Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  Regina’s voice sounded calm to her own ears. “It’s Ree Hannon.” She had never called herself that before. “Can you come out to the house? Something happened.”

  She returned the phone to its place in the hall and withdrew to the study to wait.

  Mary appeared at the door. “Ree, are you all right?” Before Regina could reply, Mary added, the familiar note of supplication in her voice, “You can’t ask me to take care of her and then expect me to tell my husband he can’t come in for lunch.”

  Eyes burning, Regina said in a low, harsh whisper, “How could you tolerate her, how could you take care of her, how could you lie for her, deceive me, make excuses for her?”

  Mary fell back a step. “What?” Almost inaudibly.

  “You have to know what she did.” She watched Mary’s face struggle through denial, evasion, and distress. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “I didn’t know anything.”

  “Ach! Didn’t you? And now? After what happened today?”

  Pleading, she said, “Ree, she was my mother. I know she wasn’t a mother to you, but she was mother to me.” Mary closed the study door and spoke softly. “She was distant and useless and self-centered, but she was also sweet and just so, so… I don’t know, the sun rose and set on her. For all of us.”

  “So when her daughter drowned and Alice was the only one there, just like when her sister drowned and she was the only one there, you figured it was bad luck. Is that really all you knew or suspected?”

  “What could I do?”

  “And what did Papa know?” Close to tears. “Stop lying to me, Mary. Please. What did he know? What did you know?”

  Both were whispering.

  “I didn’t know anything. I—worried. I didn’t know, but oh, it was too awful to think.”

  “What about Papa?”

  “I don’t know what he knew. Or suspected.” She sagged back against the door. “He didn’t want you left alone with her.”

  Her voice back to normal, Regina said, “But he didn’t do anything about it.”

  “What could he do? She was his wife. He had five other children.”

  “Six,” Regina cried. “He had six other children!”

  Mary whirled away from the door with her hands around her head as if to ward off a blow. “We tried to protect you! We did protect you.”

  Seconds later, Robert yanked the door open and shouted, “What’s going on in here?”

  “You get out!” Regina said.

  “You are nothing but trouble, you have never been anything but trouble.” Jabbing his finger in the air, he closed on her. “You upset your mother, then you call your sister over here and yell at her. Run around with men when your mother’s husband is on his deathbed, spread lies about me and poison your dying father’s mind.”

  Regina drew herself up. “You filthy-minded hypocrite. I said get out of here.” She stepped forward, made a shooing motion with both hands, and when he stuck out his chest, she pushed. Knew instantly she’d gone too far.

  His mouth tightened like a drawstring, and he grabbed her wrist. “Why, you dirty little whore.”

  He yanked and twisted, pulled her off her feet, and threw her toward the front door. She sprawled on the floor, head knocking on the coffee table, and cried out in pain.

  “Hey!” Laura stood in the entryway, her hand slowly unsnapping the top of her holster. “Hands up over your head, buddy.” Dead calm and dead serious.

  Regina climbed to her feet, backed away from Robert, and saw the scene from Laura’s point of view. Alice fluttered in the archway of the dining room, hands at her chest. Mary held on to the study doorjamb as if to keep from falling.

  Robert backed away, hands up placating, slipping into character, an ingratiating and regretful smile playing on his lips. He nodded at Regina. “She’s hysterical. She’s—” He made a you-can-see-how-she-is gesture, lowering his hands.

  Laura, calm center of the storm, met Regina’s eyes with sympathy and threw a look of unconcealed dislike at Robert. “Now what’s going on? And I’m not asking you,” she added, when Robert made to speak. She flicked her eyes at Regina’s forehead. “Did he do that to you?”

  “No.” Regina raised her arm to point at Alice. “She did. She tried to kill me.”

  Alice caved in with a wounded cry.

  Mary rushed to her mother’s side, uttering a shocked, “No, Regina, no, you can’t.”

