On Mystic Lake

Annie smiled. “Maybe Doc Burton will give me a grape sucker if I’m good. ”

Hank turned to her. “You were always good, Annalise. Don’t you forget it. ”

His words brought it swelling back inside her, sent her falling back into that big house by the sea where her husband had told her he loved another woman. Before the sadness could get a good hold, she squared her shoulders and opened her door. “I’ll meet you at . . . ” She glanced around, wondering what was still around.

“The riverpark. You used to love it down there. ”

“The riverpark,” she said, recalling all the evenings she had spent down at the bank, crawling through the mud, looking for fish eggs and dragonflies. With a nod, she climbed down out of the truck, hitched her bag over her shoulder, and strode up the concrete steps to the clinic’s front door.

Inside, a blue-haired old lady looked up at her. Her name tag read, HI! I’M MADGE. “Hello. May I help you?”

Annie suddenly felt conspicuous in her rumpled clothes, with her hair hanging limp and lifeless around her face. Thank God the sunglasses hid her eyes. “I’m Annie Colwater. I’d like to see Doctor Burton. I think my father made an appointment. ”

“He sure did, darlin’. Have a seat. Doc’ll see you in a jiff. ”

After she filled out the insurance forms, Annie took a seat in the waiting room, flipping idly through the newest issue of People magazine. She hadn’t waited more than fifteen minutes when Dr. Burton rounded the corner and strolled into the waiting room. The ten years she’d been gone showed in the folds of red skin along his neck and in the amount of hair he’d lost, but he was still old Doc Burton, the only man in all of Mystic who religiously wore a tie to work.

“Well, Annie Bourne, as I live and breathe. ”

She grinned up at the old man. “It’s been a long time. ”

“So it has. Come, come. ” He slipped an arm around her shoulder and led her into the nearest examining room. She hopped up onto the paper-covered table and crossed her feet at the ankles.

He sat in a flecked, yellow plastic chair opposite her, eyeing her. Coke-bottle-thick glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinner plates. She wondered how many years ago he’d started to lose his vision. “You don’t look so hot. ”

She managed a smile. Apparently his vision wasn’t all that lost. “That’s why I’m here. Hank said I look like hell—he figured it must be a disease. ”

He let out a horsey laugh and opened a manila folder, poising a pen on the blank page. “Sounds like Hank. Last time I saw him he had a migraine—and he was sure it was a brain tumor. So, what’s going on with you?”

She found it hard to begin. “I haven’t been sleeping well . . . headaches . . . sick to my stomach . . . that sort of thing. ”

“Any chance you could be pregnant?”

She should have been prepared for the question. If she’d been ready, it wouldn’t have hurt so much. But it had been years since any doctor had asked the sensitive question. Her own doctors knew the answer too well. “No chance. ”

“Any hot flashes, irregular periods?”

She shrugged. “My periods have always been irregular. In the last year, I’ve skipped a couple of months completely. Frankly, it’s not something I worry about— missing a period. And yes, my own gynecologist has warned me that menopause could be just around the corner. ”

“I don’t know . . . you’re a little young for that. . . . ”

She smiled. “Bless you. ”

He closed the chart, laid it gently across his lap, then looked up at her again. “Is there something going on in your life that would lead to depression?”

Depression.

One word to describe a mountain of pain. One word to steal the sunlight from a person’s soul and leave them stranded in a cold, gray landscape, alone and searching for something they couldn’t even name.

“Maybe. ”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

She looked at the old man. The gentle understanding in his rheumy eyes took her down a long and winding road, and at the end of it, she was twelve years old again, the first girl in her class to menstruate. Hank hadn’t known what to say, so he’d bundled her up, taken her to Doc Burton, and let the doctor handle her fear.

Tears stung her eyes and slipped unchecked down her cheeks. “My husband and I recently separated. I haven’t been . . . handling it very well. ”

Slowly, he pulled his glasses off, laid them on top of his papers, and tiredly rubbed the bridge of his beaked nose. “I’m sorry, Annie. I see too much of this, I’m afraid. It happens in little ole Mystic as often as it does in the big city. Of course you’re blue—and depression could certainly explain sleeplessness, lack of appetite, nausea. Any number of symptoms. I could prescribe some Valium, maybe start you on Prozac. Something to take the edge off until you come out on the other side. ”