Lake News

Praise for BARBARA DELINSKY

“ONE OF WOMEN'S FICTION'S TRUE MASTERS” (
BookPage
), AND

LAKE NEWS

“[Her characters] . . . become more like old friends than works of fiction.”

—Flint Journal
(MI)

“Delinsky fans won't be disappointed.”

—San Antonio Express-News

“Delightful . . . . Readers will be sorry to reach the end of
Lake News
and yearn for more about its cast and characters.”

—The Pilot
(Southern Pines, NC)

“Delinsky plots this satisfying, gentle romance with the sure hand of an expert.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Recommended . . . . Lily Blake [is] a remarkable heroine.”

—Abilene Reporter-News
(TX)

Be sure to read her other superb
New York Times
bestsellers

So many people to thank. Where to begin? It started with a double bill—shopping for a lake house and researching a book. I succeeded on both counts, thanks to the warmth and generosity of people like Chip and Tina Maxfield, Susan Francesco, and Sid Lovett—and to Doug and Liz Hentz, who've made it such fun!

My sister, Helen Dempsey, was a tireless resource when it came to all things Catholic, for which I thank her from the bottom of my heart. If I've taken literary license and made mistakes, the fault is solely mine.

For newspaper information, I am indebted to Maria Buckley and Ron Duce of the
Needham TAB
. For apple-cider-making information, I thank Julie, Andrew, and Jo of Honey Pot Hill Orchards. For miscellaneous other bits and snatches, I thank Martha Raddatz, Barbara Rosenberger, and Phyllis Tickle. I also owe a well of gratitude to Robin Mays, who passed away shortly after I finished writing this book. She's watching us, though. I know she is. Robin, the birdhouses are yours!

As always, my agent, Amy Berkower, and her assistant, Jodi Reamer, were there for me, as was my own assistant, Wendy Page. To my editors, Michael Korda and Chuck Adams, I offer heartfelt thanks and future promise.

I dedicate
Lake News
to my husband, Steve, who really got into the plotting of this one, and to our kids, always a boundless source of pride—Eric and Jodi, Andrew, and Jeremy and Sherrie.

Finally, to Ellyn's Lily, here it is!

Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush,—this the light dust-cloth,—which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.

from
Walden,
by Henry David Thoreau

Lake Henry, New Hampshire

Like everything else at the lake, dawn arrived in its own good time. The flat black of night slowly deepened to a midnight blue that lightened in lazy steps, gradually giving form to the spike of a tree, the eave of a cottage, the tongue of a weathered wood dock—and that was on a clear day. On this day, fog slowed the process of delineation, reducing the lake to a pool of milky glass and the shoreline to a hazy wash of orange, gold, and green where, normally, vibrant fall colors would be. A glimpse of cranberry or navy marked a lakefront home, but details were lost in the mist. Likewise the separation of reflection and shore. The effect, with the air quiet and still, was that of a protective cocoon.

It was a special moment. The only thing John Kipling would change about it was the cold. He wasn't ready for summer to end, but despite his wishes, the days were noticeably shorter than they had been two months before. The sun set sooner and rose later, and the chill of the night lingered. He felt it. His loons felt it. The foursome he watched, two adults and their young, would remain
on the lake for another five weeks, but they were growing restless, looking to the sky lately in ways that had less to do with predators than with thoughts of migration.

As he watched now, they floated in the fog not twenty feet from his canoe, not ten feet again from the tiny fir-covered island in whose sheltered cove they had summered. The island was one of many that dotted Lake Henry. Between the clarity of the water, the quiet of the lake, and the abundance of small fish, those islands lured the loons back year after year—because they didn't do well on land. Their feet were set too far back under large, cumbersome bodies. So they built nests on the very edge of these islands, where they could more easily enter and leave the water. John found it painful watching them lurch even those precious few inches from water to nest.

In all other respects, though, the loons were a sight to behold. Since the chicks' birth, in July, he had watched their plumage go from baby black to toddler brown to a rather drab juvenile gray, but they had their parents' tapered beaks and sleek necks, and a promise of future brilliance—and those parents, ahhhh, those parents were brilliant indeed, even in fall, with their plumage starting to dull, even this morning, through the veil of an ashy mist. They were beauties, with crisp checkerboards of white-on-black backs, white-stripe necklaces around black necks, solid black heads, distinctive pointed beaks. As if that weren't impressive enough, they had riveting round red eyes. John had heard that the red enhanced underwater vision, and he could believe it. Those eyes didn't miss much.

