Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(15)

Cricket immediately wrote back:

What relative? Didn’t you read my list? Where are you????

Kate sighed and typed:

I didn’t read your list. Sorry. Devin and I found an old postcard from my great-aunt Eby in the attic this morning. We decided to visit her camp, Lost Lake, in Suley, near the Florida border. Don’t worry. We arrived safely. See you soon.

She turned off the phone so she wouldn’t read what Cricket would say next, then she stared at the ceiling. There was no breeze, yet the dusty ceiling fan was slowly altering the rotation of its blades on its own, back and forth. There was an electric charge in the air. It made the hairs on Kate’s arm stand on end.

“I like it here already,” Devin whispered. “Can we stay?”

Kate leaned over and rested her cheek on top of Devin’s head. “For a while.”

“Do you think Dad would have liked it here?”

Kate felt her breath catch a little and hoped Devin didn’t feel it. When Matt had been alive, Kate had done everything in her power to give him the life she thought he’d wanted. She’d always been tuned in to his cues, ready to turn even a hint into a full-blown wish. Matt hadn’t really known how to be happy, but there had been something about him that had made everyone around him want to find it for him. “I don’t know,” she said, even though she really did. Matt would have hated it here. He’d hated vacations. He’d liked to stay close to home, where he could ride familiar streets and trails alone on his bike, earbuds in his ears.

“There’s no place for him to ride his bike,” Devin said.

“No.”

Devin thought about that for a moment. “I still like it here, even if Dad wouldn’t have. Is that bad?”

“No, sweetheart,” Kate said into Devin’s hair. “That’s not bad at all. Your dad would want you to be happy.”

“Alligators make me happy,” Devin said right away.

That was new. “Really? Why?”

“Because they’re here.”

“There aren’t alligators here, sweetheart. You heard Eby.”

“I think there are.”

“Okay, then. Watch your toes,” Kate said, reaching down and making a snapping motion with her hand, biting at Devin’s feet. Devin laughed and twisted away. But then she rolled back into Kate’s arm, as if gravity had pushed her there. Right where she was supposed to be.

And that’s how they fell asleep their first afternoon at Lost Lake.

*

It was twilight, and Eby, Bulahdeen, and Selma were on the lawn, each sneaking peeks at the walkway to the cabins, silent in anticipation, like waiting for a breeze to blow through the stagnant air. Bulahdeen and Selma had reacted with enthusiasm and feigned indifference, respectively, when Eby told them about Kate and Devin arriving that afternoon. But Eby could tell that they weren’t quite sure what the girls’ presence here meant. Eby wasn’t even sure. It was so unexpected that Eby found herself wondering if it had really happened. Had she really seen them in the dining room? Had she really taken them to their cabin? Or had she just imagined it, daydreaming at the front desk again?

“Here they come,” Bulahdeen said from where she was sitting at a picnic table, a jelly jar full of wine in front of her. Eby turned from the grill to see the girls materialize from the dark end of the walkway. Kate hadn’t changed from her yoga pants and T-shirt so big it fell off one shoulder, revealing a racer-back tank. But Devin was in another costume, this time a tie-dyed T-shirt dress, red cowboy boots, a red cowboy hat, and a fringed vest. “She favors you, Eby.”

“Kate or Devin?”

“Kate, of course.”

“Although the child does seem to share your sense of style,” Selma commented dryly.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, from both of you,” Eby said, watching the girls approach. Eby secretly agreed with Bulahdeen. Kate did favor her in some ways. Kate had inherited her green eyes from Eby’s sister, Marilee. But her long nose, which was both elegant and awkward, and her coltish limbs—those were all Eby. Even her short choppy hair, flipping up at the ends in the humidity, was the same heavy chestnut color Eby’s had been. When Eby had first met Kate, she’d seen in her a dreamy, bookish version of herself, and she had wanted so much to know her. But Kate’s mother, Quinn, had left in anger that summer, and Eby knew from experience that there was nothing left to do but keep the door open and hope Kate might walk back through one day.

“You say she just showed up?” Bulahdeen asked.

“I tried to keep in touch with her, but her mother wouldn’t have it. Apparently, today Kate found a postcard I sent her fifteen years ago. She decided to come see me.”

“Atlanta is a long way to come just to stop by,” Selma said, staring out over the darkening lake.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bulahdeen asked.

“It means she wants something.”

“Oh, hush,” Bulahdeen said. “Don’t listen to her, Eby.”

When Kate and Devin reached them, Eby waved away some of the smoke billowing in front of her like a potion. “The hot dogs will be ready soon and hopefully not too burnt. These grills are unpredictable,” she said. “Kate, Devin, I’d like you to meet Bulahdeen and Selma. Ladies, these are my nieces.”