Stillhouse Lake

  Sam says, "You do a background check on me?"

  It's a surprise, and I pause, beer bottle halfway to my lips, and shoot him a look. "Why would you say that?"

  "Because you seem like a woman who does background checks."

  I laugh, because it's true. "Yes."

  "How's my credit rating?"

  "Pretty solid."

  "That's good. I really ought to check that more often."

  "You're not angry?"

  He takes a pull on his drink. He isn't looking at me at all. His attention seems completely on the boats out in the water. "No," he finally says. "A little disappointed, maybe. I mean, I think of myself as a really trustworthy sort of guy."

  "Let's just say I've trusted the wrong people before." I can't help but think of the difference between how Sam Cade just reacted, and how I imagine Melvin would have reacted if he'd been sitting here, having just met me. Mel would be angry. Offended. He'd blame me for not automatically trusting him. Oh, he'd have covered it up, but I'd have felt the stiffness in his manner.

  There isn't any in Sam. He's just saying what he means. "Reasonable," he says. "I'm an employee. You have a right to check up on me, especially since I'm going to be around your kids and in your house. Probably the smartest thing you could do, to be honest."

  "Did you check up on me?" I ask.

  That surprises him. He sits back a little and glances my way. Shrugs. "I asked around," he says. "I mean, in the does-she-pay-her-bills kind of way. If you mean did I Google you, no. When women do that to men, I assume it's a precaution. When men do it to women, it looks . . ."

  "Stalkery," I finish for him. "Yes. So what was the word about town about me, then?"

  "Like I said: standoffish," he says with a laugh. "Same as me, actually."

  I offer my beer bottle, and we clink glass. For a moment we just drink. The scullers reach the far dock. The rowboats have already made port. The fancy cabin cruiser is the last one out on the water, and across the still air I can hear laughter. The lights come on in the boat and reveal four people. A snippet of faint music drifts to me. Three of them are dancing as the pilot heads the cruiser in to a private dock on the other side of the lake. Lifestyles of the rich and bored.

  "Think they're drinking champagne?" Sam asks me, straight-faced.

  "Dom Perignon. With caviar."

  "Savages. I like mine with smoked-salmon toast. But only on days ending with a y."

  "Mustn't overindulge," I agree, in my best posh New England accent. I have a pretty good one, from Mother. "So common to be intoxicated on good champagne."

  "Well, I wouldn't know, because I've never had the good stuff. I think I had a glass of cheap shit at a wedding once." He holds up his beer. "This is my version."

  "Hear, hear."

  "Your son's pretty great, you know."

  "I know." I smile into the growing evening, not quite at him. "I know."

  We finish our beer, and I collect the empties. I pay Sam his day's wages and watch as he walks the short distance up the hill to his cabin. I watch the lights come on inside his front room, glowing red through the curtains.

  I go back inside to put the glass in the recycling, and I find the kitchen quiet and clean. The kids are off to their neutral corners, as they so often are.

  It's a nice, quiet evening, and all I can think of, as I lock up and set the alarms, is that it can't possibly last.

  But it does. It surprises me more than anything that the next day--Saturday--goes smoothly. Fewer alerts on Sicko Patrol. No visits from the police. I get more work. Sunday, too. Monday the kids are back in school, and at promptly 4:00 p.m., Connor and Sam Cade are up on the roof, hammering away. Lanny gripes that it's driving her crazy, but turning up her headphones solves that minor issue.

  A good day slips into another good day, then a week. School lets out, much to the delight of my kids, and Cade becomes a fixture, joining us for breakfast, then taking Connor up to finish the roof. Once that project is complete, they start on replacing the rotten wood trim around the windows and doors. I retire to the office for work and Sicko Patrol, and it feels . . . almost comfortable, having someone around I can trust, at least a little.

  By Sunday, there's a new coat of paint on the exterior of the house, and a lot for me to clean up after, but I'm not displeased. Far from it. I'm breathless, paint-spattered, and happier than I've been in a while, because Lanny, Connor, and Cade are just as dirty and tired, and we've accomplished something real together. It feels good.

