Lakeside Cottage Read Free Page A

could see his own reflection in the dome of the 360-degree security camera mounted in the ceiling. Blood spreading out like an inky carpet. It always looks worse than it is, he told himself. He said that to his patients all the time.
    The swarm descended, a pandemonium of black suits and dress uniforms as the Secret Service came forward to apprehend the crazy and secure the chief executive.
    Harris was cold and headed somewhere dark. He could feel himself slipping, falling into a black well.
    “Make way,” a loud voice barked, the words echoing, then fading. “Somebody get this man some help.”

PART TWO
    “The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.”
    —Alan Saporta, American musician

Two
    Port Angeles, Washington
Summer
    “I t is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a half-grown boy must be in want of a husband.” Squinting through her vintage cat’seye glasses, Mable Claire Newman defied Kate Livingston to contradict her.
    “Very funny,” Kate said. “You tell me this every year.”
    “Because every summer, you come back here, still single.”
    “Maybe I like being single,” Kate told her.
    Mable Claire aimed a look out the window of the property management office at the half-grown boy and his full-grown beagle, playing tug-of-war with a sock in Kate’s Jeep. “Are you at least dating someone?”
    “Dating I can manage. It’s getting them to come back that seems to be the problem.” Kate offered a self-deprecating grin, an almost jaunty grin, just wide enoughto 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 regrout the downstairs bathroom tile at the cottage. Paint the exterior trim. Not to mentionrenewing 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