Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

  “How did it happen?” Annie’s voice was a whisper.

  “Just called her into the principal’s office and said, kiddo you’re outta school.” Lurlene made a tsking sound. “That child don’t need to get rejected again. What she needs is a daddy. ’Course a rabbit’s a better parent than he is right now—and they eat their young. I wish I could do more for ’em, but Buddy—that’s my husband—he says he raised his kids, all five of ’em, with his ex-wife, Eartha— you know her? She lives down around Forks. Anyway, Buddy don’t want to go through that again, not marryin’ Eartha, I mean, but raisin’ kids. And I’ve never had kids, what do I know about it? I mean, I can give her a durn fine cut and perm, and even paint her little nails, but I don’t know about much else. I don’t mind watchin’ her after school—she’s actually quite a help around the place—but she scares me, if the truth be told, what with her problems and all.”

  It was all coming at Annie so fast. She couldn’t make herself really comprehend it. Kathy.

  How could Kathy be dead? Only yesterday they’d been best friends, playing together in the schoolyard at recess in elementary school, giggling about boys in junior high, and double dating in high school. They had been friends in the way that only girls can be—they wore each other’s clothes and slept at each other’s houses and told each other every little secret. They promised to always stay friends.

  But they hadn’t taken the time and energy to stay in touch when their lives went down separate roads . . . and now Kathy was gone. Annie hadn’t meant to forget Kathy. But she had, and that’s what mattered now. She had gone to Stanford, met Blake, and exchanged the past for a future.

  “Nicky’s fallin’ apart, pure and simple,” Lurlene said, snapping a big bubble of gum. “Him and Kathy bought the old Beauregard house on Mystic Lake—”

  The Beauregard house. An image of it came to Annie, wrapped up in the tissue-thin paper of bittersweet memories. “I know it. But you still haven’t told me how Kath—”

  The hair dryer blasted to life, drowning out Annie’s question. She thought she heard Lurlene still talking, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then, after a few minutes, the dryer clicked off. Lurlene set the scissors down with a hard click on the white porcelain tile counter.

  “Lordie, you do look fine,” Lurlene squeezed her on the shoulder. “Open your eyes, honey, and take yourself a peek.”

  Annie opened her eyes and saw a stranger in the mirror. Her brown hair was so short there was no curl left. The pixie cut emphasized her drawn, pale skin, and made her green eyes look haunted and too large for the fine-boned features of her face. Without lipstick, her unsmiling mouth was a colorless white line. She looked like Kate Moss at fifty—after a lawn-mower attack. “Oh, my God . . .”

  Lurlene nodded at her in the mirror, grinning like one of those dogs that sit in the back windows of cars. “You look just like that young gal that nabbed Warren Beatty. You know who I mean—the one from The American President.”

  “Annette Bening,” said one of the ladies across the room.

  Lurlene reached for her camera, a disposable. “I gotta get me a picture of this. I’ll send it in to Modern Do magazine. I’ll win that trip to Reno for sure.” She hunkered down in front of Annie. “Smile.”

  Before Annie could think, Lurlene popped the photo and straightened, chewing on the scarlet tip of her acrylic nail. “I’ll bet there ain’t a hundred women in the world who can do justice to that haircut, honey, but you’re one of them.”

  All Annie wanted was to get out of this room without crying. It’ll be all right. It’ll grow back, she told herself, but all she could think about was Blake, and what he would say about what she’d done when— if—he came back to her. Shakily, she reached for her handbag. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothin’, honey. We’ve all had bad weeks.”

  Annie turned to Lurlene. In the woman’s heavily mascaraed eyes, there was real, honest-to-God understanding.

  If she hadn’t felt so sick, Annie might have managed a smile. “Thanks, Lurlene. Maybe I can return the favor sometime.”

  Lurlene’s painted face cracked into a toothy grin. “Why, honey, this here’s Mystic. You hang around long enough and a favor’s gonna come beggin’.” She bent down and grabbed a big green fishing tackle box from the corner. It hit the tile counter with a clatter and the lid snapped open. Inside was enough makeup to turn Robin Williams into Courtney Love. Lurlene grinned. “Now, are you ready for your makeover?”

