The Broken Lake (The Pace Series, Book 2)

by Shelena Shorts

  They were talking to Mr. Healey at the counter. I saw Mr. Healey dip his head and begin shaking it side to side. My thoughts drifted to Dawn and Danny, until I saw Danny come from the back carrying a small stack of items. Dawn.

  I walked right up to where the officers were. “Is Dawn okay?”

  “Yes, Dawn’s fine,” Mr. Healey answered. “It’s Ms. Mary.”

  Ms. Mary couldn’t have done anything wrong, that’s for sure. She was just a quiet, elderly woman who worked at the store. Then it occurred to me that Mr. Healey didn’t have a disappointed look on his face, he wore a shocked and saddened look.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Mr. Healey cleared his throat, but the younger, thin officer spoke up. “Ms. Mary was found dead in her home this morning. She was murdered.”

  My heart fluttered and my muscles tightened. Wes stepped forward and placed his hand on my back.

  I looked at Mr. Healey. “Oh, my gosh. Murdered? Ms. Mary?” At that point Wes put his hand on my elbow to steady me.

  Mr. Healey said, “Officer, I don’t understand. Why would anyone do that to her?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.” The officer reached out his hand toward Danny.

  “Are these her belongings?” Danny nodded and handed over her cubby items. “We’ll check these against the items her family says are unaccounted for.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  This time the rounder one spoke up. “We received a call this morning when her house alarm went off. Upon arrival, we found her dead.”

  It was all too much. This was the kind of stuff people see on TV. This didn’t happen to someone who worked in the same little bookstore where I worked. This was some sort of nightmare.

  The thin officer spoke up. “Speaking of this morning, do you mind telling us where you were?”

  I looked up, about to answer his question, but noticed his eyes were fixed on Wes.

  “Me?” Wes asked, confused.

  “Yes, you. I find it a bit odd that two major crimes have occurred in the last week involving people you are somehow connected with.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I snapped, switching from shocked sorrow to anger.

  “It’s okay, Sophie. The officers are just doing their job.” He squeezed my elbow and looked directly at them. “I was at a press conference this morning.”

  “Yes, the one that was televised live.” I added, just to be sure it was clear that Wes was in no way responsible for killing poor Ms. Mary.

  The officers nodded and wrote in their notepads.

  “Thank you for the information. Please call us if you can think of anything else.” The thinner one, Officer Petty, I had taken notice of his name tag by then, handed over a business card. Then they each gave a brief nod to Mr. Healey, Danny, and Wes, ignored me altogether, and walked out.

  I turned to Mr. Healey. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I know, Sophie. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Wes made a more sympathetic comment. “I don’t know who could be so cruel.”

  Danny added, “I know. It’s crazy.”

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’m going to reach out to her family. I know she has several daughters in the area.” Mr. Healey pressed his lips together, as if holding back emotion, and then walked toward the back room, leaving us to let the news sink in.

  “Ms. Mary worked here for twenty years.” Danny sighed. “She used to babysit us.”

  “I feel terrible.” In fact, I was starting to feel all cruddy again.

  “Do you want me to take you home?”

  I looked at Wes. “No, I’m okay. I just think it’s really tragic. She was so nice.”

  “Are you sure? I can take you.”

  He looked as if he didn’t want to leave, and I almost didn’t want him to, but I knew he couldn’t hang out with me at the store all day. “I’m okay. Really. You need to go to class. Pick me up when I get off. I’ll be all right.”

  He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “Call me if you need anything.” Reluctantly, he turned and headed for the door.

  I gave him a genuine smile, considering the circumstances, and turned to Danny. He appeared almost as shaken up as his father. “You okay?”

  He shook off the concern directed toward him. “Yeah, I’m all right, but it just won’t be the same around here. She kept my dad organized and me in check. We’ll miss her, that’s for sure.”

  I wanted to offer a hug, and then thought it might be awkward. Then I wondered who would hug him. I had never seen Danny with any girl. No one ever brought him lunch or dinner. I never saw him on his phone or texting or anything. And he was good-looking.

  Then again, before I met Wes, no one would’ve ever seen me with anyone, and I had been just fine. I still would’ve needed a hug if someone close to my family had died. Still, it would seem forced, so I just walked around and patted him on his shoulder gently. He turned and gave me a soft smile.

  Interrupting the awkward I’m-here-for-you-if-you-need-me moment was a gust of air as Dawn burst through the door. “What the hell, Danny? I’m not due in until 4:00.”

  “Well, little sis, Dad wanted you here, so he could tell—”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Dawn, will you shut your mouth for two seconds?”

  They were about to go back and forth in a sibling spat when I interrupted. “Ms. Mary died this morning.”

  Her mouth froze, her face flashed through the same expressions of confusion mine had, and then she asked almost the same questions.

  Needless to say, the afternoon was not a joy. It felt cold, sad, and empty in the store all day. It seemed that we were the least busy we had been all year, like the customers knew to stay away and give the store some healing time, only it made matters worse. No one wanted to make small talk or discuss the awful news, so we were silent most of the day.

