Lake Dreams

by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy

  “I’m awake,” he told her.

  “It’s about time,” Maggie returned. “I saw you down here and when you didn’t move, I came to check. You’ll get sunburned if you sit here too long.”

  “I don’t burn,” Cole said. “I tan.”

  “Uh-huh,” Maggie said with the same sass he recalled from their teens. “Is that why your face looks pink already?”

  He stretched, logger headed from dozing. “Does it really?”

  “No,” Maggie told him, laughing. “But mine will if I stay long without any sunscreen. Have you had lunch? No? Well come up and I’ll fix you a sandwich or something.”

  “Sounds good,” he said as he rose. “Besides, your skeeters are about to eat me alive.”

  Maggie laughed but he wasn’t kidding. Mosquitoes deviled him until he dozed but several bumps itched where they’d bitten. Cole put the chair back where he found it and trailed behind Maggie. Halfway to her back door comprehension hit – he’d been talking in a normal fashion, never thinking ahead what to say or dwelling on his tragedy. Shit, he’d acted like a regular guy again and it felt great.

  Maggie bustled about her kitchen, humming as she deftly built sandwiches, ham and Swiss cheese on rye bread. She squirted mustard on one side of the bread before piling it high and reached for an onion, then paused.

  “Do you want a slice of onion on yours?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  She sliced the onion, then added.“I’ve got four other groups coming in this afternoon. I think it’s going to be a busy weekend.”

  Cole nodded and faked a smile. He’d envisioned spending the first long weekend here, without much distraction or other guests. Counting the cabin he occupied the place would be half full. “That’s good for business, I suppose.”

  “It is,” Maggie said, handing him a plate and sitting down across from him at the table. “And we need it. Not many people want to stay in a cabin these days, not with the choice of luxury hotels and budget motels on the Branson side of the lake. Of the ones who do, we lose a lot of them to Rockaway Beach because it’s better known.”

  For the first time since his arrival Cole looked around the room, noting the shabby little details he missed earlier. Although the kitchen resonated with homey charm, the linoleum was the same as twenty years ago. Cracks marred the design in several places. The tea towels hung to dry were thin and threadbare. Maggie’s faded jeans weren’t a fashion statement and neither were her kids’ worn athletic shoes. She might make a living running the old resort, he thought, but not a very good one.

  “I remember when I came with my grandparents every cabin was full,” Cole said, as he chewed on his first bite of sandwich. “Have you tried advertising?”

  Maggie shook her head and lifted one finger as she swallowed. “I don’t have money for it or I might. I’ve got an ad in the Names and Numbers phone book but its local so I don’t get much business from it. I hoped the website might help but so far, people like you, former guests with good memories are about all who find it.”

  “Maybe some of the guests will go home and brag to their friends,” Cole said, hoping it’d come true.

  “Me, too,” Maggie said. “I’d like to not have to juggle bills and struggle every month. Winter’s the worst for us. Almost no one comes then so I have to make enough money from May through about October to last all year.”

  Her blunt words impressed him and he appreciated her candor. Despite the long lapse, they were friends and he liked it. Cole could say anything to Maggie and he wouldn’t condemn her for anything she told him. Her apparently precarious financial situation concerned him and Cole considered offering her some money. As an adult, he earned a good salary but he hadn’t forgotten his childhood of peanut butter sandwiches, shoe strings knotted together and not replaced when they broke, and hand-me-down clothes from his older siblings, even his cousins.

  Cole’d never sat down to talk finances with his wife. Victoria came from a wealthier family and her folks provided a sizeable down payment on the town house. She paid her bills and he paid his. The fact they never shared a domestic moment like this one saddened him. So did the cozy kitchen – Victoria’s immaculate one wasn’t active. She preferred her kitchen counters empty and shining clean. Even though every modern convenience and appliance filled the tidy cabinets, they seldom ate at home. They’d never shared so much as a single cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Lattes in the den were more Victoria’s style. Between what he earned as a television personality and Victoria brought home as a college art professor at Washington University, augmented by her parents’ generous cash gifts, they never suffered financially. If an appliance needed replacing, they bought a new model. The word ‘budget’ didn’t exist in his wife’s vocabulary.

