On Mystic Lake

“Well, that answers my next question. But what—”

“I’ve got to run, Terri. I’ll call you later. ” Annie could still hear Terri’s voice as she hung up the phone. Then she punched in another number.

Lurlene answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Lurlene? It’s Annie—”

“Is everything all right?”

“Fine, but Nick isn’t home yet. ”

“He’s probably down at Zoe’s, havin’ a drink—or ten. ”

Annie nodded. That’s what she’d suspected as well. “Could you come watch Izzy for a little while? I want to go talk to him. ”

“He ain’t gonna like that. ”

“Be that as it may, I’m going. ”

“Give me ten minutes. ”

After she hung up, Annie went upstairs and checked on Izzy again, then she hurried back downstairs and paced the living room. True to her word, Lurlene showed up in ten minutes, wearing a puffy pink chenille bathrobe and green plastic clogs.

“Heya, honey,” she said quietly, stepping into the house.

“Thanks for coming,” Annie said, grabbing her purse off the coffee table. “This won’t take long. ”

Chapter 11

Annie stood on the sidewalk below a cockeyed pink neon sign that read: Zoe’s Hot Spot Tavern. It sputtered and gave off a faint buzzing sound.

Clutching her handbag, she went inside. The tavern was bigger than she’d expected, a large rectangular room, with a wooden bar along the right wall. Pale blue light shone from tubes above a long mirror. Dozens of neon beer signs flickered in shades of blue and red and gold. Men and women sat slumped on bar stools, drinking and talking and smoking. Every now and then, she heard the thump of a glass hitting the bar.

Way in the back were two pool tables, resting beneath pyramids of fluorescent lighting, with people bent over them, and others standing alongside, watching. Someone broke up a rack of balls and the sound was a loud crack in the darkness.

Keeping her back to the side wall, she edged deeper into the place, until she saw Nick. He was at a table in the back corner. She pushed through the crowd.

“Nick?”

When he saw her, he lurched to his feet. “Is Izzy—”

“She’s fine. ”

“Thank God. ”

He was unsteady on his feet as he backed away from her. He stumbled and plopped into his chair. Reaching out, he grabbed his drink and downed it in a single swallow. Then he said softly, “Go away, Annie. I don’t . . . ”

She squatted beside him. “You don’t what?”

He spoke so quietly she had to strain to catch the words. “I don’t want you to see me here . . . like this. ”

“Did you know that she listens for you every night, Nick? She sits beside the front door for as long as her little eyes can stay open, waiting to hear your footsteps on the porch. ”

&

nbsp; “Don’t do this to me . . . ”

Her heart went out to him, but she didn’t dare stop, not now when she’d finally found the courage to begin. “Go home to her, Nick. Take care of your little girl. This time you have with her . . . it goes away so quickly, don’t you know that? Don’t you know that in a heartbeat, you’ll be packing her bags and watching her board a plane for somewhere far away from you?”