Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

  “Of course.” He grabbed her hand and led her through the terminal and into the garage. Wordlessly, they got into the Cadillac and slammed the doors shut. The air-conditioning came on instantly.

  As the car hurtled down one freeway after another, Annie felt exhausted. She leaned back heavily in her seat and stared out the window at this city that had never become her city, although she and Blake had moved here right after college. It was a sprawling labyrinth of a town, where gorgeous, elaborately appointed dowager buildings were demolished daily by a few well-placed charges, where men and women with no appreciation for art or beauty or constancy set fire to fuses that blasted tons of sculptured marble and glass into piles of smoking, belching rubble. In this city of angels, too few noticed the loss of one more landmark. Before the collapsed building had even cooled, developers swarmed City Hall, climbing over one another like black ants for permits and easements. Within months, a sleek, glass-faced child of a building would rise higher and higher into the smoggy brown sky, so high that Annie often wondered if these builders thought they could access heaven with their leveraged millions.

  She was seized by a fierce, unexpected longing to return home. Not to the crowded, affluent beauty of Malibu, but to the moist green landscape of her youth, that wild part of western Washington State where mushrooms grew to the size of dinner plates and water rushed in silver threads along every roadside, where fat, glossy raccoons came out in the light of a full moon and drank from mud puddles in the middle of the road. To Mystic—where the only skyscrapers were Douglas firs that had been growing since the American Revolution. It had been almost ten years since she’d been back. Perhaps she could finally talk Blake into a trip now that they were no longer tethered to Southern California by Natalie’s school schedule.

  “What do you think about planning a trip to Mystic?” she asked her husband.

  He didn’t look at her, didn’t respond to her question, and it made her feel stupid and small. She pulled at the large diamond stud in her ear and stared outside. “I was thinking about joining the Club. God knows I’ll have more time on my hands now. You’re always saying I don’t get out of the house enough. Aerobics would be fun, don’t you think?”

  “I haven’t said that in years.”

  “Oh. Well . . . there’s always tennis. I used to love tennis. Remember when we used to play doubles?”

  He turned off the freeway and eased onto the twisting, traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway. At the gated entrance to their road, he waved to the guard and passed into the Colony, the beachfront jewel of Malibu. Rain beaded the windshield and blurred the world for a split second, before the wipers swept the water away.

  At their house, he slowed, inching down the brick-paved driveway. He stopped in front of the garage.

  Annie glanced at him. It was odd that he hadn’t pulled into the garage. Odd that he hadn’t even hit the door’s remote control. Odder still that he’d left the car running. He hated to leave the Cadillac out in the rain. . . .

  He’s not himself.

  The realization sanded the hard edges from her anxiety, reminded her that she wasn’t as alone as she felt. Her high-powered, ultra-competent husband was as fragile as she was right now.

  They would do it together, she and Blake. They would get each other through this day, and all the empty-nest days and nights to come. They had been a family before Natalie, and they would be one again, just the two of them. It might even be fun, like the old days when they had been best friends and partners and lovers . . . the days when they went out dancing and didn’t come home until the sun was peeking up from the horizon.

  She twisted around to face him, and brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. “I love you. We’ll get each other through this.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She hadn’t really expected him to, but still the awkward silence stung. She tucked the disappointment away and opened the car door. Tiny shards of rain slipped through the opening, mottling her sleeve. “It’s going to be a lonely spring. Maybe we should talk to Lupita about planning a barbecue. We haven’t had an old-fashioned beach party in years. It’d be good for us. God knows it’s going to be weird walking around the house without—”

  “Annie.” He said her name so sharply that she bit her tongue in the middle of her sentence.

  He turned to her, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  She leaned over and touched his cheek in a fleeting, tender caress. “I’m going to miss her, too.”

  He looked away and sighed heavily. “You don’t understand. I want a divorce.”

  Chapter 2

  “I meant to wait to tell you . . . at least until next week. But the thought of coming home tonight . . .” Blake shook his head and let the sentence trail off.

  Very slowly, Annie closed the car door. Rain hit the windshield and ran in streaks down the windows, obscuring the world outside the car.

  She couldn’t have heard right. Frowning, she reached for him. “What are you talking about . . .”

  He lurched against the window, as if her touch—the touch he’d known for so long—were now repugnant.

  It all became real suddenly, with that gesture he wouldn’t allow. Her husband was asking for a divorce. She drew back her hand and found that it was trembling.

  “I should have done this a long time ago, Annie. I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy with you in years.”

  The shock of it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was everywhere, spreading through her in wave after numbing wave. Her voice was tangled deep, deep inside of her, and she couldn’t find the frayed start of it.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said softly, and she heard the choked-up thickness of his breathing. “I’m seeing someone else . . . another woman.”

  She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. He was having an a fair. The word sank through her, hurting all the way to the bone. A thousand tiny details slipped into place: dinners he’d missed, trips he’d taken to exotic locations, the new silk boxer shorts he’d started wearing, the switch in colognes from Polo to Calvin Klein after all these years, the love they made so rarely . . .

