Snowfall at Willow Lake Read online

  “You should come, Zach,” she said. “I’m serious.”

  “Yeah, Sonnet—not to mention your dad and his new wife—would love that.”

  “Zach—”

  “It’s almost time for class.” He grabbed both their cups and threw them away. “I have to go.”

  Seventeen

  Sophie had a vision of how her days with little Charlie would go. She pictured herself showing up at Daisy’s house, being greeted by Charlie’s happy gurgles and coos, her grateful daughter heading out the door, filled with confidence. Then, while the infant blissfully slept, she would study the library of child-care books she’d bought to brush up on her skills.

  Instead, Sophie had arrived to chaos this morning—a stressed-out daughter, crying baby, messy house. Daisy had practically talked herself out of going at all.

  “Don’t be like that.” Sophie raised her voice over the baby’s cries. “You’ve thought this all out. You can do it.”

  “I can do it next year or the year after that,” Daisy had wailed. “It doesn’t have to be right this minute.”

  Pretending a confidence she didn’t exactly feel, Sophie had taken the crying, damp baby into her arms. “Go. At least try it for this week. We can do this, Daisy. I promise we can.”

  Eventually, Daisy had flown out the door, leaving Sophie and Charlie by themselves. Charlie was still crying and Sophie was wondering if she was going to be able to make good on her promise.

  She had planned her day with him practically down to the minute, scheduling meals, changing, playtime and a nap according to timetables recommended in child-care books.

  The books were vague on what to do when the baby didn’t cooperate with the schedule. She navigated a path across the cluttered living room and into the bedroom, where she changed his diaper. He was strong and angry, crying and squirming as she grappled with the diaper tapes and threaded his chubby, flailing legs into a clean stretchy suit. She pushed the soiled clothes to the floor, realizing how easy it was for the house to turn messy when you were alone with a fussy baby. She picked him up, pressing her lips to his forehead. He didn’t feel hot. Jiggling him, humming, she went to the living room and put him in his swing while she hastened to warm a bottle. He didn’t want the bottle, though. He didn’t want his binky. Or the swing, or a toy. He didn’t want Sophie.

  She set him on a blanket on the floor and looked around for a toy to offer him. Finding none in range, she simply plunked herself down beside him. “Charlie, we need to talk,” she said during a lull in his fussing. “I’ve already raised two children.” She found that if she spoke to him as if he were an adult, he forgot to cry for a moment. “You don’t scare me. But here’s the thing. I never did it on my own before. When I first had Daisy, I hadn’t married her father yet, but I wasn’t really alone. I lived with my parents that summer. And, well, you have to know my parents.”

  Charlie formed his hands into fists, and he gnawed at his knuckles.

  “You’ll get to know them as you get older,” she said. “They’re still adjusting to being great-grandparents. Anyway, when I first had Daisy, they decided the solution was to surround me with help, twenty-four hours a day. I brought my baby home from the hospital and immediately surrendered her to a trained nanny. A few months later, after I married Greg, we kept the nanny on. Don’t get me wrong—it was an incredibly supportive thing for my parents to do, and I’ll always be grateful to them. But in essence, they were saying I couldn’t do this on my own. I couldn’t take care of a baby without help. Why shouldn’t I believe that? To tell you the truth, I was grateful for Ammie and Della—the day nanny and the night nanny. Ammie was Lao and Della was from Queens. They both adored babies and Daisy was their life. It got to the point where I didn’t have to lift a finger, not for Daisy or for Max when he came along. I simply got on with my life. I finished college and law school, and started a career while someone else looked after my babies.”

  Charlie made a crabby sound but didn’t start crying again. She held out her hand, watched him grasp her finger and study it before putting it in his mouth, biting with his new teeth, but not hard enough to hurt.

  “So what I’m saying is, you’re my shot, young man,” she said. “You’re my chance to do this a different way, to make your life better because I’m here. Not that I’m putting pressure on you or anything, but I really want to be someone to you. Not just the nice lady who shows up occasionally to take you on playdates.”

