Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  Inseparable. Had she followed Gigi to the water? Seen Gigi drown? Seen her mother find Gigi’s lifeless body? She sat up. The running nightmare. Did I run from someone? Suppose, just suppose, there was a murder. Had she witnessed it?

  11

  The Slamming Door

  After dropping Regina off at the Hannon house, Al spent the afternoon mowing and weeding and throwing sticks for Ruby. Seeing Ree, walking and talking with her in the park, had sent his spirits soaring, which he felt bad about, because she was obviously unhappy, but he couldn’t help it. The fact that she turned to him with her trouble made him grin like a fool and heave the stick so far that Ruby ran back and forth in circles trying to find it. She was happy too.

  When he burst back in the house, his mother turned away from the sink with a puzzled smile. “Were you having fun out there?”

  “I miss having a dog during the week.”

  “Well, you can’t have Ruby.”

  “She wouldn’t like it in the city anyway.”

  The sounds of football reached him from the living room. Al looked in. “Off early today?” Saturday was usually a big day for car sales.

  “Yeah, why not? Biz is doing great, but they don’t need me. I’m taking it easy these days.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad.”

  “I’m thinking I might retire one hundred percent, but I’d probably end up going into work anyway.” Gregarious Ray MacDonald thrived on his many long-time local friends and, a natural salesman, loved making new friends, not to mention money. “Hey, Al, why don’t you come on with me? I’ll make you a partner. Hell, I’ll give you the business. I’ll work for free.”

  “I don’t know, Pop. Selling cars? I’m not sure I’d be much good at that.” Al plunked down on the other end of the couch. “Who’s ahead?”

  “Bah. They’re playing that Terry Hanratty guy. Parseghian’s nuts. Have you seen Joe Theisman?” Notre Dame was his father’s favorite team. “Anyway, you wouldn’t have to do sales. I got good guys for that. I’m talking about managing the business. Expanding, even.”

  “Hmm. That might be different.”

  They watched the game in comfortable silence. Al agreed with his father’s occasional outbursts over penalties, sacks, scores, and what he considered bad play calling. Meanwhile, in his head, he reviewed his conversation with Regina. Raised by her sister because her mother was overcome by grief. He thought about what she’d said about how the murder—he was beginning to think of it as “the murder”—had ruined her life. Because it cost her her mother. He could sort of understand that. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have his mother unable to care for him. His mother alive, unharmed, and unavailable? He could see how that might be felt as a devastating rejection.

  His father was shouting at the officials, occasionally swearing, provoking protest from Al’s mother in the kitchen.

  At the next commercial break, Al spoke low enough that his mother wouldn’t hear. “Hey, Dad, when that Hannon girl died, why did anybody think it was murder?”

  “Like I said, they had a killer in Richmond. So they hooked it up. Figured it was part of a pattern.” When his father was sober, his grammar improved somewhat.

  The game resumed, and Al tried to make sense of what his father had said. There was a serial killer in Richmond. A girl drowned a hundred miles away.

  Between plays, Al said, “But if the murders were in Richmond, why would they think her death was connected?”

  “The guy they suspected worked in Richmond. Came home on the weekends. All the murders in Richmond were during the week. The Hannon girl was killed on a weekend.”

  His mother appeared in the doorway. “They never had any proof she was killed though.” She tipped her head at the TV. “You boys want me to hold dinner until that’s over?”

  “Naw, those crooked refs are throwing the game.” Ohio State was ahead by a touchdown.

  Al decided he wouldn’t bring up the murder—no, the death—again. He wanted to help Regina, but he wasn’t sure this was helping her. They moved to the dining room, and Al concentrated on the meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

  Then unexpectedly, when his mother left the room to fetch ketchup, his father said, “Well, plus, the Hannons accused him.”

  Al stopped his fork halfway to his mouth.

  Ray shouted to the kitchen, “What was that guy’s name? The one they said killed the girl?”

