Lost Lake (3 page)

Kate saw Cricket’s list taped to the upright box with Kate’s clothes hung inside. Kate didn’t even glance at the note as they scooted the trunk to the middle of the room. Even if she’d still been asleep, she could have done this without consulting Cricket’s list. It was moving, not rocket science.

She didn’t know that it read:

1. The movers will be here at noon. Do not ride with them. Do not let Devin ride with them.

2. Wait exactly thirty minutes. Then drive to my house. Don’t wear anything fancy or put on makeup. It might help to look a little sad. I want Devin to wear exactly what she has on.

3. This is very important. There will be a film crew waiting at my house. They want to record your first day as you move in. Just act natural. They didn’t want me to tell you so it would look authentic, but I was afraid you might go off and do something and not stick to the schedule if you didn’t know. This is very important! I’ll explain everything when I get there.

Cricket Pheris micro-managed everything. As locally famous as she was, not many people knew that about her. She’d built her career on her supposed ability to go with the flow, to weather any storm. The truth was, Cricket didn’t weather anything. She
controlled
storms. And it had given her a reputation as a quiet kingmaker. She was the perfect combination of good taste and political ambition, but whenever she was approached to run for office, she always graciously demurred, happy behind the scenes. She’d been known to increase the numbers for any given candidate just by putting his or her campaign poster on the same lawn as her real estate sign. And all because, fifteen years ago, after Cricket’s husband died, she’d single-handedly turned her real estate agency into the biggest in the state with a series of extremely successful commercials that had even garnered national attention. The commercials had chronicled the selling of the house where Cricket and her husband and her son, Matt, had all once lived together, and the search for a new house for just Cricket and Matt.
We know about moving on.
That had been the phrase that had ended each commercial. Cricket had come across as likable and competent, but also sensitive and grieving. But it had been Matt who’d stolen the show. He’d been a beautiful child with a remarkable face that had been made for television—peachy skin and big sad brown eyes. There had been something about him that had made everyone who’d watched him root for him. Everyone had wanted him to find his home.

Matt had later told Kate that he had hated those commercials. Cricket had scripted them entirely. They had made them look close, but Cricket had worked fifteen-hour days, and Matt had essentially grown up without her.

When Kate had first met Matt, they’d both been freshman at Emory. She’d been close to flunking out. She hadn’t made friends easily, and she’d spent most of her class time staring out windows, imagining herself in some far-off place. She’d gotten so good at it that she could actually turn soft to the touch and wispy like a cloud as she sat there, and all it would have taken to send her away was one good gust of air.

She hadn’t known it at the time, but Matt had watched her daydream in class. It had been the first thing he’d noticed about her, the first thing that had attracted him to her. She’d wanted to disappear almost as much as he had. She’d known who he was, of course. But she’d never dreamed she would ever catch his attention. She’d grown up watching those commercials. She, like everyone else in the greater Atlanta area, had wanted this sweet, beautiful kid to find where he belonged.

Kate and Matt had been only nineteen when Kate had gotten pregnant, and Cricket had been so upset with her son for dropping out of college and marrying Kate, whom she believed came from a family of notorious gold diggers, that she’d refused to speak to him and withdrew all of her financial support. Cricket had had big plans for Matt. If she always backed a winner, imagine what she could have done if her own son had gotten into politics. That
face.
He had that perfect face.

But Matt had had no interest in running for public office. He’d been shy and uncomfortable around people. After they married, Kate and Matt had moved in with Kate’s mother, into this house, because Kate’s mother had been convinced that Cricket would forgive Matt in time, and then all that money would be Matt and Kate’s to share with her. Cricket had been wrong about a lot of things, but Kate’s mother’s obsession with money had not been one of them.

Kate’s mother had died of a sudden stroke two years later, never having seen her dreams of wealth for her daughter realized. That was when Cricket started making halfhearted attempts at reconciliation, but it was too late. Matt had cut ties with her and didn’t want them mended.