The birds lay low in the water now, swimming gently around
the cove, alternately rolling and contorting to groom themselves and submerging their heads to troll for fish. When one of the adults compressed its body and dove, a webbed power propelled it deep. John knew it might fill its belly with up to fifteen minnows before resurfacing a distance away.

He searched the fog until he spotted it again. Its mate continued to float near the island, but both adults were alert, those pointed bills tipped just a little higher as they scoured the fog for news. Later that morning they would leave their young, run laboriously across the surface of the lake, and lumber up into the air. After circling a time or two until they gained altitude enough to clear the trees, they would fly to a neighboring lake to visit other loons. Breeding was a solitary time, and with two fledglings to show for months of vigilance and work, this pair had done well. Now they had to refresh their social skills in preparation for wintering in larger groups on the warmer Atlantic coast.

For an eon, loons had repeated this ritual. The same intelligence that had assured their survival for so long told the current crop of birds that September was halfway done, October would bring colder days and evening frost, and November would bring ice. Since they needed an expanse of clear water for takeoff, they had to leave the lake before it froze. And they would. In all his years growing up on the lake, then returning as an adult to watch again, John hadn't seen many icebound loons. Their instincts were good. They rarely erred.

John, however, erred—and often. Hadn't he done it again this morning, setting out in a T-shirt and shorts,
wanting it to be summer still and finding himself butt cold now? He sometimes had trouble accepting that he wasn't twenty anymore. He was over forty—and, yes, still six three and fit, but his body didn't work the way it once did. It ached around the knees, wrinkled around the eyes, receded at the temples, and chilled in the extremities.

But cold or not, he wasn't leaving. Not yet. There might not necessarily be the makings of a big best-seller in it, but he hadn't had his fill of the loons.

He sat rock still in the canoe with his hands in his armpits for warmth and his paddle stowed. These loons were used to his presence, but he took nothing for granted. As long as he kept his distance and respected their space, they would reward him with preening and singing. When the world was eerily quiet—at night, at dawn, on mornings like this when the fog muffled other noise that life on the lake might make—the loons' song shimmered and rose. And it came now—breathtaking—a primitive tremolo released with the shiver of a jaw, so beautiful, so mysterious, so wild that it raised the hair on the back of his neck.

It also carried a message. The tremolo was a cry of alarm. Granted, this one was low in pitch, which made it only a warning, but he wasn't about to ignore it. With the faintest rasp of wood on fiberglass, he lifted his paddle. Water lapped softly against the canoe as he guided it backward. When he was ten more feet away, he stabilized his position and quietly restowed the paddle. Hugging his elbows to his thighs for warmth, he sat, watched, listened, waited.

In time, the loon closest to him stretched his neck
forward and issued a long, low wail. The sound wasn't unlike the cry of a coyote, but John would never confuse the two. The loon's wail was at the same time more elemental and more delicate.

This one was the start of a dialogue, one adult calling the other in a succession of haunting sounds that brought the distant bird gliding closer. Even when they were ten feet apart, they continued to speak, with their beaks nearly shut and their elongated throats swelling around the sound.

Goose bumps rose on his skin. This was why he had returned to the lake—why, after swearing off New Hampshire at fifteen, he had reversed himself at forty. Some said he'd done it for the job, others that he'd done it for his father, but the roundabout truth had to do with these birds. They signified something primal and wild, but simple, straightforward, and safe.

A loon's life consisted of eating, grooming, and procreating. It was an honest life, devoid of pretense, ambition, and cruelty. The loon harmed others only when its own existence was threatened. John found that totally refreshing.

So he stayed longer, though he knew he should leave. It was Monday.
Lake News
had to be at the printer by noon on Wednesday. He already had material from his staff correspondents, one per town. Assuming that the appropriate bins held articles promised by local movers and shakers—“movers and shakers” being a relative term—he would have a wad of reading and editing, key-stroking, cutting and pasting. If those articles weren't in the bins, he would call around Lake Henry and the four
neighboring towns serviced by the paper, take information on the phone, and write what he could himself—and if he still ended up with dead space, he would run more Thoreau.

There wasn't a book in that either, he told himself. A book had to be original. He had notebooks filled with ideas, folders thick with anecdotes he had collected since returning to town, but nothing sparked an urge to hustle—at least, not when it came to writing a book. He
did
hustle when it came to
Lake News
—but mostly between noon Tuesdays and noon Wednesdays. He was a last-minute kind of guy. He wrote better under the threat of a deadline closing in, liked the rush of a newsroom filled with action and noise, liked the perversion of keeping the managing editor on edge.

Of course, he was the managing editor now. And the production editor. And the photography editor, the society editor, the layout editor.
Lake News
wasn't the
Boston Post
. Not by a long shot, and there were times when that bothered him.