Page 10 of It Happened on the Lake

T he mansion was quiet. Harper slipped off her shoes and looked in on Gram.

Still lying on her back.

Not awake.

Thank God.

Harper needed time to think, to plan exactly what she would say to her grandmother and her father. It was only a matter of time before the news was out and Harper would have to confide in her dad.

Confide?

Or confess?

She snapped on a few lamps as the gloomy morning did little to cast any light into the rooms. Unable to shake the feeling of doom that had been with her ever since she’d first seen the Hunts’ boat floating in the middle of the lake, she walked to the window and stared out.

The boat had drifted a little farther toward town.

Across the lake, lights were turning on, people facing the morning. Her chest was tight as she stared at the Hunt house. Suddenly light appeared in the windows.

She gripped the back of a chair, and her throat turned to sand.

People appeared on the dock, standing near the empty boat slip.

Even from a distance, she recognized Thomas Hunt and his wife, Cynthia.

Lamps in neighboring houses flickered on.

Harper picked up the binoculars and peered through.

Levi comforting his mother, who clung to him as they stood near the sliding glass door. Everyone was grim-faced, and Cynthia, Chase’s mother, appeared to be fighting back tears.

Harper knew the feeling.

Thomas Hunt was nervously pacing near the edge of his dock, talking on a radio while his eyes scanned the lake.

Soon he was joined by Rand Watkins’s father, Gerald.

Two friends, two policemen. Harper watched as they talked for a minute, then walked together to the Watkins’ boathouse and disappeared inside.

At the next house Old Man Sievers, dressed in camo, leaned against the railing of his deck. A cap crammed onto his head, he smoked a cigarette and watched the action in the middle of the lake while his dog patrolled the perimeter of the backyard.

Cold to the bone, she noticed that Rand, too, had made his way to the Hunt home, where he stood, hands in the pockets of his jeans, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed on the drama unfolding in the middle of Lake Twilight.

He glanced up across the lake to stare directly at her.

Or so it seemed.

She drew back, away from the telescope and the window, and reminded herself she would soon have to deal with Gram.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed to her mother’s old bedroom. She stripped off her wet clothes on the way to the phone-booth-sized shower and turned on the water full force. She needed to wash away all her doubts, all her fears for Chase, to stem the tears that threatened to fall.

Twisting off the spray, she bolstered herself.

Get it together, Harper. Whatever happens, you have to pull yourself together.

Finally she was warm again. She dried off, scraped her wet hair into a ponytail, then dashed to the bedroom where she rifled through her small overnight case and threw on clean underwear, jeans, and a turtleneck sweater.

Before heading downstairs, she looked through the bedroom window.

The sky was lightening to the east, the thick clouds reflecting a somber gray on the water. On the opposite shore, red and blue lights flashed through the trees. More people on the docks.

She couldn’t help herself and picked up the field glasses on the window seat.

As she focused on the far shore, she saw a police boat cross the lake, heading to the area where the Hunts’ boat was adrift.

But it wasn’t the first boat to arrive. Gerald Watkins and Thomas Hunt had already motored to the middle of the lake in the Watkins’ fishing boat and were idling nearby.

Harper saw their grim expressions as they scanned the area using bright flashlights to pierce the depths, as if searching for a body.

Harper felt as if she might throw up.

She sagged against the window and fought tears. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t really think that Chase was dead. “No,” she whispered, swiping at her eyes, just as the police boat arrived and a diver plunged into the water.

Her heart turned to ice.

No, no . . . please God, no. He can’t be dead.

Not Chase! She glanced up at the crucifix.

At Jesus. Sketching out the sign of the cross and silently praying, she turned back to the window.

“Please, please, please, let him be safe. Let him be okay.” Her throat was so thick she couldn’t speak as she saw the cops watching from the deck of the police boat.

Surely, they didn’t really think they’d find Chase at the bottom of Lake Twilight. No, no, no! The diver—he wouldn’t find him, tangled up in weeds or fishing line or whatever it was that would keep a body from floating to the surface.

Other boats were joining the two already surrounding the empty craft, fishermen and neighbors nosing around, trying to see what was going on and probably trying to help. The police were keeping them at bay, but the curious were arriving in rowboats and motorboats and canoes and skiffs.

She heard the clock strike seven and tore herself away from the window.

Gram was usually up by now, but she could be sleeping late. When she was on her regular routine with drill sergeant Matilda, Gram was in bed by ten and she did not get a couple of shots of gin before being tucked in.

But she would be awake soon, so Harper forced herself downstairs and into the kitchen, where she put the teakettle on to boil and found a bag of Earl Grey.

She started filling the coffeepot with water in the chamber and several big scoops of Folgers in the basket, though she lost count of how many as her fingers were shaking and her mind was on Chase and the search party on the lake.

Maybe this was all for nothing. Maybe he would call her today and explain what had happened and . . . She clung to that hope.

“No need to borrow trouble,” Gram had told her often enough. “It comes knocking on your door, so don’t go looking for it.”

Well, it had definitely knocked—no, make that pounded—last night.

The teapot whistled, and as Harper began pouring water in the cup, the coffee gurgled, percolating and visible in the clear knob on the coffeepot’s lid.

Good.

Gram, who liked to bend the rules at night, stuck to her morning routine.

