Kristin Hannah

by On Mystic Lake (v5)

  Izzy let go of his hand. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. Last night, when he’d told her they were going to come here, Izzy had picked up a piece of paper and her crayons, then she’d gone into her room alone. When she emerged, she held a picture of her mom’s favorite flower. Daddy, I’ll give her this. That way she’ll know I was visitin’ her.

  He had nodded solemnly.

  She walked over to the wrought-iron bench and sat down. Smoothing the paper on her lap, she stared at the headstone. “Daddy said I could talk to you, Mommy. Can you hear me?” She drew in a ragged breath. “I miss you, Mommy.”

  Nick bowed his head, thinking of a dozen things at once, and thinking nothing at all. “Heya, Kath.” He waited for her to answer, but, of course, there was nothing except the swaying of the evergreen boughs and the trilling call of a bird.

  This place had so little to do with his Kathy. It was why he hadn’t come here before, not since the day they placed her gleaming mahogany casket in a gaping hole in the earth. He couldn’t stand to look at the evenly clipped carpet of grass and know that she was below it, his wife who’d always been afraid of the dark and afraid of being alone. . . .

  He reached out, touched the cold headstone with the tip of a finger, tracing the etched canal of her name.

  “I came to say good-bye, Kath,” he said softly, closing his eyes against the sudden sting of tears. His voice broke, and he couldn’t speak out loud. I loved you for most of my life, and I know you loved me, too. What . . . what you did was about something else, something I never could understand. I wanted you to know that I forgive us. We did the best we could. . . .

  He touched the stone again, felt it warm beneath his fingertips, and for a moment—a heartbeat that winged into eternity—he imagined her beside him, her golden hair streaming in the sunlight, her black eyes crinkled in a smile. It was the day Izzy was born, that was the memory that came to him. Kathy sitting up in the hospital bed, her hair all askew, her skin left pale by exhaustion, her pink flannel nightgown buttoned improperly. She had never looked so lovely, and when she looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms, she’d begun softly to cry. “Isabella,” she’d said, trying the name on her tongue before she looked up at Nick. “Can we call her Isabella?”

  As if Nick could deny her anything. “It’s perfect.”

  Kathy had continued to look at him, while tears streaked down her cheeks. “You’ll always take care of her, won’t you, Nicky?”

  She had known even then the darkness that was coming for her.

  But did she know that he loved her, that he had always loved her, and that he always would? She was a part of him, perhaps the biggest part, and sometimes even now, he heard her laughter in the whisper of the wind. Last week, when he’d seen those beautiful white swans across the lake, he stopped and stared and thought, there they are, Kath . . . they’ve come back again. . . .

  Izzy slipped her hand in his. “It’s okay, Daddy. She knows.”

  He pulled her into his arms and held her, looking up at the sky through hot, stinging tears. I have her, Kath—the best part of us—and I’ll always be here for her.

  They placed a wicker basket full of blooming chrysanthemums on the grass, then drove home.

  “I’m gonna check the garden,” Izzy said when they pulled into the driveway.

  “Don’t be long. It looks like it’s going to rain.”

  Nodding, she got out of the car and made a beeline to the white picket fence. Nick slammed the door shut and headed for the house. Sure enough, it started to rain before he reached the porch.

  “Daddy, Daddy, come here, Daddy!”

  He turned. She was standing in front of the cherry tree they’d planted last year. She was hopping up and down like an agitated bird, flapping her arms.

  He raced across the yard. When he reached her, she looked up at him, grinning, her face washed by rain. “Look, Daddy.”

  Nick saw what she was pointing at, and slowly he dropped to his knees in the already moist grass.

  The cherry tree had produced a single, perfect pink bud.

  Autumn brought color back to Southern California. Brown grass began to turn green. The gray air, swept clean by September breezes, regained its springtime blue. The local radio stations started an endless stream of football chatter. The distant whine of leaf blowers filled the air.

