Page 2 of It Happened on the Lake

T he past is unforgiving.

The nagging voice just wouldn’t stop. Harper set her jaw and kept driving, her eyes focused on the narrow, winding road, the illumination from her Volvo’s headlights shimmering against the wet pavement.

You’re not wanted.

She shifted down. The wagon shimmied a little as she took a corner too fast. Water splashed as she tore through a puddle.

You shouldn’t be here.

“Stop!” she said, angry at her self-doubts as the mansion came into view. “Enough already.”

This is a mistake!

Harper ignored the voice in her head that had been nagging her since she’d slid into her Volvo in Northern California about ten hours earlier. Her eyes were gritty, she needed a shower, and she did not need her guilty conscience pricking at her.

Not just a mistake, but a mistake of epic proportions!

“Oh, give me a break. I’m going back, dammit, and I’m going now.”

Sometimes her inner thoughts, riddled with guilt as they were, bugged the crap out of her. Like now. On this dark, dreary Oregon night.

She stepped on the accelerator and her Volvo shot forward, hitting a pothole, the whole wagon shuddering. Harper’s fingers tightened over the wheel.

You’re going to regret this.

“I’m not going to be here long,” Harper argued aloud. “I’m leaving again. Satisfied?”

Of course not.

Her deep-seated doubts were never sated.

“Pull yourself together,” she told herself, but that had been nearly impossible lately with her recent divorce and estrangement from her daughter.

And then there was her father’s heart attack.

Bruce Reed had survived, she’d heard, but she had yet to see him herself.

As soon as she was settled in the cottage, she’d drive to St. Catherine’s Hospital.

Not that she and her dad were close these days, but she sure as hell hoped he would recover.

And really, who was she close to at this juncture in her life?

No one.

Not one damned person.

She set her jaw as her headlights reflected on the old deer crossing sign riddled with bullet holes.

Some things never change.

And some things always do , her nagging brain reminded her.

“Shut up!” She cranked up the radio, blasting U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For . ” “Me neither, Bono, me neither.”

From the cat carrier on the seat beside her, Jinx gave out a low, irritated mewl.

“Almost there,” she told the cat, just as she spied the edge of the drive, nearly hidden by untrimmed laurel and overgrown rhododendrons. “You’re fine,” she assured him, then added, “We’re both fine,” though that was a lie.

She eased up on the gas. I’m home , she thought hollowly, an emptiness invading her soul.

How many ghosts from her past lingered on the solitary island, that jagged stump of rock jutting from the dark, impenetrable depths of Lake Twilight?

Her heart squeezed when she caught sight of the caretaker’s cottage at the edge of a parking apron, the place she’d once called home. It had been a spot where she’d lived on and off during her adolescence, a place of solace and heartache.

She let the Volvo roll to a stop near the cottage, just in front of the huge gate leading to the mansion.

Beyond the wrought-iron pickets, she saw the bridge that spanned a narrow neck of the lake, connecting the mainland to the island.

Her island now. She was thirty-seven, the magical age her grandmother had thought she would be responsible enough to claim her inheritance. Thirty-seven. Was that midlife?

All signs point to “yes.”

“Oh, shut up!”

And as far as crises went, she’d been through her share already.

She cut the engine and climbed out of her wagon. Flipping up the hood of her jacket, Harper stood at the gate, the Volvo’s headlamps casting her shadow through the bars of the massive wrought-iron barrier beyond which the narrow bridge seemed to disappear into the darkness.

The island itself was blurry, a massive, indistinct shape with towering fir trees that rose from the cliffs and sheltered the mansion. No lamps were lit, no exterior lights glowed to highlight the ornate walls or the high turret that knifed into the sky.

“Welcome home,” she told herself.

She’d thought as a child that the house was straight out of The Addams Family .

And she hadn’t been wrong.

But it had been Gram’s home, once upon a time, an architectural showpiece that had turned into a house of horrors.

Harper shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around her.

You can never go back.

Well, here she was.

Very much back.

At least for a little while.

She cast a disparaging glance at the stone posts that were not only fastened to the gate but also served as perches for the gargoyles her grandmother had loved so fervently.

“Tacky, I know, and possibly a tad macabre,” Gram had confided in Harper one summer morning. They had stood just inside the gate, the bridge to their backs as they’d studied the carved beasts in the sunlight.