Kate and Matt had spent seven years here together in this small house, raising Devin, starting a bicycle shop called Pheris Wheels with the small trust from his father. This was the life Matt had chosen, the one that had brought him as close to content as he’d ever been, doing what he’d wanted in an anonymous existence that he considered bohemian. Plain old middle class to the rest of the world. But as Kate looked around at their belongings, there was nothing of Matt’s here. The furniture had all been her mother’s. He’d moved into her world, part and parcel, but added nothing of himself.

Kate sat on the trunk, and Devin pulled herself up and sat close to her.

“It’s going to be all right,” Kate said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Devin nodded as she took off her black glasses, the ones Cricket liked, and cleaned them on the J.Crew T-shirt Cricket had picked out for her to wear.

“I’ll talk to Cricket about your clothes. Your dad and I always said you could wear what you wanted on summer vacation. Cricket is just going to have to deal with it.”

“What about school?” Devin asked. This was a familiar argument. Devin hated her school uniform. The idea of being in uniform at all offended her. But in the year she’d been asleep, Kate had agreed to let Cricket enroll Devin in the same private school Matt had attended.

“The school requires a uniform, you know that.”

“Can’t I go back to my old school?”

Kate hesitated. “I’ll talk to Cricket. But it’s a good school. And your dad went there.” Kate put her arm around Devin, and the movement drew her attention to the postcard in her chest pocket.

Kate took out the postcard, and she and Devin both stared at it as if new words might form on it, telling their fortune. Kate’s mother had kept this from her for reasons Kate might never know. When she looked at the card, she experienced that same small sensation of rebellion she’d felt when she’d put aside Cricket’s coffee earlier. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to be in touch with Eby. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to go back to Lost Lake.

That in itself was reason enough to go.

Escape.

The word came to her mind before she could stop it.

“You know,” Kate said, “Lost Lake is only three or four hours away. At least, it was.”

Devin looked up at her slowly, suspiciously, like there was trickery afoot. It almost made Kate laugh.

“It might be shut down. Eby might not be there. But we could go see. Just you and me.” Kate nudged her. “What do you say? We don’t have to be here when all this stuff is moved.”

“Like a vacation?”

“I don’t know what it will be,” Kate said honestly. “If there’s nothing there, well, we’ll just turn around and come back to our new place. But if it’s still there, maybe we can stay for the night. Maybe two. We won’t know until we get there.”

“Do we have to ask Grandma Cricket?”

“No. This is between you and me. Go change out of those clothes and into what you want to wear. We’ll throw some things into the car and head out.”

Devin tore off down the hall, but then stopped and ran back and hugged Kate.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, then ran away again, leaving Kate standing there, shocked.

Kate didn’t think anyone knew.

But Devin did.

She knew Kate had been asleep all this time.

2

Lost Lake
Suley, Georgia
One day earlier

Every year since her
husband George died, the fat man with tight skin and fake hair showed up on the first day of summer and offered to buy Lost Lake from Eby. He would hoist himself from behind the wheel of his Mercedes, something that seemed to take more and more effort with the passage of time, then he would stare at the lake, his greedy thoughts mentally cutting down trees and building luxurious lakefront houses. Eby would watch as his fingers twitched and his knees shook, and there were times when she could actually feel the earth start to tremble, as if the sheer power of his will was going to develop the property right in front of her eyes.

When he was through staring, Eby always invited him inside and offered him iced mint tea and butter cookies, the ones Lisette made that looked like big shirt buttons. Something special to ease his disappointment, because Eby always said no. He wasn’t used to people saying no, and Eby felt sorry for him, the way she’d always felt sorry for those who had everything and it still wasn’t enough.

This year, though, Eby didn’t offer him any refreshments.

When he drove away later that morning, Eby put her hand to her chest, where there was a sensation of tiny wings fluttering just under her skin. She finally did it. She finally agreed to sell the property to him. She’d never felt quite this way before. She was usually so sure of things. Now she felt … anxious. When his car disappeared through the trees, her eyes went to the picture-postcard swamp of a lake in front of her, flanked by cypress trees and loblolly pines, the area so quiet and so removed she could hear the water softly knocking against the aging dock.

