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“Of course. Don’t you?”
“I figure if I need to know something about a person, I just ask.”
“What a concept.”
“Like what about Aaron’s father?”
“I beg your pardon?” She’d heard him perfectly well, but she needed to stall and reel in her thoughts.
“How does he fit into the picture?”
Oh, gosh, she thought. This is Date Talk.
“He doesn’t,” she replied. “Never has.” Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “Why do you ask?”
“Why do you think I asked?” He still hadn’t smiled at her, but she caught a glint of humor in his eyes. At least, she thought it was humor.
When he looked at her like that, she felt a tug of … she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Recognition? How could that be? They’d never met before. Had they?
She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. What was it about him? Besides the fact that underneath the scruffy exterior, he had definite potential.
“I think you asked because you’re interested in me,” she said. “Am I right?”
“Lady, a guy would have to be comatose not to be interested in you,” he said, sounding annoyed. Then he started up the truck. The radio station—KXYZ out of Seattle, the only one that came in reliably at the lake—blared news at the top of the hour. He shut it off, gave her a wave and drove away.
She stood looking after him for a long moment. “Then why don’t you look happier about meeting me?” she asked no one in particular.
Seven
Each year after she got to the lake, it always took Kate a few days to decompress. She still tended to wake up and spring out of bed, already making a mental to-do list. Back in the city, it was likely to be a lengthy one: her deadlines at work and any number of errands, appointments and notes to herself about Aaron. Looking after her son meant checking his schoolwork, making his lunch and organizing his backpack, driving carpool. After school, the schedule was packed with karate, Cub Scouts, homework and playdates.
Playdates. Now there was a concept, she thought. Sadly, Aaron’s dating life was more successful than her own. Other kids liked him even if their mothers thought he was a terror.
On their third morning at the lake, she got up and put the kettle on for tea. No coffee here. Coffee meant rush hour and work and stress. Tea meant serenity.
She was determined not to rush or to allow herself to get frantic about being jobless. She had a decent income from the Seattle properties. Her father had left her a wonderful legacy. If she was careful, she could get by for a long while without her salary from the paper. What she missed, though, was her identity. Writing defined who she was. She wanted to feel like herself again, producing copy, getting it published.
Stop, she told herself. You’ve got the whole summer to figure this out. Taking a deep breath, she looked out at the lake. Just the sight of it calmed her. Clear and flat as a mirror, the surface of the water reflected the surrounding mountains covered in evergreens, some with tiny veins of snow hiding in the topmost crevices. She checked the temperature—51 degrees at 7:30 a.m. Perfect. Maybe she’d take Aaron and Bandit for a hike later.
As they had so often over the past few days, her thoughts drifted to JD Harris. Thinking about him was probably a bad idea, yet that was exactly where her undisciplined mind went. At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, she was still softhearted and romantic, capable of imagining what it was like to have a love affair or even a full-blown relationship, to plan a future with someone. While her friends at college had partied, falling in and out of love with the seasons, Kate had gestated. After Aaron was born, she’d lactated. She’d been much more productive than her friends. But she had never flung herself into an affair. As a single mom, she didn’t have time for that.
Still, a girl could dream, and Kate did. She wondered what was going on with JD Harris—who he was, how he had come to be here at the lake. She had definitely sensed a spark of interest between them. He’d said so, though she couldn’t be sure whether he was joking or not.
Though he’d made no promises, she’d half expected him to come calling.
But when in her life had she not been disappointed by a man?
The kettle rattled on the burner, and she turned off the flame before the whistle blew. A few minutes later she settled down with her tea and opened her laptop at the old-fashioned desk in the corner. Yesterday she’d composed a note to an old friend. Tanya Blair was a friend from college, a resounding success story from the UW’s School of Communications. She worked as an editor at Smithsonian Magazine, and she was Kate’s first and best prospect. It was quite a leap from local weekly to a national magazine, but Kate decided to think big. In the past, she’d tried thinking small, aiming low, and look where that had landed her.
She read over the note, and when she was satisfied with it, she printed out the letter, folded it and put it in an envelope. She felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Though she’d told Tanya her pen was for hire, she had no material to offer. Not yet, anyway. She needed to write, that was true, but she wasn’t sure what to write.
A few minutes later, Callie came shuffling out, dressed for the day in her customary sweats. Her face was puffy from sleep. “Morning,” she said, stifling a yawn.
“Hi,” said Kate. “Tea?”
“I think I’ll go straight for breakfast,” Callie said, helping herself to a bowl of Total. She held out the box to Kate, who shook her head.
“I’ll wait for Aaron,” Kate said.
