Lost Lake (25 page)

Over her mother’s shoulder, Devin was watching the girls on the lawn, her eyes following them like they were flashing lights. “Mom, can I go play?” Devin asked, which was code for
I’m tired of trying to make you foolish adults see what’s right in front of you, and I want to go be a kid now.

Kate set her down. “Stay where I can see you.”

“Bye, Grandma Cricket,” Devin said, patting her arm. “We’ll visit soon, okay?”

Cricket smiled slightly, and they all watched Devin run up to meet the other girls. For a moment Kate felt indescribably sad, because she couldn’t go with Devin back to her childhood. She could only stand here as an adult as the distance became greater and greater until, finally, there was an ocean between them.

Eby put her hand to her chest, her fingers worrying along the neckline of her T-shirt. “Lazlo,” she said, turning back to him. “I’ve changed my mind, too. Lost Lake isn’t for sale.”

“Now, Eby,” Lazlo said, condescending, impatient. “I’m afraid we had a deal.”

“I haven’t signed anything.”

“We shook hands. We had a verbal agreement, witnessed by that mute woman.” He pointed to Lisette, who sucked in her breath. “Wes might have been smart enough not to shake on it, but I’m sorry to say, you weren’t. Timing is everything.”

Eby stood up straighter. “I am perfectly free to change my mind.”

“Do you really want to do this the hard way?” Lazlo asked. “I’ll sue. We’ll go to court. Legal fees will take what little money you have left, and you’ll end up losing the place anyway.”

Lazlo’s lawyer looked uncomfortable, his eyes focused in the distance as if imagining himself somewhere cool, somewhere there was no Lazlo. Eby simply stared at him in disbelief. Lisette was puffing angry air through her lungs. Jack looked at her in concern. Wes was shaking his head, as if this was no surprise to him.

It was Cricket who finally broke the silence by holding out her hand to Lazlo. “Cricket Pheirs, Pheris Reality in Atlanta.”

Lazlo looked surprised as he shook her hand. “I know you.”

Cricket laughed her business laugh. What was she doing? Was she trying to drum up business at a time like this? “We’ve never formally met, but, yes, I believe we’ve seen each other at functions.”

“What are you doing here?” Lazlo asked.

“Eby is apparently my granddaughter’s great-great-aunt.” Cricket waved the subject away. “It’s complicated.”

“I don’t need a real estate agent.”

“I’m sure you don’t. I was just going to offer some advice. And if you know me, you know my advice doesn’t come cheap. There’s a reason why we do these things in private,” she said. “There’s a crowd of people here who could complicate this process if they knew what was going on. From what I can gather, they’re here in support of
her,
not you.” She leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, as if speaking to the only other competent person here, “I suggest you wait for a more appropriate time. They’ve had a little scare. The child ran away. Emotions are high right now.”

Lazlo looked Cricket up and down. Everyone who had come out of the woods had scratches or tears to their clothes or bits of debris in their hair. Everyone except Cricket. Her shirt was sticking to her chest with moisture, but her hair hadn’t moved an inch and her makeup was still perfect. Her eyebrows and eyeliner were very subtle permanent tattoos, and she had extensions on her eyelashes. Lazlo hesitated before saying, “Fine. I’ll be back tomorrow. It will be your last chance.
One
more chance, Eby. That’s all I’m giving you. Come on,” he said to his lawyer, nearly knocking him over as he shoved past him. “Christ, I hate this heat. I need to go back to the hotel and change this suit.”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Cricket turned to Eby and said, “Get a lawyer.
Fast.
”

“What are you doing?” Kate asked, incredulous.

“Think of it as a parting gift,” Cricket said as she took her sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. “I’ll put your things in storage when I get back.”

Kate hesitated before she said, “Thank you.”

“I wish you would see things my way,” Cricket said, watching Devin with the other little girls, sitting at a table now. Devin took off a few of her necklaces and shared them. Kate could see Cricket warring with herself. She wanted so badly to control this, to turn Devin into something she thought was better.

“For once in your life, Cricket, stop trying to control the people who love you,” Kate said. “Just love them as they are.”

“I didn’t know how to love Matt any other way,” she said softly, and it was perhaps the first true grief Kate had ever heard in Cricket’s voice. She was, for just a moment, simply a mother who had lost her son.