  Robert shouted, “You’re a crazy woman! A she-devil, Jezebel!” He turned to Laura, seething. “Do you see what we’re dealing with here? Can you see what she is?”

  Laura pressed down with both hands. “Hold on now. Everybody calm down.”

  “It was an accident that happened here today.” Robert pointed up and down at Regina, who was suddenly conscious of her soiled clothes, wild hair, and bloodied hands. “Look at her. You can see this is a very troubled young woman. Do you hear what she’s saying about Mrs. Hannon? This lovely, elderly woman who has the misfortune to have given birth to this serpent child?”

  Laura raised her voice over all of them. “Hold on. Everybody hold on.”

  Regina was dismayed to see the beginnings of perplexity on Laura’s face.

  To Alice, who was unable to be still or quiet, Laura said, “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  Mary shushed Alice.

  Laura said to Mary, “See if you can calm her down. And you,” she said to Robert. “You calm down too.” Turning last to Regina, she said, “Why don’t you come out here where we can talk like last time?”

  Regina didn’t move. “No. We can talk in here. Mary can take care of our mother, and him, I want him out of here.”

  Her heart sped up as Laura pursed her lips, clearly beginning to wonder if Robert wasn’t right.

  Robert seized his advantage, mustering a tone of calm reason. “You can see for yourself what a state she’s in. Her father died, her mother is in a frail state, and she’s running roughshod in the family home she’s coveted for all these years. She’s a danger to her mother and a worry to the whole family. You saw how it was the other day. The whole family was in mourning and she’s making wild accusations, bullying us all with lies. She puts on a sweet face to you, but the rest of us have hardly turned our backs before she starts making trouble for her mother.”

  After a moment of consideration, Laura said slowly, looking from Regina to Robert and back, “My department has a clear policy about domestic disputes. I’m not sure I can be involved in a family matter.”

  Regina stood her ground. “This house belongs to me. My father left it to me in his will. That’s not a family matter. It’s a matter of fact and law and public record.”

  Robert swiped at air. “He was an old man on his deathbed under vicious influence. I’ve told the family to contest that will. She’s his wife of fifty years.” He pointed at Alice, who had collected herself and now appeared the very image of forbearing beauty. Robert swept the air again. “He can’t just turn her out. How can a will like that be legal?”

  Laura pursed her lips. “I’m not a lawyer, but Virginia’s not a community property state. If the house was his before they married, then he can leave it to anybody he chooses, even after fifty years.”

  Robert swelled with fury. “I know a little law too, and there is such a thing as undue influence.”

  Ignoring him, Regina said to Laura, “He owned the house and left it to me. AND”—she glared at Robert—“I forbid him to ever come here again.” She appealed to Laura and pointed at him. “I want him out.”

  In the slice of time that followed, Mary said, “It’s true.”

  They all spun to look at her.

  “It’s all true. It’s her house now. She told him to stay away. It’s my fault. I let him in. I shouldn’t have.”

  All eyes turned to Robert, who glared at Mary, a low noise coming from his chest.

  Regina’s heart contracted. With sudden inspiration, she turned to Laura. “Did you ever find out anyth
ing about Marybeth Summers?” She felt but did not turn to see the impact of the name behind her.

  Laura cocked her head. “I did. You were right. And for that, there is no statute of limitations.” She turned to Robert. “You get on out of here.” She flicked a look from him to Mary and back. “You might want to be on your best behavior for a while.”

  He threw a look of scornful outrage at the three women and said to Alice, “I’m so sorry about what they’re doing to you, Mama. I’ll do my best to make it right. I’ll talk to the others.”

  He stopped at the door when Regina added, sharply, speaking to his stiffened back, “And the house where Mary lives is hers. My father left it to her. Not to both of you. To her. He knew what you are.”

  He slammed the door behind him.

  A soft noise escaped Mary, and she sagged into a chair. Regina was afraid to go to her.

