Kate had left her childhood here.
And Devin had found it.
* * *
Decades ago, Wes’s father and uncle—brothers Lyle and Lazlo—jointly inherited two large plots of land on either side of the interstate. Older brother Lazlo had moved from Suley years before, gotten a job in construction in Atlanta, then met and married the daughter of the man who owned the construction company. He quickly went from a manual laborer to the man in charge, the first in a long line of ne’er-do-well, dirt-poor-but-land-rich Patterson men to do so. Lazlo convinced his younger brother Lyle to split the inheritance, giving Lazlo sole right to the acreage to the north of the interstate. Everyone thought he was being magnanimous, because Lyle and his new wife and young son Wes needed somewhere to live, and the land to the south of the interstate was beautiful and had an old hunting cabin on it. What Lazlo didn’t tell his brother was that the northern land was actually prime real estate, and he had plans to develop it. The southern land, on the other hand, was basically worthless without the land that curved around it like a question mark and locked most of it in—Eby’s and George’s Lost Lake property.
So Lazlo developed his land, built an outlet mall and a water park, and brought a lot of money into the county. He became Suley’s golden boy, while Lyle was holed away in a cabin that didn’t even have electricity. Wes’s younger brother, Billy, was born six years later, and their mother left them soon afterward. Wes didn’t know what happened to her. Years ago, someone said they’d seen her hitchhiking just outside of Houston. Hitchhiking west, away from here.
One of the last times Wes had seen his uncle was after the fire, when Lazlo came in for the funeral for Wes’s father and brother. When he stopped by the hospital to see Wes on his way back out of town, Wes remembered asking him when he would be going back to Atlanta with him, assuming, of course, that the only family he had left would take him in. He remembered Lazlo’s vague, stammering reply, and the impact had been staggering: Lazlo didn’t want him.
Lazlo left after the funeral, and even though he came into town almost every summer with his family, to stay for a week at the Water Park Hotel, Wes had only seen him a handful of times.
In fact, he’d seen more of Lazlo in the past few days than he had in the past ten years combined.
Sure enough, as Wes backed his van to the garage door on the basement level of his building that afternoon, he saw Lazlo’s Mercedes parked to the side. The car was running, the air conditioner undoubtedly on high.
Wes pushed the remote control to the bay door, and it rose up, exposing the cavernous concrete garage. Shelves and cubbyholes lined the walls, and the open space was divided neatly into sections labeled ELECTRIC, CARPENTRY, LAWN CARE, PLUMBING, ROOFING, MASONRY. He was meticulous about this place. “A little OCD never hurt anyone,” his foster mother used to say.
There was a small glassed-in office to the side, with its own outside entrance, but no one was inside. His dispatcher, Harriet, and handyman, Buddy, were gone for the day, Fridays being half days for them. All calls were supposed to be forward to Wes’s cell, which he only now realized had been in his pocket when he’d jumped into the lake to find Devin.
All he could think as he’d run to the water was, I can’t lose another one. His legs still felt weak over it, his head light.
He backed the van into the garage, then got out.
“I almost gave up waiting for you,” Lazlo said as he got out of his Mercedes. “Where were you?”
“I’ve been helping at the lake this week,” Wes said. He took his cell phone out of his pocket to see if it was still working. Nothing. It was toast. He went to the phone in the small office to check for messages. Luckily, he hadn’t missed any. He forwarded all calls upstairs.
“I looked for you in the restaurant first. Your cook said you were out with a girl. I thought you’d gotten lucky,” Lazlo said with a “heh-heh-heh” as he entered the garage.
“I was just going up there,” Wes said, walking back out of the office. Maybe it was the afternoon he’d just had, maybe it was the thought of losing Devin, or the miraculous discovery of the Alligator Box, but suddenly he felt the need to reach out to someone, someone who knew his brother. Someone who understood. “Do you want to join me? Have a beer?”