  It was the season of sharp, sudden changes: days of bright lemon heat followed by cold, starlit nights. Sleeveless summer shirts were packed away in boxes and replaced by crew-neck sweaters. The birds began one by one to disappear, leaving their nests untended. To the Californians, who spent most of their days in clothes as thin as tissue and smaller than washrags, it began to feel cold. They shivered as the wind kicked up, plucking the last dying red leaves from the trees along the road. Sometimes whole minutes went by without a single car turning toward the beach. The crossroads were empty of tourists, and only the stoutest of spirit ventured into the cool Pacific Ocean at this time of year. The stream of surfers at the state beach had dwindled to a few hardy souls a day.

  It was time now to let go. But how did you do that, really? Annie had spent seventeen years trying to protect her daughter from the world, and now all of that protection lay in the love she’d given Natalie, in the words she’d used in their talks, and in the examples she’d provided.

  The examples.

  Annie sighed, remembering the talk she’d had with Natalie and the disappointment she’d felt in realizing that she hadn’t been a good role model. Now it was too late to change all that she’d been and done as a mother. Annie’s time was over.

  “Mom?” Natalie poked her head into Annie’s bedroom.

  “Hey, Nana,” she answered, trying to inject cheerful-ness into her voice. “Come on in.”

  Natalie climbed onto the bed and stretched out alongside Annie. “I can’t believe I’m really going.”

  Annie put an arm around her daughter. Surely this beautiful creature couldn’t be the child who’d once licked the metal ski-chair pole at Mammoth Mountain . . . or the girl who’d climbed into her parents’ bed after a nightmare when she was only a year away from being a teenager.

  Seventeen years had passed in the blink of an eye. It was too fast. Not long enough . . .

  Idly, Annie finger-combed her daughter’s long blond hair. She’d been preparing for this day for ages, almost since she’d first dropped Nana off at kindergarten, and still she wasn’t ready. “Have I told you today how proud I am of you?”

  “Only a billion times.”

  “Make it a billion and one.”

  Natalie snuggled closer and pressed a hand to Annie’s stomach. “How were the latest stress tests and ultrasounds?”

  “Everything shows a healthy baby girl. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “She’s lucky to have you for a mom.”

  Annie laid her hand on Natalie’s. There were so many things she wanted to say, on this day when her daughter was embarking on the adventure of her own life, but she knew that she had had her time. Everything of magnitude that was hers to say had been said, and if it hadn’t, it was too late now. Still, she wished she could think of one single, flawless bit of advice to hand down like an heirloom to her child.

  Natalie leaned against her. “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

  Gone. Such a hard, cold, uncompromising word. It was like death, or divorce. Annie swallowed. “Miss you?”

  Natalie turned to her. “Remember when I was little . . . you always used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up?”

  “I remember.”

  “What about you, Mom? What did you used to tell Grandpa Hank when he asked you the same question?”

  Annie sighed. How could she make Natalie understand what Annie herself had only figured out this year, after almost forty years of living? Hank had never asked his only daughter that question. He’d been a lonely, lost single father, caught between the decades of Donna Reed
and Gloria Steinem, and he had taught his daughter that a woman was defined by the men around her. He had been taught, and so he believed, that girls didn’t need dreams for the future— those were for little boys, who would grow up to run businesses and make money.

  Annie had made so many mistakes, and most of them had been because she’d planted herself firmly in the middle of the road. But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you’d never really reached for anything in the first place.

  At last, Annie had something she wanted to reach for, a risk she wanted to take. She turned to her daughter. “When I was in Mystic, I started thinking about opening my own bookstore. There was a wonderful old Victorian house at the end of Main Street, and the downstairs was vacant.”

  “That’s why you’ve been reading all those business books.”

  Annie bit down on her smile and nodded. She felt like a child again, who’d just shown a friend her most precious possession and found that it was as beautiful as she’d imagined. “Yes.”

  Natalie gave her a slow-building grin. “Way to go, Mom. You’d be excellent at that. You could give the Malibu bookstore a run for its money. Maybe I could even work for you in the summers.”

