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“I’m going to hold you to that.”
Simple, she thought. All she needed to do was find a karaoke place. And get his family to show up. Okay, maybe not so simple.
“Judging by our encounter with Officer Friendly, your relatives are pretty unhappy with me,” she said. She didn’t much care. As her client, George was her sole concern. Still, it always went better if the family was supportive of the arrangement, because families had a way of complicating things. Sometimes she told herself that the lack of a family was a blessing in disguise. Certainly it was a complication she never had to deal with.
She often imagined about what it was like to have a family, the way a severe diabetic might think about eating a cake with burnt-sugar icing. It was never going to happen, but a girl could fantasize. Sometimes she covertly attended family gatherings—graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings, even the occasional funeral—just to see what it was like to have a family. She had a fascination with the obituary page of the paper, her attention always drawn to lengthy lists of family members left behind. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of pathetic, but it seemed harmless enough.
“They’re too quick to judge,” he said. “They haven’t even met you yet.”
“Well, you did make all these arrangements rather quickly.”
“If I hadn’t, they would have tried to stop me. They’d say we’re incompatible, that you and I are far too different,” he pointed out.
“Nonsense,” said Claire. “You’re a blueblood, and I’m blue collar—it’s just a color.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“We’re all in the same race,” she added.
“I’m closer to the finish line.”
“I thought we were going to try to keep a positive attitude.”
“Sorry.”
“This is going to go well,” she promised him.
“It’s going to end badly for one of us.”
“Then let’s not focus on the ending.”
There were known psychological and clinical end-of-life stages people went through when facing a devastating diagnosis—shock, rage, denial and so forth. Everyone in her field of work had memorized them. In practice, patients expressed their stages in ways that were as different and individual as people themselves.
Some held despair at bay with denial, or by displaying a smart-alecky attitude about death. George seemed quite happy to be in that phase. His wry sense of humor appealed to her. Of course, he was using humor and sarcasm to keep the darker things at bay—dread and uncertainty, abject fear, regret, despair. In time, those might or might not materialize. It was her job to be there through everything.
All her previous patients had been in the city, where it was possible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This was the first time she had ventured somewhere like this—small and old-fashioned, more like an illustration in a storybook than a real place. It was like coming to a theme park, overrun by trees and beautiful wilderness areas and dotted with picturesque farms and painted houses.
“Avalon,” she said as they passed another welcome sign, this one marked with a contrived-looking heraldic shield. “I wonder if it’s named after a place from Arthurian legend.” She’d gone through a teenage obsession with the topic, using books as a refuge from a frightening and uncertain life. One of her foster mothers, an English professor, had taught her how to live deeply in a story, drawing inspiration from its lessons.
“I imagine that’s what the founders had in mind. Avalon is where Arthur went to die,” George said.
“Not exactly. It’s the island where Excalibur was forged, and where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle.”
“Ah, but did he ever recover?”
She glanced over at him. “Not yet.”
The first thing she did when arriving at a new place was reconnoiter the area. It had become second nature to plan her escape route. The world had been a dangerous place for her since she was a teenager. Avalon was no exception. To most people, a town like this represented an American ideal, with its scrubbed façades and tranquil natural setting. Tree-lined avenues led to the charming center of town, where people strolled along the swept sidewalks, browsing in shop windows.
To Claire, the pretty village looked as forbidding as the edge of a cliff. One false step could be her last. She was already sensing that it was going to be harder to hide here, especially now that she’d been welcomed by the law.
She took note of the train station and main square filled with inviting shops and restaurants, their windows shaded by striped and scalloped awnings. There was a handsome stone building in the middle of a large park—the Avalon Free Library. In the distance was the lake itself, as calm and pristine as a picture on a postcard.
It was late afternoon and the slant of the sun’s rays lengthened the shadows, lending the scene a deep, golden tinge of nostalgia. Old brick buildings, some of them with façades of figured stonework, bore the dates of their founding—1890, 1909, 1913. A community bulletin board announced the opening game of a baseball team called the Hornets, to be celebrated with a pre-game barbecue.
“Are you a baseball fan?” she asked.
“Devotedly. Some of my fondest memories involve going to the Yankee stadium with my father and brother. Saw the Yankees win the World Series over the Phillies there in 1950. Yogi Berra hit an unforgettable homer in that game.” His eyes were glazed by wistful sentiment. “We saw Harry Truman throw out the first pitch of the season one year. He did one with each hand, as I recall. I’ve often fantasized about throwing out the game ball. Never had the chance, though.”
“Put it on your list, George,” she suggested. “You never know.”
They passed a bank and the Church of Christ. There were a couple of clothing boutiques, a sporting goods store and a bookstore called Camelot Books. There was a shop called Zuzu’s Petals, and a grand opening banner hung across the entrance of a new-looking establishment—Yolanda’s Bridal Shoppe. Some of the upper floors of the buildings housed offices—a pediatrician, a dentist, a lawyer, a funeral director.
One-stop shopping, she thought. A person could live and die here without ever leaving.
The idea of spending one’s entire life in a single place was almost completely unfathomable to Claire.
She stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a dark-haired boy cross while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. On the corner, a blonde pregnant woman came out of a doctor’s office. The residents of the town resembled people everywhere—young, old, alone, together, all shapes and sizes. It reminded her that folks tended to be the same no matter where she went. They lived their lives, loved each other, fought and laughed and cried, the years adding up to a life. The residents of Avalon were no different. They just did it all in a prettier place.
“Well, George?” she asked. “What do you think? How does it look to you?”
“The town has changed remarkably little since I was last here,” George said. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize anything.” His hands tightened around the notebook he held in his lap. “I think I want to die in Avalon. Yes, I believe this is where I want it to happen.”
“When was the last time you visited?” she asked, deliberately ignoring his statement for the time being.
“It was August twenty-fourth, 1955,” he said without hesitation. “I left on the 4:40 train. I never dreamed another fifty-five years would pass.”
That long, thought Claire. What would bring him back to a place after so much time?
“Would you mind pulling in here?” George asked. “I need to make a stop at this bakery. It was here when I last visited.”
She berthed the van in a big parking spot marked with a disabled symbol. On good days, George could walk fairly well, and today seemed to be a good day. However, they were in a new place and she didn’t want to push their luck.
The Sky River Bakery and Café had a hand-painted sign proclaiming its establishment in 1952. It was a beautiful spring day, and tables with umbrellas sprouted along the sidewalk in front of the place, shading groups of customers as they enjoyed icy drinks and decadent-looking sweets.
She went around to the passenger side of the van to help him. The key to helping a patient, she’d learned from experience, was to take her cues from him. Respect and dignity were her watchwords.
Though she had a wheelchair available, he opted for his cane, an unpretentious one with a rubber-tipped end. She helped him down and they stood together for a moment, looking around. His somewhat cocky persona slipped a little to reveal a face gone soft with uncertainty.
“George?” she asked.
“Do I look…all right?”
She didn’t smile, but her heart melted a little. Everyone had their insecurities. “I was just thinking you look exceptionally good. In fact, it’s kind of nice to tell you the truth instead of having to pretend.”
“You’d do that? You’d pretend I looked well, even if I didn’t?”
“It’s all a matter of perspective. I’ve told people they look like a million bucks when in fact they look like death on a cracker.”
“And they don’t see through that?”
“People see what they want to see. In your case, there’s no need to lie. You’re quite handsome. The driving cap is a nice touch. Where did you learn to dress like this?”
“My father, Parkhurst Bellamy. He was always quite clear on the way a gentleman should dress, for any occasion—even a bakery visit. He took my brother and me all the way to London for our first bespoke suits at Henry Poole, on Savile Row. I still get my clothing there.”
“Bespoke?”
“Made-to-measure and hand tailored.” He glanced at himself in a shop window. “Do me a favor. If I ever get to the stage where I look like death on a cracker, go ahead and lie to me.”
“It’s a deal.” She hesitated. “So do you expect to see someone you know in the bakery?”
He offered a rueful smile. “After all this time? Not likely. On the other hand, it never hurts to be prepared for the unlikely.” He squared his shoulders and gripped the head of the cane. “Shall we?” He gallantly held the shop door for her.
The bakery smelled so good she practically swooned from the aroma of fresh baked bread, buttery pastries, cookies and fruit pies, and a specialty of the house known as the kolache, which appeared to be a rich, pillowy roll embedded with fruit jam or sweet cheese.
A song by the Indigo Girls drifted from two small speakers. The shop had a funky eclectic decor, with black-and-white checkerboard floors and walls painted a sunny yellow. There was a cat clock with rolling eyes and a pendulum tail, and a hand-lettered menu board. Behind the counter on the wall was a framed dollar bill and various permits and licenses. A side wall featured a number of matted art photographs and articles, including a yellowed newspaper clipping about the bakery’s grand opening nearly sixty years ago.
George seemed like a different person here: gentle and pensive, shedding the impatience he’d shown occasionally on the drive from the city. A small line of patrons were clustered at the main counter. George waited his turn, then ordered indulgently—a cappuccino, a kolache and an iced maple bar. He also ordered a box of bialys and a strawberry pie to go.
She ordered a glass of iced tea sweetened with Stevia.
They took a seat at a side table decorated with a large travel poster depicting a scene at the lake. A guy in a flour-dusted apron and a name tag identifying him as Zach brought their order. He was an unusual-looking young man, his hair so blond it appeared white—naturally, not bleached. Claire had changed her own hair color enough times to know the difference.
“Enjoy,” he said, serving them.
“You didn’t order anything.” George aimed a pointed look at her glass of tea. “How can you come to a place like this and not want to sample at least one thing?”
“Believe me, I want to sample everything,“ she admitted. “I can’t, though. I, um, used to have a pretty bad weight problem. I really have to watch every single thing I put in my mouth.”
“You’re showing remarkable self-denial.”
So much of her life boiled down to that, to self-denial. What she couldn’t tell him was that her diet was not a matter of vanity alone. It was a matter of survival. As a teenager, she had used food as a comfort and a crutch, turning herself into the dateless fat girl. She was the nightmare everyone remembered from high school—overweight, reviled and given over to foster care.
