The Lake House

  A slight, tinny musical sound could be heard coming from Charlotte’s headset, an island tune. “Ackey rice, salt fish are nice / and the rum is fine any time of year,” Dr. Kane sang along. He was being ironic.

  “Okay, then,” he said as he surveyed the work. “I’m through in here. C’est fini.”

  The anesthesiologist glanced at a monitor above Charlotte’s head. Pictures aboard the SS Nautica flickered on the screen. “Want to give the young lady a few more minutes to get laid? One last fling?”

  “You’re so sentimental,” Kane said, and frowned. “No. My time is much more valuable than hers. Cut her off.”

  The anesthesiologist shrugged, then ripped the cord from Charlotte’s headset, and the music stopped.

  “Thank you,” said Kane. “I hate that reggae shit anyway.”

  He flipped a switch, and the guillotine clamps made their cuts. Blood immediately drained through large plastic tubes out of the body and into a huge stainless-steel canister. Charlotte Donahue’s organs began to turn gray. The neon-colored tracers on the monitors went crazy.

  Then they flatlined with the resultant, high-pitched bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  “Okay, everyone,” Dr. Kane said to the room at large. “Let’s shuck her.”

  The open jaws of the Scoop closed. With a whine and hum, the Scoop lifted the woman’s internal system out of her body in one piece.

  Charlotte Donahue had been shucked as clean as an oyster at DC Coast in nearby Washington, one of Dr. Kane’s favorite places to eat and drink. He might even grab the wife and go there tonight.

  20

  Colorado

  Another day, another school, thought Max to herself. But hopefully, this will be a good school. No, a great school! And a great beginning.

  The jarring ring of the bell marked the end of third period. She’d been listening to a talk on the diminishing populations of endangered species in Colorado: the black-tailed prairie dog, hops blue butterfly, peregrine falcon, osprey. It was her eleventh day of classes, and she was trying hard to do everything imperfectly. Smart, but not too smart; funny, but not too funny; humble, but not a smarmy kiss-ass.

  She grabbed her very cool bicycle messenger bag from under her desk, stuffed her textbooks inside, and rose to join the bubbly throng flooding out of the classroom. The crowd included a dog. Her teacher, as usual, had brought his brown Labrador retriever to class. Kind of goofy, but kind of cool, too.

  Max never actually reached the doorway.

  A scream coming from somewhere outside the building stopped her cold. She spun around. Matthew! He’s in trouble! Max was sure it was her brother; his voice was impressed on her brain, hardwired into her nervous system.

  None of the other kids heard it—but her sensitive hearing picked it right up. Matthew!

  Max dropped her book bag, ran to the window, and looked two stories down into the dusty plain of the schoolyard. There he was! A pack of boys was chasing Matthew, a couple of them waving hockey sticks. And cans of something. What the hell are they doing?

  She saw a flash of metal and a yellow mist fill the air. Then she got it. They were trying to paint Matthew’s wings. It was the third time since they’d been at the school that a gang had gone after him.

  “Hey,” she yelled. “Hey, stop that! Stop it now!”

  She beat on the windowpane with her fists, but no one looked up. Of course not. Their hearing sucks! Max ran from the classroom, charged down the crowded flight of concrete fire stairs, and barreled out into the playground. She was careful not to fly at school. Not even now.

  She could see the bullyboys at the far end of the playground. Oh-so-cool in their Aéropostale, American Eagle, and Abercrombie garb. Five boys, ninth-graders, had formed a semicircle near the chain-link fence. Nine-year-old Matthew was trapped in the middle of them. Their faces were twisted with hate and anger as they taunted him. Thank God the press wasn’t around today, or she and Matthew would be Live at 5 again.

  She could hear everything they said, but certain words stabbed her heart. “Freak show.” “Carnival boy.” “Maggot carrier.”

  The biggest kid, a stocky, pear-shaped bully wearing baggy gangsta pants and an Avalanche sweatshirt, grabbed Matthew by the arms as another kid held up a can of spray paint. Red!

  Max heard the harsh rattling of the metal ball inside the can, then the fizz and stink of airborne Rust-Oleum.