  Until after she died, Cole never knew how much she spent at the salon, on hair color, manicures, pedicures, and cosmetics. He couldn’t have guessed the sums paid for her clothes, shoes, and accessories. When he’d gone through the bills, shock sent him to the liquor cabinet.

  He gazed across the table at Maggie, hair down and curling with the humidity outside. Cole doubted she wore any make-up but he found her pretty, even beautiful. Victoria flying her full colors had rivaled the models gracing magazine covers but he knew how she looked at night, cosmetics stripped away, enhancements gone, hair pulled back into a tight tail. Her natural hair color – a soft brown – wasn’t a secret to him no matter how much she paid to keep it platinum. Her public face the world saw and the woman he knew within the bedroom were different people but Cole thought Maggie had remained Maggie. So far, she seemed to be the grown-up version of the girl he’d known.

  Her voice brought him back from the wandering trail he’d followed through his thoughts and Cole tuned into her words, hoping she failed to notice his inattention.

  “It gets a little rough around March,” Maggie said, her grey eyes earnest. “Most years I get my income tax refund about then which helps.

  Cole sought something to say which wouldn’t sound condescending or ring with pity. He almost offered her cash but one look into her face made him realize she’d reject his offer as charity. It wouldn’t matter his bank account remained fat with what he considered blood money, the insurance payments for Victoria and his children. If he tried to give her money now he’d hurt her pride, something Cole would rather not do.

  “I could take some vacation in February or March,” he said, half joking, partly serious. “Or if I get my job back, I’ll see if one of the reporters would come down and do a story about the place.”

  Hope illuminated her face and she smiled. “That’d be great, Cole.”

  “Then I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Maggie told him. “Do you want another sandwich?”

  “No, I’m good,” Cole answered. “Where’re your kids?”

  She removed their dishes and put them in the sink, running hot water over them and adding soap. “They’re at school but it’s the last day. It’s usually not this late in May but we had a few snow days last winter to make-up. Kaitlin’s finishing her junior year and Kiefer’s a freshman. I make them ride the school bus but they don’t like it.”

  His good day, the best he’d known since losing his family, soured faster than milk left outside in August heat. Her casual words evoked the big yellow school bus Brock and Brianna rode. Cole remembered watching them step down from it the day before Thanksgiving, never guessing it’d be the last time they would. Brock’s bright red coat made him stand out among the other kids disembarking at the same corner and Brianna, arms filled with a paper turkey she made in class, ran to him when she saw her daddy. Cole swept her up into his arms and danced with her, twirling and whirling through a rain of autumn leaves the wind shifted down over them. Brianna giggled in a voice as melodious as a music box and he remembered thinking no matter what happened with Victoria, he’d have his kids. Snapshots of other memories flooded his mind with a toxic flood of emotional pain. Brock’s
first day of school, his son framed on the steps of the bus clutching his Blue’s Clues lunch box. Brianna’s plaid dress, simple and retro, ended just above her knee socks as she stepped down from the bus after her first day of kindergarten just months before. Becca longed to go on “da bus” with the big kids and he’d brought her home a bright yellow school bus ornament for the Christmas tree, telling her she’d get her turn soon enough.

  Cole zoned out, the way he’d done on set more than once. In his tortured thoughts the red loading lights of the bus merged with the crimson emergency lights of the ambulances working the fatality accident. His pulse thumped faster as his heartbeat increased. Every beat pounded like a drum inside his head. Grief mixed with longing for his children rose like a wolf within until Cole ached to howl. He would if it released his pain, his hurt but it wouldn’t. He shoved the chair back with enough force the legs scraped the floor with an ugly sound and although he didn’t mean to, Cole pushed the table enough to move it. In seconds he would bolt out the back door and run until he fell down from fatigue or a stroke or something.

