Page 17

Julia

Morning coffee should set everything right, or so Julia told herself as she poured a cup in Erika’s kitchen. She drank her coffee with cream and sugar, which always meant starting her day with a stab of guilt, but some things in life were non-negotiable.

On this fine morning, the sun’s ascent brought a kiss of perfection to the new day.

The leaves shimmered under a coating of fresh dew.

Bright flowers spread their petals wide to catch sips of sunshine while the birds flittered about.

Everything about the moment was idyllic, from the soothing sound of lapping water to the graceful butterflies riding atop the aromatic breeze.

Taylor was out walking Nutmeg. Christian and Rick had taken the canoe on the lake for a morning fishing excursion. Lucas played guitar upstairs, sounding quite good. Evidently he’d been practicing. All felt right in Julia’s world.

But it was also a veneer, she knew. Nature’s beauty was a mask covering harsher realities: Taylor and her distance, Christian and their money woes (not to mention his possible lies), and David and Fiona’s distressing fight.

Right now, what was most troubling Julia was what was not bothering Erika.

Here she was, standing in her friend’s kitchen, sipping the coffee that was always made to perfection, and not seeing (at least not in an unobstructed way) the damn lake.

If she looked through three sets of windows, two of which belonged to David, she could just make out the water dappled with golden sunbeams.

Heck, if she squinted, Julia could even guess what cereal the twins were having for breakfast—Apple Jacks. That green box was unmistakable. “I really can’t believe you’re okay with this,” Julia said, nodding toward the glass house.

Erika looked out the window from her seat at the kitchen table as she drank from her Love Lake Life coffee mug without a care in the world.

“What can I do about it?” she asked.

“You’re the lawyer, not me.”

“Which is why I know it would be a long, expensive legal battle, and even if we won, he might not be forced to tear it down. He’d probably be fined, but we’d have bad blood and still have to live with it. It’s not worth the fight.”

Erika might not be outraged, but Julia was pissed enough for the both of them. She considered her options… perhaps a bulldozer? At the very least she could give David a good hard slap on the face. But the more Julia thought about it, the more helpless and hopeless it appeared.

Erika went to the fridge, took out fruit for their lunchtime salad, and handed Julia a mango. Of course she’d give her the most slippery, difficult thing to peel and cut. That was typical of Erika, always sending a little “fuck you” with love.

But block her precious water view, and it’s laissez-faire, mon frère? Really?

“I just thought you’d be more upset,” said Julia, pointing to David, who was absorbed in his phone from an armchair in his living room. “It’s like the worst remake of Rear Window ever.”

Julia feigned a yawn to try to get a laugh, but Erika wasn’t biting. She was too busy cutting off the heads of strawberries, her knife a blur. She was quite the chef and would have been far better at dissecting the mango, which Julia was turning into porridge.

“What good is anger going to do me?” replied Erika, as flat as a Stepford Wife.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Julia said. “I didn’t realize aliens had abducted my friend.”

Still no smile, though Julia remained determined to coax one out.

Erika switched from cutting strawberries to kiwi, using a paring knife to peel the skin with the fine motor skills of a surgeon.

“I happen to be working on myself,” she said. “The law is a meat grinder, and the stress was getting to me. Rick’s been on my case to dial it back—my doctor, too. I guess my blood pressure is up. So I’ve been meditating, working on mindfulness, learning to let things go.”

“You?” Julia stifled a laugh. “Queen of the Grudge has turned to New Age spiritualism?”

At last, Julia got the smile she had been after, but it was cryptic.

“What can I say?” Erika waved the knife. “People change.”

When they were kids, Erika could give the silent treatment like it was nobody’s business.

The grievances were often over little things.

Julia remembered a borrowed sweatshirt she returned marked with a drip of mustard that went unnoticed until the stain had set in.

Erika refused to speak to Julia for days until her father got involved, orchestrating a peace summit at the picnic tables.

That afternoon the girls were back together, laughing and splashing in the water as if the crisis had never been.

It helped that Cormac Gallagher wasn’t the sort who took no for an answer.

