Love and Death in Blue Lake (2 page)

When she graduated and got certified, she took Ruby and moved to San Diego. She’d had it with L.A. With her savings from the days when everyone but she blew their money on blow, she started private practice and did just fine. Then Xander showed up six months in with a suitcase in his hand. He never left. Not that she’d minded. Not really. And things would straighten out soon. She pulled into the driveway of her parents’ enormous porched and pillared home.

Her parents didn’t know much about Xander. She didn’t tell, and they didn’t ask. Ruby had never really warmed to Xander, called him a mooch because he didn’t contribute to the household. She parked in the garage the way her father liked and thought about Xander’s other house, the one in L.A. with the wife and sons in it, the one that took all his money, the one where he sometimes spent weekends still fixing doorknobs and such. Some weekends he stayed in Beverly Hills and other, less frequent weekends, the boys came down. Ruby ignored them, and they didn’t even see her, just ate up two weeks’ worth of food in two days, food Courtney paid for, and didn’t say thank you. Not ever.

Things were about to change. Big time. That’s what this weekend was about. Xander was going to make the split final and tell the boys. They were going to be a real family, southern California style. As if he could read her mind, her phone pinged with a text. She stood outside the house and read “Picked up ring today. Want to rush to Michigan to put on your finger.”

Courtney endured a family meal with Ruby, her sister Gwennie, Gwennie’s twins, aged twelve, her baby brother, Kyle, and her parents. Sunday roast on a Thursday. Courtney had not eaten beef in years, and Ruby was vegan, but they both took a small slice and pushed it around their plates, under a bite of mashed potatoes, behind a few cooked carrot slices. It’s what they did when they came to Blue Lake.

“Everybody says you were at Eddie’s today for hours.” Gwennie smacked her lips.

“Maybe an hour.” Courtney shrugged.

“Is he my real dad?” Ruby asked, even though she knew he was not. Even though Courtney had shown Ruby the papers from the sperm bank where she had been purchased.

Kyle made a turkey baster joke.

“Kyle!” Mom’s neck turned red. Dad, deaf without the hearing aids he refused to wear, and no clue of the subject, asked did anyone want more beef.

“Sorry.” But before Kyle held out his plate for another slice of cow, Courtney saw the pleasure he took in the twins’ snicker. Really, they knew that stuff at twelve now?

It went on like that until Courtney claimed jet lag and went to her room.

Courtney woke hours later, her daughter snoring softly in the twin bed next to her. The pine trees in Blue Lake were bad for Ruby’s allergies. She could never move back. Not that she wanted to. Well, except that she’d been dreaming of Edward and of doing just that, but dreams were not wish fulfillment, they were more complicated. Just like her own life, her own hopes, fears, and desires.

Quarter after three. Edward would be home now. She knew where he lived. Gwennie had told her that and way too much more information about how he was the town man-whore and chose a different summer woman each morning, noon, and night. He had a special cottage at that newish resort, Blue Heaven, also a sofa in his office at the bar, where he’d disappear with them for an hour or two.

Courtney tried not to think, just breathe. But the room was stuffy, and panic started to rise. She padded into the bathroom for a Xanax but instead put on those jeans, the only pair she owned, bought specifically for this trip. She grabbed her messenger bag with the extra set of divorce papers and slipped out of the house. She forgot to wear shoes, but by the time she noticed, panic was pulling hard.

Her old bike was still in the garage, and she rode it out to Sapphire River Road, feeling her heartbeat stabilize and thinking back to just when these panic issues had started. She had been so strong when she was young. Strong with Edward, strong when she moved to L.A., strong when she forged a career in an emerging field, strong when she’d had Ruby on her own. The first time she remembered feeling panicky was in college. She had not been sure she was smart enough, even though UCLA thought she was. She’d hated the way her voice shook and her hands trembled when she presented in front of classrooms. For the first time, she had felt out of her element, out of control. She had shaken those episodes off for years until she wrote her master’s thesis on the anxiety/panic/phobia epidemic. She’d come up with that one after Xander had nixed many other ideas. He had loved it. The more she researched, the more she recognized herself. College was as unfamiliar to the old Courtney as the moon. Funny, she’d always enjoyed new experiences before that one. But nothing, not rock stars, not motherhood, shook her confidence like an A minus.

