Once Upon a River Page 0,52

life in Lake Lynne or if she was an aberration in her new town. A heron dropped from the sky and settled out of sight downstream. Two mallards drifted near shore, and from their slightly rusty chest feathers Margo figured they were first-year males. She wondered if they were all that survived of a dozen chicks that a mama had hatched in the spring. Margo quacked, and they made a gentle noise in response, but kept moving.

That evening, while Michael was still away, a silver car pulled into his driveway. Though Margo didn’t recognize the car, the driver was clearly Danielle, the woman who had left Michael. She disappeared on the road side of the house, and shortly afterward King appeared and bounded down to the water. It occurred to Margo that the woman might have come to take Michael’s dog. Margo reeled in her line and dragged the outboard motor off the boat without taking care to protect the propeller. She pushed off from shore and in a few minutes was downstream and on the other side of the river. King ran out onto the float to greet her, bowed playfully, and tossed her head instead of climbing into the boat. “King! Come!” Margo barked. “King! Come!” As the dog finally jumped in, the woman appeared from inside the house. She wore a white blouse under a thin white vest. She was holding a glass of something clear with ice in it and carrying a lawn chair. She rested her drink in the grass, unfolded the chair, and then sat and stretched her legs out.

“Hey, what are you doing with Cleo?” she yelled when she saw Margo and Cleo in the boat. The woman’s hair was the color of caramel.

“She’s not yours!” Margo yelled, but she was starting to realize the woman probably wasn’t there to take the dog at all. Instead, the woman was making herself at home, no doubt planning to step back into the life she had left. Michael must have known she would come back, and that was why he hadn’t gotten rid of her things.

“I’ll call the police, you little freak,” Danielle said mildly and took a long drink from her glass. She crossed her ankles.

Margo’s hair was clean, and she had braided it neatly. Was it her worn jeans that made the woman call her freak? Her old Carhartt jacket? Was it her dark, heavy rowboat with its splintery oars? Or her gun visible on the back seat? Or was she a freak, plain and simple, a wolf girl, an aberration? Would her mother see her that way when they finally met again? Was that why Margo had never been able to make new friends in Murrayville?

“You left the dog and went away,” Margo said, too quietly for Danielle to hear. And you left Michael, she thought, and you left the river. Whatever Margo might be, this woman had been a fool. Margo supposed the woman knew better now, and that was why she was back.

As Margo rowed upstream toward the cabin, Michael’s Jeep appeared and parked next to the silver car. The woman stood and met him halfway to the driveway. When Margo saw the two of them standing side by side, she felt a little sick. They seemed to belong together.

“Cleo! Come back!” shouted Michael. At the call, King moved around Margo to get to the back seat. She jumped out of the boat, causing it to tip. It happened so quickly that Margo could not compensate for the dog’s weight, and a blast of water splashed into the boat.

Michael shouted, “Margaret Louise! Come back!” And then he began to engage in intense conversation with Danielle.

And upstream and coming toward the cabin was the Playbuoy.

Margo’s boat began to turn in the current, and soon her prow was headed downstream. She maneuvered herself toward the edge of the river with one oar so she would be less visible to Paul.

She glided slowly out of sight of the cabin and Michael’s house, past a solitary black fisherman holding a bottle twisted in a brown bag. The green heads of willows wept nearby. Painted turtles and blue racers sunning themselves on fallen trees slid into the water at her approach. A great blue heron fished silently from its perch on a root, one bulging banded eye on her as she passed, wary but not alarmed so long as Margo was moving with the current. She was tempted to take up the oars and row