The Secrets of Lake Road (11 page)

“They’re going to widen the search area.” He lifted his baseball cap and scratched his head. “Some of the fishing guys caught some snappers. They think they have a better chance of finding her with the turtles. You ever hear of such a thing?”

Kevin shrugged. It was how they had found Billy. And in fact, he had heard of other instances where unusual methods had been used. An airplane had gone down in the Atlantic several years back, and divers reported that crabs had unintentionally led them to the carnage. He supposed snappers weren’t any different from crabs, feeding on what was provided. People. Humans. We were part of the food chain whether we liked it or not.

Jim situated the cap back onto his head and pulled the bill down low, hiding his eyes. “It might not be a bad idea to try it,” he said. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“I hope it doesn’t become a circus out there.” Kevin thought of Stimpy and his men on boats, following the lines tied to snappers and what that would look like to the little girl’s parents. For a second the image of Billy’s body flashed in his mind’s eye, how the men pulled Billy into the boat and then dumped him onto the beach. His flesh had been shredded to the bone on one of his thighs, his forearm clawed off. The skin on his chin had been torn, and the flap lay on his neck.

“You okay?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Sure.” He allowed himself a glance at the girl’s parents. “Did anybody tell them what to expect?”

Jim looked at the couple and then turned back to Kevin. “Nope. I imagine right now, they just want her found.”

“Right,” Kevin said, wondering how in the world anyone could prepare them for what horrors finding their daughter would bring. It had been three days. There was no telling what she was going to look like when they managed to pull her out.

He turned to the sound of a car. The sheriff’s vehicle pulled into the lot and parked near the girl’s parents. Sheriff Borg got out and talked to the couple. He glanced in the direction of the underwater recovery team where Jim and Kevin were standing.

Kevin looked at the ground and turned away from the sheriff. “I’ll catch you later,” he said to Jim, slinking away, not wanting to attract any attention to himself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The sun was making its slow descent behind the mountains when Jo climbed the stairs to the second-floor bar. She found Kevin sitting at the far end of the room away from the crowd that had gathered at the tables. Eddie leaned on the bar in front of him. The two had their heads together, and she immediately walked over to them, wanting to know what was going on. She had spent most of the day wandering the colony, avoiding the cabin and cleaning closets.

“Hey,” she said, and sat on the stool next to Kevin.

Kevin looked up and caught her eye. He still looked at her sometimes the way he did when they were teenagers, as though he was seeing her for the first time, and his eyes filled with the same deep desire. And like when they were teenagers, her body reacted, her yearning just as strong. But she wished he wouldn’t look at her that way now. Ever. It made her feel so damn guilty.

Eddie put a cold beer in front of her. “The vultures are at it again,” he said, nodding in the direction of Heil and his crew.

“I heard.” She turned in her seat to look at the mob when one of the men with Heil yelled, “It’s been three damn days! It’s time to take this matter into our own hands.”

“I have a family to feed,” Nate said. He owned the bait and tackle shop located at the opposite end of the lake. “I empathize with the parents, but a man’s got to provide, and I can’t do that if no one can fish on that lake.”

She turned back around, having heard it all before. It wasn’t until Stimpy bounded up the steps and dropped a snapper the size of a truck tire onto the bar, that the crowd hushed.

“This is the biggest one I caught, but I’ve trapped a half dozen more, and they’ll work just as good.” Stimpy looked at Heil who nodded his approval.

“What about the sheriff?” Jonathon asked.

“I don’t see him doing anything to stop us,” Stimpy said, and again looked at Heil.

Heil mumbled, “That’s true.”

“Any objections?” Stimpy asked.

“No, no,” the crowd of men muttered. Jonathon raised his arms, surrendering. The women in the crowd looked away. Jo stared at the beer in her hand.

“All right then.” Stimpy picked up the large snapper by its tail, managing to keep the turtle’s mouth away from his body. It looked to weigh close to fifty pounds. “Let’s do this,” he said, and walked out.

