Carla Neggers: Abandon

“You and Dad tried to get rid of Jesse.”

“Your father tried to get rid of him. I can’t say I did much of anything.”

“But you never helped Jesse,” Mackenzie said. “Don’t beat yourself up, Beanie.”

She stared out at the lake. “I let people take advantage of me.”

“Don’t we all, at some point in our lives?”

She snorted. “I did repeatedly.”

Mackenzie almost smiled at her friend’s sudden drama. “There’s nothing wrong with giving someone a helping hand, Beanie. Most people you’ve helped – including me – appreciate it.”

“I’ve never…” She fought back obvious tears. “I’ve just never felt so damn alone.”

“You’re a brilliant and generous woman, Beanie, and you have good friends, people who care about you – people who don’t want anything from you.” Mackenzie smiled. “For example, Gus Winter.”

“He’s always been there, hasn’t he? For all of us. He and his brother would come out here to the lake as teenagers – Jill and I were friends.”

Bernadette drifted into silence, and out on the lake, Mackenzie could hear the familiar, eerie cry of a loon. She wondered if T.J. heard it. He and Rook had taken two of the kayaks out onto the lake, leaving her alone with Bernadette.

“The worst day of my life was when Harry and Jill died up on Cold Ridge,” she said. “It was such a freak thing. They’d never have gone up there if they’d known the weather would turn like that. How do you get over such a tragedy?” But she didn’t wait for Mackenzie to respond and stood up, moving to the screen and gazing out at the water and woods that had been home to Peachams for decades. “Well, I can tell you – you don’t.”

Mackenzie remained in her wicker chair, remembering Carine explaining to her what it was like to have become an orphan at three years old. “That was the worst,” she said. “And to leave behind three children.”

Bernadette looked away from the lake, her incisive gaze now on her neighbor from across the lake. “But the scope of that tragedy made it all too easy for us all to minimize other things that happened here in the valley. It gave us a perspective we wouldn’t have had otherwise, and we tried – I think we all tried to let it make us stronger, better people. Wiser, even. Because what other choice was there?”

“Beanie.” Mackenzie thought she could see where this was going. “Please. Don’t judge yourself.”

“We were all too slow to recognize the effects of what happened to your father on you. Kevin hadn’t died up on the ridge. You weren’t orphaned.” She sighed, turning away from the screen and sitting back down. “Well. The past is what it is. I can’t take any of what I did back.”

“None of us can,” Mackenzie said.

Bernadette frowned at her. “You’re so young. You can’t have many regrets. What would you do differently?”

“For starters, I’d have recognized Jesse when he slashed me.”

“That was only a week ago!”

“It’s in the past. It counts.”

At first, Bernadette look dumbstruck, a rarity for her. Then, all at once, she burst into laughter. “Oh, Mackenzie. I swear, if changing anything about the past made you any different…” But she didn’t finish, just motioned toward the lake with the arm on her uninjured side. “I want you to have your own spot on this lake.”

“I do -”

She shook her head. “You don’t. Your parents do, and I do, but we’re all going to live to a hundred. You should have a spot now, while you’re young. Let your children grow up here, even if it’s only for summers and holidays.”

Mackenzie stared at her, not quite grasping what Bernadette was saying. “I can’t afford a place in Washington, never mind two places.”

“I’m giving you the land,” Bernadette said, exasperated. “I had a waterfront lot surveyed when I drew up my prenuptial agreement with Cal. I just haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it. I’m not trying to steal you away from your family, Mackenzie. But I’ve no one else, and you love it here as much as I do.”

“I do.” Knowing Bernadette as well as she did, Mackenzie didn’t let her emotions get the better of her. “Thank you.”

Bernadette smiled, obviously relieved. “You’re welcome.” She nodded out toward the lake. “I think your FBI agent likes it here, too.”

“Beanie – I don’t know if Rook and I will work out.”

Gus grunted, coming onto the porch from the kitchen. “You two? You’re lifers.”

“It’s true,” Bernadette said. “Everyone can see it.”

But Mackenzie had no intention of discussing Rook or her love life with either of them, and she excused herself and ran outside, out to the end of the dock. She was barefoot and wearing shorts, and she was tempted to dive into the lake with the same abandon as she had a little over a week ago, before Jesse Lambert had come at her with a knife.

What was it Delvechhio had told her last night?

“Give yourself a day to put this behind you. Be back at work on Monday.”

That meant she wasn’t fired for having too much baggage.

It meant catching a plane back to Washington tonight.

And that meant she had the afternoon. She glanced back at the porch, where Gus and Bernadette were arguing about something, and then squinted out across the lake, trying to spot the two FBI agents in their kayaks. But there was no sign of them, or of the loon she could hear warbling out by the opposite shore.

Bernadette was right, Mackenzie thought. She loved it here.

With a running start, ignoring the healing knife wound on her side, she leaped into the cold, deep water.

Bernadette struck a match and touched the tiny flame to the edge of rolled-up newspaper. “It’s the obituaries,” she said, feeling Gus’s eyes on her. “Somehow, I think Harris would approve.” But not Cal, she thought. Irony had never suited him.

Gus said nothing.

She sat cross-legged in the grass as the fire burned through the newspaper and caught the kindling. By Gus’s standards – by her own, really – it was early yet for a fire, not yet dusk. And warm. But she’d wanted one.

She winced, feeling a tug of pain in her hip. “It used to be easier to sit cross-legged. I’m creaking these days.”

Gus grunted without sympathy. “Getting out of Washington more often would help. You sit too much.” He settled back in the old Adirondack chair. “You should go mountain climbing while you’re up here.” Then he added simply, “I’ll go with you.”

There were no deep corners, no layers and odd places, with Gus Winter. He’d seen war, he’d endured the tragic loss of his brother and sister-in-law and he’d stepped up to raise his orphaned nephew and nieces – and yet the complications of his life had never become excuses for him, rationalizations for bad behavior.

“That’d be good.” Bernadette kept her eyes on the fire. “I have regrets, Gus.”

“Tell me about it.”

She straightened her legs, relieving the strain on her hip. Her injured shoulder ached, too, but she didn’t want to take more pain medication. Without looking at Gus, she said, “I won’t survive the scandal of what Cal and Harris did. Who Jesse is. That so much of it went on for years under my nose.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t survive it, and perhaps I shouldn’t. I should have pressed Harris for the truth about what was going on with him five years ago. I knew for months something was wrong with Cal.” She noticed the newspaper turning black, crumpling into the ashes. “I’m too trusting. People won’t see that as a good thing in a judge.”

“Cal didn’t get mixed up with Jesse Lambert because of you. Neither did Harris. They had their own reasons.” Gus pulled himself out of the Adirondack chair and sat in the grass next to her. He was fit, but not as limber as he’d once been. He grinned at her. “Remember sitting next to each other in first grade when they sent in that clown?”