she slowly turned to face him. “But I’m not. I questioned everyone and went over the EMT report.”

  Doubt crept in. “I don’t understand. Jesus, you called me away on a hunch?”

  “It’s more than a hunch.”

  “Okay, assuming you know what you’re talking about, why now? She got through the worst part of the accident. What made her choose this moment?” His stomach was churning.

  “That’s what I hope you’ll talk with her about. The day she fell, did anything unusual happen?”

  “My brother, sister and I were away.” He still remembered the feeling of keen exhilaration they’d all felt on the mountain that day, and how the sensation had collapsed into panic. “Do you think she freaked out because we were scattering the ashes?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t claim to be an expert, but it just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would make her want to throw herself down a flight of stairs.”

  He glanced over at Faith, and he was struck by the soft emotion in her face. “My mother survived a damn avalanche and all the subsequent surgeries and hospitalizations, the therapies and treatments. She’s finally making a new life for herself in Avalon.”

  “Then we need to find out why she would want to harm herself now.”

  “And you think a visit from me will get to the bottom of this.”

  “She needs more than a visit from you. Is there some way for you to come for a prolonged stay?”

  The knot in his stomach tightened. “I want to help. I do. But my life and my work are far from Avalon.”

  “Are you able to commute to the city? I know it’s a long way...”

  “It’s doable. You did it this morning. The problem is, I don’t see how my hanging around is going to help her. My mother and I...we’re not close.” The admission stung.

  “Now you have a chance to change that. Um, assuming you want to change it.”

  “Do you think it needs changing?”

  “Could be that’s exactly what’s called for. You’ve given her everything she needs except the one thing that is going to get her through this rough time—your presence. Your emotional support.”

  “Okay, I get it. I can be present. But emotional support has never been my strong suit.”

  “It’s never too late to learn.”

  “Sure, but having me—what? Move in? Get in her face?—is not going to magically resolve this problem.”

  “Of course it won’t. It’s just a start.”

  “And what makes you think she’d welcome my presence? Did she ask to see me?”

  She made a sound of exasperation. “I’ve already made an appointment for her to see Dr. Rose, and you should go along, as well.”

  “Dr. Rose—the psychiatrist. ‘Hey, Mom, did you really try to off yourself?’” The very idea of saying those words to her made his blood run cold.

  “I hate that this happened,” said Faith, “but you have to get to the bottom of it. I asked the others at the house if she had any unusual visitors, upsetting news, things of that sort on the day she fell.”

  “And?”

  “No one could think of anything. Except...”

  “Except what?”

  She turned toward him in the passenger seat. “Have you ever heard of someone named Celeste Gauthier?”

  His heart leaped when he heard the name. Everything in him wanted to say no, he had no idea who that could be. He couldn’t, though. He knew exactly who that was.

  After all this time, he had thought the secret was safely buried in the past and would remain there forever. Yet somehow, it had reached his mother and, if Faith’s theory was correct, it had shattered her.

  “Mason?” Faith spoke gently, as if she somehow sensed the implosion taking place inside him.

  He kept the car steady on the road. Took a deep breath. Killed the music on the radio. In the few moments before he started speaking, he became strangely aware of arbitrary details—the clean laundry scent of her shirt, and the angle of her leg as she turned in the passenger seat to face him. He heard the hum of the tires on the road, and the sound of other cars swishing past. The landscape seemed to slide by in a slow-motion blur.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know who Celeste Gauthier is.” He kept his eyes on the road. “Did she show up at the house?”

  “No. The caregiver on duty that day said a large envelope full of documents arrived from France—in French.”

  Mason’s heart thudded in his chest. “You talked to the caregiver? The one I fired?”

  “Of course. And I went over the reports from the EMTs and the hospital. Anyway, the guy said he held up each page while your mom read it. He said your mother was extremely quiet afterward, but didn’t seem visibly upset. But then later that day it happened, though we’ve no idea if the two incidents are related. So...who is she?”

