On Mystic Lake

“Yes, you should have. Who did you go see?”

“Nick Delacroix. You remember him?”

Hank’s blunt fingers tapped a rhythm on the cover of the book, his eyes fixed on her face. “I should have expected you’d end up there. You three were as tight as shoelaces in high school. He’s not doing so good, from what I hear. ”

Annie imagined that Nick was a delectable morsel for the town’s gossips. “I’m going to help him out a little. Take care of his daughter while he’s at work, that sort of thing. I think he needs a breather. ”

“Didn’t you two have sort of a ‘thing’ in high school?” His gaze turned assessing. “Or are you planning to get back at Blake?”

“Of course not,” she answered too quickly. “You told me I needed a project. Something to do until Blake wakes up. ”

“That man’s trouble, Annie Virginia. He’s drowning, and he could take you down with him. ”

Annie smiled gently. “Thanks for worrying about me, Dad. I love you for it. But I’m just going to baby-sit for him. That’s all. ”

“That’s all?” It wasn’t a question.

“You told me I needed to find a project. What am I supposed to do—cure cancer? I’m a wife and mother. It’s all I know. All I am. ” She leaned forward, ashamed that she couldn’t tell him the whole truth—that she didn’t know how to be this alone. So, she told him the next best thing. “I’m too old to lie to myself, Dad, and I’m too old to change, and if I don’t do something I’m going to explode. This seems as good as anything. Nick and Izzy need my help. ”

“The person you need to help right now is you. ”

Her answering laugh was a weak, resigned little sound. “I’ve never been much good at that, now have I?”

Chapter 8

Annie threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed, the gauzy filaments of a nightmare wrapped around her. It was the same dream she used to have years ago, and she’d begun lately to have it again. She was trapped in a huge mansion, with hundreds of empty rooms everywhere, and she was searching desperately for a way out.

Her first thought when she woke was always Blake? But, of course, he wasn’t beside her in bed. It was one of the many aspects of her new life to which she would have to become accustomed. There was no one to hold her after a nightmare.

It was getting harder and harder for her to believe that Blake would ever come back to her, and the loss of that transient hope made her feel as hollow as a reed sucked dry by the summer heat.

Tears stung her eyes. Last night she had broken her marriage vows for the first time in her life; she had shattered the faith she’d made with the only man she’d ever loved. And the hell of it was, he wouldn’t care.

Nick was just getting ready to sign off for his lunch break when the call came in, a domestic disturbance on Old Mill Road.

The Weaver place.

With a sigh, Nick radioed the dispatcher and asked her to put a call in to Lurlene. He wouldn’t make his meeting with Annie and Izzy.

Flicking on his siren and lights, he raced down the rutted strip of asphalt that led out of town. He followed Old Mill Road along the winding curves that sidled along the Simpson tree forest, over the concrete bridge above the choppy silver rapids of the Hoh River, and came at last to the driveway. A lopsided, dented mailbox, rusted to the color of Georgia mud, hung precariously from an arched piece of weathered driftwood. He turned cautiously down the road, a narrow, twisting swatch cut by hand from the dense black forest around it. Here, deep in the rain forest, no sunlight penetrated the trees; the foliage had a dark, sinister cast even in the middle of the day. At the end of the mud lane, a half-acre clearing butted up against a hillside of dense evergreen trees. Tucked into the back corner of the clearing a rickety mobile home squatted in the mud. Dogs yelped and barked at his entrance.

Nick radioed the dispatcher again, confirming his arrival, and then he hurried from the squad car. With one hand resting on the butt of his gun, he splashed through the puddles that pocked the driveway and charged up the wooden crates that served as the front steps. He was about to knock when he heard a scream from inside the trailer.

“Police!” he yelled as he pushed through the door. It swung inward and cracked on the wall. A shudder reverberated through the room. “Sally? Chuck?”

Outside, the dogs went wild. He could imagine them straining on their chains, snapping at one another in their desperation to attack the trespasser.

He peered through the gloomy interior. Avocado-colored shag carpeting, littered with beer cans and ashtrays, muffled the heavy sound of his boots as he moved forward. “Sally?”

A shriek answered him.

Nick ran through the dirty kitchen and shoved through the closed bedroom door.

Chuck had his wife pinned to the fake wood paneling. She was screaming beneath him, trying to protect her face. Nick grabbed Chuck by the back of the neck and hurled him sideways. The drunken man made an oofing sound of surprise and stumbled sideways, cracking into the corner of the pressboard bureau. Nick spun and grabbed him again, cuffing him.

Chuck blinked up at him, obviously trying to focus. “Goddamn it, Nicky,” he whined in a low, slurred voice. “What in the fuck are you doing here? We was just havin’ a argument. . . . ”

Nick holstered a fierce, sudden urge to smash his fist into Chuck’s fleshy face. “Stay here, goddamn it,” he said instead, shoving Chuck so hard he crashed to the floor, taking a cheap Kmart lamp with him. The lightbulb splintered and left the tiny room in shadows.