Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(16)

“Come here, baby. Sit with me,” Bulahdeen said to Devin, patting the seat beside her at the picnic table. “Would you like a piece of candy?” She took a warm linty roll of Life Savers from her trouser pocket.

Selma had yet to acknowledge them, her gaze still on the lake. She was sitting alone at the next table, leaning back with her legs crossed and her skirt billowing down like a stage curtain. She was fanning herself with an old complimentary card fan from a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Selma sniffed and suddenly put the fan down. Eby knew she’d been paying attention. “You call that candy? That’s not candy. Come with me … girl,” Selma said, as if she’d forgotten Devin’s name already. “I’ll give you some real candy.”

“Can I, Mom?” Devin asked.

Kate automatically turned to Eby, and that made Eby smile. No one looked to her for direction like that anymore. People in town used to do it all the time. It had been the reason most locals came out here. Eby always used to know what to say, what to do. And the falloff had happened so gradually that she wasn’t sure if the reason she stopped helping was because people stopped coming, or vice versa. Eby nodded at Kate, telling her it was all right. Selma made terrible first impressions with other women.

“Okay,” Kate said to Devin. “But save it until after dinner.”

“Selma, don’t take that child into your cabin,” Bulahdeen said. “It looks like a brothel in there.”

“What’s a brothel?” Devin asked.

“A place for only beautiful women,” Selma said as she walked by them. Devin hurried after her like a cat following a string.

“Don’t worry,” Bulahdeen said as Kate watched them go. “Selma really does have better candy. But she’s not doing this out of the goodness of her heart. She’s doing this so she can specifically say, ‘I’ve got the best candy here,’ and make it a double entendre. Mark my words.”

“Selma doesn’t seem very … happy to be here,” Kate said.

Bulahdeen shook her head. “Oh, that’s just the impression she likes to give. She’s come back every year for the past thirty years. I think she comes for the rest. She’s been married seven times. I know I’d need the rest. But she only has one more to go.”

“One more what?” Kate asked.

Bulahdeen leaned forward and said, “Husband. Selma has eight charms. Eight surefire opportunities to marry the man she wants. She’s used seven of them. I’m anxious to see who she’ll use number eight on. He’s bound to be a big deal, being her last and all. He’ll have lots of money. And he’ll probably be old.”

Kate looked to Eby again. This time, Eby just smiled. Kate hesitated, then said to Bulahdeen, “You mean eight actual, physical charms?”

“That’s what she says.”

“So she thinks she has magical powers,” Kate said, her eyes going to where Selma and Devin had disappeared, probably second-guessing her decision to let her daughter go off with this woman.

That made Bulahdeen laugh, and she reached over and patted Kate’s hand. “Magic is what we invent when we want something we think we can’t have. It makes her happy to think she’s a femme fatale. We go along with it.”

A minute later Devin came running back, delighted with a single piece of chocolate wrapped in gold foil. Selma sauntered after her.

“I’ve got the best candy here,” she said, taking her seat back at the separate table, away from them.

“What did I tell you?” Bulahdeen winked at Kate. “Selma, there’s not a man for twenty miles. Don’t you ever turn it off?”

“Of course not,” Selma said.

“She really does have the best candy here,” Devin said. “I don’t want her to turn it off.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Selma said.

Darkness fell, and the only illumination came from the umbrella poles wrapped in strings of twinkle lights, which Eby had found in the storeroom and brought out for one last summer. They created round dots of light across the lawn. As they ate hot dogs with brown mustard and dill potato salad on paper plates, they talked about the summers they’d had here. The summer it had rained every day and all the wallpaper peeled off the walls, and a carpet of frogs took up residence on the lawn. The summer it was so dry you could see the bottom of the lake, and guests waded out and found trinkets they thought they’d lost in the water years ago—coins with wishes still attached, old barrettes, hard plastic toy soldiers. Kate didn’t say much, but she seemed to enjoy the stories. It relaxed her a little.

Eby kept glancing at her. Kate had said it had been a hard year after her husband died. That in itself wasn’t unusual, not for a Morris woman. But the fact that she was here was significant. It showed some focus, some purpose, which was unusual for a grieving Morris woman. She had the look of someone stepping outside for the first time in a long time.

After they ate, there was silence, save for the thrumming of the nighttime wildlife, a strange sort of chorus that seemed to call from one side of the lake and answer on the other.

Devin held up the piece of candy Selma had given her earlier, and Kate nodded that she could have it now. The rattling of the candy paper caught Selma’s attention. As Devin put the chocolate in her mouth and made a dramatic this-is-so-good face, there might have been a hint of a smile on Selma’s lips, but it faded as quickly as it had appeared.