  He ground his back teeth together, then made himself say it. “Celeste Gauthier was my father’s French mistress.”

  “What? Oh, my God. Really?”

  “Naw, just making that up. Of course really.”

  She turned on the seat to stare straight ahead. “Well...wow. Do you think this is the first time your mother heard from her?”

  “That would be my assumption. Celeste was a secret. That whole...situation. Hell, I don’t even know what to call it. It was a damned secret, buried in the past.” He banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.

  “But you knew about it.”

  He nodded. “I was the only one. Until now, I guess.”

  “That’s a big secret to carry around. How long have you known?”

  “Since I was seventeen years old. I spent the summer in Paris that year. And that’s when I found out.”

  Part Two

  “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”

  —Helen Keller

  13

  Paris, 1995

  As the Air France 747 circled Charles de Gaulle Airport, Mason tried to resign himself to the fact that this summer was going to suck. He knew it was lame and ungrateful to even think such a thing. What guy in his right mind would think a summer in Paris could suck?

  But damn. All of his friends were up in Montauk at the tip of Long Island, surfing and partying and getting laid.

  Mason, on the other hand, would be working in an office. Never mind that the office was within spitting distance of the Eiffel Tower, and the agency he’d be working for did important work funding humanitarian missions. It was an NGO known as AIDE—Alliance Internationale pour le Développement de l’Éducation—originally founded by his grandfather George Bellamy, and Mason was here to fulfill a family tradition. Just like his father before him, Mason would spend the summer between his junior and senior years with a group of youths as an intern at the agency. It was the summer his parents had been promising him since he’d started high school. He tried to be excited about the weeks to come. He didn’t want to be that overprivileged kid who had no clue about what real work was.

  T
he other interns came from all over the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia. It was a rare opportunity, not to be taken lightly. All his life, Mason’s parents had drummed into him that he should do good work. He was privileged. That meant he had responsibilities to those less fortunate.

  Okay, thought Mason. I get that. I still would rather be surfing.

  He had looked down the list of other interns, wondering if any of them were hot girls. Some of them had names so exotic, he couldn’t even tell if they were guys or girls.

  Leaning his forehead on the window, he gazed down at the inchworm-shaped loop of the Seine, which divided Paris into Rive Droite and Rive Gauche. And he tried to keep his leg from jiggling and annoying the guy in the seat next to him.

  He’d hardly slept at all on the transatlantic flight. He had watched a movie called Before Sunrise, which had all the cuss words edited out, about an American guy and a French girl who met on a train and made out in Vienna and fell in love even though they knew they’d never see each other again. Most of it was pretty boring, but the French girl in it was hot, and when her dress slipped down one shoulder, Mason got a boner. Just about anything related to girls had that effect on him.

  Later, he had finished his John Grisham book, which made being a lawyer look way more exciting and dangerous than it probably was. He’d eaten every bite of his in-flight dinner and breakfast. People complained about airplane food, but Mason thought it was awesome.

  He pretty much thought all food was awesome. And in Paris, of course, it was going to reach a new level of awesome. Or formidable, as the French would say. He spoke French pretty well. His dad had insisted they all learn the language, on account of the family business.

  He realized his foot was jiggling again. He pressed his hand on his knee, forcing it to stop. The aircraft landed in a rumble of landing gear and wing flaps, then taxied to a halt at the gate. Mason levered himself up from his seat. He collected his backpack from the overhead bin and headed for the exit, shuffling along with yawning businessmen and sleepily blinking tourists.

  He thanked the flight attendants in their native French, earning patronizing smiles because they probably thought he’d exhausted his entire French vocabulary; then he joined the stream of passengers in the Jetway. The lineup at passport control seemed impossibly long and slow. He had to piss like a racehorse. Where had that expression come from? The arbitrary thought floated through his mind. How did anyone know how bad a racehorse needed to piss?