The Recluse

The early morning mist was just dissipating in the hollows, thinning and evaporating, reminiscent of some long forgotten spirits of the night, ethereal beings loosing their tentative hold on reality in the face of the rising sun and its warm embrace of another golden day. Still, the pond held that mystical and fascinating covering in a breathless dawn, its blanket of rising mist several feet thick as heat was transferred from its surface into the cool air of a mountain morning. Soon enough the searching rays of another August day would pierce this tranquil scene and my little lake would roll up its downy blanket once again, revealing the sparkling surface of its daytime charm.

Another grateful sip of my morning nectar, hazelnut coffee infused with heavy cream and just a touch of Kahlua, and I really should head back inside where there was a bed that needed making and a shower I should be standing in, washing away the detritus of another welcomed night of solitude. If I got my morning chores out of the way perhaps there would be time for a kayak ride around the lake this morning, or, if I started early enough to beat the worst of what was going to be another hot afternoon, a good hike across the ridges that made up my "backyard". That moniker caused me to lean back once more and immerse myself in the meandering history that had brought me to this moment.

Grandpa Willis had always called this quiet and secluded acreage his backyard, and although over time I had expanded it significantly, thus it remained in my lexicon. When I inherited the place, just two years after my disastrous divorce, it had consisted of about one hundred acres of untamed countryside. A small valley at the south extremity of the property bordered on the pond, what most folks would call a small finger lake, about three-quarters of a mile long and, at the west and widest end, perhaps slightly over a quarter mile across. Fortunately, there was no road into the lake and the few people that knew of its existence never really bothered with it much. It was hard to get to and had no natural beaches or easy landing sites. Just fifty yards north of the pond, on a significant ridge with a view for several pristine miles, sat the cottage and the veranda that now occupied both my lethargic body and my wandering mind.

Well, calling my rambling log behemoth of a dwelling a cottage might no longer be an accurate description of my home, work place, and refuge from the world. In its current form, at just over five thousand square feet, with four bedrooms, a library, a study, a two storey great room, and an attached three car garage it hardly looked like a cabin in the woods. It had certainly started its life as a cottage when Grandpa Jerome Willis built it in the early 1970's, but that original cabin of just under a thousand square feet was now my kitchen and dining room. Grandpa Jerome wouldn't recognize it anymore, but it was now my refuge, as it had been his refuge, too. We still had that in common, among other things, like ex-wives.

It had been the place he had gone to heal and hide after returning from that disastrous war in Southeast Asia, to find his wife, Carla, living in their home with his former best friend. My own father had already left home by that time, and was, as he later bemoaned, so full of himself and his life in university, that he mostly ignored the drama unfolding in his parent's lives. Grandpa Jerome had been a career military man and too often an absent father and husband to build the kind of rock solid marriage he had envisioned. Loosing his wife of nearly thirty years, and realizing that he had virtually no relationship with his two grown children had embittered him to the point that he resigned his commission, walked away from everything that he knew, bought this property, and ensconced himself here to find what peace and equanimity he could muster in the midst of his disappointment and regret. By the time I came along, some ten years later, dad and grandpa had patched up their relationship, unlike dad's older sister, my Aunt Caroline, who always blamed grandpa for the failure of her parents' marriage. I think she even felt he was somehow responsible for the failure of her own two marriages, because she couldn't deal with having a husband constantly underfoot and interfering with her well laid plans. Aunt Caroline, now retired and living in Baltimore, was a Christmas card kind of relative. We had never been close when I was growing up, and the closer I got to Grandpa Jerome the more distant she got. That was ok with me, although in hindsight I think it bothered my dad quite a lot. Dad tried hard to stay in touch with his mother and her second husband, Felix, but their home was never as comfortable a place for him as it was for Aunt Caroline.

