Silver Moonlight

Her lungs burned as they filled with the clear water of Lakona Lake. The surface was just beyond the reach of her fingertips. Something, or someone, was clinging to her legs, pulling her deeper and deeper, no matter how hard she kicked. She looked down, trying to press her billowing nightgown out of the way, to pull her mass of floating hair away from her eyes. Then she saw them. It was Dewey and Roy. They gripped her legs with hands of stone, their faces gray and eyes vacant.

Irene woke up screaming and clawing the air above her head. Her racing heart slowed as she sat up and looked around her familiar bedroom. Morning rays pierced the frost-laced windowpane, shining a cold light on her simple iron bed and small dresser.

The smell of frying bacon gradually overwhelmed the fading taste of lake water in her mouth, but the images of her older brother, Dewey, and her fiancé, Roy, lingered on. The two young men had been among the first American draftees to ship out to the war already raging in France. Dewey had been killed almost a year later, but on April 28, 1919, Roy had answered Irene’s prayers by stepping off the train, home safe with her in Adams, New Hampshire.

Roy had come home. Yet Irene’s dream revealed a bitter truth she could no longer deny. The vines of dread she felt dragging her down had taken root that very day on the train platform.

She had held back, letting Roy’s mother be the first to embrace him, his father to slap him on the shoulder before pulling out a handkerchief to dab his eyes. Roy hadn’t looked at Irene while he greeted his parents, but she had been patient, knowing they had the rest of their lives to be together.

When it was finally her turn, she had moved in with a smile that made her cheeks hurt. But the eyes that met hers were dark and empty; his smile forced. When she hugged Roy’s stiff shoulders and breathed in the mildewy scent of his wool service coat, she tamped her panic down with excuses. He was exhausted…disoriented…needed time to adjust. It was all true…but was not the whole truth.

Now, more than eight months later, she had to face it. The Roy she knew and loved had died in the war, and trying to rebuild a life with the empty shell that had taken his place was killing her, too.

There was a light rap on her door. “You all right in there?”

She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked out the window, blinking back tears. “Just a nightmare, Pa. I’m fine now.”

“Well…your breakfast’s gettin’ cold,” he replied after a moment.

Normally, she would have thrown on her dressing gown and boots to join him and her two teenage brothers for breakfast. It was her job to clean up once her father and the boys left to attend their many chores maintaining Twin Birch House through the winter. Built on the shores of Lakona Lake, the resort was one of the White Mountains’ smaller “grand hotels.” Nonetheless, Twin Birch House’s palatial main building and guest cottages, staff quarters, stables, farm, boat house and forty acres of grounds provided endless work for the year-round families, like hers, that lived on the property.

This morning, though, Irene needed to be alone, to build her resolve. She had to tell Roy she was leaving. I’ll do it today, come hell or high water, she promised herself.

Later that afternoon, she walked the three-mile path through the woods to the village on the other side of the lake. Listening to the crunch of her snowshoes cracking the delicate layer of ice on the surface of the deep snow, Irene thought back to the spring day when Roy had proposed, almost three years ago now. They’d set the wedding for Sunday, September 16th, she recalled. By then, the hotel’s summer guests would have returned to Boston, New York and Philadelphia, their families and armies of servants in tow, but the weather would still be fine.