photographs up to look at someday when the poison had drained out of them and they could no longer hurt her.
She started with the upstairs. Mike stood on the landing leaning against the banister, hands still in his pockets as she moved from room to room. When she ran out of boxes, he helped her fold and tape up some more. He never objected to one single thing, although he watched her intently the whole time.
The only place she did not go was into the bedroom closet. She couldn’t stand to see Rachel’s things hanging there. She decided to ask Florencia to ship anything on to her if she had left anything important in there.
She felt very tired when the time came to start on the downstairs, but there would be less down there. Those rooms were public, and except for her desk, she didn’t think she’d find much.
“Want something to drink?” Mike asked, following her down the stairs.
She ran her hand over the railing one last time. “No, thanks. I want to finish up.” Strange. For almost the first time since she had met him, she couldn’t read the look in his eyes. He had changed. She almost wished he would complain or get angry, anything to break the tension between them.
She made short work of the desk, shoveling her paperwork into two boxes, swiftly striping them with tape. Mike helped her stack the boxes by the front door.
Giving herself a few seconds to catch her breath, she looked around one last time. Then she opened the front door and faced Mike. Wiping her hands on a piece of wrapping paper, she held out her right hand. “We had a good long run,” she said. “See you around sometime.”
He was hesitating, as if he was making up his mind about something but couldn’t spit it out. She wanted to hear it, hear him say something she could carry away that meant he understood how good a run it had really been.
So she stood there like a fool, her hand out, when she should have turned around with whatever dignity she had left, and the tension grew unbearable.
He took her hand. And then he pulled her toward him and kissed her on the lips.
She jumped back. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she cried.
“I’m trying to kiss you, to make it better.”
“You’re making it harder!”
She started past him, but he blocked the way. “Will you listen to me?” he said. “Rachel’s gone,” he said, and suddenly he looked like the old Mike, a little shamefaced, but secretly pleased with himself.
“Don’t lie. I know she came back to you.”
“She did, and I’m a big dumb ox, but I’m not as dumb as I used to be.” He gave her a tentative grin.
“She’s not coming back?”
“I had to write her a hell of a check,” he said. “It was always business with her. And I was vain and confused, an easy mark. She’s gone, Lindy. And I-”
She shook her head. “Mike, don’t do this.”
“We could… let’s sit down here on the steps and talk.”
“After all that’s happened? I don’t think so.”
“Just give me a minute, then, and I’ll talk. Though I’m as lousy at that as I am at everything else I do without you.”
Away in the distance, Tahoe gleamed.
“Let’s dump last year in the lake,” Mike said.
Sandy brought lunch in, two salads. She set them down on Nina’s desk.
“I’m not hungry,” Nina said.
“Fine. Don’t eat,” said Sandy. “Now what?” she asked, taking the plastic lid off and pouring dressing.
“Now nothing,” said Nina.
“Is she going to pay us anything?”
“No, and I don’t even have the money to cover the office rent this month. We’re lucky the judge didn’t order Lindy to pay Mike’s attorney fees. She’s already trying to come up with thirty thousand to pay for Mike’s trial costs so that she can drop the complaint. She can’t help.”
“The landlord will carry us for a couple of months. You’ve made the Starlake Building famous. He’s got a waiting list of tenants. Here.” She handed Nina a check.
Sandy’s personal check was made out to Nina for ten thousand dollars. How she could have put together that kind of money Nina couldn’t imagine. And here she was offering it to her boss.
“You are the best,” Nina said, trying not to show her emotion. “No way. But thanks for the offer.” She handed it back.
“We’ll start fresh. Work twice as hard,” said Sandy. “You can just use that money to get us out of the crunch.” As if to illustrate this statement, she crunched thoughtfully on her crouton.
“Forget it!”
“You telling me I work for a quitter? You’ve still got a blanket to keep you warm at night, don’t you?” Sandy turned her pebble eyes directly toward Nina’s.
Nina looked back into their blackness, as if she might find in there the mysterious source of Sandy’s power. She saw only a dark-haired, round-faced, Native-American woman looking back at her, no more comprehensible than she had ever been.