  Then she carefully took back her finger, gathered him into her arms. Her whole body shuddered with love for him, for this tiny creature who had arrived so unexpectedly, and whose very existence now defined Daisy’s future.

  He wasn’t always regarded as a blessing. When the news of Daisy’s pregnancy got out, some of the people Sophie had known in Manhattan, ambitious übermothers who mapped out their children’s lives from womb to wedding, had offered their sympathy. They had acted as if someone had died rather than created a new life. Oh, Sophie, I’m so sorry. The platitudes had been murmured over tea at the St. Regis or drinks at the Oak Room. This must be so hard on you. All your plans for Daisy, your hopes, just…gone.

  She set the baby down and went around the room, picking up toys, amassing a small collection of soft, squeaky things, bright knobby objects and squishy shapes. She offered him a plush doll, its flat face embroidered with a benign smile. He clutched it with both hands and carried it immediately to his mouth.

  “Of course I had plans for Daisy,” Sophie told him. “Of course I had dreams for her. Every mother does. She has them for you—trust me on that. But if she’s smart, she’ll keep them to herself and let you discover them on your own.” Sophie hadn’t been that smart. She had told Daisy what was expected of her—good grades, good schools, meaningful work, a marriage based on mutual love and respect. One or two planned-for children. In that order.

  “She didn’t listen,” Sophie confessed.

  The baby flung down the soft toy. She handed him a plastic ring hung with colorful objects. He grabbed it and brought it to his mouth, thus validating its existence.

  “For that matter,” she said, “I didn’t listen, either. A mother rarely does. I mean, she listens with her heart and then ignores the things she doesn’t want to hear. Like the fact that when a girl is mad at the world and in rebellion mode, she’s likely to have careless sex with some guy. At least Daisy had the sense not to marry Logan O’Donnell. I’m sure there are those who claim any father is better than none at all. They could be right, but I trust Daisy’s judgment on this one. It would never have worked out, and she was smart enough to realize that. She had a ringside seat at my marriage to Greg, and probably figured out that getting married for the wrong reasons won’t make things right.”

  Charlie tossed the ring toy and sucked on his hands, gurgling as he regarded her owlishly.

  “Once you stop bawling, you’re a good listener,” Sophie remarked. “You pay better attention than most adults I know.” She found herself smiling at him, simply because he looked so wide-eyed and wise.

  “You have green eyes and red hair,” she told him. “Classic Irish looks. Are you sick of hearing that? I’m sure you’re going to grow up with everyone constantly saying you look like your father. Daisy says Logan comes to see you every week, which is more than I would have expected of him, but then again, I don’t really know him that well.”

  She offered a toy she had bought in Germany a few months ago, a caged ball that made a soft gonging sound when turned. “It’s funny,” she said, “Marian O’Donnell seemed like one of those perfect mothers to me. She was completely present in her kids’ lives. She was always at the school, volunteering in the library or computer lab. She was a career mom, one of those who made me feel inadequate. But in the end, she couldn’t save Logan any more than I could save Daisy.”

  Charlie dropped the toy from Germany. He squirmed a bit, screwed up his face. Sophie watched him for a few minutes. Bowel movement or boredom? Observing no sign of the fo
rmer, she concluded it was boredom. She couldn’t really blame him, sitting there, a captive audience while being talked at by his grandmother.

  She gently gathered him up and walked from room to room, swaying rhythmically. Daisy was still a teenager; it showed in her housekeeping. Things were done haphazardly without much attention to detail. So what? thought Sophie. The world was not going to come to an end because there were piles of laundry that hadn’t been folded yet. She stopped and looked out the window, angling her body so Charlie could see. The world was a winter wonderland, everything draped in pristine white. The sky was heavy and gray with a descending brow of clouds.

  “Daisy told me you like going out in this,” Sophie said. “Of course, you have to be dressed in nine layers of clothes, and zipped up like a pod person. I think we’ll stay indoors today.”