In another minute the crowd dispersed. Some left the bar, while others bellied up for a night of drinking to try to forget what they had just agreed to.

“Maybe I should talk to the little girl’s mother,” Jo said.

Kevin turned on the stool to face her head on. “What could you possibly say to help?”

“I’m not sure, but someone should say something. Don’t you think?”

“Why should it be you?”

“Why not?” she asked, and looked at Eddie, who tossed his hands up as a way of saying he was staying out of it and made his way down to the other end of the bar.

“I don’t know,” Kevin said, and lowered his voice. “It might sound like you know something about how she feels. Like maybe you’re still pining away for someone.”

She glared at him. Why did he always do that, say things to see how she would react? He was always testing her. “Take that back, Kevin.”

“Why?” he muttered.

“Take it back,” she said sharply.

“Okay, okay.” He put his hand on the back of her neck and squeezed maybe harder than he should. “Relax. I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say. I didn’t mean it.”

She stared at him a second more. “Yeah, okay,” she said, and he let her go. She sensed people watching them.

He turned back to the bar and picked up his beer. She peeled the label off her bottle. The fact that she had been Billy’s girl first was something Kevin couldn’t, or wouldn’t, forget.

They had been sitting on a pile of rocks stacked around a fire pit behind
Hawkes’
cabin. Billy was perched on the rock where Jo had painted their initials,
J
+
B
, three years earlier when they had been just thirteen years old. They were sixteen now, and Billy had his arm wrapped firmly around her waist. Eddie and Sheila were sharing a joint and whispering to each other. Kevin sat alone, strumming his guitar. He was humming a song, which song Jo couldn’t remember. The flames flickered across his face as though they were dancing in tune. His fingers gently plucked the strings, and his foot tapped the ground with the beat. His singular focus on the guitar, the music, the serenity on his face as he gave himself over to the sound, stirred something deep inside her. There was so much more to him than she ever suspected, this boy who had somehow gotten lost in Billy’s shadow.

She had talked to Sheila about it later when the guys were out on the lake for a late-night swim. They had been sitting on the floating pier, legs dangling over the side.

“Why do you think Kevin doesn’t have a girl?” she asked.

“Oh, he does, but she’s spoken for,” Sheila said.

“What do you mean? Who?”

Sheila looked at her as though she were dense. “Who do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“You, silly. Don’t you notice the way he looks at you? How he follows you around like a lost puppy? How he hangs on your every word?”

“No,” she said. She didn’t notice, although even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She did notice the way he looked at her. She’d catch him staring and once, they had locked eyes, and it was as though he was seeing her as she truly was. She was left feeling raw, exposed, seen for the first time as the woman she would become, and it had frightened her.

Her feelings for Kevin that summer ran as deep as her love had been for Billy the last three summers. Her love for both was real. It was just that it was a different kind of love for each. Billy was a childhood love, a familiar love, one that had roots, strong and lasting. But her feelings for Kevin felt more grown-up somehow, more physical, more filled with lust and desire.

*   *   *

Tonight they continued sitting side by side at the bar for a little more than an hour, not talking, although she was aware, hyperaware, of the close proximity of his body next to hers. It wasn’t until there were voices outside, echoing across the lake that they looked at each other. In an instant they were on their feet, rushing down the stairs and racing toward the beach.

Stimpy and two other men in a small fishing boat were calling that they had found something. Another fishing boat used a spotlight to light up the area not far from the floating pier in the middle of the lake. Underwater recovery had long since gone once darkness fell and it had become too dangerous for the divers to search at night.

“Kevin.” She grabbed his arm.

He covered her hand without a saying a word.

The crowd from the bar gathered on the beach. All eyes were focused on the fishing boats. No one talked. The only sounds were the murmurs of the men on the lake and the splashing of the grappling hooks hitting the water.

“What’s going on?” a woman asked. “Did they find my Sara?” She pushed through the crowd. “Sara.” She stopped at the edge of the water.

