Dream Lake Read Free

listening to radio shows: Jack Benny, George and Gracie, Edgar Bergen. He hadn’t yet recovered enough of his past to have any sense of the whole, but he thought he would in time. Like those paintings in which points of color, when viewed from a distance, would form a complete image.
    Mark Nolan was easygoing and dependable, the kind of man the ghost would have liked to have as a friend. Since he owned a coffee-roasting business, Mark always brought bags of whole beans and began each visit by brewing coffee—he drank it by the potful. As Mark meticulously ground the beans and measured them out, the ghost remembered coffee, its bittersweet, earthy scent, the way a spoonful of cane sugar and a dollop of cream turned it into liquid velvet.
    The ghost gleaned from the Nolans’ conversations that their parents had both been alcoholics. The scars they had left on their children—three sons and a daughter named Victoria—were invisible but bone-deep. Now, even though their parents were long gone, the Nolans had little to do with each other. They were survivors of a family that no one wanted to remember.
    It was ironic that Alex, with his bulletproof reserve, was the only one of the four who had married so far. He and his wife, Darcy, lived near Roche Harbor. The only sister, Victoria, was a single mother, living in Seattle with her young daughter. As for Sam and Mark, they were determined to stay bachelors. Sam was unequivocal in his opinion that no woman would ever be worth the risk of marriage. Whenever he sensed that a relationship was becoming too close, he ended it and never looked back.
    After Sam confided to Mark about his latest breakup, with a woman who had wanted to move their relationship to the next level, Mark asked, “What’s the next level?”
    “I don’t know. I broke up with her before I found out.” The two were sitting on the porch, applying paint remover to a row of salvaged antique balusters that would eventually be used for the front railings. “I’m a one-level guy,” Sam continued. “Sex, dinners out, the occasional impersonal gift, and no talking about the future, ever. It’s a relief now that it’s over. She’s great, but I couldn’t handle all the emotion salad.”
    “What’s emotion salad?” Mark asked, amused.
    “You know that thing women do. The happy-crying thing. Or the sad-mad thing. I don’t get how anyone can have more than one feeling at a time. It’s like trying to simultaneously watch TVs on different channels.”
    “I’ve seen you have more than one feeling at a time.”
    “When?”
    “At Alex’s wedding ceremony. When he and Darcy were exchanging vows. You were smiling, but your eyes got kind of watery.”
    “Oh. At that point I was thinking about the scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , when Jack Nicholson got the lobotomy and his friends smothered him with a pillow out of mercy.”
    “Most of the time I wouldn’t mind smothering Alex with a pillow,” Mark said.
    Sam grinned, but sobered quickly as he continued. “Someone should put him out of his misery. That Darcy is a piece of work. Remember at the rehearsal dinner when she referred to Alex as her first husband?”
    “He is her first husband.”
    “Yeah, but calling him the ‘first’ implies there’s going to be a second. Husbands are like cars to Darcy—she’s going to keep trading up. And what I don’t get is that Alex knew it, but he went ahead and married her anyway. I mean, if you have to get married, at least pick someone nice.”
    “She’s not that bad.”
    “Then why do I get the feeling when I talk to her that I’d be better off viewing her reflection from a mirrored shield?”
    “Darcy’s not my type,” Mark said, “but a lot of guys would say she’s hot.”
    “Not a good reason to marry someone.”
    “In your opinion, Sam, is there any good reason to get married?”
    Sam shook his head. “I’d rather have a painful accident with a power tool.”
    “Having seen the