And at that moment, looking at Sandy’s eyes, she felt the full cost of her gamble. She had risked Sandy’s job, Bob’s future here, their home, the work she was cut out to do in life. She had lost Paul…
Because Lindy refused to go to the bed upstairs, the one she had seen him in with Rachel, they had found their way to the boat and made up the bed in the cruiser with fresh sheets. Sunlight poured through the skylight into the cabin.
Later, they found some beer and crackers in the galley. They brought the platter up to a table on the deck, and found a spot in the sun to enjoy the lazy, warm afternoon. A few boats floated in the distance, rocking like lovers with the rhythm of the lake. Distant music drifted toward them.
“I’ll go see Riesner tomorrow,” Mike said. “Tell him to cooperate with the dismissal.”
There was no doubt in him. He sounded like a man fighting for his life. He wanted her back. But she didn’t believe in miracles. Things were far from perfect. She could never trust him as she once had. “I love you, Mike, but I won’t go on with things the way they have been.”
Mike said, “I know. So we won’t. We’ll get married on Sunday.”
There was a very long silence.
“Lindy. Marry me. Please,” Mike said urgently. “Any day you want, if Sunday’s not convenient.”
Another silence.
“Lindy?” he said, sounding very anxious.
“Oh, sure, Mike.”
“Please?”
“Why should I believe this?”
“I mean it. I love you more than ever. I need you back in my life. This time for good, Lindy.”
For a long time she looked out across the water, remembering the last time they had been together on this lake, in a boat. The spring wind fluttered through his hair as he stood waiting for her to say something, so very different than he had been that night, a different person, as she was.
He wanted to marry her at last. Here it was, big as Lake Tahoe and just as full of mystery, the happy ending, nothing like she had ever imagined. Underneath the ridiculous, persistent, flickering hope that this time would be for good and forever, doubt and fear had taken the place of faith. She had never known how fragile it all was. She had never known how your hopes could collapse on you, and destroy you. How hard it was to go on, knowing that.
“I’ll promise to marry you…” she began.
“Ah, Lindy.” His face creased into a deep smile.
“If you promise not to wiggle out of it this time,” she finished.
“No more wiggling.”
“I’ll believe that when I see the preacher here on Sunday,” she said.
They kissed, and then sat down on the built-in benches that lined the stern, touching shoulders. “I’m taking you on a real honeymoon,” Mike said. “I know just the place.”
“You want to leave right now? With the business in so much trouble?”
“The question is, what do
“A new start,” she said. She ran a finger along his chin, refreshing her memory of its shape.
“Just sell out and go.”
“I’m already packed,” Lindy said, and as she said it, words from Corinthians her father used to quote came into her mind. “Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”
She realized she would never know why it all happened, why he fell in love with Rachel, or why she forgave him. Why they had ended up in court. She did not have a clue. You just never knew about people. There were so many things going on inside them all the time, waves of memories and events, influences you could never fathom. She thought again, sadly, of Clifford Wright.
“Speaking of business,” she said, “I’m going to have Nina draw up some papers for us to sign, Mike. Things are going to be different between us, marriage or no.”
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s make it plain and simple, in writing. That ought to satisfy even ol’ Jeff Riesner.”
A speedboat went by, and its wake made the cruiser pitch and sway. “By the way,” he said, holding her tightly, “how much is the damage so far in the legal department?”
“A lot, but Nina worked very hard for me. I wish I had something personal to give her, something really special, besides money,” she said, thinking of Genevieve. “I’d like to show her how much I appreciate… Oh! I know. How about this for a bonus? I’ll pass along my dad’s claim. It’s not worth anything, but it’s a place to go besides her office. Maybe she would like that. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there now. Too many memories.”
“Great idea.”
“Her costs and hourly fees ran to about a hundred thousand total. Isn’t it awful? What an expensive lesson. She won’t get the percentage, of course.”
He turned her so that the sun warmed her back and began massaging with the art of an ex-boxer who really knew what felt good. “Your legal fees are a hundred grand?” he said, moving his fingers soothingly over the knobs in the center of her back, working slowly, kneading the sore spots he knew so well.
With the tenderest possible touch of his callused hands, he was trying in the best way he knew how to erase some of the injury of the past year.
“You got a bargain,” he said, and laughed. “My lawyer charged twice that.”
