Page 39 of It Happened on the Lake

L evi sat in the dark car.

He hated being here.

This place that he’d once loved, where he’d grown up.

He stared at the exterior of the cottage with its once-white clapboard siding and black shutters. At night, with no lights on, it looked abandoned. And maybe it was. But not for long. He planned to move back, had given up the lease on his apartment weeks before his mother had given up her life.

He didn’t understand why she’d done what she’d done or how she’d done it. Her mental capacity had been limited at best, and she had been on that crooked, dangerous path to insanity.

Or she’d arrived at its doorstep, her self-induced flaming destruction testament to how far gone she’d really been.

The muscles in his jaw tightened, and he told himself not to be maudlin or blame himself. It was over.

Surveying the wrap-around porch, he remembered growing up in this house, the good times and the bad. And the horrible.

He’d fought with himself.

Sometimes he’d wanted to move back in, make it his home again.

Other times he’d wanted to burn it down.

For now, though, he’d decided to move back.

At least for a while. Nothing in life is permanent , he reminded himself, and God, didn’t he know it?

He climbed out of his Ford, walked up the overgrown path to the front porch, and unlocked the door with his own key.

The house was quiet.

Lacking any signs or sounds of life, smelling of disuse.

The police had come and gone, so it wasn’t as musty as it had been the last time he’d walked inside, yet tonight it felt dead.

Things weren’t all that disturbed, as this place wasn’t officially a crime scene, but he noticed that some of his mother’s Early American-style side chairs had been moved a few inches, the drawers of side tables left slightly open.

All in all the interior was the same as he remembered, down to the amber ashtray sitting front and center on the maple coffee table within easy reach from the floral-print couch that his mother loved.

In the dining area, he ran a finger through the dust on the oval table where they, as a family, had played raucous pinochle matches or never-ending Scrabble and Monopoly games.

Smiling, he recalled a time playing Risk when Evan, losing badly, had gotten so angry that he’d upended the board, sending the tiny colored “army” cubes scattering all over the shag carpeting.

Cynthia had watched the ensuing wrestling match and, after ordering all the players to pick up the pieces, had burned the game that night in the fireplace.

“Play nice or don’t play at all,” she’d admonished her sons, as well as Evan and Rand.

Those were happier times , he thought now as he walked to the sliding door overlooking the lake and caught his reflection in the glass.

Twenty years had passed since his mom and dad had left him and his brother alone on their “date” nights.

Mom had always left them with Swanson’s TV dinners and bottles of Nehi soda and said, “Be good,” before she and Dad rumbled out of the drive in the Oldsmobile.

Those evenings, the two brothers would wait, Levi standing guard at the living room window until he saw the taillights of the Cutlass disappear while Chase hurried downstairs to the rec room.

Using the tiny key hidden high on a shelf behind a dusty vase of fake roses, he’d open the liquor cabinet and return to the kitchen with the purloined bottle of booze.

Judiciously they’d add the liquor to their drinks and lock the bottles back in the cabinet, leaving the key where they’d found it.

While Mom and Dad were out, they had sat side by side on the floor, backs propped against the couch, the coffee table filled with their foil trays of fried chicken, vegetables, and mashed potatoes with a glob of butter.

Sipping their doctored bottles of grape soda, they watched Daniel Boone and Star Trek on the TV console while getting a little buzzed until the folks came home.

Usually laughing and teasing, smelling of cigarettes and beer, neither Tom nor Cynthia seemed to notice that their sons weren’t completely sober.

The good times.

Along with the bad.

His jaw tightened at the thought of the worst night, one he would never forget.

One he’d lied about.

One that had haunted him for twenty years.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Levi walked to his brother’s bedroom.

It, too, was silent.

Lifeless.

A dusty shrine to another lifetime.

Chase’s double bed nearly filled the small space, and his hand-me-down dresser was covered with trophies.

On the walls were several awards along with teen art from the sixties.

Levi eyed a psychedelic Skeleton & Roses poster for the Grateful Dead along with the poster Mom really hated for the movie One Million Years B.C.

in which a scantily clad Raquel Welch stood warrior-like in the foreground while ferocious dinosaurs battled cavemen in the background.

“Isn’t she the sexiest?” Chase had asked Levi as he’d taped the poster to the wall, then pressed tacks into the corners. “I mean, man, look at her! Those legs. That rack. And her hair. She’s the whole package.”

Levi hadn’t been able to argue the fact. Not then, and not now.

Mom had threatened to rip the “indecent” poster off the wall.

But she never had.

Ever.

Levi glanced at the array of trophies on the dresser and picked up the one that was a small statue of a football quarterback, leaning backward, arm aloft, football in hand, ready to throw a pass. Chase’s name and the date were inscribed on the block on which the player was mounted.

Levi ran a thumb over the inscription and remembered the night Chase had won the award that went with it. Best All Around Athlete, Chase Hunt, 1966 .

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stared at the trophy and whispered, “What happened to you, brother?”

There were no answers in the silent bedroom, but his gaze moved to the window overlooking the front porch.

That night, he’d heard the tapping from his own room and had walked in to investigate.

Harper Reed, her expression concerned, had stood on the other side of the glass pane.

His heart had beat wildly at the sight of her upturned face and the worry in her dark eyes.

He’d wanted to take her into his arms, to tell her that everything would be all right, but he hadn’t.

Because nothing about that night had been all right.

In fact, it was the night that everything had gone wrong.