Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

After a bit, he said, “Who did you think I meant?”

  “I thought you meant Mary’s husband. Robert Medina.”

  He flashed back to the man coming out of a back room when he went to pick Regina up at the cottage. Long-ish black hair, a face that was handsome in a pre-war, matinee-idol-type way. “I saw him, and at the time I did think he was your father. I never met him.”

  “You’re lucky.” She added in a low voice, with emotion, “He’s horrible.”

  “Hmm. But now that’s all over—you’re back to being Regina Hannon.”

  “I always was.” Her insistence on this point was beginning to make sense to him.

  “Well, that solves one mystery.”

  “What?”

  “How you used to be Ree Medina and now you’re Regina Hannon.”

  They said it together, “I always was Regina Hannon.”

  She grudgingly smiled and stole a look at him that was not at all hostile.

  “I guess there’s still the mystery of the little girl.”

  “There is no mystery. She drowned. I asked Mary.” She huffed and shook her head. “I shouldn’t even have brought it up. The police came because she died. But they never thought it was murder.”

  They had reached the overlook. A long valley stretched before them, and rolling hills led to the mountains in the distance.

  After a few minutes, she said, “What time is it? I should get back.” But she made no move. “Ugh. I’ll have to sit through lunch and dinner.”

  “You want me to take you home?”

  “I’m sure Mary expected me to come back with Frank.”

  They turned toward each other and walked back, shoulders occasionally brushing.

  After a bit, she asked, “Was there ever any real reason for believing that she could have been murdered? I don’t remember it and they didn’t talk about it, and when anybody brought it up, which they never did, it was hushed up because it would upset Alice.” They reached the car. He opened the door, and she added, “So why would anybody think she could have been murdered?”

  He hesitated. “There was a serial killer in Richmond. I asked too, last night, and that’s what my dad said. I don’t think the murders were ever solved, but for a while, they thought the girl’s death here was related. They had a suspect.”

  Her mouth opened and her eyes widened. “What? Who? Why did they think he did it?”

  “I don’t know anything, Ree.”

  Her eyes clouded over, lips pursed. She dropped into the passenger seat. When he got in, she said, “If somebody murdered Eugenie, I want to know what happened.”

  “My mom says the police couldn’t prove anything.”

  “That’s what Mary said too, but she made it sound like they never even suspected it was murder. She lied to me, basically.”

  “If they couldn’t prove it then, I can’t imagine anyone could prove it now. Or what good it would do. It was more than twenty years ago. It’s over and done with.”

  “I didn’t think Mary would lie to me. She might gloss things over, but I didn’t think she’d lie.”

  He had no response for that.

  “If somebody murdered her, he ruined my life. He’s still ruining it.”

  “Do you really think it would help anything now though? To know what happened?”

  “It would help me. To know.” She sat back and stared straight ahead, bristling. When he started the car, she spoke through a clenched jaw. “If someone murdered that little girl, he destroyed my family, and I want him brought to justice.”

  10

  Running Away and Hiding

  Al slowed when they reached the outskirts of town. “Want a hamburger?”

  Regina followed his eyes to a drive-through and looked at her watch. One thirty. Al pulled over to the shoulder just short of the entrance and came to a stop.

  She was, in fact, starving after the long walk in the park, and lunch was doubtless over at home. “Okay.”

  “Want to sit inside or eat in the car?”

  She thought about Bebe insinuating that she was having fun with friends while their father lay dying. “In the car.”

  She left the ordering to Al at the drive-through window and shook her head, indecisive when he asked about fries and milkshakes. He ordered two of everything and handed her the bags to hold while he parked.

  “I cannot tell you how much I missed good hamburgers when I was in the army.”

  Al ate half of his double-decker in two bites and talked, between bites, about food, while Regina struggled to suppress her growing uneasiness about having run away from the hospital and about facing her family afterward.

  “These aren’t bad,” he admitted, pausing to swallow a handful of French fries dipped in ketchup. “But I can do better on my hibachi.”

