Page 41 of The Souls of Lost Lake

“I am. It’s my first one,” he admitted.

Ava drew back in surprise. “Your first one? But I thought you were a preacher?”

Noah offered a small smile. “Even pastors have to have their firsts.”

Ava accepted his response, and a companionable silence descended for a blessed moment before Noah saw fit to break it.

“How did you know Matthew Hubbard?” It was Noah’s narrowed gaze that made Ava squirm again. She made a pretense of trying to fit the broken pencil back together again.

“Didn’t. Didn’t know him much at all.” She knew Noah wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

He folded his hands together as if in prayer, resting his forearms on top of the open Bible. “There has to be a connection. Why would the town think you killed him otherwise?”

“’Cause there was an ax in him?” Ava knew she should probably get all swoony like some of the ladies in town at the idea, but when one grew up hearing folks talk about how your own family was axed to death, one became numb to it.

“Folks assume that’s what happened to your family, don’t they?” Noah raised an eyebrow.

Ava nodded. The pencil wasn’t fitting back together. She flipped it onto the floor. “Sure.”

“But you’ve no recollection of it? They never found your family’s bodies?”

Ava met his eyes then. She was sure hers looked as haunted as his usually did. There was something in Noah’s voice—that gentle soft bit of something that made her melt inside. Not in a nice way either. The kind of way that made her feel little again. Scared. Needing to be protected—no,defended. She wondered if Noah had been around when she was thirteen and emerging from the woods covered in blood, if life might’ve turned out different. Maybe he would’ve taken her in. Avoided Widower Frisk and all his chores and hollerin’, and avoided Jipsy with her shrewish face and bossy attitude.

“Ava?” Noah pressed.

She blinked, breaking their connection. “No. They didn’t. Figure animals or somethin’ got to them.”

“There would still have been some remains.” Noah fidgeted with the corner pages of his Bible. “Some evidence of their deaths.”

“Oh, there was evidence!” Ava sat up straighter. “Folks went out lookin’ and found our cabin by the lake. The cabin was burned up. They found blood all over outside it.”

Noah slouched back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did they search the lake?”

Ava shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“So then how do they know your family was killed by an ax?”

She lifted her eyes. “Guess they don’t. I was just dragging one behind me and it had blood on it. Stands to reason, I s’pose.”

He stood and paced back and forth behind his desk before pausing and staring down at her. “Those are all drummed-up conclusions based on nothing but circumstantial pieces to the puzzle. There’s no way you, as a child, could have wielded an ax like Lizzie Borden.”

The name stilled Ava. The chanting from the night before made its way through her recollection. That hissing, whispery voice that taunted her, knowing she was there in the office, but instead ofseeking her out to do her harm, it toyed with her like Jipsy’s cat toyed with a mouse.

“‘Ava Coons took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.’”

“What!” Noah’s voice was sharp.

Ava stared up at him. “Heard that before?” She didn’t like the quaver in her voice.

Noah nodded. “Yes. But about Lizzie Borden, not you.”

“WhoisLizzie Borden?” Ava ventured, unsure she wanted to know after last night.

Whack. Whack.

Noah squatted in front of Ava, balancing on his toes. He searched her face for a long moment before answering. “Back about forty years or so, she murdered her parents. With an ax. She killed them while they slept. But they did not convict her of the crime.”

“Like me?” Ava whispered.