  “Stop that right now, you little fucks!” she screamed.

  The boys were momentarily startled and broke apart from their huddle. Matthew wrenched free from the biggest kid’s grasp and immediately fell to the ground. His wing feathers and clothes were soaked with paint. He was forcing himself not to cry. Brave Matthew! What a damn good kid he was.

  “Matty, I’m here,” Max said, gathering her brother to her, kissing the top of his head. That was all it took to break the bullies’ cease-fire. Spray cans fizzed again.

  “Who are you calling a ‘fuck,’ you freak bitch?” yelled the leader of the pack.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I was talking to you,” Max spat out venomously. “You’re the one I want a piece of.”

  The boy was probably fifteen and already weighed at least 170. She knew him by reputation. His father had played pro football for the Denver Broncos, or something terribly impressive like that. He laughed at Max. “Bring it on. Let’s tussle.”

  Max had promised the Marshalls never to hurt a kid at school. So had Matthew. She wanted to take this creepy punk apart, but she held back, which was really hard. Almost impossible.

  Then she saw the bright red paint smeared on poor Matthew. It got her furious all over again. Bring it on? This obnoxious jerk has no idea what he’s asking for.

  “What’s your name, punk?” she said.

  “You don’t know who I am? Shit, girl, I’m Bryce Doulin. Everybody knows me.”

  “You don’t know who you’re messing around with, bitch,” Max growled. “You and your friends don’t get it. But maybe you will in a minute.”

  Doulin was a little fat, but muscular. He came at her, but Max grabbed him in a tight headlock. He pulled at her arm with both of his hands. “Hey, leggo,” he yelped.

  Max’s fingers were like steel pincers. They didn’t budge. Doulin was gagging. His piggy eyes were bulging. She yanked the spray can out of his hand. Easily.

  What they’d done to Matthew was a desecration. It was a hate crime. She knew that much. Now what should she do? Maybe paint Bryce Doulin from head to toe. Or mark him with the words MAX’S BITCH. And then what? She’d be the bully, wouldn’t she?

  She finally loosened her hold on Doulin’s neck and shoved him away from her. He stumbled and fell over backward on the lawn. The rest of the gang was looking on in disbelief. Bryce Doulin was on his ass, and a girl had done it.

  Max crushed the spray can until it crumpled and popped. It was easy. She took her time and stared right into the eyes of every kid in the circle, but especially Doulin’s.

  “Matthew could have hurt you, too. He’s almost as strong as I am,” she said. “He chose not to because he’s such a goddamn good kid. Don’t ever mess with him again. Ever. Until the day you die and maggots eat your worthless guts.”

  She helped Matthew to his feet and together they watched as the pack of older boys backed away, grumbling and cursing, but mostly scared out of their gourds. Max would remember the faces. She would remember every one of them for as long as she lived.

  Why do they hate like that? Where does it come from? She was afraid she would never really understand humans.

  But maybe that was a good thing.

  21

  ON A SATURDAY MORNING about a week later Max heard shouts, then a loud scream come from upstairs in the Marshall house. She turned to her brother, but he was lost in a game of Grand Theft Auto on his Playstation 2.

  “We better go see,” Max finally said. “C’mon, Matty. Put down the game. Matthew, now!”

  “All right. I heard you the first time.”

  A
lthough they were forbidden to fly inside the house, they flew up to the second floor and then down the hall to the master bedroom.

  They found Terry Marshall at the door to the room. She had on her cleaning outfit: a plaid kerchief, cutoff jeans, and a T-shirt that had EINSTEIN BROTHERS BAGELS printed on it.

  “It got in when I was airing out our bedroom,” she said. “It will break everything I love in there. Can you help me, Max? I don’t want to hurt it.”

  Max took a peek inside the bedroom. “It” was a female mourning dove that had apparently flown in through an open window and was trapped.

  A couple of the poor girl’s feathers were stuck onto the picture window that looked out onto a small pond. There was a smear of blood on the dove’s beak.

  “Poor baby, easy, baby,” Max whispered to the dove. “It’s okay, sweetie.”