  How had she been so blind? She must have known. Deep inside, in some primitive feminine core, she must have known what was happening and chosen to ignore it.

  She turned to him, wanting to touch him so badly it was a physical ache. For half her life, she’d touched him whenever she wanted, and now he had taken that right away. “We can get over an affair. . . .” Her voice was feeble, not her voice at all. “Couples do it all the time. I mean . . . it’ll take me some time to forgive you, time to learn to trust, but—”

  “I don’t want your forgiveness.”

  This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not to them. She heard the words and felt the pain, but it all had a dizzying sense of unreality about it. “But we have so much. We have history. We have Natalie. We can work this out, maybe try counseling. I know we’ve had problems, but we can get through it.”

  “I don’t want to try, Annie. I want out.”

  “But I don’t.” Her voice spiked into a high, plaintive whine. “We’re a family. You can’t throw twenty years away. . . .” She couldn’t find the words she needed. It terrified her, the sudden silence she found in her own soul; she was afraid there were words that could save her, save them, and she couldn’t find them. “Please, please don’t do this. . . .”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time—long enough for her to find a strand of hope and weave it into solid fabric. He’ll change his mind. He’ll realize we’re a family and say it was just a midlife crisis. He’ll—

  “I’m in love with her.”

  Annie’s stomach started a slow, agonized crumbling.

  Love? How could he be in love with someone else? Love took time and effort. It was a million tiny moments stacked one atop another to make something tangible. That declaration—love—and everything it meant diminished her. She felt as if she were a tiny, dis
appearing person, a million miles away from the man she’d always loved. “How long?”

  “Almost a year.”

  She felt the first hot sting of tears. A year in which everything between them had been a lie. Everything. “Who is she?”

  “Suzannah James. The firm’s new junior partner.”

  Suzannah James—one of the two dozen guests at Blake’s birthday party last weekend. The thin young woman in the turquoise dress who’d hung on Blake’s every word. The one he’d danced with to “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

  Tears stung Annie’s eyes, turned everything into a blur. “But after the party, we made love. . . .”

  Had he been imagining Suzannah’s face in the darkness? Was that why he’d clicked off the bedroom lights before he touched her? A tiny, whimpering moan escaped her. She couldn’t hold it all inside. “Blake, please . . .”

  He looked helpless, a little lost himself, and in the moment of vulnerability, he was Blake again, her husband. Not this ice-cold man who wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I love her, Annie. Please don’t make me say it again.”

  The sour remains of his confession tainted the air, left her with nothing to breathe. I love her, Annie.

  She wrenched the car door open and stumbled blindly down the brick walkway to her house. Rain hit her face and mingled with her tears. At the door, she pulled the keys from her handbag, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t find the lock on the first try. Then the key slipped into the slot and clicked hard.

  She lurched inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

  Annie finished her second glass of wine and poured a third. Usually two glasses of chardonnay left her giddy and reeling and trying to remember song lyrics from her youth, but tonight it wasn’t helping.

  She walked dully through her house, trying to figure out what she’d done that was so wrong, how she’d failed.

  If only she knew that, maybe then she could make it all right again. She’d spent the past twenty years putting her family’s needs first, and yet somehow she had failed, and her failure had left her alone, wandering around this too-big house, missing a daughter who was gone and a husband who was in love with someone else.

  Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten what she should have remembered. It was a lesson she’d learned early in life—one she’d thought she knew well. People left, and if you loved too deeply, too fiercely, their swift and sudden absence could chill you to the soul.

  She climbed into her bed and burrowed under the covers, but when she realized that she was on “her” side of the bed, she felt as if she’d been slapped. The wine backed up into her throat, tasting sour enough that she thought she would vomit. She stared up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. With each ragged breath, she felt herself getting smaller and smaller.

  What was she supposed to do now? It had been so long since she’d been anything but we. She didn’t even know if there was an I inside of her anymore. Beside her, the bedside clock ticked and ticked . . . and she wept.

  The phone rang.

  Annie woke on the first ring, her heart pounding. It was him, calling to say it was all a mistake, that he was sorry, that he’d always loved her. But when she picked up the phone, it was Natalie, laughing. “Hey, Mom, I made it.”

  Her daughter’s voice brought the heartache rushing back.

  Annie sat up in bed, running a weak hand through her tangled hair. “Hi, honey. I can’t believe you’re there already.” Her voice was thin and unsteady. She took a deep breath, trying to collect herself. “So, how was your flight?”

  Natalie launched into a monologue that lasted for a steady fifteen minutes. Annie heard about the plane trip, the airport, about the strangeness of the London Underground, and the way the houses were all connected together—like, San Francisco, you know, Mom—

  “. . . Mom?”

  Annie realized with a start that she’d lapsed into silence. She’d been listening to Natalie—she truly had—but some silly, pointless turn in the conversation had made her think of Blake, of the car that wasn’t in the garage and the body that wasn’t beside her in bed.

  God, is that how it’s going to be from now on?

  “Mom?”

  Annie squeezed her eyes shut, a feeble attempt to escape. There was a white, static roar of sound in her head. “I . . . I’m right here, Natalie. I’m sorry. You were telling me about your host family.”

