Lost Lake

  Kate hesitated before she said, “Thank you.”

  “I wish you would see things my way,” Cricket said, watching Devin with the other little girls, sitting at a table now. Devin took off a few of her necklaces and shared them. Kate could see Cricket warring with herself. She wanted so badly to control this, to turn Devin into something she thought was better.

  “For once in your life, Cricket, stop trying to control the people who love you,” Kate said. “Just love them as they are.”

  “I didn’t know how to love Matt any other way,” she said softly, and it was perhaps the first true grief Kate had ever heard in Cricket’s voice. She was, for just a moment, simply a mother who had lost her son.

  “I’ll never try to stop you from seeing Devin. It’s up to you.”

  Cricket nodded, then walked over to her car and left, much to the relief of drivers in the juggernaut of other cars that had stopped behind hers and who were slowly trying to back out because she was blocking the circle.

  The group left behind exchanged hopeful glances. Wes and Kate’s eyes met and held. Lisette lifted her notepad to write something. But Eby held up her hands. “Nothing has been settled yet. I don’t want to tell anyone I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to get their hopes up. Especially Bulahdeen. I’ll tell her later. For now, let’s just enjoy the party. Wes, Jack, will you bring out the cake?”

  “What’s going to happen, Eby?” Kate asked, as Jack and Wes walked away. Lisette followed them, looking at Eby over her shoulder questioningly. Eby smiled at her to tell her it was all right.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out,” she said. “So that was your mother-in-law?”

  Kate sighed. “That was her.”

  “She’s an impressive woman.”

  “No match for Devin, apparently.”

  That made Eby smile. “No. I don’t think any of us are.”

  * * *

  “If Eby doesn’t sell, then things will go back to normal,” Jack said happily to Lisette as they walked into the main house. “Summers will be the same again.” He reached over to her and took a small twig from her hair. He felt a levity come over him, the feeling he used to get when plans fell through and he didn’t have to go to a dreaded function.

  Lisette turned away quickly and headed for the kitchen.

  “Lisette, aren’t you glad?” Jack asked, following her, because it seemed to him that this was perfect. Things had been solved without anyone having to do anything.

  She nodded.

  “We’ll see each other every year, like always. You don’t have to leave.”

  Lisette lifted her notebook and wrote, There are things I need to tend to in the kitchen.

  She disappeared inside, sliding the lock in place.

  Wes was standing at the buffet table, his hands on one side of the large piece of wood the cake was sitting on. “Are you ready, Jack?” Wes asked.

  Jack nodded absently, something the little girl said suddenly in his thoughts.

  Why aren’t you fighting?

  * * *

  Selma watched Lazlo gather his wife and daughters, then leave with his lawyer in his black Mercedes. She was relieved. She didn’t feel like dealing with him anymore. She looked around for someone else, then sighed and sat down with her fan. She really should just go back to her cabin.

  “Looking for a husband to steal?”

  Selma looked up and saw the Fresh Mart girl standing there. She was wearing too much makeup, and it was melting off her face in the heat. Her hair had split ends from too many blow-dries. Youth really was wasted on the young. “Brittany. How nice to see you again.”

  Brittany sat down across from her. “You know, I’m beginning to think I’ve been too hard on you.”

  “Oh, really,” Selma said drolly. “Do tell.”

  “There’s something to be said about getting exactly what you want. I want to know how you do it. I try so hard sometimes to get boys to like me. Like Wes. We had a pact, sort of. Then I saw him dance with Eby’s niece. Sure, she’s thin and all, but her hair. What’s with all the crazy layers? Why won’t he look at me the way he looks at her? Tell me how to be like you.”

  Brittany wanted it. And it would have been so easy. All Selma would have to do was blow a wish on her. But she’d never done it before. She’d always thought it was because she didn’t want the competition. But deep down inside of her, she wondered if it was really fair. Young women know so little about consequences.

  Selma set down her fan. “Listen, child. You wouldn’t be able to get Wes even if you were like me. Because you can only steal something that wants to be stolen.”

