“What about your life in Atlanta?” Wes asked, giving her the strangest look.
“What about it?”
“Your friends. Devin’s friends. Family. Job. You’re just going to leave it all?”
She finally understood. “Oh, you thought I meant I’d buy into Lost Lake and move here.”
“That’s not what you meant?”
“No. But…” Kate allowed herself to enjoy the thought. “Maybe I could. That doesn’t sound any more crazy than just giving Eby the money and leaving.”
He looked away. “Giving up everything isn’t as easy as it sounds.”
“Only if you have a lot to give up. The only thing that matters is Devin. And I think she’d be happy to stay here forever.”
“It’s getting late,” Wes said, suddenly standing. “We should get back.”
Kate stood and called to Devin. When Devin ran over to them, Kate asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No. This would be so much easier if I was told what I’m supposed to find instead of just being given stupid clues.”
They followed Wes, who had already started off back down the road, running away from whatever ghosts he had here.
“You just said a mouthful, kiddo.”
* * *
After dinner, no one was in any particular hurry to leave. The evening held them down the quiet way a mother puts her hand on her infant’s chest to lull it to sleep. At least half an hour passed in silence, and they all remained seated, staring off into the distance.
But then Devin got up when she saw a frog. And Jack got up to show her how to feed it dead moths. Eby and Bulahdeen started cleaning and clearing. Kate had told Wes about “accidentally” throwing her phone in the lake, and he asked her to walk down to the dock to show him. Maybe he could retrieve it. Only Selma remained motionless, nursing the last of her drink, ignoring everyone, as she was wont to do. But Kate could feel her eyes on them, curious, as they disappeared into the darkness.
When they reached the dock, the blackness of the water made it look like silk, billowing as if pulled from a bolt.
“It’s out there in the middle of the lake, near the ghost ladies,” Kate said, pointing in the general direction she remembered throwing it. “I don’t think it’s retrievable.”
“I don’t know. We dove for a lot of treasure back then. The lake isn’t that deep.”
“It’s not worth it. Besides, according to Devin, there are alligators to think about.” Kate paused. “You know, when Devin mentioned earlier that her imaginary alligator talked about you, it startled me a little. I know she misses her dad, but she dealt with the transition so well, better than any of us. She always seemed to have him with her emotionally. I just … Why would her alligator talk about you and not him?”
Wes shook his head gently. “She’s not going to forget him, if that’s what you’re worried about. If Devin’s obsession with alligators is anything like my brother’s, then it’s harmless. It was just his way of dealing with things.”
“What sort of things?” she asked as they walked back to the lawn.
“Our father, mostly. Alligators are powerful, and Billy was powerless. I think it helped him to imagine a way of being in control, when our childhood was full of such chaos.”
They got to the lawn in time to see Selma floating down the path toward her cabin. The light from the lawn touched her red dress, making it glow with strange images, like a slide show as she moved.
They stopped and watched for a moment. “So, are you ever going to tell me what was in that letter you sent me?” Kate asked, thinking for just a moment how her life might have changed if they’d kept in touch, how his might have.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. Kate waited until he finally shook his head and smiled. “Great plots and schemes from the mind of a twelve-year-old boy. I wanted to move to Atlanta.”
“Really? What happened?”
“The fire happened.”
There was no going back after that. There was nothing to do but let those words sweep them through the years and land them solidly back in the present, older, wiser, different.
Kate finally said, “Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?”
He shook his head. “You can’t live on a single memory,” he said as he walked away, toward his van.
“Wes,” Kate called. “You haven’t said anything about my offer to help Eby. What do you think?”
“I think it’s very generous,” he said. He got to his van and stopped. “But you can’t save everything, Kate. Sometimes it’s best to just move on.”
11
Bulahdeen sat on the couch in the sitting room while Kate dusted the bookshelves. It was an afterthought, a last-minute decision that the main house should look presentable in case anyone at the party decided to come inside. Lisette kept the dining room spotless, but the sitting room had an air of neglect, as if Eby had walked out of it one day, to get a cup of Earl Grey or to answer the phone, and had never returned. There was even a book laying open on one of the chairs, a fine film of dust on its pages and a tiny spiderweb along its spine.
Every once in a while, Kate would peer out the window to see if Devin was still on the dock. Today, the last day before the party, Wes was outside scraping the driveway with a grading attachment he’d secured to the front of his van, so that people arriving tomorrow wouldn’t spin out or get stuck in the uneven road when they parked. The dust he kicked up had sent Selma running to her cabin earlier, her handkerchief dramatically over her mouth as if she were fleeing a forest fire. Jack was in the kitchen with Lisette, helping her put the finishing touches on the cake. Eby had disappeared into one of the cabins, as she had for the past few days, while the party preparations were going on, emerging around dinnertime, dust in her hair, as if she’d crawled through a secret passageway, a portal from past to present.
There was an undeniable sense of anticipation in the air. No one knew exactly how many people were coming, but there was a possibility of it being something big. Kate found herself hoping that it would be, that it would be something grand, that it would be all that Bulahdeen wanted it to be. Kate had been waiting for the perfect time to approach Eby about helping her financially, and the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that tomorrow would be it.
“I remember reading this book here, on the dock, fifteen years ago,” Kate said, picking up the book Eby had left on the chair.
