getting them to come back that seems to be the problem.” Kate offered a self-deprecating grin, an almost jaunty grin, just wide enough to hide behind. Men were often startled to discover she was a mother; she’d had Aaron at twenty and had always looked young for her age. And when they saw what a handful her boy was, they tended to head straight for the door.
“They’re nuts, then. You just haven’t run into the right fellow.” Mable Claire winked. “There’s a guy staying at the Schroeder place you ought to meet.”
Kate gave an exaggerated shudder. “I don’t think so.”
“Wait until you see him. You’ll change your mind.” She opened a cupboard with an array of tagged house keys and found the one marked with Kate’s name. “I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”
“We decided to come up a day early,” Kate said, hoping there would be no further questions. Though Mable Claire had known Kate through all the summers of her life, she wasn’t ready yet to talk about what had happened. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Nothing wrong with starting the summer a day early. The housekeeping and yard crew have already been to your place. School out already?” she asked, tilting her head for a better view of Kate’s boy through the window. “I thought the kids had another week.”
“Nope. The final bell rang at three-fifteen yesterday, and third grade is just a bad memory for Aaron now.” Kate dug through her purse, looking for her key chain. Her bag was littered with small notes to herself because she never trusted her own memory. Besides, this made her feel organized and in control, whether or not she actually was. She had a number of projects lined up for the summer. She needed to re-grout the downstairs bathroom tile at the cottage. Paint the exterior trim. Not to mention renewing the bond with her son, reinventing her career and finding herself.
In that order of importance? She had to wonder at her priorities.
“So are you going to be all right,” Mable Claire asked, “just the two of you in that big old house?”
“We’ll be fine,” Kate said, though it felt strange to be the only one in the family headed for the lake house this summer. Every year, all the Livingstons made their annual pilgrimage to the old place on Lake Crescent, but recently everything had changed. Kate’s brother, Phil, his wife and four kids had relocated to the East Coast. Their mother, five years widowed, had remarried on Valentine’s Day and moved to Florida. That left Kate and Aaron in their house in West Seattle, on their own a continent away. Sometimes it felt as though an unseen force had taken her close-knit family and unraveled it.
This summer it would be just the two of them—Kate and her son—sharing the six-bedroom cottage.
Quit wallowing, she warned herself, and smiled at Mable Claire. “How have you been?” she asked.
“Good, all things considered.” Mable Claire had lost her husband two years before. “Some days—most days—I still feel married, like Wilbur never really left me. Other times, he seems as distant as the stars. I’m all right, though. My grandson Luke is spending the summer with me. Thanks for asking.”
On the form to activate trash pickup, Kate filled in the dates. The summer loomed before her, deliciously long, a golden string of empty days to fill however she wished. A whole summer, all to herself. She could take the entire time to figure out her life, her son, her future.
Mable Claire peered at her. “You’re looking a little peaked.”
“Just frazzled, I think.”
“Nothing a summer at the lake won’t cure.”
Kate summoned up a smile. “Exactly.” But suddenly, one summer didn’t seem like enough time.
“‘In want of a husband,’ my eye,” Kate muttered as she locked the Jeep at the Shop and Save, leaving the window cracked to give Bandit some fresh air. Aaron was already scurrying toward the entrance. Heck, thought Kate, watching a guy cross the parking lot, at this point I’d settle for a one-night stand.
He was a prime specimen in typical local garb—plaid shirt, Carhartts, work boots, a John Deere cap. Tall and broad-shouldered, he walked with a commanding, almost military stride. Longish hair and Strike King shades. But was that a mullet under the green-and-yellow cap? From a distance, she couldn’t tell. Ick, a mullet. It was only hair, she conceded. Nothing a quick snip of the scissors couldn’t fix.
“Mom? Mom.” A voice pierced her fantasy. Aaron rattled the cart he’d found in the parking lot.
“You’re acting like an impatient city dweller,” she said.
“I am an impatient city dweller,” he replied.
They passed beneath the sign of the giant laughing pink pig, which had stood sentinel over the grocery store for as long as Kate could remember. The marquee held a sign that advertised, Maple Sweet Bacon—$.99/lb.
What are you so happy about? Kate wondered, looking at the pig. She and Aaron went inside together to stock up on supplies, for the lake house had sat empty since last year. Something in Kate loved this process. It was like starting from scratch, with everything new. And this time, all the choices were hers to make. Without her mother or older brother around, Kate was the adult in charge. What a concept.
“Mom? Mom.” Aaron scowled at her. “You’re not even listening.”
“Oh. Sorry, buddy.” She selected some plums and put them in the cart. “I’m a bit preoccupied.”
“Tell me about it. So did you get fired or were you laid off?” he asked, hitching a ride on the grocery cart as she steered toward the next aisle. He regarded her implacably over the pile of cereal boxes and produce bags.
She looked right back at her nine-year-old son. His curiously adult-sounding question caught her off guard. “Maybe I quit,” she said. “Ever think of that?”
“Naw, you’d never quit.” He snagged a sack of Jolly Ranchers from a passing shelf and tossed them into the cart.
Kate put the candy back. Jolly Ranchers had yanked out more dental work than a bad dentist. “Why do you say I’d never quit?” she asked, taken aback. As he grew older, turning more and more into his own person, her son often said things that startled her.
“Because it’s true,” he said. “The only way you’d ever quit on your own is if something better came along, and I know for a fact that it hasn’t. It never does.”
Kate drummed her fingers on the handle of the shopping cart, the clear plastic scratched with age. She turned down the canned-goods aisle. “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “What makes you so darned sure?”
“Because you’re freaking out,” he informed her.
“I am not freaking out,” said Kate.
Oh, but she was. She absolutely was. At night, she walked the floors and stared out the window, often staying up so late she could see the lights of Seattle’s ferry terminals go out after the last boat came into the dock. That was the time she felt most alone and most frightened. That was when Kate the eternal optimist gave way to Kate in the pit of despair. If she had any interest in drinking, this would be the time to reach for a bottle. L’heure bleue, the French called it, the deep-blue hour between dark and dawn.
