Lost Lake (12 page)

“I can see that.” Kate smiled, looking to where he’d just driven away.

But she understood now—the change in him. The change in them both.

Neither one of them was the same after that summer.

*   *   *

After Devin had gone to sleep that evening, Kate took her phone and walked outside. She couldn’t put this off any longer. She had to call her mother-in-law. Kate hadn’t answered any of her calls or texts since they’d arrived yesterday.

She walked down the steps of the stoop. The lights were out in Bulahdeen’s cabin. Jack’s cabin was also dark. But Selma was apparently still awake. As Kate walked past, she heard music coming from inside, something jazzy and seductive. Billie Holiday maybe. She picked up her pace, disturbing the low-lying fog in puffs and swirls. She hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. Lost Lake had a different feel to it this deep into the night. There was more mystery, and it was easier to believe in things you couldn’t see. She and Wes had spent a lot of time out here in the dark.

She walked down to the dock where, just hours earlier, she’d come face-to-face again with the person responsible for her best memories here. She smiled as she looked out over the lake. The fog was moving and curling over the water, creating shapes. It made her think of the story of the ghost ladies she had made up. Ursula, Magdalene, and Betty—those had been their names. Remembering that made her look behind her, as if expecting Wes to be there.

Muscle memory again. She shook her head, then turned on her phone. There had been two more texts since she’d last checked a few hours ago. Another from Cricket and one from Kent Harwood. Kent and his husband, Sterling, bought Pheris Wheels from Kate after Matt died. They had been two of Matt’s best customers. Kent’s text read:

We saw the commercial today! It was nice to see Matt. And you and Devin look great. Come by and see us sometime!

She had no idea what that meant. She’d call Kent later. Right now, she needed to get this over with.

In two rings, Cricket picked up and said, “It’s about time, Kate! I cannot tell you the trouble you’ve caused me. Are you on your way back, or do I have to come get you?”

She’d been anticipating worry. Cricket’s anger caught her off guard. “Trouble?” Kate asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I had a film crew waiting for you when you were supposed to move in! Didn’t you read my note?”

“No, I didn’t read your note,” Kate said, frowning. “Why would a film crew be there?”

“Because we’re filming new Pheris Realty commercials. The first one aired today.”

Kate went silent. She lowered herself to sit on one of the squared-off pylons.

“That was part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I told you I had big plans to discuss with you later, and you
leave
? Who does that?”

Who does that?
Kate thought. Someone who doesn’t want to be a part of Cricket’s big plans, that’s who does that.

“I’ve finally decided to throw my hat into the ring. I’m running for Congress. My team decided a few months ago that a series of new real estate commercials would be the perfect way to reintroduce me to the public, only this time with you and Devin “Moving On” with me. I received a lot of condolences after Matt died from people who were fans of the old commercials. They wanted to know what happened to him. What his life turned out like. This will show them. It will be a nice tribute to him. It will make a lot of people remember him—and me.” Silence. “Kate?”

It still amazed Kate that when Cricket did talk of Matt, she did it so plainly. Her grief wasn’t fresh. Cricket had mourned Matt a long time ago, when she’d lost him to Kate. It was the reason why, a few months after his death, Cricket had been so matter-of-fact about getting rid of all of Matt’s clothes. Kate had let her; at one point she’d even tried to help, stopping sometimes to tell Cricket a story behind a shirt or a pair of shoes. Cricket hadn’t liked that and had told Kate that she could handle this on her own. Kate had seen it then, just briefly, Cricket’s jealously that Kate knew more about her son’s life than she did. Kate had saved only one item of Matt’s clothing from Cricket’s purge, that T-shirt with the moth on it, hidden in a sewing bag somewhere among her things back in Atlanta.

“That’s what this past year has been about? Getting you ready to run for Congress?” Kate finally said. She couldn’t fully wrap her mind around it. She’d always known Cricket was unreadable, but she never imagined that
this
was what she’d been hiding.

“Of course not. It’s been about getting you and Devin through this difficult time,” Cricket said, sounding just like she did in her commercials.

