Page 101 of It Happened on the Lake

Old Man Sievers knew it.

And, Rand, only eleven years old, knew it.

But, he guessed, Evan didn’t yet know his mother was gone.

Nor Harper.

But they would.

And when they found out, Rand surmised, everything would change.

Everything.

1988

The Present

Chapter 24

Levi sat in the dark car.

He hated being here.

This place that he’d once loved, where he’d grown up.

He stared at the exterior of the cottage with its once-white clapboard siding and black shutters. At night, with no lights on, it looked abandoned. And maybe it was. But not for long. He planned to move back, had given up the lease on his apartment weeks before his mother had given up her life.

He didn’t understand why she’d done what she’d done or how she’d done it. Her mental capacity had been limited at best, and she had been on that crooked, dangerous path to insanity.

Or she’d arrived at its doorstep, her self-induced flaming destruction testament to how far gone she’d really been.

The muscles in his jaw tightened, and he told himself not to be maudlin or blame himself. It was over.

Surveying the wrap-around porch, he remembered growing up in this house, the good times and the bad. And the horrible.

He’d fought with himself.

Sometimes he’d wanted to move back in, make it his home again.

Other times he’d wanted to burn it down.

For now, though, he’d decided to move back.

At least for a while.Nothing in life is permanent, he reminded himself, and God, didn’t he know it?

He climbed out of his Ford, walked up the overgrown path to the front porch, and unlocked the door with his own key.

The house was quiet.

Lacking any signs or sounds of life, smelling of disuse.

The police had come and gone, so it wasn’t as musty as it had been the last time he’d walked inside, yet tonight it felt dead. Things weren’t all that disturbed, as this place wasn’t officially a crime scene, but he noticed that some of his mother’s Early American-style side chairs had been moved a few inches, the drawers of side tables left slightly open. All in all the interior was the same as he remembered, down to the amber ashtray sitting front and center on the maple coffee table within easy reach from the floral-print couch that his mother loved.

In the dining area, he ran a finger through the dust on the oval table where they, as a family, had played raucous pinochle matches or never-ending Scrabble and Monopoly games. Smiling, he recalled a time playing Risk when Evan, losing badly, had gotten so angry that he’d upended the board, sending the tiny colored “army” cubes scattering all over the shag carpeting. Cynthia had watched the ensuing wrestling match and, after ordering all the players to pick up the pieces, had burned the game that night in the fireplace. “Play nice or don’t play at all,” she’d admonished her sons, as well as Evan and Rand.

Those were happier times, he thought now as he walked to the sliding door overlooking the lake and caught his reflection in the glass.

Twenty years had passed since his mom and dad had left him and his brother alone on their “date” nights.

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