She passed the canoe rental place and kept going on the rugged dirt path. There was an unpainted open wooden gate across Edward’s property. Like an invitation. She rode in and felt the kind of serenity she had been yearning for for years. Here was where she felt most herself. Here was where she belonged. She breathed in the feeling. If she could bottle it, she’d make a fortune. Edward sat very still in a lawn chair facing the rushing river.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “That’s why the gate’s open.”

She hadn’t asked the question, but then Edward had always known her mind, sometimes better than she did. She noticed there was just the one lawn chair. A light rain started to patter against the leaves of the trees dotting his land. Probably in the light, it was a pretty piece of property. She could picture it because they’d been back here all the time when they were kids. Making out rolled up in a blanket by the river. Except now, behind them stood his house of glass, lit low from within. It beckoned her.

“I just came for the papers.”

“Left them at the bar.” He got up from his chair and took her hand, pulling her toward the house. The rain started coming down a little harder, so she let him lead her inside.

He opened the door for her. To their small world in high school, she’d been a rebel, a crazy one, but to Edward she had always been his lady. And she loved that. Their private world nobody would guess. Pizza and soda pop, not heroin and weed like some people said. Those kids didn’t know them at all. She and Edward liked it that way. He drank a little with some other guys who played guitar and drove their cars fast down the straightaway outside town. Her outlet was scouring vintage clothes from thrift shops. She had an eye for design; it had given her a career. A way to leave Edward and this town behind. A way to have a child.

What she hadn’t known then was that without Edward, she and Ruby, so in love with each other as only mother and newborn child can be, were lonely together. Everyone in L.A. was a player, so except for work, Courtney didn’t go out much. She didn’t want her daughter to have to deal with a merry-go-round of men. She loved her girl more than the world, but just not more than Edward. Ruby and Edward were meant to be her family, but somehow it never happened.

And somehow, when Ruby was four or five, Courtney forgot about him. Was over him. Wasn’t interested in saying hi when she came home to Blue Lake. All this memory in a flash as she walked through the door of his home. It was a jewel box of stars and night and glass and wood. This was no typical Blue Lake abode. She’d seen some unbelievable places in L.A., but this was something else. She was in awe.

“So little Bobby Bryman did this as his Master of Architect project?”

“Yep.”

“It’s awesome, Edward.”

“Thank you. The design was my idea.”

“Well, now that you don’t play guitar anymore, I guess you need some other outlet besides selling beer.” It was a mean thing to say, and she didn’t know why she’d said it except that her sister had needled her with the way Edward prowled. So stupid to feel a stab of jealousy after all these years.

The kitchen and living area was one big room, and Edward made no reply as he walked to the fridge for a glass of water. “Anything?” He held up a second glass.

“I’m good.”

“Sweetheart, you’re better than good.”

“Aw, now you’re just proving my sister right.”

Edward didn’t miss a beat. “I know what people say about me. I don’t care. That’s why I have a glass house. I don’t bring women here.”

“But you have your own cottage at Blue Heaven. And a special room at the bar.”

He hooted at that. “Gwennie doesn’t have enough to do with twins? She has to make up fantasies about old Eddie?”

She wished she hadn’t been so open with him, but that’s what he did to her. No secrets. Never could keep anything from him. Impossible to start now. “Did you sign them?”

Edward drank down the entire glass of water there at the sink before he answered her. “No, I did not.”

“Why?”

“I was busy.”

“So why not now?” She whipped the other set of papers from her bag, walked toward him, slapped them on the sink. Then she handed him a pen. Or tried to. He didn’t take it from her.

****

“I will sign the papers before you leave town. You have my word. Just not tonight.” Truth was, Eddie shook so hard he couldn’t hold a pen if his life were at stake. His heart slammed against his chest, over and over, like a punching bag. She was so beautiful. Barefoot in blue jeans. He wanted to hold her more than he wanted to breathe. On the outside, he stayed calm, inside he was afire.