  “Are you all right, Mom?”

  Tears leaked down Annie’s cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “I’m fine. How about you?”

  A pause crackled through the lines. “I miss you guys.”

  Annie heard loneliness in her daughter’s voice and it took all of her self-control not to whisper into the phone, Come home, Nana. We’ll be lonely together.

  “Trust me, Nana, you’ll make friends. In no time at all, you’ll be having so much fun that you won’t be sitting by the phone waiting for your old mom to call. June fifteenth will come much too quickly.”

  “Hey, Mom, you sound kinda shaky. Are you going to be okay while I’m gone?”

  Annie laughed; it was a nervous, fluttery sound. “Of course I will. Don’t you dare worry about me.”

  “Okay.” The word was spoken so softly Annie had to strain to hear it. “Before I start crying, I better talk to Daddy.”

  Annie flinched. “Dad’s not here right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “He loves you, though. He told me to tell you that.”

  “Yeah, of course he does. So, you’ll call Monday?”

  “Like clockwork.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  Annie felt tears flood her throat again, squeezing until she could hardly talk. She suppressed a fierce urge to warn Natalie about the world, to tell her to watch out for lives that fall apart on a rainy spring day without warning. “Be careful, Natalie. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  And the phone went dead.

  Annie placed the handset back on the base and crawled out of bed, stumbling blindly into her bathroom. The lights came on like something out of an Oliver Stone movie. She stared in horror at her reflection. She was still wearing her clothes from the airport, and they were wrinkled into something she didn’t recognize. Her hair was stuck so tightly to her head it looked as if she’d used Elmer’s glue as conditioner.

  She slammed her fist onto the light switch. In the blessed darkness, she stripped down to her bra and panties and left the wrinkled clothes in a heap on the tile floor. Feeling tired and old and swollen, she walked out of the bathroom and crawled back into bed.

  She could smell him in the fabric of the sheets. Only it wasn’t him. Blake—her Blake—had always worn Polo. She’d given him the cologne for Christmas every year; it came already wrapped for the holiday in a green gift box at Nordstrom. She’d given it to him every year and he’d worn it every day . . . until Calvin Klein and Suzannah changed everything.

  Annie’s best friend showed up bright and early the next morning, pounding on the front door, yelling, “Open up in there, goddamn it, or I’ll call the fire department.”

  Annie slipped into Blake’s black silk bathrobe and stumbled tiredly toward the front door. She felt like hell from the wine she’d drunk last night, and it took considerable effort simply to open the door. The expensive stone tiles felt icy cold beneath her bare feet.

  Terri Spencer stood in the doorway, wearing a baggy pair of faded denim overalls. Her thick, curly nimbus of black hair was hidden by a wild scarlet scarf. Bold gold hoops hung from her ears. She looked exactly like the gypsy she played on a daytime soap. Terri crossed her arms, cocked one ample hip, and eyed Annie. “You look like shit.”

  Annie sighed. Of course Terri had heard. No matter how much of a free spirit her friend claimed to be, her current husband was a dyed-in-the-wool lawyer. And lawyers gossiped. “You’ve heard.”

  “I had to hear it from Frank. You could have called me yourself.”

  Annie ran a trembling hand th
rough her tangled hair. They had been friends forever, she and Terri. Practically sisters. But even with all they’d been through together, all the ups and downs they’d weathered, Annie didn’t know how to begin. She was used to taking care of Terri, with her wild, over-the-top actress lifestyle and her steady stream of divorces and marriages. Annie was used to taking care of everyone. Except Annie. “I meant to call, but it’s been . . . difficult.”

  Terri curled a plump arm around Annie’s shoulder and propelled her to the overstuffed sofa in the living room. Then she went from window to window, whipping open the white silk curtains. The twenty-foot-tall, wall-to-wall windows framed a sea and sky so blue it stung the eyes, and left Annie with nowhere to hide.

  When Terri was through, she sat down beside Annie on the sofa. “Now,” she said softly. “What the fuck happened?”

  Annie wished she could smile—it was what Terri wanted, why she’d used the vulgarity—but Annie couldn’t respond. Saying it out loud would make it too real. She sagged forward, burying her puffy face in her hands. “Oh, God . . .”

  Terri took Annie in her arms and held her tightly, rocking back and forth, smoothing the dirty hair from her sticky cheeks. It felt good to be held and comforted, to know that she wasn’t as alone as she felt.

  “You’ll get through it,” Terri said at last. “Right now, you think you won’t, but you will. I promise. Blake’s an asshole, anyway. You’ll be better off without him.”

  Annie drew back and looked at her friend through a blur of stinging tears. “I don’t . . . want to be without him.”

  “Of course you don’t. I only meant . . .”

  “I know what you meant. You meant that it will get easier. Like I’d trust your opinion on this. You change husbands more often than I change underwear.”

  Terri’s thick black eyebrows winged upward. “Score one for the housewife. Look, Annie, I know I’m harsh and pessimistic, and that’s why my marriages fail, but remember what I used to be like? Remember in college?”