by Wendy Webb
Jess Stewart was standing behind his mother, grateful that the lake, or the strange creature in it, had given this baby to him. That’s the way his five-year-old mind interpreted the events of the day. He had been called down to the lakeshore in the fog to receive a gift; it was that simple. He had been chosen to save her, and the way he saw it, she was his responsibility now. He didn’t tell his parents, or hers, about this. They didn’t need to know.
Over the next few years, Jess watched as baby Adelaide, or Addie, as everyone called her, grew. He watched as her mother pushed her into town in the baby buggy. He watched as those dogs, Polar and Lucy, pulled her around on a sled in the winter. He watched Addie take her first steps. He watched as she played in her backyard while he was walking to school. By that time, she was watching him, too.
CHAPTER THREE
Kate opened her eyes and found herself in a bedroom. Crisp morning light streamed in through a six-paned window that was open just a bit, half-covered by a white lace curtain. Kate watched from her bed as the curtain began to billow in the breeze, slowly, delicately. She was mesmerized by the way it was dancing and swaying, lifted here and there by the wind.
Her eyes drifted around the room. A dark dressing table with a bench, two drawers on each side and a rounded mirror above it. A silver hairbrush and hand mirror on the vanity. I’ve always wanted a silver hairbrush, she thought.
Kate wanted to walk to the mirror and gaze into the glass, but she couldn’t. Something held her back. Instead, she snuggled deep beneath the quilts, one red, the other a feathery white. Kate felt an utter contentment that she had not recently known, if ever. This feels good.
The room was mostly white. Wooden walls painted white, a white ceiling. Dark-wood floors with wide planks. A colorful area rug that looked as though it was braided from old rags. A small bedside table was next to her, and on it was a collection of small rocks, a slim hardcover book, a pitcher of water, and a glass.
The smell of lilacs surrounded her.
“How is my beautiful wife this morning?” The sound of a man’s voice, a voice she had never heard but somehow knew intimately, broke Kate’s meditation.
Looking up, she saw a figure standing in the doorway. He was holding a large vase filled with purple and white lilacs, Kate’s favorite flower. So fragrant, so delicate, so fleeting.
The man was tall, with dark hair and eyes. Oh my goodness, he’s handsome. She had never seen his face, but somehow he was most familiar. In one glance, she saw a small boy, a teen, a young adult, and a grown man—all the faces of this man’s various ages were there, in one moment, as though she had known him his entire life.
“Your wife is happy to open her eyes and see her handsome husband,” a voice said, and Kate realized it was she who was speaking. But it was not her voice. And she hadn’t intended to say anything of the kind.
What’s happening? Kate thought, somewhere deep inside, somewhere almost unreachable. Where am I? Where is Kate? Am I still here? She had the sense of losing herself, falling deeply into the soul of another, all the while smiling at this man.
“Look what’s in bloom.” He smiled back at her, holding out the vase. He set it on the vanity and slipped into bed alongside Kate.
She felt him next to her. His scent . . . Ivory soap?
“I thought I’d pick some flowers for my wife on this fine morning,” he murmured quietly. Wife? The word stung Kate’s ear. “I love you. I love you so much, my darling girl.”
“That’s a handy thing.” Kate heard her own delighted laughter. “Considering how much I love you, it wouldn’t do to have you anything but besotted.”
He rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one arm. His face was extraordinarily beautiful. Dark with light behind the eyes.
Oh, I could get used to this, Kate thought.
“What will we do today, then?” he asked her. “The morning is fast disappearing while my lazy girl sleeps. We have a whole Saturday with nothing before us. Care for a boat ride?”
“Perhaps later.” Kate smiled. “Now, I’d like to just lie here for a few more minutes with a man who came bearing flowers.”
“Always the sensible girl,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
She closed her eyes, buried her face in his neck, and was suddenly overwhelmed with a love the likes of which she had never felt.