  “What can we do? Can’t you talk to it?” Terry Marshall asked in a shaky voice. “Get it out of here! Please.”

  “It’s petrified,” Max scolded. But then she went on: “We’ll take care of it, Moms.” “Moms” was what she usually called Terry, mostly out of respect, but sometimes just because it was the practical thing to do.

  “We know how to do this. We’ll talk to the dove,” Max said, then gently nudged Moms out of the room. “Leave it to us,” she said. Then she closed the door.

  Matthew immediately rolled his eyes at his big, usually smart sister. “We’ll talk to the dove? What are we gonna say to it? Get a grip, dumb bird?”

  “I don’t know, Matt. Something will come to me.”

  “Should we rush it? I can be kinda gentle.”

  “I don’t think so, Matty. She’ll freak. She’s petrified to be in here.”

  Max went and opened the French doors that led onto a small terrace from the bedroom.

  The dove continued to fly against the picture window—the one way it couldn’t get out of the room. It was so beautiful, warm brown with pink feet and a pinkish cast to its breast feathers.

  “Sit down with me, Matt,” said Max. “Sit by the open door. Just sit, Matthew.”

  Matt rolled his eyes again—his absolute favorite communication that meant something seemed particularly crazy to him—but sat down. “And now, we—what?” he asked.

  “We talk to it,” said Max. “It’s called a mourning dove because of its call—oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo?” Matthew said, then snorted out a laugh.

  “That’s it, Matty. You’ve got it,” encouraged Max.

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  It took a couple of minutes, but the dove finally noticed the two of them. She didn’t want them to know, but the female was checking them out. Also, she wasn’t smacking herself against the picture window anymore. Fluttering wildly, yes; but no more smacking her brains out against the glass.

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo,” Max and Matthew continued to whisper.

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “C’mon, sweetheart. You can do it,” Max coaxed.

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “This door is the way out. Come right through here.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “It’s so easy, dummy,” exclaimed a frustrated Matthew. “Go. Out. The. Door.”

  “Coo, Matty. She’s a mother. She’s worried about her young ones. Just be patient with her.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  “Oooh-a-oo-whoo.”

  Then very suddenly, and without so much as a thank-you, the mourning dove darted out the terrace door to freedom. It flew at its absolute top speed across the millpond, and disappeared into the thick grove of pines beyond.

  When Terry “Moms” Marshall finally came back to check, Max and Matthew were sitting on the bedroom floor, whispering “oooh-a-oo-whoo” over and over.

  “How strange,” their biological mother said. “You two are really weird, you know that?”

  Frannie told you, Max thought to herself.

  22

  AFTER THE CUSTODY TRIAL ENDED, I went home to jump-start my life again in the beautiful Colorado boonies.

  Kit went back to Washington, D.C.

  I’m not sure that either of us knew why we were separating, but I think it had something to do with losing the kids and needing to grieve. Kit said that his job was in Washington, at least for the time being, but that he would be out to see me a lot, as often as he possibly could.

  We phoned each other in the beginning, and sent e-mails, but there was not a single visit from him. I honestly believe we had sunk into depression. It wasn’t admirable, but I suppose it was understandable, and human, but mostly cowardly and dumb on both our parts—if I may speak for Kit as well as for myself.

  Life went on in Colorado, though there was one strange and very sad event—a good friend of mine had simply disappeared. Jessie Horvath was there one day, and then she was gone. All traces of her, all 250 pounds. Just gone.

  It was about four on a Sunday afternoon and I was up to my wrists in blood and guts. My usual gig at the veterinary hospital.

  I was in a room that doubled—tripled, actually—as the surgery suite, examining room, and pharmacy area. All around me were supplies ranging from cotton balls and tongue depressors to hundreds of plastic bottles filled with pills, all of them white. A single picture hung on the wall, a news photo of me at the head of the Cause for Paws benefit hike in Boulder.

  A tuna fish sandwich lay half eaten on the sink ledge where I’d left it at noon when a cat-rescue lady brought in a carload of feral cats to be altered.

  Thankfully, the end was in sight.

