The Lake Of Dreams Part 26

"I know it's late. I'm sorry, I couldn't sleep. But doesn't it seem astonishing to you that there's this whole branch of the family we've never known existed?"

"It does." He sighed. "Of course it does, it's interesting. But honestly-it's not life-or-death interesting. It's not wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night interesting. Lucy, don't you think maybe you're dwelling on this a little too much? Why not just relax and enjoy showing Yoshi around. Maybe if you weren't between jobs and here on vacation, this might not seem quite as important as it does right now."

Despite what I'd told Yoshi earlier, Blake's comment touched a nerve. Maybe this was one of the reasons I'd never let myself be between jobs before, had never paused, going from scholarship to scholarship, good jobs to better ones, so I could always come back and run into Art or Joey or even Zoe and think to myself: So there So there.

"What do you mean? It changes everything."

"They're, like, third cousins once removed. It doesn't change anything at all."

"Blake, the story changes everything."

He laughed, exasperated. "Okay, okay. I'm not going to argue with you at one o'clock in the morning, Lucy. I'll see you tomorrow at the party. Meanwhile, good night, okay?"

Then the phone went dead.

I sat on the patio for a few minutes longer. There were bats here, too. Winged shadows, I had always liked them, their small intelligent eyes, their fondness for insects and the night. There were caves on the depot land and perhaps the bats lived there, cl.u.s.tered silently along the walls, aware of the voice of the land, the susurrations of the water and the swift growing of the plants, listening to the strange new sounds of metal against rock as the bulldozers sc.r.a.ped away the earth.

If my grandfather had found this will, had he looked for Rose and Iris and never found them? It was possible. I'd had a hard time tracking Iris down, even with the letters from Rose and a great deal of luck. Or perhaps he'd never looked for her-that was possible, too. I tried to imagine how it must have felt for my grandfather to read that will-if indeed he had seen it-his father's words, so harsh, like blows: To amend for the things I denied her. To remind my son that the world does not owe him a living by any reckoning To amend for the things I denied her. To remind my son that the world does not owe him a living by any reckoning. Bitter words, and perhaps the writing of them had been enough; perhaps my great-grandfather had put this will into the wall so no one would ever see it, the flashing anger of a moment.

Or, if my grandfather had read this will in the silence of the house after Joseph Arthur Jarrett died, he might have shoved the papers in the wall and smoothed the plaster over with even strokes, as if to erase those words, though his father's disappointment was already engraved forever on his heart.

I thought of my father and Art, growing up in this house, those words buried in the wall, all that bitterness sealed away but present, shaping everything that followed, like water shaping rock. Like it or not, it had shaped me, too.

Lights flashed across the lawn and over the surface of the lake, then went off abruptly; gravel crunched in the driveway, and my mother's laughter carried through the night, and voices, softer, floated through the darkness. Then silence, the thud of the car door falling shut and more laughter, and the flash of lights again as the car backed out. My mother came in through the porch. I called out h.e.l.lo.

"Lucy?" she asked, coming to the screen door, then pushing it open and stepping out onto the patio. She was dressed in white and silver, like one of the flowers in her discarded night garden, her perfume drifting through the air. "What are you doing up? Where's Yoshi?"

"Oh, he's sleeping. I couldn't. How was the movie?"

She smiled, but it was a private smile, and despite the jam-filled jars and Andy's kindness and my own best intentions, I felt a surge of anger at everything she was leaving so willingly behind. So easily, too, it seemed from outside, though I knew that wasn't fair. Maybe it was because I had been thinking so much about my father, about his last restless days. Or maybe it was the scent of strawberries still lingering in the house. "It was terrible, actually, but we had fun. You know, it's been years since I laughed so much with anyone. We stopped at his place for pie when it was over."

"He's quite the cook."

If she heard my tone, she ignored it. "Yes, he really is. The pie was incredible, deep-dish, with clotted cream. He says he finds it relaxing to cook."

"Well, that's lovely."

"Lucy. Honey. Just be happy for me. For heaven's sake, just be happy, period."

"You know," I said, not deciding to tell her, the words just coming out in a rush. "The night Dad died, I ran into him here, in your garden. In the middle of the night, before he went fishing. He asked me to go with him. And I said no."

My mother seemed startled. "The night he drowned?" she asked slowly.

"Yes. That night. I mean, if I'd gone, everything would be different. He'd probably still be alive, and everything, everything, would be different."

"Oh, honey," she said. She came and put her arms around me. "Is that what you think? What you've thought all these years? Oh, honey, no. No. What happened to your father was not your fault, or anyone's fault, and you can't fix it."

"If I'd gone fishing with him," I insisted, "everything would be different now."

