Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(30)
Cricket made a sound of disbelief. “Selling your house for, frankly, more than it was worth, putting your daughter in private school, letting you move in with me, giving you a job—these are things you just went along with?”
“I didn’t want any of it,” Kate said loudly, and the ghost ladies on the lake seemed to turn to her. “And I don’t want to be a part of this either, Cricket. Matt wouldn’t think of new commercials as a nice tribute to him. He would hate them. He would never want Devin to be in them. Did you give any thought to that?”
“Do you really want to go there, Kate?” She said it so easily, like she’d been practicing taking this sword out of its sheath in one long smooth movement. “You and I both know that what’s best for your daughter has not always been your primary concern.”
And there it was, the thing Kate had feared most. Cricket brought up the incident with the scissors. Kate had been waiting for this for a while. And now that it was out in the open, now that it had been acknowledged, it felt so far away, like something she’d done a lifetime ago. Why had she been so afraid of this? Why had she been so afraid to acknowledge her grief? Just because Cricket had bottled it inside, waiting to air it on TV, didn’t mean Kate had to.
“I can’t believe I was starting to feel guilty about not calling you, because I thought you might be genuinely worried about us.”
“Well, Kate, of course I was,” Cricket said, trying to make her voice go soft.
“My great-aunt is selling Lost Lake, and she needs my help sorting everything out this summer. I’ll let you know when Devin and I will be returning. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”
Kate hung up the phone. Cricket immediately called her back. She ignored the call and connected to the Internet and searched for this new Pheris Realty commercial. She found it easily.
It was thirty seconds of Cricket talking about her real estate company, with flashbacks to the old commercials featuring Matt. Kate had forgotten just how lost he’d looked back then. It made her want to save him all over again. At the end of the commercial, Cricket was standing outside Kate’s mother’s house, beside her real estate sign with the SOLD placard on top of it. “After my son died in a tragic accident last year, my daughter-in-law and granddaughter needed me to sell their home and help them on their new journey in life, which I did.” She held up a framed photo of Kate and Devin, one she’d obviously taken from Kate’s album. Kate was smiling, holding Devin, with the sun behind them. Matt had taken that photo a year and a half ago, at a bike race their shop had sponsored. “Pheris Reality—” Cricket said as the commercial closed, “we still know about moving on.” Then there were the words To be continued.
Kate put her hand over her eyes and let out a sob. For a few moments, her chest heaved and tears ran out from under her fingers. Why she’d fallen in love with Matt, how much she had tried to help him, how much she had wanted to make him happy—it all came rushing back to her. The reason she’d worked so hard and committed so much to a life she didn’t even want was because of that boy on TV. She’d wanted him to finally have that place where he belonged. And she found herself crying as much for herself as for him, because she knew—knew with all her heart—that as much as she had loved Matt and had wanted the world for him, he had never truly felt the same way about her. She had spent seven years married to a man who hadn’t cared for her nearly as much as she’d cared for him. And she’d begun to resent it.
The phone started ringing again. Cricket. Kate was so angry and full of grief at that moment that, without thinking, she hauled back and threw the ringing phone into the lake, where it landed somewhere near the ghost ladies with a soft plop.
She stood there, stunned. She couldn’t believe she just did that.
She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes. They were going to have to go back to Atlanta. She knew that. That was their home. And she was going to have to face Cricket. But she was not going to be in any commercials. She was not going to support Cricket’s burgeoning political career. Cricket had spent so much time behind the scenes in politics that it had never occurred to Kate that she would ever step in front of the camera, though it made perfect sense. Kate didn’t know why she was so surprised. She had money, looked great on TV, came across as sympathetic but had firm opinions, and she had hair that didn’t move. She had wanted Matt to go into politics, but now that he was gone, Kate figured Cricket had decided she was just going to have to do it herself. Matt had told Kate once that Cricket had made him run for class president and major in political science because she’d been prepping him for something big. He’d said it in an I showed her, didn’t I? kind of way, something that always made Kate think that his life with her was just a way of getting back at his mother.
But Kate was tired of sacrificing her happiness for someone else’s dreams. She’d done it for her mother when she was a teenager, and she’d done it for Matt. She’d done it all willingly, but never again. For the past year, she’d been scared that she couldn’t actually live her own life, that she was someone who was inherently incapable of it. She was scared of being a bad parent. Scared of being alone. Scared to grieve. Not anymore.
This, she thought, was where her real life was going to start. She didn’t know where it was going, but it was going to start here, where she used to know herself so well, where no one else’s rules made sense but her own.