“I don’t want to waste time on the boat, especially with the current.”
“It wasn’t a current!” Ian crosses his arms.
“Listen, we need to get out of here. I still think climbing this incline is the fastest way. Ginnie, can you manage?”
I nod and wipe at a couple of leaked tears. He touches my cheek softly.
Steering clear of the body, the three of us start to climb up the cliff. It may have been embarrassing to have Isaac climbing up behind me with a nice view of my backside, that is, if I had been in my right mind.
Luckily, I’m not myself, and embarrassment is the farthest thing from my brain.
I’m almost there and try to push myself to the landing. Isaac says, “I’m going to help push you the rest of the way.”
He places his hand on my upper thigh and pushes up. I’m able to pull myself up and onto the landing.
“Help Ian,” he says, as he pulls himself up with little difficulty.
Ian’s doing well, too, but I still give him my hand and help pull him up.
Once we’re all there, we sit for a few seconds gathering our breaths. I look at both guys and have to battle against tears again. They both appear shaken; Ian especially. But I sense whoever is down there was beckoning me. Not them.
The cold wind had bothered me. Not them. I saw the girl in the forest. Not them. The beetles had been crawling all over me. Not them.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Somehow I feel it’s my fault.”
“We’re in this together.” Isaac stands and helps me up, then checks on Ian, whose face is pale with a sheen of sweat over it. “Let’s go home,” he says to his younger brother. Isaac had mentioned last night that Ian isn’t quite fifteen. Now he looks every bit a child, and my heart breaks at the sight of him.
We can’t get there fast enough. The guys would have run the whole way home, but they have on swim shoes, and I am barefoot and feeling it.
Still, I don’t complain and try to keep up with them.
When we make it to the road, Ian runs across it to his house, yelling for his parents. Isaac grabs my arm and asks, “How are you holding up?”
“I’ll be fine,” I lie. I’m far from feeling fine.
Ian is talking so fast, his parents look over at Isaac for clarification.
“We found a body. It must have been underwater and the low lake levels uncovered it. Him. Her.” Isaac wipes his hand over his face. “We’ve got to call the police.”
Mrs. Fulton drapes her arm around Ian and escorts him to the house. I feel badly at how hard Ian has taken this.
“He’ll be fine,” Isaac whispers to me.
Mr. Fulton is already dialing on his cell phone. “Beatrice, this is Sergeant Fulton. We’ve located a body at Pigeon Lake. Send out Pollarski and Hutchings along with a team….” He looks over at Isaac and raises his eyebrows.
Isaac promptly responds, “Northeast side, about a half-mile from here going diagonally.”
His father says, “Go change, then take Ginnie back home. I want you back in ten minutes.”
It’s an order, and Isaac is already running into the house before I realize his Dad wants him changed and me dropped off in under ten minutes.
“How are you holding up?” Mr. Fulton asks the same question as Isaac.
Now that the boys are gone in the house, my resolve crumbles around my feet. I shakily shrug, but tears appear and before I know it, I’m sobbing. Mrs. Fulton is out of the house, and her arms are around me. “There, there. It took strength and courage to come back here to get help.”
I slobber all over her shirt and have to wipe at my nose, which isn’t helping the mess.
“Here,” she hands me the dish towel she’s been holding.
These people have already seen me at my worst, so I don’t hold back when I blow into the rag. At this point, I don’t care. I just fell on top of a dead body, hundreds of beetles tried to crawl all over me, and I am pretty sure that something—or someone—had wanted me to discover it.
“Who found the body?” Mr. Fulton is all business.
I swallow and bite my lip.
“Would you like me to question Isaac instead?”
I shake my head. Too much already rests on Isaac’s shoulders. I can do this. “I found it. I fell on top of it. We were climbing up this huge cliff, and the tree root broke. It was a hand and partial arm. Everything else was covered under leaves and sticks and mud. And bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.”
“Why were you guys over there? That’s not public property.”
“We took the boat across to save time. The current was really strong, and that’s where we ended up. Kind of accidentally. So, was that person buried, or did someone dump her in the water.”
“How do you know it’s a female?”
I look into Mr. Fulton’s eyes for the first time during this conversation and say without a doubt, “I just do.”
It’s a female, and she wanted me to find her.
Isaac is running back over to us. “Ready, Ginnie?”
I nod.
“Hurry, son. I want to head over there and check it out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once we’re in Isaac’s Jeep, I ask about Ian.
“He’s pretty shaken up, but that’s part of his Asperger’s. If anything is outside of the norm of his expectations, he freaks out. He wasn’t expecting the boat to hit the current, and he certainly wasn’t expecting what we discovered.”
We are at Gran’s house way too fast.
“I’ll come over as soon as I can and tell you everything, okay?”
“Please, do.” I hope that didn’t sound like I was begging.
He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear and lets his hand linger. “I’ve got to go.” He drops his hand. “But I’ll stop over as soon as I can.”
I slip out of the Jeep and watch him drive off. Then, I can’t get into the house fast enough. I bound up the stairs and start the shower, peeling off my bikini and jumping into the hot water.
