Something was there, the hint of movement on the water, a pale wisp gliding over the face of the lake.
“Look,” Kris said, pointing.
Sadie leaned out and peered into the darkness. “I don’t see—”
“There. Just above the water.”
Now Sadie did see it, a ghostly form rising into the cooling air.
“Is that smoke?” she asked, slightly alarmed.
Kris shook her head. “Mist. It happens here almost every night in the summer. The valley cools down fast once the sun goes down, and as the water gets colder, the mist floats up. Kind of looks like the lake is on fire, doesn’t it?” Kris pulled Sadie closer. “When I was your age,” Kris said softly, “I would pretend the mist was the breath of a dragon that lived under the lake. And when everyone was asleep, the dragon would shoot up out of the water and fly through the night sky, breathing fire to keep the stars burning.”
They stared out at the thickening mist as it whipped up into curling white tongues that licked the darkness. Kris draped her arm over Sadie’s chest and could feel the quick, rabbit-like pat-pat-pat of the girl’s heart beating. She was reminded of the profound moment when she heard that sound for the first time, when Sadie didn’t even have a name, when she was only known as “the baby” or “baby girl” or “our little peanut.” When they were a family. When, for a brief moment, she could not feel the shards of fear and sadness buried deep within her. When there was only love.
Sadie shivered suddenly.
“I’m cold,” she announced, rubbing the sides of her arms with her hands.
“It stays kinda cool here, by the lake. Even in June,” Kris said.
Sadie did not respond, but her hands worked harder to warm her goose-pimpled flesh.
Kris slipped her arm out from around the girl.
“Do you wanna go in?”
Sadie nodded. Her eyes caught the moonlight and glistened in the shadows.
“Okay. You go get ready for bed. Don’t worry about showering tonight. You can do it tomorrow.”
She nodded again and carefully slid down from her chair. The deck’s wooden planks creaked faintly under her weight as she crossed to the back door and slipped into the house. The door clicked shut behind her.
Kris was alone.
She took a sip of her wine and rolled it lazily over her tongue as she listened to the symphony of the lake at night. The deep honk of the frogs and the buzz of the crickets had been joined by the rustling of windblown leaves, like a brush being lightly swept over a cymbal, and the occasional hoot of an owl somewhere deep in the low black mass that was the forest.
She could smell the entire world on the air: the sweetness of blooming flowers; the dry earthiness of dirt and rocks; the vibrant, ripe greenness of budding vegetation; the smokiness of ancient, twisted wood; the crisp, clean scent of lake water. This was the perfume worn by the best moments of her childhood, those summer nights when she and her parents would sit out on this very deck, the charcoal in her father’s grill smoldering to ash, the neck of a Bud Light bottle clutched between her mother’s fingers. And there was little Krissy, standing at the railing, counting fireflies.
Kris slid off the barstool and drifted over to the edge of the deck. Just as she had suspected, the railing was loose. It rocked easily back and forth in her hand, giving a few inches in either direction until the resistance of old screws finally stopped it with an irritated groan.
I can fix it, she thought, adding it to the seemingly endless list of home-improvement projects.
But that was for tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next week.
Right now she wanted to do nothing but drink her wine and watch the mist swirl on the lake as the last hint of dusk faded into night.
She shivered. Sadie was right. It was getting cold.
Without warning, an unusually warm gust of air whipped up from below and wrapped Kris’s body. It was as if someone had stepped up behind her and draped a blanket over her shoulders.
Kris closed her eyes.
“Hello, Mom,” she whispered to the wind.
CHAPTER NINE
THE BOWL OF a flush-mount fixture hung from the ceiling, a single lightbulb filling it with a soft amber light, the dried bodies of dead moths silhouetted against its frosted glass.
Sadie sat on her knees on the floor beneath the light fixture. She had just finished placing the last pair of socks in the bottom drawer of the pink dresser. The rest of her clothes were already put away: shirts in the wide top drawer, pants and shorts in the middle, underwear in the small drawer on the bottom left and now socks on the bottom right. The few dresses and rompers she had brought were hanging on wire hangers in the mirrored closet.
All that was left was to find the perfect spot for her beloved stuffed animals.
As she glanced around the room, she picked up the purple frog with the crooked eyes and goofy smile and clutched him tightly to her chest.
His name was Bounce, and Daddy had won it for her at the fair. He had given the man with the yellow teeth five dollars and thrown three softballs into a stack of plastic bottles. The third ball hit just right and the bottles went flying, going plink-plonk-plunk as they rattled across the wooden floor of the yellow-toothed man’s game booth. Anything from the middle row for the big winner, Mr. Yellow Teeth had announced.
She had scanned the collection of animals packed tightly into the third row: tigers and monkeys and even a green space alien wearing the kind of round helmet the old-timey astronauts used to wear. But when she saw the big silly grin on the froggy’s face—and he was purple, her favorite—she knew this was the one. This was her prize. From her daddy.
She had snuggled into the frog’s shaggy fur, knowing full well that frogs didn’t have fur, except this one did, this one was different—this one was lucky. She had watched two other people play that game before Daddy and neither of them had won anything. And there she was, bouncing gently in Daddy’s arms as he carried her away from the row of carnival games—from the ring toss and the duck pond and the one where you squirted the clown in the mouth and a balloon grew bigger and bigger and bigger over his creepy clown face—out to the center of the fairgrounds where lights flashed and metal cars full of screaming kids swung by on all sides and in every direction.
She had heard Mommy lean in to Daddy and whisper, “That thing looks like it has some kind of frog disease. Its eyes aren’t even sewn on straight.” And she had hated Mommy a little in that moment. Just for a second. But it was long enough for hot anger to reach deep into her chest and down to the pit of her stomach. Until then, she hadn’t noticed that Bounce’s eyes weren’t quite straight or that the threads at the corner of his smile were beginning to pull loose and a little bit of white stuffing was poking out. Until then, he had been perfect.
She remembered shrugging and telling herself that she didn’t care what Mommy thought. She loved Bounce. She would love him more because of his crooked eyes and stringy smile. She would love him most of all.
That had been almost two years ago.
The following autumn, the fair came through Black Ridge as it did every year, but this time Daddy didn’t win any prizes. He didn’t play a single game. She walked between her parents for most of the evening, until she got sleepy and Mommy carried her. Once she looked up and saw Daddy staring into the swirling silver cars of the Scrambler. The rest of the night he was either on his phone or strolling silently beside them with his hands in his pockets. He was there, but he wasn’t there. That’s how she had felt. He was with them, but he was also somewhere else, in his mind. Like he was daydreaming of a place he would rather be, like how Sadie’s mind sometimes wandered at school. She knew she should be listening to her teacher, but the sunlight outside was dancing too pretty to look away.