When everything fell apart, her survival had depended on altering the way she looked as much as possible. In addition to changing the cut and color of her hair, the way she dressed, acted and talked, losing weight had been a key element of disguising her former self. Thanks to her young age at the time, and the stress of being on the run, the pounds had come off swiftly. Keeping the weight off was a daily battle. It was dangerously easy to pack on the pounds. It started with a simple, innocent-looking pastry like the one George was holding out to her.
But she had the ultimate motivation—staying alive. “Thanks, you go ahead and enjoy that.”
“And what the devil are you going to enjoy?”
“Watching you eat a kolache,“ she said.
He shrugged. “My funeral. Whoops, I’m not supposed to be saying things like that, am I?”
“You can say anything you want, George. You can do anything you want. That’s what this summer is going to be about.”
“I like the way you think. Should’ve lived my whole life that way.” He took an indulgent bite of his pastry and chewed slowly, his face turning soft with quiet ecstasy. He opened his eyes and saw her watching him. “Well,” he said, “there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is, I’m not going to heaven. The good news is, I’m already there.”
“According to the GPS, the resort is only ten miles from here, so I’ll make sure you get a steady supply of those pastries,” said Claire.
“Honestly, it’s that good. Are you certain you can’t be tempted with one?”
“I’m certain. And it’s nice to know there are kolaches on the menu every day in heaven. Do me a favor and take a bite for me.” Sipping her tea, she checked out the other patrons. Another paranoid habit of hers was checking to see if she was attracting attention, and scoping out escape options—the swinging door behind the counter, and the main entrance to the street. Seeing no tell-tale signs of trouble, she studied the framed art poster on the wall. “That’s a beautiful shot of Willow Lake.”
“It is,” George agreed.
The image captured the placid mood and quality of light that pervaded the forest-fringed lake. She noticed a scrawled signature where the photographer had signed and numbered the print. ‘"Daisy Bellamy,’” she read. “George? Any relation to you?”
“Possibly.” A tiny smile tightened his mouth, and she could see him forcibly shifting gears. “It’s a singular sensation,” he said, alternating bites of the pastry with sips of his full-cream cappuccino. “After decades of having to watch my cholesterol, I’m not going to die of a heart ailment after all.” He sampled the maple bar. “I wish I’d known.”
She decided against pointing out his circular logic. One reason he’d enjoyed good health as long as he had was probably because he watched his diet.
“I could even take up smoking,” he said, blotting his mouth with a napkin. “Cigars and cigarettes won’t kill me. I could pursue it, guilt-free.”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“I’m working on it,” he said.
“On what?”
“On making myself happy. All my life, I told myself I’d be happy someday.”
“And now that day has arrived,” she said.
“It’s hard,” he said quietly.
“To be happy? Tell me about it.” She took his arm and moved toward the door before he could question her. “Come on, George. Let’s go buy you some cigars."
They left town and headed northward along the lakeshore road. In the last part of the afternoon, the golden light deepened to amber, orange and fiery pink. Claire was silent, undone by the splendor of it. She wasn’t accustomed to being surrounded by so much riotous beauty, and it pierced her deeply, causing an unexpected welling of emotion.
Here I am, she thought. Here I am.
“This forest has grown so lush,” George remarked. “The area used to be all logged out. It’s good they replanted it. This is as it should be.”
She could feel his excitement spiraling upward as they approached Camp Kioga. It was their ultimate destination—the camp where he’d spent the summers of his boyhood. He eagerly pointed out landmarks as they passed them—mountains and rock formations and lookout points, a waterfall with a bridge suspended high above it.
The final approach took them deeper into the forest, where the foliage was so dense that for the first time Claire relaxed into a feeling of safety, false though it might have been. The resort came into view, its lodge and outbuildings nestled in the splendid wilderness at the northern end of the lake.
According to her hastily read brochure, the resort had recently been renovated and was run by a young couple, Olivia and Connor Davis. Yet the place retained its historic character in its timber and stone buildings, handmade signs, wild gardens, wooden docks where catboats and canoes bobbed at their moorage. The resort’s Web site, which she’d browsed the night before, explained that Camp Kioga had reached its pinnacle during the era of the Great Camps in the mid-twentieth century, when families from the city would take refuge from the summer heat.
The deep history and beauty of the place made her yearn for things she couldn’t have, like people who knew who she really was. What a gift it would be if she could stop running.
Gravel crunched under the tires of the van as they trolled along the circular driveway leading to the main lodge. Three flags flew over the landscaped garden in the center of the driveway—the U. S. flag and the flag of New York, and lower down, another one she didn’t recognize.
“It’s the Camp Kioga flag,” said George. “Nice to see they didn’t change it.” It depicted a kitschy-looking teepee by the lake, against a background of blue hills.
She pulled up next to the timbered entryway and went to help George. There was no one around. It was early in the season and a weekday afternoon, and the place was virtually deserted.
After a few minutes, a young teenager in coveralls, who had been working in the garden, came over, peeling off his canvas work gloves.
