Waking Kate

  He paused to take a sip of coffee. He didn’t speak for a few moments. Kate asked, “Is that what you really did?”

  Mr. Donbeet took a deep breath and stared into his mug. “I did go to the church. I stood in the back, waiting for my moment. When the preacher asked if anyone knew a reason why the bride and groom should not be joined in marriage, he said to speak now or forever hold your peace. And I couldn’t say a word. I just stood there and cried and held my peace, like peace was something you could really hold and be comforted by, something solid and smooth and round. His father met me in the back and asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted a job. A proper job. A job at his store. And that,” Mr. Donbeet said with a wry smile, “was how I came to work at Valentine’s.”

  Kate didn’t know what to say. She finally asked, “What happened to Lucky?”

  He shook his head. “He’s gone. Almost thirty years now. Lung cancer. He and Petal had a good life together. They had seven daughters.”

  “You don’t regret it? The choice for him to be happy, even though you would never be happy again?”

  He gave her a quizzical look, before he suddenly laughed. “Oh, I see.” He uncrossed his legs and set his mug on the coffee table. “You think I made a great sacrifice for someone I loved, and then never loved again.” The thought seemed to amuse him, and Kate was vaguely offended, because it hit too close to home.

  It happens, she thought. It happens all the time.

  He went to the far side of the room and opened a box. He didn’t have to rummage for what he was looking for. It was obviously there on top. “There’s no pain in the world like loving someone who doesn’t love you in return. But it disappears, almost like it wasn’t there at all, the moment you find the person you were really meant to be with.”

  He handed her a heavy silver picture frame. In it was a photo of a middle-aged Mr. Donbeet standing next to an affable-looking blond man of the same age. They were wearing matching camp shirts, and posing in front of a lake.

  “That’s Olsen, the love of my life, my partner for nearly thirty-eight years. I met him at Valentine’s. We were together until he passed away twelve years ago. That photo was taken at Lost Lake, a tiny place just south of here. It was our first vacation together.”

  “Lost Lake?” Kate repeated. “I know that place! My great-aunt Eby owned that place. I went there, years ago.” She stared at the photo thoughtfully, trying to remember. So much time had passed. “I almost kissed someone there.”

  “I did kiss someone there.”

  That made Kate smile as she handed the photo back to him.

  “Lucky was my path to him,” Mr. Donbeet said, putting the frame back in the box. He looked at it fondly. “It’s hubris to think you’re the only person who can make another happy. Some people simply have the ability to make it seem like they need you. All they really want is the attention.”

  “Matt is a good person.” She didn’t know why she said it. They weren’t even talking about Matt. Mr. Donbeet didn’t seem surprised. “So was Lucky. But just because he’s good, doesn’t mean he’s good for you.”

  “We have a great life. I helped Matt open a bike shop. It’s doing really well. And we have an amazing daughter who’s fun and creative and knows herself so well. She’s a lot like I used to be. I hope she never loses that.” What was she saying? She had no idea. She set her mug down and stood. “Thank you for the butter coffee. I should go.”

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  “No, that’s okay. I hope you have a good life in Miami, Mr. Donbeet. I’m sorry I didn’t come see you before now.” Embarrassed, she hurried to the front door and was already outside and down the pathway toward the sidewalk before Mr. Donbeet finally made it to the door.

  “Kate,” he called.

  She stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “Kate,” he called again.

  She turned to see him standing in the doorway, the frosty air from his house crackling around him like ice breaking as it hit the heat. He smiled at her with such sympathy. She felt tears come to her eyes.

  “Wake up, Kate.”

  * * *

  Kate suddenly opened her eyes.

  The only light in the house was coming from the streetlights outside.

  She felt disoriented, the way sleep that crosses from daylight to darkness always seems to confuse you, making you wonder what time it is, what day, what year.

  She must have fallen asleep here on the couch, waiting for Matt. She still had the remote control to the television in her hand.

  She got up and looked out the living room window. The neighborhood was still and quiet. Mr. Donbeet’s house was dark. The For Sale sign in his untidy yard was creaking slightly in a sudden breeze. Her encounter with him had a smoky edge to it, like it hadn’t happened at all, like she’d dreamed it, leaving a buttery taste in her mouth.

  Confused, she walked to the kitchen and tuned on the light, squinting against it as she looked at the sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, now sitting in a pool of tepid water. The bread she’d set out for summer sandwiches was now hard. The candles she’d planned to put on the back patio were now pliable from the heat.

  “Matt?” she called.

  No answer.

  She took her phone out of her pocket. Still no message from him.

  He wasn’t here, even though she’d told him it was going to be a special evening.

  He didn’t call, even though she’d said that this meant something to her.

  Her hair was sticking to her neck with sweat. She went to the junk drawer near the dishwasher and rummaged around until she found a rubber band. She pulled her long dark hair up and secured it in a tight bun on the top of her head.

  Something had changed, though it wasn’t quite clear to her what it was yet.