  Finally, Mr. Healey went home early, and at closing time, I did too.

  It wasn’t surprising when my mother freaked out over the incident. By morning, she was actually considering moving. I had no choice but to fully engage in the conversation because she waited until I sat at the breakfast table with a bowl of cereal. No quick escape.

  “You know, Sophie,” she began, “I’m not sure living in this area suits us anymore.”

  “What? Are you kidding, Mom?”

  “Well, no. Think about it. Danger never followed you like it seems to be doing since we moved here.”

  “Danger did not follow me. Ms. Mary is the one dead, remember? It followed her to her house. Not to mine.”

  “But, Sophie, how many young girls your age can say they almost…” She elected not to finish that sentence. Instead, she shook off the thought. “I just think you’ve been too close to too many incidents involving crazy people for my taste. We wouldn’t move far. Maybe closer to the coast. Just somewhere new and fresh.”

  This was so like her. She’d always had the itch to try new places whenever she got bored, or didn’t like something about where we were living. Now that we had moved back to the place where I was born, where I had found Wes, I was not about to move again. Not a chance. Plus, I was eighteen. She couldn’t make me move, even if she wanted to.

  “Mom, I’m not moving anywhere. I like it here. And so do you, for that matter. And what about Tom? What happened to Ms. Mary was crazy, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  Which it didn’t. Danny had given Dawn and me details. The police said there had been a few reported break-ins in her neighborhood in the past few months. That was why Ms. Mary had installed the alarm system that alerted the police to the intruder. It was an unfortunate situation, and Ms. Mary would probably still be alive if she hadn’t been downstairs when the intruder broke in.

  I had heard all the “if onlys,” so I knew them well. If only Ms. Mary had been upstairs when the alarm sounded, she could’ve locked herself in her room until the police arrived
, and maybe the intruder would’ve taken what he wanted and fled without ever knowing she was there. If only it had been five or ten minutes later, Ms. Mary would have already left for work. But since she was downstairs, in the house, the police believed that the intruder panicked and strangled her. It was simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  My mom took a deep breath and a sip of her coffee. “It just makes me nervous. It’s been one thing after another. I don’t like it.”

  “Me either, but I like it here. I don’t want to move.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I think we need to be more careful, pay attention to what we do. I’m seeing how crazy this world really is.” She took a few more sips of her coffee and then her eyes went wide. “You know, I might get us an alarm too. I’d feel safer.”

  I finished my last bite of cereal, put my bowl in the sink, and quickly came up with an alternative. “Maybe. Or we could get a dog.”

  She pondered a minute. “A dog? That might not be a bad idea.”

  I knew she would probably forget about a dog or an alarm in a few days. This was just her typical whim. At least I hoped. An alarm would put a kink in Wes’ late-night visits. I wasn’t sure how I’d get around that. If she kept pressing the issue, I’d push for a dog for sure.

  The following Monday was Ms. Mary’s funeral. It was a small service at a little white church on a hillside overlooking the bay. At 9:00 a.m, I arrived with my mom and Tom, and Wes met us there. The high temperature was expected to be in the mid- to upper-60s, but the morning air felt even cooler. It was chilly enough for Wes that he wore a long black coat over his suit.

  Although the atmosphere was somber, I couldn’t help but smile at his handsome appearance. His coat was far enough open to reveal a black suit jacket and pale blue dress shirt, with no tie, peeking out at the center. His hair was back to normal, without the part, and slightly curled at the tips.

  “We match,” he noted, as I approached.

  I looked down and saw he was right. I had chosen a fitted navy blue quarter-sleeve dress that fell to my calves. The dress had a wide ribbon around the waistline that was the same pale blue as his shirt. Oddly, we looked like we were going to a homecoming dance. I smiled softly, getting that we-belong-together feeling, and reached up to give him a kiss.

  We filed into the church and sat near the back. I elected not to go up to the front and look into the open casket. I had no desire whatsoever to see Ms. Mary’s lifeless form. Some people believe the viewing gives them closure. Not me. Remembering what Ms. Mary looked like when she was alive was all the closure I wanted.

  The funeral service started out a little bitter, for which I couldn’t blame anyone. I would be angry too if my family member had been brutally murdered. Ms. Mary’s son read a letter, which challenged anyone who was considering taking someone else’s life to look inward and reconsider. He read about how the family missed their mother and grandmother, and could not understand why someone had taken away the best-hearted person they had known.

  The pastor preached a eulogy that piggybacked off the idea that this was not for us to understand, and then the momentum and mood quickly picked up when the pastor invited everyone to raise their faces toward heaven, because this was a celebration of a “homegoing,” a homegoing to heaven. By the end of the service, people were almost applauding.

  Strangely, I didn’t realize my situation until the interment. The only other funeral I’d attended had been my grandmother’s, and I had managed to block out the actual sadness of it. Maybe if I’d allowed the sorrow to come out then I would’ve accepted that a death had actually occurred.