“That’s nice of you to ask, son. But I don’t think so. I’m just here to tell you that I’m going to Lost Lake to get Eby to sign the papers tomorrow. I thought you might want to come along, get it all squared away. Nice and neat.”
“Tomorrow?” Wes asked, surprised. “Does Eby know?”
“Of course she knows,” Lazlo said in a tone that suggested Wes might be daft. “She agreed to sell.”
Wes shook his head. “I mean, does she know you’re coming tomorrow?”
Lazlo shrugged. “I don’t think so. What does it matter?”
“There’s going to be a party for Eby at the lake tomorrow. Eby’s great-niece is helping to organize it. A lot of people from town are coming.”
Lazlo hitched his trousers up at his thighs and did a lean-sit against the carpenter’s table near the staircase to the restaurant. Warm, enticing scents were floating down, basil and oregano and tomato. It made Wes long for something, something he couldn’t place. A happy childhood, a home. But he’d never understood how he could miss something he’d never had.
“One last good-bye. That make sense,” Lazlo said. “But I didn’t know Eby had family. What’s the niece’s story?”
Wes shifted his weight. He shouldn’t have brought up Kate. “She’s widowed. She decided to take her daughter on vacation to meet Eby. Get reconnected.”
“Eby’s going to be coming into some money,” Lazlo suggested. “Maybe she wants a piece of the pie.”
“She doesn’t need money,” Wes said.
“All women without a husband need money.”
“How would you know?”
“I’ve seen it happen. Not to me and Deloris, of course. She’d skewer me in a divorce. She’s always looking for an excuse, so I’m always very careful about my indiscretions.”
“Kate is helping Eby because Eby needs help,” Wes said. “It’s the reason I’m doing this, too. The entire town would help her if she would just ask.”
“Hmm. That’s unsettling.” Lazlo got up and brushed at the back of his expensive trousers. “But this party is a good idea. A farewell party, just so there’s no misunderstanding. Eby will say good-bye to everyone. I’ll come. I’ll even buy the meat. There’s a cook there, right? She could grill it.”
Wes smiled. “Lisette doesn’t grill.”
“Why the hell not?”
Wes blinked in surprise at his uncle’s change in mood. There was a little of his father in his uncle, in that mercurial temper. “She’s French.”
“Oh.” For whatever reason, that seemed to make sense to him. “Well, my lawyer is here. Might as well bring him tomorrow and give him a meal before we sit down with Eby. I had your and Eby’s land surveyed. This should all go smoothly.”
“So that was you,” Wes said. “I saw the tags.”
Lazlo smiled as he walked out of the garage.
Wes followed him. “Why haven’t I seen Deloris or the girls yet? Don’t they want to see me?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d set eyes on his aunt and cousins. He wasn’t sure he’d even recognize them. He had vague memories of his aunt Deloris, rich but not beautiful, and his cousins, Lacy and Dulce, who were as sour as little green apples. They’d laughed at the way Wes and Billy were dressed the first time they met. Wes remembered thinking how safe their lives must have been to be able to laugh that way, to be able to express an opinion without fear of retribution.
“Of course they want to see you. But they’re women. They like the hotel, the spa, the shopping.” Lazlo stopped at his car. “Would you like to see them?”
“If I’m investing my land in this development, we’re going to be working together. So surely I’ll be seeing more of you, and them.”
“Right, right,” Lazlo said, in much the same way he’d avoided the subject when Wes had asked when he would be moving to Atlanta with him after the fire. It finally hit him with full force: It was never going to be what he wanted it to be with his uncle.
There were very few good things about his childhood. Billy. Eby. Lost Lake. Kate. Lazlo was not one of those things, and he never would be. The funny thing was, if Devin hadn’t found the Alligator Box, he probably wouldn’t have realized this in time. He didn’t want to let them go. He couldn’t.
He suddenly thought of that aquamarine cuff link in Billy’s box, the one he couldn’t place.
“I found something today, at the lake,” Wes called after his uncle.”
“Did you?” Lazlo asked with no interest, clicking the button on his key fob to unlock his car.
