Sarah Allen - Lost Lake

“We’re okay,” Kate said. “It’s been a hard year, but we’re okay.” She was feeling awkward now, like they were unburdening their grief on a stranger. “I didn’t mean to bring you bad news. We won’t stay long. I just wanted to see you again.”

“Won’t stay?” Eby said. “Of course you’ll stay! Let’s tell Lisette you’re here. She’ll be so excited to have more people to cook for. It looks like she already set out some things for you, left over from lunch.” She nodded to the Blue Willow platter.

Kate followed Eby. She didn’t have to tell Devin to join them. Devin was spellbound. Eby led them through a swinging door into a surprisingly modern kitchen. It was like walking into another house entirely. It was windowless but bright, with stainless steel that sparkled.

Completely out of place was an old chair by the refrigerator. It was tilted back against the wall, as if someone were sitting there. Devin stared at the chair curiously.

A small woman, probably in her sixties, turned from the stove. Her hair was as dark and shiny as a wet otter’s. There was a dramatic gray streak in it, toward the back, and it peeked out as she moved. “More guests, Lisette! Look who it is! It’s my niece Kate! I told you she’d be back one day. And she brought her daughter, Devin.”

Lisette gave Eby a look Kate couldn’t decipher before she smiled and, without a word, walked over and kissed their cheeks.

Eby said, “Kate, I don’t know if you remember, but this is Lisette Durand. She’s been my best friend for fifty years and the inimitable cook at Lost Lake for almost that long.”

Kate didn’t remember Lisette, but maybe she would later, like a figure forming in the fog. Bits and pieces of that summer were coming back to her. For years, she’d only had vague impressions, but very real emotions, about Lost Lake. She remembered feeling happy here. She could remember that very clearly. “Thank you for the food you set out for us,” Kate said.

Lisette bowed her head modestly.

“Lisette’s father owned a famous restaurant in Paris. La Maison Durand. Hemingway ate there once,” Eby said. “She learned to cook from him. Her father, not Hemingway. I’ll be right back with the linens for your beds.”

As Eby disappeared down the hallway, Lisette lifted a small notepad tied around her neck and began to write: Do not believe a word she says. Hemingway never ate at my father’s restaurant. And my father taught me nothing. The turd. I learned everything I know from a handsome young chef named Robert. He was in love with me.

Eby walked back into the kitchen with some folded plaid sheets under her arm. “Lisette can’t speak,” Eby explained when she saw Kate’s expression. “She was born without a voice box.”

“What’s a voice box?” Devin asked excitedly, as if it might be something real, something tangible, a secret wooden box somewhere with Lisette’s voice hidden inside.

“I’ll explain later,” Kate said.

“Come on, girls. Let’s get you settled.”

As they walked out, Lisette tore the note she’d written out of the pad and turned on a burner on the stove. She burned the note, and it disappeared in a whoosh of sparks and ash, like a magician’s trick.

Devin walked out backward, to stare as long as she could.

“Grab your plate, and I’ll show you to your cabin,” Eby said as she took a key from behind the check-in desk.

They walked out together, and Kate led them to the Subaru. “Where is everyone?” she asked, opening the hatch with one hand, the plate in the other.

Eby turned and looked at the lawn. There was a wistfulness to her gaze, but also a small sense of frustration. “Two guests arrived, just before you. They’re here for old time’s sake. I’ve recently decided to sell. This is the last summer of Lost Lake.”

Kate realized that they had landed in another big aftermath in Eby’s life, just like last time, when they’d visited right after George had died. It was like they were that strange debris that always washed up after a storm. “I’m sorry. We won’t stay long.”

Eby patted her cheek. The large green stone ring on her finger was cool and calming against Kate’s skin, like a gypsy’s touch. “You can stay as long as you’d like.” She turned to the car. “You certainly brought a lot of luggage.”

Kate looked into the Outback and for the first time realized how packed it was. “Devin, what is all this?”

“My luggage,” Devin said. “You said I could wear whatever I want.”

“Did you bring everything?” In addition to their luggage, there were at least four duffle bags.

