A Snake in the Grass" at one point) has become part of a family tradition. Suzie and I went and walked around the gardens after lunch. There's a nice shaded spot under the trees in front of the library. We sat down and looked at the clouds. "Storm coming," he said. I got out the cell phone and checked the weather. "Storm coming," I said. "Nine point nine miles per hour and moving toward us. It'll be over in another hour." "I'm staying here for now," he said, "until it gets dark. I don't like to stay too long in one place." "I like to stay in one place," I said. "I can't help it. And then when I go home, I'm like a dog with his tail between his legs. I can't wait to get back to the house." "That's me, too," he said. "How about dinner at six o'clock?" "That'll be fine," I said. "I'll get dinner, we'll sit on the porch, and then we'll go to the drive-in." "Sounds like a plan," he said. I put the cell phone in my purse, went home to fix dinner, and started in on the homework. By the time I'd made the bed, and read for a while, it was almost five-thirty, and Suzie showed up at my door. "We need to pick up some things at the drugstore," he said. "Can I buy some chips and soft drinks?" "Absolutely," I said. And so we loaded the little red wagon with snacks and sodas and potato chips and settled in for the drive-in movie. The first movie of the night was _Mr. Deeds_ with Adam Sandler and Jackie Chan. Suzie fell asleep in the middle of it and, fortunately, woke up in time to see the last part. We took our time eating our junk food, so it was almost eight o'clock before we went back to the movie. We ended up seeing _The Mask of Zorro_ with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. Suzie fell asleep again, and I put him in the car and drove home. I took him upstairs, made sure he was in bed, and came downstairs again. I was just about to pour a cup of tea when Suzie called from the kitchen. "I think I'll go back out to the lake after all," he said. "Would you like to come along?" "Sure," I said. "I've got to go in about an hour anyway. The kids are supposed to come home about nine o'clock and they're usually pretty late." "I can wait for you," he said. "I wouldn't mind sitting on the porch," I said. "Can you stay out a little longer?" "Sure." I brought out a book and put it on the kitchen table and the two of us sat on the back steps and read. There were some clouds and a half-moon up in the sky, and the wind was cool. There was a warm breeze coming off the water, and I couldn't get warm. "I'm glad we don't live on a lake," he said. "It would be awful." "Where do you live?" I asked. "At the end of the Point," he said. "It's a lot bigger and nicer." "We should go out there some time," I said. "It looks nice." "There's no lake around our house," he said. "It's a reservoir." "That's really beautiful," I said. "I can't swim in it," he said. "Why not?" I asked. "When I was a little boy, some guys went fishing and didn't bring their bait back with them. They were from a place called Chatham, and they had gone out on the reservoir. When they didn't come back, people went looking for them, but they couldn't find them. It turned out that they'd drowned." "I guess they drowned trying to save their lives," I said. "I like lakes," he said. "They make me think of my father. He liked boats, and he used to take me out on the lake." "Was he a fisherman?" "No, a fisherman doesn't own a boat," he said. "He used to have a rowboat. Sometimes he'd take me out on the lake, or on the river, just to look at the water. He'd tell me about how there used to be salmon swimming up those rivers, and when he was a boy, the water used to be a different color." "How different?" "Like it was black," he said. "The trees were green, and when the leaves fell, the lake was all black, and the fish came up." "Do you still want to go home?" I asked. "Not yet," he said. "When do you have to be back?" "Noon," he said. "I'll get dressed, and I'll take you home first." "I'll go in and wake the kids," I said. "They don't know you're coming." I went upstairs and woke the kids and told them we were going out to the lake with Suzie. "Can I come?" Billy asked. "I don't want to stay here. I can just see the bugs crawling all over me." "Okay," I said. The kids were happy enough to go, and I thought they were probably glad that I'd decided to go. When we got downstairs, Suzie was standing at the front door waiting for us. "We'd better take a blanket," I said. "I don't have one." "I'll get one," Billy said. "It will take me a minute to get dressed." I sat down on the bottom step of the porch, and Suzie handed me the blanket and we waited for Billy to come back. There were only three cars at the lake now, so I guessed that they must have come in for the night. We heard someone on a horse and we looked up to see the girl on the mare ride down toward the jetty. She was riding in a slow trot. She was wearing dark slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. "That's the horse lady," I said. "Her name is Lacey." "I'd sure like to be riding her someday," Billy said. "Have you ever been riding her?" Suzie asked. "She hasn't been in the stable since I came," I said. We sat there and watched her for a minute. "She's amazing," I said. "She's been riding around out here for years and years. I wonder if she ever had a bad fall or broke a leg." "I guess she's pretty good," Suzie said. We watched her pull up in front of the stable and put her feet on the stirrup leathers and dismount and tie the horse to the hitching post and walk back into the house. We watched her until she disappeared inside the stable. She was a very attractive woman, and she always seemed to be in a very good mood. "I hope she doesn't come out here for a ride in the next fifteen minutes," Suzie said. "The boys are in the stable and I don't want them to know you're coming." "Wouldn't it be something if she did come out?" I asked. "It would be very something," Suzie said. "It could happen," I said. "She could come out and ride around a little bit, then decide to go into the house. Billy could come out here and go out on the jetty and go out on the horse." "She'd have to have us locked in," Suzie said. "What if she rode off? We could walk down there and go out on the jetty." "That's another thing," I said. "We couldn't let her see that she was being watched. We'd have to figure out a way to do that. And what if Lacey saw Billy, and recognized him?" "We'd have to see how good Lacey is with people," Suzie said. "We'd have to see how much she talks to people." "We'd have to play this very carefully," I said. "Maybe we should all wait in the woods," Suzie said. "You mean _she_ should wait in the woods," I said. "We'll have to decide what we're going to do," I said. "I don't think it will be too long before it comes to us. You never know, though. She might decide to stay out all night." "When she comes out again, maybe we'll take a walk down to the lake," I said. "I don't think we can wait around too long." "When she goes out on the lake again, we'll have to," Suzie said. "I don't know about that," I said