Wren batted her lashes at me. “You should ask him to make us a hammock, sissy. He’ll do it if you ask. He’ll do anything you ask.”
I slanted a narrow look her way. “Don’t you need to go sit in front of the air conditioner in your trailer or something?”
“I like it better here.” A freckly smirk came my way. “Anyhow, the power’s out, remember? It’s hot up there in the trailers. It’s a good day for swimming, and I want to wear my swimsuit this time. We can walk all the way down to the lake. I heard up in crew camp it’ll be, like, tomorrow before they can get all the equipment back online, so we’re just free as birds. And yesterday Blake told me that the drought’s got the lake so far down that a graveyard came up out of the water. I wanna go see it.”
Wren’s story teased my curiosity. It also struck me in a way I hadn’t expected, touching a tender place. Blake had spent time talking with Wren, telling her stories. He really was a nice guy.
With that came the usual measure of doubt. The voice of doom, warning that nice wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Kim was right about me. Love and loss were so tangled inside me, it was impossible to sort one from the other. Both terrified me.
“Y’all go on and enjoy yerselves. No sense sittin’ around here with us old gals.” Netta fanned herself with a bit of embroidery in progress.
“Awesome!” Wren jumped up before I could answer. “I’ll go get my swimsuit on.”
“Make sure you tell your mom where you’re going.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She jogged down the stairs and was gone.
I sat and talked to the ladies until Wren came back, this time wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a swimsuit underneath. She was trailed by none other than Blake Fulton, practically dragging him by the arm. “Look who I found,” she teased.
“Afternoon again, ladies.” Blake seemed a little confused.
Netta smiled. “Why, Blake Fulton.” She stood up and straightened her dress. “You’re just the man needed to protect a pair of innocent damsels from any-thang that might be lurkin’ between here and the lakeshore.”
A wave of consternation snaked across his forehead, lowering one brow and raising the other. “You look a little dressed up for swimming, Miss Netta.”
“Not them, goofball. Me n’ Allie,” Wren protested, and Blake caught my eye with a wink. He knew. He was just messing with everyone. The usual little tingle went through my stomach. He’d already decided to slip away to the lake with us, and he wasn’t doing it because Wren had dragged him along. He was looking forward to it.
How I could tell all that from a single look was beyond me, but sometimes it just happened between the two of us. It was odd, feeling that kind of connection with someone so quickly. If I didn’t watch myself, I could tumble head over heels and be off my feet, just like Kim was. . . .
He grinned at me from beneath his hat, and the issues went out the window. All of a sudden, I wished Wren weren’t coming along, which wasn’t very kind of me, since it was her idea.
“You children go on and cool off. In fact, if y’all hang on just a minute, we’ll pack you up some of these cakes to take along. Somebody might as well have ’em. Lord knows we don’t need it.”
“I’ll go do it.” Lynne rose from her chair. “It’s my kitchen.”
Genie hooked her arm through Lynne’s as they started toward the door. “We’ll do it together. I been waiting on people my whole life. This silly bit of having folks wait on me is making me crazy as a bullbat.”
Lynne’s laugh echoed high into the rafters. “Not me, sister. After raising five kids and seventeen grandkids, I’m ready for somebody to wait on me. You’re looking at Princess Gran-gran. My grandkids don’t call me that for nothing.”
They disappeared through the door laughing, and Netta decided it was time for Blake and me to be on our way. “Y’all two go on down and rustle up whatever else y’all need to take to the water. Wren can stay here for the food and bring it to the schoolhouse in a minute.”
I stood up, more than ready to depart the porch and the over-the-top matchmaking. My nerves did a little pirouette as Blake offered his elbow, and we descended the steps together, veering toward the spring path instead of toward town. “Shorter this way. But if you’re worried that you might get your pretty tea dress dirty . . .”
I glanced up at him and had that melting feeling. “I’m not worried.”
