Page 58 of Dream Lake
From all appearances, Zoë’s visit had barely affected Alex. He knew how to build a wall, how to fortify it until nothing could break through. There was no way for Zoë to reach Alex now, and that was probably for the best. Still, the ghost couldn’t stop feeling regretful about it. And Alex refused to discuss exactly what, if anything, he still felt for Zoë. The subject was off-limits.
The ghost understood.
A woman could do that to you—reach that place in your soul where the best and worst of you was kept. And once she was there, she owned that place and never left.
That was why he hadn’t told Alex about his newfound memories of Emmaline Stewart, the scenes unrolling in front of him like a moving-picture show.
Emma had been the youngest and liveliest of Weston Stewart’s three daughters. She was bookish, and funny, and just farsighted enough that she’d occasionally needed reading glasses. Wonderful cat-eye glasses with thick black frames, which she loved to wear to goad her mother, Jane. Emma would never catch a man, wearing those glasses, her mother had said. And Emma had claimed that she would catch the right man by wearing those glasses.
The ghost remembered being alone in the cottage with her, after sharing a picnic beside Dream Lake. She had read to him, a piece she had written about local high schools that had forbidden female students to “paint” their faces, meaning to use lipstick, cheek rouge, or powder. High school girls across Whatcom County had objected to the regulation, and Emma had interviewed principals of three different schools about the controversy.
“The wearing of lipstick leads to the ruin of the first barrier of a girl’s nature,” Emma had quoted one of the principals, her eyes bright with amusement behind the glasses. “Next come cigarettes, then liquor, and after that, unmentionable acts will occur.”
“What unmentionable acts?” he had asked her, kissing her cheek, her neck, the soft little space behind her ear.
“You know.”
“I do not. Describe one for me.”
Emma had laughed deep in her throat. “No.”
But he had persisted, kissing and teasing, trying to pull her hands to his body. She had giggled and feigned reluctance, knowing how to provoke his desire.
“Just tell me which body parts are involved,” he’d said, and when she’d still refused, he’d made suggestions about just what might constitute an unmentionable act.
“Dirty language isn’t going to get you anywhere,” she’d told him primly.
He had grinned. “It’s already gotten me past the first four buttons of your blouse.”
And she’d flushed and gone still as he murmured softly to her, pulling all the little buttons free of their moorings…
The remembered physical intimacy with Emma was intoxicating. And yet the desire and pleasure that a soul could experience was far deeper and more profound than any mere physical sensation.
The day that he would see her again was approaching. But the fierce anticipation was tempered by the feeling that something was wrong, that there was something he needed to know, to set right. He was grateful for the time Alex spent at the cottage; it had given him enough gossamer filaments to be woven into a memory or two. But that wasn’t enough. He needed to go back to Rainshadow Road… something had happened there that he needed to remember.
***
After going through the storage space where she and Justine kept odd pieces of furniture and framed pictures and other items they had never found use for, Zoë had gathered an assortment of objects for the Dream Lake cottage. Among them were a set of vintage metal bowling alley lockers, each square little door painted a different color… a retro wall clock shaped like a coffee cup… a teal blue Victorian cast-iron bed frame. She had also tagged some pieces of furniture from Emma’s former apartment that had been sent to Friday Harbor, things like a set of leather club chairs, a wicker trunk table, a collection of teapots that would be displayed on a set of built-in bookshelves. The quirky mixture would fit well into the new clean lines of the remodeled house, and Zoë knew that her grandmother had always enjoyed touches of whimsy in her surroundings.
It had been six weeks since Alex had started remodeling the cottage. True to his word, the kitchen had been completed, and so had the main bedroom and bathroom. Since the original wood flooring had turned out to be unusable, Zoë had agreed to let Alex install laminate flooring in a honey maple shade, and she had to admit that it looked beautiful and surprisingly natural. The second bedroom and pocket bathroom still had to be completed, and the garage hadn’t been built yet, which meant that Alex would be spending time at the cottage after Zoë and Emma had moved in. Zoë wasn’t certain how she felt about that. On the recent occasions when she’d seen him, the strain of mutual discomfort had made them both awkward.
Alex looked healthier, more well-rested, the shadows gone from beneath his eyes. But his rare smiles were as thin as a knife blade, his mouth was hard with the bitterness of a man who knew he would never have what he truly wanted. His remoteness wouldn’t have bothered Zoë nearly so much if she hadn’t seen the other side of him.
With Justine’s help, Zoë would spend a couple of days getting the cottage ready with dishes, bed linens, pictures, and other things to make it cozy and welcoming. Then she would go to Everett and bring her grandmother back to the island.
Emma’s nurses had provided frequent updates about her physical therapy and the course of medications they had put her on. They had also warned her that Emma had already started to show signs of “sundowning,” which meant that late in the day or in the evening, she might become agitated, and ask repetitive questions more frequently than usual.
Over the course of several conversations, Colette Lin, the elder-care consultant, had also helped Zoë to understand what to expect in the future. That whenever some of Emma’s abilities were lost, they were not likely to come back. That she would have sequencing problems, doing things in the wrong order, until something as simple as making a pot of coffee or doing laundry would be impossible. Eventually she would deteriorate to a point when she would start to wander and get lost, and then she would have to be taken to a secure locked facility for her own safety.
It was difficult to read Emma’s moods, especially over the phone, but she seemed to be facing her illness with the same mixture of pragmatism and humor she’d shown all her life. “Tell everyone my dementia is early-onset,” she’d told Zoë with a mischievous chuckle. “That way they’ll think I’m younger.” And another time, “Every night, no matter what you make us for dinner, tell me it’s my favorite meal. I won’t remember if it is or not.” When Zoë had told Emma that she’d found a home-care nurse to stay at the cottage in the mornings while she worked, Emma’s only question was, “Does she do manicures?”
***
“I know that inside she has to be scared,” Zoë told Justine, the night before they started to move things into the cottage. “It’s like little pieces of her are being chipped away, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.”
“But she knows she’ll be safe. She knows you’ll be there.”
“She knows that right now.” Zoë began to pet Byron, who had just crawled onto her lap. “But she may not always know it.”