“I’ll never try to stop you from seeing Devin. It’s up to you.”

Cricket nodded, then walked over to her car and left, much to the relief of drivers in the juggernaut of other cars that had stopped behind hers and who were slowly trying to back out because she was blocking the circle.

The group left behind exchanged hopeful glances. Wes and Kate’s eyes met and held. Lisette lifted her notepad to write something. But Eby held up her hands. “Nothing has been settled yet. I don’t want to tell anyone I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to get their hopes up. Especially Bulahdeen. I’ll tell her later. For now, let’s just enjoy the party. Wes, Jack, will you bring out the cake?”

“What’s going to happen, Eby?” Kate asked, as Jack and Wes walked away. Lisette followed them, looking at Eby over her shoulder questioningly. Eby smiled at her to tell her it was all right.

“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out,” she said. “So that was your mother-in-law?”

Kate sighed. “That was her.”

“She’s an impressive woman.”

“No match for Devin, apparently.”

That made Eby smile. “No. I don’t think any of us are.”

*   *   *

“If Eby doesn’t sell, then things will go back to normal,” Jack said happily to Lisette as they walked into the main house. “Summers will be the same again.” He reached over to her and took a small twig from her hair. He felt a levity come over him, the feeling he used to get when plans fell through and he didn’t have to go to a dreaded function.

Lisette turned away quickly and headed for the kitchen.

“Lisette, aren’t you glad?” Jack asked, following her, because it seemed to him that this was perfect. Things had been solved without anyone having to do anything.

She nodded.

“We’ll see each other every year, like always. You don’t have to leave.”

Lisette lifted her notebook and wrote,
There are things I need to tend to in the kitchen.

She disappeared inside, sliding the lock in place.

Wes was standing at the buffet table, his hands on one side of the large piece of wood the cake was sitting on. “Are you ready, Jack?” Wes asked.

Jack nodded absently, something the little girl said suddenly in his thoughts.

Why aren’t you fighting?

*   *   *

Selma watched Lazlo gather his wife and daughters, then leave with his lawyer in his black Mercedes. She was relieved. She didn’t feel like dealing with him anymore. She looked around for someone else, then sighed and sat down with her fan. She really should just go back to her cabin.

“Looking for a husband to steal?”

Selma looked up and saw the Fresh Mart girl standing there. She was wearing too much makeup, and it was melting off her face in the heat. Her hair had split ends from too many blow-dries. Youth really was wasted on the young. “Brittany. How nice to see you again.”

Brittany sat down across from her. “You know, I’m beginning to think I’ve been too hard on you.”

“Oh, really,” Selma said drolly. “Do tell.”

“There’s something to be said about getting exactly what you want. I want to know how you do it. I try so hard sometimes to get boys to like me. Like Wes. We had a pact, sort of. Then I saw him dance with Eby’s niece. Sure, she’s thin and all, but her
hair.
What’s with all the crazy layers? Why won’t he look at me the way he looks at her? Tell me how to be like you.”

Brittany wanted it. And it would have been so easy. All Selma would have to do was blow a wish on her. But she’d never done it before. She’d always thought it was because she didn’t want the competition. But deep down inside of her, she wondered if it was really fair. Young women know so little about consequences.

Selma set down her fan. “Listen, child. You wouldn’t be able to get Wes even if you were like me. Because you can only steal something that wants to be stolen.”

Brittany looked confused.

“For example, do you see Lisette over there with that man?” Jack and Lisette, along with Eby, Kate, and Wes, had all disappeared for a while. They were now standing on the far side of the lawn, near the dock. Obviously, they were having some little confab to which they hadn’t bothered to invite Selma.

“Jack. Sure. I know who he is.”

“If they got married, I would never be able to take him from Lisette. Do you know why?”

“Because Lisette would put a curse on you?” Brittany asked. They watched as Eby said something to Jack and Wes, and the two men walked across the lawn and went inside the main house. Lisette followed.

Selma sighed. “No. Because Jack loves Lisette. On the other hand, look at your father over there with your mother. Do you see the difference?”

She did. Selma knew she did. She simply didn’t want to accept it. “So you’re not going to tell me how to be like you?”

