The Lake House
By: Matthew Donnellon
Tags: Relationships, Short Story, Life, Love, Fiction

The drive was long but pleasant.

It was a bit different this time though. Usually, we were traveling through a tunnel of green trees, but the extenuating circumstances meant no summer trip.

Now we wandering through the same forest, but it was filled with the grey skeletons of leafless tress.

The fog coming in helped ensure the late Autumn ambiance.

I pulled the car onto the old dirt road. It was hard from the cold snap, the gravel and mud mostly frozen in place.

I smiled when I saw the house. It was the same one I’d been going to all my life.

Luckily, back in the day my grandfather found this spot and bought the plots around it. The rest of the small lake was far too crowded, vacation houses stacked on top of each other.

I walked around the property. Everything seemed to be in order, all the windows were in tact. The roof looked good. There had been a couple break ins in the area, and lake houses were the perfect target.

But nothing seemed to be amiss. I returned to the car to help bring things inside.

She had surprised me by taking a half day off from work. I wasn’t planning on being up here until nightfall and now had an extra few hours to spend at the lake.

I thought the extra time would be spent splitting wood for the stove, but a neighbor left a neat pile on the side of the house. I made a mental note to send something over to say thanks.

After I got a small flame going in the fire place, we walked out to the dock. The water was smooth as glass. If it had been any colder I’d swear it was frozen.

“Wow,” she said.

“I know I’ve never seen it this calm. It looks like a picture.”

“Take your clothes off.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re jumping in.”

“You’re insane. You know how cold that water is?”

But she was entirely too convincing and next thing I knew we where jumping off the dock.

It might as well had been frozen.

I lost my breath all sense of being while I scrambled back to the shore.

I took our wet clothes and put them next to the fire place while stoking the flames.

“You’re a mad woman,” I said as we were both wrapped in blankets.

“Who me? Please I hardly felt it.”

“Sometimes I wonder about you.”

“Oh yeah what do you wonder?”

I just shook my head.

“I’m going to go get dressed again,” I said.

“Too bad I was enjoying the view.”

“You want to eat early? I’m starving.”

“Sounds good to me. Do you need help with dinner?”

“No I got it. Give me an hour or so.”

“I will be here with my book.”

After finally getting warm, I entered the kitchen. I’d been looking forward to this all day.

Well, to be fair, I spend most days looking forward to dinner. But this was particularly good. I figured we were at the lake house a little decadence couldn’t hurt.

First, a little prep.

I got a pot boiling water going and cut a bunch of haricot verts and set them aside.

Then I pulled out a stainless steel pan. I got some butter and olive oil heating up in the pan with a few minced cloves of garlic. Then I halved a bag of fingerling potatoes, placing them in the pan cut side done. I let them go for a bit just until the potatoes started to crisp, then I seasoned them with sea salt, fresh cracked pepper, and a bit of chili powder, before tossing them into the oven to finish cooking.

The final step of the meal were two mammoth ribeye’s I’d gotten from a specialty butcher. I brought my beloved cast iron pan from home. It was my grandmother’s. It’d been seasoning for over fifty years.

I got it screaming hot on the stove, rubbed the steaks with course sea salt, and placed them on the nearly red metal. They sizzled, and popped, and within a few minutes were nicely seared.

I repeated the process with the next side.

Once done I turned the heat down, and dropped a couple cubes of butter, a few cloves of garlic, and sprig of rosemary into the pan.

The butter liquified quickly and I tipped the pan towards me, letting the hot fat pool along the edge. I took spooned the hot butter and beef drippings over the steaks until they cooked through, wherein I placed them on a plate to rest, while I let the haricot vert steam.

Everything was done at the same time. I plated for the two of us, while she lit a candle.

“This smells absolutely divine,” she said.

“Tastes even better.”

We sat down, clinking wineglasses.

“To the chef,” she said.

Just then my phone started buzzing.

“Just let it go,” she said.

I pulled my phone out and saw who it was, I couldn’t help but answer.

“Sorry I had to work late,” she said, “Where are you? I can be ready to go in a few minutes.”

“I’m at the cabin.”

“You went without me?”

I nearly dropped the phone, because my wife was at home, and I now I was wondering who the woman was eating dinner with me.

The woman smiled and kept drinking her wine as my phone fell to the floor.