“No, sweetheart,” Kate said into Devin’s hair. “That’s not bad at all. Your dad would want you to be happy.”

“Alligators make me happy,” Devin said right away.

That was new. “Really? Why?”

“Because they’re here.”

“There aren’t alligators here, sweetheart. You heard Eby.”

“I think there are.”

“Okay, then. Watch your toes,” Kate said, reaching down and making a snapping motion with her hand, biting at Devin’s feet. Devin laughed and twisted away. But then she rolled back into Kate’s arm, as if gravity had pushed her there. Right where she was supposed to be.

And that’s how they fell asleep their first afternoon at Lost Lake.

*   *   *

It was twilight, and Eby, Bulahdeen, and Selma were on the lawn, each sneaking peeks at the walkway to the cabins, silent in anticipation, like waiting for a breeze to blow through the stagnant air. Bulahdeen and Selma had reacted with enthusiasm and feigned indifference, respectively, when Eby told them about Kate and Devin arriving that afternoon. But Eby could tell that they weren’t quite sure what the girls’ presence here meant. Eby wasn’t even sure. It was so unexpected that Eby found herself wondering if it had really happened. Had she really seen them in the dining room? Had she really taken them to their cabin? Or had she just imagined it, daydreaming at the front desk again?

“Here they come,” Bulahdeen said from where she was sitting at a picnic table, a jelly jar full of wine in front of her. Eby turned from the grill to see the girls materialize from the dark end of the walkway. Kate hadn’t changed from her yoga pants and T-shirt so big it fell off one shoulder, revealing a racer-back tank. But Devin was in another costume, this time a tie-dyed T-shirt dress, red cowboy boots, a red cowboy hat, and a fringed vest. “She favors you, Eby.”

“Kate or Devin?”

“Kate, of course.”

“Although the child does seem to share your sense of style,” Selma commented dryly.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, from both of you,” Eby said, watching the girls approach. Eby secretly agreed with Bulahdeen. Kate did favor her in some ways. Kate had inherited her green eyes from Eby’s sister, Marilee. But her long nose, which was both elegant and awkward, and her coltish limbs—those were all Eby. Even her short choppy hair, flipping up at the ends in the humidity, was the same heavy chestnut color Eby’s had been. When Eby had first met Kate, she’d seen in her a dreamy, bookish version of herself, and she had wanted so much to know her. But Kate’s mother, Quinn, had left in anger that summer, and Eby knew from experience that there was nothing left to do but keep the door open and hope Kate might walk back through one day.

“You say she just showed up?” Bulahdeen asked.