“Oh. Gosh. I’m sorry. Scot. Scot Tannauer.” He held out his hand, then withdrew it just as quickly and shook it out as if he had carpal tunnel syndrome. She couldn’t tell whether he was attracted to her or terrified of humans. He took a look around the station house. “I’ve never been to the Adirondacks before. I read up on them.”
“I didn’t know there was much reading to be had on them.”
“Oh, yes. Yes. The history of the mountains, and the great camps, and the Vanderbilts and the other families who came up here.”
“Bankers came even then,” Evelyn said with a light laugh.
“Oh—yes—I get the joke,” he said, looking down at his suit.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”
“Sorry. Just. No. I’m just—”
“So you were saying? The great camps?”
“The architecture is really something. It’s an interesting style that was replicated in some of the national-park lodges, but really nowhere else.”
Evelyn began to ask about who the architects had been, but the station house door opened and Nick Geary stepped in wearing white tennis shorts and a white polo shirt. His hair was still chocolate brown and perfectly floppy, his eyes the same dark blue, his skin perfect, and his lips a deep red that girls would’ve killed for. His nostrils were the only problem, large and quivering; they had no doubt seen their share of coke, Evelyn thought as she smiled and kissed his cheek. “Nick!”
“Evelyn. It’s been ages. How’s the singing?” he said, not as distantly as Evelyn had expected. “Sir,” he said to Scot. “So I’ve been deputized as your chauffeur for the day. Hop in. Evelyn, how much luggage do you need for a three-day weekend? Jesus Christ.”
“The singing?” Scot asked.
“I was really into musicals when I first met Nick. I’m surprised he remembers.”
“Oh,” Scot said, sounding like a horse neighing.
CHAPTER THREE
Shuh-shuh-gah
The stores of Lake James Village topped out at two stories, crowded together on one mile of the three-mile-circumference pond in town. It looked, comfortingly, exactly as Evelyn had remembered it from her first and only other trip there, the summer after Preston’s Sheffield graduation. Though years had passed, no Walmarts had arrived to suck the specificity out of the village, and there were not even any chain drugstores, as those were relegated to the road leading out of town. Instead, it was Just Bead It and Custard Mustard & Ale and the confusing promise of the Steak Loft.
Even the smell of the air through the rolled-down windows was familiar after all these years, wet leaves and burning wood and muddy grass. Evelyn, who’d decided to sit in the backseat to let Nick handle conversing with Scot, watched as the light green of the trees whirred by. It was quiet but for some chirps of birds and the rumble of the ancient Hacking Jeep along the road.
Though it was late May, the local clothing store, the Sweater Haus, still had thick Irish sweaters and Wellies in the windows. Even the Gap and Bass outlets, part of an aborted attempt on the part of the town elders to make Lake James into a discount-clothing destination, showed what remained of winter gear in their windows: puffy jackets, raincoats, heavy leather hiking boots. The Lakeview Inn’s A-frame chalkboard promised seven-bean soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and weather that was fifty-five and cloudy.
Evelyn looked over James Pond, which the Lakeview sat on, remembering the first time she’d seen it. All that talk about Lake James as a summer playground for the rich and well bred, she remembered thinking, and it was a rinky-dink middle-class vacation town with a tiny lake and wooden bears surrendering with their paws up outside every third store. Then she’d followed the directions Preston had given—the same directions Nick was following now—and taken a right between two stone pillars with a hanging wooden sign that read MT. JOBE ROAD—PRIVATE DRIVE, and perceived her error. Here was an unfinished rough dirt road, and glimpses of an enormous lake to the left, and the suggestion of very nice houses, as implied by the trees in front of them that hid them from view.
“Oh,” Scot said from the front, having the same realization Evelyn had had years earlier. “There’s another lake? I thought the lake was the one in town.”
“That’s the pond,” Evelyn said. “James Pond. All the tourists come here and think it’s Lake James and take a paddleboat out or whatever and then go home thinking all the fuss is about this pond. Lake James is huge. At least ten times the size of the pond. You can’t see it from town.”
“Why can’t you see it from town?”
“Private drives, friend,” Nick said, hurtling up Mt. Jobe. “Get with the program.”
“I’d think the residents would object to that,” Scot said.
“The residents all live on the private drives,” Evelyn said with a laugh. “They’re the ones keeping everyone else out.”
“Such communist ideas, Evelyn,” Nick said.