  His mother came back in the dining room and plunked the ketchup in front of her husband. “Titus Rawley.”

  “No, Tiberius Rawley. They as good as accused him of murder in public. Made a big scene about it. They were the ones that connected it with Richmond. He lived there, girls died. Came back here, and another girl dies. The Hannons demanded an investigation.”

  “Really!”

  “Oh yeah. I’ll tell you, when the Hannons want something investigated, you can bet something’s gonna happen.”

  His mother said, “The family was just wild with grief, Al.”

  “Back then,” Ray continued, “they didn’t have the methods they do now. I mean, I guess they had fingerprints, but that’s about it. Anyway, it was right after the war. Everybody coming home. Lot of distraction.”

  Al mused, “So the Hannons were convinced he did it.” He remembered Ree saying that her sister Mary had lied when she made it sound as though the death had never been investigated as a murder. He’d thought Ree was overreacting, but now he wondered.

  His father stopped eating long enough to reach for salad. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago, and I didn’t pay that much attention. But that boy was in some hot water for a while, you better believe it. Lost his job cutting grass in Richmond. Nobody wanted him around their neighborhood after all that.”

  They ate in silence for a bit.

  Then Ray resumed. “He came up with an alibi for the drowning, and I don’t think they ever got anything on him for the Richmond murders either.”

  There was another moment of silence. His mother’s meatloaf was as good as her spaghetti. The green beans and salad were from the garden.

  Then Ray said, “It was a rotten thing, those little girls killed that way.”

  His mother nodded, for once able to agree with her husband. “It was an ugly, ugly business.”

  Al asked, “Where is he now?”

  Each looked to the other for an answer.

  Ray spoke first. “I don’t know what happened to him after that. I think he disappeared.”

  “He was free to go, I suppose.”

  Later that evening, Al lay on the bed in his room, hands folded behind his head, puzzling over the new version of Ree Medina. Regina Hannon. Same sweet smile, same blue eyes and peachy-creamy skin. Same pretty girl but a whole new story. A girl given away to her sister as a child.

  Al searched his memory of their relationship leading up to her disappearance and replayed everything he’d learned in the last two days, trying to align Ree-Regina’s double image. The night of the prom, he’d been completely blindsided. Never dreamed she wouldn’t be there when he went to pick her up. Was baffled when she never came back to school. Hurt that she hadn’t told him she was leaving, hadn’t said goodbye. At the time, he’d been aware only of his own shock and humiliation.

  With the distance of eight years, knowing he couldn’t have been a factor in what she did—or what had happened to her—he recalled that there always had been a barrier he couldn’t cross. At the time he didn’t question it, but now, from an adult perspective, he felt reasonably sure that he had known her better than anybody else at school. Yet he didn’t know the first thing about her family or her life at home. How could he not? He had talked to her every day in class, in the halls, walking home from school on days when she stayed for Latin club.

  He talked freely about his family, and she listened with great interest and asked a lot of questions, but she wouldn’t even mention hers. She gave him not-so-subtle signals that certain topics were off-limits. She’d spe
ed up or slow down, change the subject, notice something, remember something, clam up. He’d sensed that she’d retreat forever out of reach if he pressed the issue, so he’d respected her boundaries. Nothing about herself. Had he sensed trouble under her cool exterior? He couldn’t say he had, though probably he should have.

  She was an artist, loved to paint and draw, he’d discovered early on. She joined the drama club, which gave him more days to walk her home.

  “Are you going to be in a play?”

  “No! I can’t imagine acting in a play. I’m working on the sets.”

  She explained that she was going to paint a mural as a backdrop on the back wall of the stage, which they’d covered in butcher paper. “Look.”

  She stopped and showed him her sketchbook. They stood shoulder to shoulder in thick woolen jackets against the midwinter cold. The play was Hamlet, but he recognized the rolling hills they lived in and mountains in the west.

