Return to Willow Lake

MUST-DO LIST (REVISED, AGAIN)

sublet apartment

return library books

repay student loans

realign priorities

really fall in love (no, seriously)

What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

—CYNTHIA OZICK, AMERICAN WRITER, B. 1928

Chapter Five

Sonnet awakened as the train from the city lurched into the station at Avalon. Just for a moment, she felt fuzzy and disoriented, her sleepy mind flipping through all her many homecomings. As a new, homesick college student, she’d arrived with a sense of relief, eager to be enfolded in the comfort of her mother’s arms. During her various internships overseas, she’d visited less often, but always with appreciation. Yet as time went on, the town where she’d been born and raised seemed smaller and smaller to her, with less and less to tie her to the pretty lakeside hamlet. While her world was expanding, Avalon remained the same.

She felt strange about this homecoming, for a lot of reasons. It made her seem like she was going backward into a world where she no longer fit or belonged.

Grabbing her bags from the luggage rack, she stepped down to the platform and looked around. Same little burg, with its picturesque square, the old brick buildings huddled shoulder-to-shoulder, their striped and scalloped awnings shadowing the shops and businesses she’d walked past every day as she was growing up.

She noticed a bit of commotion on another car as a group of people got off, lugging hard cases of equipment and rolls of cable on hand trucks. There were a couple of guys and women, dressed mostly in black, looking around as if they’d stepped off a spacecraft onto an alien planet. One of the guys wore a black baseball cap with the logo MFP, and the equipment boxes were marked Mickey Flick Productions.

Sonnet thought they might be a camera crew. Back when her mother served as the town mayor, she’d set up a volunteer film commission to attract business. A place like Avalon didn’t see much action, but every once in a while a crew came through to create footage of the quaint town, or of fall foliage or sometimes aerial views of the area. It was a place that seemed frozen in time, achingly pretty, useful for establishing a historic or generic small town setting. A few years back, there had been a public television documentary on the annual Christmas pageant that had created quite a stir.

The PBS camera crew hadn’t looked like this bunch, however. These people had that edgy East or West Coast look. They consulted smartphones and lit up cigarettes before moving en masse to a large panel van parked in the commuter lot.

Seeing a camera crew reminded her of Zach Alger. He was the last person she wanted to think about, but she couldn’t help herself. God, those kisses. Those hands. The things he’d whispered in her ear. Even now, she felt an unbidden spasm of desire at the mere thought of him. It was ridiculous, feeling turned on by a man she had no business thinking about.

Squaring her shoulders, she took out her new phone and sent a text to Max Bellamy, her stepbrother, who had offered to pick her up. In the parking lot, he texted back. Need help with bags? She indicated that she did not, and rolled her luggage toward Max’s slightly beat-up Subaru.

Max stood in his shirtsleeves, one hand in his jeans pocket, his hip cocked at a jaunty angle. He attended college in Hamilton, where he liked to say he majored in beer and girls. With his surfer-blond good looks, he took after his dad, Greg Bellamy, though his air of easy charm was something that belonged to Max alone. Sonnet liked him well enough, but she would never understand him. He came from a great family—he was a Bellamy, for heaven’s sake—yet he seemed to be in no hurry to find his life.

“Hey, you,” she said, giving him a hug. He’d topped six feet a few years ago, and he moved with easy grace as he loaded her bags in the back. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Sure. Your mom’s going to go nuts when she sees you.”

“She’s already nuts. Seriously, Max. Pregnant?” It felt weird just saying it aloud. Her mother—her over-forty mother—was pregnant. When Nina had first told her, Sonnet had been speechless with disbelief. Then she’d accused Nina of telling a bad joke. “I’m still in shock. How about you?”

Max rolled out of the parking lot and headed toward the Inn at Willow Lake, which Nina and Greg owned and operated. “It’s cool with me. I mean, yeah, it’s weird because we’re so much older than little Junior or Juniorette is going to be, but…” He shrugged. “Red Bull?” He offered her a sip of his drink.

“Uh, no, thanks.” She tried not to ingest things that had ingredients she couldn’t pronounce. She looked out at the scenery—the covered bridge over the Schulyer River, the hills draped in sunlit green. As they neared the inn, she glimpsed the lake in the distance, shining like a jewel. “Hey, I saw a camera crew get off the train. Know anything about that?”

