Daughters of the Lake

by Wendy Webb

  “I saw him and instantly knew I was going to marry him,” she’d sighed on the phone to her cousin. “I’ve just met my future husband. Mark my words.”

  Kevin and Kate didn’t tell anyone else they were dating. Office romances were frowned upon at the paper, and both of them were relatively new on the job. Kate, in fact, was just beginning the three-month probationary period, customary at many workplaces, and neither she nor Kevin wanted to muddy the waters of their employment with rumors of an affair. At work, they were cool, cordial coworkers. Nobody guessed that their friendly, though somewhat formal, demeanor with each other concealed a great fire. Kevin was a master at masking his feelings; he was so good, in fact, that early on, Kate spent many days at work wondering if she had misinterpreted his ardor that first night.

  They would leave the office separately, each talking loudly about hitting the gym or doing some shopping, only to meet later at her house. At that time, Kate was renting a small cottage on a lake a few miles outside of town. When she chose the house for its old-fashioned charm and its lake view, she had no idea that its remote location would make it a very convenient place to conduct a clandestine romance. Nobody would come to her house unannounced and find them together or drive by and see his car parked in her driveway.

  Those early days, the first sweet, solitary, secretive weeks, Kate felt as though she were living in a dream world. She had the job she always wanted—ever since she had discovered her love of journalism during her days writing for the high school newspaper, she had dreamed of growing up and working at the Gazette. And now it was a reality. She loved her job and soon became known as an outstanding writer, earning praise from everyone who read her work.

  Only she and Kevin knew that another dream of Kate’s had come true as well, falling head over heels in love. Kate couldn’t believe her good luck. She was happier than she had ever been.

  When their relationship was forbidden and taboo, sharing the secret of their affair was exciting. Kevin and Kate made a game out of seeing who could break the other’s composure at work, whispering seemingly innocent words that referenced a secret intimacy. Kevin started this game by putting a note on Kate’s desk that simply said, “Canoe.” Kate knew what he was referring to. The night before, they had canoed to a small island just across the bay from Kate’s house. They hadn’t secured the canoe well enough on shore. Kate looked up from the blanket they had laid on the ground to see her canoe floating freely in the middle of the lake. When they stopped laughing, Kevin had to swim out to retrieve it.

  The first time Kevin told Kate he loved her, they were at the office. It was a month or so after their relationship had begun, and Kevin walked by Kate’s desk to drop off a stack of papers. As he bent down, he whispered into her ear, “I love you.” He ran a finger down her forearm and walked away casually, as though nothing had been said at all. It sent a jolt of electricity through Kate’s body. She’d been in love with him since their first night together at the Tavern and was relieved that he had finally gotten around to admitting he felt the same way. Later, that small act, him running his finger quickly down her forearm, came to mean “I love you” between them. It became their secret way of expressing love in a public place.

  Because they didn’t go out together, except for the nights when the whole gang from work would stop by the Tavern for a drink, Kate and Kevin spent the majority of their time alone, playing house. They quickly settled into a routine like an old married couple, making dinner together at her place, talking about the happenings in the office, perhaps watching a movie or a television show before tumbling into bed together.

  Sometimes on weekends Kevin would stay for the night, but most often, Kate would wake up and find him gone. The empty side of the bed always left her feeling cold and deserted, but she shrugged it off—he had to shower and change for the workday, after all.

  Three months after that first night at the Tavern, Kevin proposed to Kate. They were sitting on the dock in front of her house on a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon, dangling their feet in the cool water. He pulled the ring out of his pocket and said, nervously, “This was my mother’s. I can’t imagine anyone else but you wearing it. Will you . . . I guess what I’m saying is, will you marry me?”

  Kate was stunned. It had all happened so quickly. He didn’t know her family; she didn’t know his. She knew that he had grown up with a father who was in the military, but she didn’t know he’d attended fifteen different schools before he graduated from high school. She didn’t know anything about his early years, a life that consisted of making friends and losing them, over and over again. Young Kevin had quickly learned—after watching through the back window of his father’s station wagon as countless best friends disappeared, only to reappear in the next town in the form of some other boy just his age—that people were replaceable.

  During his childhood, Kevin had honed the art of making friends quickly and deeply, in a frantic effort to create some sort of intimacy in his life before it was smashed to pieces when the family had to pack up and move to his father’s next post. After many years of this, it became easy for Kevin to create relationships. Sustaining them was another matter. He never had any practice at it. He simply left people behind as he began new phases of his life, knowing that someone else would arise to take their places. But Kevin never thought consciously about these things, or how they might impact a marriage. He was not a deep thinker. So when he asked Kate to spend the rest of their lives together, he had no idea he was proposing the impossible.

  Kate did not know any of these things that day on the dock as he sat next to her with a ring in his hand, but she knew there was only one response to his question. She couldn’t imagine a life without Kevin in it. Unlike his, Kate’s close relationships lasted a lifetime.

  She said yes, he slipped the ring on her finger, and they sat on the dock together for hours, staring at the sun glinting off the water’s surface and talking quietly about the rest of their lives, which, to both Kevin and Kate, had suddenly come into sharper focus.