Bulahdeen took a bite of the ham-and-Brie sandwich Lisette had brought her earlier. Lisette seemed to instinctively know when there was someone hungry nearby. She had appeared holding a plate with tiny violets painted on it as soon as Kate and Bulahdeen had entered. “I learned to read by that book,” Bulahdeen said, chewing her sandwich in tiny bites, like a squirrel.
“You learned to read by Jane Eyre?” Kate asked. “You must have been a very advanced reader.”
Bulahdeen shook her head. “Actually, I got a late start. We were so poor I didn’t even know I was supposed to go to school until I was seven. Then I couldn’t get enough of books. That’s why I taught literature. It always made me feel sneaky and giddy. Like I was getting away with something. I always thought that, at any moment, someone was going to tell me to put down my books and get a real job.”
“Have you read all of these?” Kate asked, indicating the wall of bookshelves.
“Every one.”
Kate laughed. “Eby should update her library, then.”
“No, I’ve read enough.” Bulahdeen finished her sandwich and licked her fingertips. “I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.”
Kate put Jane Eyre on the shelf and continued to dust. “Why do you keep coming back here, Bulahdeen, when everyone else stopped?”
“Because life is my books these days. And every summer here is a new chapter. Ever read a story that you simply can’t imagine how it will end? This place is like that. The best things in life are like
that. My husband has Alzheimer’s. You’d think that would be the end of that story, wouldn’t you? A brilliant man who loses his mind. The End. But, every once in a while, when I’m visiting him at the nursing home, he’ll turn to me and suddenly start talking about Flaubert. Then he’ll ask me how our sons are doing. As long as he’s still there, as long as this place is still here, the story goes on.”
Kate smiled as she looked out the window again. Devin was still on the dock, the cypress knee in one hand, her other hand up, shielding her eyes from the light as she looked across the lake. She was wearing her green bathing suit, white shorts, and a blue polka-dot capelet. She looked like a pint-size superhero on watch.
Kate turned back to Bulahdeen, only to find she’d stretched out on the couch and had fallen asleep with the plate on her stomach. Kate continued to clean, wiping off table surfaces and combing the dust out of pillow tassels.
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.
He reached inside, and the first thing he took out was a cardboard pencil box gone soft. He opened it and poured dozens of alligator teeth into his hand, touching them as if they were jewels, as if they flashed and sparkled. He put them back in the pencil box and set it aside. Next he brought out a small plastic alligator toy Billy used to play with at the breakfast table. Then a key chain shaped like an alligator, which Wes had given him for his sixth birthday. A cigarette lighter that had once belonged to their mother, engraved with the initials ELI. A cracked gold pocket watch Billy had hidden so their father couldn’t pawn it, because it had belonged to their grandfather. And a single aquamarine cuff link Wes couldn’t place.
The box was almost empty now. Wes looked inside and felt the blood rush from his face. His hand shook as he reached in and brought out a single unmailed letter, sealed in a plastic sandwich bag. He automatically looked at Kate. She saw the letter in his hand but didn’t seem to recognize it.
He quickly put the things back in the box, then stood.
“That really is the Alligator Box, isn’t it?” Kate asked him.
“Yes.” He had to leave. That was all he could think of. He had to get away and process this. “I’m sorry, I really need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow at the party.” They were looking at him strangely as he clutched the box, dripping wet. He tried to smile. “No more swimming out here alone, okay?” he said to Devin.
“Thank you, Wes,” Kate said.
He nodded, then walked away.
* * *
“We have to talk about this,” Kate said to her curiously silent daughter after she’d taken Devin back to their cabin and washed her off. “What just happened out there? Why did you jump there,
of all places, when I specifically told you it was dangerous?” This had been no accident. She’d found Devin’s glasses on a stump by the trail. She’d taken them off before she’d gone into the water.
They were sitting on the couch now, Devin on her lap. Devin sighed deeply. “The alligator kept trying to give me clues to where the box was. I finally understood. I had to get it before it was too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I’m not sure.”
Kate paused, changing tactics. “Did you see the box—the trash bag—through the water? Did you know what it was, or were you just guessing?”
“No, I saw your phone. I saw it the day Bulahdeen showed me the place where the knees are, but I didn’t realize what it was at first. The alligator must have moved it there, to tell me exactly where to jump.”
“My phone?”
Devin pointed to the coffee table, where Kate thought Devin had placed her cypress knee on their way to the bathroom. But instead of the knee, it was Kate’s phone in its electric blue case, wet and covered in grime. Kate reached forward and picked up it, nonplussed.
“I didn’t realize how deep the water was. I couldn’t make it all the way to the bottom and stay there long enough to pull the bag out of the dirt. And there were all these roots in the way.”
Just the thought of it made Kate shiver. What was going on? Devin was a dreamer, not a risk taker, so this was simply baffling. “Have you ever seen this alligator before?” Kate asked gently. “Or did this just start here?”
“He lives here.”
“And he talks to you?”
“Yes.”
“And he told you where the Alligator Box was?”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell you!” Devin said, her skinny arms and legs trembling with frustration.
“Does he have a name?” Kate asked.
Devin suddenly stilled and looked at her curiously. “You know what his name is.”
“No, I don’t.”
“His name is Billy.”
A slight chill ran through her. It suddenly made sense, in a distant way, like remembering a decision you made long ago, one you wouldn’t make now, but one that had made perfect sense back then. Putting aside her disbelief and confusion and worry for a moment—all things the adult in her felt—Kate found that the only thing left was the one true thing.