Inside of herself, deep in a place that Kate could barely reach, she was crying. It was never like this with anyone, not even with Kevin, not even in the beginning. She had never felt this feeling of love, the one she had in her dream. This is what true peace feels like, she thought. This is what it is to be where one’s soul resides.
Kate opened her eyes and found herself alone in the white room. She got out of bed and walked to the mirror. A strange reflection stared back at her, another woman’s face, yet it was somehow familiar. She ran a hand through a long mane of deep-auburn hair, tangled and wild from sleep. She looked into the violet eyes and touched the ribbon on the collar of her white dressing gown. Where had she seen it before?
Kate’s eyes shot open and she sat up in bed. Not the same dream again. It had been recurring for three weeks, since the night of her birthday.
She didn’t want to think about that night right now. Instead she stretched and glanced out the window, noticing that the sun was high in the sky. Midday? What am I still doing in bed? As she swam toward full consciousness, the realization hit her: The body on the beach. I’ve been dreaming about a dead woman who has just washed up on the beach of my parents’ house.
Kate closed her eyes and shuddered, burying her own face in the pillows as though she was a child again, when the simple act of shutting her eyes could block out the most painful of events. Then she heard voices in the kitchen: her parents, Fred and Beverly, and Johnny Stratton.
She slipped a sweatshirt over her head and padded down the hallway into the kitchen, squinting in the bright light of day.
“Well, there’s my Katie,” Fred chirped as Kate took a seat at the table.
“What in the world happened?” Kate coughed into her sleeve.
“Honey, you fainted on the beach back there,” Fred told her.
“But I just woke up in bed,” Kate said, frowning. “How . . . ?”
“Johnny and I got you up to the house.”
“Up all those rickety stairs?” Kate’s hands flew to her mouth.
“Aw, you’re not too heavy for this old man.” Fred smiled.
“Especially when it’s me who does most of the carrying,” Johnny said.
Chuckles all around. It seemed to Kate that everyone was in extraordinarily good spirits, considering the fact that they had just found a dead body. Two dead bodies. But an uncomfortable silence fell among them, and Kate knew the liveliness was just for show.
“I was out all of this time?” Kate asked, searching her mind for a memory that would not materialize.
Johnny and Fred shot each other a look. “You were sort of, well, delirious, you might say, when we got you back into the house,” Fred said. “Mumbling all sorts of crazy things. Your mother thought bed was the best place for you.”
“How long ago was that?” Kate asked, looking at the stovetop clock.
“An hour or so,” Johnny said, clearing his throat.
“And you’re still here?” Kate asked.
“Honey,” Beverly said, pouring Kate a cup of coffee, “Johnny’s going to have to ask you a few questions about the discovery down on the beach this morning.”
Kate took a long sip, careful to steady her shaking hands. “What kinds of questions?”
“You seemed to recognize her, is all,” Johnny said slowly. “Well, that’s not quite all. You seemed to know the baby was there. Neither of us had seen it, until you pulled her dress away.”
Johnny waited for Kate’s response to the question he didn’t pose. She looked at him, and then from one parent to the other, but said nothing.
“Do you know any more about this, Katie?”
Johnny asked, finally. “Are you mixed up in this thing in any way?” Johnny scratched his head and fidgeted in his chair.
Kate looked around the room at these faces she’d known all her life. They knew, just like everyone in town knew, she’d been having a rough time of it lately. She had moved back into her parents’ house because Kevin, her husband of five years, had had an affair. With a much younger woman in the newspaper office where they all worked. The cliché of it would have been enough to make Kate gag if the devastation of it all hadn’t imploded her world.
She had left Kevin and their house and everything in it—except her beloved Alaskan malamute—and come home to regroup and get her life back together. The whole sordid mess was common knowledge. Nobody had escaped hearing about—or just plain hearing—the loud confrontation between Kevin, Kate, and Valerie—the other woman—at the Jackpine Tavern on the night of Kate’s birthday. A thing like that kept the gossip mill running for months in a small town.
What had Johnny just asked her? “I’m sorry, John. What?”
