On Mystic Lake

Natalie leaned against her. “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

Gone. Such a hard, cold, uncompromising word. It was like death, or divorce. Annie swallowed. “Miss you?”

Natalie turned to her. “Remember when I was little . . . you always used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up?”

“I remember. ”

“What about you, Mom? What did you used to tell Grandpa Hank when he asked you the same question?”

Annie sighed. How could she make Natalie understand what Annie herself had only figured out this year, after almost forty years of living? Hank had never asked his only daughter that question. He’d been a lonely, lost single father, caught between the decades of Donna Reed and Gloria Steinem, and he had taught his daughter that a woman was defined by the men around her. He had been taught, and so he believed, that girls didn’t need dreams for the future— those were for little boys, who would grow up to run businesses and make money.

Annie had made so many mistakes, and most of them had been because she’d planted herself firmly in the middle of the road. But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you’d never really reached for anything in the first place.

At last, Annie had something she wanted to reach for, a risk she wanted to take. She turned to her daughter. “When I was in Mystic, I started thinking about opening my own bookstore. There was a wonderful old Victorian house at the end of Main Street, and the downstairs was vacant. ”

“That’s why you’ve been reading all those business books. ”

Annie bit down on her smile and nodded. She felt like a child again, who’d just shown a friend her most precious possession and found that it was as beautiful as she’d imagined. “Yes. ”

Natalie gave her a slow-building grin. “Way to go, Mom. You’d be excellent at that. You could give the Malibu bookstore a run for its money. Maybe I could even work for you in the summers. ”

Annie looked away. That wasn’t part of her dream at all, doing it here, under the watchful, critical eye of her husband. She could just hear his comments. . . .

Not like Nick’s response.

There was a knock at the door.

Annie tensed. It’s time. “Come in,” she called out.

Blake strode into the room, wearing a black silk suit and a bright smile. “Hey guys. Is Natalie ready? Mrs. Peterson and Sally are here to pick her up. ”

Annie manufactured a brittle laugh. “I always pictured myself lugging your suitcases up the dorm stairs and unpacking your clothes for you. I wanted you to at least start school with your things organized. ”

“I would have had to call security to get rid of you. ” Natalie started out laughing and ended up crying.

Annie pulled Natalie into her arms. “I’ll miss you, baby. ”

Natalie clung to her, whispering, “Don’t you forget that bookstore while I’m gone. ”

Annie was the first to draw back, knowing she had to be the one to do it. She touched Natalie’s soft cheek, gazed into her precious blue eyes, remembering for the first time in years how they used to be the color of slate. So long ago . . .

“Good-bye, Nana-banana,” she whispered.

“I love you, Mom. ” It wasn’t a child’s wobbly voice that said the words. It was a young woman, ready at last to be on her own. Sniffling, her smile trembling, Natalie pulled away.

She gave her dad a weak grin. “Okay, Dad. Walk me out. ”

After they’d turned and walked away, Annie kept watching,

as the door slowly clicked shut. She surprised herself by not crying.

Oh, she knew that later, in the long darkness of the night, and in the many days that lay ahead, a new kind of loneliness would creep toward her, loose its silent voice in the echo of this emptier house, but she knew, too, that she would survive. She was stronger than she’d been in March. She was ready to let her eldest daughter go into the world.

“Good-bye, Nana,” she whispered.

Annie went into labor in the first week of November. She woke in the middle of the night, with her stomach on fire. The second cramp hit so hard, she couldn’t breathe.

She doubled forward. “Oh . . . God . . . ” She focused on her own hands, until the pain released her. Clutching her belly, she flung the covers back and clambered out of bed. She started to scream, but another cramp sliced her voice into a pathetic hiss. “Blake—”