Lost Lake (11 page)

“Maybe he’s doing it for the party,” Bulahdeen said from her seat at a picnic table. Devin was sitting beside her. Jack had quietly joined them and was showing Devin a coin trick. “I invited him.”

“Did you?” Selma asked, walking by. “Maybe I’ll come after all, now that men are going to be there. Do you dance, Jack?” She trailed her fingertips along his shoulders as she passed.

“No,” he said, slipping out from under her hand.

Kate asked Eby, “Are you talking about the man who was in the house earlier today? The one in the yellow shirt?”

“Yes.”

“He looked familiar,” Kate said.

That made Eby laugh. “He should. The two of you were as thick as thieves that summer you were here.”

That made Kate jerk her head around, her eyes going to the dock. “That’s him?”

“You know, Wes asked me for your address after you and your family left. I think he missed you.” Eby took the ear of corn out of Kate’s hands. “Why don’t you go ask him if he wants to stay for dinner.”

Kate nodded and wiped her palms on the sides of her dress. Did that seem too eager? She walked across the lawn to the dock. He was about halfway down, on his knees, hammering nails into a new pale board. He hadn’t fixed just some of the boards. He’d replaced nearly all of them.

A memory hit her suddenly. The last time she’d seen him was right here. They’d been sitting on the end of the dock with their feet in the water. Something had been changing between them, something that only the passage of time had made clear. From almost the very beginning, she’d known Wes had liked her, liked her in that way boys like girls. She hadn’t really minded, as long as it hadn’t interfered with their adventures. But slowly, as the days had passed, she’d begun to feel something like a summer fever coming over her, a sickness. It had emanated from somewhere near her trembling belly and had evaporated hotly from her skin whenever he was near. Sitting there on the dock that afternoon, Wes had shifted slightly and his bare leg had accidentally touched hers. It had taken her breath.
What is this?
she remembered thinking, almost panicked.
What has changed?
She’d tried to keep it from him, this affliction, because she’d wanted things to stay as they were. She’d been having so much fun. Completely oblivious, Wes had turned to her to ask a question, but then he’d stopped, looking at her curiously as she’d held her breath and stared at him, at the glints of red in his hair, at the scar above his right eyebrow, at his eyelashes, so light they were almost blond.

He’d known then. He’d seen the change, that this strange sickness had taken her too. And he’d looked so
relieved,
like the way he’d looked the first time he’d set eyes on her, reading on the dock. It was as if, finally, he could share all that he’d been keeping inside. Finally, someone understood.

His eyes had gone to her lips.
What does that mean,
she’d thought.
What is he going to do? Why has all the air left my lungs?

He’d slowly leaned his head in toward hers.

And that’s when her mother had called her from the lawn, startling them both and making them jump away from each other. Kate had gotten up and told him she’d be right back. She hadn’t known at the time that her mother had packed all of their things and that they were leaving.

She’d never seen that boy again.

He was a big man now, broad shouldered and long limbed. She smiled, thinking of how fast he’d been growing that summer when they were twelve. He’d been gangly with arms and legs that seemed to stretch second by second, as if he were made of putty.

“Excuse me,” Kate said as she approached. He didn’t hear her. “Excuse me!” she said, louder. No response.

She stopped a few feet away from him.

“Wes!” she yelled.

He finally stopped and craned his neck around to look at her with blue eyes that were so achingly familiar, now that she felt something unknotting in her chest. It really was him. His hair was a russet shade, like an autumn leaf, and it was stuck to his forehead with sweat. His color was high, with vivid pink slashes of exertion on his cheeks. His presence was just so vital, so
centered
. She wasn’t expecting that. She remembered him being the Sancho Panza to her Don Quixote that summer. He’d gone along with everything she’d wanted to do. He’d happily let her take the lead and stayed in her shadow.

He smiled when he saw her, then he put down his hammer. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

He stared at her, brows raised, until she realized he was waiting for her to speak. “Oh,” she finally said. “Eby wants to know if you’d like to join us for dinner.”

“Sorry, I can’t. Not tonight. I didn’t know it had gotten so late.” He lifted his face to the sky. The setting sun in the distance resembled a bright orange ember, as if a candle had just been blown out. “What time is it?”

