Page 225 of It Happened on the Lake

“So what? Make it work. Isn’t that what—?”

“I always say. Yeah, I know. I said I’ll think about it.”

“That usually means no.”

Harper didn’t argue. She couldn’t because it was true. She’d often promised to consider one of her daughter’s ideas and then immediately tossed it aside. Which is just what she was doing now. “Well, we’re keeping some of these,” Dawn announced, picking up Chatty Cathy, a black Ken, and a baby doll that Gram had probably named, but Harper couldn’t recall. “I’m taking them tomyroom!”

“Myroom. Remember, it’smyroom,” Harper argued as Dawn flounced up the two floors to the tower room and presumably left the dolls in the tower.

Once she returned with a smug smile pasted on her pale lips, they made their way down the back stairs to the main floor and the parlor with its dark drapes, settee, and collection of eclectic furniture, teacups, ashtrays, and even a couple of baby dolls that Harper hadn’t yet rounded up.

“Geez, another telescope?” Dawn paused to look through the eyepiece and adjusted the focus. “What’s the deal? This one’s pointed at that Levi guy’s house, too.”

“Don’t know,” Harper lied.

“Well, he’s gone now. Or at least not outside where I can see him.” As she straightened, Dawn noticed the wineglass Harper had left on the table near the telescope. A slow grin lifted the corners of her mouth. “You’ve been spying, Mom.”

“No—” she started to argue, then admitted a partial truth. “Well, okay, I have looked through it. Yes.”

“Have you literally been scoping that guy out?”

“No. But I have seen him, and others.” She decided to come clean. “I know the guy in that A-frame, too. Next door to the Hunts.”

“Oh yeah?” Dawn was moving the telescope slightly.

“He’s now a detective with the local police department. Just like his dad was when we were growing up.”

“He went to school with you, too,” Dawn guessed.

“Right. But he was a couple of years older.”

“Doesn’t look like he’s home.” Dawn straightened. “So this—” She made a circular motion that Harper guessed included the house, island, lake, and point on the far shore, “—is kinda like a high school reunion for you?”

“Well, not quite, but the house on the other side of the Hunts’ was the Leonettis’. Beth Leonetti was my best friend in high school.”

“You said that before.”

“Right, well, she’s a Realtor now. AndifI decide to sell this house once it’s fixed up, I’d ask her to help me.”

“Don’t sell it!”

“Are you going to live here?”

“Well, yeah.” Dawn nodded. “When I visit.”

Harper cocked her head. “Realistically? And how often would that be?”

“I don’t know, but just don’t put it on the market! Fix it up if you want to, but keep it. For now,” she said. “Don’t I have some say in it? Grandma says that once you die, everything goes to me, right?”

Grandma being Marcia. Every time she heard her daughter refer to Marcia as her grandmother, she felt her skin crawl. “I’m listening to you now. And Marcia doesn’t have any say about what I—we—do with this place.” Harper didn’t try to hide her irritation. Marcia’s interest in the house and grounds, her proprietary attitude about Dixon Island, had always been a source of friction to Harper. It had been Marcia, not her father, who had doled out the trust fund checks and paid all the bills, along with that sleazeball of an attorney, Lou Arista.

She was so lost in thought, Harper actually started when she heard the doorbell chime.

“I’ll get it,” Dawn said, and before Harper could stop her daughter, Dawn was racing to the front door.

“Wait,” Harper said, rushing after her, but it was too late.

Dawn unlocked the dead bolt and flung the door open wide.