The Girls of Tonsil Lake (28 page)

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Andie muttered as we neared the bottom of the box.

“The same reason she didn’t make Cindy Hathaway leave you alone,” said Vin. “She had no reason to think those dreams were going to come true”—she pointed at the notes on the table—“but she had every reason to think we’d have a hard way to go. She wanted us to always be strong and to always have each other. As long as we shared knowing we’d killed someone, we’d maintain a connection, and knowing we’d killed for survival meant we were strong.”

“I don’t know, Vin,” said Andie. “That’s a stretch.”

“Is it?” Vin picked up the envelope of pictures. “Rosie bought you this camera when the rest of us were still counting on the Salvation Army for our Christmases. She saved your stories, Jean, when no one else gave them a second thought. Remember that binder full of them we found after she died? And you, Suzanne—who taught you to put on makeup and to make the best of what you had? Who took me to the doctor and convinced me life could go on after rape, when all I wanted to do was die?” She laughed as tears spurted from her eyes. “Who made sure we had care packages at college just like the other kids did? The last ones were waiting for us when we went back to school after her funeral.

“Are we really going to wonder whether that person loved us or not? Are we going to question her judgment when hers was the
only
judgment that ever put our needs first?” She looked around the table at us. “Well, are we?”

“No, we’re not,” said Suzanne.

At last the relief felt real. Vin was right, of course. For the first time since that night, the four of us were completely free. “It feels good,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Andie. “But, you know, there’s a little part of me that’s disappointed we didn’t kill the forny bastard.”

She looked so pseudo-wistful that I burst out laughing. Suzanne got to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go to the pub. I think it’s time the Tonsil Lake girls got drunk.”

Suzanne

It was snowing as we walked to the tavern, and even as we complained about the cold, we enjoyed the beauty of it.

“Where will you build your house?” I asked Vin.

“In the middle there,” she said, pointing, “backed up into the trees.” She looked between the three of us. “There are enough lots for all of us, you know, if you’d like to build houses.” She grinned. “Or park trailers. Of course, you’ll be living in the B and B, Suzanne, so you won’t want one.”

“I can’t afford it,” I said regretfully, “but I could probably buy one of your lots and build a little house on it. I’d like that, I think.”

“You could afford it if you had partners,” said Andie. “Jake left me a whole bunch of money I didn’t know was coming, over and above the bigger bunches he left the kids. I think he’d like it if I invested it in your spa.”

“And I sold Mark’s mother’s jewelry. I offered it to his girls, but they didn’t want it and didn’t mind if I sold it. I’d like to invest that somewhere,” said Vin.

“It might never make any money,” I cautioned. “I want it to be an ‘every woman’ type of place.”

“Works for me,” said Vin with a shrug. “I’d just like knowing you were right up the road.”

“I’d like to invest, too,” said Jean.

We all stopped walking and looked at her. Jean never bought so much as a pair of earrings without consulting David.

“I spend my book advances,” she said. “I put them into the family budget and feel proud of contributing. But when I started getting royalty checks, David told me to stuff them somewhere for a rainy day. We withdrew a few times when all three kids were in college at once, but for the most part, it hasn’t rained yet.”

We reached the pub with our hair full of snowflakes and waved to the bartender, who called, “The usual?”

“You bet,” said Andie, “and could you bring us some paper?”

He brought us our drinks and a stenographer’s notepad, and we scrambled for pens.

An hour later, we had drawn up a workable partnership, contingent on the Arthurs dropping the price of the house a few thousand, on David not going ballistic, and on the results of a home inspection.

Two hours later, I was crying into my Margarita, Andie was telling me to stop being a ninny, and Jean and Vin were playing darts really badly.

So why was I surprised when the door to the pub opened and David walked in, followed by Paul and Trent?

Vin

I tossed Jean an accusing look. “You called David because you were losing, you big whine-ass.”

“I did not, though I thought about it when you wanted the drunk at the bar to play William Tell with us.” She shook her head seriously. “It could have gotten ugly if you’d missed, since all the bartender had was those pickled eggs in the big jar, which are even smaller than apples.”

She smiled brightly at David, though her eyes weren’t focusing too well, so the smile kind of slipped past him. “Hi, honey.”

“Hi, babe.” He gave her a hug. “Got to missing you.”

“That’s sweet.”

I wished Lucas were there. This reminded me too much of high school days when part of us had boyfriends and part of us didn’t.

“I talked to Lucas,” said David. “He sent you this.”

He draped me over his arm and gave me a kiss, which would have worked out better if we hadn’t both been laughing so hard. “I hope he does better than that in real life,” David complained. “That could hurt a guy’s back.”

“Hey, O’Toole, you weren’t supposed to do that,” called Paul, “because he’s...umph.” Trent’s elbow gouged his ribs.

“He’s what?” I headed back toward the table, a dart still in my hand.

“Leaving our stuff up at the B and B,” said Paul, keeping a watchful eye on my weaponry. “He said he’d walk down but we weren’t supposed to tell you.”

“You mean he’s here?” I was already reaching for my coat. “He just went back to the island.” The dart wouldn’t go through my sleeve and I drew my hand back, looking down at it in consternation.

Perhaps darts aren’t a good idea after several rounds of “the usual.”

“Nope,” said David. “He went to the airport.” He looked wise. “I know that on account of I took him. Then he said, ‘What the hell am I doing this for when I haven’t taken a vacation in twenty goddamned years?’ And we came back to Lewis Point. He’s staying in Kelly’s room, Jean, but he’s not real messy.”

