Page 15 of It Happened on the Lake

A s promised, Beth was waiting for her in the lobby.

“Harper!” she cried and half ran across the tiled floor, her high heels clicking rapidly.

Beth was as ebullient as ever. Her brown hair had been permed and feathered around her face, bangs nearly touching her eyes.

She’d put on a few pounds since high school but was still on the petite side, just had a few more curves.

“It’s so, so good to see you.” She gave Harper a bear hug before taking a step back.

“What’s this?” She motioned up and down with one finger to indicate the blue scrubs Harper was wearing.

“Wait a second. Don’t tell me. You’re interviewing for a job here?

” she joked. “Either as a patient,” she motioned to the bandages on Harper’s face, “or a nurse?”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re kind of a female Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all in one.”

“Very funny.”

“Seriously, it would make a great Halloween costume. ’Tis the season, you know.”

“If you say so.”

“Just kidding! How are you feeling?” She eyed the bandages on Harper’s face. “Not all that great, I bet.”

“Been better.”

“But you’ll be okay?”

She wondered. “Loaded question.”

They were walking out the door.

“I’m over there.” Beth pointed to the spot where she’d double-parked in a zone where the curb was painted red and a sign warned against parking. “Let me take that.” She grabbed the plastic bag from Harper and hurried around the front of her little BMW to slide behind the wheel.

Harper slipped into the passenger seat. Beth tossed her bag into the back just as a security guard hustled out of the main doors. He was jogging fast, raising a hand at them.

“Oops.” With the radio blaring, Beth peeled out, cutting off a transport van and shooting for the exit of the parking lot.

“Whoa!” Harper said, buckling her seat belt quickly. “Some things never change.” Beth, in high school, had been a lead-foot and had the speeding tickets to prove it.

“Oh no, no,” Beth argued as Bon Jovi belted out “Bad Medicine” from the CD player and she tapped out the beat on the steering wheel.

“I’ve slowed down. A lot.” She caught Harper’s skeptical gaze and turned the volume down, the song fading into the background.

“Really.” And as if to prove her point, she reduced the Bimmer’s speed to a few miles over the limit as they wound down the hill on which St. Catherine’s had been constructed.

“That’s what having a kid will do for you.” Sliding Harper a knowing glance, she added, “You know how it is. Your whole life changes. Including how you drive.”

Harper did know. She thought of those first frantic years of motherhood when she’d been a child herself.

Suddenly the whole world had turned dangerous, one booby trap after another—electric light sockets, laundry detergent, the front steps, speeding cars cutting through the neighborhood, asbestos, and Red dye #2, for crying out loud.

But Dawn had survived and grown from a happy-go-lucky child in pigtails to a recalcitrant teenager who embraced all things Goth before becoming a college student who no longer believed her mother was the enemy. Thank God.

At the base of the hill, Beth slid through a yellow light before cutting into a neighborhood filled with the oldest homes in Almsville.

Turn-of-the-century Victorians interspersed with postwar ramblers, all with small neatly kept yards, birch and oak trees nearly bare, while fir branches waved in the breeze, pumpkins and corn stalks decorating the porches.

“Bring back memories?” Beth asked as she cruised by the high school, a two-story building of redbrick, the rows of windows glowing in the gloom.

“A few.”

“More than a few, I bet.” She waited at a stop sign, then turned toward the lake. “So what do you do now, Harper? I mean, do you work?”

Harper slid her a glance. “No, I’m just a trust fund baby.”

“Oh.”

“Just kidding.” It was true she’d always received a quarterly check, issued by Gram’s attorneys, and the funds had kept her afloat, paying for college and rent, then later supplementing her income.

She’d gotten her degree in California while Dawn was a toddler, then taught English in middle school for years while also freelancing with a newspaper when Dawn was in school.

But after the dissolution of her marriage, Dawn moving to Oregon for college, and her inheritance coming due, Harper had quit her day job.

And now . . . God now, she might actually write that novel she’d always talked about.

How many times had she started chapter one?

Just as many as she’d put it aside. “I quit teaching last June,” she said.

“You know, I finally think I’ll try my hand at writing.

You remember, I always talked about it.”

But now she had time. No kid to raise. No husband to tend to.

Beth slowed for a corner, waited as a bicyclist sped past, then turned onto Northway, driving past the homes that were tucked between the lake and the shoreline. In the spaces between the houses, Harper caught glimpses of the lake, still and gray, reflecting the somber sky.