Harper had been in her teens at the time, and the monstrous winged creatures seemed to her as if they’d risen from hell, just like Sister Evangeline had warned in catechism.

The gargoyles’ lips were pulled back into snarls, fangs long and curved, each with a snakelike tail that coiled around its muscular body.

They were not identical. One was sculpted with reptilian eyes and scaled like a dragon.

The other’s skin was taut and smooth over visible muscles.

Horns curved from its forehead. Huge eyes bulged above a pug nose, and sharp claws extended from manlike hands.

The end of its tail was carved into an arrow’s tip. A devil-creature.

To Harper, each sculpture appeared to be the epitome of pure evil.

“You want to scare people away?” she asked, studying the stone creatures warily as she sidled closer to her grandmother.

“No. Not really.” Gram pulled shears from the pocket of her golf skirt and clipped off an errant bit of ivy that had dared wrap around the wrought-iron railing.

“I just want people to think about it before they ring the bell. They might even consider me a bit eccentric. Wouldn’t that be delicious?

” She’d flipped up the sunglasses she referred to as her Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany’s pair, setting them into her perfectly coiffed hair.

Her blue eyes sparkled as she winked at Harper.

“It’s all kind of in fun, you know. But, yes, I do like my privacy.

Grandpa, he wasn’t fond of them.” She hitched her chin toward one of the stone carvings.

“He called them ‘Ugly and Uglier.’ Thought he was so damned funny.” She sighed and for a second was caught in a nostalgic moment, her eyebrows pinching together.

“I guess he would have preferred something more traditional. More regal.”

“Like?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . lions, I suppose.

” She swatted at a mosquito, then snipped off another offensive sprig of ivy.

She let the sunglasses drop onto the bridge of her nose again.

“Come to think of it, he did mention lions, oh, and eagles. Yes, that’s right.

Too traditional.” With a quick shake of her head, she added, “As if. Let me tell you, I nixed those ideas quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. My house, my choice, my gargoyles.” She eyed the carved creatures and smiled.

“You know, I think they protect me. Keep all of us safe.”

“What about Mama?” Harper asked, feeling the heat from the sun beat against her crown and a coldness enter her heart. “They didn’t keep her safe.”

A shadow crossed Gram’s face. Her amused smile faded.

“No, I suppose not.” Gram cleared her throat and scrabbled into her pocket, this time for a pack of cigarettes.

She lit up quickly with a silver lighter.

As she shot a stream of smoke to the blue, blue sky, she said, “Your mother, she didn’t like them much either.

” Her voice had turned soft as she wrapped one arm around her slim waist, holding her cigarette aloft in her other hand as she squinted up at the scaled gargoyle, the dragon, the one Harper’s grandfather had named “Ugly.”

“When she was a little girl, about your age, or a year or two younger, maybe, your mother suggested we should replace them with race horses or unicorns.” Another puff.

“Can you imagine? Unicorns?” She said it as if it were a joke, but there was a sadness to her tone, as there always was when she mentioned Mama.

Harper felt it, too. That sadness was like a shadow, always close, ready to grow if you thought too long.

“Well, that was Anna for you. Forever the dreamer.” Quickly Gram took another draw on her cigarette, then dropped it onto the pavement and crushed it with her sandaled foot.

Harper had hazarded a glance up at Ugly with its scaly skin and folded wings. If it had been the gargoyles’ job to protect the family, then they had failed miserably. Otherwise Mama would still be alive.

Now, of course, Evan, too, was gone and had been for years. But she wouldn’t think of that tragedy. Nope. There was no time for melancholy on this miserable night.

The Volvo’s headlights offered enough illumination for her to run up the uneven flagstones to the caretaker’s cottage. While rain peppered the ground and dripped off the sagging eaves, she huddled on the porch and fumbled with the key ring—Gram’s set of keys to unlock the door.

Stepping inside, she flipped on the light switch.

Nothing.

The house remained dark, cold, the emanating scent of mold evident.

“Not good,” she told herself and backtracked through the rain to the car where she searched in the glove box.

All the while Jinx let her know he was still very unhappy.

“I know, I know, it won’t be long now,” she said as she found the flashlight, snagged it, and headed back to the cottage.