  Annie looked away. That wasn’t part of her dream at all, doing it here, under the watchful, critical eye of her husband. She could just hear his comments. . . .

  Not like Nick’s response.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Annie tensed. It’s time. “Come in,” she called out.

  Blake strode into the room, wearing a black silk suit and a bright smile. “Hey guys. Is Natalie ready? Mrs. Peterson and Sally are here to pick her up.”

  Annie manufactured a brittle laugh. “I always pictured myself lugging your suitcases up the dorm stairs and unpacking your clothes for you. I wanted you to at least start school with your things organized.”

  “I would have had to call security to get rid of you.” Natalie started out laughing and ended up crying.

  Annie pulled Natalie into her arms. “I’ll miss you, baby.”

  Natalie clung to her, whispering, “Don’t you forget that bookstore while I’m gone.”

  Annie was the first to draw back, knowing she had to be the one to do it. She touched Natalie’s soft cheek, gazed into her precious blue eyes, remembering for the first time in years how they used to be the color of slate. So long ago . . .

  “Good-bye, Nana-banana,” she whispered.

  “I love you, Mom.” It wasn’t a child’s wobbly voice that said the words. It was a young woman, ready at last to be on her own. Sniffling, her smile trembling, Natalie pulled away.

  She gave her dad a weak grin. “Okay, Dad. Walk me out.”

  After they’d turned and walked away, Annie kept watching, as the door slowly clicked shut. She surprised herself by not crying.

  Oh, she knew that later, in the long darkness of the night, and in the many days that lay ahead, a new kind of loneliness would creep toward her, loose its silent voice in the echo of this emptier house, but she knew, too, that she would survive. She was stronger than she’d been in March. She was ready to let her eldest daughter go into the world.

  “Good-bye, Nana,” she whispered.

  Annie went into labor in the first week of November. She woke in the middle of the night, with her stomach on fire. The second cramp hit so hard, she couldn’t breathe.

  She doubled forward. “Oh . . . God . . .” She focused on her own hands, until the pain released her. Clutching her belly, she flung the covers back and clambered out of bed. She started to scream, but another cramp sliced her voice into a pathetic hiss. “Blake—”

  He sat upright in bed. “Annie?”

  “It’s too . . . early,” she wheezed, clutching his pajama sleeve. She thought of Adrian and panicked. “Oh, God, it’s too early. . . .”

  “Jesus.” He lurched out of bed and raced for the clothes that lay heaped over a chair. In a matter of minutes, he had Annie in the car and they were speeding toward the hospital.

  “Hang on, Annie. I’ll get you to the hospital.” He shot her a nervous look. “Just hang on.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Imagine you’re on a white sand beach.

  Another cramp.

  “Shit,” she hissed. It was impossible. All she could think about was the pain, the red-hot pain that was chewing across her belly, and the life inside her. Her baby. She clutched her stomach. “Hold on, baby girl . . . hold on.”

  But all she saw was Adrian, tiny Adrian, hooked up to a dozen machines, being lowered into the ground in a casket the size of a bread box. . . .

  Not again, she prayed silently over and over. Please God . . . not again.

  The sterile white walls of the hospital’s waiting room pressed in on Blake. He paced back and forth, one minute watching the clock, then skimming through some idiotic magazine about celebrities and their infantile problems.

  He kept reliving it in his mind. Annie being rushed into the delivery room, her eyes wide with fear, and her voice, broken and braying, saying over and over again, It’s too early.

  Everything had flashed before his eyes in that single, horrifying moment when they’d put her on a gurney and wheeled her away from him. He’d seen his whole marriage in an instant, all the good times and the bad times and the in-between times; he’d seen Annie go from a fresh-faced college sophomore to a pregnant thirty-nine-year-old.

  “Mr. Colwater?”

  He spun away from the window and saw Annie’s obstetrician, Dr. North, standing in the doorway. She wore a crisp white coat and a tired smile. “The baby—”

  “How’s Annie?”