As dad and grandpa got closer, I became the beneficiary, and beginning as a young lad I got to spend several weeks each summer in these remarkable hills and valleys, getting to know and love that grumpy old man who slowly, and at great risk, opened himself up to me and taught me to love this land as he did. Over the next twenty-five odd years Grandpa Jerome and I became more than relatives, more than mentor and acolyte, we became fast friends, remaining so until he passed away in his sleep.

My mom, Pamela Foster, is a city girl, born and bred and she has never taken to this place, nor did my older brother, Karl, who thought it a dump, but dad would bring me out, sometimes spending a day or two with his father before dropping me off with grandpa and heading back to the city and the construction and land development company he ran with my mom's brother, Uncle George. I sometimes wonder if the deep respect and friendship between dad and George, begun while they were both at university, wasn't the real catalyst for mom and dad's subsequent marriage. The two men were like peas in a pod and their partnership seemed to sometimes overshadow the partnership of my parents. I don't mean that to imply that my folks didn't have a great marriage, I think they did, but I think mom has always known that George and dad were just special together. It also made their business relationship special and they became very successful. My brother Karl and my cousin Andrew now run the business on a day to day basis, while Uncle George stays around as board chairman, my father having passed away from a heart attack while on the golf course with Uncle George, some six years ago. Mom still lives in their sprawling home in Fairfax, Virginia, only one cul-de-sac apart from Uncle George and Aunt Anna. Karl and his wife Estelle live about ten miles away from mom and see her regularly. I drop in when I can, but it is never often enough to suit her, and is, unfortunately, too often to suit me because I get tired of her constant need to fix my life. Don't get me wrong here, I love my mom, she is a great person, but she can't wrap her head around the fact that I like my solitude. I know that she sees me as a reincarnation of Grandpa Jerome, hiding out from the world in bitter isolation. Maybe she's not all wrong, but I am comfortable in my own skin now, and I really don't feel that bitter anymore.

Well, that is the family background in a nutshell. Oh, except for Jessica, I guess. I met Jess in collage during my junior year. Typical story I suppose, and after dating for two years and thinking we were comfortable with one another, we were married in the spring of 1997. A year later the drinking started. By the fall of 1999, the cracks in our marriage were becoming endemic and began to resemble an emotional Grand Canyon. Nothing I did was good enough for her. There was always one more thing she had to have, one more event that we simply couldn't miss, and the long hours I worked in the business drove her crazy with jealousy. Looking back now, I admit I was pretty driven trying to match up to my brother, and I expected a lot from her. I wanted the emotional and physical support of a mature wife, and didn't recognize that she was perhaps unable, more than just unwilling, to provide what I needed. I tried to give her what I thought she needed, but I found I couldn't give her what she wanted, my undivided attention and an almost fawning devotion to her aspirations of "the life". As her disappointments mounted her drinking grew more and more pronounced. We really were probably never suited to one another, but like so many young idealistic couples we supposed we could overcome most anything and I guess we both thought we could change a few things in each other. I am, at heart, an introvert. I need relatively few people in my life, but those people are vitally important. Jessica is a people person, she loves the hubbub of social activities, the more people around the better. I couldn't understand why I wasn't enough for her and she began to see me as a stick in the mud, holding her back from a fulfilling life. Our early closeness began to be replaced by mutual indifference. Jessica started to go out partying with out me, which hurt. But the day I came home to finding her in our bed with her new doctor, who was vitally interested in doing complex and in depth physicals as house calls broke the last tenuous cords holding our increasingly acrimonious partnership together. Fortunately, we had put off any discussion of children, so we were at least spared the trauma of splitting a family.