  Regina nibbled the end of one fry. “You were in the army?”

  “I joined after my first year of college. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to get away. I should have known I’d get sent to Vietnam, so it was pretty stupid.”

  She felt, rather than saw, Al looking past her out the passenger-side window, following her gaze, curious about what she was staring at. Nothing. In her mind’s eye, she was replaying the connected eyes of her siblings when she fled her father’s hospital room.

  She forced herself to turn her attention back to Al. “Did you? Get sent to Vietnam?”

  “In sixty-three. We were just ‘advisors’ back then.” He told her all about it, answered her questions, filled her in on everything he’d done since leaving high school.

  By the time he got to the new job at Pike Patterson Engineering, they had both finished eating, and Regina was feeling more or less normal. She knew she had disgraced herself yet again and felt only resignation. Al rattled the straw in his milkshake, balled up his wrappers and napkins, stuffed everything into the bag, and held out his hand for her empty wrappers.

  She handed them over. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “De nada, as Sergeant Rodriguez used to say.” He got out and dropped the trash into a waste bin. Got back in and started the car. “What about you? Where did you go when you left here?”

  She sighed and gave the straight answer that she knew wouldn’t satisfy him. “I went to live with my cousin in Savannah.”

  “How come? You had a year left at Piedmont.”

  “Because it was unbearable at home.”

  “Home meaning…?”

  “With my sister and her horrible husband.”

  He looked over his shoulder to pull out on the highway. “What’s so bad about him?”

  “He’s a hypocrite. A self-righteous prig.”

  Al grinned. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  It was the question she’d been dreading, and she felt heat rise through her neck to her cheeks. “It all happened very quickly. I didn’t have time.” Her voice failed and she whispered, “But I should have written to you. I’m sorry.”

  Neither spoke again until she directed him past the cottage and onto the tree-lined drive. A heaviness fell over her as Al pulled up to the house. Two cars had joined Frank’s and Mary’s. One was surely Edith’s; the other must belong to her brother Pace. Regina checked her watch. It was a little after two o’clock.

  Al broke into her thoughts. “Beautiful old house.”

  “I love it. I just hate everybody in it.” She looked to see if he was shocked, but he only laughed. Frank’s car reproached her. “I don’t really hate them all. But they think I’m wicked and ungrateful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I stay away.”

  “Why do you stay away?”

  “Because they think I’m wicked and ungrateful.” She couldn’t help laughing with him. “I ran away eight years ago. And then I ran away again this morning.” She shut her eyes and was stricken with the image of tears leaking from her father’s eyes.

  A warm hand closed gently on her wrist. “Call me if you need to get away again.”

  “Were you angry?
When I left?”

  “No. I was worried about you.” He paused. “I missed you.”

  “I didn’t mean to run away from you.”

  He grinned. “Well, I would hope not.”

  She opened the door and set one foot on the ground. But then she paused.

  He said, “Tomorrow?”

  “I can’t say.” Bebe’s caustic remark about her “catching up with friends” echoed in her mind, but the urge to escape outweighed it. “They’ll go to church in the morning.”

  “You don’t go?”

  She shook her head. “More black sheep-ery on my part. You?”

  “No. My mom goes to Saint Ignatius. She’s Catholic. My dad is a lapsed Presbyterian. He sleeps late. Me, I attend the Sunday brunch at La Maison. I always have the chocolate croissants. They’re terrible.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Very tempting. Okay. About nine?”

  “Sure. Pick you up?”

  “No, I’ll meet you. And if something comes up—”

  “I’ll read the paper and eat my croissant and hope you can make it. If you can’t, that’s okay.”

  “Thank you.” She hesitated then picked up his hand and kissed it. She left without looking back.

  Inside the front door, she paused as a momentary suspension of sound told her that her arrival had been noticed. Then the murmur of voices and clatter of dishes resumed. She veered left into the living room, where Frank and Edith sat together like a couple. Pace sat close by on the end of the big Victorian settee, the three of them huddling like the cronies they always had been. Frank, everybody’s friend, called a greeting, and Edith offered her usual composed and unreadable smile.

