“It’s almost eight,” she said, returning the phone to her pocket.
“Thanks.”
He started to turn, but she stopped him by suddenly thrusting out her hand and saying, “Hi, I’m Kate. You probably don’t remember me.”
He stood. His hand was large and calloused, folding around hers like wrapping paper. “I know who you are,” he said, nicely but blandly. Milk and white rice. She knew that tone very well, that politeness ferociously guarding something else. Her mother-in-law was an expert at it. “I sent you a letter, years ago. Did you get it?”
“Eby just told me that you’d asked for my address. It never came.” She paused. “Or, at least, I never received it. My mother might have hidden it from me.”
He gave her a strange look. “Why would she do that?”
“She and Eby had some sort of argument that summer. That’s why we left so suddenly. I just found a postcard Eby wrote me years ago that my mother kept from me. When I get back home, I’ll look for your letter. I wish I had known. I had a great time here with you.”
“If you find it, just throw it away.”
“Why?” Kate asked, surprised. “What did it say?”
He shook his head. “It’s been a long time.”
He had come into his own with a confidence and presence that he hadn’t had before. But he’d lost something, too. She wasn’t quite sure what it was. Maybe, like her, he’d changed too much, left too much behind.
“Mom!” Devin called, running toward them. Her cowboy boots clunked on the dock boards as she approached. Kate didn’t have a quiet child. Devin could make noise in a room made of cotton. “Bulahdeen said to tell Wes that there’s cocktails if he’ll stay. Is that a bird?”
“Cocktails are grown-up drinks. Cockatiels are birds.” Kate put her arm around Devin’s shoulders. “Wes, this is my daughter, Devin. Devin, this is Wes. I met him the summer I came here when I was twelve. We were good friends.”
“Wes,” Devin asked breathlessly, her eyes wide, “have you ever seen any alligators here?”
He smiled. “No. Sorry.”
“Devin is newly interested in alligators,” Kate explained.
“When my brother was about your age, he was obsessed with alligators,” Wes told Devin. “He even called himself Alligator Boy, and he wouldn’t answer to anything else. He was determined to turn into an alligator when he grew up. He had it all planned out. One day he would wake up with a tail. The next day his alligator teeth would come in. This would go on for days until he was finally a whole alligator and no one, especially our father, would recognize him.”
Alligator Boy. Kate had almost forgotten about him. He had tagged along wherever they went but rarely said anything. It had been easy to forget he was even there. “Billy,” she said, suddenly remembering. “His name was Billy.”
“Yes. And you were the one who made up the story about him turning into an alligator,” Wes said. “He loved that.”
“Did he really turn into an alligator?” Devin asked, her voice quiet with awe.
“No. He passed away a long time ago in a house fire. But he wanted it so much that, if he had lived, I bet he would have.”
“I’m sorry, Wes,” Kate said, and put her hands in her pockets awkwardly. She felt her phone—and the scratch of something sharp against her knuckles. She took out the small curved bone she’d found on the stoop.
“What is that?” Devin asked.
“I found it this morning. I didn’t recognize it at first, but it looks like an animal tooth, like the kind Billy collected in a big box. Do you remember that?” she asked Wes. “He used to carry that box around wherever he went.”
“He called it the Alligator Box,” Wes said, staring at the tooth in her hand. “It was lost in the fire.”
“Is it an alligator tooth?” Devin asked Kate.
Kate shook her head. “Probably not.”
“I bet it is!”
“Would you like it?” Kate said, offering it to her daughter.
Devin looked excited and was about to take it, but Kate saw the moment it clicked that this nice man had a brother who collected things like this. A brother who was now gone. She stepped back and said, “No, I think Wes should have it.”
Devin was one great kid. Matt had rarely seen it, but Kate always had. She wasn’t going to fall asleep again and miss another year. She was going to be here for every moment. For the first time since waking up, she knew that clearly, without fear. She smiled at Devin while extending her hand to Wes.
“That means a lot to me,” he said sincerely. “Thank you.”
Suddenly, something knocked hard against the dock below. Tiny ripples fanned out on all sides of the water around them, like petals. They all looked down, as if waiting for something to appear, but the ripples gradually died away, leaving the water once again calm and inscrutable.
“It’s been doing that all afternoon,” Wes said with a laugh, when he saw that Kate was standing perfectly still, her arms out slightly, as if the entire dock was going to collapse under her feet. “There must be a floating tree trunk stuck under there, knocking against the support columns.”
“Can we dive down there and see?” Devin asked.
“No. Go tell the others that Wes can’t stay,” Kate said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Devin ran back to the lawn, calling, “Bye, Wes!”
He waved, and they both watched her go.
“Is your husband here with you?” Wes asked as he turned to place his tools back in his toolbox. He clicked it shut and picked it up with one hand, still holding the tooth in the other.
“No. He passed away last year.” Kate turned and walked back up the dock, still not entirely convinced it wasn’t going to collapse.
Wes fell into step beside her. “Now it’s my turn to be sorry.”
They walked in a familiar silence. There was a muscle memory there, forged by repetition fifteen years ago. It felt nice to be this comfortable around a person again. Kate used to make friends so easily as a child, like everyone was made of magnets, instantly drawn to one another. As she got older, it seemed like those magnets turned and forced everyone away from a specific area around her.
They stopped on the lawn. Wes put the tooth in his pocket and shifted his toolbox from one hand to the other. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just wanted Devin to see this place. I have such good memories here. I wanted her to have them, too.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again, before you leave.”
“I’ll say good-bye this time, I promise.”
Wes nodded. She wondered if he was thinking about that almost-kiss, or if he even remembered. Was she just projecting old feelings onto him, like a movie on a wall? The boy who had given her that last best summer was now this handsome unfamiliar man. And yet, she knew him. She knew him in that way you can only know a person you remember as a child, like if you cracked away the adult shell, you’d find that child happily sitting inside, smiling at you.
Without another word, he waved to everyone on the lawn, then walked to his van.
“Kate, will you get the butter from the kitchen?” Eby called. “I forgot to bring it out.”
Kate turned and went into the house. She tapped on the kitchen door, then entered and saw that the kitchen was closed down for the night. She glanced at the old chair beside the refrigerator as she opened the door and took out the tub of butter. When she closed the door, she paused because the chair was now leaning back against the wall on two legs.
Hadn’t it been on all four just seconds ago?
Puzzled, she left by the back entrance so she could take the cardboard box from the Fresh Mart, which Lisette had left by the door, to the garbage bins. After recycling the box she turned the corner, but then stopped short.