The Secrets of Lake Road (19 page)

“So, uh,” Johnny said. He couldn’t meet Kevin’s eyes. “I’m going to go. Tell Mom, if I see Caroline, I’ll let her know she’s looking for her.” He started to walk away with a familiar swagger that made Kevin feel as though someone had kicked him in the gut.

“Johnny,” he called.

Johnny turned, tossing the long hair out of his eyes.

“Do you love her?” Kevin asked, but only loud enough for Johnny to hear.

The personal question took them both by surprise. Johnny looked at his feet and then over his shoulder at his friends. He turned back toward Kevin. “Not really,” he said.

“That’s good,” Kevin said, and crushed the cigarette he had been smoking underneath his sneaker. “You’re better off.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jo sat at the far end of the bar, facing the door. She was drinking soda. It was too early for beer and, technically, the bar wasn’t open. Eddie was kind enough to let her sit inside, out of the rain, although the storm had ended some time ago. He was in one of his moods and didn’t offer much conversation, which was just as well. She didn’t feel much like talking anyway.

She twisted her hair and let it fall in front of her shoulder. Her shirt was damp and her feet dirty from traipsing around the lake in flip-flops. She had searched everywhere after first stopping at Megan’s cabin, where Megan made a point of telling Jo that she hadn’t seen Caroline since they rode their bikes to the Country Store the day before. The Pavilion was open, but empty. She hoped Kevin had better luck. She checked her phone, considered calling her boss one more time, but she couldn’t get a signal. She dropped it onto the bar. So that was that.

The crowd that had been on the docks started trickling in. Heil walked in with Stimpy and a couple of other fishermen, and she found herself amidst another community meeting. She sat on the edge of the stool and gripped the soda in front of her, wondering if Patricia would show up. She had to find a way to get Patricia alone and ask how she knew Billy, and why she acted as though he was still alive.

The men were seated and the discussion started.

“Why is the sheriff asking questions about that boy Billy and those bones?” one of Stimpy’s cronies asked. “Why’s he bugging us? He said nothing’s official, so why’s he drudging up old news?”

Jo steadied herself, not making eye contact with any of the men. Although she could’ve sworn every one of them glanced in her direction at the mention of Billy’s name.

“I’ll talk to the sheriff,” Heil said.

“It’s bad enough that girl is still out there,” someone bellowed. “He keeps talking about those bones, and he’s going to scare people away.”

“Hell, I don’t think they’re scared. I think they’re bored,” Jonathon jumped in. “I had two families pack up their vehicles and head home,” he said. “No one wants to hang around the lake in the summer heat if they can’t enjoy the water. Although it’s tragic what happened, people are restless. They’re good people, hardworking people, who spent their hard-earned money to come here. They want to spend their time on the lake fishing and swimming. It’s what they expect, or they want their money back.”

Some of the other cabin owners chimed in, complaining they, too, had worked hard to fill their rentals and couldn’t afford refunds or cancelations.

“What about the Trout Festival in a few days? There are a couple hundred people or more expected to come. The kids expect to fish in the tournament. We can’t disappoint the kids,” the father of the Needlemeyer twins said.

“Okay, okay.” Heil held up his hands to quiet them down. “We’re not canceling the festival or the fishing tournament.”

“Well, this mess has to be cleaned up by then. We can’t have a tournament while there’s a boat out there dragging the lake for that little girl’s body,” Jonathon said.

Heil stared at the men long and hard. “You’re not going to lose anymore renters,” he said to Jonathon. “And no one’s canceling anything,” he said to all of them.

“But I swear, I saw the families packing up the
Blue Hen,
” a man from the back of the room said.

The crowd murmured. It was true. Other renters were talking about leaving. The gossip went round and round.

“Not one person has rented a boat in five damn days,” Stimpy said.

Nate chimed in about not having any customers, about how he, too, couldn’t afford to lose any more money.

“Let’s face it: nobody is going to get near the water with those boats out there looking for that little girl,” one of the men said.

Another said, “It’s been too long. What’s the likelihood of finding her now anyway?”

“You mean what’s the likelihood there’s anything left to find,” someone said. The group nodded its assent. “They’ll never find scraps. The lake is too damn big. She was small to begin with.”

