Hush

“All right,” she said, leading him down the long hallway toward the front door. Did he expect her to gush with gratitude?

“Are you planning to attend parents’ day at the camp tomorrow?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, incredulous at his question. She could feel her blood begin to boil. “Did you assume I’d spend the day at Barneys along with the other neglectful mommies?”

She regretted the remark as soon as it had shot from her mouth. It was the kind of sniping Hotchkiss had warned her against.

“You shouldn’t take everything so personally, Lake,” he said, stopping in the foyer. “Are you just driving up for the day or are you going to be using the house this weekend?”

Now what? she wondered. “Why?” she asked.

“If you’re not going to use the house, I’d like to stay there tonight. I have to go on to Boston from the camp and it’d be nice not to have to make two long trips in one day.”

“Actually I am using the house this weekend,” she lied.

He studied her face, though she couldn’t tell what he was looking for. A sign that she’d just fibbed? She wished he’d just leave already.

“Okay, then,” he said coolly after a moment. He reached for the door handle-and then hesitated. “Are you coming?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. It was as if his whole visit was some mind game meant to drive her nuts.

“You said you had to go back to your clients’.”

She remembered her earlier lie. “I do. But I have a call to return first.”

After he’d left, she leaned for a moment in relief against the foyer wall. Then she hurried down to her bedroom and swung open the closet door. His old black suitcase was exactly where it had been, though slightly askew from having been put back haphazardly. She surveyed the room. She’d totally changed the bedroom a month ago, making it all white and spare, far different from what it had been when Jack had shared the space with her. But it was less than tidy today, with a few items scattered on the low dresser-a Starbucks receipt, a clipping she’d torn from the Wall Street Journal. She walked over and glanced at them. She was pretty sure they had been moved. Jack had snooped around.

Kicking off her shoes, she fell back onto the bed. Everything right now seemed Kafkaesque to her-Jack’s behavior, Keaton’s death. She thought of her lie about using the house in the Catskills. The kids’ camp was only twenty-five minutes from the house, but her plan had been to drive all the way to the camp from Manhattan and return to the city later that day. She had avoided going to the house all summer, mainly because of what was happening with Jack-she was afraid of memories. But maybe it would do her good to be there. The house had always been a refuge for her, and it might be exactly what she needed right now. Nothing there could conjure up Keaton and the horrible mess she was in. It would be great for Smokey to poke around outdoors. And there was no reason she couldn’t leave right now.

It took her only a half hour to pull everything together for the trip. She gathered her folders and her laptop, with the hope of working on her presentation at some point during the weekend. She packed the cooler with a small steak from her freezer and a fresh head of lettuce. As usual, Smokey resisted the carrying case, so she spent a few minutes gently easing him inside.

“You’re gonna get to be outside tonight, Smokey boy,” she told him. “Won’t that be nice?”

Ten minutes later, as she waited for the garage attendant to bring her car around, she considered how escaping the city would put her out of the loop with people at the clinic, who’d be among the first to hear news about the murder investigation. Cell service was spotty where she was headed, so if someone decided to call her, it might be impossible to get through. After pondering this for a few minutes, she called the clinic and asked for Maggie.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be at my house in the Catskills this weekend,” Lake told her. “The cell service around Roxbury is bad so I thought I’d give you my number up there-in case you want to reach me.”

“Is one of the doctors supposed to call you?” Maggie asked.

“Um, no-I just thought it would be good for you to have it. You know, in case someone needed me.”

“Okay,” she said obligingly. “But I’m sure it won’t be necessary. Since we have no transfers today, Dr. Levin is sending everyone home at lunchtime. He thought we all needed the break.”

Lake also left a message on Molly’s voice mail, telling her about her plans and that she would catch up with her later.

The traffic north was heavy and aggravating, though Lake managed to make the first part of the trip in just over two hours. When she finally pulled off the highway for the last leg-along several rural highways up through the Catskill Mountains-she felt a rush of pleasure override her anxiety. In her mind there had never been a better word to describe the landscape up there than piney-endless fir trees hugging the mountains that rose steeply from the road. The temperature was seven or eight degrees cooler here than in the city, and she rolled down the window to breathe in the mountain air.

Nothing had changed in the months since she’d last been here, but then again it never did. The small towns she passed through, with their general stores, painted clapboard houses, and weathered steel bridges, seemed untouched since the 1950s. She and Jack had bought the weekend house here ten years ago based mostly on the affordability of the area, but she’d come to love the region-it reminded her of parts of the Pennsylvania landscape where she’d been raised.

Jack, however, had eventually grown bored of it. “Every other restaurant is made from an old caboose,” he’d said snidely during a drive up just a few months before their split. It had been no surprise when he’d told her she could keep the house.

Just outside of Roxbury she stopped at a farm stand to pick up fresh tomatoes and fruit. When she pulled into the town a few minutes later, it seemed deadly quiet, and there was the usual dustiness the town always seemed to wear in August as the summer wound down.

Her house was at the far end of town. When she and Jack had gone house hunting they hadn’t been able to afford a place with lots of land, so they settled on a lovely center-hall colonial in a short row of houses across from what was called the village green, but what was really a smidgen of park with a few tired benches. The house didn’t provide much privacy, but the backyard was spacious enough for the kids to romp around in. And she loved her next-door neighbors, David and Yvon, gay partners in their fifties.

It felt strange but good to set eyes on the house again. As she parked in the driveway and unloaded her bags, she heard someone’s long strides behind her. She turned to see David approaching the car.

“Hey, stranger,” he said, embracing her. “We’ve missed you like crazy.”

“Same here. And I so appreciate you keeping an eye on the house for me. You guys have been wonderful.”

“We weren’t expecting you this weekend. Does this mean you’re going to start coming up again?”

“Yes, I really plan to-though this trip turned out to be just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’m going to parents’ day at the camp tomorrow. How about a drink tonight before dinner?”

She’d originally planned to hibernate for the evening, but she suddenly felt the need to have Yvon and David chattering on her back porch.

“I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more, but we just heard that Yvon’s mother is in the hospital. It’s probably just another kidney stone but we’ve got to head back to the city right now.”

She felt a rush of disappointment. “Well, we’ll do it another time. I just hope she’s okay.”

“She’s fine, I’m sure, though I don’t know if I’ll be okay after spending the weekend at Mt. Sinai, waiting for the damn thing to pass. What about you? How are you doing these days?”

“Better, much better, really.”

“And you’ll be all right here all by yourself?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been up here plenty of times without Jack.”

“It’s going to be kind of quiet around here-Jean didn’t come up this weekend and the Perrys are at a wedding in Dallas apparently.” He gave her a smile. “Well, I’d better dash. We don’t want to make Momma Bear cross.”

He sprinted back across her front yard and up the steps of his house. Next door, Lake saw that Jean Oran’s house was locked up tight, and so was the Perrys’. Lake glanced over to the green across the street. Usually there