The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [165]
When I looked up again, all the wild anger that had driven me had drained away. I was left with only a weariness so strong I felt I might not be able to get up. But eventually, I did. I skirted the pile of papers and turned out the light, making my way through the hall and back out into the empty parking lot. The door had been unlocked; anyone could have caused the damage. That’s what I told myself anyway as I drove up the lake road. The house was all lit up, and when I came in, my mother and Yoshi and Andy were gathered in the kitchen by the phone.
“There you are,” my mother said.
Yoshi put his arm around me.
“Where were you?” my mother asked. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I was just walking.”
“For four hours? Lucy, it’s after midnight.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Look.”
I squinted at the clock on the stove. It was.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I walked for a while and sat by the lake, and I just lost track of time. I’m so sorry you were worried.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” I took Yoshi’s hand, laced my fingers through his. “I’m fine, just tired.” I kissed him on the cheek in a showy way, eager to get away. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs. I’m beat.”
Chapter 20
WHEN WE REACHED THE CUPOLA I WALKED ACROSS TO THE futon with its rumpled sheets and sat down on the window seat overlooking the lake and the wild garden where I’d last spoken to my father. All the time he’d been holding this secret so close that even my mother hadn’t known.
Yoshi sat down next to me and took both my hands in his. He waited, steady, until I could take a deep breath and tell him the story. I remembered how comforting it had always been, in the midst of the unsettled earth beneath us, to have Yoshi there. Once I started talking, there was a relief in the telling that I hadn’t expected, and some of the pressure in my chest began to ease.
“He really said that?” Yoshi asked, his voice low and even. “He actually admitted that to you?”
I pressed my lips together for a second, then took a breath.
“He did. He said it was an accident. But that’s not the thing—the thing is that he left my father there. He couldn’t find him, and he just left. And he never said a word.”
Yoshi kept holding my hands. He left the silence open so I could speak.
“He came to the funeral,” I said, remembering. “And all these years he’s been so damned nice to everyone, helping my mother, giving Blake a job, trying to hire me—all so we’d think he was wonderful, when all this time he did this, and he knew.”
“He said it was an accident?”
“He did.”
“Well, maybe it was. Maybe he was trying to make amends, Lucy. This must have been eating him alive,” Yoshi observed.
I pulled my hands away, pressed them against my cheeks. “Don’t defend him. It’s not defensible, what he’s done.”
“Hey,” Yoshi said. “Is it me you’re mad at here?”
“No.” I took another deep breath. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not.”
“All right.”
“Right.” I closed my eyes for a second. “All right. I don’t know what to do. I certainly can’t tell my mother.”
Yoshi shook his head and gave a little disbelieving laugh. “Why not?”
I considered that. His family wasn’t geographically close, but they were open in a way my family had never been. Why couldn’t I say anything? Because I didn’t know how my mother felt about Art and about the land; I didn’t know what she was planning to do. And because I wanted to protect her from this knowledge.
“That’s not your job,” Yoshi pointed out when I tried to explain. “Lucy, you can’t carry this with you, not saying a word. It will eat you alive, too, if you do.”
“And then there’s Blake,” I went on, aware that I was not really responding to Yoshi. “Blake is right in the middle of this. Even if he doesn’t know what happened, he’s been woven into everything. Art is right, he has a deep stake in