On the hammock, the pair of tweens sat up. “Hey, Blake!” Alexis called out, sending a wistful look his way.
“Hey, Alexis. How’s the swing working out?” I’d noticed that Blake already knew practically everyone in the village, especially the women . . . of all sizes. The girls on the hammock were eyeballing him as if he were a rock star.
“Pretty good.” Alexis dangled her long, thin legs over the side, idly kicking her feet, part woman, part little girl. “Hey, I saw that guy in the woods again last night. The ghost guy? He was there, I swear. I’m not making it up. I think you better come again tonight and stake out the porch. That’s the third night in a row I’ve seen him, you know.”
Wrinkles of concern formed at the corners of Blake’s eyes. “Alexis, I looked all over the woods and didn’t see any sign someone had been out there. You sure you two haven’t just been telling each other too many stories up in the attic?”
“There’s been somebody there. I’m not making it up.” Alexis tipped her head up to one side, offering a short burst of teenage attitude.
“Did your grandma see him?”
“By the time she got all the way out of bed, he was gone. But he was there, I know he was. It’s creepy. He walks around on the hill and then sometimes, he just stands there and looks.”
Blake pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, scanning the trees. “Did anybody else in the house see him?”
“No. Nobody else would get up and look.”
Blake nodded, unsurprised. Even I, who hadn’t spent much time around the big house, knew that Carlton Danes, who played the town founder, wasn’t nearly the pioneer he thought he’d be. He may have looked like Harland Delevan with his dark hair and handlebar mustache, but he was about as western as my mother. He couldn’t handle the heat and spent his time between go-lives lolling around in his room.
“I’ll come back and check it out tonight,” Blake promised. “See if I can get a look at your ghost.” He winked at her, and she pulled a little embroidered pillow off the hammock and threw it at him.
“I didn’t say he was a ghost. I just said he might be a ghost. Or maybe he’s one of those paparazzi sneaking around. You can chase him off like you did the other ones.”
“I’ll do my best.” He snatched up the pillow and threw it back to her. “You guys should go down to the water. Hot day out here.”
“That an invitation? Granny says we can’t go unless we have someone to watch after us. She’s all worried some creep might get us at the lakeshore or something.”
Blake glanced my way, letting me decide. “Sure. Wren’s in the house waiting for some picnic food. You can walk down to the schoolhouse with her.”
“Wren’s coming?” It was clearly a complaint.
Blake frowned. “Hey, if you’re too good to go with us . . .”
“Yeah, whatever.” The girls scooted off the hammock and ran for the house in a long-legged teenage footrace. Alexis was an athlete. She could fly. I wondered if her counterpart, Essie Jane, ever had the chance to run freely through the grass on this hillside, or if her life was one of constant hard labor and abuse.
“What’s behind that look?” Blake asked as we started down the path to the spring. “Something crossed your mind all of a sudden.”
I felt strangely exposed. So much of my life had always been about keeping the wild meanderings of my mind to myself. I’d learned early on that sharing those things around Mom and Lloyd’s house didn’t bring good results. Strangely enough, the advice that came to me now was Wren’s: You worry too much about what other people think. If an eleven-year
-old could spot it . . .
“Do you ever wonder what they were really like? Whether we’re getting any of it right? About the people who lived here first, I mean. Are we doing them any justice, or just making a farce out of their lives for entertainment’s sake? It bothers me a little, I guess. People died here. Disappeared off the face of the earth, as far as we can tell. A whole town full of people. I don’t know . . . I guess I just feel like . . .” I trailed off, searching.
“Like we owe them something?” Blake put words to my thoughts.
“Exactly. I feel like we owe it to them to get it right, to honor their lives, not just use them to put on a show or compete for a million dollars in gold. There’s too much of that these days. It’s like TV has become all about turning people into comic characters so we can ridicule them. I don’t want to be part of that. Something happened to the residents here. They deserve for the truth to finally come out. I’m just not sure that’s really what Rav Singh’s goal is. He seems more about the sensationalism. This whole thing with planting ore and duplicating a gold rush . . .” I stopped walking and looked up into the trees, suddenly feeling as if the citizens of Wildwood were watching.