  I find myself smiling in an entirely unguarded way at Sam that day, and when he smiles back, it's just as open and free, and I have a sudden flashback to the first time Mel smiled at me. I realize in this moment that Mel's smiles were never open, never free. For all that he played the good husband, the perfect father, it was Method acting to him. Never break character. I can see the difference in the way that Sam talks to the kids, in the way he makes mistakes and corrects them, says goofy things and smart things, and is a real, natural human.

  Mel was never those things. I've just never had a good mirror to hold him against to see the differences. My father was mostly absentee, and not very warm; children were there to be seen, not heard. I've come to realize that when Mel found me, he read that thirst in me . . . and the need to fill it. He must have studied for the part. There were times his mask slipped, and I remember every one of them . . . the moment when I got angry at him about missing Brady's third birthday party was the first. He'd turned to me with such sudden, vicious violence that I'd recoiled against the refrigerator. He hadn't hit me, but he'd held me there, hands on either side of my head, and stared at me with a kind of empty blankness that had terrified me then, and still had the power to do it now.

  Even when Mel had been perfect in his camouflage, he'd been shallow. His calm had felt stretched and unnatural, and so had his affection.

  When he'd gone into his workshop, I imagine that was where the real Mel had come out. He must have lived for the closing of that door, the turning of that dead bolt.

  As much as I watch Sam, I don't see any of that. I only see a person. A real person.

  It makes me ill and sad to realize how little I understood what was right in front of me, right in bed with me, the entire nine years of my marriage. It was my marriage. Not ours. Because it had never been a marriage to Melvin Royal.

  I'd been a tool, like the saws and hammers and knives in his workshop. I'd been his camouflage.

  It is terrifying and soothing to understand this, at long last. I never let myself think about it much, but seeing Sam, seeing the kids around him, makes me realize everything that was wrong and artificial in my marriage.

  I don't tell Sam this, of course. That would be one hell of a strange conversation, especially since I am in no way going to tell him who I really am. Hell, no. But it means something that the kids like him. They're both so smart, and I know that building this safe place for them to grow and do better--it's important. Risky, but necessary. I'm still willing to run if I have to, but not until it's necessary.

  So far, all's quiet. Quieter than it's ever been.

  By the middle of June, Connor and Sam have the house looking fantastic, and Sam is teaching my son the basics of construction. They're planning on leveling the ground out back. Pouring concrete and putting down posts. Lanny hovers on the outskirts of it, making suggestions, until suddenly she's into it, too, intently watching as Sam draws out plans with an architect's eye.

  It's a long-term project. Nobody's in any hurry about it. Least of all me. Work keeps coming in on my freelance businesses, to the point that I'm turning things down. I can afford to be picky, and to charge accordingly, and my reputation is growing. Things are definitely looking up.

  I don't depend on the income from my online work, of course, not completely. I don't have to, because Mel did one thing right: in that awful storage locker where he kept his horrific journals, his trophies, he also kept his escape plan.

  A duffel bag full of cash.r />
  Nearly two hundred thousand, the inheritance from his parents' estate that he'd told me he'd invested in a mutual fund. It sat for years in his storage shed, waiting for him to sense it was time to bolt. He'd never had the chance to take it. He was arrested at work, and he never spent another day as a free man.

  I turned in the contents of that storage locker to the police, of course I did, but before I did that, I picked up that bag and put it in the trunk of my car. I drove far across town to one of those strip mall mailbox stores and opened up a box in a fake name--made up on the spot--and then took the duffel bag to a UPS location far across town to ship it to my new PO box. It was terrifying. I thought I'd get caught, or worse, that someone would open the box and the money would disappear without a trace. I couldn't have complained about it.

  But it did arrive. I tracked the progress online, and I paid extra to have the mail center hold it for me until I could pick it up. Good thing I did, because just two days later, despite my cooperation with the police, I was arrested, jailed, and awaiting trial.

  The box with the duffel bag inside was still there almost a year later when I was acquitted. Collecting dust in the back corner of the store, which thankfully was still in business. Small miracles.