  She found herself wondering if, sixty years from now, she would speak of this moment the way the old man had of spoken of that day in the church, that day that had changed everything.

  As an old woman, would she turn to the man who loved her, this future mystery man, a man who wasn’t Matt, and ask, “Did I ever tell you about the day I finally let go of him? That day that led me to you?”

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  Lost Lake

  by Sarah Addison Allen

  Available January 21, 2014 from St. Martin’s Press

  Paris, France

  Autumn 1962

  The wet night air bounced against the electric streetlamps, giving off tiny sparks like flint. Almost tripping again, Eby Pim laughed and looped her arm through George’s. The uneven sidewalk was buckled by old roots of lime trees long since gone. George’s large flat feet made him sure of his step, but she was in heels and her gait was unsteady, the tick-tick-pause-and-sway making her feel quite drunk or like she was dancing to music that was out of tune.

  George leaned in and whispered that he loved her, that she looked beautiful tonight. Eby smiled and buried her face in his shoulder. They had such an easy sense of themselves here. And the longer they spent away, the longer they wanted to stay away. They wrote short notes on postcards to their families, and George regularly sent home crates of extravagant furniture and antiques, but to each other they never spoke of going back.

  Paris was the perfect place to disappear, with its dark, sinewy streets. The first week of their honeymoon, they got lost here in the fog for hours, ending up in strange intersections and alleyways, tripping over feral city cats, who would sometimes lead them to warm cafés and restaurants if the cats were feeling generous and full of tasty sewer rats. More often than not, George and Eby wouldn’t get back to their hotel until daylight, then they would sleep in each other’s arms until the afternoon. George paid the owner’s young son to bring coffee and pastries made with cheese and spinach to their room at dusk. They would enjoy the food in bed, curled in wrinkled sheets, watching the sun set and discussing what direction to head in when darkness fell and made everything a game of hide-and-seek again.

 
Tonight they walked aimlessly, trying to get lost. But they failed. For four months now they had been traversing these streets. Even in the dark, they were beginning to recognize some neighborhoods by a vague scent of char from the war. And there were various points along the river they knew just by the tone of the water. Over dinner, a meal that had consisted wholly of mushrooms simply because they felt like it, they still couldn’t bring themselves to talk of home yet. Instead, George brought up the young couple they’d met the other day, the ones from Amsterdam.

  “Amsterdam sounds nice, doesn’t it?” he asked Eby.

  She smiled, knowing where this was going. “Yes, very nice.”

  “Maybe we should visit.”

  “We might get lost,” Eby said.

  “That’s the idea,” George said, reaching across the table and taking her hand and kissing it.

  And so Eby’s family would have to wait a while longer, even though letters from home were becoming increasingly more forceful and concerned. It’s not seemly, her mother wrote, to stay on a honeymoon this long. You were only supposed to be gone two weeks! Your sister and I are getting tired of making excuses for you. Come home to Atlanta. Take your place.

  On their way back to the hotel, they approached a restaurant they knew by the smell of fried sausage thick in the air. The bell over the restaurant door rang, and yellow light from inside melted into the fog like butter. They stopped when they heard voices. A man and a woman walked out of the restaurant laughing, whispering. Their voices faded into the seductive night, where couples often pressed themselves into dark doorways, unseen. They could be so silent you didn’t even know you were walking by two people making love until you passed though the red-lit steam of their desire. There had been times when Eby and George had been overcome. Their first night in Paris, Eby had felt reluctant when George had taken her by the hand and led her under a footbridge, pressing her against the damp stones, kissing her while lifting fists full of her skirt. But then she’d realized how free she was here, and she’d begun to think, This is me. This is the real me. C’est moi, she’d whispered over and over.

  And this truly was her. This was her decision, her happiness. Marrying George wasn’t something she did to help her family. Money flowed through her family’s fingers like spring-water. They couldn’t seem to keep hold of it. And generations of Morris women had sincerely tried to fall in love with rich men. Eby’s sister, Marilee, had been their one true hope. Rich men liked beautiful wives, and Marilee was sure to snatch one with her blond hair, which shone like rabbit fire, and her fierce green eyes. But the moment Marilee set eyes on the boy who filled their family’s car tank with gas, she was gone. To everyone’s surprise, it had been Eby, tall and strange with crooked features—whose one true accomplishment was that she was the first child to read every single book in the school library—who ended up marrying rich. Morris relatives in five surrounding states had attended the wedding, their hands out for money, like this was their triumph. What they didn’t seem to understand was that Eby didn’t do it for them. She’d been in love with George since they were children. But not a single soul believed her.