“But you’ve known about this for months? Why didn’t you say anything? I’ve gone along with
everything
you wanted me to do for the past year, Cricket. Why did you still feel the need to blindside me with this?”

Cricket made a sound of disbelief. “Selling your house for, frankly, more than it was worth, putting your daughter in private school, letting you move in with me, giving you a job—these are things you just
went along with
?”

“I didn’t want any of it,” Kate said loudly, and the ghost ladies on the lake seemed to turn to her. “And I don’t want to be a part of this either, Cricket. Matt wouldn’t think of new commercials as a nice tribute to him. He would hate them. He would never want Devin to be in them. Did you give any thought to that?”

“Do you really want to go there, Kate?” She said it so easily, like she’d been practicing taking this sword out of its sheath in one long smooth movement. “You and I both know that what’s best for your daughter has not always been your primary concern.”

And there it was, the thing Kate had feared most. Cricket brought up the incident with the scissors. Kate had been waiting for this for a while. And now that it was out in the open, now that it had been acknowledged, it felt so far away, like something she’d done a lifetime ago. Why had she been so afraid of this? Why had she been so afraid to acknowledge her grief? Just because Cricket had bottled it inside, waiting to air it on TV, didn’t mean Kate had to.

“I can’t believe I was starting to feel guilty about not calling you, because I thought you might be genuinely worried about us.”

“Well, Kate, of course I was,” Cricket said, trying to make her voice go soft.

“My great-aunt is selling Lost Lake, and she needs my help sorting everything out this summer. I’ll let you know when Devin and I will be returning. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”

Kate hung up the phone. Cricket immediately called her back. She ignored the call and connected to the Internet and searched for this new Pheris Realty commercial. She found it easily.

It was thirty seconds of Cricket talking about her real estate company, with flashbacks to the old commercials featuring Matt. Kate had forgotten just how lost he’d looked back then. It made her want to save him all over again. At the end of the commercial, Cricket was standing outside Kate’s mother’s house, beside her real estate sign with the
SOLD
placard on top of it. “After my son died in a tragic accident last year, my daughter-in-law and granddaughter needed me to sell their home and help them on their new journey in life, which I did.” She held up a framed photo of Kate and Devin, one she’d obviously taken from Kate’s album. Kate was smiling, holding Devin, with the sun behind them. Matt had taken that photo a year and a half ago, at a bike race their shop had sponsored. “Pheris Reality—” Cricket said as the commercial closed, “we still know about moving on.” Then there were the words
To be continued
.

Kate put her hand over her eyes and let out a sob. For a few moments, her chest heaved and tears ran out from under her fingers. Why she’d fallen in love with Matt, how much she had tried to help him, how much she had wanted to make him happy—it all came rushing back to her. The reason she’d worked so hard and committed so much to a life she didn’t even want was because of that boy on TV. She’d wanted him to finally have that place where he belonged. And she found herself crying as much for herself as for him, because she knew—knew with all her heart—that as much as she had loved Matt and had wanted the world for him, he had never truly felt the same way about her. She had spent seven years married to a man who hadn’t cared for her nearly as much as she’d cared for him. And she’d begun to resent it.

The phone started ringing again. Cricket. Kate was so angry and full of grief at that moment that, without thinking, she hauled back and threw the ringing phone into the lake, where it landed somewhere near the ghost ladies with a soft
plop.

She stood there, stunned. She couldn’t believe she just did that.

She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes. They were going to have to go back to Atlanta. She knew that. That was their home. And she was going to have to face Cricket. But she was not going to be in any commercials. She was not going to support Cricket’s burgeoning political career. Cricket had spent so much time behind the scenes in politics that it had never occurred to Kate that she would ever step in front of the camera, though it made perfect sense. Kate didn’t know why she was so surprised. She had money, looked great on TV, came across as sympathetic but had firm opinions, and she had hair that didn’t move. She had wanted Matt to go into politics, but now that he was gone, Kate figured Cricket had decided she was just going to have to do it herself. Matt had told Kate once that Cricket had made him run for class president and major in political science because she’d been prepping him for something big. He’d said it in an
I showed her, didn’t I?
kind of way, something that always made Kate think that his life with her was just a way of getting back at his mother.

