“Monarch Lake. Do you know it? It’s maybe a half to three-quarters of a mile southwest of Cedar Ridge Canyon.”
Dru said she was familiar with the lake. “Who found it?”
“AJ’s mother,” Ken said. “Lily Isley.”
13
Thunder cracked overhead as Lily left the house, and the sky opened as she slid into the Jeep. The rain broke over the windshield, sounding like birdshot, sheeting the glass. She was glad for the noise. She had worried her dad would hear the car, that he’d catch her, question her, try to stop her, and there wasn’t a way to explain where she was going without sounding insane.
She could have driven down to the front gate and taken the highway as far as the turnoff to Monarch Lake, and she considered it. It made sense, given the stormy weather. But, instead, once she got the Jeep started and dropped it into gear, she turned right onto the old service road that led around the back of the barn. It wound first in a southeasterly direction, passing Winona’s house, before looping north and then west. Few people knew about it; even fewer used it. The twisted, meandering route, what remained of a long-ago state highway, was barely passable even in good weather, but it would shave minutes off the drive.
The Jeep’s tires bumped and slid over the uneven pavement, dropping into caliche-choked potholes, jerking over muddy ruts. Passing Winona’s house, Lily was surprised to see a shaft of light cracking the front curtains. Had she come home? Lily hoped so; she prayed for it. But she couldn’t stop to find out. The dream, the sense that AJ was at Monarch Lake, that he was in trouble and needed her, was too strong. The old service road ended at CR 440, and turning left, she accelerated, feeling the Jeep’s tires grab the county road’s firmer surface. Water rose on either side of her; the white froth churned in her wake. Her hands gripped the wheel, sweaty and slick in her anticipation and fear.
Scenes from her dream flashed before her eyes, vivid and terrifying. It felt as if it was only days ago she’d almost let AJ drown. She’d had nightmares for weeks after it happened. AJ had wakened in the night, crying, too, but only for a little while, and then he’d seemed to forget. There had been no lasting effects. Not even a fear of the water. Before that awful summer was over, he’d learned to swim from a certified Red Cross instructor in a proper pool. Paul had insisted; he had forbidden Lily to take AJ to Monarch Lake again. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. No. One morning not long after the incident, she had wakened at home in Dallas and gone to AJ’s bedroom, as was her habit, but he hadn’t been in his crib. She’d found him downstairs in the kitchen with the nanny Paul had hired. Behind her back without consulting her. Whatever confidence had remained to her, whatever pride, was all but destroyed.
She hadn’t fought Paul on it, and that had cost her—so dearly—thousands of treasured moments she would have shared with her small son, whispering nonsense into his ear, waking to his tiny hands patting her cheeks, his astonished joy at new discoveries. She’d given all those precious memories away, given him away, God help her, to the nanny, because she had felt incompetent and frightened that she couldn’t keep AJ safe. She had retreated from his life, left him on a separate shore. But she couldn’t think of that now, the terrible wrong she had done him and herself.
The rain had eased, and cresting a hill, she caught a glimpse of the eastern shore of the lake, and beyond it, the bright glint of water. She found the turnoff and followed it past an assortment of picnic tables, deserted at this early hour just as they had been the last time she’d been here. The rain stopped, and the sky began to clear. Water puddled the road, fell from the trees. The windshield fogged. She bent forward, straining to see.
She was almost past the clearing, where she’d come with AJ before, when she recognized the live oak where she’d spread the quilt, and beyond it, the graveled shoreline where Butternut had gone to drink. Heart tapping, she pulled into the weed-choked verge and got out of the Jeep. The growth of juniper trees was more pervasive than she remembered, and so dense that only the tops were green, like paint-filled brushes, while nearer the ground their branches were desiccated and viciously tangled. They tore at her clothing as she made her way to the water’s edge.
It was while she was standing there that the cloud cover broke widely, making her blink in the sudden glare. But as the moment lingered, shimmering, she became aware of the deep silence, the utter sense of desertion. Was AJ here? Hiding? A shout rang out from the water; someone was crying. She looked and saw nothing. Dream, said her mind. More dream images came, pulling her back, but this wasn’t the past. AJ was here now. She felt his presence. He would have heard her, cracking a path through the underbrush that was dry despite the rain. He’d come out now, seeing her. He would know he was safe with her, the way he’d known it as a very little boy.
“AJ?” she called softly, sidestepping a bit along the shoreline. “AJ?” Louder now. She turned in a circle.
That was when she caught sight of it. Some fifty yards beyond where she’d parked the Jeep, a pickup truck was nosed partway into the juniper thicket. There was something not right about it. Or was she misled by the vestiges of her dream? They hung about her like a shroud, obscuring her sight line. Closing her eyes briefly, she became aware of a peculiar smell; it permeated the air, acrid, nose burning. Her brain labeled the odors: smoke, gasoline, chemical, plastic. It was the sort of foul smell that hung around after a fire, the kind of evil stench that said, Get away. But she took a few steps toward the vehicle, then stopped to study it. It was a white double-cab pickup. A Dodge. AJ drove a white double-cab Dodge pickup.
Now she was running as she had before, twenty-three years ago, but instead of water, she was tearing through a wicked maze of juniper. Dead branches as bony and sharp as witches’ fingers ripped her cotton shirt, tore her skin, drawing blood. Breaking through the last of the needled scruff, she stopped abruptly, several feet from the driver’s side of the double cab, panting, brain ticking, registering the relatively undamaged exterior, stark in comparison with the interior, which looked as black as the inside of a closed coffin. The windows were up. She was perhaps ten or twelve feet away; the light glancing off the glass made seeing inside impossible. But fearing what she’d find, she didn’t want to go closer. Latent terror uncoiled from the floor of her mind, begging her—warning her―to leave. If she didn’t look, advised a voice in her brain, AJ couldn’t be in there. It was in spite of herself that she took a step toward the truck, then a series of steps before stopping again. How could she do it?