Kate took her phone out of her pocket. She turned it on to see the time, and as soon as she did, she saw all the missed texts and voice mails from Cricket. There were dozens of them. She was going to have to call her back soon.

“It’s almost eight,” she said, returning the phone to her pocket.

“Thanks.”

He started to turn, but she stopped him by suddenly thrusting out her hand and saying, “Hi, I’m Kate. You probably don’t remember me.”

He stood. His hand was large and calloused, folding around hers like wrapping paper. “I know who you are,” he said, nicely but blandly. Milk and white rice. She knew that tone very well, that politeness ferociously guarding something else. Her mother-in-law was an expert at it. “I sent you a letter, years ago. Did you get it?”

“Eby just told me that you’d asked for my address. It never came.” She paused. “Or, at least, I never received it. My mother might have hidden it from me.”

He gave her a strange look. “Why would she do that?”

“She and Eby had some sort of argument that summer. That’s why we left so suddenly. I just found a postcard Eby wrote me years ago that my mother kept from me. When I get back home, I’ll look for your letter. I wish I had known. I had a great time here with you.”

“If you find it, just throw it away.”

“Why?” Kate asked, surprised. “What did it say?”

He shook his head. “It’s been a long time.”

He had come into his own with a confidence and presence that he hadn’t had before. But he’d lost something, too. She wasn’t quite sure what it was. Maybe, like her, he’d changed too much, left too much behind.

“Mom!” Devin called, running toward them. Her cowboy boots clunked on the dock boards as she approached. Kate didn’t have a quiet child. Devin could make noise in a room made of cotton. “Bulahdeen said to tell Wes that there’s cocktails if he’ll stay. Is that a bird?”

“Cocktails are grown-up drinks. Cockatiels are birds.” Kate put her arm around Devin’s shoulders. “Wes, this is my daughter, Devin. Devin, this is Wes. I met him the summer I came here when I was twelve. We were good friends.”

“Wes,” Devin asked breathlessly, her eyes wide, “have you ever seen any alligators here?”

He smiled. “No. Sorry.”

“Devin is newly interested in alligators,” Kate explained.

“When my brother was about your age, he was obsessed with alligators,” Wes told Devin. “He even called himself Alligator Boy, and he wouldn’t answer to anything else. He was determined to turn into an alligator when he grew up. He had it all planned out. One day he would wake up with a tail. The next day his alligator teeth would come in. This would go on for days until he was finally a whole alligator and no one, especially our father, would recognize him.”

Alligator Boy
. Kate had almost forgotten about him. He had tagged along wherever they went but rarely said anything. It had been easy to forget he was even there. “Billy,” she said, suddenly remembering. “His name was Billy.”

“Yes. And you were the one who made up the story about him turning into an alligator,” Wes said. “He loved that.”

“Did he really turn into an alligator?” Devin asked, her voice quiet with awe.

“No. He passed away a long time ago in a house fire. But he wanted it so much that, if he had lived, I bet he would have.”

“I’m sorry, Wes,” Kate said, and put her hands in her pockets awkwardly. She felt her phone—and the scratch of something sharp against her knuckles. She took out the small curved bone she’d found on the stoop.

“What is that?” Devin asked.

“I found it this morning. I didn’t recognize it at first, but it looks like an animal tooth, like the kind Billy collected in a big box. Do you remember that?” she asked Wes. “He used to carry that box around wherever he went.”

“He called it the Alligator Box,” Wes said, staring at the tooth in her hand. “It was lost in the fire.”

“Is it an alligator tooth?” Devin asked Kate.

Kate shook her head. “Probably not.”

“I bet it is!”

“Would you like it?” Kate said, offering it to her daughter.

Devin looked excited and was about to take it, but Kate saw the moment it clicked that this nice man had a brother who collected things like this. A brother who was now gone. She stepped back and said, “No, I think Wes should have it.”

Devin was one great kid. Matt had rarely seen it, but Kate always had. She wasn’t going to fall asleep again and miss another year. She was going to be here for every moment. For the first time since waking up, she knew that clearly, without fear. She smiled at Devin while extending her hand to Wes.

“That means a lot to me,” he said sincerely. “Thank you.”

