Dream Lake (Friday Harbor 3)

Zoë brought a glass of cold water. When the plate was empty, Alex set down his fork, and drank the water, and silently evaluated his physical condition. The change was nothing short of miraculous. His headache was fading, and the tremors were gone. He was sated with taste and warmth … it was like being drunk on food.

“What was in that?” he asked, his voice distant as if he were speaking from a dream.

Zoë had replenished his coffee cup. She leaned her hip against the table as she faced him. Her cheeks were satiny from the heat of the stove. “French bread I made myself. Heirloom tomatoes I bought at the farmer’s market. The cheese was made on Lopez Island, and the eggs were laid this morning from wyandotte hens. The basil was grown in the herb garden out back. Would you like another helping?”

Alex could have eaten an entire pan of it. But he shook his head, deciding it was better not to push his luck. “I should leave some for your guests.”

“There’s more than enough.”

“I’m fine.” After taking a swallow of coffee, he looked intently at her. “I wouldn’t have thought—” He broke off, not able to describe what had just happened to him.

Zoë seemed to understand. A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Sometimes,” she said, “my cooking has a kind of … effect … on people.”

The back of his neck prickled, not unpleasantly. “What kind of effect?”

“I don’t let myself think about it too much. I don’t want to ruin it. But sometimes it seems to make people feel better in a sort of … magical way.” Her smile turned rueful at the edges. “I’m sure you don’t believe in things like that.”

“I’m surprisingly open-minded,” Alex said, conscious of the ghost wandering back into the kitchen.

“Well, look at you.” The ghost sounded relieved. “You’re not going to keel over and die.”

Zoë’s attention was diverted as her cat meowed at the back door, its furry bulk visible through the screen. As soon as she let Byron inside, he sat and looked at her, flicking his tail impatiently.

“Poor little fluff-monster,” Zoë cooed, putting a spoonful of something in a dish, setting it on the floor.

The cat gobbled up the treat ferociously, looking like the kind of pet that would eat its owner.

“Isn’t it against the health code to let him in here?” Alex asked.

“Byron’s not allowed near the dining or food-prep areas. And he only visits the kitchen for a few minutes a day. Most of the time he sleeps on the porch or in the back cottage.” She came to collect Alex’s plate. The front of the apron gaped to reveal just enough lush cl**vage to make him light-headed. He dragged his gaze up to Zoë’s face.

“You get grumpy,” she said gently, “after you’ve had too much to drink.”

“No,” Alex said, “I get grumpy when I’ve stopped.”

She looked at him closely. “You mean for good?”

Alex gave her an abbreviated nod. There were countless reasons for him to quit, but the one that mattered most was that he didn’t want to need anything that much. He’d been caught off guard by the realization of how dependent he’d become on booze. It had been easy to delude himself into thinking it wasn’t a problem because he wasn’t disheveled and homeless, had never been arrested. He was still functional. But after what had happened that morning, he couldn’t deny that he had a problem.

It was one thing to be a heavy drinker. It was another to become a full-blown alcoholic.

Zoë went to take his dishes to the sink. “From what I’ve heard,” she said over her shoulder, “it’s not an easy habit to break.”

“I’m about to find out.” Alex stood from the table. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning for the check.”

“Come early,” Zoë said without hesitation. “I’m making oatmeal.”

Their gazes met across the room.

“I don’t like oatmeal,” Alex said.

“You’ll like mine.”

Alex couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away. She was so soft-looking, so radiant, and he let himself think, just for a moment, about the way she would feel under him. The magnitude of his attraction to her was nearly overwhelming. He wanted things from her that he’d never wanted from anyone, things beyond sex, and none of it was possible. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff, fighting not to fall while the wind pushed at his back.

As Zoë returned his stare, rampant color washed over her face, contrasting with the brilliant pale gold of her hair. “What is your favorite food?” she asked, as if the question were profoundly intimate.

“I don’t have a favorite food.”

“Everyone has a favorite.”

“I don’t.”

“There must be some—” A timer interrupted her. “Seven-thirty,” she said. “I have to pour coffee for the first guests. Don’t go, I’ll be right back.”

