The Secrets of Lake Road - Karen Katchur Page 0,61

and let the snappers out.”

“That doesn’t sound like something she would do.”

“I know. But I’m pretty sure she did.”

“Come on, why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand her sometimes. Maybe she thought it was cruel to capture them.” Caroline may have believed the ends didn’t justify the means, and although Jo was frustrated with her daughter, she also couldn’t help but feel proud of her too. In some ways Caroline was right. It was brutal both to the turtles, the ones who got tangled in the lines, and to the little girl now thought of as bait. It was a harsh reality. Sometimes life was cruel.

Kevin nodded.

She motioned to the bar, to where Heil and the group of men plotted inside. “They want to give up the search,” she said. “And the sheriff”—she kept her voice low—“he was asking some of the men questions … you know, about Billy.”

She waited for him to say something, anything, but he remained quiet. He always acted crazy whenever she brought up Billy. He wouldn’t even look at her.

Then he said, “Why don’t you go see if Caroline is back at the cabin with Gram? I’ll find out what’s going on inside.” He took the stairs two at a time.

She looked across the parking lot, spotting Sheriff Borg and Patricia, and then turned her gaze to the lake and the lone watercraft with the last three men from the recovery team.

She raced up the hill to Lake Road and the cabin.

* * *

Jo pushed open the door to the screened-in porch. Inside she found Caroline and Gram sitting on the porch swing with a photo album opened in their laps. Gram exchanged a look with Jo and shook her head: a motion that Jo understood to mean that Gram didn’t want her to confront her daughter. She wanted her to keep quiet. But since when did Jo listen to Gram?

“Caroline, where have you been?” She crossed her arms and looked down at the flip-flops on her daughter’s feet.

“I went for a bike ride,” Caroline said, and avoided looking at Jo in an attempt to hide her lying eyes.

Jo could always tell when Caroline was lying. She was terrible at hiding her emotions. Her face gave her away every time. All Jo had to do was look at her daughter to know what she was feeling on the inside. She suspected it had to do with her age and innocence. Thank goodness, her daughter at least had that.

“You wore flip-flops to ride your bike? Where are your sneakers?” she asked.

“I couldn’t find them.”

“Because they were covered in mud and Gram had to throw them away. Do you want to tell me how they got so dirty?”

“I don’t know.” Caroline stretched out the last word sounding like a whiny guilty child.

“Please look at me,” Jo said. “And tell me you didn’t sneak out of your room last night and mess with Stimpy’s traps.”

Caroline dipped her head and hid her face under the visor of her baseball cap. “I didn’t,” she said in the same whiny guilty voice.

“That’s enough,” Gram said. “She said she had nothing to do with releasing those snappers, and I believe her.”

Over the top of Caroline’s lowered head, Jo read Gram’s lips. Leave her alone.

Jo looked away. So Gram was taking Caroline’s side. Not once in all of Jo’s life had Gram ever stuck up for her. Not when she had been a pregnant teenager, a time when she had needed her most. And not now, when Gram clearly understood that Caroline had broken a law. For an instant Jo felt envious of her own daughter, and at the same time she felt petty and childish, too.

“Who’s this?” Caroline asked, and pointed to a photograph in the album.

Gram looked down through the reading glasses she had perched on the tip of her nose. “I’m not sure,” she said.

They both ignored Jo at this point. It took everything Jo had not to yell that she was her mother, demand Caroline answer her questions, but she happened to glimpse at the colored photo and did a double-take. It was a picture of Billy at his cabin. He was holding up a lake trout. Jo had taken the picture. Dee Dee was in the shot, along with a little girl Jo couldn’t place.

“Where did you get these?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. They were stored in the back closet all these years, the one Gram had finally decided to clean