heavily on the frame house. A lightning flash caused the shadows of the trees to stretch long, grasping fingers down the wall and across her blanket. Something thumped repeatedly. She grabbed the flashlight and crawled from bed and went into the living room, leaning on the cheap rubber-tipped cane she’d gotten at the hospital. The front door was wide open. The elements poured through, and all the papers she’d left stacked on the coffee table were flung across the floor. She put her shoulder against the door and forced it shut and threw the deadbolt for good measure.
She fell into an easy chair and waited with gritted teeth for the pain in her ankle to subside. While she recovered, the fact the door had been locked earlier began to weigh heavily on her mind. What was it that brought her awake? The noise of the door banging on the wall? She didn’t think so. She’d heard someone call her name.
The storm shook the house and lightning sizzled, lighting the bay windows so fiercely she shielded her eyes. Sleep was impossible and she remained curled in her chair, waiting for dawn. Around two o’clock in the morning, someone knocked on the door. Three loud raps. She almost had a heart attack from the spike of fear that shot through her.
Without thinking, she cried, “Lourdes? Is that you?” There was no answer, and in an instant her thoughts veered toward visions of intruders bent on mischief and the spit dried in her mouth. Far too afraid to move, she waited, breath caught, straining to hear above the roar of the wind. The knocks weren’t repeated.
8.
Bernice didn’t fly to France for Lourdes’s funeral. Nancy, mad with grief, wanted nothing to do with her sister. Why hadn’t Bernice been there to protect Lourdes? She’d allowed their daughter to go off with a couple of people Nancy and Francois scarcely knew and now the girl was never coming back. As the weeks went by, Nancy and Bernice mended fences, although Francois still wouldn’t speak to her, and the boys followed suit. Those were dark days.
She’d gone into a stupor when the authorities gave her the news; ate a few Valiums left over from when she put Elmer in the ground, and buried herself in blankets. She refused to leave the house, to answer the phone, scarcely remembered to eat or shower.
Li-Hua told her more about the accident when Bernice was finally weaned off tranquilizers and showed signs of life once again.
The story went like this: Dixie had driven Karla and Lourdes to Joyce, a small town a few miles west of Lake Crescent. They ate at a tiny diner, bought some postcards at the general store, and started back for Olympia after dark. Nobody knew what went wrong, exactly. The best guess was Dixie’s Subaru left the road and smashed through the guard rail at mile 38—Ambulance Point. Presumably the car went in and sank. Rescue divers came from Seattle and the area was dredged, but no car or bodies were found. There were mutters that maybe the crash happened elsewhere, or not at all, and conjectures regarding drift or muck at the bottom. Ultimately, it amounted to bald speculation. The more forthcoming authorities marked it down as another tragic mystery attributed to the Lake Crescent curse.
Bernice took a leave of absence from work that stretched into retirement. Going back simply wasn’t an option; seeing new faces in Dixie and Karla’s classrooms, how life went on without missing a beat, gutted her. Li-Hua remained in the counselor’s office. She and Hung had come very late to professional life and neither could afford retirement. Nonetheless, everything was different after the accident. The remaining Redfield Girls drifted apart—a couple transferred, three more called it quits for teaching, and the others simply stopped calling. The parties and annual trips were finished. Everybody moved on.
One night that winter, Li-Hua phoned. “Look, there’s something I need to tell you. About the girls.”
Bernice was lying in bed looking at a crossword puzzle. Her hands trembled and she snapped the pencil. “Are you all right, Li?” Her friend had lost too much weight and she didn’t smile anymore. It was obvious she carried a burden, a secret that she kept away from her friend. Bernice knew all along there was more to the story surrounding the accident and she’d pretended otherwise from pure cowardice. “Do you want me to come over?”
“No. Just listen. I’ve tried to tell you this before, but I