When Zoë returned, however, Alex was gone. A sticky note had been applied to the backsplash above the sink, with a word written in black ink:

THANKS

Zoë took the note in her hand, drawing her thumb over the surface. A sweet, terrible ache filled her chest.

Sometimes, she thought, you could rescue a person from trouble. But some kinds of trouble, a person had to rescue himself from.

All she could do for Alex was hope.

Fourteen

Alex was tormented by nightmares from midnight to dawn, his body jerking as if he’d been hit with an electric current. He dreamed of demons sitting at the foot of his bed, waiting to tear at him with long sharp claws, or of the ground opening beneath him and letting him fall into endless darkness. In one dream he was hit by a car on a dark road, the impact knocking him backward onto hard midnight asphalt. He stood over the unconscious body on the road, looking down at his own face. He was dead.

Startled awake, Alex sat up in bed. He was soaked in sweat, the sheets sticking to him in a clammy film. A bleary glance at the clock revealed that it was two in the morning.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

The ghost was nearby. “Go get some water,” he said. “You’re dehydrated.”

Alex lurched from the bed and went into the bathroom. He drank some water, turned on the shower, and stood there for a long time with the hot spray pounding on the back of his neck. He wanted a drink. It would make him feel better. It would take away the dreams, the god-awful sweating. He wanted the taste of alcohol, the sweet burn of it in his mouth. But the fact that he wanted it so badly was enough to steel him against it.

After finishing the shower, Alex dragged on some pajama pants and pulled a blanket from the bed. Too exhausted to change the sheets, he went to the living room. Breathing heavily with effort, he collapsed onto the couch.

“Maybe you should go to a doctor,” the ghost commented from the corner. “There must be something they could give you to make this easier.”

Alex rolled his head slowly against the arm of the couch. “Don’t want it to be easier.” His tongue felt too big for his mouth. “I want to remember exactly what this is like.”

“You’re taking a risk, trying to do this on your own. You might fail.”

“I won’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because if I do,” Alex said, “I’m going to end it.”

The ghost gave him a sharp look. “End your life?”

“Yeah.”

The ghost was silent, but the air seethed with worry and anger.

As Alex’s breathing slowed, memories slid around the headache. “By the time my brothers and sister left home,” he said after a while, his eyes closed, “both my parents were drinking nonstop. And when you live with a drunk, the sum total of your childhood is about thirty minutes. The good days were when they forgot I was there. But when either of them remembered they still had a kid in the house, that was when it sucked. It was a minefield, living with them. You never knew when you’d set your foot wrong. Sometimes asking my mom for food or trying to get her to sign a school permission slip would make her explode. One time I changed the TV channel when my dad was sleeping in the recliner, and he woke up just long enough to backhand me. I learned never to ask for anything. Never need anything.”

It was the most that Alex had ever told anyone about the way he’d grown up. He’d never explained that much even to Darcy. He wasn’t sure why he’d wanted the ghost to understand.

There was no sound or movement, but Alex had the impression of the ghost settling for the night, occupying a shadow in the corner. “What about your brothers or your sister? Did any of them try to help?”

“They had their own problems. There’s no such thing as a healthy, normal family surrounding a drunk. The trouble belongs to everyone.”

“Either of your parents ever take a shot at this?”

“You mean quit drinking?” Alex let out a quiet breath of amusement. “No, they both rode that train off the tracks.”

“While you were still on board.”

Alex changed position on the sofa, but it didn’t help the feeling of being uncomfortable in his own skin. His nerves were raw, his senses smarting. The nightmares were ready to come creeping back as soon as he tried to sleep. He could feel them waiting nearby like a pack of wolves.

“I dreamed I died,” he said abruptly.

“Earlier tonight?”

“Yeah. I was standing over my own body.”

“Part of you is dying,” the ghost said pragmatically. At Alex’s shocked silence, the ghost added, “The part of you that drinks to avoid pain. But avoiding pain only makes it worse.”

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” Alex asked in weary hostility.

“At some point,” the ghost replied after a while, “you may have to stop running and let it catch up to you.”

After a few hours of broken sleep on a couch that resembled a torture rack, Alex showered, dressed, and made his way to Artist’s Point like one of the walking dead. He hoped to hell that he wouldn’t have to see Justine—he wasn’t going to be able to tolerate her today.

