On Mystic Lake

Izzy had stood there, motionless. She hadn’t spoken— but then, she hadn’t spoken in months. That was one of the reasons they’d expelled her . . . that and the disappearing. A few months ago, she’d started to believe she was disappearing, one tiny finger at a time. Now she wore a small black glove on her left hand—the hand she could no longer see or use. Recently she’d begun to use her right hand awkwardly, as if she believed some of those fingers were “gone” now, too.

She hadn’t looked up, hadn’t met Nick’s eyes, but a single tear had streaked down her cheek. He’d watched the tear fall, hit her dress, and disappear in a tiny gray blotch.

He’d wanted to say something, but he had no idea how to comfort a child who’d lost her mother. Then, like always, his inability to help his daughter had made him angry. It had started him thinking that he needed a drink—just one to calm his nerves. And all the while, she had stood there, too quiet and still for a six-year-old, staring at him with a sad, grown-up disappointment.

He picked his way through the living room, stepping over containers from last night’s takeout. A lonely housefly buzzed lazily above the scraps. It sounded like the roar of a lawn mower.

He glanced down at his watch, blinking until his vision cleared. Eight-thirty.

Shit. He was late to pick up Izzy. Again.

The thought of facing her, letting her down again, seeing that tiny black glove . . .

Maybe if he had a little drink. Just a short one—

The phone rang. He knew even before he answered that it was Lurlene, wondering where he was. “Heya, Lurl,” he drawled, leaning tiredly against the wall. “I know, I know, I’m late. I was just leaving. ”

“No hurry,

Nicky. Buddy’s out with the boys tonight— and before you jump down my throat, Izzy’s fine. ”

He released a sigh, unaware until this moment that he’d tensed up. “You don’t care that I’m late, and Izzy is fine. So, what’s up?”

Her voice fell to a stage whisper. “Actually, I was callin’ with an interestin’ bit o’ gossip. ”

“Good God, Lurl. I don’t give a shit—”

“I met an old friend of yours today—you care about that don’tcha? And I have to say, she ain’t nuthin’ like I expected her to be. Why, to hear you and Kath—oops! I didn’t mean to mention her, sorry—anyway, she was just as sweet as cream butter. I wouldn’t even have known she was rich. She was that everyday. Like Miss Sissy Spacek. I saw her on Oprah the other day and you woulda thought that lady was no differ’nt’n you or me. ”

Nick tried to keep up with the conversation, but it was spiraling beyond his control. “Sissy Spacek was in your salon today? Is that the point?”

Lurlene’s musical laugh skipped up and down the scales. “You silly, of course not. This is Mystic, not Aspen. I’m talkin’ about Annie Bourne. She’s back in town, visitin’ her daddy. ”

Nick couldn’t have heard right. “Annie Bourne is back in town?”

Lurlene babbled on about haircuts and cashmere sweaters and diamonds the size of grapes. Nick couldn’t keep his focus. Annie Bourne.

He mumbled something—he had no idea what—and hung up.

Jesus, Annie Bourne. She hadn’t been home in years; he knew that because Kathy had waited futilely for phone calls from her old best friend.

Picking his way through the debris in his living room, he went to the fireplace and grabbed a picture off of the mantel. It was one he’d seen daily but hadn’t really looked at in years. A bit faded, the colors sucked away by time and sunlight, it was of the three of them, taken in the last rosy days of the summer before their senior year. Annie and Kathy and Nick. The gruesome threesome.

He was in the middle, with an arm around each girl. He looked young and carefree and happy—a different boy from the one who’d lived in a cramped, dirty car only a few months before. In that perfect summer, when he’d first tasted the rain-sweet elixir called normal life, he’d finally understood what it meant to have friends, to be a friend.

And he had fallen in love.

The photograph had been taken in the late afternoon, when the sky was a deep and unbroken blue. They’d spent the day at the lake, shrieking and laughing as they dove off the cliffs into the water. It was the day he’d first understood it would have to come to an end, the day he realized that sooner or later, he’d have to choose between the two girls he loved.

There had never been any doubt about whom he would choose. Annie had already applied to Stanford, and with her grades and test scores, everyone knew she’d be accepted. She was on her way in the world. Not Kathy. Kathy was a quiet, small-town girl given to blue moods . . . a girl who needed desperately to be loved and cared for.

He still remembered what he’d told Annie that day. After the life he’d lived with his mother, he knew what he wanted: respect and stability. He wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, to be part of a legal system that cared about the death of a lonely young woman who lived in her car.

He’d told Annie that he dreamed of becoming a policeman in Mystic.

Oh, no, Nicky, she had whispered, rolling over on the blanket to stare into his face. You can do better than that. If you like the law, think big . . . big . . . you could be a supreme court justice, maybe a senator.

It had hurt him, those words, the quiet, unintentional indictment of his dreams. I don’t want to be a supreme court justice.