On Mystic Lake

Page 5

“Annalise—”
She kept tears at bay one trembling breath at a time. Everything hung on the thread of this moment. “Promise me we’ll wait until June—when Natalie gets home. We’ll talk again . . . see where we are after a few months apart. I gave you twenty years, Blake. You can give me three months.”
She felt the seconds tick by, slicing tiny nicks across her soul. She could hear the even, measured cant of his breathing, the lullaby that had eased her into sleep for more than half her life.
“All right.”
The relief was overwhelming. “What are we going to tell Natalie?”
“Christ, Annie, it’s not like she’s going to have a heart attack. Most of her friends’ parents are divorced. That’s half of our goddamn problem, all you ever think about is Natalie. Tell her the truth.”
Annie felt her first spark of true anger. “Don’t you dare make this about motherhood, Blake. You’re leaving me because you’re a selfish prick.”
“A selfish prick who’s in love with someone else.”
The words cut as deeply as he intended them to. Tears burned behind her eyes, blurred her vision, but she’d be damned if she’d let them fall. She should have known better than to fight with him—she had no practice, and hurtful words were his profession. “So you say.”
“Fine,” he said in a clipped, even voice, and she knew by the tone of it that this conversation was over. “What do you want to tell Natalie and when?”
This was the one answer she had. She might be a complete failure as a wife and lover, but she knew how to take care of her daughter. “Nothing for now. I don’t want to ruin this trip for her. We’ll tell her . . . whatever we need to . . . when she gets home.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll send someone over tomorrow to pick up a few of my things. I’ll have the Cadillac returned on Monday.”
Things. That’s what it came down to after all these years. The bits and pieces that were their life—his toothbrush, her hot rollers, his album collection, her jewelry— became just things to be divided up and packed in separate suitcases.
He picked up the envelope from the table and held it out to her. “Open it.”
“Why? So I can see how generous you’ve been with our money?”
“Annie—”
She waved a hand. “I don’t care who owns what.”
He frowned. “Be sensible, Annie.”
She looked at him sharply. “That’s what my dad said to me when I told him I wanted to marry a skinny, dirt-poor, twenty-year-old kid. Be sensible, Annie. There’s no rush. You’re young. But I’m not young anymore, am I, Blake?”
“Annie, please . . .”
“Please what—please don’t make this hard on you?”
“Look at the papers, Annie.”
She moved closer, stared up at him through her tears. “There’s only one asset I want, Blake.” Her throat closed up and it became hard to speak. “My heart. I want it back in one piece. Have you given me that in your precious papers?”
He rolled his eyes. “I should have expected this from you. Fine. I’ll be living at Suzannah’s house if there’s an emergency.” He pulled out a pen and wrote on a scrap of paper from his wallet. “Here’s the number.”
She wouldn’t take the piece of paper from him. He let go and it fluttered to the floor.
Annie lay perfectly still in her king-size bed, listening to the familiar sound of her own breathing, the steady rhythm of her own heart. She wanted to pick up the phone and call Terri, but she’d already leaned on her best friend too much. They’d talked daily, for hours and hours, as if talking could ease Annie’s heartache, and when their conversations ended, Annie felt more alone than ever.
The last week had passed in a blur, seven endless days since her husband had told her he was in love with someone else. Each lonely night and empty day seemed to hack another bit of her away. Soon, she’d be too small for anyone to notice at all.
Sometimes, when she awoke, she was screaming, and the nightmare was always the same. She was in a dark room, staring into a gilt-edged mirror—only there was no reflection in the glass.
Throwing back the covers, she climbed out of bed and went to her walk-in closet. She yanked open her lingerie drawer and pulled out a big gray box. Clasping the box to her chest, she moved woodenly back to the bed. A lifetime’s collection of photographs and mementos lay at her fingertips, all the favorite pictures she’d snapped and saved over the years. She went through them slowly, savoring each one. At the bottom of the box, she found a small bronze compass, a long-ago gift from her father. There was no inscription on it, but she still remembered the day he’d given it to her, and the words he’d said: I know you feel lost now, but it won’t last forever, and this will make sure that you can always find your way home again . . . where I’ll always be waiting.
She clutched the bit of metal in one hand, wondering when and why she’d ever taken it off. Very slowly, she slipped it around her neck again, then she turned to the photographs, beginning with the black-and-white ones, the Kodak trail of her own childhood. Small, dog-eared photos with the date stamped in black across the top. There were dozens of her alone, a few of her with her daddy. And one of her with her mother.
One.
She could remember the day it was taken; she and her mom had been making Christmas cookies. There was flour everywhere, on the counter, on Annie’s face, on the floor. Her dad had come in from work and laughed at them. Good God, Sarah, you’re making enough for an army. There’s just the three of us. . . .
Only a few months later, there were only two of them. A quiet, grieving man and his even quieter little girl.