Blake studied me for a moment, seeming to muse on the question. “You know, I like that about you. You don’t just go with the program. You think for yourself.”
My eyes met his, and I felt myself falling, yet walking a tightrope at the same time. This feeling was a chasm so wide, so deep, so terrifying. If I kept stepping out farther and farther, sooner or later I was bound to take a misstep and tumble into the abyss. Everything in me wanted to believe that this was real, but I just couldn’t get there. Trust is a muscle, and when you haven’t exercised it most of your life, it atrophies like any other part of the body.
“Yeah, give me a door and a window, and I’ll try the window,” I joked, deflecting again. How pathetic, really.
He just shook his head and smiled down at me. “I was serious.”
I stood there searching him. For what, I couldn’t say. Proof? Some indication of how often he did this kind of thing? Did he charm everyone he met—like the deli girl and the ladies up in the big house? He was so easy with people, so seemingly unhindered, but was this really him? And why was I so caught up in wondering? I had my own plans for my life, my own dreams, and after this summer in the village, those dreams could start moving at light speed, compared to the past. I didn’t need distractions . . . risks. Yet I was drawn to Blake Fulton like a moth to a porch light. Why?
“Listen, Blake, I . . .”
He reached across the space between us, touched the side of my face with the backs of his fingers. I closed my eyes, leaned into him without wanting to. My head was a mess, wave upon wave of thoughts and memories crashing on shore, splintering into droplets, chaotic and disorganized—my mother telling me what a screw-up I was, Lloyd looking right past me at a family dinner like he wished I wasn’t taking up space, a child psychologist telling my mother that my oppositional behavior was an attention-getting device, my father’s friends and family spreading his ashes near a stream he’d loved as a child. The impossibility of comprehending that he was gone forever. The terrible, throbbing ache of always wondering whether I was doing what he’d want, whether I was honoring his life or just disappointing him.
“Blake, I’m just not . . .” Sure of anything.
“Shhh.” He pressed a finger to my lips, stepped closer, and I lost myself in him. I knew he was planning to kiss me, and suddenly everything about it seemed right. The tide of worry in my mind went still, and a breath caught in my chest, then trembled out in anticipation.
“You know, I can’t figure you out.” His voice was low and intimate. His eyes held mine.
“Do you want to?” Who was this girl? This girl jumping in so completely, free-falling and not caring where she might land?
“Yeah, I do.” His lips quirked slightly to one side just before his head inclined over mine, and my eyes fell closed, and I tumbled through space. His kiss was soft at first, but strangely familiar. In some part of my mind, I realized I’d been imagining this, and now it was real. I let myself drift into the strong, solid feel of him, the slight scent of woodsmoke, the taste of his lips against mine.
The questions didn’t seem to matter then. They fell away, and for the first time in a long time, everything about the moment felt right.
When his lips parted from mine, he stood back and looked at me, his hand twined into my hair, the pad of his thumb sliding along my cheek. “Some things don’t need to have an explanation, Allie. Some things just are, because they are. Because God made them that way. If we’re meant to solve the mystery of Wildwood, we will. And if there’s something meant for you and me, I think we’ll know. Maybe that’s why we’re both here this summer. Maybe for us, it’s about you and me.”
If there’s a girl in this world who wouldn’t fall to pieces over words like that, coming from a guy like Blake Fulton, I hadn’t met her yet. I laid my head against his chest and just hung on, because I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing in my life had ever felt this incredibly powerful or deathly uncertain.
I wanted to believe in it. I wanted to grab the idea that all of this was meant to be, that it would last and travel beyond the confines of Wildwood, but as I clung to Blake, all I could see was my eight-year-old self, running after my father’s car the day he drove away and never came back.
When you love people, they leave.
