Starlight On Willow Lake

“So about those tears.” He shifted around to face her.

She wondered if he actually cared about her tears. Unlikely. He was simply trying to make sure he hadn’t engaged an unstable person as his mother’s caregiver.

“Like I said, it was a rare meltdown. Nothing to worry about. You didn’t hire a wacko.”

“I’m already convinced of that. You said you were feeling relief. Because...?”

“The past few months have been a tough spell for us. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the placement agency I’d been working for. Just before you got in touch with me, I was looking at having to move right at the end of the school year. The idea of uprooting the girls yet again was awful.”

“Your daughters like it here in Avalon, then.”

“We all do. Small town, good schools, beautiful area. But I think they would like anywhere that feels stable to them. We’ve had a lot of upheaval since their dad died. Sometimes I think most of my life has been spent in some sort of upheaval or other.”

“Sorry to hear that.” He added a tiny splash more Scotch to her glass. “Care to talk about it?”

She smiled shakily into the glass and took another sip. “Depends on which upheaval you’re talking about.” She fell silent, traveling back through the years to the first big shock of her life. When she was just a schoolgirl, her grandparents both died in a single, tragic moment, leaving behind their only daughter—Faith’s mother. The tragedy had occurred in Lockerbie, Scotland. They had not been on the tragic Pan Am flight that day in 1988, but on the ground, visiting friends in the town, on a tiny loop of a street called Sherwood Crescent.

Faith’s grandparents had saved for months for their overseas visit, planning to spend Christmas with the Henrys, whom they knew through an international church group.

It would have been long dark when they sat down for dinner on that dreary December eve, but inside, there would have been a cheery fire in the grate and probably something warm and comforting to eat. Surely they never knew what hit them, but the investigation determined that it was a giant Pratt & Whitney engine, and the impact was so enormous that some of the Henrys’ blue garden paving stones flew three blocks away, landing on the roof of the police station.

Faith came home from school the following day, flush with excitement for the upcoming holidays, to find her mother sitting in the dim afternoon light, twisting tissue after tissue in her hands as she stared at the breaking news on TV. For months afterward, Faith always felt a chill of horror when a plane passed overhead.

Between sips of whiskey, she related this to Mason, who sat motionless, not even blinking. “So I guess,” she concluded, “it’s not surprising I have a strange connection to things from Scotland.”

Mason moved at last, tossing back his drink. “That’s... Man, that’s incredible, Faith. I’m really sorry. A shock like that. It can turn your life upside down. It’s like you can’t escape the memories. They’re always there, intruding whether you’re asleep or awake.”

She nodded, startled by his insight. “You’re right. Even now, walking into a dark house with nothing but the TV on takes me back to that day. I never told the girls. I figure they’ve been through enough in their own lives.”

“What sort of things? If you don’t mind saying.”

“I don’t mind.” She had no use for deception. Never had. Secrets and lies had never done anyone any good, least of all her. “Dennis was sick for a number of years. He was diabetic, and there were complications. Including the fact that he was foreign—Scottish—and had never bothered to get a green card. He was facing deportation, and we couldn’t afford to fight it. The medical debt from his treatment is a hole so deep, I doubt I’ll ever dig my way out. And now there’s Ruby’s care and her meds... I won’t bore you with all the details.”

“You’re not boring me.”

She smiled, had another sip of the strange-tasting whiskey. “I must be. I’m boring myself.”

“Come on.”

“We should be talking about your mom, not about me. I’d like to talk more about your mother’s situation,” she said. “The more I know about her, the better I can help her.”

“Oh, sure.” Something in his reply told her he wasn’t expecting that. “Mom will tell you everything you need to know—implicitly if not explicitly. She had an amazing, vibrant life as an athlete and a world traveler. Now she has to figure out how to live with quadriplegia. There’s really nothing I can add. Except that she doesn’t seem to be doing so hot in the attitude department. I totally get why she’s so pissed off all the time. You and I can’t imagine what it’s like, living with this level of disability.”

“That’s true. We grow up hearing we have to play the hand we’re dealt, but we are always looking for a way around that.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping the whiskey and watching the reflection of the stars on the lake. “We really have no idea what it’s like to be paralyzed,” said Faith. “The loss of privacy and independence are huge. Your mother might still be going through a grieving process for the loss of her old life.”

“Yes. You’re right. I feel so damned bad for her, and then it pisses me off, because there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“There is. You can’t fix her spinal cord injury. You can’t give her back her physical abilities. But there’s plenty to be done.”

A silence ticked slowly between them, but it was a comfortable silence. A thoughtful one.

He tipped his head back to look at the sky. “I’m not used to it being so dark at night,” he said.

“I like the dark,” she said. “It lets you see more stars.”

He nodded. After a while, he said, “I want you to know, you can always call me or ask me anything. I’m here to help, as limited as I am in the nursing skills department.”

“Good to know.” She felt a pleasant warm buzz from the whiskey. “That’s powerful stuff.”

His smile—a little crooked, eyes crinkling at the corners—was way too charming. She could look at him all night. “It coats the nerves with happiness,” he said.

“Well put. So I do have a question. You said I could ask you anything. Where does your mind go when it wanders?”

“I wasn’t expecting that kind of question.” He finished his drink and rattled the ice in his glass. “My mind never wanders,” he stated. “I have laser focus.”

She couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking. “Must be a gift.”

“How about you? Where does your mind go?”

“My girls. Their well-being. Their future. See? I’m boring myself again.”

“But you’re not boring me.”

Faith was surprised by all these flickers of attraction toward Mason, but she quickly and systematically extinguished each one. They came from different worlds. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, while Faith’s background was unequivocally blue-collar. Or pink-collar, as it was known. Her mother had worked when she could, selling sewing notions and quilting supplies at a small fabric shop, but most days, she was too sick to go out. As a girl, Faith used to dream of growing up and becoming a doctor and finding a way to cure her mom’s congestive heart failure. As she grew older and truly grasped their dire financial situation and the enormous cost of education, she had surrendered that dream. She just wished Cara didn’t have to surrender it, too.

She watched the play of the moon and the stars on the lake. “It’s so beautiful here. Did you grow up in Avalon?”

“No. We have family in the area, and my brother, Adam, lives here. He’s the reason we brought Mom here after the accident.”

“Will I meet Adam?”

“Sure. He lives in the quarters above the boathouse. But he’s away now, attending special training for his job. He’s a firefighter, going for his certification in arson investigation. You’ll meet our sister, Ivy, too, one of these days. She lives in California, but she’s moving to Paris for a two-year art fellowship.”

“Paris. How exciting to be in Paris. Have you been?”

There was a beat of hesitation; then he said, “Yeah. I’ve been to Paris.”

“And?” She wanted him to elaborate. One of the things she loved about her job was the people aspect. You could live a lot of lives just listening to other people’s stories.

“And what?” he asked.

“City of light? Movable feast? Everything it’s cracked up to be?”

His hand twitched around the whiskey glass; then he tossed back the rest. “A big, busy city. A place to get lost.”

He didn’t seem interested in talking about Paris.