But Kate was tired of sacrificing her happiness for someone else’s dreams. She’d done it for her mother when she was a teenager, and she’d done it for Matt. She’d done it all willingly, but never again. For the past year, she’d been scared that she couldn’t actually live her own life, that she was someone who was inherently incapable of it. She was scared of being a bad parent. Scared of being alone. Scared to
grieve
. Not anymore.

This, she thought, was where her real life was going to start. She didn’t know where it was going, but it was going to
start
here, where she used to know herself so well, where no one else’s rules made sense but her own.

She looked at the water and sighed.

Apparently, her new life was going to start without a phone.

7

The next morning, Devin
woke up early. She didn’t know where she was, and she sat up quickly. But then it came to her. The cabin. Lost Lake. Her eyes went slowly around the room. It reminded her of a hut, the kind a banished princess would live in, hiding from a wicked witch. She liked the thought of being banished. That way, she’d never have to go back. The bed was old and white, with a scene from the lake painted on it. The dresser was fat and round and had glass knobs that looked like cloudy diamonds. The wallpaper was peeling, and she got a splinter in her foot from the uneven floorboards last night, but all in all she couldn’t have dreamed of any place better.

Her dad wouldn’t have liked it here. But her dad wouldn’t have liked moving into Grandma Cricket’s, either. Her dad had only really liked his bike shop, and Devin didn’t like it there. She missed him, but not the way her mom seemed to miss him. She wondered if her mom missed him because she didn’t remember him. Devin remembered him very clearly. She would test herself every once in a while and, yes, she could still recall everything about him, right down to the way he smelled, a sharp combination of soap, summer sweat, and tire rubber. She had a fanny pack that had belonged to him, and inside she kept a photo of him and a Paracord bracelet he used to wear all the time, which she’d sneaked out of her parents’ room the day Grandma Cricket decided to clear all of her dad’s clothes out of the house. She kept it around in case she ever needed it, in case she started forgetting.

Everything was quiet. Her mom obviously wasn’t up yet. She threw the covers off and walked to the window in her bedroom. She pulled and straightened her Wonder Woman T-shirt and her pajama shorts with the strawberry pattern on them, which had gotten uncomfortably twisted in her sleep. She stopped at the window and looked out, yawning. Bright mist from the lake was threading through the spaces between the cabins and lying low over the lawn in front of the main house.

A tang of barbecue charcoal was in the air, left over from where they’d cooked on the grills last night, and it made her hungry. She turned to go to the kitchen, to see if food had magically appeared like it had when she’d woken up yesterday. She’d liked those fruit tarts, which she’d never had for breakfast before.

But something caught her eye outside the window, and she stopped.

There, walking down the path toward the lawn, was an
alligator
.

It was huge and green-black and walked in a slow, swishing motion. Its wide, stiff tail left a trail in the dew. It was the most beautiful thing she thought she’d ever seen. She watched it walk all the way to the lawn, then it stopped. Minutes, hours, days passed. What was it doing?

It slowly turned its long bumpy head, teeth baring slightly, and looked back at her.

Follow me.

She sucked in her breath. It turned and ambled left, toward the lake, then out of sight.

Devin ran out of her room and into her mother’s. “Mom!”

Kate’s head was covered with a pillow. “Hmm?”

“Mom!”

When her mother didn’t answer, Devin couldn’t wait. She ran out of the bedroom, then out of the cabin, leaving the door wide open. She darted barefoot down the path, exhilarated. She turned when she got to the lawn and ran down to the lake. Her feet pounded on the new boards Wes had laid down as she ran all the way to the end of the dock. Her breathing was heavy, and it sounded loud over the water. She looked around, turning in circles, trying to find it. The lake had no beach; the water simply butted up against the ground, forming a muddy ledge.