Callie indicated the window. “He’s been waiting for you.” On the lawn, he and Bandit were playing tug-of-war with what she hoped was an old towel.
“I didn’t even hear him get up.” Kate shook her head. “So what’s on your agenda for today?”
“Yolanda is picking me up. We’ve got three houses to do on Lake Sutherland.” She grimaced. “I so don’t feel like working.”
She looked a bit peaked, Kate observed, though there was nothing wrong with her appetite. Teenagers, Kate thought. They stayed up too late, no matter what time they had to get going in the morning. Kate had no complaints about the girl, though. She helped around the house, Aaron adored her and she seemed to be behaving herself.
She poured a second helping of Total and noticed Kate watching her. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “I’m getting fat as a pig.” But she added milk and sugar anyway. “What about you? Do you have plans today?”
“I might take Aaron hiking up to Marymere Falls. Have you seen it?”
“No. I’ve heard it’s pretty up there. Maybe I could go on my day off.”
“I should also get some work done,” Kate said, glancing at the silent black rectangle of the laptop.
“Have you figured out what you’re going to write yet?”
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
“I still think you should do Walden Livingston,” Callie said. “He’s like, this totally famous cult guy.”
“I know. He still gets mail from some of his fans,” Kate said. “Just a few, every year.”
“He’s the reason I picked this house to stay in, you know,” Callie said. “When I saw the Annie Leibovitz photo of him and figured out that this was his place, I was totally blown away. His books are, like, sacred to people who care about the earth.”
Kate never failed to be startled by this girl. She was a combination of streetwise runaway and naive idealist, incredibly well read in some areas and completely ignorant in others. “Not many young people are aware of Walden Livingston. How did you hear of him?”
“I was placed with a couple who made environmentalism,like, their whole life, and old Walden was their number one man. They had a signed copy of the book he wrote and a book of his collected quotations. You know, ‘Leave no trail for a future traveler, let him find his own way’ and all that. Did he really talk like that?”
Kate rested her chin in her hand and studied the Leibovitz portrait, which hung on the wall by the door. The picture captured the twinkle in his eye, the dramatic sweep of his snowy hair, which he’d told her was once as red as her own. His face had a geography as distinctive as the land itself, and Leibovitz’s eye brought that out. I miss you, she thought, then turned to Callie. “I’m not even sure he said all those things.”
“Did he seem, like, completely different from other people, in real life?”
“Good question.” Kate smiled, remembering. “Maybe he did. To me, he was just Grandpa. That’s about as special as it gets for a kid.”
“I’ve only met my grandparents one time.”
“Do you think you’d like to visit them again one day?”
Callie took a big bite of cereal and regarded Kate with wariness.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Kate said.
“Then why did you ask?”
“I’m curious, I admit it. I want to know about your life.”
Callie considered this for a moment. She set down her spoon and pushed the bowl away. “Here’s what I know about my grandparents, the ones on my mother’s side. They never did find my dad, so his parents were out of the question. When Brother Timothy got busted and the commune broke up, my mom and I came to Washington. She was so broke, she went to her folks in Tacoma and just ditched me there. Didn’t even say goodbye or say where she was going.”
Kate ached for her. “I’m sorry, Callie.”
The girl shrugged. “No big deal. I’m totally over it. Anyway, they called CPS—Child Protective Services. They said they couldn’t take me. I bet your grandfather wasn’t like that.”
“No,” Kate said. “He was … magical. I feel so lucky to have known him.”
“Did you know he was different?”
“I don’t think I really concerned myself with his life’s work. I know he had a lot of demands on his time. He traveled pretty much all during the school year.” She went to the bookcase and got a leather-bound album, the one devoted to her grandfather’s career.
Together, she and Callie perused the photographs, magazine clippings and newspaper articles. There was an entire page devoted to pictures of Walden posing or shaking hands with U.S. presidents, from Lyndon Johnson through Ronald Reagan. He had managed to get each one to sign some sort of legislation to help the environment.
“Man,” said Callie, “I wonder what it would be like to do something so big, so important with your life.”
“I don’t think he could imagine doing it any other way.” Although Walden had always been beloved by activists concerned with saving the earth, he had disappointed his parents by failing to take up the reins of the family business. When the family business was timber, and the eldest son’s passion was conservation, it must have made for some unhappy times, especially when he spent most of the family fortune on his cause, but all that had happened before Kate’s time. She studied Callie, whose coloring looked better now that she’d eaten. There was a question beneath Callie’s question about Walden—Am I anybody? Do I matter?