First her tea with the pills, then a quick trip to the bathroom before she had coffee, an English biscuit, and a morning cigarette in the parlor.

Gram ate her breakfast at nine, and hopefully Matilda would be here to take over by then.

Because Harper was going out of her mind.

She needed to be with Levi. With Rand. She needed to help.

As soon as Gram was up, Harper would walk across the bridge to the cottage to tell her father about last night and the fact that Chase Hunt had gone missing.

She hazarded another glance out the windows to the lake and saw that even more boats had gathered, swarming near the police craft, but, from what she could tell, no sign of Chase.

Her stomach knotted painfully again, and for a second Gram’s tea and pills were forgotten as she stared at the far shore.

Levi stood next to his distraught mother, who was talking to Alaina at the rail of the deck while keeping her gaze fastened to the activity in the lake.

From this distance, Harper couldn’t read her expression but guessed that Chase’s mother felt the same numbing fear that pressed her heart.

She glanced at the telescope, tempted to peer through, but decided she had to deal with Gram first.

For the first time in forever, she didn’t spy a single cat slinking through the parlor.

Not this morning.

This quiet morning.

She didn’t even hear the furnace rumbling or Gram’s soft snoring. Only the coffeepot gasping and gurgling in the kitchen. She peered in on her grandmother. Not moving, eyes closed, mouth open.

But...

She noticed Diablo crouching on the top of Gram’s desk.

The big gray cat, gold eyes alert, long tail twitching, watched as she set Gram’s tray on a side table and reached for the cord for the drapes.

“Gram,” she said softly, hating to wake the old woman, but knowing if she didn’t, Matilda, when she arrived, would have a fit about Gram not getting her morning medication on time. So fine.

“Gram?” she forced out, though her gaze was riveted on Lake Twilight.

Rain was falling again, drizzling down the window in thin rivulets.

“It’s time to get up.” The window revealed the dismal day beyond.

More boats had gathered on the lake and lights were flashing on the point, police cars visible in the spaces between the houses.

Harper’s throat closed.

Levi was still huddled with Cynthia. He was bareheaded in the rain, the tie of Cynthia’s robe flapping in the wind. They seemed oblivious to the weather.

She cleared her throat and forced her gaze from the window to the bed where her grandmother lay, red-haired Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy next to her. “Come on,” she said, and as the window hadn’t provided much light, she turned on a bedside lamp.

Gram didn’t move.

Didn’t so much as blink.

Or cough.

And her pallor was wan. Gray.

“Gram!” she cried, finally noticing that her grandmother’s chest wasn’t rising and falling, not one little bit. “Gram!”

Diablo leapt from the secretary and onto the bed.

Gram didn’t respond at all. Not a flinch. No reflex.

Oh God. No, no, no! Harper touched the old woman on the shoulder and shook her.

Nothing.

She placed a hand under her nose.

Felt no whisper of breath.

And her pulse—Harper tried to find it but couldn’t.

And her skin was cool to the touch.

“No!” Harper yelled, and the cat rocketed off the bed, sending the dolls to the floor. “No! Oh God!” She picked up the bedside phone, stretching the cord, her heart thundering a hundred times a minute. She dialed 0 and waited for the dial to slowly spin back to place. This couldn’t be happening!

The operator answered.

Harper didn’t wait. Panicked, she yelled into the receiver.

“I need an ambulance! Right now. Do you hear me? Send an ambulance to Dixon Island off of Northway Road in Almsville!” Her voice was high-pitched, catching on the numbers as she repeated her address.

“It’s my grandmother. Olivia Dixon. She’s not breathing!

Oh God, she’s not breathing! Send an ambulance! ”

CPR!

She’d heard about it in health class.

She should be administering CPR!

However you were supposed to do it.

Harper had barely listened in health class, but there was something about pushing on the chest to get the lungs going, then forcing air through the victim’s lips.

Freaked out, nearly hyperventilating, Harper slapped the receiver’s cradle to end the call. Once she heard the dial tone again, she spun out the numbers for the gatekeeper’s house.

Dad was there.

He will know what to do , she thought as the rotating dial took eons to return with each digit of the number.

Even though she sensed it was too late.

You didn’t have to be a doctor to see that her grandmother was gone.

Even Harper knew it.

Marcia, Harper’s stepmother, answered the phone. “Hello?” Her voice was groggy.

“Put Dad on the phone.”

“What? Harper. Your dad’s asleep and—”

“Just get him! It’s an emergency!”

“What emergency?”

“Get Dad! Tell him to come to the house! Now!” She slammed down the receiver so hard the gray cat scrambled out the door.

Harper collapsed into the chair near the bed and held her grandmother’s cold hand.

A million thoughts raced through her head, pictures of herself and Gram throughout her life, how delighted the older woman had been in her grandchildren, especially Harper, and now .

. . Harper’s gaze landed on the gin bottle.

Now empty. She thought of the mix-up with the pills and Gram’s insistence on having a drink and . . .

Oh. Dear. God.

Guilt sliced through her.

She shouldn’t have messed up the pills. She shouldn’t have let Gram have a drink. She should have been here.

If she’d just stayed, she might have heard Gram cry out.

If she’d checked on her, she might have stopped Gram from having another drink.

But she hadn’t.

And now her grandmother was dead.