“I’m letting her be a kid. This doesn’t last long. It will be gone before she knows it.”

“Devin! Devin!” Cricket called. She held out her arms. “Come to Grandma Cricket!”

“Cricket, don’t,” Kate warned.

Devin stopped in her tracks, and Kate could almost see the color drain from her face when she set eyes on her grandmother. She looked at Kate, and her expression broke Kate’s heart. Kate thought Devin had been coming around, but the moment Devin saw Cricket, Kate realized that her daughter still didn’t trust her. Devin still didn’t trust her to make this right. Devin turned and ran away, disappearing into the crowd.

Cricket dropped her arms and turned to Kate accusingly. “Where is she going? What have you said to her about me?”

“I haven’t said anything to her about you. Go home, Cricket. If you leave now, you can be back before dark,” Kate said, taking a step back toward the party to go after Devin.

“Wait, is that Lazlo Patterson?” Cricket asked. Lazlo was standing in front of one of the fans near the dance floor, and his laughter had caught Cricket’s attention.

Kate turned back to her, surprised. “You know him?”

“I’m in real estate in Atlanta,” Cricket said. “Of course I know him. I’ve never done business with him, though. Rumor has it that he’s connected. What is he doing here?”

“He wants to buy Lost Lake from my great-aunt.” Kate paused. Even though she was a good six inches taller than Cricket, Kate could feel herself standing up straighter, as if steeling herself. “I want to buy it from her instead.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Oh, Kate,” Cricket said with a shake of her head, as if she pitied Kate for even thinking such a thing. “You don’t want to mess with Lazlo Patterson. You don’t know anything about real estate or about running a place like this.”

She honestly believed that. She had no idea that Kate ran Matt’s bike shop. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t care. “You don’t know who I am or what I can do. I know what’s best for myself and my child. Go back to Atlanta, Cricket. I’m going to find Devin. If you had just given us some warning, I wouldn’t have to go after her to tell her you’re not here to snatch her away, like some witch in a fairy tale.”

“Did you just call me a witch?” Cricket asked.

Kate walked to the lawn, searching. Cricket followed her, until Kate managed to lose her by walking directly across the dance floor in the middle of a song. Kate then walked quickly to the main house, where the scent of chocolate cake was thick and cool in the air. She checked the sitting room, the dining room, then went to the kitchen. As soon as she entered, the chair by the refrigerator shifted slightly, as if the wind from her entrance had moved it. She exited by the back of the house. No Devin. She jogged down the path to their cabin. She went inside and checked all the rooms, calling her name. Nothing. As she hurried back to the lawn, she stopped to look in the windows of the other cabins.

Now she was getting worried.

She finally found the little girls Devin had been playing with earlier, back under the picnic table, eating pilfered potato chips. She bent down and asked them, “Have you seen Devin?”

“She ran that way,” one of the girls said, pointing toward the right side of the lake. “Into the woods.”

“Kate?” Eby called from the next table. “What’s wrong?”

Kate straightened. Lisette and Jack were now sitting with Eby. “I can’t find Devin. She ran into the woods.”

“What?” Eby said, standing. “Why?”

“Because my mother-in-law just showed up. And Devin probably thinks she’s here to take her back to Atlanta.”

Wes approached them. He’d been on the periphery for a few minutes now, watching what was going on, taking in the worry on all their faces. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Devin just ran away, into the woods,” Eby told him.

“The cypress knees?” he asked Kate. He looked ready to run.

Kate shook her head. There was no taste of lake water in her mouth, no silt on her skin. Devin was dry and hot, in sunlight. Kate didn’t know how she knew these things, just that this place seemed to want to let her know. “No, the other direction.”

“Let’s go,” he said, heading for the lake. Kate followed. Eby, Lisette, and Jack brought up the rear.

“Kate? What’s going on?” Cricket said, trotting up to her. “Where are you going?”

“Stay here, Cricket. Devin ran into the woods when she saw you.”

“This is no place for a child. If you can’t even keep an eye on her—”

“Don’t.” Kate stopped and spun around to face her. “Don’t you dare.”

Kate caught up with Wes. Cricket hesitated, then followed them anyway, because heaven forbid someone else could be right for a change.

Wes was walking fast, studying the trees along the lake path.

