“Yes,” I said. “I hope it will.”
We parked and gathered up our picnic stuff. He had a blanket. I couldn’t help looking back at the cleaned-up foundation as I walked alongside Kane into the woods and to the lake. I was sure the Foxworth children had never been able to take this walk.
Dad was right. It was a beautiful day for a picnic, with just a slightly cool breeze coming off the water. The sky was a deep blue, making the puffy clouds look whiter. There seemed to be no wind at all up there to move them along. They looked pasted against the light blue background. Maybe they were asleep, I thought, and smiled to myself, recalling how I used to assign meanings to their different shapes. Some looked like animals, some like mountains and hills. Once I thought a dark cloud looked like a witch. Sometimes I would give one a name and be excited if I saw the same shape again. It was as if it was coming back just for me.
“Why are you smiling?” Kane asked.
“I was just thinking of something I used to do when I was little. I would give clouds names, identify them as things.”
“I do that once in a while, even now,” he said.
I smirked.
“I do,” he insisted. “Even Kane Hill gets bored sometimes.”
“I wasn’t bored. I was imaginative,” I said. “When you’re young and alone, your imagination has no boundaries.”
He looked at me oddly for a moment.
“What?”
“What I like about you is every time I’m with you, it’s like unwrapping a surprise gift,” he said. “How about over there?” He pointed to an open area not more than a dozen feet from the edge of the lake. “Looks flat enough.”
“Okay.”
He spread out the blanket, smoothed it down, and helped lay out our picnic lunch. “I have a confession to make,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve never been on a picnic. I’ve been on a safari in Africa, but that was like having a hotel moving around with us, and the tents were pretty elaborate. All the food was prepared for us, but we saw some incredible things and took great pictures.”
“I haven’t been on a picnic since . . . since I was very young.”
He nodded and poured us both some apple juice out of the thermos. Then he took off his jacket, folded it, and laid it down for me to use as a pillow.
“Thanks,” I said, and lay back.
“I didn’t tell any of my friends I was doing this.”
“Embarrassed?”
“No. Just want to start having some secrets,” he said with that impish little smile of his.
“You can rest your head on me, if you want. I’m soft in some places.”
“I’d say you’re soft in all places,” he said, shifting quickly to do it. We both stared up at the sky silently. I felt his hand reach for mine, and when he grasped it, I grasped his, too. “Can you feel it?” he asked.
“What?”
“The earth moving?”
I laughed and then thought about it. Was I imagining it? “I think I can. I never felt it or even thought about it until now.”
“When you’re with someone you really want to be with, like I am with you right now, everything you’ve seen before, every color, every shape, anything, really, looks different. Looks . . .”
“Looks what?”
“Brand new,” he said.