Sarah Allen: Lost Lake

Lisette was born without the ability to speak, but she’d been brazen with written words as a child, substituting a sharp tongue for a poison pen. She blamed herself for the suicide of a paramour when she was just sixteen, after she had slipped him a note during a romantic dinner, telling him she was too good for him and would never love him. The next day she’d learned he’d hung himself in his parents’ apartment. Shocked by her own power, which hitherto had only been to hurt feelings, not end lives, Lisette’s guilt had sent her to the Bridge of the Untrue in Paris that fateful night fifty years ago, where she had intended to kill herself. She’d thought it was the only way to snuff out this monstrous power she had. For stubborn souls like Lisette, death was easier than the courage it took to actually change your life.

When Eby had seen Lisette jump from the bridge, some great force had pushed Eby into action. She could remember racing to the end of the bridge and sliding down the bank into the cold water, yelling for Lisette to say something, anything that would let Eby know where she was in the fog. The current had swept them up in the darkness, and there had been a sickening sensation of floating in gelatin as Eby scrambled for some purchase, her hand miraculously finding Lisette’s long hair, like a tangle of cold seaweed. She’d grabbed it and pulled her head above water, where Lisette had sputtered and clawed at Eby, obviously not knowing what was happening. Eby had held her and wouldn’t let her go, but they had both been helpless to the current. Eby remembered thinking all they had to do was hold on to each other. Everything would be okay if they just held on to each other.

Sure enough, out of nowhere, two large arms had grabbed them and pulled, pulled so hard there was actually a sucking sound. The water hadn’t wanted to let them go and had resisted. But George had won. He’d pulled them to the bank and stood over them, dripping, incredulous.

People on the street that night in Paris had heard the commotion and had come to their aid, leading George, Eby, and Lisette to the restaurant they had passed earlier, where they’d been given threadbare blankets and glasses of port. They had known Lisette there—she was the owner’s daughter—and this kind of behavior apparently had not been unusual. In fact, no one had seemed particularly concerned. Some customers hadn’t even looked up from their late meals.

Eby had been too exhausted to argue with George when he’d insisted they go back to their hotel, promising they would check in on the girl the next day. It turned out, there had been no need. Lisette had followed them and slept on the hotel’s front steps that night. She’d followed them everywhere after that, as quiet and thin as a shadow, getting a room at their hotel, even later following them to Amsterdam, then finally back to America.

Lisette had turned out to be the best friend Eby had ever had, that thing she’d never known she’d needed, when all she thought she’d needed was George. They had saved each other so many times over the years now that they’d eventually lost count.

Eby turned. “I need to cancel the summer reservations. All three of them.”

Lisette followed Eby to the check-in desk in the foyer, furiously scribbling something on her notepad as she walked. Eby sat behind the desk, and Lisette tore out the note and slapped it on the desk surface. Eby picked it up and read it.

I am not going. I will chain myself to a tree. They will not make me leave. You go. Do what you want. Leave me here to get flattened by a bulldozer. Leave me here to die.

Eby pushed the note back to Lisette. “Flattened by a bulldozer? How unromantic. You’ll have to come up with something better than that. You jumped off a bridge in the middle of Paris. It’s going to be hard to top that one.”

Lisette snatched the note and stomped to the kitchen.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Eby called to her. She heard the smack of Lisette’s palm against the swinging door. “I promise.”

Eby worried about Lisette. Too much, probably. But Lisette had no one else to worry about her. The one true difference between them was that Eby had her memory of George, a memory that would always remind her that she was worthy of love. But Lisette only had the memory of a sixteen-year-old boy who committed suicide because of her. Lisette had pushed everyone in her life away except Eby. She had no one else real in her life, past or present, who had steadfastly loved her no matter what, and that was why the thought of losing this place scared her so. The memory of everyone who had ever loved Lisette was here.

That’s when it suddenly occurred to Eby.

Jack.

Aha.

Eby picked up the phone with hope.

She knew what she was doing. She was focusing on Lisette instead of dwelling on this tremendous, life-altering decision she’d just made. But she was okay with that. She was good at being needed. It had been years since she’d felt really useful.

And if she just kept busy enough, maybe she could ignore the strange, anxious fluttering under her skin and the tingling in her fingers from where she’d shaken hands with the man.

Then all this would all be over before she knew it.

The next day, Eby thought she’d be productive and begin the process of going through the things that needed to be packed. She had great plans for finding her clipboard and cataloging everything. Maybe even taking photos. But she quickly became overwhelmed when she realized just how much stuff there was. Forget cataloging it. Where was she going to put it? She started by looking up nearby storage units in the town of Suley’s thin phone book. But then she wondered who was going to move all these things, things she couldn’t possibly part with, many of them bought on her honeymoon. So she switched gears and looked up movers. Then she wondered, if she was hiring movers, why didn’t she just buy a house to move into and avoid having to move everything twice? But the only place nearby that was big enough to store everything she had—a house and thirteen cabins’ worth of memories—was the old Rue-McRae Homestead in town, which had been turned into a visitor center years ago. It detailed the history of the town’s settlers for anyone who was interested, of a rough-and-tumble group of people from the swamp, mostly displaced from Okefenokee over the past several hundred years. The Rue-McRae Homestead aside, it would take several normal-size houses to put all this furniture in. And she couldn’t afford to buy several houses. Selling the lake acreage would pay off her first and second mortgages. But then, buying even a single house would leave her with no money to travel.

That made her think of Lisette, who had been banging around the kitchen for the past twenty-four hours. Currently, the scent of rising dough and hot berries was being sucked through the old air-conditioning unit and spread throughout the main house. This was Lisette’s rebellion. She was cooking for guests who weren’t coming. It was as if nothing bad could happen if she just kept going. Like a wheel in motion, she seemed to think no one could stop her, or make her leave, once she started.

Eby gave up trying to plan her departure for now and sat behind the front desk with a crossword puzzle. She couldn’t do this alone. Lisette was going to have to help her. Eby would just wait for this hissy fit to pass.

The air conditioner turned off. The house ticked and settled. Eby sighed and set the crossword aside, then scooted her chair to the very edge of the desk, where she could lean back and see a corner of the window in the sitting room. She often did this, to watch a quiet corner of the lake. There were even scratch marks on the floor from years of pulling the chair to her daydream spot.