“Callie, what’s your mother like?” Kate knew it was risky to broach the subject, but she sensed that it was at the heart of the girl’s troubles. “That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s fine. I don’t have much to say, though. She’s a loser and I don’t miss her one bit.” A car horn sounded, and Callie jumped up. “Gotta bounce,” she said. “I’ll be back by seven.”
“Don’t forget your lunch.” At the door, Kate handed her a paper sack.
Callie gave her a stark look of gratitude, then headed for the door.
Kate knew the girl didn’t have much kindness in her life. Even the smallest act of thoughtfulness came as a surprise to her. Kate found herself wishing that someone had loved Callie as a little girl, had fixed a sack lunch for her and told her goodbye in the morning. She was convinced that if everyone could have that in their life, the world would be a better place. The thought made her glance at the computer. No, she thought. No. One crusader in the family is enough. She needed to get her own act together before saving the world.
She closed the album, and used a soft cloth to clean the old leather covers and the edges of the pages. Her grandfather had led an important life. She was supposed to do the same, with her big plans for a big career. Things had worked out differently for her.
Just then, Aaron came bursting into the house, dancing around at the boot tray to kick off his shoes. “Mom!” he yelled. “Hey, Mom!”
“I’m right here,” she said. “You don’t have to shout.”
“Okay. I found a fossil.” He hurried over and showed her a stone imprinted with some beetlelike shell.
“You sure did, buddy,” Kate said. “Where did you find it?”
“In the woods.” He held it out to her. “You can keep it if you want,” he said. “For a present.”
“Hey, thanks,” she said, putting away the album. She was doing something important with her life, she reflected, taking the offering from her son. What was more important than this?
Eight
“Kate Livingston,” JD said into his cell phone as soon as Sam answered. “What can you tell me about her?”
He had driven into town to buy some fly-fishing supplies and check his mail. Having nothing to do all day, every day, was keeping him extremely busy.
“Katie Livingston in the big house down the road?” Sam gave a low whistle. “I haven’t thought about her in years. You’ve met her?”
“Yeah. So what do you know?”
There was a muffled sound as Sam moved on his end, perhaps to get out of earshot of his wife or kids. “That I used to be in love with her,” he said in a strained whisper.
“How’s that?” JD grinned and shook his head. Sam was big-hearted and completely unafraid of his emotions. Since JD had known him, he’d fallen in and out of love a half-dozen times, soaring to the height of joy and plummeting to the depths of despair with reckless abandon. Finally, a few years back, he’d fallen for Penny, a civilian contractor, and announced to JD that he’d found his final soul mate. He’d kept his promise, too, lavishing her and their kids with adoration and reveling in both the struggles and pleasures of family life.
“Seventh grade,” he confessed. “She was a year younger. I had a giant crush on her. When I was a hormonal twelve-year-old, the sight of her in a bikini could put me in a coma. God, she was cute. Red hair and freckles. Later, when we were in high school.” He gave a low whistle.
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.” Now thoughts of an adult Kate in a bikini crowded into his head.
“Damn. Little Katie Livingston. I was nuts for her, every summer. She still incredibly hot?”
Oh, yeah, he thought. “You’re a married man.”
“Who intends to stay that way. So … is she?”
“She’s.” JD looked out his truck window. The Strait of Juan de Fuca was a flat, glossy blue, dotted by freighters heading for open water. He tried to think of a word for Kate Livingston. Down, Simba. “Smoking hot still works for her.”
Another whistle. “Man. I haven’t thought about her in years.”
“I borrowed her ice chest. Long story. She’s got a kid. Looks to be around ten years old or so.” “Husband?” “I didn’t meet one.”
“If she goes by the name Livingston, she’s probably single. Comes from an old, old lake family. The Livingston place is legendary. Huge. It’s been there for almost a century. The family fortune was made during Prohibition. Timber and Canadian whiskey. Not very politically correct but it put them on the map—for a while, at least. I think subsequent generations managed to spend it all, but they kept that lake house. I lost track of Katie, though. I went into the service and I heard she went to college. She was some kind of genius and we all thought she’d do something big with her life.
“Is the whole family there?” Sam asked.
“No, but she had a kid,” JD pointed out. “That’s big.”
“Hard to believe she never married.”
“Why is it hard?”
“You met her. You tell me. What’s she like now?”
Beautiful, thought JD. Kind and funny and a little bit vulnerable. Completely wrong for him in every way he could think of. The whole world was wrong for him, he reflected. That was the thing about what he’d done. He didn’t regret it for a moment, but now he was a misfit wherever he went.
To Sam, he said, “She seems like … a nice person.”
“A nice person. Oh, that tells me a lot.”
“Like I said, I just ran into her one day.”
