Beneath the Lake Page 36

  Well, life goes on.

  It’s what one does.

  Everything is coming to fruition, or is expected to, within the next two weeks. Coinciding with the grand opening of Sisters, Gaspar expects to finalize the legal documents granting Raymond Mercer and Megan Mercer permanent adoption rights to Sierra Mercer. The wedding had been quick and dry, three months after their return, in the private chambers of a judge with whom Gaspar was friendly. The vows lacked all poetry and were exchanged hastily, the two of them eager to get through the adoption process before the courts or other outside parties decided to dig into the family records, attempt to track down Sierra’s missing father.

  ‘How did you do it?’ Ray asked the lawyer one night last fall, over a steak dinner at one of Boulder’s finest restaurants, not a Mercer gastro, for those had been liquidated along with everything else. ‘There has to be more to it than this.’

  Swirling his cognac, the Hungarian measured his words. ‘As I stated last summer, your father knew his time was near and put his affairs in order. He made certain no one could trace him or Francine to the lake. Leonard was off the grid, had been for years. Colt had her own arrangement with him, the details of which he never shared with me, only to say that she needed a quick exit from New York and that Simon would not be relocating with her and her daughter. Excuse me, your daughter.’

  ‘Did you ever find Simon?’ Ray asked.

  Gaspar’s eyes cut at Ray in cold warning. ‘London was all anyone could tell me. I wouldn’t lose sleep if I were you. Men like Simon have a way of… surrendering their parental rights, permanently.’

  Ray wondered then if Colt had really been the one to do it, or if she had only given the order. Like Warren, Uncle Gaspar had been a soldier in his youth, and his wealth, accumulated through his own firm and as primary counsel for Mercer Corp., could buy a lot of things, including silence everlasting.

  Environmental clean-up, for instance. Ground crews to dispose of the unfortunate wreckage left in the sands below Admiral’s Point. Political influence, for another, to shut down any possibility of investigation by local police, fire departments, the state’s Game and Parks Commission. Hush money. Another real estate deal. For all Ray knew, Gaspar and the last shingle of Warren’s estate now owned a few miles of property on one side of Blundstone Lake.

  All of this was speculation on Ray’s part, and he has been trying to stay focused on the launch instead. But as the date of their grand opening nears, Ray can’t help feeling like everything they have built is a house of cards. Or a castle of sand. All it will take is one wave of suspicion to wash it all away. The judgement to follow might result in criminal proceedings or something worse. A psychological dismantling, his or Megan’s or Sierra’s, from which there will be no recovery.

  Ray loves Megan and knows that she loves him. But their soul-searching conversations tapered off within weeks of their return – along with their physical intimacies – and he longs for anything but the insensate fog swallowing a little more of their hearts each day.

  If only he could stop catching Megan looking at him so strangely, in those moments she thinks his attention is elsewhere. What he sees in her questioning eyes the moment before she averts them is usually a mirror of his own troubled stew. The questions he asks himself late at night, when sleep refuses to come.

  Who is this person I’ve decided to build a life with? How can we possibly have escaped? What awful bargain have we struck, and with what dark forces, in order to walk away from so much wickedness and loss, as if that weekend never really happened and we are two ordinary people, the kind you see in a TV commercial for new and improved clinically white teeth-whitening strips?

  There is beauty in the way fate has chosen them, he allows, spitting them out of the nightmare in an almost perfect troika. Two lonely singles, their families gone, old enough to see the door to parenthood closing but young enough to raise a new life between them – plus a little daughter, inherited. How neat.

  We became a family on the deaths of two others.

  Megan is a devoted mother, doing all the right things – the reading, the feeding and bathing, and even the discipline, reminding Sierra that the loss of a loved one does not constitute a license to get everything you wanted every day for the rest of your life. But does she love Sierra? Really love her – if not as deeply and instinctually as her birth mother had, then at least deep enough that she can’t imagine being without?

  Ray has never seen anything unhealthy or cold pass between Megan and Sierra, but he’s felt it. The cold seeping into the living room after dinner, while Sierra colors in her books or makes another bead necklace, and Megan always congratulates her, thanks for the gift, putting on the necklace no matter how mismatched and lopsidedly it has been cobbled together. A lingering chill after bedtime, lurking behind the walls, as if Colt is watching over them. Francine. Warren or Leonard or the woman Ray whipped with the fly rod…

  ‘She might give you a few more years, the way she done us. But only if you make your offering, and this time you better mean it, Raymond. It can’t be an accident like the others. It has to be true.’

