The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [69]
The raft moved gently, soothingly, on the waves. The moon, almost full, cast the sprawling old house in mild light. I was cold, but I didn’t want to leave. I lay there for a long time, watching the sky clear and the stars emerge, taking their places in the night.
Chapter 9
MAYBE IT WAS THE NIGHT SWIM OR THE FACT THAT MY JET lag had finally eased, but I slept very well that night and woke feeling like myself again. I checked my e-mail before I even got out of bed, wondering what Yoshi had decided about his travel plans. My mailbox was almost full, because he had forwarded me photos from our friends Neil and Julie, sitting on a white sand beach, the azure ocean stretching to the horizon. There were underwater photos, too, of fish in neon colors—yellow and bright blue—swimming amid the swaying coral. They’d gone snorkeling near an island about three miles from the Indonesian coast, and they had liked it so much that they’d invited Yoshi to go with them while he was there. He wanted to know if there was any reason for him not to do it—he’d arrive two days late if he did.
There wasn’t really, and if the situation were reversed I knew I’d want to see Neil and Julie, to visit that beautiful beach. I wrote back that it was fine with me, but in truth I felt for the first time how very far away he was, and I was filled with a desire to be there with him, diving into water as warm as breath. To try to ease the distance I called him, and we spoke for a few minutes. He was waiting for a train and it was noisy, so I didn’t tell him much about what I’d discovered in Rochester, though I did promise to e-mail him the images of Frank Westrum’s windows and said we’d go see them when he was here.
All the time I was talking, my mother had been moving downstairs. I heard the shower go on and then off, the closet doors opening, the tap of her heels. It was chilly, the floor cold against my bare feet, so I poked around in the drawers where some of my old clothes were still stored. I hadn’t brought enough sweaters; in Japan the heat was already dense, and I’d forgotten about the chill that lingered in the lake air long into the summer. I found an old sweatshirt, dark blue, with the words Night Riders in orange across the front. That was the team name for The Lake of Dreams High School. Dreamers didn’t have much punch, and Nightmares had been decreed too negative, so we were the Night Riders, a name Keegan and I had taken literally often enough in that final year, traveling out on his motorcycle, or slipping the canoe into the midnight lake and climbing in, riding the slow waves, the pulse of the night, out into the water.
My mother was already dressed when I came downstairs, standing at the counter eating leftover bean dip on wheat crackers, drinking a glass of milk. The recipe card Andrew had left was on the counter, too, and a silk scarf, in a beautiful rhubarb shade, was pooled beside it. She was lost in her own thoughts, though after an instant she looked up and smiled.
“Morning,” she said, wiping off her fingertips and reaching for the glass.
“How was dinner?”
“Very nice. We didn’t go far, just downtown. We ate at that new place, the one that juts over the water? It was good. I wish you’d come with us.”
“It just didn’t feel right,” I said. “So much romantic tension in the air.” I was trying to joke, but the words sounded flat and wrong even as I said them.
She looked at me for a long moment, maybe remembering our argument. “Oh, nonsense,” she said finally, lightly. “Really. I hardly know him.”
“You seem to like him.”
“Yes, I do.”
“So. Well. That’s good. Anyway, I was tired last night, and I had a lot to think about. The windows are so stunning, Mom. You’ll have to see them.