Chapter 5 - The Premiere
Late September in Washington state brings out the gold and copper in the maple trees, painting the mountain passes in colors that no Hollywood studio could ever quite replicate with artificial lighting and digital paint.
We drove up to Lake Samish on a Saturday afternoon.
This time, there was no sneaking around, no flathead screwdrivers, and no angry neighbors waiting in the carport with golf vests and bad attitudes.
Donald Vance, our neighbor from the Cape Cod estate, had spent the last two months trying to avoid eye contact with us every time he saw our trucks in the driveway. Word had gotten around the lake community that the “crazy old man” wasn't demented at all—he was the father of the tech multi-millionaire who had just bought out half the shoreline and hired the best real estate litigators in the Pacific Northwest.
The lake house looked different now.
It wasn't empty anymore.
Through the massive glass walls, you could see warm leather sofas, low-slung oak coffee tables, a massive stacked-stone fireplace radiating a real, crackling fire, and a set of framed 35mm film prints hanging along the hallway walls—photographs I had taken back in the seventies on movie sets in Los Angeles.
Lorraine wasn't living here full-time—she had moved into a modest, two-bedroom townhouse near Madison’s school in Bellevue, working part-time as an administrative assistant while going through court-mandated counseling and community service. She hadn't gone to prison, thanks to Brennan’s legal team proving she had been coerced under financial duress, but the scars on our family were deep and real.
She visited on weekends now.
She didn't look at the lake with guilt anymore. She looked at it like someone who had survived a shipwreck and was finally learning how to swim.
On this particular afternoon, Brennan and I were standing out on the wide cedar deck overlooking the water, watching Madison skip flat stones across the silver-blue surface of the lake.
Skim. Skim. Skim. Sink.
“Four,” Madison shouted, turning around with a triumphant grin. “Grandpa, did you see that? Four skips!”
“I saw it, kiddo,” I called out, raising my coffee mug to her. “Personal best for the season.”
Brennan leaned against the cedar railing, folding his arms as he watched his niece chase a dragonfly along the dock. He was wearing his usual gray hoodie, though he had finally bought a new one after the old one got soaked during a rainstorm in Seattle.
“You know, Dad,” Brennan said quietly, “you still haven't officially moved in.”
I looked down at my boots, then out at the water where the sun was beginning to dip behind the evergreen ridges, turning the sky into a brilliant palette of bruised purple and burning gold.
“I like my apartment above the pharmacy, son,” I said. “The lady who runs the register gives me free donuts on Tuesdays, and I don't have to worry about cleaning three thousand square feet of glass.”
“You don't have to clean it,” Brennan said, nudging my shoulder with his. “I hired a housekeeping service. They come twice a week.”
“That’s what rich people say when they want to avoid sweeping,” I retorted.
Brennan laughed—a deep, easy sound that I hadn't heard nearly enough of over the last few years.
“Well,” he said, pointing a finger toward the front driveway where Lorraine’s modest blue sedan had just pulled up alongside my old Ford Ranger. “You might want to rethink that. Look who’s walking up the steps.”
I turned around.
Lorraine was walking up the stone pathway, carrying a large ceramic baking dish wrapped in a checkered kitchen towel. She wasn't wearing her heavy camel coat anymore. She wore a simple denim jacket, her blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders, and for the first time in two years, she wasn't walking like she was trying to avoid being seen.
She stopped at the edge of the deck, looking up at us with a tentative, hopeful smile.
“Pot roast again,” she announced, holding up the baking dish. “And before anyone makes a joke, I bought the beef with my own paycheck from the accounting firm.”
Brennan smiled. “Is it edible this time?”
“It’s better than edible,” Lorraine said, walking up the steps and giving her brother a quick, fierce hug before turning to me. “It’s a recipe I learned from a dad who taught me how to fix things when they broke.”
I looked at my daughter, then out at the wide, beautiful lake house that my son had bought with his love and my daughter had nearly destroyed with her fear.
The set was built.
The actors had stopped reading from the wrong script.
And for the first time in a very long time, the house didn't feel like a vault.
May you like
It felt like home.
“Well, what are you standing there for?” I said, turning toward the glass double doors that stood wide open to the evening breeze. “The candles are burning down. Bring the pot roast inside before it gets cold.”