  Dr. North frowned for a second, then said, “Your wife is sleeping peacefully. You may see her now.”

  He sagged in relief. “Thank God. Let’s go.” He followed Dr. North down the quiet white hallway to a private room.

  Inside, the curtains were drawn and the room lay steeped in bluish shadows. The bed was a narrow, steel-railed thing tucked neatly inside an L-shaped privacy curtain. A bedside table held a telephone and a blue plastic water pitcher with the room number scrawled across the side—as if someone would steal it. Metal IV racks stood alongside the bed like tall, thin vultures, their plastic bags and see-through veins connected to Annie’s pale wrists.

  She looked young and frail in the strange bed. It brought back a dozen painful memories of his son.

  “When will she wake up?” he asked the doctor.

  “It shouldn’t be long.”

  Blake couldn’t seem to move. He stood in the center of the room, staring at his wife. He’d almost lost her. It was the thought that kept spinning through his head. He’d almost lost her.

  He went to the bed and pulled up a chair. He sat there, staring at the woman who’d been his wife for almost twenty years. Dr. North said something—he didn’t know what—and then left the room.

  After forever—he’d lost track of time—she opened her eyes. “Blake?”

  His head snapped up. He saw her sitting up, looking at him. She looked scared and broken. “Annie,” he whispered, reaching for her hand.

  “My baby,” she said. “How’s our little girl?”

  Shit. He hadn’t even asked. “I’ll go find out.” He rushed away from her and hurried down the hall. He found Dr. North at the nurses’ station, and he dragged her back to Annie’s room.

  At the doctor’s entrance, Annie straightened. She was trying desperately not to cry; Blake could see the effort she was making. “Hi, doctor,” she said, swallowing hard.

  Dr. North went to Annie, touched her hand. “Your daughter is alive, Annie. She’s in neonatal intensive care. There were some complications; she was barely five pounds and developmentally that’s a problem. We’re worried about—”

  “She’s alive?”

  Dr. North nodded. “She still has a lot of hurdles to overcome, Annie, but she’s alive. Would you like to see her?�
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  Annie clamped a hand over her mouth and nodded. She was crying too hard to answer any other way.

  Blake stood aside as the doctor helped Annie into the wheelchair stationed in the corner. Then, feeling left out, he followed them down the hallway and into the neonatal ICU.

  Annie sat huddled beside the incubator. Inside the clear plastic sides, the baby lay as still as death, a dozen tubes and needles connected to her thin red arms.

  Blake came up beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  She looked up at him. “I’d like to call her Kathleen Sarah. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.” He glanced around—up, down, sideways, anywhere except at the incubator. “I’m going to get us something to eat.”

  “Don’t you want to sit with us?”

  He didn’t look at the baby. “I . . . can’t.”

  Annie didn’t know why she was surprised, or why it hurt so deeply. Blake was no good with tragedy or fear; he never had been. If the emotions couldn’t fit in a neat little box, he pretended they didn’t exist. She would have to handle this in the way she’d handled every upset in her life: alone. Dully, she nodded. “Fine. Get yourself something. I’m not hungry. Oh, and call Natalie. She’ll want to know what’s happening.”

  “Okay.”

  After he left, she reached through the bagged opening in the incubator’s side and held her baby’s hand. Though she couldn’t feel the skin, she could still remember the velvety softness. She tried not to think about Adrian, and the four futile days she’d sat beside him in a room exactly like this one, mouthing the same useless prayers, crying the same wasted tears.

  Katie’s hand was so damned small and fragile. Annie tucked her fingers around the minuscule wrist. For the next hour, she talked, hoping that the familiar sound of her voice would soothe her daughter, make her know that even in this brightly lit new world full of needles and breathing machines and strangers, she wasn’t alone.

  She couldn’t have said later what she talked about, what she dredged up from her frightened soul to spill onto that austere, frightening plastic box.

  But it didn’t take long for the words to dry up, taking the false optimism with them.