Chapter 4 - The Lake in the Glass
"You're kicking us out?!" Susan shrieked, her voice reaching a pitch that made the cabin windows rattle. "It's five o'clock in the evening! It's raining outside! Where are we supposed to go?!"
"There is a motel six miles down the state highway," David said, without a trace of remorse. "They have vacancies. I checked when I stopped for gas."
"I am not staying in some filthy roadside motel!" Jessica raged, her face contorting into an ugly mask of hatred. "This is absurd! You're having a psychotic break! We need to call an ambulance! Mark, help me, he's lost his mind!"
Uncle Mark didn't move an inch. He kept his eyes locked firmly on the knots in the floorboards. He knew that one wrong word, and the fraud files David had mentioned would be sitting on the desk of the Cook County State’s Attorney by sunrise.
"Fifteen minutes," David said quietly, glancing at his watch.
Jessica glared at me, her eyes burning with pure venom. "You did this," she spat, pointing a trembling, manicured finger at my chest. "You and your pathetic, weak-willed little brat! You've been poisoning him against us since Sarah died! You couldn't handle that I was successful and you were just a miserable widower living on handouts!"
I didn't answer her. I didn't need to.
I leaned down and gently picked Jacob up out of his chair. He buried his face immediately into the crook of my neck, his arms wrapping around my throat with a desperate, crushing strength. He was trembling so hard his teeth clicked together.
"I've got you, buddy," I whispered into his hair. "I've got you. You're safe."
David walked around the table. He didn't look at Jessica as she continued to scream insults at his back. He didn't look at Susan, who had sunk onto the sofa, sobbing theatrical, hysterical tears into a throw pillow.
Instead, David reached down into the puddle of red wine.
He didn't care that the vintage pinot noir stained the cuffs of his chore coat. He carefully slid his fingers beneath the soggy edges of Jacob’s cardboard backing. With the precision of a surgeon handling delicate tissue, he lifted the ruined painting from the table.
The red liquid drained off the corners in heavy, rhythmic drips, spattering against the floorboards.
David held it up to the light of the setting sun filtering through the pine-framed windows.
The bright blue sky Jacob had mixed so carefully was bruised and streaked with crimson. The tiny dock was smeared into violet mud. But right in the center, where the bottom of Jessica's wine glass had rested, the pressure had created a perfect, clear circle—a bizarre, luminous ring where the wine had been squeezed outward, leaving a fragile halo of the original blue sky and clear water untouched.
"Look at that, Jacob," David said softly.
Jacob sniffled, keeping his face half-hidden against my shoulder, but his left eye peeked out toward his grandfather.
"What is it, Grandpa?" Jacob choked out, his voice tiny and broken.
"It’s the lake," David said gently, his deep voice wrapping around the boy like a thick wool blanket. "You see that circle? That’s where the water went calm. Even when the storm hit it, the center didn't wash away. It held."
David reached down, picked up his heavy gold wedding ring from the puddle, and set it on the dry edge of the sideboard.
Then, he looked at me. "Leo. Take Jacob to the truck. Get his jacket on. We're going to the diner in town."
"Dad," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "What about them?"
"They will be gone before we get back," David replied, his eyes hardening into flint. "And if they aren't, Sheriff Miller will be here to escort them off the property. He and I went to high school together. He doesn't have much patience for trespassers."
Jessica let out a choked sound of utter disbelief, turning on her heel and storming down the hallway toward the guest bedrooms, slamming the door so hard the framed black-and-white photos along the corridor rattled on their hooks.
Susan remained on the couch, her shoulders heaving, her eyes darting between David and the door as if waiting for someone to shout that it was all an elaborate joke.
"David..." she whimpered, reaching out a hand. "Thirty-eight years..."
"Thirty-eight years of maintenance," David said, his voice flat and final. "And today, the structure condemned itself."
May you like
He turned his back on her, holding Jacob's dripping painting flat in both hands, and led us toward the front door.
***