  I was closing up my ninth and last patient, a big homeless tabby named Sophie, when I heard an ungodly racket out front.

  It was an extremely loud police siren—and the car was right outside my door.

  I hoped somebody in a 4 ¥ 4 hadn’t hit a deer or a horse. Clearly, it was some kind of emergency, though.

  Damn. I didn’t need this at all.

  I knotted the last stitch in Sophie’s incision, put her into a cage with a fluffy pink blanket, then hurried outside to greet whatever trouble the cops were bringing me.

  “I’m coming,” I called ahead. “I’m coming! Hold your water! Turn off that damn siren!”

  23

  THE INN-PATIENT, my small animal hospital, is a 2,000-square-foot glass-and-timber box that sits twenty feet off the highway near the intersection in Bear Bluff, a precious town but one so tiny you could pass through it a couple of times without even noticing. The state troopers’ barracks is only two miles up the road, and I’ve gotten to know most of the “staties” from the hard-luck strays and hit-and-runs they’ve brought me over the years.

  The cruiser’s rotating beacon was still on when I stepped out into the parking area outside my front door. Suddenly I hoped this wasn’t about my friend Jessie.

  I saw Trooper James H. Blake get out of his car. A former fullback at Colorado State, he’s a massive six-three with huge arms and torso. His strong arms carried a dun-colored sleeping bag, and it was soaked with blood.

  Oh, c’mon, James H., I said to myself.

  I took another look at the cruiser and saw a couple of plaid-shirted teenage boys in the backseat. A blonde and a redhead: long shaggy hair; angry, pouty faces.

  My sinking heart told me that whatever was in the sleeping bag had been hurt by those two boys. I’ve heard all the rationale, so don’t bother to argue with me. I hate hunting, and I always will.

  James Blake was obviously upset, too. I could tell he was trying hard not to lose it. He’s tried to date me a couple of times, and though I’ve declined, I do believe he’s a nice, decent, stand-up guy. So why don’t I date him? Because I’m a dumb bunny. Also, I’m holding out for Kit.

  “Frannie, I hope you can do something,” James Blake said as he approached. Blood from the bundle in his arms was dripping onto
the gravel underfoot.

  I pushed open the glass doors for James, led him through reception, then past hospital wards one and two.

  “Nothing on Jessie, I assume,” I said.

  “Nothing,” answered James.

  As we passed number two, a loony-tunes black Lab who’d been dropped off to have his chompers cleaned started howling. That set off the basset hound with gastric torsion, and the stray shepherd cross.

  Also Pip, my own Jack Russell terrier, who hangs out with the boarding dogs and can’t say no to a good barkathon.

  The clamor disturbed the animal in the sleeping bag, and it started a panicky stir.

  “Shut-tup, you guys!” I hollered at the dogs.

  I showed James into an exam room and shut the door behind us. A stray dog was napping on a window seat, snug in a pile of pillows. I started to unwrap the folds of polyester-filled bag.

  Dog, cat, raccoon, or whatever, this was going to be an awful mess. That much I knew already.

  But I was totally unprepared to be staring into the glazed-over eyeballs of a Gymnogyps californianus—a bird that, to my knowledge, hadn’t been seen in Colorado in two hundred years.

  “What the hell is it, Frannie?” he asked.

  “It’s a California condor,” I told him. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh. That’s because their flesh isn’t supposed to be around here.”

  And it was weird-looking flesh at that. My newest patient had a bald head about the size of a large mango, with a longish hooked beak partially cloaked in pink wattles. There was a patch of stiff black feathers on its forehead, and where its neck met its shoulders was a wild ruff of thin black feathers that continued down the whole of its body, making this poor creature look like a weary old man wearing half of a gorilla suit.

  “He sure is pretty,” said Blake.

  I laughed. “Pretty rare, anyway. There are only about a hundred and sixty of these left in the world, and of those, sixty are wild and the rest are in captive-breeding facilities. Or so they say.”

  It was the sad truth. Once ranging freely, by 1987 all but a dozen of these birds had been poached, poisoned, and shot nearly out of existence. With dedication and hard work, they’d been brought back to their current number in captivity.