Susan Wiggs - Lakeside Cottage

After loading the supplies into the truck, he decided to check his post office box. Sam was diligent about forwarding his mail from D.C. Sam had carte blanche to open and throw away anything that looked weird, which was pretty much all of his mail these days. People came out of the woodwork to send him everything from invitations to prayer chains to unsolicited marriage proposals. He was flooded with photographs of women and the occasional man wanting to meet him, the images sometimes pathetic, sometimes lewd, sometimes downright scary. Early on during the ordeal, he had made a serious error in judgment, signing an agreement with Maurice Williams, LLD. The media agent had promised to represent and protect JD’s interests, to guide him through the quagmire of public life. Instead, he kept trying to persuade JD to agree to be a consultant for a feature film about his life and what had come to be called “the incident.” According to Sam, Williams was beside himself over JD’s absence. He’d even threatened to bring suit, which Sam and JD thought was hilarious.

As he walked along the tired-looking main street of Port Angeles, he contemplated crossing the road to avoid venturing too close to the Armed Forces recruiting office. He resisted the urge. Penny and Sam said he needed to have confidence that he wouldn’t be recognized. Still, it was weird and surreal to see his face plastered on brochures and recruiting posters. Without his permission—because the army didn’t need it—he had become one of this year’s model soldiers. In the shopfront window was a placard three feet high with his service portrait and the caption Real Heroes for the Real World.

Yeah, that was JD, all right. He was so real there was an unauthorized movie coming out about him, so real he kept getting offers to endorse a line of camping gear or sunglasses, even prophylactics. According to the unauthorized biography that had appeared just weeks after the attack, he was “America’s most appealing brand of hero—one who was ‘just doing his job.’ “

Tina had cooperated with the publisher of the instant book. So had Janet. Jessica Lynch had gotten a Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor, but not JD. His biographer was Ned Flagg, a failed journalist with a flair for invention and a fast Internet connection. The book was heavily promoted and just sensational enough to rocket briefly onto the bestseller list.

Feeling almost defiant, JD paused in front of the recruiting office. Through the open door he could see a round-cheeked boy talking to an earnest recruiter who was no doubt promising him the same action and adventure JD had been promised years ago.

He moved directly in front of the recruiting poster, studying it while the plate-glass window reflected his true image back at him.

The strange thing was, he hadn’t really gone to elaborate measures with some complicated disguise. Coached by Sam and Penny, JD had grown out his hair and was as surprised as the Schroeders when it came in a glossy dark blond. He’d worn it in a military-style buzz cut for so long he’d lost track of the color. He had shaved off his mustache, traded his contact lenses for an ancient pair of glasses and cultivated a beard stubble. “Backwoods chic” Penny Schroeder called his new look. “They’ll never guess America’s hero is under that.” With the John Deere cap to complete the outfit, he looked more like Elmer Fudd than Captain America.

“I could mess up your dental work,” Sam had offered. “Get rid of that toothpaste-ad smile.”

“I’ll take my chances,” JD said. “I just won’t smile.” That promise had been remarkably easy to keep. Until today. Until Kate Livingston and her boy. He didn’t recall actually smiling at them, but he might have. A little.

Two teenage girls wandered past, popping gum and window shopping. They slowed down to admire the poster.

“God, he is so hot,” one of them murmured. For a moment, JD felt her eyes flicker over him. Shit, he thought. He’d gotten cocky about his disguise and now he was busted.

“Excuse me,” the girl said and brushed past him.

JD let out the breath he’d been holding and headed the other direction. It was crazy, completely crazy. People projected all their yearning onto an oversize poster while looking through the actual person as if he wasn’t there.

Shaking his head, he headed into the post office and checked his box. Sam had sent on a batch of bills and notices. At the bottom of the stack was an item that had not been forwarded by Sam. JD had requested it on his own, with unsteady hands and a heart full of trepidation. It came in a flat white envelope, weighty and substantial in his hands.

He couldn’t believe how intimidating this felt. It was insane. After all he’d been through, nothing should intimidate him. But this was something he’d always wanted. Always.

He opened the envelope and took out a glossy booklet the size of a small-town phone directory.

He smoothed his hand over the logo: The David Geffen School of Medicine @ UCLA.

JD told himself that he still hadn’t decided whether or not to send in his MCAT scores and begin the application process to enroll the following year. But he sure as hell might. He had the entire summer to think about it.

For the time being, he turned his thoughts to other matters. On the drive to the lake, he felt an unaccustomed ripple of anticipation. For the time being, his mother was all right, and he was finally starting to feel human again.

Kate slammed the bedroom door behind her just in time, because the intruder was lunging for her.

“Aaron,” she screamed, clattering down the wooden steps and out the back door. “Aaron! Get in the car! Now!”

He was outside, tossing a stick for Bandit. Instead of responding to her panic, he scowled at her. “Huh?”

“In the car, darn it, there’s an intruder in the house,” she said, whipping out her harshest epithet. “Bring Bandit. I mean it, Aaron.”

It felt as if their escape took hours, but it was probably only seconds. Aaron and the dog got in back as she leaped into the driver’s seat.

She reached for the ignition.

Oh, God.

“No keys,” she said in a panicked whisper. “Where are the keys?”

It was a nightmare, worse than the scariest horror movie ever made, the kind in which a character named Julie (it was always Julie, no last name) fumbled in the car, desperateto escape, but the car wouldn’t start and the next thing you knew, old Julie was chopped liver.

“I blew it,” Kate said, sinking back against the headrest as she remembered leaving her keys on the kitchen counter.

A hulking dark shape loomed at the driver’s-side window. Bandit went into a barking frenzy, baying at the glass.

“Don’t hurt us,” Kate babbled. “Please, I beg you, don’t—”

“Mom.” Aaron spoke up from the back seat. He quieted the dog.

“Hush,” she said. “I have to negotiate with—oh.”

The monster, she saw, was holding out the car keys. “Looking for these?” the monster asked.

Except it wasn’t a monster, Kate observed as the red haze of terror faded from her vision. It was … a girl. Cringing at the sight of the dog.

“For heaven’s sake,” Kate said, rolling down the window. Bandit inserted his muzzle into the gap, and the stranger moved back a few more steps. “What in the world is going on?”

The girl looked as embarrassed as Kate felt. Her face turned red and she stared down at her dirty bare feet. Her messy hair fell forward. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, you did.” Kate’s adrenaline had nowhere to go, so it crystallized into outrage. “What were you doing in my house?”

The girl straightened her shoulders, shook back her hair. “I was, um, like, cleaning the place. I’ve been working with Yolanda for Mrs. Newman, cleaning summerhouses.”