The Secrets of Lake Road

“Am not!” she yelled back at him.

“Enough, Caroline.”

“Why don’t you ever yell at him? Why is it always my fault?”

Her mother sighed and covered her face. “It’s not always your fault, okay? And you’re right.” She dropped her hands and smiled. “Your brother can be a real jerk sometimes.” She brushed the hair from Caroline’s face.

Caroline’s chest opened as she looked up at her. Her mother was so beautiful when she smiled. She wanted to tell her, but she was too afraid she would take it the wrong way. Everything she said, good or bad, her mother misunderstood.

“What?” her mother asked, and furrowed her brow. “You’re looking at me funny.”

Caroline opened her mouth to talk, not knowing what words would come out. There was so much she wanted to say now that she had her mother’s attention. She was scared and feeling so alone. “I should’ve watched her,” she said about Sara. “She was on the pier, and I knew her mother wasn’t paying attention.” She looked down at her hands and waited for her mother’s reaction.

Without saying anything, her mother sat next to her and wrapped her arms around her. It was a rare embrace, and Caroline clung to her, elated to gain her mother’s affection even though the reason for it made her feel terrible. “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

Her mother pulled back and took Caroline’s face in her hands. “She wasn’t your responsibility.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said, but still, it felt that way.

Gram walked into the kitchen, now wearing polyester pants and matching cotton shirt. She yanked open the refrigerator door, not realizing she had interrupted a rare mother-daughter moment. “Who wants dinner?” she asked.

“I have an errand,” her mother said, and stood. She touched Caroline’s shoulder, pausing to give it a squeeze before she fled for the door.

*

Caroline lay on her bed and listened. The cabin was quiet except for the murmur of the small TV coming from Gram’s bedroom. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but it was too early for bed. And it was too late to be out with friends. It was the time in-between when she was either too old for certain things or too young for others, a time when there was nothing for a girl her age to do. She wondered what was happening down at the lake, if people had gathered or if everyone had stayed home. Where was her mother?

She sat up and swung her legs to the floor. She looked out into the night. Leaves rustled. Willow’s branches swayed in the breeze. Her mother said it wasn’t her fault, what had happened to Sara. Maybe she was right. But she couldn’t just sit here feeling they way she did. She had to do something. At the very least, she wanted to know what was happening down at the lake. She was still wearing her T-shirt and shorts, so why not go and find out? Carefully, she lifted the screen out of the window and slipped through.

She had figured out how to crawl out the window undetected when she was ten years old. She’d had a bad dream about a wolf scratching at her bedroom door and trying to get inside to bite her throat. She had been so scared, she had wanted to flee, to climb in Willow’s branches, the one place a wolf couldn’t reach her, and hide. She had been surprised at how easily the screen had lifted away, but in truth, the cabin was old and in need of repairs.

Ever since the night of the wolf dream, when she wanted to escape, she’d crawl out the window and up the willow tree. No one ever thought to look for her there, and she felt safe. Once, she had spied her brother making out with a girl on the corner of the dirt road. She had stayed hidden in the tree and watched her brother slide his hands underneath the girl’s top, the girl batting his hands away, but eventually giving in. She felt guilty watching her brother do these things, and she felt dirty, too, but she couldn’t stop herself from staring. No way she’d ever let a boy touch her in that way.

Tonight, instead of curling up in one of Willow’s branches, she jogged down the dirt road toward the lake, keeping to the edges near the trees. She felt a strong pull toward the water, and it was more than curiosity about the progress of the search. She knew she had to be at the lake, to see whatever there was to see.