The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club (12 page)

 

—letter to the editor, the
Coldwater Gazette

 

 

 

Jake tried to cram the bung back into the hole, but water gushed through too fast. He hauled in the anchor and rowed for shore with all his might. Lacy baled with cupped hands. It was a losing proposition. Water crept past their ankles and up their shins at an alarming pace.

“Can you swim?” he yelled.

“Yes, but surely we won't—”

Water lapped over the gunwale and they were swamped in seconds.

Fortunately, the bracingly cold water they slowly sank into was only about four feet deep. Jake grabbed her hand and, leaving the rowboat to settle on the lake floor, started slogging toward the shore.

“But what about the boat?” she wailed.

“It's not going anywhere, that's for darned sure,” he said as he trudged ahead, feeling his way along the sandy bottom. The sleeve on his titanium leg gave a bit as water began to seep in around his stump.

“It's all my fault,” Lacy said with misery etched on her face. “I didn't see the plug until after I gave that rag a yank. Oh, I shouldn't have . . . why, oh, why do I always feel compelled to fix things?”

“Especially things that don't need fixing,” Jake said crossly. To be fair, she couldn't have known his dad had jerry-rigged a repair with that bit of cork and cloth, but for once, why couldn't she have left well enough alone?

“I'm so sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said woodenly. How was he going to explain this to the family? Everyone loved using Dad's rowboat. It was as if Marvin Tyler's spirit still hovered around the little craft in which he'd spent so many happy hours.

“But I can't help worrying,” she said through chattering teeth. “When I'm to blame for something, I own up to it. I can't just let it go.”

Some people go quiet during times of unexpected calamity, facing the unknown with stoic silence. Lacy Evans was not one of them. She lamented loud and long over the lost fishing poles, the oars, the padded and much-patched seat bolted to the front thwart, even the lures in the rusty tackle box. Nothing was excluded from her litany of woe.

They drew nearer to the shore. The water reached only mid-thigh at that point. Then the unthinkable happened. Instead of sand under his feet, Jake felt the suck of mud. He took another step with his right foot, but his left didn't move, stuck fast in the sludgy bottom of the lake. Then when he gave his leg a twist to pull it free, he felt, rather than heard, an ominous
click.
The pin on his prosthesis had come undone.

The only thing keeping his leg in place was the mud his foot was stuck in and his dad's old jeans. The prosthesis weighed about three pounds. Since Lake Jewel was spring-fed, there was always some movement under the surface. If his leg came out of the jeans and got loose from the mud, it might be swept along in a current. He'd never find it. If he lost his leg, it would take months to replace, never mind costing
another
arm and a leg to boot. He would
not
go back to a wheelchair. Or even a pair of crutches if he could help it. He couldn't work at the grill like that.

Jake sat down in the water and grabbed his metal ankle.

“Go on ahead,” he said.

“Why? What's wrong?”

“I said go on.”

“No, not unless—”

“Lacy,” he said sharply as he glared up at her. “My leg has come unfastened. I have to take it off the rest of the way here and then reattach it once I get to shore.”

“When the boat started sinking, I forgot about your leg. You'll need someone to lean on, won't you?”

“No.”

But she wouldn't take no for an answer, grasping his arm and giving him an ineffective tug. He wished he could be entirely sucked into the mud hole that had grasped his prosthetic foot.

“Leave me be. I mean it.”

He hadn't raised his voice, but she must have heard the steel in his tone. Stricken, she turned away from him and made for the lakeshore.

“There's a path in the woods a few yards up that embankment,” he said once she climbed out of the water. “Turn north and follow it. It'll take you back to the house.”

Visibly shivering, she plopped down on a stump halfway up the embankment. “Not until you're out of the water, too.”

She was right. Lake Jewel was so cold, if he didn't get out soon, hypothermia was a real possibility even in spring. All his senses went on high alert.

A sudden rustle in the woods to the right pricked his ears and movement caught the corner of his eye. Heart pounding, he jerked his gaze a few yards down the shoreline and saw that it was only a whitetail doe coming down for a drink.

Feeling stupid for being spooked by a deer, Jake reached down and yanked his prosthetic foot out of the mud. Then he eased the leg out of the jeans. It was a relief to hold the titanium rod in his hand. Normally, Lake Jewel was clear enough to see ten feet down, but with the sinking rowboat and the way they'd mucked toward the shore, he and Lacy had churned up plenty of silt. If he lost his grip on the leg now, he'd be hard pressed to find it again.

He rolled in the water and started side-stroking toward shore. It was slow going. A pair of jays scolded overhead, their cries unnaturally loud. To his hypervigilant ears, it sounded like a warning. Like the high-pitched ululations of Afghani women . . .