  I'd spent half of it on our safety, shelter, and identities before Stillhouse Lake. This house had come remarkably cheap at auction, but I'd spent twenty thousand buying it and ten thousand more fixing it up. Still, I have enough, with the income I'm pulling in now, to spend a little. I imagine Mel will be furious about the loss of his carefully hoarded fortune, and that makes me very, very happy. It soothes me to think I'm using that money to pay for a new life.

  When Cade offers to help me out with the garden, which I've let run wild, I take him up on it, with the provision that he let me pay him for it. Which he does. We spend hours together discussing the plans, choosing the specific varietals, planting them together. Building stone borders and rambling paths. Putting in a small pond and stocking it with little, darting goldfish that shimmer in the sun.

  And little by little, I become aware that I trust Sam Cade. It isn't any specific moment I can point to, or anything he says or does. It's everything he says, does, is. He is the calmest, easiest man I've been around, and every time I see him smile, or talk to my kids, or talk to me, I realize how poor my choices were before. How barren my life was with Melvin Royal. It had looked full.

  It was as lifeless as the moon.

  Before I'm even aware of it, two more weeks go by. My garden looks like something a home and garden magazine would feature, and even Lanny seems relatively happy. She moderates her goth to something edgy but cool, and lo and behold, my daughter tells me one day that she's made a friend. Online at first, but she asks, with her usual blend of aggressive reluctance, if I'd drive her to meet Dahlia Brown at the movies. Dahlia Brown, the girl she punched out at school.

  I'm dubious about this turn of events, but when I meet Dahlia, she seems to be a nice girl, tall and a little awkward with it, and self-conscious of her braces. The boyfriend, turns out, dumped her over the metal in her mouth. Best thing that could have happened to her.

  Connor and I sit in the back of the theater, and Dahlia and Lanny sit together, and by the time Dahlia comes home with us for dinner, she seems to be entirely at ease. So is Lanny.

  That becomes a regular thing, the movies, as summer wears on: Lanny and Dahlia together, besties. Dahlia picks up the black nail polish and emphatic layers of eye makeup, and Lanny adopts Dahlia's style of flowing floral scarves.

  By mid-July, the girls are thick as thieves, and they've attracted two more friends. I'm on my guard, of course; one young man is full goth, with a pierced septum, but his boyfriend is helplessly preppy, and they seem wonderfully good together. And wonderfully funny, which is a good thing for my daughter, too.

  Connor seems much different, too. His D&D buddies are true friends now, and he even--for the first time--tells me he's decided on a career.

  My son wants to be an architect. He wants to build things. And as he tells me this, I find tears in my eyes. I have been desperate to believe he would have dreams, have a life beyond running and hiding, and now . . . now that's true.

  Sam Cade has given him dreams that I couldn't, and I'm shakily, wonderfully grateful for it. I talk about Connor's new passion to Sam the next night, as we sit together on the porch with our drinks. He listens in silence, says nothing for a long time, and then finally turns toward me. It's a cloudy evening, with the heavy energy of a gathering thunderstorm; we're under a tornado watch in this part of Tennessee, but so far there's no alert.

  Sam says, "You don't say much about Connor's dad."

  I haven't said anything, in fact. I can't. I won't. So instead, I say, "Nothing much to say. Connor needed someone to look up to. You gave him that, Sam."

  I can't see his face in the gloom. I can't tell if I've frightened him or pleased him, or something of both. There's been a guarded tension between us for weeks now, but beyond the occasional, almost accidental brush of fingertips passing tools or a bottle of beer, we haven't so much as touched. I don't know if I can feel romantic toward a man again, and there seems to me to be something holding him back, too. A bad relationship, maybe. A lost love. I don't know. I don't ask.

  "Glad I could help," he says. His voice sounds odd, but I don't exactly know why. "He's a good kid, Gwen."

  "I know."

  "Lanny is, too. You're--" He falls silent for a few seconds and takes what sounds like a convulsive swig of his beer. "You're a damn good mom to them."

