“I was thinking earlier about how much I hated Samantha,” he said. “And then it occurred to me that you still love her. That’s what makes this so complicated.”
She exhaled long and loud and tilted her chin to stare at the ceiling in the darkness. “How can I possibly love that woman?”
“She was your mother.”
“I know. God help me, she was. And you’re right. In some crazy, stupid way, I do still love her. I miss her. I miss what she should have been. I feel guilty that I abandoned her.”
“You saved yourself. That’s not the same thing.”
“Do you think she hated me for leaving?”
“No. I don’t think that at all. She kept your picture, remember?”
“I should have helped her. I should have done something more.”
“Serena, some people are beyond help. You know that. Samantha wasn’t the person she was because of you. She was just a lost soul. Her demons destroyed her.”
“What about my demons?” she asked.
“You’ve beat them back for years. You’re not your mother.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Being weak during one terrible time in your life doesn’t change how strong you are.”
She pressed her fingers together, as if she were praying. She didn’t feel strong at that moment, and she didn’t even want to be strong. She needed other things. She needed not to be alone. She needed to let someone hold her and help her. Those were hard things to admit to herself.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said.
“Okay. You must be tired.”
“Not sleep, Jonny. That’s not what I want.”
She stood up from the table. Quickly, firmly, she pulled him to his feet, too. She led him through the cottage until they got to their bedroom. Inside, she closed the door tightly, hearing the handle rattle. They stood close to each other in the darkness, nearly invisible, and she heard nothing but his breathing. She guided his hands to her shirt, and he peeled it up, and then he unhooked her bra, and her breasts came free. His fingers undid the buckle of her jeans and slid the zipper down. She stepped out of the rest of her clothes.
“Turn on the light,” he said. “I want to see you.”
She did. The glow was dimmed, barely more than the light of a candle. She stood naked in front of him, feeling strangely exposed. It had been too long, and she didn’t feel like the woman she’d once been. But he didn’t see any of her flaws. His eyes roved over her skin, getting to know her again; his fingers touched her everywhere, softly, intimately. Her body responded like fire; her lips parted in a soft moan. She reached out and began undoing his buttons, but then she stopped.
“I’m not out of the woods,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“I don’t know how long it will take for me to be okay again.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll call Alice. I will. I’ll talk to her and get back in therapy.”
“You do whatever you need.”
“I need you, Jonny. That’s what I need.”
“I’m right here.”
“Undress for me. I want to see you, too.”
Serena watched him take off his clothes. Her eyes devoured him. His face, his skin, his body, his lean muscles. The pale scar dividing his chest that symbolized all of the divisions they’d been through in the past fourteen months. When he was completely naked, like her, she engulfed him in her embrace and molded her body against his, two halves making one whole.
Then she kissed him with all of her passion letting go, and she led him to bed.
25
The tow-truck driver named Rex Samuels guided Stride along the roads on the south side of Island Lake. Like a psychiatrist’s inkblot, the reservoir sprawled across dozens of miles, creating strangely shaped inlets and a myriad of dead-end roads. Some of the roads were paved, but many weren’t, and they all looked alike, densely lined with evergreens. It was still early, just before sunrise, but there would be no sun that day. Another storm front had rolled in from the west to block out the sky, and the first drizzle of rain began to spatter across Stride’s windshield.
He was quiet as he drove. He should have been tired because he hadn’t slept at all, but instead, he felt charged with adrenaline. His body ached, but it was a good ache. He could still feel Serena in his arms and remember the sensations of her body below his, of being inside her again.
Maggie sat in the truck’s second row of seats. She nursed a cup of McDonald’s coffee and an Egg McMuffin, and she wore sunglasses despite the gray light. Rex sat next to Stride. The tow-truck driver had a big thermos of coffee, and a few white sticky crumbs of what looked like oatmeal clung to his lumberjack beard. The man wore a white T-shirt that didn’t stretch far enough to cover his stomach and loose-fitting jeans that were covered in grease stains.
“How’d you guys find me again?” Rex asked, sounding annoyed that they’d dragged him away from his business on a Monday morning.
“You fixed a tire for somebody on Saturday near Pike Lake Park,” Stride said. “He called me. He said you were telling him about doing the same thing for Gavin Webster up in these woods last weekend.”
Maggie slid a photograph of Gavin between the seats. “This is the guy, right? You’re sure?”
Rex glanced at it. “That’s him.”
“Are we close to the spot where you met him?” Stride asked.
“Hmm.” Rex leaned forward and squinted into the woods. “Not sure about that. Seems to me we took another wrong turn back there. Better turn around.”
Stride sighed and maneuvered the SUV into a tight U-turn. His tires scraped on the dirt, and he had to back up into the brush and avoid the white trunk of a birch tree that bent over the road. They’d already made several wrong turns and gone all the way to the winding edge of the lakeshore before Rex confirmed that they weren’t in the right area.
“Didn’t you write down the location?” Maggie asked impatiently.
“I did when he called me. After that, I threw it away.”
“Do you remember any identifying features?” Stride asked. “Were there houses nearby? Could you see the water?”
“Yeah, I remember some houses. Not where Webster was, but I passed some houses as I was going there.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” Maggie commented sourly.
“Did you go as far as Boondocks?” Stride asked.
“No, I’d remember that. The wife and I go there for beer and nachos sometimes. Webster was on the south side of the lake. I never went through town.”
The rain got harder. Stride turned on his windshield wipers, and his headlights shined through the gloom. When he steered around a curve, they found themselves back at the paved highway of Rice Lake Road. Stride turned south. The land was more open here, with a few widely separated houses set back from the road and power lines following the highway. He accelerated through the spray. He hadn’t gone far when they passed a small fire station. Rex suddenly came to life.
“Hang on, what’s that?”
“The Gnesen Fire Station,” Stride said.
“No, the road. What road is that?”
“It’s County 295. Datka Road. But that heads toward Fredenberg Lake, not Island Lake.”
Rex’s big head bobbed up and down. “Yeah, I guess it could have been Fredenberg. I don’t know. The roads all look the same up here. Anyway, I definitely remember turning at the fire station.”
Stride could almost hear the sound of Maggie rolling her eyes in the back seat. He did another U-turn and headed left on Datka Road. The asphalt disappeared under his tires after about a hundred yards, and he drove through mud. Trees hugged the sides of the road, some pines, some birches that had cast yellow leaves into the ruts. They passed a few driveways and a handful of mobile homes built in the clearings. After a mile or so, they reached a fork, and Rex said confidently, “Yeah, go right. This is it.”