  Pace, a stockier, more stolid version of Frank, said, “There she is. You missed lunch, Ree.”

  Mary came in behind her with a coffee pot, tending to the others as if they were guests, not family come home. She straightened up from refilling cups. “Are you hungry? We saved you a sandwich and a piece of cake.”

  “No, thank you.” Regina felt conspicuous and awash with shame, but Frank, Edith, and Pace had already resumed talking in that inexhaustible way of all the older Hannons—loudly and with complete assurance. Regina, soft-spoken and at a loss for words, felt awkward, dumb. She fell in behind Mary, saying, “Can I help?”

  Mary left a dish behind for her, much as she might have done when Regina was a child, giving her sister a task Mary could easily have handled herself. Regina picked up the saucer and lamely trailed Mary to the kitchen, but she froze in the doorway at the sight of Bebe talking to a slim, sporty-looking woman who Regina realized must be Pace’s new wife, Fran.

  Fran looked at her curiously and said, “Hello,” clearly unsure who Regina was.

  Bebe smirked. “This is the famous missing Regina. Prodigal daughter.”

  Fran’s brow cleared. “Oh, you’re Regina!”

  Her eyes were appraising, not unfriendly, but Regina squirmed, wondering how she’d been represented to this newcomer.

  Fran leaned toward the dining room and looked around the corner. “My goodness, you look like Alice!” She looked from the portrait to Regina and back again.

  Bebe set down a stack of plates hard enough to rattle them, drawing a quick look from Mary and making Regina jump.

  Fran was still puzzled. “And you’re so young. How are you related?”

  When no one answered right away, Mary spoke up. “She’s our sister.”

  “Are you the baby in the picture?”

  “That’s me,” Bebe said. “Ree isn’t in the picture.”

  Regina picked up the stack of dishes, cradled them in one arm, and opened three cabinets before it dawned on her that everything had been rearranged.

  Fran pointed. “Here, Regina, they keep those here.”

  Meanwhile, Bebe scooped up an unused place setting from the dining room table. “Mary set a place for you at lunch. She didn’t know you had a date.” The corners of her mouth lifted in a mirthless smile. “Al MacDonald. Isn’t he one of your boyfriends from high school?”

  Regina flushed but said only, “No.” Words did not come to her defense. What boyfriends? Plural? There’d never been anyone but Al. Bebe, as always, had set her on her heels.

  “Al MacDonald?” This was Mary, mildly curious. “I don’t think I knew him.”

  “His father sells cars,” Bebe supplied.

  “Owns a dealership,” Frank corrected as he entered the room, then changed the subject. “Pace wants to go to the hospital this afternoon. He’ll take Alice. Anybody going with him? Fran?”

  “Sure.”

  Mary wiped the counters and hung up the dish towel. “Frank, Ree, Edith, and Bebe all went this morning. You and Pace and I can take Alice this afternoon.”

  Bebe was undeterred. “I remember Al MacDonald coming to pick up Ree for a date the day she ran off.” She said this laughing. Lightly, as if it were a joke. “I felt bad for him.”

  Regina’s cheeks flamed.

  Edith appeared at the door to the kitchen and asked Mary, “Is Alice lying down?”

  Mary said, “Yes, I’ll get her.”

  At the same time, Fran, arrested by Bebe’s story, asked, “What happened?”

  Bebe turned a malignant smile on Regina. “He must have been the scariest date in history. She ran away from home and never came back. Stole the grocery money for a bus ticket.”

  Pace called Fran away, and Regina, left in the kitchen with Bebe, fled to the living room, now empty. Regina crossed to the window in the farthest corner, yanked apart the curtains, and looked out across the back lawn, wondering why, why, why she had come. Minutes ticked by. Mary, Pace, and Fran clamored through the hall on their way to the hospital, surrounding and ushering Alice. Edith announced, as they filed out the door, that she was going upstairs to lie down.

