Kate stepped back from Wes and immediately looked for Devin, hoping her daughter wouldn’t see Cricket. She knew how she would react. If Kate had known her mother and father were planning to leave that day fifteen years ago, Kate would have cried, would have screamed, would have hidden. Anything to keep from leaving.
She found Devin sitting under a picnic table with the other girls. They were chewing on ice, secreted away in their own little fort.
“Are you all right?” Wes asked.
“Yes,” she said, turning back to him. His color was high. “I’m sorry. I see someone I need to talk to. Excuse me.”
She could feel his eyes on her as, every muscle in her body tense, she walked over to Cricket, who was now standing by her car. She was surveying the crowd, getting a feel for it.
Cricket took off her sunglasses and carefully put them on her head as Kate approached. “So this is what has been taking up all your time,” she said calmly, so calm that she could only be angry.
“What are you doing here?” Kate demanded. She didn’t belong here. Everything about Cricket being here was wrong. She brought Kate’s old life with her; Kate could even feel it trying to settle over her skin, like dressing her in clothing she didn’t want to wear. This must have been what Devin felt like every day of the past year.
“You forced my hand when you stopped answering your phone.”
“So you drove four hours here?” Kate asked. “If you found out where it was, then you knew there was a phone number.”
“But then I would have missed that charming little dance,” Cricket said with a click of her tongue. “Who was that?”
Kate didn’t want to tell her. This had nothing to do with her. But Kate had created this mess. She had let Cricket think that her life was hers to control. It was time to fix this. “His name is Wes.”
“Is that who you really came here to see?”
Kate sighed. “No. Of course not. I told you. Devin and I found a postcard. We came here to see my great-aunt, Eby.”
“So you were dancing like that with a man you just met.”
Kate paused, wrestling with Cricket’s control. She almost squirmed with it, but she didn’t want to give Cricket the satisfaction of seeing it. “No. I met him here when I was twelve, the last time my family visited. He lives here. In Suley.”
“Matt has only been gone a year,” Cricket hissed.
“I know that.”
“How quickly you move on,” Cricket said.
“Quickly?” Kate asked, her voice rising. “I could barely function when he died. I lost all direction when I lost Matt.”
“Which is why you need me. Enough of this. I came here to see what the lure of this place was, and I found it, obviously. I want you and Devin to come back with me today. We will make this new commercial and introduce you to the city. And you and Devin will be at my side when I announce I’m running for Congress. You owe me this, Kate. I’ve spent the past year trying to get you ready for this. It’s going to happen. Where is Devin?” Cricket looked around. The little girls had left their secret hiding place and were now zigzagging through the crowd in a game of chase, invisible comet tails trailing behind them. Devin was wearing her tutu, this time with a neon green T-shirt and dozens of plastic pearl necklaces, so she was hard to miss. “My God, all that time I spent getting her out of those clothes, and you just let her wear what she wants.”
“I’m letting her be a kid. This doesn’t last long. It will be gone before she knows it.”
“Devin! Devin!” Cricket called. She held out her arms. “Come to Grandma Cricket!”
“Cricket, don’t,” Kate warned.
Devin stopped in her tracks, and Kate could almost see the color drain from her face when she set eyes on her grandmother. She looked at Kate, and her expression broke Kate’s heart. Kate thought Devin had been coming around, but the moment Devin saw Cricket, Kate realized that her daughter still didn’t trust her. Devin still didn’t trust her to make this right. Devin turned and ran away, disappearing into the crowd.
Cricket dropped her arms and turned to Kate accusingly. “Where is she going? What have you said to her about me?”
“I haven’t said anything to her about you. Go home, Cricket. If you leave now, you can be back before dark,” Kate said, taking a step back toward the party to go after Devin.
“Wait, is that Lazlo Patterson?” Cricket asked. Lazlo was standing in front of one of the fans near the dance floor, and his laughter had caught Cricket’s attention.
Kate turned back to her, surprised. “You know him?”
“I’m in real estate in Atlanta,” Cricket said. “Of course I know him. I’ve never done business with him, though. Rumor has it that he’s connected. What is he doing here?”
“He wants to buy Lost Lake from my great-aunt.” Kate paused. Even though she was a good six inches taller than Cricket, Kate could feel herself standing up straighter, as if steeling herself. “I want to buy it from her instead.”
“You?”
“Yes, me.”
“Oh, Kate,” Cricket said with a shake of her head, as if she pitied Kate for even thinking such a thing. “You don’t want to mess with Lazlo Patterson. You don’t know anything about real estate or about running a place like this.”
She honestly believed that. She had no idea that Kate ran Matt’s bike shop. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t care. “You don’t know who I am or what I can do. I know what’s best for myself and my child. Go back to Atlanta, Cricket. I’m going to find Devin. If you had just given us some warning, I wouldn’t have to go after her to tell her you’re not here to snatch her away, like some witch in a fairy tale.”
“Did you just call me a witch?” Cricket asked.
Kate walked to the lawn, searching. Cricket followed her, until Kate managed to lose her by walking directly across the dance floor in the middle of a song. Kate then walked quickly to the main house, where the scent of chocolate cake was thick and cool in the air. She checked the sitting room, the dining room, then went to the kitchen. As soon as she entered, the chair by the refrigerator shifted slightly, as if the wind from her entrance had moved it. She exited by the back of the house. No Devin. She jogged down the path to their cabin. She went inside and checked all the rooms, calling her name. Nothing. As she hurried back to the lawn, she stopped to look in the windows of the other cabins.
Now she was getting worried.
She finally found the little girls Devin had been playing with earlier, back under the picnic table, eating pilfered potato chips. She bent down and asked them, “Have you seen Devin?”
“She ran that way,” one of the girls said, pointing toward the right side of the lake. “Into the woods.”
“Kate?” Eby called from the next table. “What’s wrong?”
Kate straightened. Lisette and Jack were now sitting with Eby. “I can’t find Devin. She ran into the woods.”
“What?” Eby said, standing. “Why?”
“Because my mother-in-law just showed up. And Devin probably thinks she’s here to take her back to Atlanta.”
Wes approached them. He’d been on the periphery for a few minutes now, watching what was going on, taking in the worry on all their faces. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Devin just ran away, into the woods,” Eby told him.
“The cypress knees?” he asked Kate. He looked ready to run.
Kate shook her head. There was no taste of lake water in her mouth, no silt on her skin. Devin was dry and hot, in sunlight. Kate didn’t know how she knew these things, just that this place seemed to want to let her know. “No, the other direction.”
“Let’s go,” he said, heading for the lake. Kate followed. Eby, Lisette, and Jack brought up the rear.
“Kate? What’s going on?” Cricket said, trotting up to her. “Where are you going?”
“Stay here, Cricket. Devin ran into the woods when she saw you.”
“This is no place for a child. If you can’t even keep an eye on her—”