  The afternoon stretched out, long and empty. Charlie showed absolutely no interest in taking a nap, not even after consuming two bottles and having two diaper changes. Sophie decided not to worry about the routine. This was part of the challenge she’d set for herself. The old Sophie would have already been frantically paging through the child-rearing books, looking up what to do when the baby wasn’t willing to settle down for a nap. The new Sophie simply moved to his rhythm. It was an eye-opener to be with someone who lived so completely in the here and now. Someone for whom seeing his own hands float by his face was a revelation. Each passing moment was filled with discovery for him.

  “You’re very Zenlike,” she told him. “I used to always think I needed to get up, go somewhere, do something. But you—you’re just happy to be. It seems to be working well for you.”

  She discovered that it didn’t bother her a bit that none of the things on her schedule had gotten done. Perhaps, she thought, raising a baby with no help from a spouse or nanny was more a matter of being rather than doing.

  “How are things in Mayberry?” asked Tariq.

  He had taken to calling her a few times a week. She knew he missed her, but it was more than that. He was worried about her.

  “They’re fine,” she said. “I’m fine. Everything is fine. You should come and visit me and see for yourself.”

  “America is too scary,” he said.

  “Then you’ll have to take my word for it. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for you to grasp that I could settle down in a small town and make a new life for myself.”

  “I think you can do anything you put your mind to. But—I know you’re reluctant to hear this—you haven’t even begun to sort out what happened that night.”

  “What, you’re my shrink now?”

  “Your friend, Sophie. Someone who loves you.”

  Holding the phone to her ear, she paced in front of the big picture window of the cottage. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing all right.” She stopped pacing. “I saw Brooks Fordham.”

  “The reporter bloke.”

  “Yes. He’s better. He’s on a sabbatical from the paper, but he does plan to write about what happened.”

  “Of course he does. Is that the only reason he came calling?”

  She considered this. “Hard to say.”

  “Still having nightmares?”

  “Yes, except—” She knew of one occasion she hadn’t. And that was when she had slept with Noah. “Lots of people have nightmares,” she hastily pointed out. “It doesn’t mean they’re cracking up.”

  “But lots of people haven’t been through what you went through.”

  She stood and glared out the window. It was another gray-and-white day, the lake dusted with more snow. Meager afternoon light lay flat against the snow. From the big picture window of the cottage she could see a bend in the road, a hairpin turn, more accurately, and the bank that dropped off abruptly into the lake. The road there was marked by caution signs and bordered by a laughably inadequate guardrail. When she saw the occasional car rounding the bend in the road, she felt herself tense up.

  She turned away and focused on Willow Lake. Tina was out on her skates, doing her afternoon workout. It was impossible to see Tina and not remember what Bo Crutcher had told her—that Tina and her partner wanted to have a baby. That they wanted Noah to father it. Life in this small town was far more interesting than Sophie had ever anticipated.

  “The Incident is completely behind me,” she assured Tariq. “You don’t believe that, but it’s true. I’ve moved on.”

  “You’ve run off.”

  She smiled. “Charlie cut another tooth last week. Did I tell you?”

  “Several times. And you e-mailed photos.”

  “And I’m driving hockey car pool this afternoon,” she added.

  “The fun never ends.”

  “I slept with the guy across the road,” she blurted out. “More than once.”

  A beat of silence. Then Tariq said, “That’s brilliant. Did you really?”

  Sophie hugged her arm across her middle and paced some more as she explained. She skipped the bit about running her car into a ditch in a snowstorm, just saying she met him on her first night in Avalon. “He’s your classic rugged outdoorsman variety, right down to the five o’clock shadow. He’s a veterinarian.”

  “How very James Herriot of him.”

  “Don’t be condescending. It was completely spontaneous,” she said, and even the thought of Noah created a phantom warmth in her. “We’re not dating. We barely know each other. But there’s this thing between us—I don’t even know what to call it. It’s the sexual equivalent of dropping a lit match into a pool of kerosene.”

