Part 5 (1/2)

I found that message a little more cheerful, but I was still awake at 5:00 a.m. and not sleepy in the slightest.

I hadn't been awake to see the sunrise in years, so I decided to go out to the front porch and enjoy it. I settled into an old cane rocker with some juice and propped my feet on the porch railing. I loved the quiet time at the lake in the mornings, before the birds started chirping or the boaters and the jet Skiers started their wake wars. The water reflected a bright coppery light that made you feel cleaner and somehow healthier and more virtuous just for being outside in it. Even the gentle lapping of the water seemed muted and kinder.

I might have worried about the fact that I was wearing just an old Wildcats T-s.h.i.+rt, panties, and a surprisingly chipper expression. But the only cabin within sight was the old McGee place, about fifty yards down the sh.o.r.e.

The McGees had been friends of my family for generations. They were sweet people who co-hosted decades of Fourth of July barbecues with my grandparents. But the tradition had died with Gammy Muldoon. My parents preferred entertaining at their house and I hadn't quite graduated to hosting family holidays yet. I was still doing ”hostess training wheel” events like baby showers and bridal teas. Besides, Harold McGee was getting older and no one had opened up the house for years. I thought so right up until the front door opened and my new neighbor stepped out onto his porch.

”Gah!” I yelped, tumbling off of the chair in a panty-baring heap. If there was one thing Mama drilled into my head, it's that you never have a second chance to make a first impression. And I had just made a first impression on my new neighbor with my a.s.s in the air. Lovely.

Maybe I could commando-crawl into the house without him realizing I was even there. I peeked over the porch railing to see him staring at me, openly smirking. ”Morning.”

Maybe not.

”Morning.” I said, standing and trying to pull my s.h.i.+rt down as far as possible. I stood behind the rocker, hoping it at least would cover my bare legs.

My new neighbor, hoo boy. I will admit that the only reason I own the X-Men trilogy on DVD is that I have an unnatural fixation with Hugh Jackman. And here I was living next door to Wolverine personified. Old battered jeans, black T-s.h.i.+rt, bare feet, a lot of dark wayward hair and sideburns that desperately needed a trim. Sharp hazel eyes and sharper cheekbones, and a wide, generous mouth set in a grim line. He raised his coffee cup in mock salute and padded back into his house.

”I usually wear pants!” I called.

Later that afternoon I sat at the scarred maple breakfast table, my hands on my chin, staring at a Saran-wrapped Bundt cake. It was my special Ugly Cake recipe. Chocolate cake swirled with a cream cheese and dark chocolate filling. Once baked, it was about as attractive as homemade sin. But it was a really good ice-breaker, even if it was ”Sorry you started off your day being confronted by my airborne a.s.s” ice.

And yes, I do consider cake mix and cream cheese to be essentials when I stock up on survival groceries.

Normally, baked goods wouldn't pose such a heated internal debate, but I was absolutely mortified by the whole pantybaring welcome. That whole incident had thrown me off-kilter. I came to the lake for solitude. I didn't particularly want to be on friendly terms with my neighbor. But here I was, having l.u.s.ty feelings for the Wolverine look alike, which could not be healthy in my present emotional state.

”Oh, screw it,” I muttered, scooping the cake off the table and bounding for the door. ”It's just cake.”

I shoved the screen door open just enough to pop my new neighbor in the nose before I realized he was standing there. ”Gaah!” he yelped, clutching his free hand to his face.

”Oh!” I cried. ”I'm so sorry!”

”You are reedy bad at meeting people, aren't you?” he groaned, blood trickling out from under his fingers. In his other hand, he held a key ring.

”Come in,” I said, chucking the Bundt and grabbing a handful of paper towels. I pressed the paper to his nose. ”I'm so sorry.”

He tilted his head back. ”I broght you some keys that Mrs. Witter left for you,” he said. ”I did not expect a door to the face.”

”I'm so sorry. I usually don't a.s.sault my neighbors. And I'm wearing pants. Look, see?” I said, indicating the very covering jeans I was wearing.

”Very nice,” he muttered, blotting at his reddened nostrils. He extended his other hand and shook mine. ”Lefty Monroe.”

”Seriously?” I said. ”You tell people that?”

He gave a brief flash of gleaming white teeth, then tucked them back away. It was the first time someone had smiled at me and then taken it back. Interesting. Lefty? And to think I was embarra.s.sed that I was going to call him Wolverine.

”Lacey Terwilliger,” I said, extending my hand. I shook my head and corrected myself. ”Lacey Vernon.”

”New alias or multiple personality?” he asked, arching a brow, not shaking my hand.

”Newly separated. I'm taking my maiden name back,” I said primly. I didn't think guys with prison nicknames should throw stones. But I did just hit him in the face, so...

”Sorry,” he muttered, his eyes immediately putting up what I can only describe as ”defense s.h.i.+elds.” Well, that was just fine. No matter how good he looked in worn Levi's, I planned to maintain and defend the no p.e.n.i.s policy.

”I made you a Bundt cake,” I said, handing him the plate. ”But now I think I owe you another one for smacking you in the face.”

