The Secrets of Lake Road (12 page)

At one point, an older boy on Chris’s team smacked a line drive down the third baseline. Caroline got her glove out just in time for the ball to slap her palm in the center of the mitt where she pinched it tightly, the sting tearing through the leather and up her arm. She wanted to throw the mitt to the ground and shake off the pain, jump around, and yell. Instead she tossed the ball to first base like a pro, pretending it didn’t hurt, feeling not only her brother’s but all the boys’ eyes on her, especially Chris’s.

Johnny punched his fist into his mitt. “All right. One out. Two to go,” he said.

Between innings, Caroline sat with Megan and Mrs. Roberts rather than in the dugout with Johnny and the team, although they stopped bellyaching about her presence once they saw what she could do. She was part of them, but she wasn’t one of them. It was the best way she could explain her feelings at the time.

Twice Megan squealed when a foul ball flew her way. She ducked and flapped her hands
like a girl,
Caroline thought. Maybe Megan did it to get Jeff’s attention. But it was that kind of behavior that gave girls a bad rap when it came to sports. Johnny hit two balls out of the park. Everyone hooted and hollered. He shrugged.

The game lasted an hour and a half before it became too dark to see the ball clearly. They called it quits before anyone got hurt. Caroline felt good about her performance. She had stopped every ground ball that had been hit her way. She had thrown the ball to first base with accuracy and speed. But okay, her batting needed improvement.

In the end Chris’s team had won nine to seven. The sun set, and most of the adults fled to their perspective cabins once the mosquitoes arrived. The kids hung around afterward, reliving the highlights, poking fun at the mishaps, and extending the fun for a few minutes more.

Johnny patted Caroline’s shoulder. “Good game, Caroline.” She felt an enormous amount of gratitude, and she’d never admit it out loud to anyone, but she really did love her brother.

*   *   *

The Needlemeyer twins collected the bases. The remaining bats and mitts were plucked from the ground. Gram had been right. A baseball game was just what they had needed. They had all but forgotten about the scene at the lake and the drowning girl. At least until Adam walked onto the field. He was out of breath. His hand covered his skinny chest. They gathered around him—Caroline, Johnny, Chris, Megan, the Needlemeyer twins, even the Chitney girls. Jeff, the newcomer, lingered on the perimeter.

“I think they found her,” Adam said.

For a moment no one moved. No one uttered a word.

Megan’s eyebrows shot up. She looked at Jeff. Perhaps she saw this as an opportunity to talk with him. She stepped away, cornering him really, and filled him in on the events from the last few days.

Caroline twisted a string on her mitt, struggling with indecision to stay at the ballpark or head down to the lake. She supposed it was like a fire or car accident where it was impossible to keep away, to not want to go and look. And still she stayed rooted to her spot among the others.

“We might as well go down and see what’s going on,” one of the Chitney girls said, and tugged on Johnny’s arm.

Johnny and Chris and the two girls headed in the direction of the woods to the path that led straight to the parking lot and beach. Megan stood next to Jeff, obviously waiting to see what he would do.

Caroline hesitated a moment or two before chasing after Johnny, trying to catch up. “Wait for me,” she called, yet knowing he wouldn’t. It was dark and darker still under the hundred-year-old trees. She ran blindly, using the mitt on her left hand as a shield against the small branches whipping in front of her face. Cougar barked. She cursed herself for not having a treat to toss to him. Once, she looked over her shoulder, wondering if Megan or Adam or the new boy, Jeff, had followed, but she didn’t hear anyone behind her. She imagined they decided to take the Lake Road. She’d beat them there.

She reached the parking lot and slowed to a walk. A large spotlight lit up two boats in the middle of the lake. Men’s voices, deep and muffled, carried across the water. Crickets buzzed. She made her way through the smattering of vehicles and reached the dock where both Chris and Johnny and the girls stood. Her heart raced from the running, the excitement, the fear.

Johnny glanced at her but turned his eyes back to the water, his arm secured around one of the girl’s waists. The other sister latched onto Chris. Caroline stood on the opposite side of him, her arm brushing up against his. He smelled like dirt and sweat and sweetness all at once, making her legs weak.