  “Cole, what’s wrong?” Maggie’s voice cut into his emotional maelstrom.

  Words refused to form into sentences. Images pummeled his brain, each one painful. He saw Becca’s pink, girly bouncer, Brock’s baseball bat and glove, Brianna’s Barbie doll collection. In his head, the kids played out in the strip of back yard behind the town house and splashed in the tiny plastic wading pool he’d bought at Wal-Mart. They rode their Little Tikes toys until they almost ran the wheels off. “I’m just remembering my kids, Maggie. God, I miss the brats.”

  Victoria would reject his emotional outburst with disdain, her cool, sculptured perfect face like a statue’s in repose. Her eyes would narrow as she looked down her slender nose because to her revealing emotion equaled weakness.

  Maggie’s eyes darkened as if she felt his pain. “I know you do, Cole. I couldn’t imagine losing mine. I’m sorry if it’s my fault, if mentioning the kids and the bus reminded you.”

  Although his memories slashed his soul like jagged broken glass, Cole shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m glad you did. Remembering hurts but if I don’t, I might forget them. I wouldn’t want to, not ever.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Her calm tone eased his urge to bolt.

  He stared into her clear grey eyes and admitted the truth. “I have tried not to think about them because it hurts so much. I tried to forget, to put them out of my mind. Now I realize if I don’t remember I’ll lose them forever. I probably wouldn’t have seen it without you, Maggie so thanks.”

  “De nada,” she returned. “If I helped, I’m glad. I know what it’s like to live with emotional pain, Cole. And if knowing and remembering makes things more bearable, in time you’ll move past the worst of it.”

  If true, he’d be better equipped to face each day. “I hope so.”

  “You will.”

  His skin prickled with the intensity in the room, the powerful emotion surging around them so tangible he could all but touch it. Cole hardly could grasp their strong connection. He hadn’t seen Maggie in decades and yet their friendship restored almost immediately. Despite years lived apart instead of in tandem they connected in the same old way with the close familiarity he recalled. Cole could say anything to her without fear of condemnation and he’d listen to her without judging. All the time he’d been away, Cole thought with a wry sense of amusement, he’d possessed a best friend, one he didn’t realize remained, waiting until he needed her.

  Without thinking it through, he said, “Maggie, can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “Do you think it’s strange we can talk like this, so familiar after years without even seeing each other?”

  She cocked her head to one side as she pondered his question. “No, I don’t,” she said after a moment. “We bonded as kids and I’ve come to realize the ties we make early in life, if they’re strong, they remain. Twenty years ago, even fifteen I would’ve said the idea’s crazy but it’s not. We were friends and we still are. It’s not hard to get, is it?”

  Cole chuckled. “No, it’s not. I needed to make sure I wasn’t having some crazy hallucination and you weren’t being nice to a poor old buddy because you felt sorry for me.”

  “Nope,” Maggie said as a smile teased her lips. “I’m really glad you showed up. I’ve needed a friend to talk to for a long time.”

  “So have I,” Cole said. “I’ve needed one more since last November but I haven’t been able to open up with anyone else like this. I get the feeling you still know me, down to my bones and you care.”

  “I do, Cole,” Maggie said. “Now I need to go get the cabins ready before the guests show up. I’m not trying to run you off…”

  “But you’ve got work to do,” he said, filling in her sentence.

  “Yeah, I do. And you probably need some alone time too.”

  He did and he liked the fact she grasped it. “I do. I’m going up to the cabin for awhile but I’ll see you later.”

  Maggie paused long enough to put one hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. “I’d like that, Cole. See you later.”

  “Thanks for lunch and all.”

  “Anytime,” she told him.

  Cole exited the back door and instead feeling left out or pushed away, he savored the chance to be alone with his thoughts. But he didn’t go back to his cabin. If he did, he would pour a drink, then another. It’d become much too easy to let booze dull his pain or temper his thoughts. Cole decided to explore the resort, to check out all the old places he remembered so he strolled up toward the swimming pool.

