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Sometimes the flare-ups happened in the car. She’d be driving along, and she’d hear their song. “Don’t Stop Believin’” … Journey. Once she nearly ran a motorcyclist off the road, when she was driving home from the plant late at night when the song came on the radio. She’d had to pull off the highway, roll down the windows, and force herself to let the cold damp February air roll over her flaming cheeks and snap her back to reality before she could drive on.
She’d even tried her own version of an exorcism to get over Mason. Three years ago, on the two-year a
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A light winter rain was falling as she navigated the rutted gravel road that led through thick woods back to the lake. Officially the lake’s name was Lake Wesley Forlines Jr., after a local decorated World War I hero. But everybody around Passcoe always just called it Hideaway Lake, because county budget cuts had long ago closed the only public beach and boat ramp. Now the only access to the lake was through the Bayless’s property. Private property.
Weeds and sapling trees had sprung up in the narrow lane, and it struck A
But the little stone cottage was still there, nestled beneath the leafless limbs of a huge old water oak. Acorns crunched under her tires as she rolled to a stop a few yards away from the house, and, as she stepped out of the car, she glimpsed the gray-green glimmer of the lake through a raggedy hedge of privet that had replaced the lawn Mason had so carefully cultivated.
Briars caught at the legs of her jeans as she pushed open the rickety cedar gate. A
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She walked around to the rear of the house and tried the back door, which led onto a small utility room. The wooden door was spongy with rot, but it had apparently been latched from the inside, and she was afraid if she tugged too hard the whole door would collapse on top of her. Which wouldn’t do. A
So she moved over to the left, to the wide set of triple windows that looked out over the lake. Or at least, they’d looked out on the lake when it was their master bedroom. Now those windows mostly looked out on the tops of dead weeds. A lanky camellia bush partially blocked the center window, but she managed to slither behind it, praying as she did so that no snakes were hidden in the thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot. She grasped the window sill with both hands, grunted and shoved the window upward. She climbed inside.
Instantly she wished she hadn’t. Her muddy shoes left footprints in the thick carpet of dust on the worn wooden floor, and cobwebs festooned the ceiling fan overhead. The furniture in the room, an old wooden dresser, matching mahogany four-poster bed, and chest of drawers of no particular vintage or value, had come from Cherry Hill’s attic. But Mason hadn’t bothered to remove any of it when he moved out. Now a pale green mist of mold dotted the dark varnished wood surfaces. Some kind of animal had been chewing at the bare mattress.
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She shouldn’t have come. She opened the closet, so small they’d once joked that it wouldn’t hold even one of the Bayless family secrets. Not much left there. Some rusty wire coat hangers, a folded green wool blanket on the one shelf. On a hook on the back of the door she found a faded plaid fla
Her footsteps echoed in the closed-up house as she walked from room to room. To be precise, the house only had three rooms, the bedroom, an L-shaped living-dining room, the kitchen, and of course a bathroom, which was not much bigger than their bedroom closet.
One by one, she opened and closed the kitchen cupboards. The cabinet beside the stove held a yellowing box of pancake mix and an opened carton of baking soda. Kernels of rice trailed from a sack of Mahatma, where a mouse had nibbled a hole in the plastic bag. The cupboard by the refrigerator held two mismatched coffee mugs and a stack of green-tinted Quixie promotional glasses. Rust spots freckled the fridge.
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They’d had big plans once: to build a double-decker boathouse at the end of the dock, one with a deck and a screened porch and a stone fireplace up top, for cookouts and parties, with davits below to hold the Sallieforth, a derelict 1967 seventeen-foot Chris-Craft ski boat that Mason hoped to eventually restore to working condition.
So many plans. Once that lake had been a clear blue-green, lapping wavelets against a shore lined with the blue hydrangeas, red geraniums, and drifts of Shasta daisies planted by the original caretaker’s wife. Now weeds and water lilies choked the shoreline and obstructed the water views. She felt a melancholy, as cold and gray as the winter lake, seep into her soul.
Turning away from the window, she wandered into the living room, where the only furniture that remained was a lumpy brown sofabed, handed down from one of Mason’s college roommates. The sofa faced the fireplace, where a stack of half-burned logs perched atop a small mound of coals. The old copper tub on the hearth had once held pieces of kindling, matches, and twists of newspaper. She reached in, found a couple sizable twigs, a long wooden kitchen match, and some yellowing newspaper.
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