Jessica, in her new incarnation as the devoted mistress to her gynaecologist boyfriend became a total shrew. They figured to take me to the cleaners financially and he helped her hire a lawyer who promised her the world. That's where the ugliness really escalated. While I was involved in the family business at the time, all the assets were still held by Dad and Uncle George in twin family trusts that her skunk of a lawyer couldn't break. Even the fancy condo we lived in was owned by the corporation. The more disappointing her financial outlook became, the more she piled on half truths and then finally outright lies to attack me with, culminating in her swearing out a complaint against me for spousal abuse, which earned me a restraining order keeping me five hundred feet from my home and any place she chose to be. By the time I managed to get it lifted she had cleaned out the condo and trashed what was left. Fortunately, that did not sit well with the court in the final reckoning, much to her chagrin. Still, she got more or less everything she could, including the new Jaguar I had bought her for that last Christmas, our meagre savings, and about fifty thousand dollars in furniture and jewelry. By then, I didn't care. I wish I could say that she had ripped my heart out, but in truth I was just exhausted after the last year and a half of constant drama, and I just wanted the pain to be over with. While my heart may not have been shattered at that point, my self confidence certainly was, and my parents' approbation over my dissolved marriage didn't remedy my feelings of failure and impotence. Karl was already raising kids and proving himself an unquestioned asset to the company as a brilliant land developer, and I was the second son, divorced at twenty-five, and seemingly unfocused on the future.

A full year later I was recovering my equilibrium and my self confidence, and with it I came to the realization that I didn't belong in the company on a regular managerial basis. I had a long conversation with Dad and Uncle George and it was decided I'd take a two year leave of absence from the company to pursue my dream of creative writing. Between Karl and Andrew there was enough depth of family management to secure an orderly transition in the corporation anyway, and they both loved the business, which I didn't. I agreed to stay on as a member of the board, securing me a comfortable income until the family trust would kick in on my thirtieth birthday, which would make me quite independently wealthy.

Karl thought my decision smacked of hubris and juvenile dreaming, and he let me know that in his impeccable perception I was the one that had screwed up my marriage to a woman I didn't deserve. Furthermore, he made it clear that he was relieved I would not continue to be a drag on Willis & Foster, our family business. So much for familial support, I guess. The dressing down he gave me left a rift between us that has never fully healed.

Wanting to get away from the city and the bad memories and failed relationships propelled me back to Grandpa Jerome's cottage and his unequivocal acceptance of me, failures and all. I think my divorce in some ways sealed the bond between us. We had both failed as husbands and we were both happiest in our closed off little world where we had less to explain and fewer expectations to meet. With Grandpa Jerome's endless encouragement and tireless companionship I began to write. What no one expected, including me, was that my writing would become successful. In fact, initially due to my lasting friendship with a collage girlfriend who landed on her feet in the publishing business, I got my first book published and it was surprisingly well received. That led to a multi-book deal with my publishers in 2004, allowing me to turn my leave of absence from Willis & Foster into a permanent resignation, although I still retain my seat on the board, forcing me to drive into the city every other month. In the next three years I managed to write two best sellers and began to develop a reputation in the field of romantic suspense novelists. Now, my biggest challenge is not to be trapped in the success of my early writing, following what had worked so well and becoming, in effect, a formula writer. My latest novel, therefore, had disappointed some of my readers, but I felt it was my best work, and I had the financial independence as well as the recognition now to do what I wanted regardless of my sometime less than adoring public.

I lived in that cottage with Grandpa for the three years after leaving the city behind. During that time we drew up plans and began the process of renovations that continued long after that last year when I was finally forced to move him into a nursing home where he spent his last ten months, suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes, and increasing dementia. He had made it clear that when he was gone the property would be mine, as the only living relative that had ever cared about it. Karl's only thoughts on the property were what might be earned from developing it, which drove Grandpa crazy! While we lived together I began quietly buying up land surrounding the acreage and by the time I laid Grandpa's ashes to rest under a great old oak tree, the hundred acres had ballooned into nearly a thousand. I now owned all the land around the lake and a goodly buffer beyond it. The fact that it drove Karl to distraction imagining all the potential profit to be made by developing the lake front property gave me a great deal of satisfaction, which unfortunately annoyed my mom to no end. She really thought her kids should get along and, I suppose because Karl was the oldest, therefore, by default, the wisest, and because of course he spent much more time with her than I did, she generally thought I was being selfish and obstructionist, just like Grandpa had been.

