The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [118]
Andy urged me again to join them and I declined, though I didn’t mention my plans for the evening, as if I were still seventeen.
They weren’t in a hurry to leave—it was still early. Andy asked what the chapel had been like, and I went inside to get the pictures I’d printed. The rooms were cool, dim after the bright patio; the screen door slammed and the murmur of their voices followed me. The life I remembered in this house was gone, pure and simple, and had been for years.
Back on the patio, I spread the images of the windows across the glass-topped table. While they didn’t come close to capturing the splendor of the chapel, they were beautiful nonetheless. Andy and my mother passed them back and forth, commenting on the colors, the artistry, and the remarkable nature of this find. Andy said they ought to open it up for tours, and my mother agreed.
“I suppose it will depend on who ends up with that land,” she said pensively, still studying the images. “But maybe even a developer would see the value and keep it intact. Kind of like a centerpiece. I can imagine Art doing something like that, can’t you? Is it still a functioning church?”
“It was deconsecrated,” I said. The idea of the chapel surrounded by sprawling high-end homes filled me with a kind of helpless rage. It wasn’t proprietary, as I’d felt with Oliver, but rather a deep sense that the windows should be set apart, valued for something beyond their monetary worth. “That’s what Suzi said, anyway. There’s special liturgy, I guess. But apparently a church can be reconsecrated, too. I get the impression the church officials are trying to get it back. I hope they do. Because no, actually, I can’t see Art valuing these windows at all. Not in the way they should be valued.”
“Well, of course the church wants them back—beauty aside, the land must be worth a fortune,” Andy said, ignoring my comment about Art, and missing my point altogether.
“It must,” my mother agreed. “The land alone is worth a mint.”
My concerns about her plans for the house flared again. I hoped my mother wouldn’t use the chapel to justify selling Art the land. I wanted to say something, but with Andy there, I really couldn’t. And maybe I couldn’t anyway: it wasn’t my business, as both she and Blake had so clearly pointed out.
They finished their wine and invited me once more to join them. I waved from the porch as they pulled out. I collected my clothes from the dryer and carried them upstairs, where I spent half an hour putting things in order, lining the note cards about Rose up on the desk like a school project. Then I left, slipping on my jeans and a long-forgotten pair of heeled sandals that I’d found in the back of my closet, glad to get away from the house, the empty e-mail. I rolled the Impala windows down all the way, the rushing air tangling my hair. As I reached the village I had to slow down because the traffic was so thick. I parked behind Dream Master and crossed through the gravel lot to the dock.
Keegan was waiting for me, standing with his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts, looking down the outlet to the place where it curved and disappeared into the trees. The outlet was calm and clear, the turbulent waters after the rain having receded. I shook off the memory of Max by the foaming water. From this distance, Keegan hardly looked older than he had in high school, though he’d traded his motorcycle for a van with side airbags, and his leather jacket for a windbreaker. I waved, smiling as if I were a teenager again. First with the arguments at the house and then with that kiss on the shore, I’d fallen in, been swept headlong into the dynamics of the past, which I thought I’d left behind. Keegan gave me his hand to help me into the boat. He sat behind the wheel,