  “Wow!” He took the sketchbook and held it out at arm’s length, then turned and looked at the mountains in the distance, bare and gray in winter. He lifted a corner of the page. “Can I look?”

  She dipped her head and smiled shyly. He paged through the sketchbook, through trees and plants pencil-drawn in minute detail. It amazed him, since he had never progressed beyond stick figures. She laughed off his exclamations, but she seemed pleased by his enthusiastic praise.

  The next time he walked her home, he spotted her sketchbook among the books she was carrying and asked if she had drawn anything new. She bit her lip, then smiled and showed him a whole new series of watercolors of trees leafing out and turning through the seasons. The mural was finished and she didn’t have any school activities that involved art, so he dared to suspect that she’d brought her sketchbook because she wanted to show him her latest work. It felt like a privilege, and he didn’t need to fake his admiration of her talent. She flushed with pleasure.

  She worried about math, and he’d helped her whenever she asked, just to be with her. She’d drink tea with him at lunch, and they’d put their heads together over proofs and formulas.

  They’d never exactly dated, but they’d once played tennis in the early spring. He offered to pick her up, and she hesitated, then suggested they meet at a halfway point between their houses and walk from there. They spent the whole time—two hours—chasing errant balls and laughing until they were doubled over.

  He knew she’d never dated anybody else. She was famous for turning down dates. He’d heard that from his brother and his friends, who were athletes, popular, big men on campus. Phil’s jerk-friend Stan called her Miss Snooty Medina. Jealous! Big brawny jock Stan the Stud was jealous of Phil’s dopey younger brother, Al. Stan nicknamed him Dork and called him a mamma’s boy. Remembering, Al had to laugh. How galling for poor Stan, that Ree wouldn’t look at him, that she preferred Al.

  She never let him come into the cottage. She always stopped at the gate in a way that warned him off—she’d slip in and close it and back away quickly, so there was no question of any physical contact. He got a glimpse of a man once when he walked her home. He asked if that was her father and she acted as though she hadn’t heard the question and withdrew, so he dropped it.

  April turned to May, and the upcoming junior prom was all anybody wanted to talk about. Ugh, Al and Ree agreed between classes.

  But then Al said, tentatively, “We could go together.” As if they could both escape the peer pressure that way. He held his breath while she considered.

  “But I don’t know how to do those dances,” she said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I don’t even like that music.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What do you like?”

  They discovered they both loved classical music. Bach for him, Debussy for her. They both loved Mozart.

  “But maybe we could learn to dance,” he persisted. “Then we wouldn’t be the only ones who didn’t go to the prom.”

  “We wouldn’t be the only ones,” she said. “But okay.”

  So she asked the girls she knew about the dances, and he asked his brother, then they met in the park to practice. It was cool for May that day, wet gray clouds rushing overhead, the ground soft from heavy rains. He brought a transistor radio, and they collaborated on how they were supposed to do the Stroll, the Jitterbug, the Hand Jive. All of which they agreed made them feel ridiculous.

  “I’d rather waltz,” she said. “Do you know how?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll show you. Frank taught me at a wedding.”

  “Frank who?” Al asked in alarm.

  “My uncle.”

  Soon they were whirling among the trees, talking about the balls in Jane Austen’s books. Then they made up what they thought the dances in the books were—reels with changing partners, for which they used trees—and play-acted until they collapsed on the ground, breathless from laughter. He reached for her hand, but she’d already jumped up, and he got only leaves and dirt.

  She was brushing off debris, but he had landed in mud, and she laughed at him. Then he got a look at her back. They were both muddy. They screamed with laughter, but something crossed her face and she said she had to go.

  At the cottage, as she slipped past the gate, he caught her hand and held on. She looked back uncertainly, but the warmth was still there. He made a silly bow and kissed her hand. She burst out laughing, curtsied, looked back at him one last time. Then she went inside the cottage.

  And slammed the door.

