The Lake of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

family eyes, a changeable blue flecked with green, with long dark lashes—both serious and amused. “Things move on, Luce. You’ll see. Lots of changes this time.” He tossed my bag into the back of his truck. “How about you? How’s your life these days? Do you miss Indonesia at all? I think about my trip there all the time. Especially that park we went to—the one with wild-looking trees, and the volcanoes.”
    Blake had come to visit me just after I’d met Yoshi, and we’d gone snorkeling on the coral reefs, hiked through the lowland rain forests. It had been Yoshi’s idea, actually. He’d gone with some friends a few weeks earlier and thought Blake and I would enjoy it.
    “We had a good time, didn’t we?”
    “We sure did. It was steamy hot, though. What’s Japan like? And how’s my good friend Yoshi these days? Things okay? I like him, you know.”
    “I know.” They’d hit it off, Yoshi and Blake, drawn together by a love of sailing and all things nautical, as well as by a kind of carefree approach to life that sometimes drove me crazy. They’d both been enamored of rambutans, the hairy red fruits piled high on roadside stands like shaggy Ping-Pong balls, and had pulled over five or six times to buy baskets full, peeling them to reveal the sweet, translucent fruit within. “He’s planning to come, you know. In a couple of weeks.”
    “No joke? That’s great, Lucy. I’ll be glad to see him again.”
    “Me, too.” I told Blake about my life then, about Yoshi and the geothermal springs, the incessant trembling of the earth, talking in a stream because I was so tired and so happy to see him and so disconcerted, as I always was, to be back in this place I’d known so well, where life had gone on quite steadily without me. Blake filled me in on the businesses that had opened or closed, the classmates who’d had babies or gotten married or divorced, all sorts of local gossip.
    We’d left the main roads to climb the low rise between the lakes. The landscape was deeply and comfortingly familiar, the country roads following ancient trails through the lush green hills and fields, broken by white farmhouses, red barns, silos. The Iroquois had lived on this land once, and they had named the lakes: Long Lake, Beautiful Lake, Place of Blessing, Stony Place, Canoe-Landing Place, The Lake of Dreams. After the revolution, their villages were razed and burned to the ground—blue and gold historic signs marking General Sullivan’s brutal campaign were scattered every dozen miles or so. The land had then been allotted to the vanquishing soldiers, who carved farms from the forests, braving the long winters for the brief, exquisite months of summer. Along the shores, summer cottages and rough fishing camps had sprouted, and over the years these had been replaced by ever larger and more ostentatious commuter homes. Still, we drove primarily through farms; from the county line at the top of the rise, we followed the road down a long hill, through green fields that ended at the silvery blue edges of the lake.
    “Your old friend Keegan is back, by the way.”
    A pulse then, the familiar quickening I always used to feel.
    “Is he? I haven’t seen him in years.” This was true, though it didn’t feel true.
    “He is. He opened up a studio in the old Johnson glass insulator factory by the outlet. That whole building’s been renovated. Restaurants, galleries. Very trendy.” Blake glanced across the cab at me. “You remember Avery, right?”
    “ Your old friend.”
    Blake smiled, nodded. “Right. We’re back together, you know. She’s a chef in a new vegetarian place in the Johnson building, too. Did I ever tell you that when we broke up the second time she went to culinary school? She’s really good.”
    By then we had reached the intersection with the lake road, near the entrance to the depot. The lake was deep enough for battleship training, and during World War II hundreds of families had been relocated