Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(42)

Kate and Devin had just started unloading the groceries when Kate heard Selma call, “Kate! Oh, Ka-ate!”

With a box full of vegetables in her hands, Kate turned to see Selma now standing on the front stoop of her cabin. “Yes?”

“I want to take a long bath and I don’t have any clean towels.”

Kate nodded to the main house. “I’m sure Eby has some in the laundry room.”

“I’ll wait here,” Selma said. “You said you were helping Eby, right? Eby usually does this.”

Kate and Devin took the first load of groceries inside. “I’ll be right back with the rest,” Kate said to Lisette. “I have to run some towels over to Selma first. What is it with women like that?”

Lisette shook her head slowly and wrote something on her notepad. She is lonely.

“She doesn’t act lonely.”

Lisette smiled and wrote, None of us do. Not even you.

*

Minutes later, Kate knocked on Selma’s door. Selma called for her to come in. When Kate entered, she saw that Selma had already changed into a Chinese dressing gown and was lying on the couch, reading a magazine. The cabin seemed hazy but not by smoke. The haze had a scent, like a perfume.

Scarves were draped over lampshades. High-heeled shoes lined the hearth of the fireplace. There were open hat boxes strewn around, but they didn’t contain hats. One contained candy; another, hundreds of tiny makeup samples; another, inexplicably, bottle caps. Kate stood at the door and held out the towels.

Selma tossed the magazine aside in a truly impressive show of ennui. “Just put them in the bathroom. And take the old towels with you.”

Kate went to the bathroom, set the new towels on the sink, and came back out with the used towels, which were covered in makeup. She walked to the front door, about to leave, but then stopped and turned. “I saw you at the Fresh Mart today. You were having an argument with the girl there.”

Selma sighed. “She doesn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I flirt with her father. The man who owns the store. He’s married. It’s what I do. All my husbands were married when I met them.” She rubbed her bare ring finger distractedly. “But she doesn’t have anything to worry about. If I’d wanted him, I’d have used my last charm to get him by now.”

Kate opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally she had to ask, “All of your husbands were married?”

“Strange, isn’t it? But those are the rules,” Selma said.

“You have rules?”

“I didn’t make them. They’ve been there since time immemorial.”

“So why didn’t you stay married to any of them? You obviously went to a lot of trouble to get them.”

Selma frowned, then stood. “It’s never what I think it’s going to be.” She gestured to seven picture frames on the mantle, some large, some small, each photo of a smiling man. The youngest was an old photo of a man in his twenties, the oldest was a recent photo of an elderly man. “Those are my husbands,” Selma said. “I keep them around to remind me what not to look for the next time.”

Kate watched Selma walk over to the mantle. She picked up a small jewelry box. It was chestnut in color with tiny flecks of ivory inlay on top. On its own, it was completely innocuous, and Kate would have thought nothing of it. But the way Selma picked it up and cradled it made it alive somehow. Kate stared, fascinated. She could feel its pull.

“Do you know what this is?”

“No,” Kate said, shifting her weight and swallowing.

“The secret to my success,” Selma said, holding out the box and opening it slowly in front of Kate.

Kate leaned forward and looked inside. She frowned when she saw that it was empty, save for a small heart charm sitting on the black velvet lining. “What is it?”

“Ha!” Selma said, snapping the box shut, making Kate jump back quickly. “I knew it. Only women like me know what it’s for.”

“What do you mean?” Kate felt a little light-headed, like she’d stood up too quickly.

“It’s a charm. My last one. I’m saving it to use on my last husband. He will be old and rich, the last one I will ever need.”

Kate wondered if Selma clung to this idea of charms the same way Kate had clung to Cricket, because when you run out of rope, you grab the first thing within reach. When Selma divorced one husband, maybe the charms comforted her with the fact that she wouldn’t have to be alone for long, that another one would come along soon.

After standing there awkwardly for a moment, holding the dirty towels and watching Selma smile and stroke the box like a cat, Kate turned and left the cabin. Once outside, she stopped on the stoop. She took a deep breath of lake air and felt her head clear. She looked back at the door she’d closed behind her and wondered if understanding Selma was really possible.

Maybe she really was magic.

*

Selma put the box back on the mantle. She didn’t understand why she acted this way. She couldn’t seem to help herself. And she had been this way for so long that she didn’t think she could be any other way. Not that she wanted to. Her mother had hated it, had hated what Selma had become, but Selma didn’t care. She wasn’t her mother. That was all that mattered.

Selma tried not to think of her mother, but when she did, she felt pity. She was a fading photo from the past—thin, transparent, disappearing from the window at the kitchen sink, where she would always stand and wait for her husband to come home to her.