Starlight On Willow Lake

At the south end was the town called Avalon, as picture-perfect as a storybook setting, with its whistle-stop train station, old-fashioned town square, stone-built Greek revival library and shady shoreline parks. Its outskirts were equally attractive—a mountain road leading to a ski resort, a ball field for the local bush-league baseball team, white-steepled churches, their spires seeming to thrust through the new-leafed trees. The cliffs of the Shawangunks attracted climbers from all over the world. Somewhere not so far away, there was probably suburban blight—shotgun shacks and mobile homes, ramshackle farms and big-box stores. But he couldn’t see any of that from here. And more important, neither could his mother.

The place he’d acquired for her was on the western shore of the lake, so it caught the sunrise every morning, something his real-estate agent had pointed out when he had bought the property. The agent had babbled on about the attributes of the historic mansion, not knowing Mason was already sold on getting the place. He was looking for security for his mother, not for a return on investment.

“Why do they keep quitting?” he asked her, paging through the printouts of the candidates for the job of primary caregiver. “Is it the living quarters?”

“Have you seen the living quarters?”

He’d looked at pictures after the remodel was done. The living quarters, located in a private wing of the house, featured a suite of rooms with a view of the lake, new furnishings and luxurious fixtures. “Okay, good point. So?”

“I haven’t been conducting exit interviews. I’m sure Adam gave you an earful. Nobody wants to live with a miserable old woman who can barely change the channel on The Price Is Right.”

Oh, boy. “You’re not old,” he said. “Your parents would freak out if they heard you say that. And being miserable is optional. So is watching The Price Is Right.”

“Thank you, Sigmund Freud. I’ll remember that next time I’m lying in bed, pissing into a plastic tube—”

“Mom.”

“Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to trouble you with the reality of my body functions.”

Now he understood why they all quit.

* * *

“Where should I put your things, Mr. Bellamy?” asked the housekeeper.

Mason stood glaring out the window at an impossibly serene and beautiful view of Willow Lake. Although he’d arrived late the day before, his luggage had been delayed—some mix-up at an airport between here and New Zealand.

Now Mrs. Armentrout rolled the two large bags into the room. The suitcases wore tags marked Unattended Baggage.

He hadn’t seen the luggage since dashing to the airport in New Zealand after getting the call about his mother’s accident. Now he realized he didn’t need the bags at all, since they were packed with winter clothes.

“Right there is fine, thanks,” he said.

“Would you like some help unpacking?”

“Sure, when you can get to it.”

“I can do that right now.”

The housekeeper worked with brisk efficiency, hanging his bespoke suit in the antique armoire, carefully folding cashmere sweaters away in a cedar-lined drawer. She lifted a dress shirt out of the suitcase and put it on a wooden hanger, her hand moving appreciatively over the fabric.

Philomena Armentrout actually looked more like a supermodel than a housekeeper. A native of South Africa, she was tall and slender, with creamy café au lait skin, wearing chic black slacks and a white blouse, shining dark hair and subtle makeup. Only the closest of inspections would reveal the tiny scars where the jaw wires had been surgically anchored after her husband had assaulted her. Mason had committed himself and all his resources to staffing the household with the best personnel available, and Mrs. Armentrout was definitely the best. That wasn’t the only reason Mason had hired her, though. Broken and battered, she had needed a new start in life, and Mason was taking care of her immigration process. According to Adam, she ran the place like a high-end boutique hotel, supervising every aspect of the household.

His phone in the charging station on the desk murmured insistently, signaling another text message from Regina. She had not taken the news of his change of plans well. She’d peppered him with all the questions he’d already run through with his brother and sister: Why did he need to come here in person? Couldn’t a staffer take care of hiring the new caregiver? Couldn’t Adam or Ivy change their plans and step in?

No, they couldn’t. Both had commitments that couldn’t be broken—Adam’s training in arson investigation, Ivy’s art fellowship at the Institut de Paume. But Mason didn’t feel like getting into a big debate with Regina at the moment, and so he ignored the message.

Last night he’d slept like a corpse in the comfortable guest room. It was so damned quiet here, and the air was sweet and the jet lag had finally caught up with him.

“Is my mother up yet?” he asked.

She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “In a bit. Lena, the morning aide, will bring her to the lounge room for coffee at nine. You can go see her in her room right away if you want.”

He did want to see his mother. Just not...before she was ready for the day.

One of the hardest things Alice Bellamy was having to adjust to was the loss of privacy. Needing another person to look after all her personal needs was a constant source of irritation. “I’ll wait,” he said. “The coffee is great, by the way. Thanks for sending it up.”

“Wayan roasts his own. He gets the green coffee beans from his family in Bali. It’s got a funny name, tupac or leewalk, something like that.”

“Luwak,” said Mason. “No wonder it’s so good. You should look this stuff up sometime. You won’t believe where it comes from.”

“Right. That’s the stuff that comes from a civet cat’s arse or something, yes?”

“It’s organic.”

Like Mrs. Armentrout, the personal chef had been selected for his unique excellence as well as his urgent need to escape his dire circumstances. Wayan had been attending cruise ship school in the Philippines. The Balinese native had abruptly been cut from that program, leaving him stranded and nearly penniless in a foreign land. Mason had found him through a sponsorship program and brought Wayan—along with his wife and son—halfway around the world. The family lived above the old carriage house, now a four-car garage and workshop. His wife, Banni, served as an evening aide and personal assistant, and their son, Donno, was Alice’s driver, mechanic and general fix-it guy. Mason hadn’t met Wayan yet, but Adam sang rhapsodies about his cooking.

Mrs. Armentrout held up a rash guard shirt. “It’s a shame you had to cut your vacation short,” she said. “I’ve heard the surfing in Malibu is the best in the world.”

“It will keep,” he said simply.

“And the skiing was good?” she inquired.

“You bet.” It occurred to him to explain the trip wasn’t strictly a vacation, but a journey to fulfill his father’s last wish, followed by a work trip. He knew the explanation would make him sound less like a selfish prick who was avoiding his wounded mother.

But it didn’t actually bother him to be regarded as a selfish prick. It just made things simpler.

“How is she doing?” he asked Mrs. Armentrout. “She didn’t have much to say about her fall.”

“The doctor said the collarbone will heal nicely. There was a surgery to repair it with plates and screws, and she was able to come home the very next day.”

“I’ve spoken to the surgeon about her collarbone already. That’s not what I’m asking.”

“She’s... It’s terribly hard, Mr. Bellamy. She is bearing up.”

“Were you around when she fell?”

“No one was around. You can look over the report from the EMTs.”

“I’m sure Adam went over that with a fine-tooth comb,” Mason said.

The mantel clock chimed nine. He felt Mrs. Armentrout watching him. He could practically hear her thoughts. She was wondering why he didn’t seem so eager to settle in. “I’ll let you finish here,” he said, wishing he could be a million miles away. “I’m going to see my mother. We’re starting the interviewing process today.”

As he descended the wide, curving staircase, he wondered if this was where his mother had fallen in her chair. Had she called out in terror? Had she felt pain?

He trailed his fingers over the silky walnut handrail. She couldn’t feel the texture of the wood with her fingertips. Physical sensation below the spinal cord injury was gone. Yet when he thought of the expression he’d seen on her face last night, he knew that she still felt the deepest kind of pain.

* * *