“It belonged to my brother,” Wes said, opening the side door of the van and bringing out the Alligator Box. It was so much smaller than he remembered. But, then, Billy had been small, so even the toy fishing box had been huge in comparison. He opened the box and took the cuff link out. “Billy used to collect things, sentimental things. Things he wanted to keep secret. Things like this.” He held it out to Lazlo.
“My cuff link!” In four steps, Lazlo had walked over and grabbed it like a badger. “Deloris gave me the set. I had no idea where I’d lost this. She gave me hell about it.”
“You lost it at the cabin. When the water park was being built on the other side of the interstate. I remember you gave Dad a job on the site, and then you used to come by during the day, when he was at work. If Billy and I were there, you would give us a dollar and tell us to go away. You brought women out there.”
“So I did, so I did.” He put the cuff link in his pocket, secreting away the proof from Deloris, who was, Wes was beginning to realize, his one big fear. “What’s your point?”
“The point is, you knew how bad things were. You saw how we lived. You saw what our father did to us. Why didn’t you do anything?”
“Whoa, son.” Lazlo held up his hands. “That was a long time ago.”
Wes took a deep breath. He felt relieved now, somehow. “I’m not selling my land.”
“You don’t mean that,” Lazlo said, unfazed.
“Yes, I do.”
Lazlo laughed. “Think this through, son. That land isn’t worth anything unless you sell it with Lost Lake. What do you want, some bonding time? We could do that. But Wes, this business. This isn’t a family reunion.”
“And I realized that just in time.”
Lazlo just shrugged. “The truth is, I don’t need your land. I’ll develop around you. When you change your mind, let me know. No hard feelings.” He opened his car door. “You’re overthinking this, you know. My father beat me, and look how well I turned out. Shit happens. You step over it and keep walking.”
Wes pressed the button to lower the garage door. “In case you didn’t notice,” Wes said, as the door closed between them, “that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
He stood in the darkness for several long moments before turning and walking upstairs.
12
The town of Suley was a strange and independent one. Like most small towns, the older generations were the ones who kept the secrets, to such an extent that the newer generations were growing up with no idea why they were the way they were. Like the reason they craved briny bread and chokecherry jam. Because it was the food of the swamp. Or why they liked to run their hands over the surface of smooth dry boards of houses or fences, why it made them feel restful. Because their great-great-grandmothers had spent so much time keeping the swamp damp out of their houses that their dreams of dryness had become a fundamental part of them, something passed down like bumps on noses and crooked pinky toes.
They had no idea why the idea of someone they didn’t recognize made them leery. And they didn’t understand why, if they sat so long in one place that the day’s shadow passed over them, that they felt like they wanted to stay hidden in that shadow forever. It was because, generations ago, their ancestors had fled into the dark safety of Okefenokee. Deserters from the Civil War and Indians run off their land—they knew what it was like to hide. It was a hard safety and a lot of work, but they knew that it was still far, far better than what they had left behind.
Okefenokee was eventually cleared of settlers, and the swamp people went their separate ways. Suley was one of the places those settlers ended up, a hundred miles west but worlds away. Lost Lake was so named because it reminded those settlers of the swamp they had lost. Not many people knew that anymore. Most people these days thought it was called Lost Lake because the lake was so hard to locate. No one ever found the road to it on the first try.
The original owner of the camp had tried to make a go of it, but he had failed for one very important reason: He hadn’t included the residents. George and Eby had succeeded where he had failed because they knew that what you lost is as much a part of you as what you found. They knew that the lake was a part of Suley history, and they always welcomed the residents out.
And that was why the town had come here today, to Eby’s party.
Even though most residents didn’t know why they were the way they were, they all knew they were connected in some way. Losing Eby meant losing Lost Lake. And losing Lost Lake meant losing a part of themselves, a very old piece to a crumbling puzzle.