Annie traced the smooth surface of the print with her fingertip. She’d missed her mother so often over the years—at high school graduation, on her wedding day, on the day Natalie was born—but never as much as she missed her now. I need you, Mom, she thought for the millionth time. I need you to tell me that everything will be all right. . . .
She replaced the treasured photograph in the box and picked up a colored one that showed Annie holding a tiny, blotchy-faced newborn wrapped in a pink blanket. And there was Blake, looking young and handsome and proud, his big hand curled protectively around his baby girl. She went through dozens more pictures, following Natalie’s life from infant to high school senior, from graham crackers to mascara.
Natalie’s whole life lay in this box. There were countless pictures of a smiling, blue-eyed blond girl, standing alongside a succession of stuffed animals and bicycles and family pets. Somewhere along the way, Blake had stopped appearing in the family photos. How was it that Annie had never noticed that before?
But Blake wasn’t who she was really looking for.
She was looking for Annie. The truth sank through her, twisting and hurting, but she couldn’t give up. Somewhere in this box that held the tangible memories of her life, she had to find herself. She went through print after print, tossing aside one after another.
There were almost no pictures of her. Like most mothers, she was always behind the camera, and when she thought she looked tired, or fat, or thin, or ugly . . . she ripped the photo in half and ditched it.
Now, it was as if she’d never been there at all. As if she’d never really existed.
The thought scared her so badly, she lurched out of bed, shoving the photographs aside with a sweep of her hand. As she passed the French doors, she caught sight of a disheveled, desperate-looking middle-aged woman in her husband’s bathrobe. It was pathetic what she was becoming. Even more pathetic than what she’d been before.
How dare he do this to her? Take twenty years of her life and then discard her like a sweater that no longer fit.
She strode to the closet, ripping his clothes from their expensive hangers and shoving them in the garbage. Then she went to his study, his precious study. Wrenching the desk drawer open, she yanked everything out.
In the back of one drawer, she found dozens of recent charge slips for flowers and hotel rooms and lingerie.
Her anger turned into an honest-to-God fury. She threw it all—charge slips, bills, appointment reminders, the checkbook register—in a huge cardboard box. On it, in big bold letters, she wrote his name and office address. In smaller letters, she wrote: I did this for twenty years. Now it’s your turn.
Breathing hard, feeling better than she had in days, she looked around at her perfect, empty house.
What would she do now? Where would she go? She touched the compass at her throat and she knew.
Perhaps she’d known all along.
She’d go back to the girl she’d seen in those rare black-and-white photos . . . back to where she was someone besides Blake’s wife and Natalie’s mother.
Part Two
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.—ALBERT CAMUS
Chapter 4
After hours of flying and driving, Annie was finally steering her rental car across the long floating bridge that connected the Olympic Peninsula to the rest of Washington State. On one side of the bridge, the waves were in a white-tipped frenzy; on the other side, the water was as calm and silvery as a newly minted coin. She rolled down the window and flicked off the air conditioner. Sweet, misty air swept into the car, swirling tiny tendrils of hair across her face.
Mile by mile, the landscape rolled into the vivid greens and blues of her childhood world. She turned off the modern freeway and onto the two-lane road that led away from the shore. Under a purplish layer of fog, the peninsula lay hidden, a pork chop of land ringed by towering, snow-capped mountains on one side and wild, windswept beaches on the other. It was a primitive place, untouched by the hustle and bustle of modern life. Old-growth forests were draped in skeins of silvery moss, and craggy coastlines were sheltered from the raging surf by a towering curtain of rock. At the heart of the peninsula was the Olympic National Park, almost a million acres of no-man’sland, ruled by Mother Nature and the myths of the Native Americans who had lived here long before the white pioneers.
As she neared her hometown, the forests became dense and dark, covered still in the early spring by a shimmering, opalescent mist that concealed the serrated tips of the trees. It was the time of year when the forests were still hibernating, and night fell before the last school bell had rung. No sane person ventured off the main road until early summer; legends were told and retold of children who did and were never seen again, of Sasquatches who roamed the thickets of this wood at night, snatching up unsuspecting tourists. For here, in the deepest reaches of the rain forest, the weather could change faster than a teenage girl’s mind; it could turn from sunshine to snow in a heartbeat, leaving nothing but a blood red rainbow that wept into ebony at the edges.
It was an ancient land, a place where giant red cedar trees grew three hundred feet into the sky and fell into utter silence, to die and reseed among their own, where time was marked by tides and tree rings and salmon runs.
When Annie finally reached the town of Mystic, she slowed her speed, soaking in the familiar sights. It was a small logging community, carved by early, idealistic pioneers from the great Quinault rain forest. Main Street ran for only six blocks. She didn’t have to reach its end to know that at Elm Street the rutted asphalt gave way to a puddled, pockmarked gravel road.