The chasm opened again as the heat of the kiss burned away, the gap quickly separating Blake and me. Love provided such a thin, fragile bridge. How could anyone trust it, even under the best of circumstances? And these were hardly the best of circumstances. What would we really be, out in the real world with all its distractions?
Some things just are, because they are. Because God made them that way.
Was God a big enough bridge? Was it really possible that this was meant for me? The answer to the prayers of thousands of lonely nights?
You may miss your daddy, sugar pie, and I know you do. You always will. But you got to remember, God’s just one prayer, or one thought, or one hope away. Grandma Rita had promised me, holding my face at my father’s funeral. You lean on that when the world goes dark. Whatever big hurt you’ve got inside you, God can cover it over. Don’t be afraid to open up and ask.
But really, I’d never asked. I’d never believed that God had anything better in store for me than a life where you do your best to get by, to stumble along broken and wounded, never quite daring to hope for the really good things. But maybe I’d been wrong all this time. Maybe a tragedy is exactly that—a singular thing, a shadow we travel through on the way to a different destination. Maybe the bigger tragedy is the one we undergo by choice. The decision never to walk forth from the shadow and see what lies beyond it.
When Blake and I continued on along the spring path, I felt lighter, somehow. As if, all along, maybe it really could’ve been that simple. As if perhaps I could change the way I’d been looking at things.
The moment of clarity stayed with me as we returned to the schoolhouse, Blake disappearing into his side, and me going into mine. When I came out again, Blake was standing on the back porch in black exercise shorts and a gray tank top that fit rather well, I might add.
He frowned at my outfit, which I had reduced by several layers of petticoats and a corset, after trading out the heavy plaid skirt for my lightweight muslin daily skirt.
“You’re going in that?”
I looked down, confused, my mind stumbling in a race from past to present. It hadn’t even occurred to me to leave behind the costume and garb myself like a normal person. “I never even thought about it.”
Blake grinned. “Not that it isn’t fetching.” He waved a hand toward the trees. “But no cameras today, Scarlett. No need to play the part. I know you’ve got clothes hidden in there. Your part-time roommate doesn’t keep secrets very well. That might come as a surprise.” He nodded toward the spring path, wher
e the girls were giggling and looking at something under a cedar bush. For once, Wren was in on the game rather than just watching with a morose look. I wondered if she’d also leaked the information about the cell phone, but Blake seemed casual enough, so I guessed not. Thank goodness. Wherever Kim was by now, I hoped her plan to meet Jake had worked. I hoped she was being careful.
“Go on,” Blake urged. “If we run into anybody, they’ll just think you grabbed your clothes from crew camp.”
“Good point.” I hurried back to my room and returned in my closest approximation to swimming gear—capris, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. When I rounded the building again, I felt strangely underdressed as Blake looked at me.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was that realization again. We’d never spent real world time together, other than those confusing meetings in and around the Berman Theater. What if he didn’t like me this way?
Doubt inched its way in, a summer cloud testing the determination of the sun as we walked to the water, the girls dashing ahead. I felt a shadow sliding along the ground, trying to keep pace. Did Blake feel it too? What if all we really had between us was the codependence of two people forced to live in close proximity, in a very strange situation?
He seemed quieter than usual as we sat on the rocks along the lakeshore, our legs dangling in the water while the girls enjoyed the magic of waves and sunshine. The motorboats slipping past seemed almost foreign now. Too noisy, too bright, too fast. Wildwood was a muted life, moving at the pace of a raft drifting down the lazy Mississippi. It took time to accomplish even the simplest of things. There was no multitasking, because so many tasks required the sum of your energy and effort.
At the end of each day, I was physically exhausted, yet mentally so much calmer than I’d ever been—as if my brain weren’t trying to go a million directions at once, even in sleep. The past few evenings, other than that one strange dream last night, I’d slept like a rock, barely even hearing Blake come and go from his room as he worked the night shift.
Wildwood Creek Page 28