  Thunder mutters off in the distance, though we can't see any lightning. Behind the hills, most likely. But I can feel the weight of the rain coming. The air has an unnatural sticky heat to it, and I want to simultaneously fan myself and shiver. "I've tried to be," I tell him. "And you're right. We don't talk about their dad. But he was . . . he was vile."

  Emotion makes me mute when I try to say more, because another letter arrived from Mel this morning. It's back to his normal cycle, because this one is all small talk, all reminiscences and questions about the kids. It's set me on edge, because now, having seen how Sam treats the kids, I can see the difference. Mel was a good dad in the stock photo sense: he showed up, smiled, posed for pictures, but it was all surface. I know that whatever he felt, whatever he feels now, it's a shallow shadow of real affection.

  I'm thinking about Mel as I sit here next to Sam, and it makes me want to reach out to Sam, to feel the warmth of his fingers on mine, more as a talisman than as any kind of attraction. I need to drive away Mel's ghost and stop thinking about him. I realize, with a start, that I am on the verge of telling Sam the truth about Mel. The truth about me. If I do, he'll be the first.

  It's so startling to me that I find myself staring at Sam, at his profile as he sips his beer and stares out at the lake. A distant blur of lightning illuminates his face, and for a strange instant he looks familiar. Not like Sam. Like someone else.

  Someone I can't place.

  "What?" He turns his head and meets my gaze, and I feel my face grow warmer. That's so odd it unnerves me. I don't blush. I can't imagine why I'm suddenly feeling awkward, out of my depth, while sitting on my own porch with a man who's become so familiar to me. "Gwen?"

  I shake my head and turn away, but I'm all too aware of his sudden attention. It feels like a searchlight against my face, both warm and terrifyingly revealing. I'm grateful that the clouds have made it artificially dark tonight. I am conscious of the cold glass of the beer bottle I'm holding, the chilly beads of condensation slipping down the back of my hand.

  I want to kiss this man. I want him to kiss me back.

  It comes as a shock to me, a genuine and awful shock; I haven't had this impulse in a long, long time. I'd thought it was gone, burned away in the inferno of Melvin's crimes, of the betrayal of trust that reached all the way inside me. Yet here I am, trembling, wanting Sam Cade to press his lips to mine. And I think I know he can feel it, too. It's
like an invisible wire pulling tight between us.

  It must have scared him as much as it did me, because he suddenly drinks the rest of his beer in quick, thirsty gulps. "I should be going before that storm hits," he says, and his voice sounds off, different, deeper and darker. I don't say anything, because I can't. I can't imagine what I can say, really. I just nod, and he stands up and walks past me to the steps.

  He's two down when I finally get my voice under control and say, "Sam."

  He pauses. I can hear the muttering grumble of thunder again, and another flash of lightning rips the sky, clear as a knife slash.

  I roll the bottle between my hands and say, "Coming back tomorrow?"

  He almost turns. "Still want me back?"

  "Of course," I say. "Yes."

  He nods, and then he's gone, walking quickly away. As he does, the security lights we've installed come on, alert to any motion. I watch him as he walks to the gate, to the road, and he's halfway home before the lights click out again.

  The rain starts five minutes later. A hesitant patter at first, and then a steady soft knocking on the roof, and then a thick curtain that shimmers off the edges of the porch. I hope Sam made it home before it hit. I hope the downpour doesn't wash the garden away.

  I sit in the quiet, listening to the constant roar of the rain, and I finish my beer.

  I'm in trouble, I think.

  Because I've never felt this vulnerable before. Not since I was Gina Royal.

  It takes a while. Slowly, almost imperceptibly over the last of the hot, muggy summer, Sam and I relax our guards, put aside our armor. We allow brushes of hands without flinching, smiles without premeditation. It feels real. It feels solid.

  I finally begin to feel fully human.

  I don't fool myself that Sam can fix what's broken in me. I don't think he deludes himself about it, either. We're both scarred--I have been able to tell that from the beginning. Maybe only the truly damaged can accept each other in the way we do.