  Not long after, she disappeared. He knew some people thought she’d done something. It was a small town, Christian, conservative. In those days, girls were responsible for what happened to them.

  He squirmed. There might be something dark in all this. Was it connected somehow to the murder that was not a murder that happened so long ago? He shook his head. That didn’t make sense. The night he was thinking about was something like fifteen years after the murder.

  He lay a long time replaying that memory, still wondering. What was going on with you, Ree?

  12

  The Idyll

  Regina woke with a jolt at the distant sound of the heavy front door closing and looked at her watch to see how long she’d slept. Frank’s voice floated up to the attic, hale and hearty, greeting someone. Regina combed her hair, changed into a light, flowered sundress with a hem well below her knees, and ventured downstairs, where she walked in on a hushed conversation.

  Frank said, “He’s leaving the house to all the children equally.”

  “So we sell it and divide between us.” Pace.

  Fran piped up. “So that’s Pace and me, Edith and Beau, Mary and Robert—”

  “To the children, not their spouses,” Frank corrected her.

  “The five of you then.”

  “Six.”

  Fran counted fingers. “Frank, Mary, Edith, Pace, Bebe…”

  Mary looked up, saw Regina hanging back in the doorway, and smiled. “And Ree.”

  “Oh, of course.” Fran tipped her head and added, kindly enough, “And Regina. You’re so much younger, I have trouble getting it through my head that you’re the same generation.”

  Regina folded her arms. “Does Alice know that you plan to put her in a nursing home?”

  Looks that Regina didn’t understand passed around. As though a silent discussion were being repeated in everybody else’s mind, even Fran’s.

  “It’s a private retirement home. Very nice.” That was Edith, calm and cool, reproach undetectable in her tone, but Regina heard it anyway.

  Regina said, “Surely she doesn’t want that.”

  Bebe flounced in her seat, willing enough to voice what Regina felt all the others thinking. “You’ve come here, what, once since you were old enough to leave? They never hear a word from you. So what do you care?”

  Mary murmured what was, for her, a firm rebuke. “Bebe.”

  Bebe flushed.

  Edith typically took Mary’s
side. “It’s a lot of work if she stays here, too much for Mary.”

  Fran said brightly, “I’ve heard Westover Hall is a lovely place. A beautiful old antebellum plantation house.”

  Pace seconded this. “Mrs. Cooper and Sam Jones are both there. They have quite a lively social life. It would be good for Alice. It’s what she used to enjoy.”

  Mary left for the kitchen, and Regina followed. “What can I do?”

  Mary opened the refrigerator. “It’s all done. You can put the salad on the table.” She handed it to Ree.

  Fran appeared. “How does Mary find so much to do? She thinks of everything. If you try to help, she says it’s all done, but she keeps right on working.”

  The dining room was shadowy with lace curtains pulled across the windows against the brilliance of a sunny late afternoon. Regina placed the salad bowl on the table and pulled the curtains open. The line of tree trunks stood out against the depth of the woods.

  Mary glanced in, and her eyes rested on the curtains momentarily. It was enough. Quickly sensing her mistake, Regina pulled the curtains shut just in time. Alice joined them, still wearing the teal silk suit she’d worn to the hospital that afternoon. Her hair was arranged in a silky twist, silver wisps framing her face, youthful for her sixty-seven years, hauntingly beautiful. Eyes an improbable sapphire blue. Edith, Pace, and Fran drifted in behind her, followed by Frank, talking about people they’d run into at the hospital. Pace held Alice’s chair. No one sat until she was settled.

  They all, of one accord, looked toward William’s unoccupied seat at the head of the table, then at Frank and fell silent.

  He bowed his head and said the family grace that William had always said, adding at the end, “And we pray especially for thy servant William. In Jesus Christ Our Lord, amen.”

  Amens were murmured around the table.

  “I thought he looked better this afternoon,” Fran offered brightly.