“Some kind of top-secret production is going to be starting. That’s the word, anyway,” Max said, flashing his thousand-watt grin. “Maybe they’ll make me a star.”

“You wish.”

He turned into the gravel-paved lane leading to the Inn at Willow Lake. As always, it was lush and gorgeous, perfectly planted and maintained, a testament to Greg Bellamy’s skill as a landscape architect. “There’s some producer named C. Bomb staying at the inn,” Max said. “He’s like the head of the outfit or something.”

“C. Bomb?”

“That’s what he calls himself. Clyde Bombardier or something like that. Spends all day glued to his laptop, gabbing on his Bluetooth.”

“So, not your typical guest.” The inn was known as a place for romantic getaways. “And he’s not telling people what he’s up to?”

Max shrugged. “His business. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“And my mom? My pregnant mom?” Sonnet was still trying to get her mind around the concept. When she’d told Orlando, he’d merely wondered why Sonnet had to go haring off to Avalon simply because her mom was expecting. Orlando didn’t get it. It wasn’t every day a grown woman discovered her mother was going to have a baby.

“Her business,” Max said reasonably enough. “I’m sure the two of you will be up half the night discussing it.”

* * *

Nina was sound asleep. Sonnet tiptoed into the house, which had once been a caretaker’s cottage on the estate that had become the Inn at Willow Lake. She found her mother on a daybed in the living room, covered in an afghan, softly snoring. Quietly setting down her things, she paused to study Nina. Did she look different, or was that just Sonnet’s imagination? She just looked like…Mom, with her pretty Italian features and thick black hair, which she’d grown long enough for a ponytail, her dark eyelashes shadowing cheeks that looked slightly gaunt. You’re pregnant, Sonnet thought. You’re supposed to be glowing.

“Mom,” she said softly.

Nina’s eyes fluttered open. Her mouth unfurled into a smile. “Hi, baby.” Her favorite pet name for Sonnet now took on new meaning. “Thanks for coming.”

Sonnet hurried over to the daybed and they hugged. Her mother smelled like Pond’s lotion, a warm scent that took Sonnet back to her girlhood. She shut her eyes, and in a swift sequence she remembered all the hugs they’d shared through the years. During her childhood, the two of them had been inseparable, making their way through life together. There were tough years, there were times Sonnet yearned for a father or for something that looked like a two-parent family, but ultimately, the two-alone dynamic brought them closer. They were more than just mother and daughter; they were best friends.

“It’s the middle of the day and you’re sleeping,” Sonnet said.

“The prerogative of pregnant ladies.”

It felt completely surreal to Sonnet. “So you weren’t kidding about being pregnant.”

Nina scooted up to a sitting position. “Not kidding. Not the sort of thing any woman kids about.”

There was a bottle of prenatal vitamins and a prescription bottle for something Sonnet didn’t recognize next to a glass of water on the end table. Reality started sinking in. Sonnet’s mother was pregnant. “Are you showing yet?”

Nina smoothed a hand down her midsection. “Not too much.”

Sonnet couldn’t help staring. “Not there, anyway. But wow, Mom. You’ve had a visit from the boob fairy. Your girls are looking good.”

Nina waved her hand and glanced away. “I’m not really focused on that.”

“Well then…congratulations. It’s really exciting, Mom. Just unexpected. You caught me off guard. The last thing I thought I’d hear from you is that you’re having a baby.”

Nina smiled. “You’ll get used to the idea. Greg and I are so happy.”

“That’s great.” Sonnet was surprised to feel the tiniest twinge of jealousy, followed by a cold wave of shame. Her mother and Greg were totally in love, they were having a baby together, and she was happy about it. Yet there was a small, selfish part of her that wished she’d had the childhood this baby was going to have—two doting parents, a storybook-pretty life in this cottage near the lake. It was a stark contrast to the drafty rentals she and Nina had lived in, with Nina working all the time, trying to make ends meet.

“How are you feeling?” Sonnet asked, shifting gears into good-daughter mode. “Besides tired, I mean.”

“I feel…I’ll be fine,” Nina said firmly. “Perfectly fine.”