  Laura said, “Are you okay?”

  Mary nodded, eyes wet, otherwise composed.

  After a long silence, Laura said, “This other matter.”

  28

  No More Running Away

  Al arrived at six, as planned. When Regina opened the door, the first thing he saw was an angry red wound on her forehead. She looked apprehensive and distraught, and behind her he saw a woman in a sheriff’s uniform.

  “Ree?” He reached for her hands and she gave them at the same time. “What happened?” As he spoke, he took in her disheveled clothes, a dress he recognized and liked but wrinkled and spotted with—blood? Her beautiful hair was wild. His grip on her hands tightened, then he took her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “Come in.”

  The oldest sister, Mary, stood behind the deputy. He saw no one else. With a quick glance around the house, he saw nothing amiss. Ree introduced him to the deputy, whose name was Laura. The name rang a bell—this must be the deputy Ree had been confiding in. Whatever they were doing, it was clear that Ree intended to include him. Good.

  He followed them into the living room, where the deputy sank into a wingback chair and picked up a clipboard and pen. Regina sat at one end of the sofa and, with her eyes, drew him to sit beside her. Mary took a nearby armchair.

  “I’m taking an initial statement,” Laura said. “We’re almost done.”

  Al turned to Regina who said, while he gently touched the wound on her forehead, “My mother hit me with an oar and tried to drown me.”

  “She what?”

  “I’ll tell you everything later.”

  Laura said, “Okay, I think we’ve been over most of it. You had your back turned though.”

  “Right. I was wading right at the edge where the bottom drops off. She was in the boat. I was backing out because I wasn’t in a bathing suit, I was just holding up my skirt, and I almost slipped into the deep part.”

  “But you didn’t see what she was doing.”

  “She was in the boat. I saw her get in, but then I was looking the other way, out across the lake.”

  “How big is this boat? Let’s go out there. I want to see where it happened.”

  Regina stood at once, as did Laura. Al rose, and Mary, slowly, got up too. Regina led the way through the hall, past the staircase, and out the door to the back porch, down wide wooden steps and across the lawn to the dock on the placid lake.

  Al caught up to Ree and asked, “Where is she now?”

  “In her room. Lying down.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “This afternoon at about one, maybe one thirty.”

  “She hit you with an oar?”

  Regina didn’t have a chance to answer. They had reached the dock and Laura resumed her line of questioning. “The boat was here? Like this?”

  “That’s how we found it, but she untied it and got in.”

  Laura made a note, asking while writing, “You were going out on the lake in the boat?”

  “She was. She didn’t ask me to come with her.”

  Laura looked toward the upstairs windows of the house. “Would she normally take the boat out on her own?”

  “She sometimes did.”

  “You’ve seen her do that before?”

  “I haven’t, no. Mary told me that she sometimes does.”

  They all turned to Mary, who said, “Yes, she sometimes did.”

  “She seems frail to be doing that.” Laura said this, and Al was having the same thought.

  “She’s not as fragile as she seems,” Regina said. “Physically. Mentally and emotionally, she’s not as normal as she seems.”

  Laura consulted her notes. “The boat was tied like this, but she untied it.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it get tied up again?”

  Regina hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  Laura looked at Mary, who answered resignedly, “It was loose.” She pointed toward the shore on the far side of the dock. “It had drifted from out beyond the dock back to the shore. Robert pulled it back and tied it up like that.”

  Laura wrote while the rest of them waited in silence. “So you saw her untie the boat and get in, but then you had your back turned.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then she hit me on the back of the head with the oar.” Regina felt the back of her head and winced. “There’s a lump. You can feel it.”

  She offered Laura her head, guiding her fingers until she winced again, and Laura said, “Got it. You sure do have a lump.”

  Al said to Regina, “Where?” She showed him and he gently traced the outline of an egg-shaped swelling.

  “But you didn’t see her do it?”