Julia had no memories of Erika’s mother—she wouldn’t have been able to help a police sketch artist render her if she tried.

Her face was lost to time. Her photos had all been thrown away because of a long-standing vendetta, this one between Erika’s parents.

What mother abandons her young child for a new life with another man? The cruelty astounded her to this day.

Julia long suspected that Erika’s edge, her take-no-prisoners attitude both inside and outside the courtroom, stemmed from this early trauma.

It was a defense mechanism, just as David’s overinflated ego helped protect him from the pain of his father’s death and his mother’s bereavement.

Erika had a big heart, but it was surrounded by fortifications the military couldn’t break down.

“Tell me more about this Zen way of being,” said Julia.

“I sure could use it.” She wasn’t ready to dive into her crumbling business empire or the debt collectors hounding her.

She needed another few days of vacation before she’d sign up for that pity-fest. She also didn’t want to be like Christian, who was prone to bouts of jealousy, but here she was, enviously admiring Erika’s recently renovated kitchen.

It was straight out of Magnolia Journal.

As a young girl, Erika fancied herself a budding artist, and she could draw quite well. She’d talked about going to art school, but she must have gotten the same lecture from Cormac that Julia gave Taylor about her creative writing pursuits.

Julia figured Erika would find some sort of creative profession—advertising, perhaps—but she surprised everyone when she took the LSAT and applied to law school instead.

Like her choice in husbands, Erika becoming a lawyer never made perfect sense to Julia, though it did fit her warrior persona.

She won nearly every argument she got in, never backing down from a challenge.

That trait definitely worked in her favor; her career became quite lucrative.

Looking around her lake home, Julia supposed the house was now Erika’s canvas, a way to express her innate but underdeveloped artistic ability.

The reclaimed beams and Douglas fir cabinets, along with a breakfast bar featuring a soft gray concrete countertop that perfectly complemented the oak barstools, were the stuff of dreams. Erika had even installed the ultimate farmhouse-chic status symbol— a skirted sink below the bifold windows that fully connected the indoors and out.

While Erika’s kitchen was most definitely the heart of the home, Julia’s was the heartache.

It was dark and cramped, and probably had mold from shoddy insulation and wet winters.

Julia didn’t have the money to remodel her primary residence, let alone fix up the summer house.

No wonder she felt a stab of envy as she followed Erika into the well-appointed living room adorned with country-themed furnishings, none of which came from Ikea.

Julia didn’t begrudge Erika her financial security.

She’d worked hard for her money and was also fortunate to inherit a nice nest egg from her late father, who could be generous to a fault and paid for everything in cash.

The remodeling work had taken place over time, done drip by drip—less upheaval, with just a project here and there.

And lo and behold, everything had come together seamlessly.

Julia was no longer inside the same house where she had played as a little girl.

This home had new floors, new windows with fresh window treatments, a modern kitchen, new rugs, and all updated furnishings.

But not everything had changed. Erika kept the oil painting portrait of her late father hanging above the fireplace.

Although he was a salesman by profession, in that portrait, Cormac Gallagher, posed in a wingback chair and dressed in a crisp navy sport coat with a white shirt underneath, had the regal air of a sea captain.

His shock of silver hair and stern expression bolstered that comparison, as did his weathered face, rendered as though the wind and waves had carved the many crevices into his flesh.

While he appeared stern and humorless in the painting, Cormac could be personable and engaging, with a magnetism that helped earn him plenty of girlfriends after his wife absconded.

But even after he took David under his wing, he still intimidated Julia.

His geniality felt like thin ice, apt to crack under the slightest pressure, exposing something cold, dark, and treacherous just below the surface.

Julia felt his stony, reproachful eyes—even rendered in a painting—following her every move.

The many candid framed photographs scattered throughout the living room showed his more affable side.

Here was Cormac at the lakeshore, frolicking in the water with Erika when she was a toddler.

Another showed him with his close friend, a man Erika called Uncle James, even though he wasn’t technically family.

Julia’s attention shifted from the pictures to an ornate rug in the center of the room. It was made of striking red, orange, and blue dyed wool, handwoven into an intricate pattern.