  Leonard, Mom, Colt, Dad. They paid their dues. The lake took them, and sent us home. But we cheated. We never made our true offering.

  Any of them could be here now, in the halls and bedrooms late at night, at dawn. There had been no funerals or memorial services, never would be, not in this lifetime. Gaspar had seen to that too.

  Ray and Megan had not protested, which was another form of consent.

  It is a warm Tuesday in May, the hour creeping toward four o’clock. Megan has finished the last panel in her mural, this one a playful but almost hallucinatory caricature of Sierra’s favorite animated heroine, Tinker Bell, she of the fairie wings and the magic wand that showers the neighboring garden mural not with stars or pixie dust but ‘butterflies’. Oversized white and red moths with cold black eyes, or so it appears on those mornings when Ray is hungover. A not uncommon occurrence, now that things have stabilized and he can’t find a reason not to unwind with a few cold ones, or six, or fourteen, usually uncapping the first toucan about the time Sierra tromps in from day care, demanding cookies and calling him Uncle-Daddy, which he should view as a healthy transitional moniker but instead gives him the creeps.

  Like the nail polish. Last week he caught Sierra painting the tips of her little fingers black. When he confronted Megan about it, she didn’t understand why he was so rattled. Little girls go through phases, she told him, they want to try all the colors. What’s the big deal?

  It could be a coping mechanism, or a sign of something worse. But the big deal wasn’t really the nail polish. It was Megan’s inability (or unwillingness) to take it seriously. Rather than start another fight (like the one they had after Megan dyed her hair black last winter), Ray had let the matter drop.

  Now he is working at the back of the retail space, in the playroom that will double as a waiting room, stapling the last of the shingling to the area’s centerpiece: a doll house large enough for the little girls to climb into and decorate, making up the beds, serving tea to friends real and imaginary.

  Between the bleats and hissing of the air compressor powering the staple gun, he hears voices up front, and realizes Megan is not on the phone with another contractor or delivery service. Someone is here unscheduled. Inside their unfinished home. The intrusion sends a spike of paranoia through him. He sets the staple gun down and sneaks toward the front parlor to see what’s afoot.

  A woman in a camel-hair coat, professional office attire beneath, is nosing around with her daughter, who looks to be ten or eleven and wears a plaid skirt and matching beret. Ray goes no further than the end of the dessert bar, pretending to inspect an electrical outlet.

  ‘Sorry for the inconvenience,’ Megan says, offering the woman a brochure containing a rate card for the basics as well as exclusives. Sisters aims to reap extra profits hosting private parties after normal business hours or by appointment. ‘Here,
take my card. Show it to anyone when you come back and we’ll give you twenty per cent off your first visit.’

  ‘How sweet of you.’ The woman beams, moved to seize Ray’s wife by the arm. ‘I am so thrilled, I can’t even tell you. It’s beautiful what you’re doing. Something so positive for our little women and for the community. I’ve already told every mother I know and a few that aren’t there yet but might want to start trying just so they can be a part of this, the… Sisterhood!’

  ‘Oh, wow, thank you so much,’ Megan says, nailing the role of the down-to-earth-yet-chic entrepreneur. She has a new wardrobe to go with her cropped black hair, and sometimes Ray can barely see his waitress under all the make-up. ‘We hope to see lots of you and… I’m sorry, what’s your daughter’s name again?’

  The woman ushers her rather sullen looking child forward. ‘This is Colette. And I’m Rachel.’

  Ray flinches as if he’d stuck his finger in the outlet, knocking over a pickle bucket filled with paint brushes and scrapers, setting off a racket that causes the three of them to turn on him in dismay.

  ‘Sorry!’ he says too loudly, waving like a creep. ‘Just the clumsy husband back here. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll just get this out of the way…’ At which point he throws the tools into the bucket and hurries to the family-friendly restroom and slams the door. He is sweating, shaking, on the verge of throwing up across the fold-out diaper-changing station.

  I didn’t hear that. Not a chance in hell. Coincidences happen, but come on. Colette isn’t a common name. Someone – or something – is sending me a message.

  Ray moves to the sink, where he cups cold water over his face, closing his eyes, trying not to think of Colt, the lake, the dead.

  Somewhere in Nebraska the clouds are rolling in. The storm is coming. Coming back for all of us, because I never made my true offering.

  Ray turns the faucet off and pulls two paper towels from the dispenser, blotting his eyes and chin. He breathes deeply and squares himself in the mirror.

