The Secrets of Lake Road - Karen Katchur Page 0,76

eel the men had dumped onto the beach cut across her mind, and she quickly forced it away. Far, far away. She was barely holding it together. If she went there, to the dark place of reality, she’d never be able to pull herself out. And now wasn’t the time to fall apart, not while her daughter was still out there, waiting to be found.

She wrapped her arms around Dolly and paced the living room. She stopped moving when the rotary phone rang. She grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?” Her breathing quickened, thinking it might be news about Sara. But all she heard was static and Kyle’s faint voice calling her name. The connection was poor, and after a few seconds of white noise, she hung up and continued walking.

Most of Sara’s toys were strewn about the place much like Patricia’s toys used to be when she had stayed in this very cabin with her parents. Now that she had been in the place a few days, she noticed other things, things she remembered from her childhood. Like how the wicker rocking chairs creaked underneath a person’s weight, how the pipes groaned when the water was running, how the old claw-foot bathtub still looked a little creepy.

Evidence of mold stained the corners of the ceiling in most of the rooms despite the fact that the brochure had stated the cabin was recently painted. She supposed it couldn’t be helped. The colony had a way of holding onto moisture whether it was dampness or humidity. Nothing ever felt totally dry—not the air, the towels, the clothes, your skin.

And the smell, the ones she remembered from childhood that had hit her at full force when she had first stepped through the door. They were a mixture of the same damp earthy lake air and smoke from the fireplace. The sight and scent had filled her with such a state of happiness; she didn’t think anything bad could happen while she was here.

She looped around the couch and chairs. When she grew tired of the pattern, she circled the kitchen table, walking, pacing—the movement soothing. Sometimes her mind raced with thoughts of Sara, her heart too heavy for her chest to hold and she’d stop, bend over, and release the most terrifying sound she had ever heard, one laden with grief.

She continued on, stepping in and out of one of the three bedrooms. She couldn’t bring herself to walk into Sara’s bedroom, where her daughter should be sleeping. And the master bedroom, if you could call it that since the space could just about fit the queen-size bed and chest of drawers, where Kyle had slept on their second night when she had telephoned about Sara, reeked of failure and loneliness. The thought of both empty beds was too much to bear.

She took to biting her nails, moving haphazardly through the rest of the cabin. She lost track of time. At one point she poured a glass of water and swallowed it down in large gulps. Within minutes, the water sloshing around her belly, she bent over the kitchen sink and threw up. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had something to eat or drink. Her body ached with exhaustion. She walked on.

Gradually, slowly, her thoughts turned to Jo and the news about Billy. No, no. She wasn’t ready to think about it yet. She couldn’t bear to think he was gone from this world. Not Billy, too.

But she did think about him, the boy he was the last time she saw him. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans even though it had been a particularly hot day. In fact, it had been a hot summer. The days were long and the humidity relentless. But somehow not even the heat could touch cool Billy. Or maybe because he spent so much time on the lake, the coolness of the water never truly left him. It was as though he had been a very part of what made the lake special.

True, she had been young, but not so young that she didn’t recognize the way her stomach flip-flopped and her heart skipped whenever he was near. “Are you feeling okay?” Dee Dee would ask. “I feel funny,” she would whisper, only to have Dee Dee whisper back, “That’s why they call it lovesickness.”

She had followed Billy everywhere. He had never given any indication he had minded. In fact, thinking back, he had encouraged her.

“What do you think, Pattie-cakes?” He had looked into