Page 80 of Pro Bono

“I think you’re right, but it’s hard to judge size or speed from this distance. Whatever they are, there are three of them. It could be my mother and her friends.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “If so, they’ll end up here at some point.”

“Unless this is the wrong house.” He said, “I’d like to see if driving the road in that direction gets us close enough to see. What do you think?”

She said, “At least it’s a plan, and I don’t have one, so that’s the plan.”

They walked back around the house to the front and got into the car.

Linda Warren was paddling at a rate that made her arms and hands strain to reach forward an extra inch and drag the blade backward another extra inch. Each stroke made her kayak roll from side to side a little bit, and she fretted because any lapse in form would take some of the speed away. Her ears were tuned only to the splashes of the other women’s paddles, trying to judge how near the sounds were coming from and how rapid the repetitions were without stopping paddling to look behind her.

Everything else in her mind was like sights barely glimpsed from the seat of a speeding car. Nothing could be thought through or verified, because all of it was so horrible that if it was true, she had only seconds to live and had to paddle harder. Had Mary really tried to kill her with a hand ax? Instead of an answer her mind told her that enough wounds could look like the blade had been the propeller of a motorboat. The image was worse somehow than just dying, and it made her determination and her will to ignore the strain and discomfort stronger.

She heard one of the women—Mary, it sounded like—shout at her, “Wait, Linda! It was only a joke.” She felt her chest swell with hope,because the voice had come from farther back than she would have feared, and Mary had just wasted a couple precious breaths shouting nonsense. She was beating them.

She was approaching the margin of reedy shallows near the shore now, and she looked for a clear place to land. She had to be on dry ground before either of the others, so they couldn’t get ashore and ready themselves to attack her together as she arrived. She was taller and lankier than the others, and she sensed that she could outrun them if she could get a start on them. She suspected that they were thinking the same thing, so she aimed the bow of her kayak straight into the reeds and tried to go faster.

The kayak glided into the reeds and she heard the silky whisper of them sliding along the sides and bottom of it. She paddled against the weeds until her kayak stopped, then got out and splashed to the low, pebbly shore, up onto the level ground, already veering to the right, away from the house, and began to run.

As Charlie drove beyond the house and the road began to curve gradually to the right, he noticed again that the pavement almost immediately seemed older and less cared for. It seemed likely that the contractors who had built the house had needed to improve and maintain the section from the intersection with the interstate highway as far as the house well enough and long enough so their trucks and earthmoving equipment wouldn’t get mired in mud or tip over. That must have been expensive—maybe more expensive than constructing the buildings. The portion of the road beyond it that circled the lake was another matter, and it obviously dated from an earlier time.

The car bounced along over bumps that may have been caused by almost anything—buckled sheets of pavement, the old roots of vanished trees, or underground rocks that were slowly becoming outcroppings. There were potholes deep enough to jar a driver’s jaw when a tire hit one. Before Charlie had driven a quarter mile, he had gotten out of the car twice to see whether a tire had gone flat or been knocked out of alignment. After the third time, he opened the driver’s side door and leaned in.

He said, “You know what I’m thinking?”

Vesper said, “Is it what happens if the car stops working?”

“That’s right,” he said. He looked into the forest that began only feet from the road, then back in the direction they had come from, then back at her. “I don’t relish the idea of backing up to where we started, but if we have to, I’d rather do it in daylight than after dark.”

“Agreed,” Vesper said. “If it will help, I can walk along behind the car and direct you away from the holes and ruts.”

“That’s very generous, but it’s a last resort. I want to go forward for another few minutes and see if we can find a place to turn around. If we don’t find one in, say, ten minutes, we’ll start backing out.”

“Okay,” she said.

They moved ahead slowly, trying to find a good spot, but noted only that the road was beginning to disappear, replaced by a stretch of pebbly beach. Then, after about ten minutes, there it was. The road was now impossible to see, and the pebbles were replaced by a flat shelf of slate-gray stone. It looked slippery and slightly tilted, but it jutted several feet out from shore, widening the space by that much. Charlie stopped the car and walked to the shelf to examine it. Vesper came with him.

“This looks like it,” she said.

“Let’s try it. I’ll turn to the left, back up and keep going as far as I can. You stand over there—not on the rock surface, but beyond it where the bank is pebbly, and stop me if I’m backing out too far.”

“Just be sure you can see me in your mirrors and I’ll keep you out of the lake.”

Warren got into the car, moved it onto the rock, and turned it to the left as sharply as he could, inching along until the grille came within inches of a tree. He turned the wheel all the way to the right and backed up until he saw Vesper waving her arms and shaking her head, then went forward again. It took them three back-and-forth cycles, but they ended up with the car facing the end of the lake where the house was.

He got out of the car and joined Vesper. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said.

“It sure is,” he said. He saw that Vesper had returned her attention to the lake. She was staring into the distance, and after a moment her face looked puzzled.

Warren stepped out a few paces on the stone shelf, trying to follow her gaze. “Do you see something?”

“No,” she said. “That’s the point. I mean, I see it, but it’s different. I only see two of those yellow boats or canoes or whatever they are.”

Warren said, “It looks like they’re going the other way.”

The two yellow kayaks were close together, and the two sisters were paddling steadily, their eyes on the edge of the tall pine forest above the bank, trying to be sure they didn’t miss the next glimpse of Linda Warren. She was a strong runner, and she moved faster than the two women could paddle a kayak. Every time May thought Linda must be exhausted by now and ready to collapse and rest, either she or Rosewould catch a flash of white skin or the blue bathing suit between two trees above the shore, always lasting only long enough for the mind to verify what the eye had seen, and then gone again. Each time, the sight was farther away.

Rose said, “I think she’s still building her lead on us.”

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