To his relief, Zoë was alone. She welcomed him into the kitchen, urging him to sit at the table immediately. “How are you this morning?”

He gave her a sullen glance. “If you measure headaches using the Fujita scale, I just reached F-5.”

“I’ll get you some coffee.”

The vicious throb at the front of his skull made him want to gouge his eyes out. Carefully he lowered his forehead to his arms and tried to think past the jitters. “Why don’t you bring me a six-pack of Old Milwaukee tall boys to go with it,” he said in a muffled voice.

Zoë set a cup on the table. “Try this first.”

Alex fumbled for the coffee.

“Let me—” Zoë began, reaching out to steady his hands.

“I don’t need help,” he growled.

“Okay,” she said calmly, backing off.

Her patience annoyed him. The cherry-printed wallpaper hurt his eyes. His head was pounding like a thrash band concert.

Once he got the cup to his mouth, he drank as if his life depended on it. He asked for another.

“Have some of this first,” she said, placing a shallow bowl in front of him.

The bowl contained a golden cakelike square spangled with candied fruit cut into strips no thicker than a cat’s whisker. Cinnamon-scented steam rose to his nostrils. Zoë poured a splash of whole milk into the bowl and gave Alex a spoon.

The baked oatmeal was chewy and tender, crisp at the edges, the crumbly sweetness infused with a sunny citrus tang. As the milk soaked into the oatmeal, the texture loosened and each spoonful became more moist and delicious than the last. It was the farthest thing possible from the gray-slurry oatmeal of his youth.

As he ate, the toxic feeling left him, and he relaxed and began to breathe deeply. Something like euphoria settled over him, a mellow warmth. Zoë moved around the kitchen, stirring contents of pots, pouring milk into pitchers, and chatting lightly without requiring a response. He had no idea what she was talking about—something that had to do with the difference between a cobbler and a brown Betty, none of which made any sense to him. But he wanted to wrap the sound of her voice around him like a clean cotton blanket.

His days fell into a pattern: every morning before work he went to the kitchen at Artist’s Point and ate whatever Zoë put in front of him. The half hour he spent with her was the time around which everything else was structured. After he left, the sense of well-being faded hour by hour until he reached the raw and ragged evenings.

His sleep was riddled with nightmares. Often he dreamed he was drinking again, and he awoke smothered in shame. Even the knowledge that it had only been a dream, that he hadn’t fallen off the wagon, failed to ease the panic. What got him through the nights was knowing that he would see Zoë soon.

She always said “good morning” as if it actually were one. She set plates of beautiful food in front of him, every bite blooming with color and fragrance, flavors nudging each other forward in clever ways. Soufflés so light they seemed to have been inflated by a wish, eggs Benedict blanketed with hollandaise the color of sunflowers. She created symphonies of eggs and meat, poems of bread, melodies of fruit.

The kitchen was more personal to Zoë than her bedroom. It was her artistic space, arranged exactly as she wanted it. The open pantry, lined floor to ceiling with shelving, held rows of deeply colored spices in glass cylinders, and huge old-fashioned penny candy jars filled with flour, sugar, oats, vivid yellow cornmeal, plump beige pecan halves. There were bottles of pale green olive oil from Spain, inky balsamic vinegar, Vermont maple syrup, wildflower honey, jars of homemade jam and preserves, bright as jewels. Zoë was as particular about the quality of her ingredients as Alex was about making angles plumb and square while framing a house, or using the right carpentry nail for a given task.

Alex loved to watch Zoë work. She moved around the kitchen with a kind of clunky-ballerina quality, graceful movements often coming to the abrupt finish of a heavy pot being lifted with both hands, or an oven door closing decisively. She wielded a sauté pan as if it were a musical instrument, gripping the handle and jerking it back with a sharp elbow motion so that the contents appeared to jump and toss themselves.

On the seventh morning that Alex ate breakfast at the inn, Zoë served him a plate of buttermilk grits sprinkled with cheese and spicy red crumbs of fried chorizo sausage. She had stirred some of the sausage renderings into the grits, charging them with salty, earthy richness.