  Later, they wondered how they were going to broach the subject of their engagement at the office. Interoffice dating was forbidden, after all. And here they were, getting married. They both loved their jobs. How would they explain this? What would happen when the truth came out?

  “I think we should call Stan right now and invite him to meet us at the Tavern,” Kevin said, referring to Stan Corrigan, the paper’s editor in chief. “We’ll tell him what’s been going on between us, ask for his blessing, and hope for the best.”

  The meeting went better than they had hoped. Stan had no idea they were dating, but he seemed delighted to hear they were planning to marry.

  “Kids, that’s great news,” he said, hugging them both and buying a round of drinks for the table. “A married team will probably stay around awhile,” he said, mostly to himself, it seemed.

  Kate had the peculiar sensation that her dream life with Kevin had just been given legs and stepped into the cold world of reality. Stan knew. Soon everyone would know. It was real. It was happening. They decided to break the news to the rest of the staff on Monday.

  Kate was nervous when she arrived at the office that morning. She found Kevin already sitting at his desk with the same kind of cool demeanor that had helped keep their relationship secret for the past three months. They exchanged cordial smiles.

  The paper’s editorial staff always had a meeting first thing on Monday to talk about the coming week. Each department would lay out their editorial plans, discussing possible stories and angles. The staff was small enough and friendly enough that the meeting was also the forum in which they acknowledged birthdays and other important events in each other’s lives.

  When it was Kate’s turn to speak, she talked about this story and that story, chasing this source and that photograph. Then she said, “I have something else to add. I had an exciting development happen over the weekend. I’m engaged!”

  Kate’s news elicited, at firs
t, open-mouthed stares from the staff, none of whom knew she was dating anyone. From there, the scene quickly evolved into a chorus of shouts and hugs. Everyone wanted to know, Who was the lucky guy?

  “Kevin, maybe you could take it from here.” Kate smiled at her fiancé across the table.

  More open-mouthed stares. Then cries, hugs, and shouts from the staff. It was a great moment for both Kate and Kevin, who were laughing and talking and telling the stories of how they’d had to keep their relationship secret.

  Stan even got into the act, saying that everyone was invited to celebrate at the Tavern after work. “The first drink’s on the Gazette!” Stan cried.

  For Kate, it was a relief to finally be able to show her true feelings for the man sitting next to her.

  From that moment until their wedding day, Kate was caught up in the whirlwind that descends upon a newly engaged woman. Introducing her parents to the man of her dreams and announcing their engagement was as joyful an experience as she had ever had. First, disbelief, then the floodgates opened, along with several bottles of wine. Fred and Beverly toasted the young couple, welcoming Kevin into their family in the warmest possible way. Kevin’s parents, who had settled in a small town several miles away after his father had retired from the military, were similarly thrilled.

  Then, it was on to the flurry of wedding planning—shopping for a dress, choosing the photographer (a young kid from the newspaper) and the florist, the music and the venue. Steak or chicken at the reception? Open bar or cash bar? When Kate finally walked down the aisle on her father’s arm toward the only man she had ever loved, she believed, deeply in her soul, that she was blessed. Now all that was left was to live the spectacular life that they had created for themselves.

  Five years passed. During that time, Kevin and Kate had purchased a home and a couple of cars, settled into a familiar routine of married life, and worked their way up from reporters to editorial positions at the newspaper.

  One day, Kevin came home carrying a large, square box from the office supply store in town.

  “I got something for you today,” Kevin said to his wife.

  Kate smiled. “I’d hazard a guess that it isn’t paper for the printer.”

  “Open it and find out,” Kevin said as he set the box in front of her. Kate gingerly took off the lid and peered inside to find a little black-and-white fuzz ball of a dog, all paws and teeth and tail. She squealed.

  Kate lifted the little bundle out of the box and held it to her neck, where it nibbled on her chin with its sharp little puppy teeth.

  “I know you’ve been wanting a dog.” Kevin smiled. “I saw an ad in the paper offering Alaskan malamute puppies for sale. I thought . . .”

  But Kate wasn’t listening. This was truly love at first sight. Much later, when she thought about that day, she knew that whatever else Kevin had done, whatever heartache he had brought into her life, he had been responsible for finding Alaska, and for that, she would always be grateful.

  After the breakup of their marriage, friends would ask Kate when things had started to go wrong. Had it been coming awhile? Had she seen any signs? The truth was, Kate had been blindsided by Kevin’s affair, but in retrospect, she realized that she should have seen the signs, which were as bright and prominent as the neon ones in Times Square.

  Their own relationship had started out as a clandestine affair, after all, and although Kate would admit it to nobody, not even to Simon, it seemed that Kevin had enjoyed the secrecy and the forbidden nature of those early days a great deal. All that intensity cooled considerably once they were married, but Kate reasoned that it was normal, knowing that no couple could keep up such a frantic level of excitement for a lifetime.

  Still, in her heart, Kate often found herself wondering if it was only the secrecy of their relationship that had truly excited Kevin. Kate didn’t realize that theirs was the longest relationship Kevin had ever had. He was always antsy for the thrill, the conquest, the adventure. He wanted to learn intimate things about somebody new. He longed to hear someone else’s important stories, their life scripts. To Kate, their relationship deepened with every passing day. To Kevin, it eroded.

