Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(52)

The rumbling outside stopped, and the sudden silence left a buzz in her ears.

“Selma will be so disappointed now,” Bulahdeen said, her eyes still closed. “There’s one less thing for her to complain about.”

Kate started to respond, but she suddenly felt dizzy.

She grabbed the back of a chair. She thought she heard a splash, and there was a sensation of darkness behind her eyes. She looked to Bulahdeen, but the old lady hadn’t moved. What was happening? She tasted lake water in the back of her throat and felt a clamminess along her skin. She wiped her face, and her hand came away wet, with tiny grains of silt. She’d never experienced anything like it before.

She went to the window and looked out again. Devin was gone.

She ran out of the house to the lawn and looked around, panicked without any reasonable explanation why.

Wes had just gotten out of his van. The dust he’d stirred up from the driveway was settling around them like flour.

“Devin,” Kate said to him. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think…” That’s when it occurred to her. “The cypress knees!”

In the few seconds it took Kate to turn, Wes had shot off like a stone from a slingshot, down to the lake and around the trail. It didn’t take long for her to catch up with him. He didn’t hesitate when he reached the group of cypress knees and jumped into the water and vanished.

You can’t save everything. Wes’s words echoed in her head.

Through the murky water, Kate thought she could see the billowing of Devin’s blue capelet. She lost her breath when it floated to the surface without her. But almost immediately after, Wes broke through the water. Devin had her arms around his neck, and she began to cough. Kate’s knees gave out as Wes walked out of the water with her and handed her over to Kate.

Kate held on to her daughter tightly. She was so small that it felt like Kate could wrap her arms around her twice. With all the loss Kate had experienced lately, this was the unimaginable one. This was the one she knew she couldn’t live through. She closed her eyes and felt the tears sting.

“There’s something down there,” Wes said, sloshing back into the water.

“What?” Kate said, her eyes popping open. “Wes, wait!”

But he took a deep breath and went under again. Kate could remember the maze of roots down there. It was like swimming through a scribble.

“Mom, you’re squashing me,” Devin finally said.

Kate pulled back. She angrily wiped at her eyes. “What were you doing out here? I told you not to go swimming around these roots!”

Devin looked taken aback at Kate’s tone, as if it never occurred to her that Kate would react this way. Devin had an agenda that made sense to her, but Kate had no idea what it was.

“What if something had happened to you? What if you had gotten hurt? You scared me, Devin.”

Devin’s eyes darted to the water.

Kate pushed her daughter’s tangled wet hair behind her ears. “Sweetheart, what are you looking for?” Kate asked more softly. “What is it? Let me help you. What do you want to find?”

Devin pinched her lips together.

“I know this has been a hard year,” Kate said, “and I know it seemed like I wasn’t there for you, but I was. And I am now. You’ve got to trust me again. You’ve got to talk to me. That’s how we’re going to get through this. Together.”

Devin still didn’t say anything.

“Is this about your dad? Is this about moving?”

Devin finally said, “The alligator doesn’t want any more to change, either. He wants everybody to stay.” Devin wiped her eyes with one hand. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. “That’s why he wanted me to find the box.”

“What box?” Kate asked as Wes emerged from the water again.

Devin pointed to the plastic bag Wes was now pulling out of the lake. “The Alligator Box.”

*

With his clothes sticking to his body, and inches of water pouring from his work boots, Wes made it to the trail and went to his knees beside Kate and Devin. Devin called it a box, but it didn’t look like a box. It looked like there was something more sinister inside the black trash bag. He unknotted the tie and reached in … and drew out another black bag.

He opened it only to find another. Then two more.

Finally he pulled out an old plastic waterproof tackle box. It was sooty and burned in places, like it had been in a fire.

My God.

Wes set the box down as if it were made of glass, then sat back and stared at it. Finally, pushing his wet hair out of his face first, he slowly reached forward and unsnapped the locks. He took a deep breath as he opened the seal. Out poured a curious counterbalance of smells—musty and dank, smoky and scorched. But there was an underlying scent that was all Billy. It punched Wes in the gut. It was almost too much, all of these memories flooding back, when there were times over the past few years when he couldn’t even remember what his brother looked like. The sheer tangibleness of these things, of Billy’s Alligator Box, almost made him sick.

The box had been here all along.

Billy had been here all along.

And the thought that he’d almost missed it, that he never would have found it once Lost Lake was gone from him and belonged to other people, terrified him.