Lake News (37 page)

He shot her a wry grin. “What did you hear? Not that you
asked
anyone, but people talk. Poppy told you where I live.” There was a tiny rise in his voice at the end that said he was guessing that.

She didn't argue. “Never married, she said. They would say the same about me.”

He tipped an imaginary hat, ceding the point. “It's fact with me. I was in a long-term relationship once. Marley and I were together for eight years. She would say we came close to getting married. I wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“She didn't like my hours.”

“Didn't she work?”

“Sure did. She was an ad executive. Her hours were much worse than mine, only she wanted me free when she was. It didn't work that way often. That's probably why we stayed together so long.”

“Because you didn't see each other much?”

He nodded. “We were very different people. She wasn't a schmoozer, if you know what I mean.”

Lily knew what he meant. Sara Markowitz called often
just to schmooze. Or used to. Right now, Sara didn't know where Lily was.

John said, “Marley wouldn't have appreciated Saturday mornings in the center of town. She wouldn't have appreciated loons. She wasn't a person who liked to relax. I do.”

Wanting to picture where he did that, Lily asked, “What's your place like?”

“At Wheaton Point? Modest, but growing. When I bought it, it was a typical old lake camp. Small and musty smelling. And cold. I put in a woodstove first thing, but you can only do so much without insulation. I nearly froze that first winter. My pipes did. That was an experience. But I got it fixed, and added insulation and new plumbing that spring, and an extra room on the first floor that summer, and two rooms upstairs the summer after that.”

“Did you come back here because of your father?”

He looked off into the dark. “Nah. The job offer was good.”

Lily was thinking that he must have had offers other places, too, and that Lake Henry took a certain kind of person—when he reversed himself.

“Yeah.” His voice was quiet. “Actually it
was
because of him. We have unfinished business, Gus and me.”

“Are you getting it finished?”

“Not yet. He's a tough nut.”

Lily knew about those. Maida was another. “Was it hard when you first came back?”

“Yes. I didn't fit anyplace. After a few issues of
Lake News,
people in town began to thaw.” He turned his
head and looked at her. “I've had some letters to the editor about your case.”

Letters to the editor? Dropping her forehead to her knees, she shivered. It was inevitable, of course, especially now that people knew she was back.

She heard a rustle but didn't identify it until she felt the weight of John's sweater settle on her shoulders. She might have protested if the warmth hadn't felt so good. Drawing the arms around to the front, she wrapped her hands in the wool and looked up. “Are they good, or bad?”

“Mostly good.”

“Mostly.”

“One expressed concern that the press would be poking round again once they learned you're here. The others ranged from accepting to welcoming. Do you want me to run them?”

She was startled. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes.”

She hadn't expected that. “If I asked you not to, you wouldn't?”

“That's right. It's your choice.”

She pulled the sweater in tighter. It smelled of John, a calming combination of clean and male. For no reason at all she smiled. “Is that because you're a nice person, or because you want to get on my better side?”

“Both. I haven't had a dinner like that in years.”

“Soup and bread? It was barely dinner.”

“Thick chowder, sweet corn bread, mellow wine, and a beautiful woman—it was, too, dinner.”

Lily turned her head sideways. His features were
barely lit, but she saw a smile. It warmed her deep inside. He might be a charmer, but she liked it just then.

A new sound came.

She raised her head and listened. It was distant, one little cry, then another. Not loons. More like squeals. Human laughter?

“What was that?” she whispered.

John chuckled and whispered back, “It's the last Saturday night in September.”

“Oh my God. Still?”

“It's a Lake Henry tradition.”

On the last Saturday night in September, the town's brave souls went skinny-dipping. The site was a hidden cove off a bend in the lake. The participants were usually in their teens and early twenties. On occasion, the weather was downright cold.

Not so the bodies taking part, and not so Lily's just then. Sitting with John, thinking about those naked bodies down the shore a ways, she felt a humming inside.

John moved closer. “Did you ever?” he murmured in an intimate way.

His thigh was inches from hers. She pressed her eyes to her knees and shook her head no. “Did you?”

“Oh yeah. Every year from eleven on. That was how I got my first feel of a woman's breast.”

Lily tried to picture it but couldn't imagine a prepubescent John. She easily imagined a pubescent one, though. He was much like the man beside her, only naked.

“I mean,” he whispered, “there you are, in the middle
of all those arms and legs and
bodies,
and no one knows who's touching who. It was a curious little troublemaker's dream come true.”

She couldn't help herself. “Whose breasts did you touch?”

“Don't know, but they sure felt good.”

She laughed into the sweater that carried his scent, embarrassed but delightedly so. With a shaky breath she realized that she was also aroused. It had been a long while since she had felt heat in that particular spot. It was one of the evening's surprises, not bad as surprises went.

But then, just when she was wondering what he might do to fuel it, he said, “I'd better go.” Before she could object, he was off the porch and eating up the ground to the lake with purposeful strides.

She thought to call out—
Here's your sweater,
or,
Thanks for coming,
or,
Don't leave yet!
But she didn't move, didn't speak. She sat there embraced by his scent and watched the moonlit canoe leave her dock.

How to sleep, thinking about that? How to sleep with a whole new realm of possibility suddenly opened up wide? It was one thing to admire long, leanly muscled, lightly haired legs, and another to want to touch them.

