Sarah Allen - Lost Lake

“And you don’t have to make such a big deal of it,” Bulahdeen turned to Selma and said, pointing a bone-knobby finger at her. “It was on your way.”

“I live in Meridian. Mississippi. You live in Spartanburg. South Carolina. That is not on my way.”

“Don’t give me that. You had nothing better to do.”

“Speak for yourself, old woman. I’ve got another husband to catch.” Selma was sixty-five but told everyone she was fifty, and she claimed to be an expert on men, though having seven husbands might mean to some that she was an expert on getting it wrong. Selma had a reputation for flirting with all the men who stayed here in the summers, in an offhand way, second nature, like the way a bird naturally flaps its wings when it falls. Thirty years ago, she’d visited Lost Lake with her third husband. She soon divorced him, like all the others, but then she kept coming back. No one understood why. She never seemed to enjoy herself.

“We stopped by town for some supplies before we came here,” Bulahdeen said as she walked to the check-in desk.

“Supplies meaning Bulahdeen bought six bottles of wine,” Selma said.

Bulahdeen hoisted her purse onto the desk, then leaned against it with a deep breath. “When I mentioned to some folks about you selling this place, they seemed surprised.”

“Oh,” Eby said. “Well, that’s because I haven’t told anyone yet.”

Bulahdeen looked at her curiously. Her eyes were as cloudy as crystal balls. “Is it a secret?”

“Not anymore,” Selma said dryly, still standing at the door, ready to make an escape.

“No, it’s not a secret,” Eby said. “It just happened so fast. And, really, there’s no one in town I think would care. About the lake, I mean. Not anymore. The water park is now the biggest part of the town’s income. Lost Lake isn’t doing anyone any good anymore. Developing it will probably benefit Suley.”

“What are you going to do?” Bulahdeen asked.

“Inventory. Then figure out where to move and where to put all this stuff. Then travel, maybe. George and I always wanted to go back to Europe.”

Bulahdeen snorted. “I can guess Lisette’s reaction to that.”

“She doesn’t want to leave.” Eby’s eyes shifted to the front door again, as if waiting for someone else to come through.

“Jack’s not with us, if that’s who you’re looking for,” Bulahdeen said.

“Now he I would have picked up,” Selma said.

Eby turned to the wall of key hooks behind her. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d been counting on Jack coming. She’d dropped hints. But Jack, for all his wonderful qualities, did not always grasp subtleties. Eby should have been clearer. This was his last chance. She grabbed two keys with heavy brass fobs attached. “Here are the keys to your regular cabins. I’ll grab some linens and bring them to you. I haven’t cleaned the cabins. Just giving you fair warning.”

Selma walked over and took her key from Eby. “Yes, our last summer here is certainly going to be special.”

Bulahdeen took her cabin key and picked up her purse. “Selma, has anyone ever told you that you complain too much?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“So this is how I’m going to spend my summer?” Selma said, opening the front door and waiting for Bulahdeen. “Being insulted by the likes of you?”

“By the likes of me? Look who thinks she’s so high and mighty.”

“Watch out, old woman, or I’m going to leave you here.”

“No, you’re not.” Bulahdeen reached into her purse and brought out a set of keys and shook them. “I’ve got your car keys.”

“What are you doing with those?”

Bulahdeen cackled as she walked out the door.

“Bulahdeen, if you try to drive my car, I’ll have you arrested!”

Eby walked to the kitchen with a smile. She was glad they came.

When she entered the kitchen, which she had to pass through to get to the laundry room, Lisette was standing in front of an empty chair beside the refrigerator, her hands on her hips. She often did that—stare at that chair.

“Well, you’ll be glad to know that Selma and Bulahdeen came anyway. All this food won’t go to waste.” Eby gestured to the colorful array of enamel-covered cast-iron pots on the stove in the remarkable kitchen, Lisette’s domain. The appliances were cobalt blue, and the walls were stainless steel. Bright white lights shone overhead.

Lisette’s father had passed away a few years after Lisette left Paris. He’d obviously forgotten to change his will, or he thought Lisette would finally come back. Or maybe he didn’t even think of her at all, which was a strong possibility, given what Lisette had told Eby of him. Either way, Lisette had inherited half of her father’s modest fortune. Her mother, the other half. Lisette’s money explained the lovely kitchen in the otherwise shabby main house, and how Eby never had to worry about the cost of food. Lisette took care of all of that. To be happy, all she needed was a roof over her head and someone to cook for, which George and Eby had always given her.

