Uncertain about what to do next, Wendy watched freshly fallen yellow birch leaves floating on the water, and her eyes teared up as she imagined sprinkling Teddy’s ashes on the lake, watching them disappear. She let herself take in the play of sunlight burning through the last of the morning fog, bright golden rays catching the stunning fall foliage. Although her cousins, who weren’t homeschooled or only children, whose parents weren’t divorced, didn’t give her credit for knowing anything practical, she knew her way around the lake.
She didn’t want to scatter Teddy’s ashes just anywhere. It had to be the perfect spot. She wasn’t going to rush her decision. If her dad or aunt got suspicious and beat down her door, her note should keep them from going totally nuts and bringing in search dogs or anything, even if they wouldn’t understand. Wendy knew she could tell her dad about her mission, but she didn’t want to—her sentimentality embarrassed her.
And the truth was, she didn’t want her father to help her scatter Teddy’s ashes. It was for her to do, on her own.
Feeling reenergized, she set the tin on top of the boulder, on a flat, shady spot where it wouldn’t fall. She’d leave it there until she’d picked out Teddy’s final resting place. She was so afraid of tripping on a tree root or something and dropping the tin, having the ashes dump out in the ferns or dead pine needles.
The spring.
She smiled, remembering it was one of Teddy’s favorite spots on the lake.
Ducking under a low hemlock branch, Wendy pushed through ferns until she came to a narrow path that would take her through the woods to the spring. The nature preserve had made a sign for it and carved out a little picnic area on the lakeshore, where hikers and paddlers could take a break, before or after hiking the hundred yards back up another path to the spring to refill their water bottles.
On a happier day, Wendy thought, she’d sit and watch the ducks that were often there, and dip her toes into the water. Teddy would come with her sometimes, and he’d leap off the rocks into the water. She pictured him paddling like mad, his tongue wagging. He’d scare the ducks, but he never meant to.
Maybe that was where she’d scatter his ashes.
As he dipped his paddle into the soft lake water, Ham felt almost like a normal tourist. He’d stopped at a wilderness outfitter, whose name and address he’d spotted in his Vermont guidebook, and found out about the small lake and the nature preserve out by Longstreet Landscaping. He’d had to be direct with some of his questions. No way around it. With Tatro’s escape in all the news, he wanted to get on with finding Deputy Longstreet and talking to her.
But everyone seemed to know she was involved in Tatro’s arrest, and what he’d done to her niece, and Ham didn’t want to attract attention to himself. He decided to rent a kayak—prove that his interest in the same lake where Deputy Longstreet owned land was purely coincidental, and all he wanted to do was to spend the day on a quiet lake that didn’t allow motor-operated watercraft.
He’d had to rent a roof carrier, too. He headed out to the nature preserve, alert for any sign of Deputy Longstreet’s campsite as he drove up the dead-end dirt road. He passed a small lake house, a cabin up on a hill on the other side of the road, then, back on the same side of the lake, a sign for a spring, a rustic old barn, another lake house, and, finally, the turnaround he’d read about in his guidebook, where he could leave his car and launch his kayak.
He hoped he’d be able to see the marshal’s campsite from the water.
The autumn scenery was breathtaking, and Ham was able to lose himself in the peace of a solitary paddle in an isolated Vermont lake. This was where he should have come to restore body and soul, he thought, not home to Texas, not into the middle of all the secrets he and his parents kept from one another.
The long, slender kayak was easy to maneuver, tracked well, forgiving of his lack of physical conditioning. But there was no wind, just a bit of fog to contend with, and it was dissipating fast. Ham paddled through a thick patch that hovered in the middle of the lake. When he came out of it, he was just ten yards from shore.
A girl was standing under a giant pine tree on a narrow, rocky point, mouth agape as she stared at him as if he’d just emerged from a cloud of doom, the devil himself.
Ham smiled and waved to her. “Good morning!” he called cheerfully, noticing another sign for the spring, this one on the lake, presumably to alert paddlers like himself. “I’m just stopping for water. That sign’s right, isn’t it? There’s a spring here?”
At first the girl looked as if she might bolt, but then she nodded, although still tentative. “It’s a short walk through the woods.”
She looked about seventeen. Ham wondered if she was the marshal’s niece who’d had the run-in with Tatro. What was she doing out here alone, with that sick bastard on the loose? Didn’t she know?