Lost Lake Read Online Free PDF

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.
    She was going to miss her