Chapter 12: The Lake Offers a Choice
The key was a sliver of ice in her palm. Susanna stood perfectly still, the rough planks of the cabin floor chilling her bare feet. Through the warped glass of the door window, the world was a study in gray and black: the lake a slab of polished slate, the pines dark smudges against a lighter dark.No wind. No sound but the slow, deep rhythm of Lisa’s breathing from the bed.Her fingers closed around the iron key. Last night, after Lisa had fallen into a heavy, wine-deep sleep, Susanna had watched the fire die. She had watched Lisa’s face, soft and unguarded in repose, and felt a love so sharp it was like a bone lodged in her throat. Then she had seen the keys, discarded on the floor next to Lisa’s jeans. The cabin key, separate from the car key.A simple, stupid iron thing.
She had slid from the bed, the bracelet slipping down her wrist, and picked it up.Just in case.Just to know she could.
Now, in the bleach-light of dawn, the “just in case” pressed against her life like a pin. She could turn the lock. She could step onto the porch, down the two steps, onto the dirt road that wound back through five miles of forest to the main highway. She was wearing only one of Lisa’s old t-shirts.It wouldn’t matter.She could walk. She had walked away from worse things, in her mind.Her hand lifted.The key hovered before the lock.
The bedsprings groaned.A slow, deliberate sound.
Susanna’s breath hitched, frozen in her chest.
“You letting a draft in?” Lisa’s voice was sleep-thick, but alert.Too alert.Susanna turned, the key now a guilty brand behind her back. Lisa was propped on one elbow, the quilt pooled around her waist. Her blonde hair was a tangled corona against the pillow. Her blue eyes were clear, absorbing the scene: Susanna, framed in the weak light, shivering at the door.
“Just looking at the lake,” Susanna said.Her voice was too high. “It’s so quiet.”
“Come back to bed. It’s freezing over there.” Lisa patted the empty space beside her, her smile soft, inviting. But her gaze was a physical touch, scanning Susanna’s face, her stance, the hand hidden behind her back.“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. You’re cold.I can see you shaking.” Lisa’s tone shifted, a playful scold. “Don’t make me get up and drag you back.”
It was a joke. It wasn’t a joke.Susanna felt the two possibilities vibrate in the air between them. A standoff.If she took a step forward, it was surrender. If she turned and put the key in the lock, it was a declaration of war.
Her feet, numb with cold, made the choice for her.They carried her the three steps back to the bed. She slid under the quilt, the residual warmth from Lisa’s body a shocking contrast to her own chill. She kept her right hand closed, the key digging into her palm.
Lisa immediately curled around her, skin to skin, a leg thrown over Susanna’s thighs. She nuzzled into the crook of Susanna’s neck.“Mm. You’re an ice cube.” Her hand found Susanna’s clenched fist.She stilled. “What’ve you got?”
“Nothing.”
Lisa’s fingers pried hers open with gentle, inexorable pressure. The key sat in Susanna’s sweaty palm, glinting dully.The silence stretched. Lisa picked it up, held it between her thumb and forefinger, studying it as if it were a strange insect. “Taking up locksmithing?”
“I was just… I saw it on the floor.I picked it up. In case we got locked out.” The lie was pathetic, transparent.
“We have the car key,” Lisa said flatly. “That’s the one that matters.” She continued to look at the cabin key, her face unreadable. Then, with a sudden movement, she leaned over Susanna and dropped it onto the rickety nightstand.It landed with a dull thud. “But it’s good to be prepared, I guess.”
She settled back, her body molding against Susanna’s again, but her arm was tighter, a possessive bar across Susanna’s ribs.Her lips were close to Susanna’s ear. “You know you don’t need a key to leave, right?” she whispered.The words were soft, almost loving. “The door’s not locked against you. It’s locked against everything else.”
Susanna stared at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a sprawling, rotten flower. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a trapped bird. Lisa’s words slithered into her, finding their old, familiar home.It’s locked against everything else.The world was the danger. Lisa was the protector.Even now, especially now.“I know,” Susanna breathed.
“Do you?” Lisa’s hand slid up, over her breastbone, feeling the frantic beat beneath. “Your heart’s going crazy. Still thinking about running?”
“No.”
“Liar.” Lisa kissed her shoulder, a slow, open-mouthed kiss that was more claim than comfort. “But it’s okay.I’d probably think about it too, if I were you. It’s a fucked up thing we have. I get it.” She shifted, rising up on one elbow to look down at Susanna.Her expression was eerily tender.“But this is it, Susanna. This is the fresh start.No more shit from the outside world. Just you and me, figuring it out.You gonna stay and figure it out with me?”
The question hung in the cold air. Susanna looked up into those blue, blue eyes, saw the desperate need veiled behind the cool control, the fear of abandonment that was the only honest part of Lisa. She saw the lighthouse story she would never finish.She saw the freezing walk down the dirt road. She saw the terrifying, blank page of a life without this gravity, this devastating, defining love.
Her hand, the one that had held the key, came up to touch Lisa’s cheek.A surrender.A signing.
“Yes,” she said.Lisa’s smile was brilliant, victorious. She collapsed onto her, a weight both crushing and exhilarating.“Good. Now warm me up, I’m freezing.”
And as they tangled together under the quilt, as Lisa’s hands began to map her skin with a fervent, forgiving hunger, Susanna kept her eyes open. She stared past Lisa’s hair at the nightstand, where the iron key lay, now just a hand’s breadth away on the scarred wood.It seemed smaller now.Irrelevant. The real lock, she understood with a sinking clarity, was not in the door. It was the bracelet on her wrist, the arm around her body, the lie she had just agreed to live inside. The lake outside the window held its perfect, silent reflection, but in the cabin’s dim light, nothing was clear at all.