Shortly after Grandpa Jerome passed I quietly celebrated my thirtieth birthday with just my parents, and received my trust fund of W&F stock and about three million in US Treasury bonds. The dividends from my stock portfolio combined with my book royalties gave me an income I would never be able to spend, unless I tried very very hard. I sometimes wished it mattered more, but beyond a certain threshold of creature comforts, a nice house to hide in, good food, good whisky, and an occasional cigar, my needs were really not that extravagant. Not much point in excess wealth if you have no one to share it with. They say the best revenge is living well, and after the divorce I thought I would do just that, but in truth, I wasn't, but I was living safely. I just had no enthusiasm for the vulnerability involved in risking any close relationship, even with my mother. Therefore, I dwelt in my magnificent hilltop home in relative isolation, with a literal forest as a buffer from the seemingly constant disappointments I had piled up in my marriage, my brief foray in business, and my relationship with my own family. My writing kept me focused on the alternative reality I had created through my characters, keeping my growing ambivalence about my own life at bay.

I've always thought that the reason my books were as successful as they have proven to be is because I poured so much of myself into them, looking for an alternate world where I felt safe and successful, feelings that eluded me in the real world. Maybe others subconsciously recognized the illusions I created and could wrap themselves in the cocoon of escapism as well. Lately I found myself hoping that my readers were more successful at it than I seemed to be.

Looking up from my reveries I realized the mist was gone from the lake, the dregs of my coffee was cold, and I had a crick in my back! Time to get busy before another day became a footnote to indecision and ennui. A half finished book in my laptop beckoned me, although not with any degree of urgency. If I didn't make the bed it would save time unmaking it tonight, although I hate getting onto a wrinkled bed, and if I postponed my shower until after my hike I would save one because I knew I'd need another after climbing through the hills for several hours. Chores postponed were chores avoided!

Fifteen minutes later I was off, my old worn hiking boots as comfortable as a second skin, my walking stick gripped comfortably in hand, and my light backpack over my shoulders carrying bottled water, a towel, two sandwiches, and one Romeo & Juliet cigar, which constituted my tobacco ration for the week. I decided that a circumnavigation of my lake would be a fine and manageable goal for the morning, a hike of about three miles of moderate terrain and providing me with an ideal locale for my indulgence. The rock ledge at the far end of the lake, jutting as it did out over the water, would give me a prime spot to enjoy the guilty pleasure of my cigar. The only thing that could improve that anticipation would have been an accompanying glass of Speyside Scotch, but alcohol and rough terrain were not a match made in heaven, especially for a man nearing forty years of age, so it would have to be one indiscretion at a time.

It took just under an hour of steady plodding up and down the two and one-half miles of winding trail to reach my goal at the east end of the pond, although it was barely three quarters of a mile as the crow flies. While mostly hidden from the direct rays of the mid morning sun, I was still damp with perspiration by the time I settled on my rock ledge. Glancing out over the vista I knew by heart I nevertheless swelled with some pride at the distant sight of my timber frame home, presiding as it did as a warm and inspiring presence over the otherwise natural rugged harshness of this pristine landscape. Grandpa Jerome would have smiled at my pretension, but he would have done so in good humour and with undying empathy.

Lost again in my thoughts and memories I was startled and somewhat disconcerted to hear a discordant choir of female voices, not, in my first subconscious impression, unlike a flock of magpies, bearing down on me. As they drew nearer it became evident that they were following an old path that lead up from the land of my nearest neighbour, Bill Howell. I had purchased several hundred acres from Bill over the past dozen years, land that had abutted this very end of the lake. I still saw Bill several time a year, although it had been at least six months since our last visit. He was getting on in years, a contemporary perhaps of my father.