*
She had said no, of course. Jack was embarrassed. Not that he’d asked her out, but that he’d asked her to dinner first. He knew her better than that. He knocked himself lightly on the head with his hand. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She never ate dinner. In all the years he’d been coming to Lost Lake, Lisette had never come out to the lawn at night for barbecue and cocktails. When the sun set, she was always in her room, the single light from her window like a wink. Most of the summer faithfuls knew how Eby had saved Lisette, how she’d been sixteen and about to commit suicide because, over dinner, she’d broken the heart of a boy who had loved her. There was part of Jack, a part tucked back behind everything he treated so logically, that understood why the boy had taken his own life, because he understood how powerful an attraction to her could be. She was enchanting. He loved the notes she wrote in her pretty handwriting, the way she smelled, like oranges and dough, the savage blackness of her hair.
It suddenly occurred to him.
Was that what he was supposed to tell her? Was that what Eby meant?
It seemed so simple. He thought she knew.
But what if she didn’t? What if she didn’t know he loved her?
He frowned at another possibility. He felt fear heat his ears, the same fear he felt when he had to go to a place he’d never been to before or speak in front of people. It made him want to run, to avoid the embarrassment altogether.
What if she did know, and it didn’t matter?
What if she didn’t love him back?
*
“Wes!” Devin said, and Kate watched her run up to him.
The sun was setting behind the trees, streaking over the water. The heat had gone from boiling to a soft, wet simmer. Devin had been sitting on a picnic table since Wes had arrived, elbows on her knees, chin resting on her hands, waiting, waiting, waiting for him to finally stop working. She watched as he first put up the canopy Kate had mended last night, then fixed the barbecue grills. Kate was sure that he could feel her daughter’s impatience as surely as if she’d thrown it and hit him with it.
“I want to ask you something,” Devin said, almost sliding to a stop. “Did you and your brother live someplace close by?”
“Yes, we did,” Wes said. “About a half mile from here. Through the woods.” Wes pointed to the east side of the lake. “But the house is gone now. It burned down.”
Devin turned and squinted in that direction. She put her hand to her good eye and covered it, something she often did when she was looking for something. She’d been doing it most all her life. She saw that Kate was watching, and lowered her hand. “Is there, like, a trail or something?”
“There used to be. My brother and I walked it here every day.”
“Will you take me there?” Devin asked, turning back to him.
That caught him off guard. “Take you there?”
“Yes. Can we go on a hike through the woods?”
“Devin, you can’t ask him to do that,” Kate said, walking over to them. Her hands were stained green and brown from pulling up weeds in Eby’s neglected planters in front of the main house.
“But I’m not asking,” Devin said. “The alligator wants him to.”
“That sounds ominous,” Wes said, taking off his tool belt.
Devin looked over her shoulder at Kate. “What does that mean?”
“It means it sounds like the alligator wants to eat him,” Kate clarified for her.
“No!” Devin said immediately. “It’s not like that. He’s friendly. And he really, really likes you, Wes. Out of everyone here, he talks about you the most.”
Kate’s brows dropped in confusion. “He talks about Wes?”
“All the time.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Wes said.
“Really?” Devin said.
“Never argue with an alligator,” Wes said.
Devin nodded at him seriously. “Exactly.”
So the three of them headed off to the lake. “We’ll be back before dark,” Wes called to the others. “I’m going to show them the path to the cabin.”
“Be careful,” Eby said. She’d been waiting for Wes to finish with the grills before she started dinner for the guests. She was now lighting charcoal in one. “Do you have your phones with you?”
“Mine, um, accidentally fell into the lake,” Kate said.
Wes took his out of his pocket and held it up. “I have mine.”
Once they reached the path around the lake, Wes ducked into the woods and soon found the trail. After a few minutes of walking, Kate began to notice some markers on the trees. “What are all these plastic tags?” she asked Wes, reaching out to touch one of the small bright ties that were deliberately attached to some low-hanging limbs.
“They look like survey markers,” he said. “Did Eby have her land surveyed recently?”
“Not that I know of.”
The trees began to thin the farther they walked, becoming more uniform, more evenly spaced, as if they’d been deliberately planted years ago. Kate realized that they were all pine trees, and all of them had identical scars on them, reaching high into their trunks. The bark of the trees seemed to peel away in a V shape, like a curtain parting, and inside were even, whispery lines that looked like they were made by ax cuts. There was something magical about this place, about the uniformity of the trees, like they were dancers in costumes, frozen the moment before their first step.
“What are these marks on all these trees?” Kate asked.
“They’re called catfaces,” Wes said, walking at a brisk pace, like he was passing through the bad side of town. “That’s how I always knew we’d crossed from Eby’s property onto ours.”
“I don’t remember us ever exploring this part of the woods,” Kate said. “I think I would have remembered this.”
“I kept us on Eby’s property to avoid my dad. I think I knew her land better than my own.”
“Why are they called catfaces?” Devin asked.
Wes talked while he walked, so Kate and Devin couldn’t linger. Instead, they walked while looking up, periodically tripping over branches and roots. “Because those scars where the bark is peeled away look like cat whiskers. Generations of my family were turpentiners. They tapped these trees for resin. The catfaces are the hacks they made to get to the veins of the trees. Turpentining used to be a huge industry in this area. When the industry dried up, there wasn’t much to do with this land.”
A short time later, they broke through some brush and suddenly found themselves in the curve of an old dirt road. Kate was out of breath.
“The road leads to the highway, that way,” Wes said, pointing left, not stopping. “This way leads to what remains of the old cabin.”
They walked a short distance up the road to where there was a grassy bare spot containing an old stone chimney, looking as if it was standing inside an invisible house.
“And here we are,” Wes said.
Devin ran to the clearing. Wes stayed at the very edge, as far back as he could get without disappearing into the trees.