4
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:
Don’t worry when you get home today and Devin and I aren’t there. I took Devin on a mini-vacation to see an old relative. Be back in a few days.
Cricket immediately wrote back:
What relative? Didn’t you read my list? Where are you????
Kate sighed and typed:
I didn’t read your list. Sorry. Devin and I found an old postcard from my great-aunt Eby in the attic this morning. We decided to visit her camp, Lost Lake, in Suley, near the Florida border. Don’t worry. We arrived safely. See you soon.
She turned off the phone so she wouldn’t read what Cricket would say next, then she stared at the ceiling. There was no breeze, yet the dusty ceiling fan was slowly altering the rotation of its blades on its own, back and forth. There was an electric charge in the air. It made the hairs on Kate’s arm stand on end.
“I like it here already,” Devin whispered. “Can we stay?”
Kate leaned over and rested her cheek on top of Devin’s head. “For a while.”
“Do you think Dad would have liked it here?”
Kate felt her breath catch a little and hoped Devin didn’t feel it. When Matt had been alive, Kate had done everything in her power to give him the life she thought he’d wanted. She’d always been tuned in to his cues, ready to turn even a hint into a full-blown wish. Matt hadn’t really known how to be happy, but there had been something about him that had made everyone around him want to find it for him. “I don’t know,” she said, even though she really did. Matt would have hated it here. He’d hated vacations. He’d liked to stay close to home, where he could ride familiar streets and trails alone on his bike, earbuds in his ears.
“There’s no place for him to ride his bike,” Devin said.
“No.”