“You brought up a good point.” Heil’s voice boomed over the crowd. He pulled his shorts high on his expansive stomach. “Maybe we can talk the recovery team into limiting their search to early morning. There aren’t many of them left now anyway.”

“What about us?” Stimpy asked, motioning to his gang of fishermen.

“Same goes for you,” Heil said. “Trap more snappers, but leave them in their cages. Let everybody swim and fish and enjoy themselves. We can pick up the search in the off-hours.” He paused. “Although I agree, there’s probably not much left of her to find.”

Kevin stepped inside the bar as the rumble of the crowd subsided. Jo immediately went over to him. She grabbed his hand and led him down the stairs to the parking lot. She wanted to know if he had found Caroline, but she couldn’t ask him here, not with Heil and the fishermen within earshot.

“Did you find her?” she asked once they were outside and alone.

“No.” He stepped closer to her. He smelled wet like the rain mixed with cigarette smoke, but underneath it all, she smelled the soap on his skin, a scent unique to him. “Would you please tell me what’s going on,” he said.

“Caroline opened Stimpy’s traps and let the snappers out.”

“That doesn’t sound like something she would do.”

“I know. But I’m pretty sure she did.”

“Come on, why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand her sometimes. Maybe she thought it was cruel to capture them.” Caroline may have believed the ends didn’t justify the means, and although Jo was frustrated with her daughter, she also couldn’t help but feel proud of her too. In some ways Caroline was right. It
was
brutal both to the turtles, the ones who got tangled in the lines, and to the little girl now thought of as bait. It was a harsh reality. Sometimes life was cruel.

Kevin nodded.

She motioned to the bar, to where Heil and the group of men plotted inside. “They want to give up the search,” she said. “And the sheriff”—she kept her voice low—“he was asking some of the men questions … you know, about Billy.”

She waited for him to say something, anything, but he remained quiet. He always acted crazy whenever she brought up Billy. He wouldn’t even look at her.

Then he said, “Why don’t you go see if Caroline is back at the cabin with Gram? I’ll find out what’s going on inside.” He took the stairs two at a time.

She looked across the parking lot, spotting Sheriff Borg and Patricia, and then turned her gaze to the lake and the lone watercraft with the last three men from the recovery team.

She raced up the hill to Lake Road and the cabin.

*   *   *

Jo pushed open the door to the screened-in porch. Inside she found Caroline and Gram sitting on the porch swing with a photo album opened in their laps. Gram exchanged a look with Jo and shook her head: a motion that Jo understood to mean that Gram didn’t want her to confront her daughter. She wanted her to keep quiet. But since when did Jo listen to Gram?

“Caroline, where have you been?” She crossed her arms and looked down at the flip-flops on her daughter’s feet.

“I went for a bike ride,” Caroline said, and avoided looking at Jo in an attempt to hide her lying eyes.

Jo could always tell when Caroline was lying. She was terrible at hiding her emotions. Her face gave her away every time. All Jo had to do was look at her daughter to know what she was feeling on the inside. She suspected it had to do with her age and innocence. Thank goodness, her daughter at least had that.

“You wore flip-flops to ride your bike? Where are your sneakers?” she asked.

“I couldn’t find them.”

“Because they were covered in mud and Gram had to throw them away. Do you want to tell me how they got so dirty?”

“I don’t know.” Caroline stretched out the last word sounding like a whiny guilty child.

“Please look at me,” Jo said. “And tell me you didn’t sneak out of your room last night and mess with Stimpy’s traps.”

Caroline dipped her head and hid her face under the visor of her baseball cap. “I didn’t,” she said in the same whiny guilty voice.

“That’s enough,” Gram said. “She said she had nothing to do with releasing those snappers, and I believe her.”

Over the top of Caroline’s lowered head, Jo read Gram’s lips.
Leave her alone
.

Jo looked away. So Gram was taking Caroline’s side. Not once in all of Jo’s life had Gram ever stuck up for her. Not when she had been a pregnant teenager, a time when she had needed her most. And not now, when Gram clearly understood that Caroline had broken a law. For an instant Jo felt envious of her own daughter, and at the same time she felt petty and childish, too.

“Who’s this?” Caroline asked, and pointed to a photograph in the album.

