And there it was, the thing Kate had feared most. Cricket brought up the incident with the scissors. Kate had been waiting for this for a while. And now that it was out in the open, now that it had been acknowledged, it felt so far away, like something she’d done a lifetime ago. Why had she been so afraid of this? Why had she been so afraid to acknowledge her grief? Just because Cricket had bottled it inside, waiting to air it on TV, didn’t mean Kate had to.
“I can’t believe I was starting to feel guilty about not calling you, because I thought you might be genuinely worried about us.”
“Well, Kate, of course I was,” Cricket said, trying to make her voice go soft.
“My great-aunt is selling Lost Lake, and she needs my help sorting everything out this summer. I’ll let you know when Devin and I will be returning. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”
Kate hung up the phone. Cricket immediately called her back. She ignored the call and connected to the Internet and searched for this new Pheris Realty commercial. She found it easily.
It was thirty seconds of Cricket talking about her real estate company, with flashbacks to the old commercials featuring Matt. Kate had forgotten just how lost he’d looked back then. It made her want to save him all over again. At the end of the commercial, Cricket was standing outside Kate’s mother’s house, beside her real estate sign with the SOLD placard on top of it. “After my son died in a tragic accident last year, my daughter-in-law and granddaughter needed me to sell their home and help them on their new journey in life, which I did.” She held up a framed photo of Kate and Devin, one she’d obviously taken from Kate’s album. Kate was smiling, holding Devin, with the sun behind them. Matt had taken that photo a year and a half ago, at a bike race their shop had sponsored. “Pheris Reality—” Cricket said as the commercial closed, “we still know about moving on.” Then there were the words To be continued.
Kate put her hand over her eyes and let out a sob. For a few moments, her chest heaved and tears ran out from under her fingers. Why she’d fallen in love with Matt, how much she had tried to help him, how much she had wanted to make him happy—it all came rushing back to her. The reason she’d worked so hard and committed so much to a life she didn’t even want was because of that boy on TV. She’d wanted him to finally have that place where he belonged. And she found herself crying as much for herself as for him, because she knew—knew with all her heart—that as much as she had loved Matt and had wanted the world for him, he had never truly felt the same way about her. She had spent seven years married to a man who hadn’t cared for her nearly as much as she’d cared for him. And she’d begun to resent it.
The phone started ringing again. Cricket. Kate was so angry and full of grief at that moment that, without thinking, she hauled back and threw the ringing phone into the lake, where it landed somewhere near the ghost ladies with a soft plop.
She stood there, stunned. She couldn’t believe she just did that.
She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes. They were going to have to go back to Atlanta. She knew that. That was their home. And she was going to have to face Cricket. But she was not going to be in any commercials. She was not going to support Cricket’s burgeoning political career. Cricket had spent so much time behind the scenes in politics that it had never occurred to Kate that she would ever step in front of the camera, though it made perfect sense. Kate didn’t know why she was so surprised. She had money, looked great on TV, came across as sympathetic but had firm opinions, and she had hair that didn’t move. She had wanted Matt to go into politics, but now that he was gone, Kate figured Cricket had decided she was just going to have to do it herself. Matt had told Kate once that Cricket had made him run for class president and major in political science because she’d been prepping him for something big. He’d said it in an I showed her, didn’t I? kind of way, something that always made Kate think that his life with her was just a way of getting back at his mother.
But Kate was tired of sacrificing her happiness for someone else’s dreams. She’d done it for her mother when she was a teenager, and she’d done it for Matt. She’d done it all willingly, but never again. For the past year, she’d been scared that she couldn’t actually live her own life, that she was someone who was inherently incapable of it. She was scared of being a bad parent. Scared of being alone. Scared to grieve. Not anymore.
This, she thought, was where her real life was going to start. She didn’t know where it was going, but it was going to start here, where she used to know herself so well, where no one else’s rules made sense but her own.
She looked at the water and sighed.
Apparently, her new life was going to start without a phone.
7
The next morning, Devin woke up early. She didn’t know where she was, and she sat up quickly. But then it came to her. The cabin. Lost Lake. Her eyes went slowly around the room. It reminded her of a hut, the kind a banished princess would live in, hiding from a wicked witch. She liked the thought of being banished. That way, she’d never have to go back. The bed was old and white, with a scene from the lake painted on it. The dresser was fat and round and had glass knobs that looked like cloudy diamonds. The wallpaper was peeling, and she got a splinter in her foot from the uneven floorboards last night, but all in all she couldn’t have dreamed of any place better.
Her dad wouldn’t have liked it here. But her dad wouldn’t have liked moving into Grandma Cricket’s, either. Her dad had only really liked his bike shop, and Devin didn’t like it there. She missed him, but not the way her mom seemed to miss him. She wondered if her mom missed him because she didn’t remember him. Devin remembered him very clearly. She would test herself every once in a while and, yes, she could still recall everything about him, right down to the way he smelled, a sharp combination of soap, summer sweat, and tire rubber. She had a fanny pack that had belonged to him, and inside she kept a photo of him and a Paracord bracelet he used to wear all the time, which she’d sneaked out of her parents’ room the day Grandma Cricket decided to clear all of her dad’s clothes out of the house. She kept it around in case she ever needed it, in case she started forgetting.
Everything was quiet. Her mom obviously wasn’t up yet. She threw the covers off and walked to the window in her bedroom. She pulled and straightened her Wonder Woman T-shirt and her pajama shorts with the strawberry pattern on them, which had gotten uncomfortably twisted in her sleep. She stopped at the window and looked out, yawning. Bright mist from the lake was threading through the spaces between the cabins and lying low over the lawn in front of the main house.
A tang of barbecue charcoal was in the air, left over from where they’d cooked on the grills last night, and it made her hungry. She turned to go to the kitchen, to see if food had magically appeared like it had when she’d woken up yesterday. She’d liked those fruit tarts, which she’d never had for breakfast before.
But something caught her eye outside the window, and she stopped.
There, walking down the path toward the lawn, was an alligator.
It was huge and green-black and walked in a slow, swishing motion. Its wide, stiff tail left a trail in the dew. It was the most beautiful thing she thought she’d ever seen. She watched it walk all the way to the lawn, then it stopped. Minutes, hours, days passed. What was it doing?
It slowly turned its long bumpy head, teeth baring slightly, and looked back at her.