A crowd formed on the beach. She thought she saw her father. He was taller than most of the other men. Yes, she was sure it was him. His right shoulder sagged whenever he stood for long periods of time. And like everybody else, he stared at the scene on the lake.

She spied her mother at the water’s edge, far from the crowd. Her mother’s long wavy hair blew in the breeze. Another woman stood next to her. She believed the woman to be Sara’s mother. She couldn’t be sure. She wondered where Sara’s father might be.

Megan, Adam, the twins, and Jeff walked into the parking lot. They headed in Caroline’s direction. Caroline took a small step away from Chris before Megan and the others reached the dock and joined them. The last thing she wanted was for Megan to suspect she liked him.

“Did I miss anything?” Megan asked.

Caroline shook her head.

A woman approached their little group on the dock. It wasn’t until she was close that Caroline recognized her as Chris’s mother. Caroline knew who she was but never had any reason to talk with her. Besides, there was something unapproachable about her that made Caroline shy away. It had something to do with the expression on her face, hard and edgy, but sad, too.

The sheriff’s vehicle drove into the lot followed by one of his deputies. They got out of their cars and gestured toward the lake. Someone on the beach shouted, “They got something! They’re bringing it up!”

Caroline’s breathing came in short spurts. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling: fear, curiosity, dread, or some combination of all three. Dried sweat clung to her skin. Goosebumps broke out across her arms and legs. She held her mitt close to her chest as the grappling hooks emerged from the water.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jo crossed her arms against the cool breeze coming off the water. The wet sand stuck to her feet and flip-flops. The mosquitoes buzzed around her ears. Now that she was standing next to Sara’s mother, she didn’t know what to say. So rather than say anything, she stood in silent support. Somehow it was enough.

When the grappling hooks submerged a second time, the scene on the lake became quiet.

“He had to go to work,” Sara’s mother, Patricia, said of her husband. “I know how that sounds. Just horrible. Doesn’t it?” She shook her head. “Just dreadful.”

Jo didn’t respond, but it
did
sound awful. What kind of man left his wife at a time like this, knowing his little girl had drowned, that her body was still out there?

Patricia continued. “He’s always working. Seventy, eighty hours a week. He doesn’t understand what a monster he’s being. He doesn’t. He didn’t even know his little girl. He didn’t know how she painted with watercolors for hours. Or how her face lit up whenever she heard the words
ice cream
. Or how, when she wrapped her arms around your neck and hugged you tight, you felt like the luckiest person in the world.”

Jo reached for Patricia’s hand and held it. Neither one allowed their gaze to stray from the lake. A few seconds passed in silence.

“It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. It was supposed to be the best vacation Sara and I had ever had. It was supposed to be fun for the two of us. But I turned my back on her. I never should’ve turned my back. It was that damn umbrella. That stupid, broken umbrella. I wasn’t paying attention,” she said. “I should’ve been paying attention. It happened so quickly.”

Jo nodded but was unable to speak, to offer comforting words. What could she say? What could anyone say? She understood better than anyone about guilt. Regret. If she could go back in time, she’d fix things with Billy. She’d say she was sorry. She had never meant to hurt him.

But you couldn’t go back no matter how many times you replayed in your mind the event that brought you to this point, the things you should’ve, could’ve, and would’ve done rather than what you did do. Jo knew that Patricia would rewind those minutes of that day over and over for the rest of her life, how Sara was by her side and then suddenly she wasn’t.

There was a flurry of activity on one of the boats. She turned toward Patricia. For a second there was something familiar about her as though Jo had seen her before, and the shadow of a distant memory flitted across her mind.

“Listen to me,” Jo said. Her words came out in a rush. “It’s not going to be easy to see her. She’s not going to look like she did. The snappers.” She paused. “She’s been in the lake for a long time.” Jo couldn’t continue. The words caught in her throat.

Patricia nodded. But Jo was sure Patricia didn’t understand what she was trying to say. It wasn’t that Sara’s body would be pale and bloated and lifeless. It was that she was going to look so much worse than Patricia could ever imagine.