“I asked what you knew about this, Kate, if anything,” Johnny said, and the gentleness in his voice was enough to break her heart.
What could she say? She couldn’t very well tell the sheriff that she had been dreaming about the woman who had washed up on the beach—she’d sound like a lunatic. And she was certainly not going to talk about what had really happened out on the beach, that she had looked at the dead woman and seen herself lying there. It was as though she had stumbled across her own dead body on the beach, and more horrifying than that, her baby’s.
She wasn’t going to tell them she nearly died of grief at seeing the baby’s sweet face, so silent, so lifeless. Had she not fainted, she surely would’ve snatched the baby out of the dead woman’s arms and held it close to her chest, the way a mother would. No, it was better not to tell anyone about that.
But she had to say something. The three of them sat there, looking at her, waiting. Kate opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.
“I’m going to lay this right on the table for you folks,” Johnny said. “Traffic tickets, DUI arrests, minor offenses—those are the kinds of things I can make go away. But something like this? A woman and her baby, dead?”
“Now, John, you’re not insinuating Katie’s involved in this,” Beverly broke in, much to Kate’s relief.
Now she had a minute to think. This was insane, all of it. How could she explain what she had done on the beach, that she had been grasping for the baby when she shouldn’t have known—didn’t know—there was a baby?
“I’m not insinuating anything,” Johnny said, watching Kate intently. “It’s just, the way you went after her like that. We had to drag you off her, before you fainted. My people are going to be investigating this thing, Katie. Better that I know now if there’s anything more to know. I’m on your side, here, honey. If you are involved in this in any way, if you know this woman or have ever seen her before, you need to tell me now.”
Johnny went on, “Just so that we’re clear. You are not making a statement here. We’re just old friends talking over coffee at the kitchen table. Nothing you say right now can or will be used against you. But if you know anything, anything, tell me now. I do not want to find out about it days or weeks down the road. If you’d like to call a lawyer, though, we can do this by the book.”
Kate finally found her voice. “I don’t need a lawyer. If I could be of any help to you, I would. But I really don’t know anything more than what I saw, what we all saw. I was in the house doing the crossword puzzle. I heard Sadie barking. I knew Dad had taken her with him that morning, and I got worried. Sadie doesn’t bark like that for no reason. So I went down to the beach to see if he was okay.”
Fred smiled at his daughter.
“And that’s the first time you saw the body?” John led her.
“Yes, that’s the first time I saw the body,” Kate stumbled over her words. “I’d never seen the woman before.” The lie stung on her lips.
“And the baby?” Johnny took a sip of his coffee.
“I can’t explain that,” Kate said, shaking her head. “It was something about the way the woman’s arm was hidden under the folds of her dress. I saw . . . I noticed . . . I don’t know. A lump or something. I was really upset by the sight of her and I had this feeling. I guess you’d call it intuition. My instincts took over. I had the feeling something else—someone else—was there. I can’t explain how or why.”
It was mostly the truth. She looked around at the three concerned faces, all nodding.
“That’s really all there was to it,” she concluded.
Johnny put down his coffee cup with a sense of finality. “I’m going to leave it at that for now,” he said to Kate. “But I’ve got a dead woman and her baby on their way to the morgue, and it’s my job to find out who they are and what happened to them. Just so you know, I am going to need to get a formal statement from both of you, Kate and Fred, but we don’t need to do that now. You’ve all been through quite an ordeal today.”
“Thanks, John.” Fred patted his old friend on the back. Such are the perks of raising a family in the small town where you, your parents, and your grandparents were raised, he thought.
Fred and Johnny had grown up together, played on the same Little League baseball teams, vied for the same girls in high school. If they’d lived in another place, a bigger city, Kate certainly would have been hauled to the police station and questioned because of her peculiar behavior on the beach that morning. That’s all she’d need.
“All right, then. I’ve got to get back down to the station to see if they’ve ID’d her,” Johnny said. “I don’t recall any missing persons reports about a woman and a baby from around these parts, but we don’t know where this lady might have come from.”
