The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [156]
“He’s quite the cook.”
If she heard my tone, she ignored it. “Yes, he really is. The pie was incredible, deep-dish, with clotted cream. He says he finds it relaxing to cook.”
“Well, that’s lovely.”
“Lucy. Honey. Just be happy for me. For heaven’s sake, just be happy, period.”
“You know,” I said, not deciding to tell her, the words just coming out in a rush. “The night Dad died, I ran into him here, in your garden. In the middle of the night, before he went fishing. He asked me to go with him. And I said no.”
My mother seemed startled. “The night he drowned?” she asked slowly.
“Yes. That night. I mean, if I’d gone, everything would be different. He’d probably still be alive, and everything, everything, would be different.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. She came and put her arms around me. “Is that what you think? What you’ve thought all these years? Oh, honey, no. No. What happened to your father was not your fault, or anyone’s fault, and you can’t fix it.”
“If I’d gone fishing with him,” I insisted, “everything would be different now.”
“Yes, maybe. And if he hadn’t gone fishing at all everything would be different, too. If it had been raining, if and if and if. You can’t do this, Lucy. You just can’t. Believe me, I tortured myself for a long time, too. Your father had had something on his mind for days. After the accident—and at first I wasn’t even sure it was an accident—I couldn’t stop wondering: why hadn’t I pressed him harder to find out what was wrong? I woke up when he got out of bed that night. I caught his hand as he was leaving the room and asked him what was wrong and he said nothing. He kissed me, and he said not to worry. Those were his last words to me. I couldn’t sleep, though, so I went up to the cupola. I heard you come in, Lucy. I heard the motorcycle come and go, I heard you talking in the garden with your father. It was fine, everything you said. It was not your fault, what happened.”
I didn’t speak for a moment. Bats rushed above us, like leaves drifting, like scraps breaking free from the sky. The relief I felt at having told her was physical.
“I know that. It’s just—”
“Your father is gone, honey. He’s been gone a long time. He would want you to live your life.”
“I know. I know that. But Mom, you said he was preoccupied. Do you happen to know why? What was on his mind?”
She sat down, shaking her head. “Oh, Lucy, do we have to? I don’t want to talk about the past anymore. You’ve found Iris, right? So your quest is over. The past is the past, Lucy,” she added gently. “It doesn’t help you to dwell there. You miss too much of what’s going on right in front of you. Believe me, I speak from experience on this. Don’t get stuck.”
The will, those pages with their slanted handwriting, was burning in my hands. I imagined telling her about it, but as with Blake, something held me back. This will left half of everything to Iris, and all these decades later, I had found her. Would the will still be valid? Would Iris even care? Would my mother? I didn’t know, and that was just the trouble. I felt like I was walking on sand.
She looked at me—puzzled, irritated, concerned. I knew she wanted more than anything to walk away and go to bed, to drift into sleep, the scent of pine and strawberries permeating everything, the memory of Andy’s laugh, the touch of his large, capable hands, all of this easing her into pleasure, sleep, dreams. Still, after a moment she sighed and pulled her chair closer to the table. I thought of the morning we’d sat here looking at Rose Jarrett’s cryptic notes—just over two weeks ago, though it seemed a lifetime away. I turned the pages in my hands.
“I don’t know,” my mother said. “I don’t know the answer to your question. As I said, I thought about it night and day for months after your father died. Trying to understand what had happened. We weren’t old, you know—your father only forty-five that summer, and I was forty-three, and for a long time