Page 142 of Lavender Lake
Wyn looked like she wanted to respond, but I saw the expression on Poet’s face.
“Come on,” I interrupted. “Let’s get this tent set up so we can get into the hot spring.”
“Do you believe it?” Wyn asked as she shoved one of the stakes into the tent loops.
My brow furrowed. “Believe what? About the healing powers of the hot spring?”
“Yeah,” Wyn said.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It seems a little . . . out there.”
“I believe it,” Hadley said. “Wholeheartedly.”
“Yeah?” Poet asked. “I’m struggling with this stake.”
I went over to her side and took the stake from her. “It’s bent. Gotta use brute force.”
“Because I have so much of that,” she said with a laugh. She lifted her arm up and flexed it. “I’m like Bugs Bunny when his arm sags.”
“Why do you believe it?” Wyn asked, picking up the thread of the hot spring having magical healing powers.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling,” Hadley replied. “The two weeks before Mom died . . . Dad carried her to the truck and drove her out here. I didn’t know that. Not until Muddy told me.”
My throat thickened with the memories of that time. I’d known. The scent of pine and sulfur had clung to her skin.
Our friends stopped their actions to look at Hadley, waiting for what came next.
“I used to think the hot spring failed. She died anyway, you know? But now, I think the hot spring did what it was supposed to do. Because it was never going to heal Mom. Not the way we wanted her healed. But it healed something between my parents. I don’t know, it sounds insane. But the two of them, those two weeks, it was about them. Under the night sky. Talking. Wishing. Saying their goodbyes.”
I turned away so my friends and sister couldn’t see the tears that gathered in my eyes and fell down my cheeks.
She’d died.
But that didn’t mean she was forgotten. She’d never be forgotten.
“It’s nice,” Poet said quietly. “Having something to believe in.”
“Amen,” Wyn murmured.
I cleared my throat, hoping that destroyed the emotion that was threatening to choke me.
Gone. But never forgotten.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Hot Spring
“I see your one M&M,” Wyn said, pushing an orange-colored candy to the pile, “and raise you four black licorice whips.”
“Call,” Hadley said, laying down her cards.
The three of us followed.
“Son of a bitch,” Wyn hissed, looking at me. “You won. Again. You promised you wouldn’t cheat.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I swore I wouldn’t and I didn’t. This was luck. I swear.”
I took a drink from my huckleberry soda, and then gathered my winnings, sliding them across the sleeping bag.
