Page 156 of It Happened on the Lake

“I said so. What about you?”

“Me?” Dawn repeated. “Fine. Yeah, fine. Just busy.”

“When you’re not so busy and I get this house together a little more, I’ll come down to Eugene and take you to lunch or dinner. You can show me your apartment. I’d love to meet your roommate.”

“Uh . . . well, that would be hard,” Dawn said, and the tone of her voice made the muscles in the back of Harper’s neck tighten.

“Why?”

“Katie moved out about two weeks ago,” Dawn admitted.

“Moved out.”

“Well, in with her boyfriend, but, don’t worry, she’s still paying half of her rent.”

“Because her parents don’t know,” Harper surmised.

“Right, and she might come back, you know. She’s only known Ryan for about two months.”

“And she’s already living with . . .” Harper let the rest of the sentence fall away. Who was she to judge? How crazy in love had she thought she’d been around that age?

“Yeah. It’s no big deal, but you don’t need to come down here yet. I’ve got a jillion things to do, like two major papers due next week, and I really need to study.”

There were probably other reasons her daughter didn’t want her to just show up, but Harper didn’t press it.

“I thought I’d come up and visit you and Grandpa,” Dawn said. “I just don’t know when.”

“That would be great.” Harper faked her enthusiasm. Until she figured out who was sneaking into the house and leaving macabre messages, she didn’t want her daughter anywhere near the place. “Just give me a heads-up, so that I’ll be sure to be here and not out running errands.”

“I’ll try to figure it out. But maybe over the weekend. Or the next one. When I figure it out, I’ll call you back. Look, I gotta run, I’m late already.”

“Sounds good,” Harper said, but Dawn had already hung up. She held on to the receiver for a minute and leaned a hip against the kitchen counter.

The thought of her daughter showing up here was a worry. Much as she’d love to see her kid, it wasn’t a good time. When she considered the disturbing message left on the dolls, the continued harassment from the reporter, and the fact that wily Jinx was still missing, Harper decided it would be best for her to drive to Eugene and catch Dawn on campus. Despite the whole “no roommate” thing. Harper suspected there was more to Dawn not wanting her mother to show up and interrupt her new, independent life. Too bad.

With an eye out for the cat, Harper slipped on a jacket, then walked across the bridge to the cottage and through the unlocked door. When she’d first landed back in Almsville—oh God, was that less than a week ago?—she’d stepped inside the house, then quickly backed out. Today she wanted to see just how bad the damage actually was.

Though the rain had stopped, there was a constant dripping noise inside the cottage, and the whole place smelled damp and moldy. The carpet was squishy, the paneling peeling, the wallpaper streaked by rainwater. Several windows leaked, and drawers in the kitchen no longer closed tightly, while a couple of the cupboard doors hung drunkenly, half off their hinges.

“Lovely,” she muttered, climbing the stairs. Two of the steps had buckled, and she silently prayed that they held. She’d already fallen through one staircase within the past year and didn’t want to do a repeat performance.

Upstairs held two bedrooms—hers and Evan’s. Both rooms had been cleared out as they’d moved to the main house years before. After their mother’s death she and her brother had spent more time with Gram than they had with their father and his new wife. Bruce had been forever out of town on business with Marcia glued to his side. She wasn’t going to miss out on the travel, nor was she going to play the dutiful stepmother and sit in this little cottage to raise his son and daughter. Not when she could live in a Portland penthouse with views of the mountains and city lights and a security guard. With an in-house spa and restaurant, the building was steps away from the boutiques and shops.

No room for Bruce’s kids in the two-bedroom condo.

Gram, as always, had stepped up.

“This is what happens when you don’t trust your spouse,” Gram said once while watching Bruce and Marcia climb into a taxi headed for the airport on a cool summer evening. She and Harper had been standing at the gate, Bandit at their side as they looked through the wrought-iron rails to watch the taxi’s taillights disappear around the corner of the lane. Harper had been about eleven at the time, and the fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air. “What happens?” Harper had asked.

“You don’t dare let them out of your sight.”

Harper had looked up at Gram in the gathering dusk. “But you trust Gramps, right?” she’d asked.

Gram’s smile had twisted. “Not on your life.”

“Really? Why?”

Her grandmother had sighed. “Oh, honey, it’s complicated,” she’d said and brushed aside a bumblebee that was buzzing near the fragrant blossoms.

---