On Mystic Lake

“I found a sand dollar, remember? I handed it to you with our baby wobbling on the blanket between us, rocking her little butt back and forth. I think she was trying to learn to crawl. ”

Annie closed her eyes, and he wondered what she was thinking. Could she remember the rest of that day? How often he’d touched her . . . or when he’d leaned over and grazed the back of her neck with a kiss. Hey, Godiva, he’d whispered. They rent horses down the road. . . .

And her laughing answer, Babies can’t ride.

“When did we stop having fun together, Annie? When?” He was seducing her with their memories, and he could see that it was working; he could see it in the way she stared at her hands intently, in the sheen of moisture that filled her eyes.

Slowly, he reached down and placed the two rings back on her finger. “Forgive me, Annie,” he said quietly.

She looked up. A tear streaked down her cheek and dropped onto her nightgown, leaving a gray-wet blotch. “I want to. ”

“Let me sleep with you tonight. . . . ”

She sighed. It was a long time before she answered, time enough for him to feel hope sliding away. “Yes,” she said at last.

He told himself that nothing mattered but the answer. He ignored the uncertainty in her voice and the tears in her eyes and the way she wouldn’t quite look at him. It would all be okay again after they slept together. Finally, the bits of their broken lives would fuse together again.

He wanted to crush her against him, but he forced himself to move slowly. He got up, went into the closet, and changed into his pajamas. Then, very slowly, he went to the bed and peeled back the coverlet, slipping beneath the cool, white cotton sheets.

It was soothing to hold her again, like easing into a favorite pair of slippers after a long day at the office. He kissed her lightly, and as always, she was quiet and undemanding in her response. Finally, he turned over—the regular beginning of their nightly ritual. After a long moment, she snuggled up behind him.

Her body spooned against his, her belly pressed into his back. It was the way they’d always slept, only this time she didn’t curl her arms around him.

They lay there, touching but not touching in the bed that had held their passion for so many years. She didn’t speak, other than to say good night, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

It was a long time before he fell asleep.

Natalie set a big metal bowl full of popcorn at the foot of Annie’s bed, then she climbed up and snuggled close to her mom. It was Friday afternoon: girls’ day. Annie and Natalie and Terri had spent every Friday together since Annie returned home. They laughed and talked and played cribbage and watched movies.

“I left the front door open for Terri,” Natalie said, pulling the bowl of popcorn onto her lap.

Annie grinned. “You know what your dad would say. He thinks criminals spend all day in the rosebushes, just waiting for us to leave the door open. ”

Natalie laughed. They talked about this and that and everything. Their conversation followed the river of their years, flowing from one topic to the next. They laughed about antics that were as old as Natalie and as new as yesterday. Through it all, Annie was amazed at Natalie’s maturity; the teenager who had gone off to London had come home a young woman. It seemed light years ago that Natalie had rebelled, that she’d shorn her hair and dyed it platinum and pierced her earlobes with three holes.

“How come Dad never talks about the baby?”

The question came out of the blue, smacking Annie hard. She tried not to compare Nick and Blake, but it was impossible at a moment like this. Nick would have been with Annie every step of the way, sharing in the miracle, watching her belly swell. She would have clung to his hand during the amniocentesis, letting his jokes distract her from the needle . . . and she would have laughed with him later, when they found out it was a girl, skipping through name books and spinning dreams. . . .

She sighed. “Your dad is uncomfortable with pregnancy; he always has been. Lots of men are like that. He’ll be better after the baby is born. ”

“Get real, Mom. Dad’s good at doing his own thing. I mean, you guys are supposedly getting over your ‘bad patch,’ but he’s never here. He still works seventy hours a week, he still plays basketball on Tuesday nights, and he still goes out for drinks with the boys every Friday night. When are you guys working out your problems? During Letterman?”

Annie gave her a sad smile. “When you get older, you’ll understand. There’s a certain . . . comfort in the familiar. ”

Natalie stared at her. “I have almost no memories of Dad—did you know that? All I remember about him are a few hurried good-bye kisses and the sound of a slamming door. When I hear a car engine start or a garage door close, I think of my dad. ” She turned to Annie. “What about after this summer . . . when I’m gone?”

Annie shivered, though the room was warm. She looked away from Natalie, unable to bear the sad certainty in her daughter’s eyes. “When you’re gone, I’ll be worried about potty training and what to do with the Baccarat on the living room table. I’ll consider plastic surgery to pull my breasts back up from my navel. You know, the usual stuff. ”

“And you’ll be lonely. ”

Annie wanted to deny it. She wanted to be grown up and a good parent and say just the right thing that would alleviate Natalie’s worry. But for once, no parental lies came to her. “Maybe a little. Life can be like that, Nana. We don’t always get what we want. ”

Natalie glanced down at her own hands. “When I was little, you told me that life did give you what you wanted, if you were willing to fight for it and believe in it. You told me that every cloud had a silver lining. ”

“Those were a mother’s words to a little girl. These are a mother’s words to a nearly grown woman. ”

Natalie looked at her, long and hard. Then she turned away.