  Bebe followed her, picking up a conversation that Regina heard only as murmurs. After a moment of silence, Frank stopped on his way out the door and came to her. At last, Regina found her voice.

  “Frank, I’m sorry,” she said, but Frank waved off her apology.

  “Don’t mind Bebe.”

  Regina gulped back sudden tears. “She hates me!”

  “She’s not the beauty you are and she knows it.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Bebe doesn’t like a rival. I’m going to run back to Roanoke. Be back for dinner.”

  Regina waited in the living room until she was sure everyone was settled on the second floor, then she slipped past the closed doors and trotted up the stairs to the attic.

  “I should never have come.” She said it out loud, looking over the lake. She thought about what she’d said to Al about loving the house and hating everybody in it. No, she didn’t hate anybody. She hated the way the Gorgon Bebe never let her forget for a moment that she had chosen to stand outside the family circle. But she hadn’t chosen that! She had been excluded. The perfect family of five children had excluded her all her life.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and worked herself up close to tears. She stayed away because she’d been pushed away. Fran, Pace’s wife of one year, was more at home here, explaining to her, Regina, where they kept the luncheon plates, referring to Regina’s own family as if she and Fran were both outsiders and Fran was actually a little closer to the fire than Regina, since at least she knew where they kept the plates.

  She slumped her shoulders with a sigh, then roamed the attic, pausing to sort half-heartedly through the papers on her father’s work table. She saw nothing of possible significance. It was ridiculous to think she could understand anything that had happened so far beyond the reach of her own memory.

  Or was it? She had just turned three when Eugenie drowned. She searched her earliest memories. You called her Gigi. No one had used that name for years, and it struck a chord. Gigi. Another one of Frank’s words came back to her—inseparable. No one had ever told her that. She remembered asking what had happened to Eugenie, all those questions, but it occurred to her for the first time that she
hadn’t just been curious. She’d been asking for Gigi. Of course she had. Gigi. Regina had missed Eugenie and grieved for her. It came as a revelation, this long-buried loss, hidden from her by time, silence, and misdirection, coming back only now with the name that was like an open-sesame. Gigi. Regina said her long-lost sister’s name out loud, over and over, and searched her memory anew.

  She knew they’d shared the nursery. Regina closed her eyes. Memory, more like a smell or a taste, an unarticulated feeling, evoked the cries of blue jays coming through an open window early in the morning. Ghosts of memories teased her. Memories or imagination? Or was she just remembering what she’d been told?

  She’d been told her nightmares were a torment to Alice. Regina screamed in the night, Mary said, frightening Alice. Mary took Regina home with her to the cottage, explaining that it was too much for Alice to hear Regina crying out in the night. Mary pleading, “She’s not strong. It upsets her when you cry like that. It frightens her.”

  Regina lay down and watched shadows play across the sloping attic ceilings. The nightmares she remembered well. They had lasted several years. Always she was running away, being chased, hiding. Mary, Mimi, comforting and shushing, let her sleep with her, wrapped her arms around her from behind, warming her and calming her, in the early days when the two of them lived in the cottage alone.

  Regina drowsed in the heat of the afternoon sun streaming through the silent attic. Who was there when Gigi drowned? From what Frank had told her, it was Mary and Alice, Gigi and herself. And Bebe, sixteen and gadding all over town, according to Frank. Regina had no early memory of Bebe. She could remember Bebe coming home from school in the summers, later, after Gigi died and Mary took Regina to the cottage. Bebe sometimes watched her for Mary, scolding Regina and pinching hard enough to leave bruises. Telling her that Alice didn’t want her and that Mary wanted time alone with her husband for a change. Bebe got married at eighteen and went to live in England, to Regina’s great relief.

  She tried to conjure that long-ago quiet, empty sunny afternoon. Gigi, wandering down to the water. Mary and Alice, not watching. Was a man watching? Alice was always so afraid of someone watching. The family brushed it off as paranoia, but could there be a basis for it? A man watching?