  Above the sky stretched out blue but the clouds he’d noted earlier gathered along the western horizon, still cumulus and worth watching. If he knew anything at all about predicting weather, Cole’d say a storm was coming.

  Chapter Five

  As he sauntered along the gravel drive linking all of the cabins Cole noticed details he hadn’t before. Although Lake Dreams Resort resembled the place he recalled, he detected a slight shabbiness, an air of neglect he didn’t see until he paid attention. Even though the season had just begun, some of the thick grass, heavy with clover grew too tall and looked unkempt. In a few places, around the aged swing set and the battered picnic table near the pool, weeds sprouted. When Cole ambled closer to some of the cabins, he spotted little things requiring maintenance. Although he’d never been much of a handyman, he’d fixed a few routine things around the house and growing up Cole shadowed his dad who made home repairs because they couldn’t afford a professional. If Maggie owned some basic tools, Cole thought he would spend a little time sprucing up the place. He didn’t have much else to do but with guests arriving, this wasn’t the time to start. He’d ask Maggie first although he doubted she’d mind.

  Past noon, the morning warmth shifted into humid heat, oppressive and thick. The swimming pool beckoned and on impulse Cole decided to go for a swim. He wasn’t sure whether or not an hour passed since eating but he didn’t care. He’d never paid much attention to the old wives tale anyway. If his stomach kicked up, it wouldn’t have anything to do with how long ago he’d eaten lunch. He dashed up to the cabin, rooted through the clothes he brought until he found his old swim trunks. Once green, the color’d faded from a rich forest shade to a hue closer to lime but no one would see him. Cole tried to remember when he’d last worn them and realized it’d been on a family outing at Hurricane Harbor. His belly tightened as he remembered the kids splashing in Hook’s Lagoon, all of them floating down Gully Washer Creek, a lazy river more active than most with some waterfalls and geysers along the way. He struggled to hold onto the good memories yet push back the pain. For once, he accomplished the task and so, wearing trunks and flip flops, Cole headed down to the pool.

  Maggie waved as she exited one of the smaller cabins and he lifted his hand in greeting. Poolside, he kicked off the footwear and dived into the deep end. After the steamy heat, the water ca
rried an almost Arctic chill and when he came up for air, Cole shivered. Until then he’d forgotten they used an Ozark spring to fill the pool and how cold the water stayed until about the Fourth of July. He swam laps until he became bored, then fetched up to fall into one of the reclining deck chairs. The contrast of his frigid skin and the heated air reminded him to check the sky.

  Just as he expected the innocuous cumulus clouds, the fluffy cotton bolls, were gone and in their place cumulus congestus clouds towered in the western sky. Cole gauged their height at somewhere above 20,000 feet and knew a storm would hit by nightfall. Back when weather had been his passion, not his paying gig or daily grind, he spent hours watching clouds, looking for indicators and predicting his own forecasts. He hadn’t done it in a long time, relying instead on the National Weather Service, the station’s Doppler radar and other data. Doing it old school came back to Cole the way people claimed riding a bicycle did. To amuse himself, he came up with a prediction. If he hadn’t lost his knack, Cole figured a squall line of storms would fire off to the west and march eastward over the Branson area by early evening. Cole expected heavy rain, strong winds, a lot of thunder and lightning. Judging by the height of the clouds, he couldn’t rule out the chance of a tornado, either.

  Eyes shut against the brilliant afternoon sun, he basked poolside until the crunch of tires on gravel warned some of the new guests were arriving. Comfortable, although hot, Cole resisted moving until he heard the high voices of young children approaching. He peeked and saw a trio of kids, about the same size his would be now headed for the pool with an adult. The little ones carried inflatable pool toys and Styrofoam sticks for an afternoon of fun. Cole couldn’t bear to watch so he grabbed the towel he brought and left as they entered through the gate.

  “Hi,” Cole said as they passed. “The water’s cold today.”

  “Thanks,” the man replied. “I hope we’re not running you off.”