I bake a dozen cupcakes and put them into a box, without icing. Then I get a half dozen piping bags and fill them with different colored frostings. I put everything into a bag and tell Jane to watch the place while I’m gone. I bet Margo would have a great time frosting these cupcakes, and it will give her something to do up on that mountain range.
I get behind the wheel and start my drive to the lake. I’m so nervous that I nearly turn around three different times, but I manage to push through it and complete the drive. He’s going to be so confused as to why I’m here, why I’m doing this. What will my excuse be? Even I don’t know.
I pull into the drive, and the house is just as beautiful as I remember it. The entire house is made up of gray stone and cedar. The front door is painted a dark-forest green, and there is welcome wreath hanging on the door. I frown at that as I ring the doorbell. He doesn’t seem like much of a home decorator. Maybe the previous owners left it.
The door opens, and Carson is standing on the other side. He’s holding a phone between his ear and his shoulder. He frowns when he sees me there, but he motions for me to step inside. I do as I’m asked and close the door behind me. The entry way is fairly plan, with nothing inside but a desk and the stairwell to the second story, but the walls and ceiling are made up of a beautiful oak. The floor beneath my feet is cold stone with a rug in the center. The light in the center of the room is a chandelier made up of twisted twigs and sticks, giving it a nice country feel.
“Right, I understand that, but—” he says into the phone, motioning for me to follow him deeper into the house.
He leads me into the living room where he sits on the couch and bends over the coffee table with a bunch of documents scattered across it. He starts talking on the phone much faster, reading off whatever the papers say.
I stand off to the side, trying to give him privacy but also taking in this room. The floors and the ceiling are the same as the entry way, but this room is much more comfortable. There are soft leather couches, oversized chairs, and a big coffee table in the middle of them all. There’s a dark fluffy rug in the center that I’m sure would feel like walking on clouds. A big TV is in the corner of the room, next to the stone fireplace, and there is a big set of double glass doors that lead out to the back property and the lake behind the house. I can see into the kitchen from here, and the same oak walls and floor follow the entire layout of the house, with floor to ceiling windows all along the back wall. It’s beautiful here.
I hear him drop the phone onto the table. “I’m sorry about that,” he says, pulling my attention back to him.
“Oh, that’s okay. It’s not you knew I was coming.”
He stands up and closes the distance.
“Anyway, I had some overstock on cupcakes today that hadn’t been iced yet. So I thought that Margo might enjoy icing them. Here’s a dozen of them and piping bags full of icing.” I hold them out.
He looks from me, to the bag, and back. “Oh, okay. Thanks,” he finally says, taking them from my hands. “She’s taking a nap right now, but I’ll let her know as soon as she wakes up.”
I smile and nod. “Okay. The place is beautiful, by the way.” I motion around the house and property.
“Thanks. I really do like it. It’s a lot different from Chicago.”
“Is that where you’re from?” I ask, pretending like I have no idea.
He nods. “Yeah. As you can imagine, living in a penthouse apartment is very different from here. I almost can’t sleep, it’s so quiet.”
I smile. “I remember those days,” I agree.
“Where are you from?”
“Oh, here and there. Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City. We moved around a lot.”
“What made you want the country life?” he asks, setting the box down on the table.
I shrug. “My life was kind of hectic growing up. My mom passed when I was young, and my dad was a drug addict. Nothing was ever stable. So when he passed, I thought about how my life was and how I wanted it to be. More than anything, I just wanted a home, something stable, and warm. So I moved here and worked at the bar until I saved up enough money to buy a place. Then I opened the bakery a little while later.”
“Wow, I never would have expected that,” he says, falling back onto the couch.
“Why not?” I ask around a smile. I almost feel like I’m standing in front of the class, giving a speech I’m not prepared for. I feel nervous under his gaze.
He shrugs. “I don’t know, you just seem so…normal. You seem to fit in here like you were born and raised here. You don’t seem like an outsider like me.”
I offer him a smile. “It’ll come. Just be patient. I was like you for a long time. People were so curious about me, where I came from, why I was here, what my life story was. But it goes away… eventually.” I laugh and he lets out a chuckle himself.
I don’t sit down because he doesn’t ask me to, so I stand, just hovering and feeling awkward. “Well, I guess I’ll take off.” I pull my eyes from his and look toward the door.
“Would you like a drink?”
I turn back to face him, surprised. “Oh, I…”
“If you need to go, please don’t let me keep you. I’m just”—he shrugs—“really bored and in need of adult interaction.”
I smile. “Of course. I can stay for one.”
I follow him into the kitchen, and he takes two beers out of the fridge. He turns to look at me. “Beer okay?”
“Sure,” I agree.
He uses the bottle opener to remove the cap, then hands it over. I take a sip, following along behind him out onto the back patio that overlooks the lake. We each sit in a wooden patio chair, and I have another nervous drink as I take in the sight of the lake before me.
“It’s beautiful out here,” I say, mostly to myself.
“It really is. I saw this place online and bought it instantly. I figured that even if the house was shit, I could tear it down and build something better. But there was nothing that compared to this lake.”
“So, what did you do in Chicago?” I ask, wanting to confirm the rumors.
“I practiced law.”
“Wow, a lawyer?”
He smiles and nods. “Yeah. It was a good job, but it kept me working over forty hours a week, and I was missing a lot of time with Margo. It was like, in the blink of an eye, she went from being a little baby to two years old. I realized how precious life is, and I was missing hers. Suddenly, working wasn’t important. Life was. Being here, being present.”
I listen intently as he talks, and I can’t help but to agree. “You’re very lucky you have her. She’s so sweet.”
When I say that, I see the corners of his mouth turn down slightly, but he wipes it away completely. “What about you? You married, have children?”
“No and no. I’ve always dreamed about it, though, finding the one perfect person who will change my whole outlook on life. Having children and watching them grow. Growing up, my family wasn’t very traditional, so of course, that’s all I want.”
“The classic happily ever after,” he breathes out.
I laugh. “I guess so.”
There’s a long drawn out minute as we both look out over the lake. “So, what do you plan on doing here? I mean, are you going to open your own law office, or do you plan on not working for a while?”