Page 28 of It Happened on the Lake

Thank God.

Harper needed time to think, to plan exactly what she would say to her grandmother and her father. It was only a matter of time before the news was out and Harper would have to confide in her dad.

Confide?

Or confess?

She snapped on a few lamps as the gloomy morning did little to cast any light into the rooms. Unable to shake the feeling of doom that had been with her ever since she’d first seen the Hunts’ boat floating in the middle of the lake, she walked to the window and stared out. The boat had drifted a little farther toward town.

Across the lake, lights were turning on, people facing the morning. Her chest was tight as she stared at the Hunt house. Suddenly light appeared in the windows.

She gripped the back of a chair, and her throat turned to sand.

People appeared on the dock, standing near the empty boat slip.

Even from a distance, she recognized Thomas Hunt and his wife, Cynthia.

Lamps in neighboring houses flickered on.

Harper picked up the binoculars and peered through.

Levi comforting his mother, who clung to him as they stood near the sliding glass door. Everyone was grim-faced, and Cynthia, Chase’s mother, appeared to be fighting back tears.

Harper knew the feeling.

Thomas Hunt was nervously pacing near the edge of his dock, talking on a radio while his eyes scanned the lake. Soon he was joined by Rand Watkins’s father, Gerald. Two friends, two policemen. Harper watched as they talked for a minute, then walked together to the Watkins’ boathouse and disappeared inside.

At the next house Old Man Sievers, dressed in camo, leaned against the railing of his deck. A cap crammed onto his head, he smoked a cigarette and watched the action in the middle of the lake while his dog patrolled the perimeter of the backyard.

Cold to the bone, she noticed that Rand, too, had made his way to the Hunt home, where he stood, hands in the pockets of his jeans, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed on the drama unfolding in the middle of Lake Twilight.

He glanced up across the lake to stare directly at her.

Or so it seemed.

She drew back, away from the telescope and the window, and reminded herself she would soon have to deal with Gram.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed to her mother’s old bedroom. She stripped off her wet clothes on the way to the phone-booth-sized shower and turned on the water full force. She needed to wash away all her doubts, all her fears for Chase, to stem the tears that threatened to fall.

Twisting off the spray, she bolstered herself.Get it together, Harper. Whatever happens, you have to pull yourself together.Finally she was warm again. She dried off, scraped her wet hair into a ponytail, then dashed to the bedroom where she rifled through her small overnight case and threw on clean underwear, jeans, and a turtleneck sweater. Before heading downstairs, she looked through the bedroom window.

The sky was lightening to the east, the thick clouds reflecting a somber gray on the water. On the opposite shore, red and blue lights flashed through the trees. More people on the docks.

She couldn’t help herself and picked up the field glasses on the window seat. As she focused on the far shore, she saw a police boat cross the lake, heading to the area where the Hunts’ boat was adrift. But it wasn’t the first boat to arrive. Gerald Watkins and Thomas Hunt had already motored to the middle of the lake in the Watkins’ fishing boat and were idling nearby.

Harper saw their grim expressions as they scanned the area using bright flashlights to pierce the depths, as if searching for a body.

Harper felt as if she might throw up.

She sagged against the window and fought tears. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t really think that Chase was dead. “No,” she whispered, swiping at her eyes, just as the police boat arrived and a diver plunged into the water.

Her heart turned to ice.

No, no . . . please God, no. He can’t be dead. Not Chase! She glanced up at the crucifix. At Jesus. Sketching out the sign of the cross and silently praying, she turned back to the window. “Please, please, please, let him be safe. Let him be okay.” Her throat was so thick she couldn’t speak as she saw the cops watching from the deck of the police boat.

Surely, they didn’t really think they’d find Chase at the bottom of Lake Twilight. No, no, no! The diver—he wouldn’t find him, tangled up in weeds or fishing line or whatever it was that would keep a body from floating to the surface.

Other boats were joining the two already surrounding the empty craft, fishermen and neighbors nosing around, trying to see what was going on and probably trying to help. The police were keeping them at bay, but the curious were arriving in rowboats and motorboats and canoes and skiffs.

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