We were married on a late September day, the sun shining brightly one moment, disappearing behind woolly gray clouds the next. The changing light was like a curtain falling between acts of a play, and the wedding, too, felt like a dazzling Broadway production. I was mad for Charles. Nothing felt completely real, but it was wonderful.
The ceremony was held at the Lake Geneva Country Club. We weren’t members and my dad couldn’t pay for a wedding like that, but the Stanfords could and did, so we deferred most decisions to my in-laws-to-be.
But my dadhadinterceded with Mrs. Sine in town, who made the most beautiful white silk dress. It was high-necked with dozens of buttons down the back and more buttons from the sleeves to the wrists, and a long, full skirt that bunched around my feet.
You know it well, Jen, because you wore it when you married Danny.
I can still see it. The country club, all our guests, Charles with his slicked-back jet-black hair, his ramrod-straight posture. My dad handed me off to the handsome groom. An Illinois Supreme Court judge officiated. I shyly whispered my wedding vows, meaning them with all my heart.
Charles and I exchanged rings, and then he lifted my veil to kiss me. There were cheers and applause, and everyone spilled out of the main country club building and onto the sprawling lawn. Billowy white tents had been set up near the edge of the lake. The best catered food money could buy was served and a top band from Chicago played Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.
Half the guests had polished manners and wore clothes that had been designed in Chicago and New York; my friends and family wore their Sunday best and stared down at their shoes a little too often. But the champagne worked its magic. We danced and danced on the lawn, and huge flocks of migrating geese winged across the sky. My friends fluttered around me as the sun set and they told me that I was the envy of them all. I understood what they meant, and I had to agree.
It was just perfect, Jennifer.
Or so I believed for that one glorious night, my wedding night on our beautiful Lake Geneva.
Nine
I READonly a couple of the letters, as I’d been told. Then I fell asleep in my clothes, no doubt dreaming of Sam, past and present. I awoke with the vaguest feeling of dread, as if I’d been shaken out of an awful nightmare, a fantasy not of my choosing.
It took a moment to place the apple green walls and the fluffy mohair throw over my legs, but then I got it. I was at Sam’s house. I was supposed to be safe and protected here, happy too. I always had been in the past.
There was a weight on my chest—Sox in deep slumber.
I had just dislodged the cat when a high-pitched, almost bloodcurdling scream came through the thin panes of the bedroom window. Was someone being murdered outside? Of course not—but what was that awful noise?
I bounded over to the window, parted the curtain, and peered out into the front yard. It was early morning.
I couldn’t see too much out the window, mostly shadows and wisps of mist coming off the lake. A row of shingled houses stretched south. Then I saw and heard a man yelling with the exuberance of a ten-year-old. He charged across the lawn of a house maybe a hundred yards down the shoreline.
The running man cleared the lawn quickly and nimbly, negotiated the length of rickety-looking dock painted white, and, without breaking stride, performed a shallow dive into the lake.
What a neat dive it was. And what an odd scene for so early in the morning.
I watched for a minute or so as he stroked a smooth freestyle before disappearing into the mist. He was a good swimmer—graceful, strong. That made me think of Danny. He’d been a great swimmer, too.
I turned away. I was awake now, so I pulled off the day before’s clothes and tugged on clean jeans and a blue Cubs sweatshirt from the top of my duffel bag. I picked up Sam’s letters, which had fallen to the floor. I remembered “I never really loved Charles.” I couldn’t deal with that one yet. I had loved my grandfather. How was it possible that Sam hadn’t?
I went downstairs to the homey, golden oak kitchen where so many summer mornings had started. I fixed coffee and called the hospital to check on Sam, and to make sure her doctor could see me later that morning. Sam was holding stable. She still hadn’t opened her eyes, though.
I slammed around the familiar kitchen, making breakfast for myself: Grape-Nuts, orange juice, a “cuppa joe,” whole wheat toast with sweet butter. I fed the cats—and peeked to see if the swimmer had returned. He hadn’t. Maybe I’d made him up.
While I sipped the last of my coffee, I watched Lake Geneva. God, it was beautiful. The early fog had lifted some.And what is this?The swimmer was hoisting himself up on his dock and was sluicing water off his body with the edge of his hands. I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. He was naked.
Well, he had a decent body, whoever he was. Obviously,heliked it, too. Typical male narcissism, not to mention thoughtlessness. “Jerk,” I mumbled.
Maybe ten minutes later, the Jag was purring softly under the oak. I set a big bunch of freshly picked flowers next to me on the passenger seat. I hit the road to see Sam. She had some questions to answer.
Ten
I SHAVEDa couple of minutes off the usual fifteen-minute run to the hospital. Once I was there, I found my way to the ICU. Visitors were already gathering at the nurses’ station, but I caught the attention of one of the physicians. Dr. Mark Ormson apologized but told me that I should wait. Sam’s doctor was examining her right now.
There was a coffee machine in the waiting room around the corner. I pressed quarters into it and was thinking that I needed to see Sam but that Ididn’tneed any more coffee.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man of about seventy-five, tanned, with a well-trimmed beard. He waved, then rose from one of the linked plastic chairs and walked toward me. It was Shep Martin, Sam’s lawyer and a neighbor on the lake.
We sat down, and when he started talking about Sam, it was obvious that Shep was as surprised and shook up about her condition as everybody else seemed to be.
