The Secrets of Lake Road

I want my mommy, Sara said.

I know you do, she said in an understanding voice, because wasn’t that what Caroline wanted too? I’ll take you to her. She reached for her, but Sara recoiled.

Don’t let them find me, Sara said.

I won’t. I promise. But you need to come with me now. I’ll take you home, she said. I’ll take you to your mother. It was then Caroline noticed holes, hundreds of them, up and down Sara’s arms and legs. It was as though bits and pieces of her body had been rubbed out, chunks of her skin removed. Caroline covered her mouth to keep from screaming.

Find me, Caroline, Sara said in a whispering voice. Find me.

Caroline sat straight up in bed, her hands over her mouth. She was shaking so hard, her knees knocked. She breathed in and out, trying to slow her speeding heart. She was dreaming again. It was only another bad dream. The room was warm and humid. The curtains sagged in the stagnant night air. The window screen lay on the floor beneath the window. She thought she had put it back after Megan had left. She was pretty sure she had.

The chill she had felt in the dream crept up her spine and settled in her bones. It wasn’t real, she told herself, and sprung from the bed. She stuck the screen back in the window and pulled the curtains closed. It wasn’t real. Then why did it feel that way?





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Patricia returned to the Sparrow, thinking about the recovery team. They had promised they’d be back to searching before the sun came up. She didn’t doubt them, although she was losing hope at a rapid pace. The lake was big, several miles long, and who knew how deep? There was no telling where the storms, or whatever else, the voice in the back of her mind screamed, could’ve dragged her little girl. She didn’t want to think about her daughter lying on the murky bottom. The image of the half-eaten eel the men had dumped onto the beach cut across her mind, and she quickly forced it away. Far, far away. She was barely holding it together. If she went there, to the dark place of reality, she’d never be able to pull herself out. And now wasn’t the time to fall apart, not while her daughter was still out there, waiting to be found.

She wrapped her arms around Dolly and paced the living room. She stopped moving when the rotary phone rang. She grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?” Her breathing quickened, thinking it might be news about Sara. But all she heard was static and Kyle’s faint voice calling her name. The connection was poor, and after a few seconds of white noise, she hung up and continued walking.

Most of Sara’s toys were strewn about the place much like Patricia’s toys used to be when she had stayed in this very cabin with her parents. Now that she had been in the place a few days, she noticed other things, things she remembered from her childhood. Like how the wicker rocking chairs creaked underneath a person’s weight, how the pipes groaned when the water was running, how the old claw-foot bathtub still looked a little creepy.

Evidence of mold stained the corners of the ceiling in most of the rooms despite the fact that the brochure had stated the cabin was recently painted. She supposed it couldn’t be helped. The colony had a way of holding onto moisture whether it was dampness or humidity. Nothing ever felt totally dry—not the air, the towels, the clothes, your skin.

And the smell, the ones she remembered from childhood that had hit her at full force when she had first stepped through the door. They were a mixture of the same damp earthy lake air and smoke from the fireplace. The sight and scent had filled her with such a state of happiness; she didn’t think anything bad could happen while she was here.

She looped around the couch and chairs. When she grew tired of the pattern, she circled the kitchen table, walking, pacing—the movement soothing. Sometimes her mind raced with thoughts of Sara, her heart too heavy for her chest to hold and she’d stop, bend over, and release the most terrifying sound she had ever heard, one laden with grief.

She continued on, stepping in and out of one of the three bedrooms. She couldn’t bring herself to walk into Sara’s bedroom, where her daughter should be sleeping. And the master bedroom, if you could call it that since the space could just about fit the queen-size bed and chest of drawers, where Kyle had slept on their second night when she had telephoned about Sara, reeked of failure and loneliness. The thought of both empty beds was too much to bear.