*
With his clothes sticking to his body, and inches of water pouring from his work boots, Wes made it to the trail and went to his knees beside Kate and Devin. Devin called it a box, but it didn’t look like a box. It looked like there was something more sinister inside the black trash bag. He unknotted the tie and reached in … and drew out another black bag.
He opened it only to find another. Then two more.
Finally he pulled out an old plastic waterproof tackle box. It was sooty and burned in places, like it had been in a fire.
My God.
Wes set the box down as if it were made of glass, then sat back and stared at it. Finally, pushing his wet hair out of his face first, he slowly reached forward and unsnapped the locks. He took a deep breath as he opened the seal. Out poured a curious counterbalance of smells—musty and dank, smoky and scorched. But there was an underlying scent that was all Billy. It punched Wes in the gut. It was almost too much, all of these memories flooding back, when there were times over the past few years when he couldn’t even remember what his brother looked like. The sheer tangibleness of these things, of Billy’s Alligator Box, almost made him sick.
The box had been here all along.
Billy had been here all along.
And the thought that he’d almost missed it, that he never would have found it once Lost Lake was gone from him and belonged to other people, terrified him.
He reached inside, and the first thing he took out was a cardboard pencil box gone soft. He opened it and poured dozens of alligator teeth into his hand, touching them as if they were jewels, as if they flashed and sparkled. He put them back in the pencil box and set it aside. Next he brought out a small plastic alligator toy Billy used to play with at the breakfast table. Then a key chain shaped like an alligator, which Wes had given him for his sixth birthday. A cigarette lighter that had once belonged to their mother, engraved with the initials ELI. A cracked gold pocket watch Billy had hidden so their father couldn’t pawn it, because it had belonged to their grandfather. And a single aquamarine cuff link Wes couldn’t place.
The box was almost empty now. Wes looked inside and felt the blood rush from his face. His hand shook as he reached in and brought out a single unmailed letter, sealed in a plastic sandwich bag. He automatically looked at Kate. She saw the letter in his hand but didn’t seem to recognize it.
He quickly put the things back in the box, then stood.
“That really is the Alligator Box, isn’t it?” Kate asked him.
“Yes.” He had to leave. That was all he could think of. He had to get away and process this. “I’m sorry, I really need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow at the party.” They were looking at him strangely as he clutched the box, dripping wet. He tried to smile. “No more swimming out here alone, okay?” he said to Devin.
“Thank you, Wes,” Kate said.
He nodded, then walked away.
*
“We have to talk about this,” Kate said to her curiously silent daughter after she’d taken Devin back to their cabin and washed her off. “What just happened out there? Why did you jump there, of all places, when I specifically told you it was dangerous?” This had been no accident. She’d found Devin’s glasses on a stump by the trail. She’d taken them off before she’d gone into the water.
They were sitting on the couch now, Devin on her lap. Devin sighed deeply. “The alligator kept trying to give me clues to where the box was. I finally understood. I had to get it before it was too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I’m not sure.”
Kate paused, changing tactics. “Did you see the box—the trash bag—through the water? Did you know what it was, or were you just guessing?”
“No, I saw your phone. I saw it the day Bulahdeen showed me the place where the knees are, but I didn’t realize what it was at first. The alligator must have moved it there, to tell me exactly where to jump.”
“My phone?”
Devin pointed to the coffee table, where Kate thought Devin had placed her cypress knee on their way to the bathroom. But instead of the knee, it was Kate’s phone in its electric blue case, wet and covered in grime. Kate reached forward and picked up it, nonplussed.
“I didn’t realize how deep the water was. I couldn’t make it all the way to the bottom and stay there long enough to pull the bag out of the dirt. And there were all these roots in the way.”
Just the thought of it made Kate shiver. What was going on? Devin was a dreamer, not a risk taker, so this was simply baffling. “Have you ever seen this alligator before?” Kate asked gently. “Or did this just start here?”
“He lives here.”
“And he talks to you?”
“Yes.”
“And he told you where the Alligator Box was?”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell you!” Devin said, her skinny arms and legs trembling with frustration.
“Does he have a name?” Kate asked.
Devin suddenly stilled and looked at her curiously. “You know what his name is.”
“No, I don’t.”
“His name is Billy.”
A slight chill ran through her. It suddenly made sense, in a distant way, like remembering a decision you made long ago, one you wouldn’t make now, but one that had made perfect sense back then. Putting aside her disbelief and confusion and worry for a moment—all things the adult in her felt—Kate found that the only thing left was the one true thing.
Kate had left her childhood here.
And Devin had found it.