Page 66 of It Happened on the Lake

She walked into Gram’s room and imagined her grandmother as she’d last seen her, unmoving in the bed, her skin a sickly gray color, her eyes open and fixed. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered and picked up the rag dolls, intent on throwing them into the trash.

But she hesitated, her throat closing as she glanced down at Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy with their faded red hair and broken smiles and round eyes. Andy in blue pants and a checked shirt, his bow tie askew, Ann wearing a pinafore over striped socks.

“Oh, Gram.” Harper didn’t have the heart to throw them away. Not yet. Instead, she put them onto the bed, pressed into the pillows just as Gram had always placed them—without Maude wedged between the pair. “Another day,” she promised, and looked around the room.

She took a seat at Gram’s dressing table and remembered her grandmother brushing Harper’s hair when she was still in grade school.

Gram would stand behind her, meeting Harper’s gaze in the oval mirror.

“Such pretty hair,” she would say as Harper fidgeted on the stool.

Gram had always let Harper wear pieces of her jewelry while Harper sat trying not to cry as Gram struggled with the knots and snarls that were ever-present in her long hair.

“If you weren’t such a ruffian, your hair would stay nice,” she’d say, as Harper had spent most of her days climbing trees or riding her bike or playing war with Evan, chasing him and some of the cats through the myriad of trails that crisscrossed the island.

“Maybe we should just cut it. A buzz-cut, how about that?” Gram had asked once, pausing to take a drag from her cigarette burning in the ashtray on the dresser.

Harper had glanced up sharply, catching Gram’s gaze in the reflection and seeing the mischief in her eyes through her smoke.

Harper recalled the long strand of pearls and matching clip-on earrings she loved to wear and how Gram had confided, “Those were your mother’s favorite, too, when she was a little girl.”

Now she turned toward the mirror, remembering her visage at six, all dimples and crooked teeth, and today—well, she was healing but still looked bad. Tomorrow, she might get up, wash her hair, and even add a touch of makeup, join the real world.

She opened several drawers in the dressing table and was surprised to find a bottle of Chanel.

A twist of the cap conjured up more memories of Gram.

“My sweet Number 5,” she had called it. Harper studied a box of talcum powder along with bottles of makeup and tubes of Gram’s favorite lipsticks, all still arranged neatly.

She picked up a tube of Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, Gram’s favorite, and opened the tube to see it was half used.

After replacing the tube, she tried to open one of the bottom drawers, but it wouldn’t budge.

She tugged harder before she realized that both bottom drawers, on either side of the small desk area, had locks.

The one on the left opened smoothly, while the one on the right didn’t budge.

She found Gram’s key ring and located several small keys.

On Harper’s second attempt, she was able to unlock the drawer, and it slid out with some difficulty.

“So what’ve you got in here that you want locked up?

” she asked as she pulled out a stack of personal letters to discover another set of keys, two of the attached keys bearing the Chevrolet logo.

The keys to Gramps’s Corvette, she guessed.

A smaller one, probably for the gun cabinet in the garage, and several more that she couldn’t identify but would try out.

The last item, wrapped in an embroidered hankie, was a small glass jar with a screw-off lid, in which a dozen tiny holes had been punched. And inside the glass itself, the bodies of six desiccated bald-faced hornets lay crumpled, their small bodies curled in death.

She eyed them with a sense of revulsion and curiosity.

Why would Gram have kept them, hidden away with her secret treasures?

Why would anyone?

Perfume, keys, makeup, jewelry, and hornets.

An unlikely combo.

And a mystery she couldn’t solve now, or maybe ever.

She left the jar in the drawer with the other items and thought she should burn the letters. She would. But she would probably read them first. What would be the harm? Gram and almost everyone she loved was long dead.

“Not tonight,” she said, recalling sadly that her grandmother had buried her husband, only daughter, and grandson before she, too, had left this world with the help of her granddaughter.

At that thought, Harper walked straight to the liquor cabinet and, despite her earlier convictions, poured herself a stiff drink—vodka again, to vanquish the spirits that haunted this island—or more precisely crept through her mind.

“There are no ghosts,” she told herself before she took a long swallow and made her way to the parlor windows and the night dark beyond. A specter appeared in the watery glass—her own ghostly reflection, pale and wan.

From out of nowhere she heard Cynthia’s curse: You fucking bitch! You go straight to hell. You killed my son!

“Not today,” she said and finished her drink. “Not going to hell today.” After all, she’d been there already, about twenty years ago.