Susan Wiggs - Return to Willow Lake

The opportunity was still so new, he had only the sketchiest idea of what was in store for him next. He knew for certain Mickey Flick had a reputation for doing things in a big way. The guy had mentioned that this opportunity was a major production. Major. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to Zach, for sure.

The current project was so top secret he would only learn the details when everything was in place. All he knew was he’d been offered a fortune to work on the production. He wondered why they’d picked him, given all the talent in the business. He wouldn’t quibble. The money was nice, it was more than he’d dreamed of making, but that wasn’t the part that excited him. What really excited him was the crazy array of possibilities that now lay before him.

Speculating on what the secret plan for the show might be, he dreamed of Malibu, maybe filming a surf competition. Or perhaps there would be a crew of castaways on Fiji, mountaineers in Colorado. Or a rock group in Amsterdam. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Mickey Flick was known to work closely with some of the biggest names in the music business. His last hit had involved a world-class heavy metal star’s collaboration with a classical pianist, culminating in a triumphant performance in Carnegie Hall.

Zach couldn’t wait to see what was in store for him. And at the end of it all, he’d finally have the seed money to start living his dream.

The people in the café carried on, oblivious. Just for a second, Zach felt a twinge of frustration. He wanted to call somebody, tell somebody, share this amazing news. And the person he most wanted to share it with was the last one who wanted to hear.

Part Three

MUST-DO LIST (REVISED, AGAIN)

sublet apartment

return library books

repay student loans

realign priorities

really fall in love (no, seriously)

What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

—CYNTHIA OZICK, AMERICAN WRITER, B. 1928

Chapter Five

Sonnet awakened as the train from the city lurched into the station at Avalon. Just for a moment, she felt fuzzy and disoriented, her sleepy mind flipping through all her many homecomings. As a new, homesick college student, she’d arrived with a sense of relief, eager to be enfolded in the comfort of her mother’s arms. During her various internships overseas, she’d visited less often, but always with appreciation. Yet as time went on, the town where she’d been born and raised seemed smaller and smaller to her, with less and less to tie her to the pretty lakeside hamlet. While her world was expanding, Avalon remained the same.

She felt strange about this homecoming, for a lot of reasons. It made her seem like she was going backward into a world where she no longer fit or belonged.

Grabbing her bags from the luggage rack, she stepped down to the platform and looked around. Same little burg, with its picturesque square, the old brick buildings huddled shoulder-to-shoulder, their striped and scalloped awnings shadowing the shops and businesses she’d walked past every day as she was growing up.

She noticed a bit of commotion on another car as a group of people got off, lugging hard cases of equipment and rolls of cable on hand trucks. There were a couple of guys and women, dressed mostly in black, looking around as if they’d stepped off a spacecraft onto an alien planet. One of the guys wore a black baseball cap with the logo MFP, and the equipment boxes were marked Mickey Flick Productions.

Sonnet thought they might be a camera crew. Back when her mother served as the town mayor, she’d set up a volunteer film commission to attract business. A place like Avalon didn’t see much action, but every once in a while a crew came through to create footage of the quaint town, or of fall foliage or sometimes aerial views of the area. It was a place that seemed frozen in time, achingly pretty, useful for establishing a historic or generic small town setting. A few years back, there had been a public television documentary on the annual Christmas pageant that had created quite a stir.

The PBS camera crew hadn’t looked like this bunch, however. These people had that edgy East or West Coast look. They consulted smartphones and lit up cigarettes before moving en masse to a large panel van parked in the commuter lot.

Seeing a camera crew reminded her of Zach Alger. He was the last person she wanted to think about, but she couldn’t help herself. God, those kisses. Those hands. The things he’d whispered in her ear. Even now, she felt an unbidden spasm of desire at the mere thought of him. It was ridiculous, feeling turned on by a man she had no business thinking about.

Squaring her shoulders, she took out her new phone and sent a text to Max Bellamy, her stepbrother, who had offered to pick her up. In the parking lot, he texted back. Need help with bags? She indicated that she did not, and rolled her luggage toward Max’s slightly beat-up Subaru.

Max stood in his shirtsleeves, one hand in his jeans pocket, his hip cocked at a jaunty angle. He attended college in Hamilton, where he liked to say he majored in beer and girls. With his surfer-blond good looks, he took after his dad, Greg Bellamy, though his air of easy charm was something that belonged to Max alone. Sonnet liked him well enough, but she would never understand him. He came from a great family—he was a Bellamy, for heaven’s sake—yet he seemed to be in no hurry to find his life.

“Hey, you,” she said, giving him a hug. He’d topped six feet a few years ago, and he moved with easy grace as he loaded her bags in the back. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Sure. Your mom’s going to go nuts when she sees you.”

“She’s already nuts. Seriously, Max. Pregnant?” It felt weird just saying it aloud. Her mother—her over-forty mother—was pregnant. When Nina had first told her, Sonnet had been speechless with disbelief. Then she’d accused Nina of telling a bad joke. “I’m still in shock. How about you?”

Max rolled out of the parking lot and headed toward the Inn at Willow Lake, which Nina and Greg owned and operated. “It’s cool with me. I mean, yeah, it’s weird because we’re so much older than little Junior or Juniorette is going to be, but…” He shrugged. “Red Bull?” He offered her a sip of his drink.

“Uh, no, thanks.” She tried not to ingest things that had ingredients she couldn’t pronounce. She looked out at the scenery—the covered bridge over the Schulyer River, the hills draped in sunlit green. As they neared the inn, she glimpsed the lake in the distance, shining like a jewel. “Hey, I saw a camera crew get off the train. Know anything about that?”

“Some kind of top-secret production is going to be starting. That’s the word, anyway,” Max said, flashing his thousand-watt grin. “Maybe they’ll make me a star.”

“You wish.”

He turned into the gravel-paved lane leading to the Inn at Willow Lake. As always, it was lush and gorgeous, perfectly planted and maintained, a testament to Greg Bellamy’s skill as a landscape architect. “There’s some producer named C. Bomb staying at the inn,” Max said. “He’s like the head of the outfit or something.”

“C. Bomb?”

“That’s what he calls himself. Clyde Bombardier or something like that. Spends all day glued to his laptop, gabbing on his Bluetooth.”

“So, not your typical guest.” The inn was known as a place for romantic getaways. “And he’s not telling people what he’s up to?”