Lacy was staring at him, her face white as those sheets in the lake house. He jerked his gaze away and focused instead on the flat rock outcropping at the water's edge that was his goal. Flecks of mica glinted in the sunlight. It was almost as if the rock was shining a searchlight on him, the better to illuminate his humiliation. He didn't want Lacy to see him like this. He couldn't let anyone see him. He wouldn't—

 

 

“Jake?”

 

 

“No! There's a sniper. Get down,” Jake said as loudly as he dared.

 

 

“Jake!”

He blinked slowly and found himself lying flat on his back on the rock outcropping at the lake's edge. Chest heaving, he gazed up at the canopy of a forest near to bursting into full leaf.

He wasn't downrange in Afghanistan. It wasn't night and that darn sure wasn't another jarhead he'd manhandled into a position of supposed safety on the rock beside him.

“Lacy,” he whispered.

Jake realized that instead of his weapon, he held his prosthetic leg in his left hand. He'd had a flashback. Zoned out for a bit.

In front of
her
.

His belly spiraled downward. He'd rather she had walked in on him and caught him naked in that frigid shower. Cold water does a favor to no man, but it would have been preferable to this.

She'd caught his soul naked. She'd
seen
him at his most vulnerable. His weakness had broken over the ridge.

Lacy sat up and rubbed her upper arm. There was a red spot where he'd gripped her hard. It might even bruise. He'd rather take a beating than leave a mark on her.

“Jake, what in the world was that about?”

“Nothing. Get going back to the house. The walk will warm you up.”

“Not until—”

“Look,” he said, angrier with himself over hurting her than embarrassed about his prosthesis now. He needed to get away from her, but at this point, he'd have to convince her to do the getting. “I have to put my leg back on and I'd rather do it without an audience, if you don't mind.”

He sat up and gave her his best leer. “Unless you'd like to strip, wring out your clothes, and let me watch while you put
them
back on. . . .”

That put her on her feet. She was trotting up the path and gone before he could get the hem of the jeans rolled up enough to reattach his leg.

Murphy was definitely in charge. Whatever could go wrong with this date,
had
gone wrong. Horribly, irrevocably wrong.

* * *

Lacy stomped through the woods, water squishing from her sneakers with each step. Her chest burned. Bradford Endicott might have stolen her reputation and her livelihood, but he'd never laid a hand on her in anger.

She'd never forgive Jake. Never.

Yes, she'd lost his father's rowboat, but she'd said she was sorry.

What was wrong with him?

Jake had been aggressive on the gridiron when they were in school and he had thrashed those bullies, but she'd never thought of him as the violent sort. This . . . “episode,” for lack of a better word, wasn't like him at all.

At least, she wouldn't have said so. Still, a lot could change in ten years or so. Heaven knew she wasn't the dreamer she'd been back then, but she was still basically the same person. When Jake had grabbed her, she'd looked into the wild eyes of a stranger. She hadn't recognized him at all.

She picked up her pace, eating up the distance to the lake house in a quick dogtrot. Then a sudden thought stopped her cold.

“What if it wasn't him?” she whispered to herself. What had he said? It hadn't made much sense. Something about a sniper and getting down as if she were in danger before he grabbed her and hauled her to the ground.

Maybe Jake had had a flashback from his time in Afghanistan. A symptom of PTSD. She didn't know much about post-traumatic stress, but if anyone qualified for the disorder, a battle-tested amputee probably would. The anger she felt toward him began to dissipate. It was replaced by something else.

Not pity. Jake would be the first to reject that, she realized. No, it was understanding. Empathy. Lacy had a hard time connecting with others. If she kept to herself, no one could hurt or disappoint her. But Jake's weakness wakened something in her.

She felt an ever-strengthening tie to Jake. What if he hadn't meant to scare her any more than she'd meant to sink the Tyler family rowboat?

Of course, if Jake had these attacks of sudden fierceness with any regularity, she'd need to protect herself from them. Still, she'd help him if she could. She wouldn't turn her back on him.

That was why, when she slipped into the lake house to look for a blanket to wrap herself in, she made it a point to find two.

* * *

He half expected that Lacy had kept running and was now a quarter of the way around the lake, heading back to town. Instead, he found her curled up, knees tucked to her chest, in one of the Adirondack chairs on the front deck of the cottage. With an old quilt draped over her shoulders, she stared calmly out on the lake, not so much as glancing in his direction as he climbed the stairs to the deck.

An army blanket was folded on the chair beside her.

“For me?” he asked.

When she nodded, he wrapped the scratchy fabric around himself and sat down. The blanket absorbed some of the lake water that clung to him and emitted a wet woolly smell in exchange. Silence stretched between them. Neither of them seemed inclined to speak first, to fill the quiet as the sun beat down on them.