  Brittany looked confused.

  “For example, do you see Lisette over there with that man?” Jack and Lisette, along with Eby, Kate, and Wes, had all disappeared for a while. They were now standing on the far side of the lawn, near the dock. Obviously, they were having some little confab to which they hadn’t bothered to invite Selma.

  “Jack. Sure. I know who he is.”

  “If they got married, I would never be able to take him from Lisette. Do you know why?”

  “Because Lisette would put a curse on you?” Brittany asked. They watched as Eby said something to Jack and Wes, and the two men walked across the lawn and went inside the main house. Lisette followed.

  Selma sighed. “No. Because Jack loves Lisette. On the other hand, look at your father over there with your mother. Do you see the difference?”

  She did. Selma knew she did. She simply didn’t want to accept it. “So you’re not going to tell me how to be like you?”

  “You don’t want to be like me,” Selma said.

  “Yes, I do! I want to be happy.”

  “I just told you how,” Selma said, angry with herself for giving away too much already. She stood and began to walk to her cabin. She had a headache.

  “Selma, there you are!” Bulahdeen said, stopping her. “I haven’t been able to find anybody. Where have you all been?”

  Selma liked that Bulahdeen thought she had been included in the lake group’s little getaway. “Here and there.”

  “Hasn’t this been an exciting day? I got rid of the sign. But I wish that man hadn’t made a speech. No one seems to like him. Eby doesn’t even seem to like him. That might work in our favor. I’m glad he left. Look, they’re bringing out the cake!” Jack and Wes were now exiting the house, carrying a chocolate monstrosity.

  Sometimes Bulahdeen was simply exhausting. And Selma was in no mood for her right now. “Why are you trying so hard? Why is everyone trying so hard to save this place?”

  “Because we love it here,” Bulahdeen said.

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Bulahdeen tsked. “Selma, if you keep acting like you don’t care, pretty soon everyone is going to believe you.”

  “You’ve known me for thirty years and that is just now occurring to you? I’m not acting. Bulahdeen, why don’t you just give up? She’s selling. And, contrary to what you may believe, you can’t stop it from happening. Everyone is here to say good-bye. It’s what people do when they go their separate ways. They say good-bye. I’ve done it a lot. It goes like this.”

  Selma turned and walked away.

  13

  Bulahdeen Ramsey was born in a shanty area in upstate South Carolina that locals called the End of the World, which was just that for everyone who lived there. They knew how they were going to turn out. They knew the ending to their stories in this place, with its muddy streets, its smell of unwashed men, and grease from the kitchens that turned all the window coverings yellow. Those lucky enough to have a pig or chickens guarded them fiercely. There had been more than one lifeless body hauled away to town, shot trying to steal animals. Protein was a commodity greater than gold.

  Women from the Baptist Church came once a month with charity boxes of flour and sugar and old clothes. Shoes in the winter. The men had seasonal jobs on the nearby farms. They were carted away in trucks and would stay gone for weeks a
t a time, coming back for sex and drink, before going back again. The women were calmer when the men were away. There was more food, less drink, no babies conceived to be born in the dead of winter, like Bulahdeen.

  Doctors rarely traveled to the End of the World, because payment was never a given, not even in the form of vanilla pie or a burlap bag of walnuts. So when Bulahdeen’s mother went into hard labor, no doctor was there to help her. She died giving birth. Bulahdeen’s father cast her away from him and ran as far as he could. He died of drink in the river.

  Bulahdeen grew up in her aunt Clara’s tar-paper home. Her aunt weaned her with a cousin close to Bulahdeen in age, then set her aside, leaving Bulahdeen to figure out things on her own. Sometimes it seemed they forgot about her entirely. When the people from the county came to check on the kids, to document their health and ages, Bulahdeen was always away, staving off hunger by picking wild blackberries and chicory and fireweed in her own personal glen out near the polluted river that ran from the cannery. The school system didn’t know Bulahdeen existed, so she was never made to go.

