She licked her lips and tilted her head to the side. I was positive she was about to say yes, agree with me that we’d known each other at some point in time, but she didn’t. Instead, she fluttered her lashes rapidly, as if clearing her thoughts, and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Have you been here before?” I was desperate to find out how I knew her.
She answered by shaking her head.
“Did you grow up around here? A nearby town, maybe?”
Her posture appeared to soften, her spine not as rigid, yet her curious expression remained. “No. I was born and raised in Mulberry—about six hours south of here. This is the first time I’ve ever been to these mountains.”
“But you agree…we somehow know each other.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t even know your name.”
I wanted to point out that I’d been convinced of knowing her prior to learning her name, but I decided against it. There was no reason to freak this girl out on her first day here, especially if I had any hope of figuring out who she was. “Drew Wheeler. Does that help?”
“Sorry,” she whispered with the slightest shake of her head, sympathy clinging to her expression. “I guess I just have one of those faces.”
That couldn’t have been it. There was nothing generic or common about her. Everything from her eye color to the dimple on her chin to her name was unique. There was no doubt in my mind that she was one of a kind. And I refused to think otherwise. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something familiar about you.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” A smirk tugged at one corner of her mouth, and humor lightened her tone. She jerked her chin in a silent gesture toward the lake, keeping her gaze steadily on me. “So are you going to tell me about this town beneath Lake Bennett?”
I cringed and sucked in air through clenched teeth. “You should probably know that we don’t refer to it as that around here.”
Her face pinched in doubt, but she didn’t argue. “Then what’s it called?”
“Crowe’s Lake,” I said with pride.
She shrugged, and it was the first time since I walked up to her that she showed any sign of timidness. “It’s not my fault that I don’t know that. I wanted to take the boat tour, the one that takes you out on the lake and gives you the history of it all, but when I went to sign up, it was sold out.”
“Yeah, that one fills up fast this time of year. The boat is small and only runs twice a day. This is our busiest week with it being the Fourth of July and all, so we typically book up quickly.” We ran into this issue every single year. We only had so much room, and it didn’t make sense to spend money on another boat just to accommodate this one specific week.
McKenna smiled, though it was clear as day that it was to hide her disappointment. However, she didn’t seem to let it get to her. Instead, her attention wandered toward the water softly lapping against the dock below us. “So, Drew…what can you tell me about Crowe’s Lake?”
I smirked at her correction and the emphasis she used while my stomach did somersaults at the sound of my name on her lips. “This whole area used to be well-known for its agriculture. It had a lot of land for farming, and with the river running by it, it was a pretty popular place for fishing too. But between the mid-fifties and late sixties, the town grew smaller and smaller, meaning it produced less and less. Its popularity had dwindled until it could barely sustain itself, and eventually, most of the residents moved away, choosing to live in busier, more developed cities.”
“Why?”
I usually hated it when someone interrupted my explanation, yet for some reason, it didn’t bother me when McKenna cut me off to ask questions. “Things change, I guess. Farming is a hard job, lots of manual labor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people got tired of sweating for pennies when they could sit in an office and make two, three, maybe four times the amount of money.”
“So they just turned it into a lake because everyone moved away?”
I laughed to myself and shook my head. “No. In the early seventies,