* * *
Selma heard the noise growing outside and turned up the volume on her Billie Holiday CD. There were dozens of men out there, married men. She could feel them, a prickling sensation along her skin, like goose bumps. She gave up trying to ignore them, checked her makeup, then left her cabin.
It took more effort to make an entrance these days. When she was younger, she’d been able to step into a crowd like this and conversations would stop and heads would turn. Men would be pulled to her the way a sun pulls planets into its orbit. But the older she got, the louder she had to laugh, the more attentive she had to be. Sometimes she felt relieved that she only had one charm left. There was a certain peace to knowing she was almost through. It made her picky, though, because she was, first and foremost, an avaricious woman, and her final husband would have to be rich enough to set her for life. And he needed to be old too, because then there would be a chance he would die before the charm wore off and she wouldn’t have to worry about grabbing all she could. But she’d married two elderly men already, and neither time had she been lucky enough for them to die, so she couldn’t count on it. It would also be nice if he didn’t have children. Offspring were so difficult. All her stepchildren hated her, the daughters especially. She’d never wanted kids of her own for exactly that reason. She’d had eight charms that could force men to be with her. But she had absolutely no idea how to make anyone else do it.
When she reached the lawn, she stopped and looked around, taking stock. Know your arena, she always thought. There was a large vinyl sign hanging on two aluminum poles that read FAREWELL, EBY! THE TOWN OF SULEY THANKS YOU!
Lisette was sitting with a man with a huge beard who was wearing a bowling shirt with the name GRADY printed on the chest. He was reciting a recipe for chicken wings, and Lisette was writing it down, a look of complete fascination on her face—like she’d never heard of chicken wings before. Selma rolled her eyes.
Selma saw Jack and walked over to him first. He was easy and was used to her flirting, and it served the purpose of other men seeing her do it, building the anticipation a little. He was at one of the grills. Several of the town children were around him, asking him questions and generally making him uncomfortable as they waited for their food. When she approached, the children grew quiet. One boy put his thumb in his mouth.
Jack tensed when he realized she was there. Honestly, it wasn’t like she’d broken his foot.
“Well, this turned out to be a bigger affair than I thought it would be. And there are steaks? Who popped for steaks?” she said, taking a handkerchief out of the pocket of her dress and fannin
g away the smoke coming at her from the grill.
“The steaks are courtesy of Lazlo Patterson, the man buying the property. He’s the one responsible for the sign too. Bulahdeen hates it.”
Of course she did. It didn’t fit into her nice, neat dream that this was going to make a difference, when Eby had clearly made up her mind. “Where is she?”
“Last time I saw her, she was trying to untie the sign. She’s managed to do it three times so far. Someone keeps putting it back up.”
Selma shook her head. Crazy old woman.
She scanned the crowd for the next man to bounce to and saw Harold, the owner of the Fresh Mart. He smiled at her and eagerly beckoned her over. His daughter was with him—the girl Selma had argued with just a few days ago. Brittany. Poor girl. She was under the impression that she could stop her father from being selfish, from wanting his own pleasure. Children always think that. Sometimes Selma wished women would stop blaming her when men left them for her. She could never take a man who truly loved his wife. So, really, it wasn’t her fault. They should thank her. She separated the wheat from the chaff for them.
She walked toward him, stepping through the crowd, when an arm suddenly slid around in front of her, holding out a black bottle of cold beer. “You look hot,” the male voice said.
Selma took the bottle and turned. He was in his late fifties … too young. Disappointing. But he had money, that she could tell. And he was married. He wasn’t handsome, but that didn’t matter. It used to, but not anymore.
“Selma Koules,” she said, holding out her hand limply in a way that made men unsure whether or not she wanted them to kiss it.
He kissed it.
She smiled to herself. He would be too easy, if she wanted him.
“Lazlo Patterson,” he said.
Selma’s scalp tightened at the name. A strange reaction, she mused. It felt almost like panic, or maybe fear, the kind of disorienting fear you feel when you’re lost. “I’ve heard of you,” she said, taking her hand away.