The Secrets of Lake Road

“Where did you get these?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. They were stored in the back closet all these years, the one Gram had finally decided to clean out.

Caroline kept her finger on the little girl in the photo. “She looks like Sara, the little girl who drowned.” She looked up at Jo, a little frightened.

“Oh my god,” Jo said. “That’s not Sara, that’s Pattie Dugan.” Patricia. “Dee Dee used to babysit Pattie every summer. Pattie is Sara’s mother.”

“I’ll be,” Gram said. “I remember her parents, Bob and Jean. They rented the Sparrow for many summers. Nice people. Good people.”

Good people meant lake people, regulars who were accepted in the association and community. It meant Pattie had been one of them this entire time. Jo touched her neck and throat.

Gram continued. “But they stopped coming when Bob lost his job. I heard later they divorced,” she said. “But that’s all lake rumors. I don’t know if any of that is true.”

Jo had to sit down, and she plopped onto a wicker rocking chair across from Caroline and Gram and the photo. It wasn’t the shock of seeing a picture of Billy that made her knees weak, although that was a part of it. It was the surprise to find out she had known who Patricia was all along. Patricia Starr was little Pattie Dugan.

Pattie must’ve been nine or ten years old in the photograph. It was no wonder Jo didn’t recognize her now that she was an adult. It all seemed logical except the part about Billy.

Was it possible Patricia, Pattie, didn’t know Billy had drowned that summer?

Jo tried to think if she had seen Pattie in the summers since then, but how could she be sure? Jo had only been able to stay with Gram for a couple of days at a time before taking off. She hadn’t spent an entire summer at the lake since she was sixteen.

“Do you remember what summer they stopped coming?” she asked Gram.

“My goodness, I’d have to think about it. I’m not sure.”

Jo didn’t like the feeling that crept up her spine.

“This changes everything,” she said. “It’s Pattie’s little girl out there. She’s one of us. They must not know.” She was referring to the lake association and even Sheriff Borg. “Heil will have to continue searching. He can’t leave a regular out there.”

The logic was twisted but true. A first-timer, an unknown without any attachment to the lake community, someone who didn’t contribute year after year to help line the pockets of Heil and the locals, wouldn’t be treated the same. If the lake people had any rules—hell, if they had any conscience at all—it was their unwavering loyalty to their own kind. They may have reopened the beach when Billy had drowned, but they had never stopped searching or limiting their search like they planned to do with Sara. This was because Billy was one of them and Sara wasn’t, but now it seemed as though she was.

“Mom,” Caroline said.

Jo looked from Gram to her daughter. She had almost forgotten Caroline was there.

“Is that Billy?” Caroline asked.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Gram slammed the photo album shut, startling Caroline.

“That’s enough reminiscing for one afternoon,” Gram said, and stood. “Is anyone hungry? I’ll make sandwiches.” She rushed to the kitchen, taking the photo album with her.

Caroline looked to her mother for an answer to her question, an explanation. Was the boy in the picture the same boy who drowned? Was it Billy, her mother’s old boyfriend and her father’s friend? But Caroline could tell from her mother’s expression that she had already lost her. Her mother had retreated deep inside herself to those dark places Caroline recognized and wished she didn’t. It was anyone’s guess when her mother would surface. The only thing that surprised Caroline was that her mother hadn’t raced out the door.

“Forget it,” Caroline said. She’d find the answers to her questions on her own somehow, some way.

She returned to her bedroom where she found the new sneakers. She pulled on a pair of socks and then slipped the sneakers on. She’d get them a little dirty and no one would be the wiser. Gram had promised she’d keep her secret once she explained to Gram her reasons, the same reasons she used with Adam, although she didn’t mention his part, not wanting to implicate him. She was willing to take full responsibility for the two of them if it came down to that. It was her idea, her plan, her doing.

When she had told Gram she couldn’t stand the thought of what those snappers would do to Sara, Gram had more than understood—she had agreed and believed Caroline brave for taking a stand albeit an illegal one.

“Sometimes,” Gram had said, “doing the right thing means you have to break some rules.”