The Secrets of Lake Road

Oh, here it comes, she thought. Nothing good ever came without a price. “What is it?”


“You know it’s a sensitive issue, especially when we’re still trying to find that little girl. People around here are reluctant to talk about drownings, past or present.”

“What are you saying?”

“It was one thing to poke around and ask a few questions, but now I’m going to be asking in an official capacity. And I have no doubt Heil is going to tell everyone to keep their mouths shut. Remember, he’s worried about his own liability in this.”

“I don’t care about Heil or that the damn alcohol came from his bar.”

“That may be. But he cares. And people aren’t going to want to speak out against him.”

She shook her head. The sheriff was missing the point. He needed to focus on Billy’s friends. He needed to interrogate Jo. “You’re still going to try, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Even Jo? Because I know she knows something about that night that she’s not saying.” She wanted to be present when he questioned her, but knew he’d never allow it.

“I’ll talk with her.” He paused. “I need you to be patient a little while longer. Like I said, it’s a sensitive matter, and I don’t want people to clam up before I even get started. You need to be patient and let me do my job.”

She didn’t respond, and continued squeezing the keys in her fist.

“I’m serious,” the sheriff said. “Let me handle this.” He waited for her to say something. When she continued giving him the silent treatment, he said, “You know I never would’ve closed the case if we would’ve found his arm with the body. If we would’ve had all the evidence back then, things would’ve gone differently.”

When she still refused to acknowledge what he was saying to her, he asked, “Did you hear me?”

“Oh, I heard you,” she said, and turned her head away.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Caroline woke to a wet stickiness between her legs. She tossed the covers off. The sheets were stained with blood. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What happened to her last night? Her underwear was soaked. She pulled at her nightgown and found the back of it spotted red. It took a few more panicked seconds for her to understand.

She jumped from the bed and felt a warm gush between her legs. She cupped her hand over her private parts as if she had to pee. She peeked into the hallway, looking, listening for any sounds. The bathroom door was wide open. She made a break for it, not knowing what else to do. She stripped off her pajamas and cleaned herself with a washcloth. She knew she needed supplies. She had read all about menstruation from the stupid pamphlets the nurse had handed out during the school year. But it wasn’t until she had read Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret did she fully understand what was coming. It wasn’t like her mother had ever sat her down and had “the talk” with her. She wondered if there were parents who actually did stuff like that with their kids.

She doubted it.

What she knew about sex she had also learned from reading books. The information the other girls her age had imparted was mostly misinformation, like how you couldn’t get pregnant the first time, how anal sex wasn’t really sex. Books set Caroline straight. They saved her from the embarrassment of having to ask her mother to explain.

Although she had to give her mother props for standing up to the school board when they had threatened to remove some of the more graphic health books from the school library. Caroline’s mother had stepped out of her dark place and into the world, rallying a group of women’s rights activists into the largest protest the school had ever seen. With the support of the librarians and most of the other mothers behind her, the books stayed on the shelves. She was proud of her mother and embarrassed, too. The subject of sex had made Caroline feel all weird inside. It was a subject her mother cared about deeply.

She sometimes heard strange sounds coming from her parents’ bedroom, the moans, the creaking bed, the thumps and crashes. Once, she banged on the door, shouting for them to stop, thinking they were killing each other. They never answered her cry, but the rest of the night had been eerily quiet. She shuddered. Don’t think about it. No child ever wanted to think about their parents having sex, let alone the loud boisterous kind her parents had.