“So,” Beth ventured, as she switched out one CD for another. “You’re planning to stay?”

“Don’t know yet. I’ve thought about selling—”

“Well, if you do, I would be thrilled, I mean thrilled to have the listing!”

“—but I’m just not sure. Haven’t really figured out what I’m going to do.” And that was God’s honest truth, even though her father’s recent warning about Beth angling for a listing still darted through her mind.

“I can’t imagine you’d want to stay here with everything that happened, you know, Chase and your grandma . . .well and everything.”

“I’m just not sure. Thought I would at least stay a while, fix it up some, and then make a decision.”

Would she want to stay in the huge house with all of its memories, ghosts of the past, or would she want to move on?

Make a fresh start. And yet, there were some good recollections that tethered her here, to the lake, and she wondered as she stared through the rain-splattered windshield if Dawn might want to live here someday?

“It’s a seller’s market now, and the low interest rates won’t last forever,” Beth advised.

Beth drove along the twisting road, taking the deadly S curve a little too fast, though the sleek car hugged the road.

Finally she turned unerringly into the lane leading toward the island.

“Oh Lord!” she said, eyeing the gate and the gargoyles perched on the support posts.

“Are you kidding? I can’t believe you’ve still got those hideous beasts at the gate! They’re still creepy as hell.”

“Worse than,” Harper agreed, glancing up at the statues backdropped by roiling gray clouds. “But I kinda like them.”

“Seriously?” Beth threw her a glance as they drove onto the bridge. “You and who else?”

“Gram.”

“Well, she’s gone and they should be, too.”

The BMW slid to a stop in front of the house.

“Wow. I’d forgotten how impressive this place is.

” She cut the engine and stared through the rain-spattered windshield to the brick mansion with its sloped roof and tall windows.

“Can you believe you own a private island, for God’s sake? How’s that for exclusive?”

Beth tossed her keys into her purse. “You know I never see this side of the house from my place. I get the other view. From across the lake. It’s impressive from there, too. Looks like a damned castle.”

“You still live on Fox Point?”

“Craig and I bought Mom and Dad out years ago.”

So her father had said.

“Craig said we couldn’t let it go, you know. That it would be our only chance to live on the water, so we worked out a deal with Mom and Dad, who were looking to downsize.”

“Your brothers were okay with it?”

“The twins were still in college, so what did they know?” She changed the subject.

“We have so much catching up to do!” She reached into the small backseat and picked up Harper’s bag of wet clothes.

“Kinda weird, ya know? I’m in the same house I was growing up, Rand is just down the street in his dad’s A-frame, and now you’re here on the island. It’s like the band’s back together.”

“Minus a few key players.”

“Yeah. But the rental next to me has tenants again, and Old Man Sievers’s place? His daughter, what’s her name—?”

“I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“Oh yeah . . . Uh, Frankie—Francine, that’s it!

She’s in his place with two kids, teenagers—the girl is in Max’s class, and the boy, oh, I don’t remember, a year or two older, I think.

” Beth slammed the BMW’s door shut. She backed up a few steps to the edge of the parking apron and craned her neck to gaze up at the pitched roof and high turret, visible just above the roofline.

Harper climbed out of the car and noted the rain had stopped, though the old asphalt shimmered with puddles. “What about the Hunts’ house?”

“Oh-um, I guess Levi might move back. He’s been talking about it, and now that his mother won’t be returning, who knows?”

“You keep up with him?”

“A little,” Beth said. “I haven’t talked to him since last night. I mean what do you say to a guy who’s lost his brother and father to the lake? And now his mom? Geez. It’s like the whole family is cursed.” Then she sighed. “Well, maybe we all are, you know? Maybe we’re all cursed.”

“I guess. You know that the lake was once called the Lake of the Dead.”

“I heard that. Good thing they changed it, or I’d never sell a house around here.” Beth laughed at her own joke and took another step back, the heel of her boot sinking into the wet mulch of Gram’s rose garden, so she could get a better look at the upper story of the house.

“Be careful,” Harper warned.

“Why?”

“That’s the spot where Gram buried her cats.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“Jesus. Gross!” Quickly Beth moved to stand on the asphalt again and regarded the skeletal vines with horrified eyes. “Oh. My. God. You’re kidding, right?”