No one on the beach approached Sara’s mother to comfort her or show their support. Perhaps they believed if they got too close, the tragedy would somehow feel more real or that it would somehow become contagious. It was as though an invisible force field surrounded the woman, pushing them away. After all, she was a newcomer to the lake and therefore not one of them.

People liked to believe they were immune to tragic accidents. This sort of thing happened to those who weren’t paying attention, who were careless, who didn’t take the signs posted along the fence seriously—
SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
.

The fishermen continued tossing grappling hooks and dragging the bottom where the snappers were congregating, feasting. Minutes passed. The waiting was excruciating, more than Jo could bear. She had to warn Sara’s mother, prepare her for what she might see when they brought her little girl to shore. It had to be her because there was no one else.

“I’m going to talk with her,” she said to Kevin, and slowly made her way across the beach to the lone woman standing at the water’s edge.

Kevin called for Jo to come back, but she knew he wouldn’t chase after her. He stopped chasing after her a long time ago.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The ballpark was the place to be after dinner since the Pavilion remained closed. Clusters of kids and their parents organized an impromptu baseball game. Most everyone’s mother came to watch, setting up beach chairs along the first and third baselines. It was, after all, a recreational field for the lake community and not a regulation ballpark where bleachers might have been erected. Families brought their own bats and balls and mitts. The Needlemeyer twins brought the bases.

Megan sat next to her mother, close to one of the dugouts. Side by side you could see the resemblance between the two. Both wore their blond hair parted straight down the middle. Their skin was pink from the sun. Their eyelids were covered in the same blue eye shadow that made Caroline cringe. Their nails were painted pink. Mr. Roberts’s dark complexion and hairy arms were a sharp contrast in comparison. He stepped forward. “I’ll be the umpire.”

Some of the other fathers took up positions as first- and third-base coaches. Johnny was made captain of one of the teams, and Chris the other. Johnny played baseball for the varsity team in high school back home, although he rarely talked about the game or bragged about how good he was with lake friends. “It isn’t cool,” he said to Caroline once when she asked him why.

In ways it was true what he had said. It wasn’t cool. Home was home, and when they were at the lake for a few weeks every summer, well, the lake was the lake, and you didn’t mix the two. It was as though they were a part of two separate worlds, straddling a bridge between their school and their lake friends, neither of which were meant to be crossed.

She liked to think she was standing on sacred ground at the lake, where the outside world—in her case, school and home—weren’t welcome. Cell phones were shoved in back pockets and forgotten. Video games and the Internet were no longer distractions. “It’s how it should be,” Gram said. “You kids are doing what you’re supposed to be doing—playing outside face-to-face with other kids.”

But Johnny was a good ballplayer, better than good, whether he was home or at the lake. There had been talk of possible scholarships to colleges if he was interested. Caroline didn’t know how he felt about it one way or the other. They didn’t talk about things in their family, even good things, accolades, and achievements. Everything in her family was one big secret.

“Caroline, you’re at third,” Johnny said.

A couple of the older boys protested when Johnny handpicked Caroline to play. “She’s a girl,” they said. “Girls can’t play baseball.”

Johnny looked at her. “You okay with hardball?”

She nodded and adjusted the cap on her head. She was good enough to play baseball with the boys. She knew it, but she was surprised her brother thought so too.

“She can handle it,” Johnny said to the other boys. His faith in her ability overwhelmed her. Maybe he wasn’t all that bad for a brother.

They were short a few players. “I’ll pitch for both teams,” the Needlemeyer’s father said. Mr. Roberts volunteered to be both umpire and catcher. Yes, there was a potential conflict with a play at home plate, but there was a level of trust between the kids and their parents that the game would be played fairly.

There was one boy, Jeff, who Caroline didn’t know. His family had arrived at the lake for the first time that morning. Johnny picked him to be on their team. “Can you play both center and right field?” he asked.

“I can.” Jeff was tall, and his long legs could cover a lot of ground. He looked to be around the same age as Caroline.

Megan pulled Caroline aside before the start of the game and laid claim on him. “He’s a babe,” she said. Caroline rolled her eyes.
Whatever.