  Annie gasped. She could picture it—her face with more color than a Benjamin Moore paint wheel. “N-No thanks, I’m in a rush.” She popped to her feet and backed away from the chair.

  “But, but—I was gonna make you look like—”

  Annie mumbled a hurried thank you and ran for the door. She escaped into her rented Mustang and cranked up the engine, barreling out of the driveway in a spray of gravel and a cloud of smoke. She made it almost a mile before she felt the sting of tears.

  It wasn’t until almost fifteen minutes later, as she drove past the corner of the World-of-Wonders putt-putt golf course, with her hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel and tears leaking down her cheeks, that she remembered the question that had been left unanswered.

  What had happened to Kathy?

  Annie drove around Mystic, down the rain-rutted back roads, up the bare, harvested hills, until the tears on her cheeks had dried to thin silver streaks. She knew she had to put on a happy face when she saw her dad. Finally, when she’dregained some measure of self-control, she went home.

  Hank was seated in one of the old butter-yellow chairs beside the fireplace. A book of crossword puzzles lay open on his lap. At her entrance he looked up. The smile on his face fell faster than a cake when the oven door was slammed. “Holy hamhock,” he said slowly.

  Annie couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve been cast in G.I. Jane, the sequel.”

  Hank’s laugh started slowly, gathering strength. “It looks . . . good, honey.”

  “Good? I wanted to look younger, but I didn’t want to look like an infant.”

  Hank got to his feet and opened his arms. The magazine fell to the floor in a flutter of paper. “Come here, honey.”

  Annie walked into his embrace and let him hug her. When he drew back, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, wrapped piece of candy. Butterscotch. He’d always thought those candies would help Annie through the dark times. He’d given her one when her mom died. Here, honey, have a piece of candy. For years afterward, whenever she smelled butterscotch, she looked around, expecting to see Hank.

  Smiling, she took the candy and unwrapped it, popping it in her mouth. It rolled around on her tongue, tasting of sweetness and memories.

  He touched her cheek. “Real beauty is on the inside.”

  “That’s something women say to each other, Dad. Trust me, men don’t believe it.”

  Hank gave her a crooked grin. “I believe it, and last time I looked, I’m a man. And I think your haircut is stunning. It’ll just take a little getting used to.”

  “Well, I feel like a new woman, and that’s what I wanted.”

  “Of course it is.” He patted her shoulder. “Now, how about a rousing game of Scrabble?”

  Annie nodded and let him lead the way. He pulled the Scrabble box out from the armoire in the corner of the living room, where it had probably been sitting since the last time they’d played—twenty years ago. He dusted off the box and set out the board on the coffee table.

  Annie stared at her seven smooth wooden squares, trying to come up with a word to start the game. “So, Dad, you didn’t tell me about Kathy Johnson.”

  He didn’t look up. “Didn’t I? I thought I wrote you about it. Or maybe I told you when I was down for Christmas?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged, and she could tell that he wasn’t going to look up. “Oh, well. I guess you know now. That Lurlene’s the mouth that roared in Mystic. Sorry you had to find out about i
t that way.”

  Annie could tell that Hank was uncomfortable. He kept pulling at his collar, though it wasn’t even buttoned to his neck, and he was staring at his letters as if they were the original ten commandments. He was not the kind of man who liked to discuss death. Anyone’s. But certainly not the untimely death of a woman he’d watched grow up.

  Annie let the subject rest. Forcing a thin smile, she plucked up four letters and started the game. Anything she wanted to know about Kathy’s death, or her life, would have to come from somewhere else.

  Chapter 6

  Nick Delacroix stood in his front yard in the pouring rain, staring down at the limp, sagging, half-dead cherry tree he’d planted last year. Slowly, he fell to his knees in the muddy grass and bowed his head.