“Unless you count his handwriting,” said Paul. “We were playing Pinochle and whenever he or Trent wrote down the score, no one could read what they wrote.”

“So we started playing poker,” said Trent. He looked dolefully at Suzanne. “You know my house? I hope you weren’t real attached to it. I think I lost it to Paul.”

Lucas came in then, and draped me over his arm much more convincingly than David had.

We sat around the table in the tavern until after the bartender made last call. Then he sat down and had a drink with us before coaxing us out the door.

We walked back to the B and B, our feet crunching and squeaking on the snow that had obliterated the path.

“ ’Night, Rosie,” we called as we passed the cemetery, then “See you in the morning,” as we passed the church.

A glob of snow fell out of a tree and went straight down the back of Andie’s coat. We all stopped to brush her off, and turned back toward the lake.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” said Suzanne.

It was. The sky had cleared when the snow stopped, and the moon turned the ripples of the lake to silver and cast a shade of blue over the snow. Stars shone overhead, and I picked out the ones we had allotted to those we’d loved and lost.

“There’s Rosie’s,” said Jean, pointing, “and it’s no forny airplane.”

We started walking again, our laughter falling soft against the snow rather than ringing out as it had earlier. We girls walked with our partners of choice, our arms linked with theirs, but close enough that we could reach out and grab each other. “Hey, wait,” we would say. “Remember this?”

“Home,” Jake Logan had written to all of us, “is wherever you hang your heart.”

We were home.

Epilogue

Archie

I never come to Indiana when Vin and Lucas do. My new husband, who is a fisherman, doesn’t really like leaving the island, but he did this time. “It’s a family reunion,” Vin said firmly, “and you’re family.”

It has been fun, putting faces with the names I’ve known all these many years. For sure, I would have known Jean and David in a heartbeat because even though they’re two separate entities, they’re near to being joined at the hip. Jean’s new book, which Vin edited and her employer published, is a hit. It’s way down on those bestseller lists writers set so much store by, but it’s there.

Andie’s book was monstrous successful, but she doesn’t care for the notoriety that’s gone with it. She calls it “that book” and swears she won’t be writing another one. She says she’s not interested in getting married, either. She and Paul are together nearly all the time, and they seem content with that. I wouldn’t be, for sure, but I spent twenty-some years loving a married man, so what do I know?

Suzanne runs the Lady of the Lake Spa, which is greatly successful. I don’t go in for such things, but I certainly did enjoy the day she gave me as a gift. I felt wonderful afterward and my husband said, “You look younger somehow,” which led to all kinds of private celebration.

She’s married to Trent. They are apart a great deal of the time, but they like it that way. She’s so lovely it near hurts to look at her, but you can see the pain in her eyes that never quite goes away. She’s loved much and lost much, and it shows.

Vin and Lucas live on the island and on the lake, going from one place to the other at the drop of a hat. Although she wouldn’t like admitting it, she’s happier in love with Lucas than she was with Mr. Stillson. She still has a veneer of sophistication that serves her well in the business world, but she’s quite at home in her bare feet or in oilskins on Lucas’s brother’s boat.

All of everyone’s family is here this weekend in June for the reunion. The lake rings with the shouts of young parents corralling their children and the laughter of those children. Even Vin’s stepdaughters are here, traveling alone and taking advantage of Suzanne’s spa.

It’s amazing, it is, how the families meld. Everyone watches everyone else’s children. There’s even a nursery of sorts under the trees with shaded playpens for babies belonging to Josh and Laurie, Lo and Sarah, and Brian and Kelly.

“God,” says Suzanne, looking wide-eyed at the three of them and beyond at Carrie’s and Miranda’s children, “it’s like when ours were little.”

“Nah.” Andie stood beside her. “We get to send all these home.”

Jean and Andie have houses on either side of Vin’s, far enough apart for privacy but close enough to meet for coffee whenever the mood strikes them, and it seems to strike them often. They all have little guesthouses, too, so there’s usually room for everyone. This weekend is an exception to that, of course, so Suzanne has closed down her spa to outside clientele to accommodate the overflow.

An early riser by nature, I woke this morning in time to see the sun peeping up over the woods. I stepped out on the porch of Vin’s house in my bathrobe, something that’s entirely acceptable here, and looked down toward the lake.

A huge boulder sat in the grass above the beach that had been created by bringing in sand. The men had rented a large yellow machine and hauled in the rock from a rear corner of what even I refer to as the Henderson farm although the Hendersons are gone from here.

This morning, the Girls—as everyone from their husbands to the minister to the bartender at the pub calls them—all sat on the rock, though Jean looked near to falling off. As I watched, they leaned in toward each other as though sharing a confidence, then their laughter rose and spiraled so that the morning had an extra glow about it.

Then Jean fell off the rock.

Or else Andie pushed her.

A word about the author...

Liz Flaherty has spent the past few years reinventing herself. The career postal worker who wrote on weekends and sewed whenever someone lost a button now writes whenever she feels like it and sews the rest of the time. She’s not necessarily more productive these days, but she certainly does have a lot of fun.

She lives with her husband, Duane, in the farmhouse they bought in 1977 and intended to stay in until the kids grew up, at which time they planned to move to a small house that cleaned itself and cooked their meals while he played golf and she...didn’t. This has not happened. Even though they occasionally discuss downsizing, neither of them is willing to go through a 36-year accumulation of stuff.

THE GIRLS OF TONSIL LAKE
is her eighth book.

~*~

Other Liz Flaherty titles

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BECAUSE OF JOE

HOME TO SINGING TREES

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