"Yes, maybe. And if he hadn't gone fishing at all everything would be different, too. If it had been raining, if and if and if. You can't do this, Lucy. You just can't. Believe me, I tortured myself for a long time, too. Your father had had something on his mind for days. After the accident-and at first I wasn't even sure it was an accident-I couldn't stop wondering: why hadn't I pressed him harder to find out what was wrong? I woke up when he got out of bed that night. I caught his hand as he was leaving the room and asked him what was wrong and he said nothing. He kissed me, and he said not to worry. Those were his last words to me. I couldn't sleep, though, so I went up to the cupola. I heard you come in, Lucy. I heard the motorcycle come and go, I heard you talking in the garden with your father. It was fine, everything you said. It was not your fault, what happened."

I didn't speak for a moment. Bats rushed above us, like leaves drifting, like sc.r.a.ps breaking free from the sky. The relief I felt at having told her was physical.

"I know that. It's just-"

"Your father is gone, honey. He's been gone a long time. He would want you to live your life."

"I know. I know that. But Mom, you said he was preoccupied. Do you happen to know why? What was on his mind?"

She sat down, shaking her head. "Oh, Lucy, do we have to? I don't want to talk about the past anymore. You've found Iris, right? So your quest is over. The past is the past, Lucy," she added gently. "It doesn't help you to dwell there. You miss too much of what's going on right in front of you. Believe me, I speak from experience on this. Don't get stuck."

The will, those pages with their slanted handwriting, was burning in my hands. I imagined telling her about it, but as with Blake, something held me back. This will left half of everything to Iris, and all these decades later, I had found her. Would the will still be valid? Would Iris even care? Would my mother? I didn't know, and that was just the trouble. I felt like I was walking on sand.

She looked at me-puzzled, irritated, concerned. I knew she wanted more than anything to walk away and go to bed, to drift into sleep, the scent of pine and strawberries permeating everything, the memory of Andy's laugh, the touch of his large, capable hands, all of this easing her into pleasure, sleep, dreams. Still, after a moment she sighed and pulled her chair closer to the table. I thought of the morning we'd sat here looking at Rose Jarrett's cryptic notes-just over two weeks ago, though it seemed a lifetime away. I turned the pages in my hands.

"I don't know," my mother said. "I don't know the answer to your question. As I said, I thought about it night and day for months after your father died. Trying to understand what had happened. We weren't old, you know-your father only forty-five that summer, and I was forty-three, and for a long time after, I'd wake up in the morning believing it hadn't happened. I think that's why I closed off the rooms. I wanted a wall between then and now, between what we'd dreamed for our lives and what had really happened.

"Anyway, all I can tell you is that he had something on his mind. He was preoccupied. Not worried so much as distracted. It was like he was listening to music I couldn't hear. Sometimes I'd have to ask him a question three or four times to get an answer. He was finishing the kitchen renovation, and he kept having problems with the subcontractors. I didn't want to add to his stress. I figured he'd tell me eventually, once he'd had time to work it out, whatever it was."

She stared at the table, then looked up and spoke again. Her eyes were dry, but her words were rough with emotion.

"Does it matter, Lucy? Because I think we're still in different places with all this. In the beginning I kept searching for reasons, too. I tortured myself with the idea that I might have changed the outcome. If I'd only done this, or said that, a different set of events would have followed. Maybe so. But this this is what happened, and nothing changes that. It was an accident, and over the years it's become a comfort for me to think of it that way." is what happened, and nothing changes that. It was an accident, and over the years it's become a comfort for me to think of it that way."

We'd never spoken so directly of my father's death before; we'd driven grief underground, like water pressed beneath shale, threatening to emerge without warning. I didn't want to cause her any further pain, but I put the will, those angry pages, on the table. I explained what it was and how I'd found it. I told her what it said.

She sat back in the chair, then picked up the papers and shuffled through them, though it was too dark to see.

"Really? He left half of everything to Iris?"

"He did. If he meant for this will to be seen, that is. He might have put it in the wall himself. Changed his mind, sealed it away instead of burning it."

She nodded slowly. "Either that, or someone else did. Your grandfather or grandmother. It's hard for me to imagine it was your grandfather, though. Do you remember him at all?"

"Not really, no."

"He was genial, he liked the good life and was happy to float along on what his father had accomplished. Art's a lot like that, when you get down to it. He feels ent.i.tled to everything, somehow. He was the sort of person who went along to get along-though, who knows, he might have bottled up enough anger to do this. Your grandmother, though-especially after your grandfather had that stroke-was very protective of her boys, especially of Arthur. I can see her doing this. Of course, I never knew your great-grandfather, so I can't really say what he might have done."

"Well, someone didn't want it to be found."

"Yes."

"That seems awfully mercenary, if it was all about the money."

"It might have been money. Or it might have been anger or embarra.s.sment. They were very proper, both of your grandparents. Very concerned with appearances, with the family name. It's a small town, and word would have gotten around. It might have been a sense of shame as much as anything, if either one of them did this.

"That's your father's handwriting," she said, picking up the first page and reading it again. Found in kitchen, west wall. Found in kitchen, west wall. "He must have come across it during the renovation that last spring." She sighed. "He never mentioned it. He wouldn't have, though. Still, I knew something was off." "He must have come across it during the renovation that last spring." She sighed. "He never mentioned it. He wouldn't have, though. Still, I knew something was off."