  Her aunt had too many children to care for, so Bulahdeen became like a stray cat that only came close enough to be fed table scraps at night. She spent the rest of her time walking the roads and fields. In the summer she slept in the shelter made by two felled trees and a canopy of ivy. In the winter she slept on the porch, curled near the crack under the door, covered with a blanket.

  When Bulahdeen was six, she was run out of her glen by some boys who had discovered it and claimed it for their own, so she was forced farther out to forage, closer to where no one at the End of the World was ever supposed to go near. The Waycross Estate. The owner of hundreds of acres of farmland lived there, the man responsible for what little wages were earned in the End of the World.

  That’s where she met Maudie Waycross, the boss’s daughter. She was known to be pretty and generous and absolutely off limits to anyone, much like the estate itself.

  She was sitting under a tree, on a quilt, picnic food in waxed paper pouches around her. She didn’t seem to care about the food. She was completely engrossed in a book. She didn’t even notice Bulahdeen standing there until Bulahdeen took a small step forward, thinking she could just reach over and take one of the pouches and run. When Bulahdeen stepped on a twig, the girl looked up, startled.

  Bulahdeen turned to run away, but the girl called to her. “Stop!” She put the book away and smiled. “What a surprise to see you. You look like a wood nymph. You have beautiful hair.”

  Bulahdeen didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what a wood nymph was. And no one had ever told her that her hair was beautiful. It was wild and strawberry red and never fully contained with a dirty scarf and an old clip she’d found in a nearby dump site.

  “I’m Maudie. What’s your name?”

  Several seconds passed. “Bulahdeen.”

  “You’re from the End of the World, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here. But I’m not supposed to be here, either. So let’s not be here together. Come, sit with me. I’ll share my food with you.”

  Bulahdeen sat on the very edge of the quilt, and Maudie handed her a sandwich. Bulahdeen ate, timidly at first, then voraciously when she realized how good it was. Maudie rested back, the book on her stomach, and looked up at the sky through the trees. She told Bulahdeen about the book she was reading, a story set in a place called England, involving a man who had a madwoman in his attic but who was in love with a young woman who taught a little girl who lived in his house. It was all very confusing to Bulahdeen.

  Maudie suddenly sat up. “What’s your favorite book?”

  “I don’t have one,” Bulahdeen said, eyeing the rest of the food on the quilt.

  “Don’t you like to read?” Maudie asked, handing Bulahdeen an apple.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Where do you go to school?”

  “I don’t go to school.” Maudie just stared at her. So Bulahdeen told her about her family and her life—all of it. She hadn’t meant to talk so much, but no one had ever listened the way Maudie listened. By the time she finished talking, the food was all gone—she’d eaten it all without realizing—and the sun was setting.

  Maudie reached over and brushed some of Bulahdeen’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don’t like the ending, you make up a new one.” There was yelling coming from the direction of the main house on the estate, and Maudie quickly stood. Someone was calling her name. As she gathered the quilt and the empty waxed-paper packets, she said hurriedly, “In two years, I turn eighteen. My dad thinks I’m going to marry Hamilton Beatty, because he wants me to. But I’m not. I’m leaving when I turn eighteen. I’m going to see the world! Meet me back here tomorrow, Bulahdeen.”

  “Why?” Bulahdeen called after her.

  Maudie turned and smiled. Bulahdeen would always remember that smile, how beautiful it was, how it made Bulahdeen’s stomach feel jumpy and wonderful. She’d never felt anything like it before.

  Hope.

  It was the first time she’d ever felt hope.

  “Because we can change your ending, too,” Maudie said, then ran away.

  That was the day everything changed.

  Maudie taught Bulahdeen to read. She got Bulahdeen enrolled in school. And nearly every day, Maudie and Bulahdeen met in the woods and ate and read to each other, and Maudie told Bulahdeen of all her plans when she would turn eighteen.

