The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [158]
My mother reached over and put her arm around my shoulders. She smelled unfamiliar, of strawberries and sweat.
“Go to bed, Lucy,” she said. “Get some sleep.”
I went upstairs, climbed into the room at the top of the house where Yoshi was sleeping in the middle of the futon. He moved away as I slipped in beside him. I lay there for a long time, the events of the day and discoveries of the night coming around and around, as if circling on a conveyor belt I could not switch off. I tried relaxation exercises and reciting lines of poetry and, remembering how I had felt in the chapel, for the first time in years I even tried self-consciously to pray, but the cupola was filling with the grainy gray light of sunrise before I finally slipped into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
Chapter 19
WHEN THE LAND AROUND THE LAKES WAS HOME TO THE Iroquois, they celebrated each harvest season by setting bonfires along the shore to make a ring of fire. This tradition was still celebrated every autumn after the leaves had scattered across the surface of the lake and the fields were stripped bare of their splendor, brown and dormant. Over the years people had begun to light a ring of fire on the Fourth of July as well. Boy Scouts sold flares and people plunged them into their lawns or deep into the pebbles of their beaches; Yoshi and I bought four from a stand outside the grocery store, and I explained what would happen: as the post-solstice twilight faded into darkness, the flames and flares would be lit up along the shore, making a necklace of light.
This was what we were waiting for when we gathered in the park by the marina. Blake had docked in the slip closest to the shore, and he and Avery had set up coolers of drinks, along with baskets full of delicate turkey and watercress sandwiches from The Green Bean. Family and friends sat with drinks on the edge of the seawall, or gathered in groups on the boat or the dock or the lawn. There was a band concert going on in the gazebo and children ran out to dance barefoot in the grass, parents chasing after them when they ran too close to the water. I found Avery on the boat deck, wearing a close-fitting T-shirt that made her pregnancy clearly visible.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It was my fault completely.”
She met my gaze. “Not entirely,” she said. “Blake didn’t have to tell.”
“I was giving him a hard time,” I said. “About sticking around here and taking a job at Dream Master. He was just giving me a context, that’s all. I’m the one who let it slip for no reason.”
She sighed, looked off over the lake, sipped at her sparkling water.
“All right,” she said at last, and looked back at me again.
“We’re good, then?”
She shrugged. “Not exactly. Not quite yet. But there’s no undoing it, so we might as well move on.”
I nodded. That seemed a little harsh, but fair enough. Honest, anyway.
“Besides,” she said, relenting a little, “we’re telling everyone tonight. No formal announcement, we’re just telling people one by one.”
“Okay. Congratulations, by the way. I’m really glad for you both.”
At this she smiled a little, and gave a quick nod, and then one of her friends was coming over, hugging her, and I stepped aside and took my drink back to the park, where Yoshi was waiting. I slipped my arm through his, resting my head for a second on his shoulder, and he glanced at me, smiling, before he went back to the conversation. He was talking to Joey, who was with the same long-limbed, long-haired woman I’d seen him with at Dream Master. Zoe and Austen were there, too, standing on the boat with Art. Across the expanse of lawn I glimpsed Max, dancing with wild abandon to a Sousa march, and Keegan, dancing with him for a few beats, before he laughed and swooped down, lifting Max and putting him up on his shoulders. I felt a pang of affection and the slightest bit of regret, but it was gone as quickly as it came, and I turned my attention back to the conversation.
They were talking about The Landing. They had the