“Shouldn’t we divide up?” Kate asked Eby. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

“Of course it would be better,” Cricket said. “Why are we trusting this person? Does he know where he’s going?”

Eby gave Cricket a passing glance, but one that could see right through her. She almost seemed to pity Cricket. “Wes’s ancestors are people from the swamp. They know these things. They’re all like that, the people in Suley. They never get lost.”

“This way,” Wes said, ducking under some brush where there were a few broken limbs.

It took about ten minutes. They were all calling out Devin’s name and making enough noise in the leaves and twigs that she could probably hear them coming a mile away. They were sweaty and scratched from the whip-thin limbs of new shoots, when finally Wes stopped.

“There she is,” he said, pointing to an incline, where part of Devin’s tattered tutu could be seen from the tree she was unsucesfully hiding behind. She was sitting on some moss, her back to the trunk. The trees were thick here, and the canopy of limbs above dappled the light around them. Kate took a moment to steady herself, to swallow the panic and anger. Devin didn’t need anger. She needed someone who understood, and Kate was that person. She used to be Devin.

The rest stayed behind as Kate walked up to her.

Devin had her legs pulled to her chest, a sad, angry ball of tulle. “I’m not going back,” she said.

Kate crouched in front of her. “You can’t stay in the woods all night.”

“No, I mean I’m not going back with her,” Devin pushed herself up and faced the others. She pointed at Cricket.

“Devin,” Kate said.

“It’s wrong,” Devin said to her mother. “Her house is not the right place to be. You can’t just let people take things from you. You’ve got to fight it. Why aren’t you fighting it? This is a good place. This is the right place. Why doesn’t anyone see that? Do something!” Devin said, her voice growing louder. She looked at all of them accusingly.

They just stood there. Devin faced her mother. “You let her talk you into things you didn’t want to do,” she said. “Why did you do that?”

“Do something!” she shouted again.

Lisette looked away from the intensity of Devin’s stare. Jack put his arm around her.

Kate shook her head, emotion thick in her throat at this wild, delicate creature, this painted child in her bright colors and glasses, in the middle of nowhere, trying to fight for something that wasn’t her fight. “I was sad, sweetheart.”

Devin, starting to cry, turned desperately to Cricket. “I love you, Grandma Cricket, but I don’t want to live with you. Mom and I can make it on our own. Mom just thought she needed you, but she doesn’t. She was just confused.”

Cricket’s lips pinched and she pivoted and walked away. She hated for me to cry, Matt once said about his mother. Cricket Pheris is worse at grief than she is at love. She doesn’t know how to “move on.” She knows how to turn away.

“It’s okay, Devin,” Kate said quietly, and she lifted her crying daughter into her arms.

“We’re not going back, are we?” Devin asked, her arms tightly around Kate’s neck.

“No, sweetheart.” Kate rocked her back and forth. “And if you had just asked me, instead of running away, I would have told you.”

Cricket had started walking in one direction. But Wes headed in another. “This way,” he called to her, and she reluctantly changed course. Slowly, they retraced their steps back to the lake, Kate carrying Devin the entire way.

They emerged from the trail, and the party was still in full swing, a hot mass of music and laughter and smoke from the grills. No one seemed to notice their battered group except Lazlo, who walked down to meet them, just as they reached the dock. His lawyer hurried after him, briefcase in hand.

At first, Kate had an odd impression that he was worried about them. But that notion was quickly dispelled when he said, “Eby, there you are. It’s getting late. Let’s go in the house where it’s cool and sign these papers, shall we?” Lazlo’s eyes slid to Wes. “Wes, son, have you changed your mind?”

Eby turned to him curiously.

“I told Lazlo yesterday that I wasn’t going to be investing in the development, after all. I want to keep my land.” Wes looked at his uncle flatly. “No, I haven’t changed my mind.”

Over her mother’s shoulder, Devin was watching the girls on the lawn, her eyes following them like they were flashing lights. “Mom, can I go play?” Devin asked, which was code for I’m tired of trying to make you foolish adults see what’s right in front of you, and I want to go be a kid now.

Kate set her down. “Stay where I can see you.”

“Bye, Grandma Cricket,” Devin said, patting her arm. “We’ll visit soon, okay?”