The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [12]
“To Lucy,” she said, lifting a glass with her good hand. “Welcome home.”
“Is that Lucy already?” a voice from the dining room called.
Art, my father’s brother, older by a less than a year, came to stand in the doorway. Even as I realized who it was, I was shocked. He had aged, his broad face slackening, and his hair, gone gray at the temples, cut short and bristling. Somehow in this aging he had come to resemble my father so closely it might have been his ghost standing in the doorway. I couldn’t speak. Art didn’t seem to notice, though. “Here’s the wanderer,” he said, stepping into the kitchen to give me a quick, tense hug. “Home at last. How long are you staying?”
“A couple of weeks,” I said.
“Good. You’ll have to come see us—lots of changes afoot.”
“I was telling her.” Blake was leaning against the counter. “There’s a big brouhaha over at the depot today, did you see it?”
Art nodded. “I did. They wanted me to sign a petition. Wetlands—well, damn. I told them that’s prime real estate, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build.”
Blake laughed and agreed, and I glanced at my mother, who was standing with her injured arm across her waist. She caught my eye.
“Art was kind enough to replace the bathroom faucet today,” she said.
This meant: Don’t make a scene, Lucy, please.
Undeterred, I was about to tell Art exactly what I thought about losing the wetlands, but then the ancient freezer on the porch shuddered on, forcing me to consider the muttering old house, its demands and complaints, and the kitchen renovation, which had been less than half-finished when my father died, walls torn out, appliances in boxes, dust from the Sheetrock gathered in the corners. Art and my father had never gotten along, but Art had come to finish the kitchen job. Twice in those numb weeks after the funeral I’d walked in and seen my uncle’s legs sprawled out from beneath the sink, tools spread out around him as he struggled with the couplings, and thought it was my father.
“Dad loved those marshes,” was what I finally said.
Art was a big man, with long arms and hands thickened from years of work. He drummed his fingers on the counter, looking in my direction but not quite at me; his gaze traveled past me, to the scene outside the window, to the lake.
“He did. Your father did love that place, I know, Lucy.” He drummed his fingers a little harder, and then slapped his hand flat on the counter. “We used to go there when we were boys. It was our go-to place, I guess you could say, whenever we needed to think something through, or just to get away. Fishing wasn’t bad, either,” he said, lost in thought for a moment before he shook his head and rejoined the conversation. “Now, Blake,” he went on, changing the subject. “I’ll see you later today, right?”
“Not today. I can come tomorrow.”
“Be early, then. There’s plenty of work.” Art turned to my mother. “Evie, I fixed the window sash in the bathroom, too. I’ll stop back next week to put on a coat of paint. But it should be okay in the meantime. Come and take a look.”
“I appreciate it, Art,” my mother said, following him into the other room.
“What was that about?” I asked Blake once they’d gone. “Are you working at Dream Master now?”
Dream Master Hardware and Locks was the business our great-grandfather had founded in 1919, turning his intuitions about the internal mechanics of locks into a thriving enterprise. In its heyday the Dream Master factory shipped locks all across the country. Like most of the other industries in the area, it was gone now, but the hardware store remained, and Art owned it. My father had once owned it, too, but in 1986, the year the comet came, when I was almost ten, he had come home one morning with a box full of things from his office, and he’d never gone back, or said a word to me about why he left.
Blake ran one hand through his wild curls and glanced after Art. “Walk me outside,” he said.
We went through the porch and down the steps, and then Blake kept