“You don’t want to be like me,” Selma said.

“Yes, I do! I want to be happy.”

“I just told you how,” Selma said, angry with herself for giving away too much already. She stood and began to walk to her cabin. She had a headache.

“Selma, there you are!” Bulahdeen said, stopping her. “I haven’t been able to find anybody. Where have you all been?”

Selma liked that Bulahdeen thought she had been included in the lake group’s little getaway. “Here and there.”

“Hasn’t this been an exciting day? I got rid of the sign. But I wish that man hadn’t made a speech. No one seems to like him. Eby doesn’t even seem to like him. That might work in our favor. I’m glad he left. Look, they’re bringing out the cake!” Jack and Wes were now exiting the house, carrying a chocolate monstrosity.

Sometimes Bulahdeen was simply exhausting. And Selma was in no mood for her right now. “Why are you trying so hard? Why is everyone trying so hard to save this place?”

“Because we love it here,” Bulahdeen said.

“Speak for yourself.”

Bulahdeen
tsk
ed. “Selma, if you keep acting like you don’t care, pretty soon everyone is going to believe you.”

“You’ve known me for thirty years and that is
just now
occurring to you? I’m not acting. Bulahdeen, why don’t you just give up? She’s selling. And, contrary to what you may believe, you can’t stop it from happening. Everyone is here to say good-bye. It’s what people do when they go their separate ways. They say good-bye. I’ve done it a lot. It goes like this.”

Selma turned and walked away.

13

Bulahdeen Ramsey was born
in a shanty area in upstate South Carolina that locals called the End of the World, which was just that for everyone who lived there. They knew how they were going to turn out. They knew the ending to their stories in this place, with its muddy streets, its smell of unwashed men, and grease from the kitchens that turned all the window coverings yellow. Those lucky enough to have a pig or chickens guarded them fiercely. There had been more than one lifeless body hauled away to town, shot trying to steal animals. Protein was a commodity greater than gold.

Women from the Baptist Church came once a month with charity boxes of flour and sugar and old clothes. Shoes in the winter. The men had seasonal jobs on the nearby farms. They were carted away in trucks and would stay gone for weeks at a time, coming back for sex and drink, before going back again. The women were calmer when the men were away. There was more food, less drink, no babies conceived to be born in the dead of winter, like Bulahdeen.

Doctors rarely traveled to the End of the World, because payment was never a given, not even in the form of vanilla pie or a burlap bag of walnuts. So when Bulahdeen’s mother went into hard labor, no doctor was there to help her. She died giving birth. Bulahdeen’s father cast her away from him and ran as far as he could. He died of drink in the river.

Bulahdeen grew up in her aunt Clara’s tar-paper home. Her aunt weaned her with a cousin close to Bulahdeen in age, then set her aside, leaving Bulahdeen to figure out things on her own. Sometimes it seemed they forgot about her entirely. When the people from the county came to check on the kids, to document their health and ages, Bulahdeen was always away, staving off hunger by picking wild blackberries and chicory and fireweed in her own personal glen out near the polluted river that ran from the cannery. The school system didn’t know Bulahdeen existed, so she was never made to go.

Her aunt had too many children to care for, so Bulahdeen became like a stray cat that only came close enough to be fed table scraps at night. She spent the rest of her time walking the roads and fields. In the summer she slept in the shelter made by two felled trees and a canopy of ivy. In the winter she slept on the porch, curled near the crack under the door, covered with a blanket.

When Bulahdeen was six, she was run out of her glen by some boys who had discovered it and claimed it for their own, so she was forced farther out to forage, closer to where no one at the End of the World was ever supposed to go near. The Waycross Estate. The owner of hundreds of acres of farmland lived there, the man responsible for what little wages were earned in the End of the World.

That’s where she met Maudie Waycross, the boss’s daughter. She was known to be pretty and generous and absolutely off limits to anyone, much like the estate itself.

She was sitting under a tree, on a quilt, picnic food in waxed paper pouches around her. She didn’t seem to care about the food. She was completely engrossed in a book. She didn’t even notice Bulahdeen standing there until Bulahdeen took a small step forward, thinking she could just reach over and take one of the pouches and run. When Bulahdeen stepped on a twig, the girl looked up, startled.