Kate’s mother reached across the table and squeezed her daughter’s hand.
“And Kate”—Johnny turned to her as he was on his way out the door—“this goes without saying, but don’t leave town.”
“Am I in trouble here?” Kate asked him, standing up. “I mean, seriously, John. This is crazy. I faint at the sight of a dead body, and now I can’t leave town?”
“You’re not in trouble,” he said to her. “But we are going to need to get your statement sooner rather than later. You leaving town isn’t going to look good to those who do the looking.”
“But I was planning to go to Wharton for a few days,” she said, referring to a small tourist town some fifty miles down the shoreline. “Can I still do that?”
“Taking your cell phone?” Johnny asked her. Kate nodded. “Then, okay. As long as I know where you’ll be.”
Kate pushed her chair away from the table, said goodbye to the sheriff, and walked out onto the deck, her giant malamute, Alaska, at her heels.
“Come on, Lassie girl,” she called to the dog. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They headed down the staircase toward the beach. Put it behind you. It’s over. She stopped and stared at the spot where they had found the body, remembering the sight of the woman’s hand grasping at the shore. Her slight smile. The baby. Alaska howled and scratched at the wet sand, digging in deep and pulling Kate away, down the beach, toward different things.
As he drove back to the station, Johnny Stratton felt his heart pounding in his chest. By all rights, Kate Granger should’ve been sitting in the back seat of his squad car. If it had been any other person, any other family, the scene on the beach would’ve been probable cause to hold her for questioning, at the very least. Johnny shook his head. He knew too much. He knew that Kate had recently left her husband because of his infidelity. That news was all over town. And he knew, from her father’s own mouth, how distracted and upset and distant Kate had been these past few weeks.
And now these bodies—a beautiful young woman and what looked to be a newborn. Johnny could barely formulate the thoughts that were simmering on the edges of his mind. Not Katie Granger. He had been at her ba
ptism. Her first communion. Her wedding. He had known her father all his life. Was there any possibility that she was mixed up in this ugly scene? The very thought of it produced a bitter taste in Johnny’s mouth. Like blood.
He dialed his cell phone. “Pick up Kevin Bradford. I want to see if that bastard can ID these bodies. No, I won’t take his word for it. I want a polygraph. And I want a sample of his DNA to check against the baby’s. I don’t care, Howard. I want him to submit to it all voluntarily. No warrant, no lawyers, no nothing. Do you hear me?”
Johnny turned his phone off and threw it across the car seat. He wasn’t going to waste any time finding out whether or not his best friend’s daughter had anything to do with this.
CHAPTER FOUR
As Johnny was questioning Kate’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Kate was setting her rowing shell in the water and climbing into the delicate boat, taking care not to step through its paper-thin bottom. She had tried running for a time in the midst of her problems with Kevin in an effort to shave off the twenty-some pounds she had put on since their wedding, as though a newly svelte body might help things. But running only felt good when she stopped. With rowing, Kate felt just the opposite. Every stroke, every push felt fantastic. She couldn’t get enough of skimming atop the water’s glassy surface, stroking, pushing, pulling her way along. Sometimes she spent two or three hours out on the secluded bay, until her body simply couldn’t take any more. The act of rowing gave Kate a feeling of power and control that she had never known. Not to mention it took care of those twenty pounds.
It was also a way to commune with the lake, alone in a small boat low on the water. Kate loved being so near to it. Kayaking gave her the same feel, the closeness to the lake, but for Kate, kayaking was hard work. Rowing was a meditation, by necessity. Thoughts couldn’t wander to the latest celebrity gossip or to a song played over and over in your head or to an especially cruel word from your beloved as he walked out the door. While rowing, Kate’s mind needed to stay focused on the motion of it or she’d end up face first in the water. The hypnotic rhythm—pull, skim, push—over and over again, cleared the random thoughts from her mind and lulled her into a sense of peace. She needed it today.