Lightning ripped the sky in a ragged fork, and the rain beat down harder. She jumped at a clap of thunder, and before he knew what he was doing, he had taken her into his arms. It just happened. And she stayed, one second, two, three. He kissed the side of her forehead, just rested his lips on her skin, not a real kiss, not what he wanted to do. As if she knew and wanted it too, she lifted her face to his, and he brought his mouth to hers. Holding back, trying not to tear into her mouth with all the passion moving through him, he kissed her soft lips, slicked with a hint of summer rain.

She had been huddled inside his arms, but now her hands slid around his shoulders and she was holding him like she used to, pulling him closer, kissing his mouth open, still soft, still sweet, but yearning for more. She felt it too, then. He knew she must. He would not be signing those papers because she would not be leaving town. He just couldn’t let her go. Not again.

Another clap of thunder must have brought her to her senses because she put a hand on his chest and pushed him away with the lightest touch, as if she were as reluctant to release him as he was to let her go.

“Want I should drive you home?”

They were inches apart, and their eyes held each other, telling stories neither would say aloud.

“Okay.” Her eyes shifted to her bare feet, toenails painted peachy-pink something. His Courtney always wore black nail polish. This was somebody new, but she was also the same.

“We can sit and talk for a while, see if it slows down.” He wasn’t sure if he meant the rain or his madly beating heart. Maybe both. “I’ll still drive you. Can throw your bike in the back of my truck.” Eddie didn’t like talking and especially not that many sentences in a row. He waited for her to turn him down.

“Okay.”

That was the girl he knew, always easy with him, going along, well except for the baby part. She went along with everything until one day she didn’t, and no matter what he said, he could not change her mind, and then it was too late and she was gone.

He took her hand and pulled her to the sofa. She let him. He held her hand a little longer than he should have, and she pulled away first.

“There was only ever you for me.” What had he just said? And how could he take it back? “So you love him?” He tried to cover his declaration with more words. “The way we loved each other?” He had to know how she felt. Because he was feeling caught back in time, caught back in her.

“So, what? No sex for eighteen years?” She folded her hands in her lap, demure as all hell, her gaze leveled at her fingertips, which he noted were painted the same shade as her toes.

His little vixen, acting so innocent, but with the quick retort, sting in tail. “Well, none that meant what we did.”

Her soft laugh was just the same. She moved with slow grace, hugging her legs to her chest, refusing to look at him. Or answer him. “All the girls in school loved you, and I’m sure they formed a consolation line the minute I left town.”

“I was inconsolable.” Sure, he’d gone through those girls in a matter of weeks, but he wasn’t proud of it. After that first dazed year of sex and anger that turned into a steady stab of sadness, he slowed down, yeah, he still fooled around, but he never loved. He didn’t bother with excuses, he just walked. Way he saw it, women knew what to expect when they took him on.

“It doesn’t do any good to talk about it.” Forehead pressed to her knees, voice muffled.

“No, I suppose not, but why should that stop us? We always could talk about anything.” And then he remembered that it was true. He could always talk to her. Ten sentences in a row. Hours of talking and dreaming and loving her. The cracked window inside him opened wide, and it all rushed back in, as fierce inside his body as the weather outdoors.

Her head came up as if she felt the shift in him, and she turned her face to his. Her eye makeup had smudged in the humidity. She used to do that on purpose, like a sexy vampire. He reached out and touched her face. “Your eyes…”

“Oh god.” She tried mopping up the mess, but made it worse.

“No, don’t. I like you like this.”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re crazy.”

“About you. Your eyes always said come here and love me. They’re saying it now.”

****

He kissed her again. And she let him again. This time they went a little rougher, let their hunger out a little more. She slid against him, and his hands roamed beneath her damp shirt. That caught Courtney. What was she doing? She was engaged. She was happy. She was living her dream life. Or so she thought, until she’d seen Edward today. This was crazy. How could everything change in a matter of hours like this? It couldn’t change. She wouldn’t let it. She was divorcing Edward and marrying Xander. End of story.