It can’t blast hard enough or hot enough. I scrub my body…again…reliving the beetles of my nightmare and my reality. Eventually, I sit down on the shower floor, pull my knees in, and cry.
I’m not sure how long I sit in the shower, but my skin turns pruny, and the water cools down. I turn off the shower and step out, wrapping a towel around myself and wiping the steam off the mirror. My hair is a mess, but that seems to be its constant state, and my eyes are red and puffy. I comb my hair out and braid it, sticking clips in to keep it out of my face.
A knock on the bathroom door makes me jump.
“Virginia?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“Because the police are here and want to speak with you.”
I throw open the door, startling Dad, and head for my room.
“Is it drugs?” He follows me.
“Seriously?”
“Did you steal something?”
“Turn around,” I tell him. He turns and I quickly throw on shorts and a t-shirt minus the underclothes. “Okay.”
He turns around again to face me. “Well? Some answers, please.”
I take a deep breath and say, “I found a body across the lake.”
Dad’s eyes widen. “A body? As in a human body?”
“Yes. Isaac, Ian, and I took the boat out, and we got stuck near someone’s private property—I guess, that’s what Mr. Fulton said—and while we were climbing our way up the cliff thingie, a tree root broke and I fell. Onto a body.” I hug myself to keep from crying again.
But Dad knows me. He walks over and hugs me. And I melt.
I cry, and he consoles.
It’s at this moment, I realize how much I’ve missed him these last few days. I let him hug me for a long time. When he releases me, I try to hold on some more. “The police are waiting, Virginia. They probably want a statement. I’ll be right there with you.”
Gran is downstairs entertai
ning the two police officers. Isaac is not with them. She sees me enter the front sitting room and says, “There’s our popular girl. Would you like some iced tea, Ginnie?”
“Ma, sit down. The doctor wants you off your feet as much as possible.” Dad sounds exasperated. “I’ll get her some tea. I’ll be right back.”
I nod. I want him to stay, but I also want iced tea.
“Hello,” I say to the police officers.
They stand up and shake my hand, introducing themselves, but I don’t catch their names, and I’m not about to ask. Instead, I sit next to Gran.
“Isaac Fulton said you were the one to discover the body?”
“Yes. A hand and arm. I’m assuming the body was underneath the debris.”
One of the officers is young—early to mid-twenties—and he smiles in my direction.
Dad walks back in the room, hands me an iced tea, and sits on the other side of me. I guzzle the tea, answering basic questions, but purposefully leaving out the freaky stuff.
“What did they discover?” I ask before they leave.
“We don’t have too many specifics just yet, but it looks to be an older child, maybe a teenager if she was petite.”
“She?”
“Yes, it looks like the body is a female.”
A wave of grief dumps itself on me, and I close my eyes. I feel Dad’s arm around me. “That poor girl,” I whisper.
The police leave, and Gran asks what we want for dinner.
“It’s only two o’clock, Mom,” Dad says. “And we’ll take care of dinner.”
“I’m not dead yet, mister!” Gran snaps. “You’ll not treat me like some invalid. Lord, you’re getting just as bad as Sue.” She walks out of the room purposefully kicking the wheelchair, muttering under her breath.
“What’s with her?” Dad asks.
“She’s probably worried about what happened.”
“How about you and I get some dinner later? Just the two of us?” Dad asks.
“What about Gran?”
“I’m sure she won’t mind, plus she has a few friends coming over later in the evening for cards. I guess it’s a Saturday night ritual.”
A dinner date with my Dad? Normally, I would say yes, but I feel emotionally drained, and want to not leave the house. “Can we take a rain check?”
“Sure. You still want to go exploring for some bugs?”
“No, Dad. I want to stay away from outside at least for the rest of today. And maybe the rest of forever.”
He hugs me again. “Okay, go relax, and do whatever you want to do. If you change your mind, let me know.”
Dad decides to hike without me. “Oh no, you’re not going alone.” Gran slips into her hiking boots and begins to tie the laces.
“Mom, you are not going with me.”
“Try and stop me.” She steps outside and starts marching to the woods.
“Looks like you’re going on a hike with Gran.”
Still, he smiles and shrugs. “There’s no stopping that woman. You’ll be all right for a little bit?”
“Yes. I’m going to relax and not think about anything dead.”
When he leaves to follow Gran into the forest, I only watch for a few seconds. I shudder and quickly turn away. I’ve had enough of these woods and lake for a long time.
After checking my phone and texting Alisa and Mum, I scroll through Instagram and see pics of the first party of the summer. But most of the kids I barely know, and I admit to myself that a big part of me is simply not a party girl. Alisa has always pushed us to go to parties. “We need to do this,” she’d say. “We need to break free from our nerd status.”
The pictures don’t entertain me for long, nor do they fill me with longing. Instead, my mind gets distracted by today’s events. Now that I don’t have beetles all over me, and I’m not landing on a dead body, my interest is piqued. I wander into Gran’s office and turn on her computer. My thoughts keep going back to that girl who probably died a horrible death. What had happened? And why are these strange things happening to only me?