  George was talking of Amsterdam again as they approached what the Parisians called the Bridge of the Untrue, rumored that young lovers weren’t able to cross if their love wasn’t real. It was the last bridge they crossed before their hotel came into view. Eby almost pulled back as they drew near. She didn’t want to return to their hotel so soon. But that made her smile to herself. When did after midnight become soon? What she was really avoiding was the post that would inevitably be waiting for them: more concerned letters from her mother, more requests for loans from relatives, more invitations from her new peers to join clubs and parties when they returned, more snarly notes from her sister, Marilee, for whom all of this was supposed to happen, and because it hadn’t, she seethed like water the second before it rolls to a boil. There might even be a phone message, which the owner of the hotel thought was rude. Eby’s mother didn’t understand. She was a typical southern American woman whose social lifeline was the telephone wire, to be used as often as possible.

  It would take time in Amsterdam for their old lives to catch up to them again. They would have a few weeks to themselves there, at least. That was good.

  Eby and George stepped onto the bridge. Ancient lemon-ball lamps appeared one at a time in the fog, growing gradually brighter as they approached, then dimming out as they passed, as if invisible hands were flicking them on and off.

  It was in the darkness between the lights, at the center of the bridge, where it arched like a cat’s back, that the fog seemed to shift and take form. A pale arm came into view, then a gray nightgown, the hem of which was flapping in the breeze from the churning water below. They were only feet away when Eby realized it was not a ghost but a young woman, a teenager, standing on the bridge railing, her bare toes curled around the cold narrow stone like claws.

  Eby froze, pulling George to a stop.

  “What’s wrong?” George asked, then he followed Eby’s gaze up. “My God.”

  For several moments they didn’t move, for fear any disturbance in the air would push the swaying girl over the edge.

  Eby had heard rumors of the brokenhearted committing suicide on the Bridge of the Untrue, but, like all rumors, they were myths until proven. Her heart suddenly felt heavy. There was so much happiness in the world. It was everywhere. It was free. Eby never understood why some people, people like her family, simply refused to take it.

  The girl was beautiful, her skin like fresh cream and her long hair so dark it seemed to suck the color out of everything it surrounded. She was small. French women all seemed to be small-boned bird creatures, delicate in a way Eby could never be.

  The girl didn’t turn. Eby wondered if she even knew they were there. Eby slowly reached out a trembling hand. At her farthest stretch, she was still inches from the girl. Wasn’t happiness like electricity? Weren’t we all just conduits? If Eby could just touch her, maybe the girl could feel it.

  “S’il vous plaît,” Eby said softly, wishing she knew something else to say. She’d studied French in finishing school in Atlanta with her sister, Marilee. Her mother had mortgaged the house in order for Marilee to attend Goddell’s School for Fine Young Women, hoping it would later put her in the path of rich men. Eby was sent on the small chance that one of the male teachers would take a liking to her and her studious ways, and at least she’d marry a man who wore a tie. Madam Goddell would have been horrified by how little French Eby remembered, though it was more than Marilee had. Eby at least knew how to ask for the time and a glass of wine. Marilee had filched Madam’s dictionary one day and learned all she wanted to learn when she figured out how to say “Kiss me, you fool.”

  “S’il vous plaît,” Eby said again. “Please.”

  The girl slowly turned her head, her eyes falling on Eby. They were dark eyes, like her hair, beautiful and soulful, and tears dripped from them, staining the front of her nightgown. She had to be freezing on this autumn night, with the scent of wood smoke settling low in the air. The girl’s mouth moved, forming words, but no sound came out. She impatiently waved at Eby and George to move on.

  “S’il vous plaît,” Eby said.

  “Joie de vivre!” George suddenly said loudly, the only French he knew, which he’d learned in a bar their first night here. It was just like him to say that at a time like this. He was a hearty, gregarious man. He was rich, but newly rich, and so very sincere about it. He lacked the natural languidity that came with old money, the kind that made others feel like they were only walking through the dreams of the wealthy, barely there at all. People couldn’t help but like George. His laugh was like a barrel of whiskey. His cheeks were almost as red as his hair. Just looking at him, you could see that his capacity to love was as wide as the world. He wasn’t going to stand a chance against Eby’s family when the couple returned.

  The girl’s eyes flicked to George, nimbly assessing him, and she
smiled, just slightly. Her eyes then went to Eby’s outstretched hand, to the wedding ring there.

  She nodded at them, an unspoken acknowledgment, and Eby felt a rush of relief.

  But then the girl calmly turned back to the water.

  And jumped.

  PART 1

  1

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Present day

  “Wake up, Kate!”

  And, exactly one year to the day that she fell asleep, Kate finally did.

  She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her hand. She watched it from her pillow, wondering if it was real. It reminded her of her husband Matt’s favorite T-shirt, which she’d hidden in a bag of sewing, unable to throw it away. It had a large faded moth on the front, the logo of a cover band out of Athens called the Mothballs.

  That T-shirt, that moth, always brought back a strange memory of when she was a child. She used to draw tattoos of butterflies on her arms with Magic Markers. She would give them names, talk to them, carefully fill in their colors when they started to fade. When the time came that they wanted to be set free, she would blow on them and they would come to life, peeling away from her skin and flying away.