  He hadn’t cried at his wife’s funeral, or yesterday when his daughter had been kicked out of school, but he had the strangest goddamn urge to cry now—and over this stupid little tree that wouldn’t grow. He pushed to his feet and then turned away from the tree, walking tiredly back up to the house.

  But when he was safely inside, with the door slammed shut behind him, he couldn’t forget about that damned tree.

  It was all because of yesterday; it had been a bad day— and in the past eight months he’d had enough of them to know.

  His Izzy had been kicked out of school.

  At the thought, the anger came crawling through him again. When the anger faded, all he had left was shame.

  Yesterday, his Izzy had stood in the principal’s office, her brown eyes flooded with tears, her full, little girl’s lips quivering. Her pink dress was stained and torn, and he’d known with a sinking feeling that it had been like that when she’d put it on. Her long black hair—once her pride and joy—was a tangled bird’s nest because no mother’s hand had combed through it.

  He’d wondered fleetingly, absurdly, what had happened to all those pretty ribbons she’d once had.

  We can’t have her in school anymore, Mr. Delacroix. Surely you see that?

  Izzy had stood there, motionless. She hadn’t spoken— but then, she hadn’t spoken in months. That was one of the reasons they’d expelled her . . . that and the disappearing. A few months ago, she’d started to believe she was disappearing, one tiny finger at a time. Now she wore a small black glove on her left hand—the hand she could no longer see or use. Recently she’d begun to use her right hand awkwardly, as if she believed some of those fingers were “gone” now, too.

  She hadn’t looked up, hadn’t met Nick’s eyes, but a single tear had streaked down her cheek. He’d watched the tear fall, hit her dress, and disappear in a tiny gray blotch.

  He’d wanted to say something, but he had no idea how to comfort a child who’d lost her mother. Then, like always, his inability to help his daughter had made him angry. It had started him thinking that he needed a drink—just one to calm his nerves. And all the while, she had stood there, too quiet and still for a six-year-old, staring at him with a sad, grown-up disappointment.

  He picked his way through the living room, stepping over containers from last night’s takeout. A lonely housefly buzzed lazily above the scraps. It sounded like the roar of a lawn mower.

  He glanced down at his watch, blinking until his vision cleared. Eight-thirty.

  Shit. He was late to pick up Izzy. Again.

  The thought of facing her, letting her down again, seeing that tiny black glove . . .

  Maybe if he had a little drink. Just a short one—

  The phone rang. He knew even before he answered that it was Lurlene, wondering where he was. “Heya, Lurl,” he drawled, leaning tiredly against the wall. “I know, I know, I’m late. I was just leaving.”

  “No hurry, Nicky. Buddy’s out with the boys tonight— and before you jump down my throat, Izzy’s fine.”

  He released a sigh, unaware until this moment that he’d tensed up. “You don’t care that I’m late, and Izzy is fine. So, what’s up?”

  Her voice fell to a stage whisper. “Actually, I was callin’ with an interestin’ bit o’ gossip.”

  “Good God, Lurl. I don’t give a shit—”

  “I met an old friend of yours today—you care about that don’tcha? And I have to say, she ain’t nuthin’ like I expected her to be. Why, to hear you and Kath—oops! I didn’t mean to mention her, sorry—anyway, she was just as sweet as cream butter. I wouldn’t even have known she was rich. She was that everyday. Like Miss Sissy Spacek. I saw her on Oprah the other day and you woulda thought that lady was no differ’nt’n you or me.”

  Nick tried to keep up with the conversation, but it was spiraling beyond his control. “Sissy Spacek was in your salon today? Is that the point?”

  Lurlene’s musical laugh skipped up and down the scales. “You silly, of course not. This is Mystic, not Aspen. I’m talkin’ about Annie Bourne. She’s back in town, visitin’ her daddy.”

  Nick couldn’t have heard right. “Annie Bourne is back in town?”

  Lurlene babbled on about haircuts and cashmere sweaters and diamonds the size of grapes. Nick couldn’t keep his focus. Annie Bourne.

  He mumbled something—he had no idea what—and hung up.