Gram looked down through the reading glasses she had perched on the tip of her nose. “I’m not sure,” she said.

They both ignored Jo at this point. It took everything Jo had not to yell that she was her mother, demand Caroline answer her questions, but she happened to glimpse at the colored photo and did a double-take. It was a picture of Billy at his cabin. He was holding up a lake trout. Jo had taken the picture. Dee Dee was in the shot, along with a little girl Jo couldn’t place.

“Where did you get these?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. They were stored in the back closet all these years, the one Gram had finally decided to clean out.

Caroline kept her finger on the little girl in the photo. “She looks like Sara, the little girl who drowned.” She looked up at Jo, a little frightened.

“Oh my god,” Jo said. “That’s not Sara, that’s Pattie Dugan.”
Patricia.
“Dee Dee used to babysit Pattie every summer. Pattie is Sara’s mother.”

“I’ll be,” Gram said. “I remember her parents, Bob and Jean. They rented the
Sparrow
for many summers. Nice people.
Good
people.”

Good
people meant
lake people,
regulars who were accepted in the association and community. It meant Pattie had been one of them this entire time. Jo touched her neck and throat.

Gram continued. “But they stopped coming when Bob lost his job. I heard later they divorced,” she said. “But that’s all lake rumors. I don’t know if any of that is true.”

Jo had to sit down, and she plopped onto a wicker rocking chair across from Caroline and Gram and the photo. It wasn’t the shock of seeing a picture of Billy that made her knees weak, although that was a part of it. It was the surprise to find out she had known who Patricia was all along. Patricia Starr was little Pattie Dugan.

Pattie must’ve been nine or ten years old in the photograph. It was no wonder Jo didn’t recognize her now that she was an adult. It all seemed logical except the part about Billy.

Was it possible Patricia,
Pattie,
didn’t know Billy had drowned that summer?

Jo tried to think if she had seen Pattie in the summers since then, but how could she be sure? Jo had only been able to stay with Gram for a couple of days at a time before taking off. She hadn’t spent an entire summer at the lake since she was sixteen.

“Do you remember what summer they stopped coming?” she asked Gram.

“My goodness, I’d have to think about it. I’m not sure.”

Jo didn’t like the feeling that crept up her spine.

“This changes everything,” she said. “It’s Pattie’s little girl out there. She’s one of us. They must not know.” She was referring to the lake association and even Sheriff Borg. “Heil will have to continue searching. He can’t leave a regular out there.”

The logic was twisted but true. A first-timer, an unknown without any attachment to the lake community, someone who didn’t contribute year after year to help line the pockets of Heil and the locals, wouldn’t be treated the same. If the lake people had any rules—hell, if they had any conscience at all—it was their unwavering loyalty to their own kind. They may have reopened the beach when Billy had drowned, but they had never stopped searching or limiting their search like they planned to do with Sara. This was because Billy was one of them and Sara wasn’t, but now it seemed as though she was.

“Mom,” Caroline said.

Jo looked from Gram to her daughter. She had almost forgotten Caroline was there.

“Is that Billy?” Caroline asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Gram slammed the photo album shut, startling Caroline.

“That’s enough reminiscing for one afternoon,” Gram said, and stood. “Is anyone hungry? I’ll make sandwiches.” She rushed to the kitchen, taking the photo album with her.

Caroline looked to her mother for an answer to her question, an explanation. Was the boy in the picture the same boy who drowned? Was it Billy, her mother’s old boyfriend and her father’s friend? But Caroline could tell from her mother’s expression that she had already lost her. Her mother had retreated deep inside herself to those dark places Caroline recognized and wished she didn’t. It was anyone’s guess when her mother would surface. The only thing that surprised Caroline was that her mother hadn’t raced out the door.

“Forget it,” Caroline said. She’d find the answers to her questions on her own somehow, some way.

She returned to her bedroom where she found the new sneakers. She pulled on a pair of socks and then slipped the sneakers on. She’d get them a little dirty and no one would be the wiser. Gram had promised she’d keep her secret once she explained to Gram her reasons, the same reasons she used with Adam, although she didn’t mention his part, not wanting to implicate him. She was willing to take full responsibility for the two of them if it came down to that. It was her idea, her plan, her doing.