”I would feel better if you kept your distance,” he admitted. ”G.o.d knows what you could accomplish with a cabinet door. Mrs. Witter said she would have left the keys in the house, but that she was afraid to. She told a very long story about you managing to lock yourself out of every room in the cabin in one afternoon.”

”I was eight!” I cried. ”This is the problem with continuing your acquaintance with people who have known you since your awkward adolescent phase. I'm expecting mine to be over just any day now. I'm really sorry about this morning. I didn't know anyone else was up here. The McGees haven't opened the house in years. I haven't seen anyone coming and going...”

”I'm renting from the McGees. I work from home,” he said, his tone harsh and clipped. ”I stay holed up for days at a time. I keep to myself.”

The message could not have been more clear if he'd put up an electric fence. Stay away. Neighbors will be shot on sight.

”Oh, that's fine. I plan on being a quiet, keeps-to-herself, we-never-expected-to-find-those-bodies-in-the-deep-freeze type of neighbor, without the actual bodies.” I said. ”That probably wasn't rea.s.suring, was it?”

He shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked out of the house without another word. Generally, people wait until they've known me for a while to have that sort of reaction. I stared after him as he made his way to his cabin, as much in bewilderment as to seize the opportunity to catch sight of his denim-clad b.u.t.t. He seemed to walk with a slight limp in his left leg. And if I wasn't mistaken, one of his cheeks was, well, fuller, than the other. It was an a.s.s with character.

”Well, at least that wasn't weird,” I marveled as he slammed the front door to his cabin behind him.

Of course, his being exceedingly grumpy and potentially crazy didn't change the fact that I sort of wanted to see him naked. Fine. I really wanted to see him naked.

10 * Meryl and Me.

It was the Fourth of independent - also of July, Independence Day. And I was known as alone and it wasn't so bad. I sat on the end of the dock, dangling my feet into the lake, watching revelers enjoy some ill-advised and not-quite-sober nighttime boating. I sipped lemonade treated with just a smidge of vodka while I watched the residents of Lighthouse Cove set off fireworks down the sh.o.r.e. Mama would have been horrified by the notion of my drinking alone, but mostly because I was so close to a body of water. She would have told me if it could kill Natalie Wood, it could kill me, too In my mother's mind, cautionary tales are timeless, however tenuously connected I watched the lights reflecting off the water, violent blooms of color that made my eyes ache and my chest tighten. It was a little lonely, knowing that there were families out there, celebrating. It reminded me of the Fourth when Emmett and I were diagnosed with pinkeye and had to sit inside while all of the other kids ran around with sparklers. Every echo of a Roman candle taunted us I had never spent a single holiday alone. As much as I used to resent being summoned to my parents' house or to the in-laws', it was sort of disorienting to have nowhere to go, nothing to do. If not for the fact that my mother kept making up excuses to call and check up on me - including calling to wish me a Happy Fourth that morning - I could have been eaten by wild boars or brutally murdered by my antisocial new neighbor and no one would know for weeks.

At the same time, I didn't have to make three dozen deviled eggs or a.s.semble some sort of patriotically themed outfit for the occasion. I wasn't responsible to anyone, for anything.

My soon-to-be ex-husband didn't seem to get that.

Mike had apparently decided that it was okay to break his lawyer's contact embargo if he needed something from me. Because he was basically a giant five-year-old. Earlier that afternoon, I'd been lounging on the couch, reading The Stand instead of the Emotional Homework for New Divorcees book Mama had insisted I bring with me. I'd unearthed King's masterwork from the front closet. I think one of my uncles had left it behind after a weekend visit. I was normally a Nora Roberts or Mary Higgins Clark reader, but I hadn't been able to put this book down. It turned out that I really liked Stephen King, or at least post-apocalyptic, metaphorical Stephen King. (I was still decidedly against child-devouring clown Stephen King.) Who knew?

My cell phone rang and, distracted by the seemingly ba.n.a.l, creeping evil of Randall Flagg, I answered it without thinking. There was no greeting or acknowledgment of any kind, just Mike imperiously demanding, ”I need my blue suit. Where did you leave it?”

I was so stunned at hearing his voice, I almost barked out that I'd dropped it at Speedy Cleaners on Schultz Avenue. Like a trained seal.

Despite recent personal revelations, my instinct to soothe and serve shamed me. I was so accustomed to jumping whenever Mike needed something, to catering to his whims before he realized he had them, that my response was automatic. I wasn't a wife. I was a personal a.s.sistant - one of those harried, abused ones that sold their celebrity employers' secrets to the tabloids.

Of course, my mouth didn't have to catch up to my brain while I processed this, so my response was something along the lines of spluttering, ”Beg pardon?”

”I. Need. My. Blue. Suit,” he said, enunciating every word as if he were talking to a very slow preschooler. ”Where did you drop it off? Oh, and did you mail my Netflix envelope?”

I stared into the phone, sure I had just hallucinated what he'd said. He hadn't talked to me for days, on the advice of counsel, and now he wanted to make sure I'd returned his rented copy of Alien vs. Predator?

Seriously?

Pressing the receiver to my ear, I demanded, ”Do you have anything to say to me? How about, 'I'm sorry. I've been cheating on you. I was wrong'?”