  “No, I had my back turned.” A trace of impatience. “It took me completely by surprise. It knocked me forward and I went over the edge. Look.” She kicked off her sandals, lifted her skirt, and waded to a point about ten feet from the shore, three or four feet from the side of the boat. The water came to mid-thigh. “Right here.” She pointed at something underwater. “It drops off. So I was about here, facing away like this. I pitched forward and went under.”

  “Okay, you were hit by the oar and it knocked you under.”

  Regina waded back to shore and shook out her skirt. “The oar didn’t hit me by itself.”

  “Right, I’m just saying that her version is that she lost her balance and fell and the oar hit you. You had your back turned.”

  “When I came up she hit me again here.” Indicating the side of her head. “She didn’t fall. She hit me a second time.”

  “And this time you saw her.”

  “No, I took in water when I went down the first time. I was gagging, I couldn’t breathe. But there’s no way it was an accident. She ran me down with the boat.”

  Laura stopped writing and looked at her.

  “When I went down the first time, the boat hit me.” Regina reached for the back of her shoulder. “I tried to get away from it but then it hit me again, here.” She touched the wound on her forehead. “The boat didn’t do that by itself. The second time she hit me, I went under again and took on even more water. I thought I was going to drown.”

  “The boat couldn’t have drifted over you if she had fallen?”

  “No, it didn’t drift over me.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “It hit me, twice, like she’d pushed off or maybe used the oar.”

  Laura held up a hand, placating. “I’m playing Devil’s advocate. You still hadn’t seen her, right?”

  “I came up again and grabbed the side of the boat. To get air. I couldn’t breathe, I’d taken in too much water. I grabbed the side of the boat like this.” She pantomimed grabbing the side of the boat and trying to pull herself up. “The boat tipped and she went in the water. I think she dived or jumped. It flipped the boat over me, I think.”

  Mary spoke unexpectedly. “It’s a wonder it didn’t land on you.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m telling you, she tried to kill me. She very nearly did.” After a moment of silence, she continued. “That’s not all. I swam o
ut away from the boat, but she was in the water with me and she tried to climb on me to keep me under.”

  Al reached for her impulsively. “You’re kidding!”

  “No!” She allowed him to pull her to him and slide his arms around her. She leaned into him, arms folded, and let him hold her while Laura wrote.

  Laura finished and looked up. “Again, Devil’s advocate, when people are in trouble in the water, they often do climb on another swimmer to try to save themselves. You know, they teach lifeguards that. It’s a danger when you try to rescue a drowning person.”

  Regina broke away from Al and strode out on the dock. “She was not drowning. She’s a strong swimmer.” At the end of the dock, she pointed at a spot a few feet beyond the end of the dock and a few feet off to the side. “She wasn’t in trouble and wasn’t swimming toward the shore. She swam from there”—she pointed back toward where the first blow occurred, then again to the spot beyond the dock—“to there. She was after me, trying to finish me off.”

  Laura was slow to respond. “But again, you didn’t exactly see all of this. Look, I believe you, but this can play two ways.” Regina started to protest and Laura cut her off, “Because so far, it’s your word against hers.”

  Regina returned and planted herself in front of Laura. “I was alone with her out here, yes. I’ve just inherited the house she’s lived in for fifty years. I told her she was welcome to stay but it’s my house, and I told her Robert couldn’t come here.” She glanced at her sister. “That means my sister won’t come, and Mary’s been her constant companion, her caregiver, and her favorite child.”

  No one spoke as the significance of her words sank in. Al and Laura both checked Mary, who was looking out over the water, expressionless. Seemingly unsurprised, Al noticed.

  “Now, here’s the thing,” Regina said, glancing at the upper story of the house and lowering her voice, as if her mother might hear. “My sister Eugenie was alone with her at this very dock when she was hit on the head and drowned.”

  Al froze, shocked, heard as from a distance that Laura said, “You think your mother drowned your sister.”