"So maybe this was what was on his mind."

"Yes," she said slowly. "I can see that. It might have been."

"If it's true, it could change everything."

In the silence we listened to the soft voice of the lake, whispering and whispering to the stony sh.o.r.e where they had pulled my father from the water.

"Well, not everything," she said.

She stood up and slid the papers back across the table. The radiant happiness that had surrounded her when she'd come in had disappeared.

"Let's just think about this," she said. "Let's not mention it to anyone. We can talk to lawyers and so forth, but for the time being, I don't see the need to discuss it with others."

"It's been such a strange day," I said, because I didn't want to consider too deeply why she might wish to keep this quiet.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 gra.s.s, 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 land and a zoning change was making its slow way through committees and would be announced within a day or so; Joey was optimistic that they'd get permission to build. I thought of the beautiful chapel, which stood in the center of the parcel they wanted, and of my mother, telling me not to mention the will I'd found, and felt a rush of paranoia: why not not say anything? Was she planning to sell her property to Art, after all? Was she changing her mind about Dream Master? I wondered suddenly, too, what had been happening with Oliver and Suzi and the chapel. say anything? Was she planning to sell her property to Art, after all? Was she changing her mind about Dream Master? I wondered suddenly, too, what had been happening with Oliver and Suzi and the chapel.

"You're pretty far from building anything, though," I said, sipping at my wine.

Joey shrugged, nonchalant, full of the smug, unearned confidence that had always driven me crazy. "Yes and no. We're almost good to go. I've already had calls from a dozen people interested in owning a piece of this. It could potentially be the biggest thing we've done."

I thought of the marshes, and the herons rising when I disturbed their reedy home, rising and floating high, huge and graceful, above the trees. I looked across the water at Blake, standing on the boat and laughing with Andy and Art and two other people I didn't know, and my mother, talking with Avery now, who was looking very happy. "New Year's Eve," I heard her say. "We're getting married New Year's Eve."

The band played, and finished, the last notes floating out over the water. We ate and drank and talked as the sun went down and the darkness deepened. Fires began to appear, first just a few and then more and more, flaring here and there around the rim of the lake. It was such a lovely, familiar evening, the air as soft and warm as breath, but the secret of the will was like a transparent wall between me and everything else. I kept moving from group to group, drifting in and out of conversations.

Finally, Yoshi and I sat by ourselves on the seawall, dangling our legs into the lake. I told him about the will and all it implied.

"Well, it's not necessarily sinister. Maybe your mother just doesn't want to take any dramatic action until she knows what it means," he suggested. The lake had turned a misty gray that blurred into the deepening sky. "After all, the will may not be valid. And if it is, then it would probably be pretty complicated to figure out who got what all these years later."

"You think I'm overreacting?"

"A little bit," he said, nodding.

"Maybe I am," I said, remembering my conversation with my mother about Oliver's intentions. She'd been completely right. "It's always like this after a few days here. I start to lose my bearings. The surface is one way, but then there are all these other things going on, sometimes going back decades, swirling undercurrents that I just don't understand."

"This time is different, though," he said. "You have Rose's story now, which must put a new light on everything."

It was true, I did. Her story, and the radiant windows of the chapel and the Westrum House, had stretched and changed the way I saw the world. Everything was connected in a way I had not understood before. Her dreams, as well as my great-grandfather's, had brought us to this dusky evening, to this moment in time when everything might shift and change again.

Blake walked down the dock, his boat shoes echoing faintly against the wooden slats. He'd strung tiny white lights on the railings.

"Hey there, you two," he said. "I'm going to run Mom up to the house. Want to come and check out the fires along the way?"

"Sounds nice," I said, splashing my foot in the water, "but I've got the Impala. So I can't."

"Yoshi? Want to come?"

"You should," I said, knowing how Yoshi loved to sail, realizing this might be his only chance, given how busy Blake always was, how our time here was already beginning to dwindle.

"You wouldn't mind?" Yoshi wanted to know.

"I wouldn't, really. I'll meet you at the house. I might take a walk first."

I waited until everyone had boarded and the boat had glided out onto the dark water, becoming nothing more visible than a net of moving lights. Then I finished my gla.s.s of wine and walked through the park, through the streets crowded with summer tourists.

I'd left the car behind Dream Master, where I knew I wouldn't get towed. As I walked along the outlet, the building turned a dark, blank-eyed, and impa.s.sive face to the world, but when I cut around to the parking lot, a light was visible in Art's window. He had left the party before I had a chance to say h.e.l.lo. I wondered if he was inside at his desk, or if he'd just left the light on. I wondered what, if anything, he knew about Iris, or the will, or Rose. So I went in.

I walked through those corridors where I had played as a child, running over the dusty linoleum, thrilled with the scents of metal and sawdust. This place had defined so many generations, and it looked caught in time. A row of safes for sale stood against the wall, made by some other company now, their little doors ajar. I walked up and down the aisles, studying the displays of locks and the bins of nails, the racks of paint chips and brushes.