This old cabin resort she and her husband George had bought after their honeymoon was slowly going downhill. Money was tight, and there was always a cabin in need of repair. Most distressingly, for the first time since buying the place, there hadn’t been a single guest over the winter. They’d always had reservations in the winter. Being so close to the Florida border, snowbirds used to flock here from the north, woolen caps still on their heads, road salt still stuck to their tires. But the regular guests had aged along with everything else. Many of them were gone now. Some couldn’t drive anymore. Some had simply grown fond of their comfortable chairs by warm windows and didn’t want to leave home.

This was the right decision. It had to be.

A small beautiful woman in her sixties came to stand beside Eby in the doorway of the main house—a two-story clapboard structure with a roof that leaked, hallways that led nowhere, and stairways that narrowed into tight squeezes as you reached the top, like in a child’s playhouse. The old house and the rental cabins had come with the lake, and one of the main reasons Eby and George had bought the place was because there had been so much to do. It had been a fitting metaphor at the time—repairing, rebuilding, reinventing.

Eby could feel Lisette’s anger like a burst of heat. The force of it made the fine silver hair around Eby’s face move, as if by wind. Eby sighed. Lisette had to have known this was going to happen sooner or later, but Eby could tell she was going to be difficult about it anyway.

Lisette opened the small notebook she had on a length of butcher’s twine around her neck. She wrote something, then showed it to Eby:
You should have consulted me about this! How long have you been planning to sell? Why did you not confide in me?

“You can’t be that surprised, Lisette. Not after the winter we had. And I’ve been thinking of traveling again. You know that,” Eby said. She had been dreaming of Europe lately, of Paris and its dark streets. In her dreams, she had lost George but was following a large orange one-eyed cat to him. He was waiting around the next corner for her. Always just around the next corner. “How about we go back to Paris? Wouldn’t that be nice?” Eby asked, trying to make her decision sound like an adventure. “Your mother is almost ninety. You should see her again. Mend that fence.”

Lisette was, and always had been, as combustible as an unlit match. Eby usually knew how to work around her tirades, to soothe her before she had time to get riled up. But mentioning Lisette’s mother, Eby realized belatedly, had been a bad idea.

I do not want to travel. And I do NOT want to go back to Paris
. Lisette underlined the word
NOT
twice.
I want to stay. Does that not matter?

“Of course it matters,” Eby said calmly. She felt that flutter under her skin again and wanted to touch it, but she didn’t dare, not in front of Lisette. “Maybe the new development will have a club house with a restaurant. Maybe you can be in charge of the kitchen there. Or maybe you can buy a house on the lake, when they’re built.”

Lisette stared at her for a few long moments before writing,
You will not be here?

“No.”

But you do not want to leave the lake any more than I do! This is our home!

Eby stepped back and closed the front door before any more cold, air-conditioned air could escape. The electric bill was high enough already. The door frame was swollen, and she had to push the door shut with her shoulder. “Of course I don’t want to leave. But I can’t just watch this place disappear, like almost everyone who used to come here has disappeared. It’s falling apart, and I can’t save it. It’s best to leave now, before we lose everything and we’re forced out. It’s best to go when there’s a
choice
.”

Your choice. Not mine,
Lisette wrote. After she showed Eby, she angrily ripped the notes out of the pad and put the small pieces of paper in her pocket. Later she would undoubtedly burn them on the stove or tear them up and toss them into the lake. Written words were considered dangerous things by Lisette.

Lisette was born without the ability to speak, but she’d been brazen with written words as a child, substituting a sharp tongue for a poison pen. She blamed herself for the suicide of a paramour when she was just sixteen, after she had slipped him a note during a romantic dinner, telling him she was too good for him and would never love him. The next day she’d learned he’d hung himself in his parents’ apartment. Shocked by her own power, which hitherto had only been to hurt feelings, not end lives, Lisette’s guilt had sent her to the Bridge of the Untrue in Paris that fateful night fifty years ago, where she had intended to kill herself. She’d thought it was the only way to snuff out this monstrous power she had. For stubborn souls like Lisette, death was easier than the courage it took to actually change your life.