Devin shrugged. “All that could fit.”

“We didn’t even know if we were staying.”

“I knew.”

“I see the resemblance now,” Eby said, smiling as she reached in for a piece of luggage.

The cabins weren’t lakeside—the trees shielded them from the water—but the lake was nonetheless a palpable presence. Like heat from a fire, the closer to water you are, the stronger you feel it. The cabins were situated in a villagelike pattern, six on one side of the stone walkway, six on the other. Cabin 13 was at the far end, forming a little cul-de-sac.

Eby walked up the steps to cabin 13, which was painted a fading orange with black shutters on the windows. The roof arched to a point right above the door. She unlocked the door, and Kate and Devin followed her inside with their luggage. Kate suddenly realized that this was the same cabin she and her parents had stayed in fifteen years ago. She recognized the nubby red sofa and cheap landscape paintings, also the incongruously expensive pieces mixed in with them—the Tiffany lamp and the antique oak library table.

There was a back door next to the kitchen counter at the far end of the room. Devin dropped her bags and ran to it. “Mom, look at this!” Devin said, and Kate walked over and looked out the window in the door. She saw that there was a large pile of twigs and needles on the back stoop, as if some gigantic creature had made a nest there.

She opened the door.

“What do you think made this?” Devin asked.

“I don’t know.”

They heard the snap of a twig and stuck their heads out in time to see something that looked like the tip of a tail slowly swish away, disappearing around the corner of the cabin.

“Come out to the lawn at sunset,” Eby said from behind them.

They both jumped and turned to her.

“We’re grilling out tonight. I know the two other guests would love to see you.”

“Are there alligators here?” Kate asked, putting her arm around Devin.

“At Lost Lake?” Eby laughed and shook her head. “No. People always think there must be. Truthfully, business might have been better lately if there were. But you have to go all the way over to Okefenokee to see any alligators. Come to the lawn for dinner?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Kate said. “We’d love to.”

Eby hesitated, staring at them like they were harbingers, like she was trying to figure out just what this meant. She finally turned and walked out, closing the door behind her. Silence stretched in front of them as Kate and Devin stood there, looking around the cabin.

Okay, they were here.

Now what?

“Come on, kiddo,” Kate said, moving forward. “You have a lot unpacking to do.”

After unpacking, they ate Lisette’s ham-and-cheese puffs and plum cake with just their fingers, standing in the open front door. Kate stared at the quiet run-down camp in something that felt close to a trance.

Her family had spent a little more than two weeks here fifteen years ago. As soon as Kate had seen the books in the sitting room of the main house today, she remembered reading some of them, remembered taking them out to the dock and staying there all day. There had been many guests here but no young people, and she’d been bored.

But then she’d met a boy her age. He hadn’t been a camp guest. He’d lived somewhere close by, in the woods. His name escaped her, lost somewhere in time.

There had been a whole other story going on with Kate’s mother and Eby, one Kate had paid no attention to because she and the boy had spent the rest of those two weeks turning feral, roaming the woods around the lake from morning to night, making up stories and watching imaginary things turn real. The fog on the water in the evening became ghost ladies. They had names and personalities Kate couldn’t remember now. The cypress knees protruding from the water were long-lost markers left by pirates, and treasure had been buried under them. They’d dived for the treasure every day, holding their breath longer and longer until they’d grown gills behind their ears. She’d been twelve years old at the time, a late bloomer, and everything had still seemed possible. After her family left—abruptly, Kate remembered—she’d gone back home, puberty hit, then her father died the next year.

Why did she have such good feelings about this place?

It was fairly simple, now that she thought about it.

She’d left her childhood here.

Kate turned from the door and took the plate to the kitchen sink, while Devin went to her room to decide what to wear that night for dinner. Kate went to her own room to make up her bed, but she flopped back on the mattress instead. A few minutes later, Devin came into her room, saw her sprawled out on the bare mattress, and climbed up next to her without a word.

Kate put her arm around Devin, then she reached into her pocket for her phone. She’d been dreading this.

She texted Cricket with one hand: