They ended up at a place on the waterfront that had an arcade in back and sold fried things in paper boats. Walt had proposed it while they waited for the flatbed's key to come back from the site office. Leah had left it there, signing in, and the man who had it had gone to fetch something from a supply shed. It was a small inconvenience that would have irritated her in any other life.
“We can walk,” Walt said. “Nobody's making you get in a van.”
Leah looked at him.
“Too soon?”
Kit laughed. Leah hated that she wanted to.
Rosa joined them beside the gate carrying a small brown paper bag. Her purchase was a pair of socks. She showed them to Kit when asked, and Kit said they were excellent socks in a tone that made no attempt to improve them. Rosa seemed to like that.
The four of them walked down a short stretch of promenade. Lake Erie lay flat and bright beside them, the far water disappearing into the sky. Leah had lived near it for most of her adult life and rarely went there without a broken vehicle to collect. Here people were paying to be carried around on a little sightseeing boat. They leaned on the rail, photographing the same buildings they could see from land.
“That's a nice way to spend twenty dollars,” Walt said.
“You can stand here for free,” Rosa told him.
“Can't have the man talk to you about the buildings from here.”
“I can talk about the buildings. Give me twenty dollars.”
Kit put a hand into her pocket. Rosa looked at her until she took it out again.
They bought food and sat on benches facing the lake. Walt had a large cup of lemonade with two straws because the woman at the counter had mistaken him for the sort of man who wanted to share. He offered it to Rosa. She shook her head. He offered it to Kit, who took a drink and made a face.
“That's not lemonade. That's a dare.”
“Good, isn't it?”
He turned to Leah, holding it out. She shook her head, then changed her mind and took a drink. It was unbearably sweet. She felt it ache in her jaw.
“You used to put salt in it,” she said.
“Don't remind me. I was an idiot.”
“You put salt in lemonade?” Kit asked.
“Not on purpose,” Leah said.
Walt pointed a thick finger at her. “She moved the containers.”
“They were labeled.”
“They were both white.”
Kit turned toward Leah. “You lived together?”
“We were staying in the same house for a while.”
“With Rosa?”
“Unfortunately,” Rosa said.
“I paid rent,” Walt told her.
“You bought a television nobody could lift.”
Kit leaned back, delighted. The ease with which the three of them became a past together made Leah's chest hurt. Not nostalgia exactly. More the discovery that they had kept existing in one another's memories, even when she had made them into names she searched on a screen.
“There was a dog,” Walt said. “Not ours. Belonged to a woman three houses down. Came in every afternoon and sat in front of that TV like he had a program he followed.”
“He liked you,” Leah said.
“He liked my food.”
“You fed him an entire meat loaf.”
“It was a small meat loaf.”
Rosa pulled a piece of breading off her fish. “It was my meat loaf.”
Walt turned to Kit. “Your mother tried to put him out once. Picked him up like he was a little puppy. Dog weighed about seventy pounds. He went stiff. Wouldn't bend.”
“He did bend,” Leah said. “At the wrong end.”
She could see it now: the dog horizontal in her arms, Walt opening a door that wasn't wide enough, Rosa refusing to help because she had not invited the dog in. Leah had laughed so hard she almost dropped him. The memory arrived whole, absurdly bright.
Kit was laughing too. She leaned forward, one hand over her mouth, and looked at Leah with an expression Leah had not seen on her in months. She was curious about her. Not suspicious, not exhausted. Interested.
“What happened?”
“We all stood there arguing,” Leah said. “The dog farted. We let him go.”
Walt laughed so loudly a couple on the next bench turned. He put a hand over his eyes. Rosa looked away, but the corner of her mouth had moved.
Leah ate a fry. It had gone cold. She ate another.
Inside the arcade a child hit a bell, and the sound brought Kit to her feet. “Do they still have that awful hockey table?”
“Probably. Nothing else has changed,” Walt said.
Kit pointed at Leah. “Come on.”
“I've got food.”
“You just said it was bad.”
She had, and there was no getting out of that. They left the trays with Rosa and went inside, where the light changed to a permanent purple evening and the carpet smelled of old soda. The air hockey table was at the back. Its surface was scratched, and one corner had been repaired with a strip of silver tape. Kit put in money from her pocket before Leah could ask.
“First to seven.”
“I've played before.”
“I know. You keep mentioning it.”
Leah picked up the striker. Kit served before she was ready. The puck shot into the goal beneath her hand.
“That doesn't count.”
“It's on the board.”
The machine had made its judgment. One red light. Leah bent her knees and leaned in. The next shot hit the edge of the goal and bounced away. She caught the rebound, sent it hard across the table, and heard Kit laugh when it went in.
They played without talking much after that. The puck clattered from wall to wall. Leah found herself shifting her weight the way she would have twenty years earlier, doing something her back was not going to thank her for. Kit played too fast, overreached, swore when the striker left her hand. Leah trapped the puck and waited while she retrieved it.
“I can take a point off,” she offered.
“You can try.”
Walt came in and stood behind Kit. “She beat a man in Cincinnati once. He said the table was tilted.”
“It was tilted,” Leah said.
“Toward him. That was what made it funny.”
Kit glanced back, delighted by another piece of her mother's life. Leah used the distraction to score.
“Rude,” Kit said.
“It's on the board.”
At six each, they stopped being generous. Leah could hear herself breathing. Kit had pushed her hair behind her ears and stood with her feet planted, watching the puck. Walt said something to Rosa, who had come to the doorway carrying the trays. Neither player heard it. Kit sent a soft shot toward the damaged corner. Leah moved for the rebound. The puck barely touched the wall, slid through the space she had opened, and dropped into the goal.
Kit lifted both arms.
“No speech,” Leah warned her.
“I don't need one. There's lights.”
Leah looked at the seven red lights. She was grinning. She couldn't help it. Kit was standing there grinning back, breathless and pleased with herself, and for once Leah did not want to improve the expression.
Rosa handed Kit the cold food. “Winner gets the dishes.”
They went outside again, blinking in the evening glare. Walt came last. He had to turn sideways around the narrow arcade door, taking a moment to get his bad leg over the raised threshold. Kit noticed and held the door without saying anything. He touched her shoulder as he passed.
Kit looked toward the arcade door after they came out. “You used to put me on the office freezer.”
“The chest freezer. Closed.”
“I know. I liked it. I could see over everything.”
Leah looked at her, then let the memory stay something good.
Walt's phone vibrated. He glanced at it, typed with one thumb, then showed Kit a photograph.
It was a boat. White hull, faded blue fabric over the cockpit, a little cabin whose windows gave it a surprised look. It sat on a trailer beside a shed. A man in the background was bending over something, his backside to the camera.
“That's him?” Kit asked.
“That's most of him.”
She grinned. “He got back to you.”
“Sunday. Says I can look at it at the marina then.”
Leah looked at the boat. “You going fishing?”
“I'm going to sit in it.”
“That's an expensive chair.”
“It's got a table too.”
He enlarged the picture. The cabin interior had a little eating space, cushions with a pattern that might have been flowers or a stain. Beneath the table was a storage hatch. Someone had left a paperback on the seat.
“How much?” Leah asked.
“Sixty.”
“Thousand?”
“No, Lee. Sixty dollars. The picture cost extra.”
She gave the phone back.
“Always wanted something like it,” he said. “Not that big. Big enough you can make a cup of coffee and get out of the rain. I used to think I'd get one when I was forty.”
He stopped. Nobody rushed to help him past the number.
Rosa folded the paper around the rest of her fish. “You'd get seasick.”
“Probably. I'd like to find out.”
Kit took the phone and looked at the little cabin again.
“You can sleep in there?”
“Man says two. One of them would have to be very understanding.”
“So, one.”
“So, one.”
Leah watched him watch Kit. He was not performing for her benefit, not entirely. He wanted the boat. He wanted to sit at that tiny table with a cup of coffee he had made himself, to have nobody tell him when the light would go off. Leah could understand that so well she had to turn toward the water.
“You going to lend him the money?” Rosa asked.
It was addressed to Leah. The pleasant little stretch of evening ended.
“Rosa,” Walt said.
“What? We've had lemonade. We can ask.”
Kit lowered the phone.
Leah looked at the paper boat in her lap. Grease had soaked through one corner. She had eaten most of the food without tasting it.
“We should go back,” she said.
“To the bank?” Rosa asked.
Walt stood up. “Enough.”
Rosa stayed where she was. “Enough's an amount. We haven't got to it.” She turned to Leah. “You could sell a truck.”
Leah looked up.
“Don't look at me like I said sell your child. Sell something you kept. There are three of them.”
“They aren't paid for.”
“Neither was my room. I paid anyway.”
Walt moved his cup. A yellow ring showed on the bench beneath it. “We can talk about this without an audience.”
“She's been saying that for twenty years.”
Leah could hear the water against the wall below the promenade. She wanted Rosa to stop, wanted the five minutes before the question back. She wanted it badly enough to hear how much she had enjoyed those minutes.
“I'd have to speak to the people I owe,” she said.
“Then speak.”
“I can't sell one this evening.”
“I didn't ask you for this evening.”
Walt's phone rang. He looked at it, then at Leah's. Her own screen had lit too. Bell again. She let it ring out.
Walt stepped away from the bench. “Let's walk.”
Rosa stayed seated. Leah's phone showed a message from Nell: Your neighbor called me. Officer at your house asking when you were last there. I gave Bell your neighbor's number. Call him.
Leah read it twice. Her house had a spare key in a flowerpot on the side porch. Nell knew. Denny knew. Kit knew. She couldn't remember the last time she had thought of how many people knew the way into it.
Walt looked over her shoulder before she lowered the phone.
“You're not taking Kitty back there tonight,” he said.
“I didn't say I was.”
“I'm saying it now. You want to go, you go. But I won't have her sleeping where they're waiting to ask.”
Kit got up. “I have my own room.”
“I know, honey.”
“Then tell me. You keep talking across me.”
He held his hands up, apologetic. Leah watched the apology come easily and felt herself liking it despite what he had just said.
“I'd like you to use it,” he told Kit. “That's all.”
Rosa finally stood, carrying her new socks against her stomach. Leah put the phone away. The lake moved beyond the rail, bright enough to hurt her eyes.
Kit put Walt's phone into his hand, gently, and picked up the tray of trash. Leah went to take it from her. Kit moved it away.
“I've got it.”
Leah let her carry it to the trash can.
They walked back with more space between them than before. Music was starting to rise from the festival, carrying over the water. The grounds had filled while they were gone; people lined up at the public entrance, unwrapping tickets on their phones. Children wore ear protection the size of their heads. Adults carried collapsible chairs, coolers they would be told they couldn't bring, bags they had overpacked for an evening that would end before they expected.
At the gate Mel had Leah's flatbed key in his hand.
“There you go. Don't say I never do anything for you.”
“I barely know you,” she said.
“And yet.”
Walt and Rosa went to his pickup. Kit stayed beside Leah.
“You've got a shift?” Leah asked.
“Not until tomorrow. I swapped.”
“You want—”
“A room. I want to go back and have a shower and not talk to anybody for ten minutes.”
Leah nodded. “I'll take you.”
They drove with the windows down. Kit had sand on one shoe from the promenade, and she rubbed it against the floor mat until Leah almost told her to stop. She didn't.
The lake appeared and disappeared between the houses. A teenager on a bicycle wobbled along the shoulder carrying a pizza box. He held it flat with one hand and steered with the other, his expression full of the solemn concentration of someone transporting a human organ.
“Brain surgeon,” Kit said.
Leah laughed. Kit smiled without looking at her.
At the motor court, Walt was waiting beside his room. Rosa had gone inside. Kit walked straight past him to number nine, the door next to his, and let herself in with a key from her pocket. Leah had not asked where she slept. She had built a whole picture without asking that.
“She has her own room,” Walt said.
“I can see that.”
“I thought you might like to.”
She looked at him. His face was tired, the lines beside his mouth deeper than they had been by the water.
“Not tonight, Lee,” he said.
“What?”
“Whatever you're working up to. Talk to her first.”
Inside number nine a shower started. Leah could hear the pipes hammer in the wall.
“She doesn't know,” she said.
Walt's eyes held hers.
“Not all of it.”
“No,” Leah said. “Not all of it.”
He went into his room and shut the door.
Leah sat on the plastic chair outside Kit's. The air was cooling. In the pool the water had gone dark except where the underwater light made a pale square on the steps. Somebody had left a small pink sandal beside the gate.
She waited for the shower to stop.