On Mystic Lake

Once awake, she couldn’t fall back asleep again. It was an unfortunate symptom of her depression that she was tired all the time, but she rarely slept well.

As usual, she spent the hours until dawn trying not to think about the big empty house on the Pacific, and the man who had been a part of her life for so long. The man who’d said, I love her, Annie.

She went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal, then she picked up the phone and called Natalie—an unscheduled call. She listened to her daughter’s stories about London for several minutes, and then quietly told her about the move to Mystic. To see Hank and help out an old friend, she’d said.

Natalie had asked only one question: “What does Daddy say?”

Annie had forced a fluttery laugh that sounded false to her own ears. “You know Dad, he just wants me to be happy. ”

“Really?”

It made Annie feel inestimably old, that single, simple question that seemed to know too much. After that, they’d talked for almost an hour, until Annie could feel bits and pieces of herself returning. It anchored her to talk to her daughter, reminded her that she hadn’t failed at everything in her life.

At the end of the conversation, she made sure Natalie had Hank’s phone number in case of an emergency, and then she hung up.

For the next hour, Annie lay in her lonely bed, staring out the window, watching the darkness until, at last, the sun came to brush away the bruising night.

It was thoughts of Izzy that gave Annie the strength to get up, get dressed, and eat something. The child had become her lifeline. Izzy touched something deep and elemental in Annie, and it didn’t take a two-hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist to understand why. When Annie looked down into Izzy’s frightened brown eyes, she saw a reflection of herself.

She knew the hand Izzy had been dealt. There was nothing harder than losing a mother, no matter what age you were, but to a child, a girl especially, it changed everything about your world. In the years since her mom’s death, Annie had learned to talk about the loss almost conversationally, the way you would remark upon the weather. My mother died when I was young . . . passed away . . . passed on . . . deceased . . . an accident . . . I really don’t remember her. . . . Sometimes, it didn’t hurt to say those things—and sometimes the pain stunned her. Sometimes, she smelled a whiff of perfume, or the vanilla-rich scent of baking sugar cookies, or heard the tail end of a Beatles song on the radio, and she would stand in the middle of her living room, a woman full grown, and cry like a little girl.

No mother.

Two small words, and yet within them lay a bottomless well of pain and loss, a ceaseless mourning for touches that were never received and words of wisdom that were never spoken. No single word was big enough to adequately describe the loss of your mother. Not in Annie’s vocabulary, and certainly not in Izzy’s. No wonder the girl had chosen silence.

Annie wanted to say all of this to Nick, to make him understand all that Izzy must be feeling, but every time she started to speak, she had an overwhelming sense of her own presumptuousness. When she looked into Nick’s pale blue eyes, or at his grief-whitened hair, she knew that he understood all too well.

They were still awkward around each other. Uncertain. For Annie, at least, the memory of their passion underscored every look, every movement, and if she spoke to him too intimately, she found that it was difficult to breathe evenly. He seemed equally unnerved around her; and so they circled each other, outfitted more often than not with false smiles and pointless conversations.

But slowly, things had begun to improve. Yesterday, they had spent ten minutes together, standing at the kitchen counter, sipping coffee while Izzy ate breakfast. Their conversation crept along the perimeter of their old friendship, dipping now and then into the shared well of their memories. In the end, they had both smiled.

It had given Annie a new strength, that single moment of renewed friendship, and so, today, she pulled into the driveway a half hour early. Grabbing the bag of croissants she’d picked up from the bakery and the bag of surprises she’d bought for Izzy, she climbed out o

f her car and went to the front door, knocking loudly.

It took a long time, but finally Nick answered, wearing a pair of ragged gray sweatpants. Swaying slightly, he stared down at her through bloodshot eyes.

She held up the bag. “I thought you might like some breakfast. ”

He stepped back to let her in, and she noticed that he moved unsteadily. “I don’t eat breakfast, but thanks. ”

She followed him into the house. He disappeared into the bathroom and came out a few minutes later, dressed in his policeman’s uniform. He looked sick and shaky, with his silvery hair slicked back from his face. The lines under his eyes were deeply etched, as if they’d been painted on.

Without thinking, she reached for him, touched his forehead. “Maybe you should stay home . . . ”

He froze, and she could see that he was startled by the intimacy of her touch. She yanked her hand back, feeling the heat of embarrassment on her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “I have trouble sleeping, is all. ”

She almost went to him then, almost started a conversation that wasn’t for her to begin. Instead, she changed the subject. That was always the safest thing—to keep it strictly about Izzy. “Will you be home for dinner?”

He turned away, and she knew he was thinking about the last two nights. He’d been too late for dinner both nights. “My schedule—”

“It would mean a lot to Izzy. ”

“You think I don’t know that?” He turned to her, and in his eyes was a bleak desperation that wrapped around her heart. “I’m sorry—”

He shook his head, held a hand up, as if to ward her off. “I’ll be home,” he said, then he pushed past her and left the house.