*   *   *

The boat veered toward the shore. Patricia took off running toward the pier on the other side of the beach where it was headed. Jo followed at a much slower pace. None of the other onlookers moved. She noticed Kevin in the back of the crowd. She felt his eyes on her, following her every step, but he kept his distance. He was good at keeping his distance when it mattered most.

The sheriff and his deputy strode to the pier, where Patricia was waiting for the fishermen. Jo stood several feet behind them. When the boat docked, one of the men shook his head. “We’re sorry.”

“No!” Patricia cried out. She lunged toward the boat. The deputy grabbed her arms and held her back.

“No,” the fisherman said. “I mean, I’m sorry, it’s not your little girl.”

Stimpy picked up a six-foot eel and tossed it onto the beach without thinking twice about how it might be received. Jo looked away.
Idiot,
she whispered. The eel’s skin was shredded, its flesh ripped and torn and full of holes.

Patricia turned her head away, wriggling free from the deputy. She stumbled. The sheriff caught her.

“What happened to it?” Patricia asked him.

“Snappers,” the sheriff said. “Get her out of here,” he said to his deputy.

The deputy took Patricia by the elbow and guided her across the beach to the parking lot, far away from the scene. Her sobs cut across the night air.

A few people from the bar came forward now that Patricia had gone. Someone said, “Would you look at the size of that thing?”

“It’s a big one,” Stimpy said, and nudged it with his foot. “We stock them in these waters, but I’ve never seen one this big. The biggest I’ve ever seen is a four- or five-footer.”

By this time everyone on the beach came forward to see the fish, even Kevin. He stood next to Jo. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets. Caroline, Megan, and a couple of their friends appeared from across the way. They stopped to stare at the dead fish.

Heil walked onto the pier and stood next to the sheriff.

“I didn’t agree to this,” the sheriff said to him. “I won’t agree to this.”

Heil slapped the sheriff on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You better,” the sheriff said, and strode to his car, where the deputy and Patricia were waiting.

Stimpy and the other fisherman fumbled with the caged snappers on the boat.

“How many in there?” Heil pointed to the traps.

“Four.” Stimpy scratched his head. “Some of them got tangled, and we had to cut the lines.”

“Well, we’re going to need more.” He motioned to the lake. “You see how big it is out there. We need more boats, too. You tell the other fishermen, I want every last one of them on the lake. We’ve got to find this girl.”

“Yeah, okay, okay,” Stimpy said.

“You hear me?” Heil addressed the crowd behind him. “We’re all in agreement?”

There was a collective rumble from the group. Jo and Kevin exchanged a look.

When no one else spoke up, Heil spit in the general direction of Stimpy and the mutilated eel. “Now get that damn thing off my beach.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Caroline spent another night tossing and turning, tangled in sheets. Her dreams were filled with snakes and eels and disfigured fish. And in the center, amidst the slithering and thrashing prey, was the rock behind Chris’s cabin, the one painted with the initials
J
+
B
.

Somehow the image of the heart, the initials, disturbed her more than the mangled fish. She was certain it was another piece of the puzzle that had to do with her mother and Billy. Maybe if she learned the secret of Billy, she could end whatever it was that haunted her mother. What she wanted most and longed to know was what made her mother run. But her mother wasn’t running, not in the dream. She was swimming, farther and farther away, all while Caroline was drowning in the lake.

Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up in bed. A cool breeze pulled the curtains against the window screen. Light from the moon cut across the floor and the far wall. She could hear her father snoring in the room next door, the sound comforting. She had been dreaming. It was only a dream. But it wasn’t.

She leaned back against the pillow, too afraid to close her eyes, fearing the images that swam behind them in the dark. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. Willow’s branches scratched against the side of the cabin, beckoning her to come out and play.

She tossed the covers aside. After making sure her bedroom door was closed tight, she lifted the screen and climbed out. She crawled into the crook of the trunk between two big branches about a third of the way up the tree. It was big enough for her to fit comfortably, stretching her legs on the thick branch in front of her and maintaining her balance in the pocket. It was better than any deer stand that had been constructed in the woods on the other side of the colony in the open field far from the cabins.