  On the day of her birthday, Bulahdeen picked blackberries and made Maudie a crown of clover, and met her at their spot, only to find a wooden box sitting on the folded quilt instead. Inside the box there was a large stack of paper, envelopes, pencils, and postage stamps. There was also a small package and a note, which read:

  I had to leave in the middle of the night. Daddy found out my plans and locked me in my room. I’m going to my aunt’s house in Boston. Here is her address. Write to me there, Bulahdeen. Write to me about how you’re making your own ending, and I’ll tell you all about mine.

  Bulahdeen opened the package to find it was the copy of Jane Eyre Maudie had been reading when they’d first met.

  Of course Maudie made it out. She had the means to make her own ending.

  But no one got out of the End of the World.

  Still, Bulahdeen wrote to Maudie. Every day at first, then every few months, when she’d collected enough events to fill a sheet of paper. Bulahdeen excelled at school, which didn’t mean anything, really. She still went home to the same place and slept on the porch and waited for her life to play out.

  The summer she turned fourteen, her aunt Clara made a bed for her in the corner of the kitchen because she needed the help. Several of Bulahdeen’s cousins, cousins not much older than Bulahdeen, now had lap babies and hip babies and babies on the way, and all they seemed to do was eat and poop.

  Bulahdeen didn’t pay much attention to the men in town. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was to avoid them. But one day, when she was alone in a nearby field collecting dandelion greens to boil, out of nowhere came Big Michael, young and mean. His eyes were light blue and close set, and Bulahdeen had caught him staring at her sometimes when she would hang out a line of diapers.

  He smiled at her and then picked a dandelion in full fluff from the ground. He blew on it, and tiny bits of fluff stuck to her hair like dust. He reached over to pick them out, but she backed away. Quick as a flash, he grabbed her and fell to the ground with her, face-first, the force knocking the air out of her chest. Then he was on top of her, grabbing at her skirt and pulling it up. He lifted himself slightly to pull at his own pants, and that’s when she twisted herself around enough to catch him in the side of the face with her elbow. The pain was like fire in her bone, and, from the sound he made, it didn’t feel too good for him either. She managed to knock him off of her, and she scrambled away on all fours before p
icking herself up and running faster than she’d ever run in her life.

  Her aunt Clara found her in the kitchen later, cradling her arm, clothes torn, covered in dirt. The only thing she said to Bulahdeen was, “Next time, don’t fight so hard. It’s easier that way.”

  That’s the moment Bulahdeen realized that she did fight. And she’d fought because she hadn’t wanted that ending. She’d wanted something else. Not this. It had been six years since Maudie had left, and Bulahdeen hadn’t received a single letter from her. Still, that night, Bulahdeen wrote to her at the address she’d given her, and told her everything that had happened. She told her she wanted things to change but she didn’t know how.

  She started staying longer at school, helping the teachers clean their rooms, because she wanted to stay away from the harm of home as long as possible. Then one of the teachers hired her to help bathe and feed her elderly mother in the afternoons.

  One day, as Bulahdeen was leaving the home after feeding the elderly woman, hurrying because she wanted to get back to the End of the World before dark, the next-door neighbor stopped her and invited her inside. She was the local librarian and, out of the blue, she offered Bulahdeen a place to stay in the home she shared with her husband, who happened to be the police chief. They didn’t have any children, and they were getting up in years, she said. She saw the way Bulahdeen tended to the old woman next door, and she said she’d give Bulahdeen room and board if she helped out with chores around the house and at the library.

  Those two years with the Bartletts were the safest she’d ever known. And not a single night went by that she didn’t lie in her bed and wonder at the turn her life had taken. She had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky.

  Until the day before she left for college.

  That’s when the librarian handed her a stack of letters. They were all the letters Bulahdeen had sent to Maudie at her aunt’s address in Boston.

  Maudie had never made it to her aunt in Boston. No one knew where she went. No one knew what happened to her. Over the years, Bulahdeen had made up hundreds of stories about Maudie’s whereabouts, none of them the truth. That was Maudie’s ultimate victory. Her ending was her own. No one else could touch it.