The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [58]
She held up her hands. “What about him?”
“Does he know about all this?”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business, either, Lucy. But the fact is, I just met Andy. It’s fun, going out, that’s all. I’m having fun. Why is that a problem?”
“It’s not. I didn’t mean that.”
“Then, what did you mean?”
I took a deep breath, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the distant lapping of waves against the shore. I’d spoken without thinking, and I didn’t really know why I was so upset. It had to do with the land, yes, and all the intricate and difficult family history. It had to do with Blake so willing to go along with Art, and even with Avery being pregnant. The dark taste of the comet wine was still in my mouth. I’d never told my mother about meeting my father on the night he died. I’d never told her that he’d asked me to go fishing. In some alternate universe there was the day we might have had if I’d said yes, a day when we came back at dawn with a line full of fish, an easy day of sunshine and grilling trout and dinner on the patio—a day that would have led us somewhere else, not here.
“I don’t know,” I said, finally. All the energy seemed to have drained from the room now, but maybe it was just jet lag. “I don’t know what I meant. It’s just—you know, a lot of changes, very, very fast.”
She nodded, but didn’t speak right away. “Not so fast,” she said, finally. “Not really, Lucy. But it must seem fast to you. I get that.”
I almost told her then how it might have changed everything if I’d gone fishing that night, how we’d be in a completely different place if I had. But she was happy now, that was the thing, maybe as happy as I’d ever seen her. In this moment, at this time, she was happy.
“All right. Who knows—maybe selling the land, even to Art, would be okay. I mean, Blake and Avery can’t raise a baby on a boat.”
She turned and looked at me hard. “What did you say?”
I closed my eyes for a second and swore silently to myself.
“Look, I wasn’t supposed to say anything. But that’s why Blake took the job. And that’s why Avery didn’t even sip the comet wine.”
“Oh, you’re right. Oh, my! It makes sense. But I didn’t realize—”
“Don’t tell him you know, okay? He’ll be upset. I promised him. And he promised Avery. She’s looking forward to making some sort of formal announcement.”
“I’m the grandmother-to-be. They won’t care that I know. I’m sure they won’t.”
She paused and pressed her hands against her face, her silver rings flashing. She shook her head once, let her hands fall.
“Oh, it’s very exciting, isn’t it? What a shock. Though now that I know, I guess it makes perfect sense. You’re right,” she added. “They absolutely cannot raise a baby on a boat. Where’s my phone?”
“Oh, please. Don’t tell him I told you.”
“I won’t. I’ll say I guessed. You’re right, she didn’t drink. When’s she due?”
“October, I think.”
My mother was already punching numbers into her cell, and didn’t seem to notice when I left the room and climbed the stairs.
I lay awake for a long time, the events of the evening running through my mind, before I finally fell asleep. Later that night a thunderstorm came in, and in my restless sleep I dreamed another dream like the one on my first night here, the urgent seeking of round things hidden beneath the leaves in the forest. But this time I found them, beautiful spherelike shapes tucked beneath leaves, as delicate as rain but made from glass, so beautiful it was painful to look at them, filled as I was with yearning. When I picked them up they turned liquid in my hands and fell to the earth, and rolled away in tiny beads, and I crawled after them, my heart breaking to think of all that beauty lost. I gathered all the fragments together and sat on the forest floor, trying to put them back together, to mend them with glue, to fasten them with metal rods, but time and again they melted at my touch, and disappeared.
Chapter 8
I WOKE UP EARLY, TO A GRAY DAWN, RAIN COMING DOWN SO hard and the clouds so low that it was hard to tell