11
Bulahdeen sat on the couch in the sitting room while Kate dusted the bookshelves. It was an afterthought, a last-minute decision that the main house should look presentable in case anyone at the party decided to come inside. Lisette kept the dining room spotless, but the sitting room had an air of neglect, as if Eby had walked out of it one day, to get a cup of Earl Grey or to answer the phone, and had never returned. There was even a book laying open on one of the chairs, a fine film of dust on its pages and a tiny spiderweb along its spine.
Every once in a while, Kate would peer out the window to see if Devin was still on the dock. Today, the last day before the party, Wes was outside scraping the driveway with a grading attachment he’d secured to the front of his van, so that people arriving tomorrow wouldn’t spin out or get stuck in the uneven road when they parked. The dust he kicked up had sent Selma running to her cabin earlier, her handkerchief dramatically over her mouth as if she were fleeing a forest fire. Jack was in the kitchen with Lisette, helping her put the finishing touches on the cake. Eby had disappeared into one of the cabins, as she had for the past few days, while the party preparations were going on, emerging around dinnertime, dust in her hair, as if she’d crawled through a secret passageway, a portal from past to present.
There was an undeniable sense of anticipation in the air. No one knew exactly how many people were coming, but there was a possibility of it being something big. Kate found herself hoping that it would be, that it would be something grand, that it would be all that Bulahdeen wanted it to be. Kate had been waiting for the perfect time to approach Eby about helping her financially, and the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that tomorrow would be it.
“I remember reading this book here, on the dock, fifteen years ago,” Kate said, picking up the book Eby had left on the chair.
Bulahdeen took a bite of the ham-and-Brie sandwich Lisette had brought her earlier. Lisette seemed to instinctively know when there was someone hungry nearby. She had appeared holding a plate with tiny violets painted on it as soon as Kate and Bulahdeen had entered. “I learned to read by that book,” Bulahdeen said, chewing her sandwich in tiny bites, like a squirrel.
“You learned to read by Jane Eyre?” Kate asked. “You must have been a very advanced reader.”
Bulahdeen shook her head. “Actually, I got a late start. We were so poor I didn’t even know I was supposed to go to school until I was seven. Then I couldn’t get enough of books. That’s why I taught literature. It always made me feel sneaky and giddy. Like I was getting away with something. I always thought that, at any moment, someone was going to tell me to put down my books and get a real job.”
“Have you read all of these?” Kate asked, indicating the wall of bookshelves.
“Every one.”
Kate laughed. “Eby should update her library, then.”
“No, I’ve read enough.” Bulahdeen finished her sandwich and licked her fingertips. “I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.”
Kate put Jane Eyre on the shelf and continued to dust. “Why do you keep coming back here, Bulahdeen, when everyone else stopped?”
“Because life is my books these days. And every summer here is a new chapter. Ever read a story that you simply can’t imagine how it will end? This place is like that. The best things in life are like that. My husband has Alzheimer’s. You’d think that would be the end of that story, wouldn’t you? A brilliant man who loses his mind. The End. But, every once in a while, when I’m visiting him at the nursing home, he’ll turn to me and suddenly start talking about Flaubert. Then he’ll ask me how our sons are doing. As long as he’s still there, as long as this place is still here, the story goes on.”
Kate smiled as she looked out the window again. Devin was still on the dock, the cypress knee in one hand, her other hand up, shielding her eyes from the light as she looked across the lake. She was wearing her green bathing suit, white shorts, and a blue polka-dot capelet. She looked like a pint-size superhero on watch.
Kate turned back to Bulahdeen, only to find she’d stretched out on the couch and had fallen asleep with the plate on her stomach. Kate continued to clean, wiping off table surfaces and combing the dust out of pillow tassels.
The rumbling outside stopped, and the sudden silence left a buzz in her ears.
“Selma will be so disappointed now,” Bulahdeen said, her eyes still closed. “There’s one less thing for her to complain about.”
Kate started to respond, but she suddenly felt dizzy.
She grabbed the back of a chair. She thought she heard a splash, and there was a sensation of darkness behind her eyes. She looked to Bulahdeen, but the old lady hadn’t moved. What was happening? She tasted lake water in the back of her throat and felt a clamminess along her skin. She wiped her face, and her hand came away wet, with tiny grains of silt. She’d never experienced anything like it before.
She went to the window and looked out again. Devin was gone.
She ran out of the house to the lawn and looked around, panicked without any reasonable explanation why.
Wes had just gotten out of his van. The dust he’d stirred up from the driveway was settling around them like flour.
“Devin,” Kate said to him. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Why? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I think…” That’s when it occurred to her. “The cypress knees!”
In the few seconds it took Kate to turn, Wes had shot off like a stone from a slingshot, down to the lake and around the trail. It didn’t take long for her to catch up with him. He didn’t hesitate when he reached the group of cypress knees and jumped into the water and vanished.
You can’t save everything. Wes’s words echoed in her head.
Through the murky water, Kate thought she could see the billowing of Devin’s blue capelet. She lost her breath when it floated to the surface without her. But almost immediately after, Wes broke through the water. Devin had her arms around his neck, and she began to cough. Kate’s knees gave out as Wes walked out of the water with her and handed her over to Kate.
Kate held on to her daughter tightly. She was so small that it felt like Kate could wrap her arms around her twice. With all the loss Kate had experienced lately, this was the unimaginable one. This was the one she knew she couldn’t live through. She closed her eyes and felt the tears sting.
“There’s something down there,” Wes said, sloshing back into the water.
“What?” Kate said, her eyes popping open. “Wes, wait!”
But he took a deep breath and went under again. Kate could remember the maze of roots down there. It was like swimming through a scribble.
“Mom, you’re squashing me,” Devin finally said.
Kate pulled back. She angrily wiped at her eyes. “What were you doing out here? I told you not to go swimming around these roots!”
Devin looked taken aback at Kate’s tone, as if it never occurred to her that Kate would react this way. Devin had an agenda that made sense to her, but Kate had no idea what it was.
“What if something had happened to you? What if you had gotten hurt? You scared me, Devin.”
Devin’s eyes darted to the water.
Kate pushed her daughter’s tangled wet hair behind her ears. “Sweetheart, what are you looking for?” Kate asked more softly. “What is it? Let me help you. What do you want to find?”
Devin pinched her lips together.
“I know this has been a hard year,” Kate said, “and I know it seemed like I wasn’t there for you, but I was. And I am now. You’ve got to trust me again. You’ve got to talk to me. That’s how we’re going to get through this. Together.”
Devin still didn’t say anything.
“Is this about your dad? Is this about moving?”
Devin finally said, “The alligator doesn’t want any more to change, either. He wants everybody to stay.” Devin wiped her eyes with one hand. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. “That’s why he wanted me to find the box.”
“What box?” Kate asked as Wes emerged from the water again.
Devin pointed to the plastic bag Wes was now pulling out of the lake. “The Alligator Box.”