Page 14 of Secrets Along the Shore

Boyfriend, Dereck—possible abuse?

Bare feet, shorts, crop top.

It was what I knew about Sophia’s murder. I compared it to the column of notes I’d taken about my murder—or attempted murder.

Shallow grave.

No clothes.

Bound hand and foot.

Methodical.

They were different. Too different to be the same person, unless, for whatever reason, they were deviating quite a bit from their preferred process.

The primary question in my mind—aside from the nagging dead snake element—was whether Sophia had been killedatStillwater Lake and in the location where we’d found her body, or if she’d been transported and dumped there.

I’d made the latter assumption when I found her. But, I concluded now, that was based on the subconscious fact that I knewI’dbeen transported and buried after I’d been supposedly killed by my offender.

If our cases were truly as unattached as I believed them to be, thenSophia may very well have been at the lake of her own accord. Which meant, she’d either gone there with someone she knew, been taken there by force but yet alive, or gone there alone and ran into a known or unknown perpetrator.

Be my voice.

I spun around, staring at Sophia’s chair. She wasn’t there, but I would have given my left arm to prove I’d heard her speak. A whisper from behind me.

I wasn’t equipped to speak for the dead. I wasn’t qualified to do any sort of amateur, off-the-books investigation. I certainly wasn’t mentally healthy enough to investigate a murder after almost being the victim of one myself.

If therapy had taught me one thing, it was to slowly approach the memories, the trauma, and the process of healing in a slow and careful fashion. I’d made matters worse the last few years by not even doing that.

And now? Now something urged me to dive in recklessly at the deep end, ignore all clinical advice of dealing with my trauma, and try to play hero to a murdered woman.

Maybe it was just another form of survival. Maybe I’d crossed into a new phase—survivor’s guilt—no—survivor’sresponsibility.

What did it matter? I had been on the verge of a mental breakdown for years now. I grabbed my car keys from the kitchen table next to my notebook. If Sophia’s murder was going to push me over the edge, maybe I could at least accomplish something worthwhile and bring resolution to Sophia before I fell.

Most people would questionmy judgement, coming to Stillwater Lake at 2:00 a.m., but I’d already lived through being abducted, held, listening to the screams of other victims, and then being almost killed and subsequently buried alive. It wasn’t that I wanted to flirt with it happening again, but I was also desensitized to it. I had a taser with me too, and I’d hooked a can of bear spray to the waistband of my jeans. I’d bought it online figuring if a tinyspray can of MACE could do the trick, why not blind the culprit permanently with a concentrated aerosol bomb meant to stop grizzlies?

I wasn’t over confident. On the contrary. The minute I parked my car in the small lot at the lake, I wanted to turn around and drive home. I could hear the frogs peeping even with my car windows rolled up. Crickets chirruped. The night was warm—warmer than yesterday when we’d found Sophia’s body.

I turned off the ignition and sat there for a moment. What was it I even hoped to find by coming here in the dead of night? Aside from some inexplicable and innate tug to do so, coming here defied reason, not to mention, I really had no business nosing into Sophia’s murder to begin with. Being the one to find her body hadn’t given mecarte blancheto her case. The fact was, the police were already probably leaps and bounds ahead of me in the investigation anyway.

But I had to see for myself. This time without the overarching shock of finding Sophia.

I opened the door and climbed from my car, shutting it quietly behind me. A soft breeze blew strands of hair across my face and I pulled them off and tucked them behind my ear. I could see where the marshy area of the lake was trampled from the crime scene investigation. The moon was relatively bright—though partially hidden by trees—so I avoided a flashlight. Something about the impact of a battery-powered illumination of the area felt invasive.

A stick cracked to my right.

I stilled, squinting in that direction. The lake reflected moonlight, shallow ripples and cattails and long grasses daring me to call it what it probably really was—a pond. But no one called it that, so Stillwater Lake it was.

Another stick cracked.

“Sophia?”

I had to ask. Her memory already haunted me. I was already seeing her in my apartment and she was the nudge I’d had to come here in the first place. It stood to reason my psyche would have brought her here as well.

Sure enough.

She came into view. Only not where I’d heard the stick crack. She was up ahead, standing in the marshy area where I’d found her corpse.