The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [44]
“Just once. A long time ago. We were on our way home early one morning when one leaped in front of our car. My father slammed on the brakes, barely missed it. We watched it disappear into the trees, and then five or six others followed, pure white. I was little, so they seemed magical, like unicorns or something. I remember we all just sat there, not speaking, for a long time. Even my dad.”
I sipped my tea and studied the three framed photos on the wall behind Avery. The first had been taken on the deck, Blake standing behind Avery with his arms around her waist. Her head was tipped back against his shoulder, she was laughing, and he was smiling down at her, the wind sweeping a piece of her hair across his cheek. The other two were more formal, the two of them standing side by side, smiling at the camera in front of a lighthouse, an anchor.
“Do you like those?” Avery asked, turning to look. “I just had them framed last week. Those two on the left are from the trip we took to Nova Scotia last spring.”
“You look so happy, both of you.” I was hoping she would tell me about the baby, so I could stop pretending that I didn’t know.
“We were. It was a good trip, mostly.” She paused, as if choosing her words. “Lucy, is Blake very much like your dad was?”
I thought about this. I never would have said so before, but knowing that Blake was working at Dream Master made me reconsider. He’d given me his reasons, and they made sense, but all the same I wondered if the lure of the past had something to do with it; he could have worked anywhere else in town. “I don’t know. In little ways, maybe. The same laugh, the same eyes, that sort of thing. But I can’t really say. Why?”
Avery sighed. “I guess I’m just trying to figure him out. Sometimes he just seems so far away. So lonely, somehow.”
I didn’t answer right away. A very sad and lonely person—those were Yoshi’s words to me. I liked to think that the past had no power over me, but maybe I was caught in it, too. Avery half-stood and reached to the counter for a bag of pistachios, and I glimpsed the faint swell of her stomach beneath the gauzy blouse, so slight I might not have noted it unless I already knew. When Blake had visited me in Indonesia, he and Avery had broken up, and one evening he’d struck up a deep flirtation with a woman at the next table. I wouldn’t have guessed then that he’d be here now, back with Avery, about to have a baby. The boat swayed gently, making little ripples in the iced tea, and I thought of the waves that had run through the earth, and of Yoshi’s hand running the length of my thigh as I woke amid the earthquakes. I thought of his kindness, and his kiss on the train platform, which seemed a very long time ago.
“Lucy?” Avery said, offering me the pistachios. “Earth to Lucy? Did you want some of these? Some more tea?”
“No, thanks.” I smiled. “Sorry to be so spacey. I guess I’m still a little jet-lagged. I should probably get going, actually.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. Can I give Blake a message?”
I shook my head, imagining the sort of message I could leave: Discovered lost ancestor, please call ASAP. “That’s okay. I’ll track him down eventually.”
Upstairs, I lingered on the deck, thinking about Yoshi, about loneliness, mine and Blake’s and maybe everyone’s. It was still a clear day, but low clouds were scattered on the horizon and the wind had come up; the lake was decorated now with whitecapped waves. The fire siren sounded; it was noon. Even though I didn’t want to go to Dream Master, I did want to tell Blake what I’d discovered, and so I left the pier and crossed the main road, following the outlet away from the center of town.
For all his talk of progress, Art had let Dream Master go quite a bit. The plate-glass windows were filmy, and one of the gutters on the third floor was hanging askew. The brick needed tuckpointing, too, and the grass in front was long. It struck me that maybe Art’s hiring of Blake was less an act of generosity than it was of desperation. There was something weirdly comforting