The Secrets of Lake Road - Karen Katchur Page 0,30
with a round of barking. She vowed to bring him a treat on her next time through.
When she reached The Pop-Inn, jug full of lake water in hand, she spied her father’s blue pickup truck parked alongside the cabin. She raced around back. He was sitting on the steps, wearing blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. His messy brown hair fell haphazardly across his forehead. Her mother was sitting next to him, her hands folded in her lap.
“Daddy!” she squealed, and dropped the jug to the ground as she launched herself into his arms.
“Hey there, Caroline.” He laughed and gave her one of his bear hugs. “I missed you, too,” he whispered into her ear.
She pulled back to look at him just in time to see her mother point to the jug at the bottom of the steps.
“What’s that?” her mother asked.
Caroline lifted her chin. “Water from the well.”
Anger flickered across her mother’s face but disappeared as quickly as it came. “Of course it is,” she said, and stood.
Caroline watched her mother cross the yard, walking like a person who had lost her way, drifting without any purpose. Her mother dropped into the hammock under the apricot tree. And Caroline found herself wondering if the trip to the well had been worth it, made purely out of spite, making her mother angry for a brief moment, and in the end, only pushing her mother further away.
She turned toward her father. “When did you get in?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kevin watched Jo walk away. It seemed to him, she was forever walking away. Even after all these years, the sway of her hips and the toss of her long dark hair jump-started his heart and stirred him below. He often had to remind himself that she was no longer sixteen, young and free, that she was a grown woman and she was his. Well, legally she was his wife, but although she had been loyal as far as he knew, she would never really be his. Her heart and soul seemed to be elsewhere, and he didn’t let himself think too hard or too long about where that might be.
They were kids when they first met, barely thirteen, about the same age as Caroline was now. Jo had the same lanky arms and legs as his daughter, but that was where the likeness ended. Caroline had his brown hair and deep brown eyes where Johnny looked more like his mother with his hair as dark as night.
But Jo at thirteen was a sight to be seen with her hazel doe eyes, dark hair, and golden sun-kissed skin. She had been attached to Billy’s side even then, following his lead, hanging on his every word. She was smitten, and Kevin had hated him for it. The way she had looked at Billy had soured Kevin’s stomach until he had tasted bile on his tongue. What he wanted more than anything back then was for her to look at him that way.
But in the end he had never blamed her.
There was something about Billy that even Kevin had found irresistible. Billy had that “it” factor, whatever “it” was. He was charming with the girls and laugh-out-loud funny with the guys. He was quick with a joke and a smile. His pale blue eyes penetrated you when you had his attention, making you feel as if you were the only person in the world who existed. And to gain Billy’s interest, to have his eye-locking stare directed at you, made you feel special, made you feel like you mattered, like whatever you had to say was important. How was Kevin ever supposed to compete with that?
One night they had been standing alone under the steps of the bar at the Pavilion drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Jo had taken off to pee in the woods across the parking lot. Eddie and Sheila had wandered to the pier, their silhouettes visible in the sliver of moonlight. And Billy, well, he had directed those piercing blue eyes at Kevin.
“Do you have a thing for my girl?” he had asked.
“What?” Kevin had shuffled his feet, swaying a little on his drunken legs. “What makes you think that?”
“I see the way you look at her.” Billy’s voice had had an edge Kevin had never heard before, and it had made him uneasy. He had immediately wanted to make things right between them, to put his best friend’s mind at ease, no matter if what he had said was a blatant lie.