But that was what she imagined doing—that and more, lying in bed through long hours of darkness, feeling lonely and in need. The damn sweater didn't help. It lay on a chair, smelling of John. She fell asleep frustrated and awoke confused. She didn't know whether to trust John. She didn't know whether to mix business with
pleasure. She didn't know whether to add a complication to her life at a time when there were so many others.

Ironically, setting the sexual elements aside, it was the kind of thing she might have discussed with the Cardinal. She had done just that when she was trying to decide whether to move from Albany to Boston. She had been dating someone there, and he had potential. He was exciting and romantic and very interested. He also had a problem with gambling—and it wasn't that Father Fran counseled her to abandon him. He didn't tell her what to do or to think, but was more of a sounding board. He asked questions. In thinking about them, she usually came to see the larger picture.

She wanted to see the larger picture now, but her mind was filled with too many small and conflicting thoughts. Father Fran might have helped her sort through them. He might have helped her achieve a measure of emotional peace.

But Father Fran was no longer available. So, this being Sunday morning, she decided to go to church.

Seeking a measure of peace—it sounded simple, but good things rarely were. Showing up at Lake Henry's First Congregationalist Church on Sunday morning meant being seen. Part of Lily wasn't ready for that. The other part of her was tired of hiding like a timid little frog. That part said it was time to break the ice.

She showered, picturing her closet full of clothes in Boston, and dressed in the lone pantsuit she had brought with her. She put on mascara and blusher, and carefully blew out her hair, then lingered over coffee with an eye on the clock. At just the right time, so that she could slip into the back unnoticed when everyone was inside and the service was about to begin, she slid into the borrowed wagon, catered to its quirks until the engine caught, then drove around the lake.

The morning was cool but not cold. The air was clear, the foliage glorious. It was a morning for pleasure driving, but Lily was too apprehensive to feel much more than a distant appreciation. Finding the church parking
lot full, she parked near the library and walked over. Two teenaged girls were running up the broad white steps as she arrived. She didn't recognize them but she could tell they recognized her by the way they stared for a few seconds too long before disappearing inside.

Turn around and go home,
the cowardly part of her cried, but she needed something more than a life trapped inside the cottage. Besides, now that the two teenagers knew she was here, if she didn't show up inside, tongues would
really
wag.

Nervous but determined, she followed them in. The foyer was empty of people but not of sound. There were organ chords, then the choir singing “Faith of Our Fathers,” and suddenly a world of memory opened up, visceral images of Sunday after Sunday when she had sung in the choir herself. She had loved doing that. Maida had approved, which made it one of the few times when all of the elements of her life meshed.

Taking a shaky breath, she passed through the foyer and stood at the meeting hall door. Row after row in the large room was filled, but she spotted a small space on the aisle in the next-to-last pew. Slipping in with an apologetic glance at Charlie Owens's youngest brother, who had no doubt left the extra space for stretching, she sat with her fingers laced in her lap and her head down. She didn't need to look to know that her mother would be with Rose and the Winslows in the fourth pew on the right, or that other prominent Lake Henry families would be in the pews immediately before and after. She figured she would know many of the people sitting farther back, too, but she didn't look up. She could feel
them glancing her way—could feel it as tangibly as the chill of her fingers—and didn't want to see.

So she concentrated on the sounds of the organ, the hymns, the choir. “Blessed Assurance” came next, then “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” She didn't sing or participate in the responsive readings that followed, but she listened to every word. From the pulpit came talk of charity, forgiveness, and love. She focused on the strength of the minister's voice and his words, wiping frustration and confusion from her mind for this little while, at least. She concentrated on ingesting the hallowedness of this place, using it to ease the parts of her that felt bruised and beaten. And it worked. By the time closing hymns were sung, she was breathing slowly and deeply.

She slipped out of the church before the benediction, fearful of ruining the feeling of ease she had achieved by having to mix and mingle. And the sense of calm remained. It was joined by something else, something unexpected, the sense that for those few moments, sitting quietly with the rest of Lake Henry, she had belonged to a community.

She couldn't remember when last she had experienced that feeling.

Even before the whispers reached John, he knew that Lily was in church. Bidden by a sixth sense, he had looked up at the exact instant when she entered. He was in the far opposite end of the pew ahead of hers. No regular churchgoer himself, he had arrived just minutes before.

And why was he here? After spending the night
with an erection that wouldn't die, he had felt a need to elevate his thoughts. One look at Lily, however, and his good intentions were shot. So he devoted himself to singing his heart out with every hymn and listened to the minister's sermon, listened intently to every word. By the time the service was done, he was in full control.

At that point, physical awareness became intellectual awareness, and he tipped his hat to Lily in other respects. She had shown courage coming to church, braving whispers and stares. Yes, she had left early, but he had left town events early, too, when he had first returned to the lake. The difference was that he had fully earned the wariness of the townsfolk. Lily hadn't. She should have been able to walk right up that center aisle and sit with her family. It bothered him that she couldn't.

He was grappling with that thought outside the church, watching the townsfolk stream down the steps into the warm fall sun, when he spotted Cassie Byrnes. She was standing with her husband and was holding one child in her arms. Two others hovered by her hip.