  Jesus, Annie Bourne. She hadn’t been home in years; he knew that because Kathy had waited futilely for phone calls from her old best friend.

  Picking his way through the debris in his living room, he went to the fireplace and grabbed a picture off of the mantel. It was one he’d seen daily but hadn’t really looked at in years. A bit faded, the colors sucked away by time and sunlight, it was of the three of them, taken in the last rosy days of the summer before their senior year. Annie and Kathy and Nick. The gruesome threesome.

  He was in the middle, with an arm around each girl. He looked young and carefree and happy—a different boy from the one who’d lived in a cramped, dirty car only a few months before. In that perfect summer, when he’d first tasted the rain-sweet elixir called normal life, he’d finally understood what it meant to have friends, to be a friend.

  And he had fallen in love.

  The photograph had been taken in the late afternoon, when the sky was a deep and unbroken blue. They’d spent the day at the lake, shrieking and laughing as they dove off the cliffs into the water. It was the day he’d first understood it would have to come to an end, the day he realized that sooner or later, he’d have to choose between the two girls he loved.

  There had never been any doubt about whom he would choose. Annie had already applied to Stanford, and with her grades and test scores, everyone knew she’d be accepted. She was on her way in the world. Not Kathy. Kathy was a quiet, small-town girl given to blue moods . . . a girl who needed desperately to be loved and cared for.

  He still remembered what he’d told Annie that day. After the life he’d lived with his mother, he knew what he wanted: respect and stability. He wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, to be part of a legal system that cared about the death of a lonely young woman who lived in her car.

  He’d told Annie that he dreamed of becoming a policeman in Mystic.

  Oh, no, Nicky, she had whispered, rolling over on the blanket to stare into his face. You can do better than that. If you like the law, think big . . . big . . . you could be a supreme court justice, maybe a senator.

  It had hurt him, those words, the quiet, unintentional indictment of his dreams. I don’t want to be a supreme court justice.

  She’d laughed, that soft, trilling laugh that always made his heart ache with longing. You’ve got to think bigger, Nicky-boy. You don’t know what you want yet. Once you start college—

  No college for me, smart girl. I won’t be getting a scholarship like you.

  He’d seen it dawn in her eyes, slowly, the realization that he didn’t want what she wanted, and that he wouldn’t reach that far. He didn’t have the courage to dream big dreams. All he wanted was to help people and to be needed. It was all he’d ever known, all he was good at.

  But Annie hadn’t understood. Ho
w could she? She didn’t know the gutters he’d crawled through in his life.

  Oh, was all she’d said, but there’d been a wealth of newfound awareness in the word, a tiny unsteadiness in her voice that he’d never heard before. After that, they had lain side by side on the scratchy green blanket, staring up at the clouds, their bodies an infinitesimal distance apart.

  It was so simple to him back then. He loved Annie . . . but Kathy needed him, and her need was a powerful draw.

  He’d asked Kathy to marry him just a few months before graduation, but it didn’t matter by then, because Annie had known he would. They tried, after the engagement, to keep their friendship together, but inevitably they’d begun to drift apart. It had become Nick-and-Kathy, with Annie a bystander. By the time Annie left for college, amid a shower of promises to keep in touch, Nick had known there would be no lifelong friendship, no gruesome threesome anymore.

  By the time he got back from Lurlene’s, it was almost nine-thirty. Well past a six-year-old’s bedtime, but Nick didn’t have the heart to put her right to bed.

  Izzy sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the cold, black fireplace. It had always been her favorite spot in this house; at least, it had been in the old days when there was always a fire crackling behind her, always a wave of gentle heat caressing her back. She was holding her rag doll, Miss Jemmie, in one arm—the best she could do since she’d begun “disappearing.” The silence in the room was overwhelming, as pervasive as the dust that clung to the furniture.

  It shredded Nick into helpless pieces. He kept trying to start a conversation with his daughter, but all his efforts fell into the black well of Izzy’s silent world.

  “I’m sorry about what happened at school, Izzy-bear,” he said awkwardly.