  The small crowd of mourners gathered on the hillside beside the church. The bumpy slope made it difficult to walk in heels, so I clung to Wes the entire time. His hold on me as we walked was comforting, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  What was different was the weighted feel of Wes’ arm around me by the end of the service. He usually held on to me with a comforting and secure hold, but this felt different, heavy and limp. It was enough to cause me to look up at him. His face was pained and his head was tilted slightly to the side, as if he was having a hard time holding it up.

  I turned back to see what had him so entranced. Ms. Mary’s children had stepped up, one at a time, to toss a flower into the grave. When I looked back at Wes, I saw him blink slowly, releasing one small tear.

  I watched it roll all the way down his cheek without him flinching or attempting to wipe it away. By the time it dripped onto his jacket, I realized that Wes was not just crying for Ms. Mary. A brick pulled my heart to the ground as I turned back to the grave.

  In slow motion, the next flower left the hands of Ms. Mary’s loved one and disappeared into the deep hole where her body would lie forever. I was very sure at that moment that this hole resembled the ones where Amelia and Lenny lay. A hole similar to where Wes may have dropped a flower for Lenny. A hole that Wes would surely never want to see again. And, unfortunately, one that I wasn’t so sure I could avoid.

  I wrapped both arms around Wes’ waist, and tears escaped my eyes as I squeezed them shut. Wes pulled me to him in the firm hold that I remembered well and kissed me on the top of my head.

  I refused to open my eyes but instead pressed my face against his side, absorbing him and every ounce of hope I held on to and feared losing. In reality, we are such little beings, insignificant to the greater powers of the universe, and suddenly I felt like I had no right to defy fate. No right to think I could beat the odds to remain in that moment, forever, with the one I loved.

  I shook off all doubt, wanting to believe that a different future was meant for me. I willed it, even wished it. But an aggressive, overwhelmingly sad aura consumed me as I held on to him even tighter. And then, behind me, the last flower was tossed. I could almost hear it land six feet below the hand that had let it go.

  Chapter 7

  MAKING THE MOST

  The strange thing about what happened at the funeral was that neither Wes nor I talked about it afterward. Even though we both knew my uncertain future was hovering over us like a low, dark cloud, there was no need to discuss it.

  We tried to keep ourselves busy. I’d never eaten so much ice cream or seen so many movies in the two weeks following Ms. Mary’s death. We were constantly doing something until it turned into such a routine that we had to change up, or both of us would burst. It was his idea to expand our horizons. We had just finished eating takeout one evening at his house when he suggested it.

  “Let’s do something different,” he said.

  I was stuffing our trash back into the bags. “Like what?”

  “Like get away.”

  Tropical island? Was this it? I was beyond thrilled. “You mean, like, go away. For real?”

  “No, not go away. Get away. I want to take you somewhere. Not too far. Just somewhere different.”

  “I’d love to.” I curled up next to him on the couch, practically bouncing up and down on the cushions.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere. You pick.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No, I’ve picked where we’ve gone since the day we met. It should be somewhere you want to go. Pick a place.”

  “I’d love to see Kerry again, but that’s too far and too cold. Hmm.” I thought about it for a minute. “Fishing.” The weather had warmed up nicely by then, so it sounded perfect, but he laughed.

  “Fishing? Sophie, be for real.”

  “I am. We can’t really go to a tropical island. It’s too hot, and I don’t snorkel.”

  “You don’t fish either.”

  “Well, that’s because no one takes me. My dad and I used to fish all the time, until he left. I haven’t been since I was little. And it’s different.”

  Still unsure, but seemingly content, he answered, “Okay. Fishing it is.”

  “Yay!” I gave him a kiss, and he shook his head. “What?” I asked.

  “I h
ad no idea you were so outdoorsy.”

  “See, you don’t know everything about me after all.”

  The truth was, he did. I wasn’t all that outdoorsy, but I remember enjoying fishing. The only reason I was such an indoor girl now, was because I preferred to be holed up in the house after all the new places my mom moved us. Heck, for all I knew, I might have an outdoor girl waiting to burst out of me.

  He planned to pick me up at 8:00 Saturday morning, so I had to request off work, which I was hesitant to do since coverage would be thin. It turned out to be no problem. Mr. Healey had already hired someone new. Dawn said it was one of Danny’s new friends and he was scheduled to come in and train on Saturday anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal that I wouldn’t be there.

  I waited in the living room for him to pull up and when I heard a car, I snuck out without saying good-bye to my mother. She knew I was going fishing and it brought back memories of my dad that she’d rather not visit, so she didn’t ask too many questions.

  I opened the front door then almost shut it again, because a very intimidating vehicle was sitting where Wes’ car should’ve been. Just as I was about to step back into the house, Wes got out. Huh?

  I closed the door behind me and walked toward him. “What’s this?”

  “We can’t go camping in a Maserati.”

  “Who said anything about camping?”

  “Well, not overnight camping, but we are going to a campground. It’s where the best part of the lake is, and I can’t go four-wheeling to it in a sports car.”

  “So what is this?”

  He had taken my bag by then and tossed it into the back. “It’s my new car.”

  “New? You bought it? Where’s the other one?”

  “It’s at home.”

  “But why buy this? We could’ve taken my Jeep.”