As a scientist, I rationalize that there is a logical answer for most everything. What I had experienced, however, was far from rational. And that’s what interests me. The unknown.
I log onto the internet and click on a search engine. I do find information on Indian burial grounds in Pigeon Forest, but it doesn’t fit what I’m looking for. That girl was not buried. If what Ian says is true, and the lake is low this season, then the girl drowned.
I stay lost in thought for over an hour, staring at the computer screen, reading about the area, and any other old news I could find. Neck deep in a conspiracy theory about ancient burial grounds in the Pigeon Lake area, I hear Dad and Gran come inside from the back deck. They’re arguing, which is odd. Dad rarely argues with her.
“I’m paying for the ticket. End of discussion,” Gran says.
“You need to respect that I’m her father, and I make the decisions here.”
“She wants to go back. Let her go. At least ask her and let her make the decision. She’s practically an adult.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating her like she’s a little girl.”
There’s a pause before Dad shows up in the office doorway. “How are you doing?”
“Good. How was the hike?”
“I wish you’d have been there. This is a bug lover’s heaven.”
“It’s no wonder you’re single,” I tease.
“Did you hear the conversation with Gran? I’m assuming you did.”
“It’s not like you to argue with her. And over me?”
“She’s insisting you go back home. That this traumatic experience would have never happened if I’d have let you enjoy your summer with friends.” He raised his eyebrows as if waiting for me to agree.
“Gran’s a smart woman.”
Dad enters the room and sits in the same armchair that Gran sat in the night before. “Is it wrong for a father to want his daughter to hang out with him before everything changes?” He asks the question quietly, and I don’t answer because I know what he means. College starts in the fall, and if Gran has her way, I’ll be stateside. Dad wouldn’t live in Ann Arbor with me. He’d be up here. And if I have my way and stay in London, then there still would be change. “Gran’s right. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
Dad reaches for my hand. “You’ll always be my little girl, which is partly why I wanted you here with me. The thought of being so far apart goes against my fatherly ways. Especially with all those parties you had planned.”
“You sent me to Michigan to keep me from partying?”
Dad’s expression showed his guilt. “Don’t hate me?”
“I don’t hate you. At first, I was miffed, but I’m getting used to being here. Besides, I don’t think I’d make much of a party girl anyway.” We stay lost in our thoughts for a moment. “Want to see the pictures I took yesterday? They’re not the best pics, but there are a couple of good shots.”
Dad scooches his chair closer. “That’s right. Show me what you got.”
I close out the search window and open up my photo files. Together, the two of us sit side-by-side, and for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, it’s our own little world once again.
12
Two days pass without incident. One of those days was Sunday, and Gran pressured me into mass. Not a big deal. I sat in the back with Dad and used the opportunity to take pictures of the old sanctuary and cathedral. The three of us ate a delicious lunch from a Chinese buffet, and then spent the rest of the evening downstairs in the home theater with a marathon Harry Potter viewing. And on Monday, Isaac and Ian surprise me with a visit. We avoid the lake, and they teach me how to play Spoons.
No ghosts. No beetles. No dead bodies.
That night, Isaac and I stay up until three in the morning texting back and forth, and I fall asleep with my phone beside me and a smile on my face.
The knock on the front doo
r brings me out of sleep. I roll over and hope someone answers it. The steady knocking doesn’t let up. “Somebody answer the door!” I yell, then throw the blanket over my head.
But no one answers me or the door. I glance at my phone. Eleven a.m. Not in the mood to be cheerful, I trudge out of my room and downstairs. “Dad? Gran?”
No one’s home.
“Fine. I’ll see who it is,” I mutter.
I open the door and come face-to-face with a tall, older man with long black hair and a brown, weathered face. His eyes seem almost black, and the look on his face isn’t happy. When I open the door, his countenance softens a little. “Excuse me, miss, I’m looking for Rose Paxton.”
“You have no right,” Gran says from behind me. At first, I’m not sure if she’s talking to him or me.
“He knocked on the door. And where were you that you didn’t hear it?”
She ignores me. “You have no right at all coming on my property again.”
His face turns again, and he stares at Gran with absolute contempt. Still, he says, “Maybe we should speak alone.”
“Maybe you better get off my property before I get my shotgun.”
“That would be an interesting twist, wouldn’t it? Would I be the second Indian you killed, or would there be more?” His words slice through the air.
“How dare you. Ginnie, I’m stepping outside. Please call the police and tell them to get over here now.”
Without coffee, my gears are turning too slowly to quite understand what is happening. “What? Why? I’m not understanding.”
“Ginnie, go. Now.” She steps outside and shuts the door.
What I really want is to pour a cup of coffee. Instead, I go into the office. This way I could be close. I slide the window open to get a better listen into their conversation. Unfortunately, they’ve stepped away from the house, so I can’t hear what’s being said. But their body language says everything.
He is stepping closer to her, pointing his finger at her. His words seem to be coming out fast. Gran is shaking her head and holding her chest. Panic seizes me. I call 9-1-1.
Lake of Secrets Page 9