  “My, my. It sounds as if this move agrees with you after all.”

  “I have to say, it’s one of the easier aspects of reinventing myself.”

  “And have you dealt with your ex?”

  “I keep our interactions to a minimum. Truthfully, it hurts to see Greg and his new wife together. It hurts to see how much he adores her, and how happy they are. It just hurts, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  “Except shag your neighbor.”

  “Well, there’s that. Dr. Maarten would say I’m exploring new facets of myself. Or maybe expending my untapped sexual energy.” That, she realized, pacing faster, was going to take more than two encounters.

  She seized on the chance to change the subject and questioned him about court proceedings and the progress of cases he was working on. She found herself listening to him with interest that quickly intensified to an undeniable tug of yearning. A part of her still belonged in that world, where she was governed by a sense of mission, where the challenges were difficult but not impossible, where she experienced control and closure.

  Yet another part remembered why she’d come here. Her journey had only just begun.

  She hung up and patrolled the house, making sure it looked cheery and inviting. Today, Max was coming over after school. After hockey practice, she would fix him dinner—his favorite, sloppy joes—and then he’d stay the night.

  A knock at the door startled her and her gaze flew to the clock. Too early for Max. She opened the door and saw that it was Gayle from down the road.

  “I brought you some muffins,” Gayle said, brushing back the hood of her parka. She held out a flat Tupperware box.

  “Thank you so much,” Sophie said, stepping back so she could come in. “That’s incredibly nice of you.”

  “Don’t get too excited. I’m a terrible baker. Cabin fever made me desperate enough to try something new.”

  “Can you stay?”

  “Just for a second.” Gayle looked around the cottage. “I’ve never been here before. Nice place.”

  “My son’s coming over for the first time today. Max is twelve. I hope he likes it here as much as I do.”

  “It’s lovely,” Gayle said. “What’s not to like?”

  “Well, let’s see. The fact that I don’t have cable TV.”

  “Whoops,” Gayle said. “Looks like you have a DVD player, though. Maybe you could rent some movies at Silver Screen in town.�
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  “That’s tempting, but I told myself I want this time with him. If we need a diversion, I can teach him cribbage or canasta. I’m nervous. And how depressing is that, to be nervous about a visit from my own son? He’s lived with his dad since the divorce,” she explained, bracing herself for the standard reaction—that questioning, judgmental stare.

  “Then no wonder you’re nervous.” Gayle patted her on the arm. “A word to the wise, though. Be prepared for it not to be perfect. You’ve probably built up all these expectations in your mind for the way you want things to go.”

  She was relieved by Gayle’s understanding. “That sounds like the voice of experience.”

  “Perfect example—after Adam’s unit was called up, he had a short furlough before being sent overseas, and I planned this amazing day for the whole family. In my head, I was seeing one seamless stream of Hallmark moments, giving us memories to last through the entire deployment.” She smiled ruefully. “We have memories, all right. Just not Hallmark memories.”

  “I take it things didn’t go as planned.”

  “Starting with the baby’s raging ear infection, a three-hour wait in the doctor’s office and ending with us getting in a fight because he insisted on driving ten miles out of his way to fill a prescription, and—what do you know?—the pharmacist is his old girlfriend. So much for the sing-along around the campfire. And oh, the gourmet dinner, sitting on the dock at the Inn at Willow Lake and looking at the turning leaves? All that flew out the window.”

  Sophie could only imagine the stress. “I’m sorry.”

  “I remember screaming ‘Get the hell out of my life’ as his train was pulling out of the station. That’s what I remember.”

  “Oh, boy. I’m sorry, Gayle.”

  “Fortunately, there’s a happy ending. I was standing on the platform with the kids, devastated, when the train suddenly stopped, and Adam jumped out. He actually pulled an emergency lever to get it to stop, because he felt as bad as I did. So we had our goodbye after all, with a trainload of people cheering us on. Somebody got a picture, too, and a wire service picked it up and we were in I don’t know how many newspapers.”