He said nothing.
“That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” she said, and she finally looked at him. “That I’ve lost any chance of making it here.”
“You made it hard on yourself tonight. When you talk about shutting down the lake, it threatens a lot of people.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, you had to say it, Claire. You did the right thing, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“No one’s come up to shake my hand.”
“Take my word for it. There are others who have concerns about the lake.”
“But they’re not going to close it down, are they? They can’t afford to. So they shut me up instead, by doing this. By trying to drive me out of town.” She looked at her building. “It’s going to work, too.”
“You’ve been here less than a year. It takes time-”
“How long does it take to be accepted in this town? Five years, ten? A lifetime?” Reaching down, she turned on the ignition, and felt the initial blast of cold air from the heater.
“Your office can be repaired.”
“Yes, buildings are easy to fix.”
“It can all be replaced. The windows, the computer.”
“And what about my patients? I don’t think I have any left after tonight.”
“You don’t know that. You haven’t given Tranquility a chance.”
“Haven’t I?” She straightened and looked at him in fury. “I’ve given it nine months of my life! Every minute, I worry about my practice, about why my appointment book is still half empty. Why someone hates me enough to send anonymous letters to my patients. There are people here who want me to fail, and they’re doing their best to drive me out of town. It’s taken me this long to realize it’s never going to get better. Tranquility doesn’t want me, Lincoln.
They want another Dr. Pomeroy, or maybe Marcus Welby. But not me.”
“It takes time, Claire. You’re from away, and people need to get used to you, to feel confident you’re not going to abandon them. That’s where Adam DelRay has the advantage. He’s a local boy, and everyone assumes he’ll stay. The last doctor who came here from another state left after eighteen months. Couldn’t take the winters. The doctor before him stayed less than a year. The town doesn’t think you’ll last, either. They’re holding back, waiting to see if you make it through the Winter. Or if you’ll give up and leave town like the other two did?’
“It’s not winter that’s driving me away. I can take the darkness and the cold.
What I can’t take is the feeling I don’t belong. That I’ll never belong?’ She released a deep breath, and her anger suddenly dissolved, leaving only a feeling of weariness. “I don’t know why I thought this Would work. Noah didn’t want to move here, but I forced him. And now I see what a stupid thing it was to do..
“Why did you come, Claire?” He’d asked the question so softly it was almost lost in the whisper of air from the heater.
It was a question he had never asked her, an elementary piece of information about herself she had never shared. Why I came to Tranquility. Now as he waited for her answer, the silence stretched between them, magnifying her reluctance to confide in him.
He sensed her discomfort and shifted his gaze to the street, granting her some measure of privacy. When he spoke again, it was almost as if the words weren’t directed at her, that he was merely sharing his thoughts with no one in particular.
“The people who move here, from other places,” he said, “most times it seems to me they’re running away from something. A job they hate, an ex-husband. An ex-wife. Some tragedy that’s shaken their lives.”
She sagged sideways and felt the icy window against her cheek. How does he know? she wondered. How much has he guessed?
“They come here, these people from away, and they think they’ve found paradise.
Maybe they’re on summer vacation. Maybe they’re just driving through, and the name of the town catches their fancy. Tranquility. It sounds safe, a place to run to, a place to hide. They stop at the local realty office and look at the photos on the wall. All the farmhouses for sale, the cottages on the lake.”
It was a picture of a white farmhouse with daffodils nodding in the front yard and a maple tree just beginning to show its spring blush. I’d never had a house with a maple tree. I’d never lived in a town where I could look up at the sky at night and see stars, instead of the glare of city lights.
“They wonder what it’d be like, to live in a small town,” said Lincoln. “A place where no one locks their doors, and neighbors welcome you with casseroles. A place that’s more fantasy than reality, because the small town they imagine doesn’t exist. And the problems they’re trying to leave behind just follow them to their next home. And the next”
Noah told me he didn’t want to come. He told me he’d hate me if I forced him to leave Baltimore, to leave behind all his friends. But you can’t let a fourteen-year-old boy run your life. I’m the parent. I’m in charge. I knew what was good for him, good for both of us.
I thought I did.
“For a while, maybe, it seems to work out,” he said. “A new house, a new town-it keeps your mind off the things you were running away from. Everyone hopes for a new beginning, a chance to make things right. And they think, what better time and place to start a new life than a summer by the lake?”
“He stole a car,' she said.
He didn’t respond. She wondered what she’d see in his eyes if she were to turn and look at him now. Surely not surprise; somehow he had already known or guessed that her coming to Tranquility had been an act of desperation.
“It wasn’t the only crime he committed, of course. After he was arrested, I learned about all the other things he’d done. The shoplifting. The graffiti. The break-ins at the neighborhood grocery store. They did it together, Noah and his friends. Three boys who just got bored and decided to add a little excitement to their lives. To their parents’ lives.” She leaned back, her gaze focused on the empty street. Snow was beginning to fall, and as the flakes slithered onto the windshield they melted and slid down like tears on the glass. “The worst part about it was I didn’t know. That’s how little he told me, how completely out of touch I was with my own son.
“When the police called me that night, and told me there’d been an accident-that Noah had been in a stolen car-I told them it was a mistake. My son wouldn’t do something like that. My son was spending the night at a friend’s house. But he wasn’t. He was sitting in the emergency room with a scalp laceration. And his friend-one of the boys-was in a coma. I guess I should be grateful for the fact that my son never forgets to buckle his seat belt. Even in the act of stealing a car.” She shook her head and gave an ironic sigh. “The other parents were as stunned as I was. They couldn’t believe their boys would do such a thing. They thought Noah talked them into it. Noah was the bad influence. What could you expect from a boy who has no father?
“It made no difference to them that my son was the youngest of the three. They blamed it on his lack of a father. And the fact I was too busy working as a doctor, taking care of other peoples’ families, to pay attention to my own.”
Outside the snow was falling more thickly now, blanketing the windshield, cutting off her view of the street.
“The worst part about it was, I agreed with them. I had to be doing something wrong, failing him in some way. And all I could think of was, how could I set things right again?”
“Packing up and leaving home is a pretty drastic measure.”
“I was looking for a miracle. A magic solution. We’d gotten to the point where we hated each other. I couldn’t control where he went or what he did. Worst of all, I couldn’t choose his friends. I could see where it was leading. Another stolen car, another arrest. Another round of useless family counseling…“ She took a deep breath. The windshield was covered by snow now, and she felt buried away, entombed with this man beside her.
“And then,” she said, “we visited Tranquility.”
“When?”
“It was a weekend in fall. A little over a year ago. Most of the tourists were gone, and the weather was still nice. Indian summer. Noah and I rented a cottage on the lake. Every morning, when I woke up, I’d hear the loons. And nothing else. Just the loons, and silence. That’s what I loved most about that weekend, the feeling of complete peace. For once we didn’t argue. We actually enjoyed being together. That’s when I knew I wanted to leave