  Kate discovered her husband’s affair on her birthday. Their friends, mostly people from the newspaper, had gathered at the Tavern to celebrate, but she wasn’t much in the mood for partying. For several weeks, she had been feeling that something was wrong in her marriage. It wasn’t anything specific, but rather a vague sense of dread that she couldn’t quite define. Kevin was always making excuses to be out of the house—he went to the gym or for long walks, worked late, that sort of thing. It left Kate with a sour taste in her mouth, a literal feeling of indigestion. But it wasn’t anything that seemed big enough, substantial enough, for her to make an issue out of it. The fact that her husband was busy and preoccupied wasn’t so unusual, was it? He always came home to her, right?

  Along with the frequent trips to the gym, Kate also noticed that her husband was overly attentive to Valerie, his new intern at the office. She was quite beautiful—jet-black hair, a perfect figure, and more than ten years younger than Kate and Kevin. He had hired Valerie to help write the news section and had talked about her to Kate in very casual terms. But lately she was coming up more and more in conversation. Kevin told Kate that he had taken the young intern under his wing. It was his intention to show her the ropes and make things a bit easier for her on the long, hard climb up the editorial ladder.

  “The kid has great potential,” he was fond of saying. “I think we found a gem when we hired her.”

  That wasn’t so unusual, either, was it? Oh, it was all professional and aboveboard. No hint of impropriety. An older, experienced mentor and a young mentee. But Kate’s radar detected something, and it wouldn’t stop sounding. Yet, to her rational mind, it seemed so cliché—a wife suspecting her husband and his pretty young intern were having an affair. And furthermore, Kate trusted Kevin. That’s why that nagging feeling made her all the more uneasy.

  It simmered and boiled in her brain, the casual coolness between her husband and the intern, the ultraprofessional manner in which he addressed her. It seemed to Kate that he was going out of his way to show everyone that there was nothing going on between them.

  But the night of her birthday at the Tavern, they had all been drinking. A few beers have a way of loosening lips, and actions. After they’d all had a few rounds of drinks, Kate saw something familiar in the way her husband reacted to this young woman. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about their fleeting glances, catching each other’s eyes for a second or two, then looking away.

  Back at Harrison’s House in Wharton, Simon interrupted Kate’s memories.

  “Hey, you were in another world there,” he said to her. “Thinking about Kevin?”

  Kate nodded, not knowing quite what to say.

  “I keep thinking back to that conversation we had not too long ago about him working late so often,” Simon mused, sipping his coffee. “You were making so many excuses for him. I saw the signs but didn’t say anything. I wish I had.”

  “When I found out for sure that he was cheating, I wasn’t exactly the picture of dignified grace.” Kate grimaced. “I’m still sort of embarrassed by what I did.”

  “You never did tell me exactly what went down,” Simon said, leaning in. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Everyone from work met at the Tavern to celebrate my birthday,” Kate began. “After a few rounds of drinks, Valerie got up to use the ladies’ room. She didn’t look at Kevin at all. But a few moments later, he excused himself and followed her. That set off my radar. It was the same sort of move we’d pull in front of our friends from work. So I followed.”

  Simon whistled and shook his head. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. I found them together in the hallway near the restrooms. I got there just in time to see my husband running his finger quickly down Valerie’s arm as the two passed each other in the hall. Just a
slight touch. To most people, it would mean nothing. But that touch was our secret way of saying ‘I love you’ when other people were around. And there he was, touching another woman in exactly the same way.”

  “Oh, honey,” Simon said. “What happened then?”

  “I confronted him. I asked him, ‘What did you just do?’ and he just stammered. Stammered! Valerie slunk off back to the table. But Kevin suddenly became much calmer than the situation warranted. He asked me what I thought I saw. He accused me of having too much to drink and making things up. That really sent a chill through me. I knew what I saw. I knew exactly what that gesture meant. And that’s when I marched back to the table and threw a drink in her face.”

  “You didn’t!” Simon hooted. “That’s so Alexis Carrington in Dynasty of you.”

  Kate put her head down on the table, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “I threw popcorn, too!”

  “God, no. Not the popcorn.”

  Kate remembered wheeling around and stalking back to the table, Kevin at her heels, pleading, “Kate, don’t make a scene. Let’s just talk about this . . .”

  But it was no use. The gall of him, putting his affair on display at her birthday party. Flirting with this woman in public while their friends gathered to celebrate her birthday. Something snapped inside of Kate at the thought of it, and when she reached the table, she did something she never dreamed she’d do. As she threw her drink into Valerie’s face, she shouted, “That’s for five years of marriage that you just destroyed.”

  Everyone at the table was stunned into silence. Nobody said a word.

  Kate had felt as though she was observing the scene, not really participating in it. She watched herself grab a half-eaten bowl of popcorn on the table and fling its contents onto Valerie’s lap, hissing, “And that’s for being so stupid as to think I wouldn’t see what was going on between you and my husband.”