Suddenly, something knocked hard against the dock below. Tiny ripples fanned out on all sides of the water around them, like petals. They all looked down, as if waiting for something to appear, but the ripples gradually died away, leaving the water once again calm and inscrutable.

“It’s been doing that all afternoon,” Wes said with a laugh, when he saw that Kate was standing perfectly still, her arms out slightly, as if the entire dock was going to collapse under her feet. “There must be a floating tree trunk stuck under there, knocking against the support columns.”

“Can we dive down there and see?” Devin asked.

“No. Go tell the others that Wes can’t stay,” Kate said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Devin ran back to the lawn, calling, “Bye, Wes!”

He waved, and they both watched her go.

“Is your husband here with you?” Wes asked as he turned to place his tools back in his toolbox. He clicked it shut and picked it up with one hand, still holding the tooth in the other.

“No. He passed away last year.” Kate turned and walked back up the dock, still not entirely convinced it wasn’t going to collapse.

Wes fell into step beside her. “Now it’s my turn to be sorry.”

They walked in a familiar silence. There was a muscle memory there, forged by repetition fifteen years ago. It felt nice to be this comfortable around a person again. Kate used to make friends so easily as a child, like everyone was made of magnets, instantly drawn to one another. As she got older, it seemed like those magnets turned and forced everyone away from a specific area around her.

They stopped on the lawn. Wes put the tooth in his pocket and shifted his toolbox from one hand to the other. “How long are you staying?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just wanted Devin to see this place. I have such good memories here. I wanted her to have them, too.”

“Maybe I’ll see you again, before you leave.”

“I’ll say good-bye this time, I promise.”

Wes nodded. She wondered if he was thinking about that almost-kiss, or if he even remembered. Was she just projecting old feelings onto him, like a movie on a wall? The boy who had given her that last best summer was now this handsome unfamiliar man. And yet, she
knew him
. She knew him in that way you can only know a person you remember as a child, like if you cracked away the adult shell, you’d find that child happily sitting inside, smiling at you.

Without another word, he waved to everyone on the lawn, then walked to his van.

“Kate, will you get the butter from the kitchen?” Eby called. “I forgot to bring it out.”

Kate turned and went into the house. She tapped on the kitchen door, then entered and saw that the kitchen was closed down for the night. She glanced at the old chair beside the refrigerator as she opened the door and took out the tub of butter. When she closed the door, she paused because the chair was now leaning back against the wall on two legs.

Hadn’t it been on all four just seconds ago?

Puzzled, she left by the back entrance so she could take the cardboard box from the Fresh Mart, which Lisette had left by the door, to the garbage bins. After recycling the box she turned the corner, but then stopped short.

Wes was at the back of his van, out of view from the people on the lawn. The back doors of the van were open, and he had put his tools inside, alongside a pile of the old dock boards he was obviously going to haul away. He had taken off the yellow long-sleeved T-shirt he’d been wearing, which was wet with sweat, and was in the process of putting on a black long-sleeved T with the Handyman Pizza logo on it. An angry river of scars covered his back and arms, the skin shiny and rippled from what looked like an old severe burn.

She quickly stepped back behind the house before he could see her.

She leaned against the wall for a moment. Behind her fond memory of him that summer fifteen years ago, she was now also starting to remember bruises, and how Eby gave him and his brother boxes of food to take home with them, but how reluctant they were to go in the evenings. She pushed herself away from the wall and walked back around the other side of the house.

Eby was still by the grill, putting the hot dogs on a plate.

Kate stopped beside her and said, “Wes mentioned something about a fire and how his little brother died. What happened?”

Eby’s brows rose. “I’m surprised he told you. He never talks about his brother.” They watched as Wes’s van pulled out and disappeared down the driveway. He honked twice in good-bye.

Kate waited for Eby to say more.

“It was the summer your family came here to visit, a few months after you left,” she said. “Wes’s father owned the property next to Lost Lake, and he and Wes and Billy lived there, on basically nothing. Their home life wasn’t good. George and I tried to help out as much as we could. That father of theirs was a hateful man. The fire burned their cabin completely. Wes was the only one to get out alive. He’s been through a lot, but he turned into a remarkable young man. I’m very proud of him.”