  Megan is standing behind him, in the bathroom, staring at him. Her eyes are solid black. Like her hair, and Sierra’s nails.

  Ray cries out, whirling and staggering into the corner. He catches one leg on the toilet and falls back against the handicap rail, throwing a hand out to keep her away.

  ‘For God’s sake, Ray,’ Megan says, taking one step toward him, then retreating. ‘What happened?’

  Her eyes are no longer black. She looks the same as she did a few minutes ago, except for the scarlet flush in her cheeks. She’s not worried about him. She’s angry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I thought… I got turned around.’

  ‘By?’

  ‘That girl, her name.’

  Megan throws up her hands. ‘Her name? What are you talking about now?’

  ‘Are you telling me you didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘My hearing’s fine. What did you hear?’

  He swallows. All of the unanswered questions piling up in his mind. The morning Megan revived him on the sail. The long walk to the road. The black Mercedes that happened to be cruising down the highway only three miles after they reached it.

  ‘Gaspar,’ he says, ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Gaspar…?’

  ‘How did he know?’ Ray says. ‘When to come? How to find us? Why that morning? Haven’t you ever asked yourself that?’

  ‘Jesus, Ray. We’ve been over this a dozen times. Your father sent —’

  ‘An SOS with the nautical radio in the trailer,’ he finishes. ‘Right. I know that’s what Gaspar said. But you know as well as I do the radios and cell phones were useless out there, not to mention my father was beyond the point of asking for help. The lake had him in its grip from the first morning, and you agreed with me about that too. How can you just ignore that?’

  Megan pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘You know what, Ray? I don’t have time for this anymore. Gaspar got us the hell away from that place and that’s all I care about. I’m buried here, doing everything I can to help us move on, but you don’t seem too interested in that these days. I don’t know what kind of help you need at this point, but you’re not helping anyone. Not me, not Sierra, and definitely not yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. Why is he always sorry these days? ‘You’re right. It doesn’t matter.’ He shuffles toward her, offering a hug.

  Megan puts up a hand. ‘Stop being sorry. Stop living in the past. That’s what you can do if you’re so sorry. The vacation’s over. This is real life, so get on board with it or stay out of my way.’

  She stomps off before he can add anything else. He stands in the bathroom, listening to her heels click-clocking up the stairs.

  Ray stays down in the shop, pretending to work, as he helps himself to a couple of toucan beers. He tells himself this is what Megan wants, for him to keep his head down and prepare for the grand opening. But he knows this isn’t the real reason he avoids sharing the evening with his two girls.

  The real reason is that he is afraid of them. The way he was afraid to get in the black Mercedes with Gaspar on the highway that day, afraid to find the real reason they were allowed to escape.

  Because it never let us go, and we are already on our way back.

  Glitch

  Megan left the front door unlocked. She did not forget to lock it. He is certain of that the moment Gaspar Riko’s shadow spills across the floor. Megan might have called him after the little meltdown in the bathroom, asked him to come over and give Ray another pep talk. Then again, she might not have needed to.

  The old Hungarian with his bushy eyebrows and droopy ears is no longer serving as Warren Mercer’s eyes in Boulder, but he must be someone’s eyes. Gaspar has been watching over the three of them like a hawk since they returned, involving himself in their business and personal affairs at every turn. He has probably sensed the cold tension in the new family, whether Megan reached out or not. Ray himself has been expecting this visit in one form or another, a small but growing part of him wanting to get it over with, and now here it is. The shadow on the floor, the shadow over their lives.

  Gaspar lets himself in, strolling through the front parlor, past the styling stations, taking in the murals and most recent finishes with avuncular pride. He wears another of his new black suits, under a long black trench coat, its lapels blotted with raindrops. He finds Ray holding a sheet of sandpaper in one hand, the beer in another, standing behind the dessert bar with his shoulders slumped, as if Sisters were not opening in three days but is closing. Closed.

  Ray suddenly knows it is over. All of it.

  ‘You’ve come a long way, young man,’ Gaspar says. ‘I’m impressed. Any last minute hang-ups, problems with your permits?’

  Ray watches the man and says nothing.

  Gaspar nods as if Ray answered anyway. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was thinking the three of you might like to step out for some dinner, my treat.’

  ‘Megan has a headache. Sierra had a long day at school.’

  ‘Is she having problems adjusting?’ Gaspar idles in the middle of the room, talking to the walls.

  ‘Which she?’

  ‘Either. Or you, for that matter.’

  ‘We’re fine, Gaspar. Just very busy.’

  ‘Hm. You don’t look fine, Raymond.’