Lisette raised her brows and gave her an I told you so look.

“You did not tell me so. They’re just here to say good-bye.” Eby hesitated. “Lisette, I’m going to need your help with inventory. I’m going to need your help with this move.”

The fine bones of Lisette’s jaw were set. She wrote on the pad around her neck, I told you. I am not leaving.

“But I am. Come with me. You can take the chair,” Eby offered.

Lisette had never fully acknowledged that Eby knew about the chair. She always gave a little start when Eby mentioned it, like a child caught doing something she shouldn’t.

I am staying. Go away. I have lunch to make for our guests.

Eby left the kitchen thinking this would be so much easier if Jack had come. Now she had to find another way to make Lisette—and her ghosts—leave.

The roadside stand ahead on the highway had been promising fresh fruit, peach cider, and cinnamon pecans for miles. They had passed at least six signs for the stand, each hand-lettered and littered with exclamation points. Kate found herself looking forward to seeing the next sign, a tension building in her body that only the truly lost can feel, starting in her stomach and spreading to her shoulders and fingertips, where her hands clutched the steering wheel. In twelve more miles, there would be fruit. Ten. Eight.

Kate and Devin began to yell with each sign, the closer they got.

Six more miles!

Four!

Two!

Finally, like magic, the stand appeared, and Kate pulled to a stop in front of the gray shack on a dead circle of gravel just off the highway. Dust, gnats, and wavy heat surrounded the place like a bubble, as if it could float up at any moment and travel to another spot of land on another stretch of rural highway somewhere.

She cut the engine of the Outback, and the sudden lack of vibration made her limbs feel heavy. Devin jumped out and ran to the tiny front porch of the shack, which was covered with rusty advertising signs for RC Cola and Pink Lady apples. This reminded Kate so much of hot, sticky road trips with her parents when she was young. Her father would fill the tank with gas and drive until the gauge went down to half, then they would drive back. They’d scoured back roads all around Georgia, finding motels with pools, highway junk shops, and old fruit stands.

Kate had been thirteen when her father died. No more weekend road trips. No more hours spent after school in her father’s video store, watching movie after movie. Her mother had gone a little crazy after that, like she’d pulled the IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY switch that the women in her family told her to pull if her husband ever died, and this was what happened. She wouldn’t come out of her room for months. Kate had lived on bagels, sandwich meat, and microwaved popcorn for most of eighth grade. She had hidden when well-meaning neighbors knocked on the door, after the first time she’d let them in and they’d worried why her mother wouldn’t see them.

There was still a place inside Kate that resented her mother’s grief when her father died. She still remembered what her mother had said to her on the day Kate and Matt went to the courthouse to get married. I hope you never lose him. It had felt like a portent. Kate hadn’t been as obvious about it as her mother, but, sure enough, she had still pulled that same switch. And she should have known that Devin had caught on. Children always know when their mothers are crazy—they just never admit it, not out loud, to anyone.

The summer afternoon was loud with the drone of insects. It throbbed through the trees like a pulse as Kate got out. The thick wet coastal-plain heat was trapped between sandy soil and low-hanging clouds, and it felt foreign and tight and new.

Once she met Devin on the porch, Kate opened the screen door and they both stepped inside. Box fans were roaring, moving the hot sweet air around and not letting the bees land on the bins of fruit. There were four customers talking with the loud voices of tourists. Kate had parked beside their cars. One was from Florida, the other from North Carolina.

The tourists turned and stared at Devin when the screen door slammed shut. She was dressed in cowboy boots, green lederhosen from last year’s school play, Heidi, and fairy wings that were crushed from hours spent in the car. And she was now wearing her favorite zebra-striped glasses. She looked like an escaped summer-stock extra. When she had emerged from her bedroom wearing all these things that Cricket had told her to leave behind, Kate had smiled. But then she’d realized what it meant. Devin was treating this like it was her last chance to wear what she wanted, so she was going to wear everything. She didn’t think Kate was going to sway Cricket on the matter.