Page 45 of It Happened on the Lake

“Craig said we couldn’t let it go, you know. That it would be our only chance to live on the water, so we worked out a deal with Mom and Dad, who were looking to downsize.”

“Your brothers were okay with it?”

“The twins were still in college, so what did they know?” She changed the subject. “We have so much catching up to do!” She reached into the small backseat and picked up Harper’s bag of wet clothes. “Kinda weird, ya know? I’m in the same house I was growing up, Rand is just down the street in his dad’s A-frame, and now you’re here on the island. It’s like the band’s back together.”

“Minus a few key players.”

“Yeah. But the rental next to me has tenants again, and Old Man Sievers’s place? His daughter, what’s her name—?”

“I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“Oh yeah . . . Uh, Frankie—Francine, that’s it! She’s in his place with two kids, teenagers—the girl is in Max’s class, and the boy, oh, I don’t remember, a year or two older, I think.” Beth slammed the BMW’s door shut. She backed up a few steps to the edge of the parking apron and craned her neck to gaze up at the pitched roof and high turret, visible just above the roofline.

Harper climbed out of the car and noted the rain had stopped, though the old asphalt shimmered with puddles. “What about the Hunts’ house?”

“Oh-um, I guess Levi might move back. He’s been talking about it, and now that his mother won’t be returning, who knows?”

“You keep up with him?”

“A little,” Beth said. “I haven’t talked to him since last night. I mean what do you say to a guy who’s lost his brother and father to the lake? And now his mom? Geez. It’s like the whole family is cursed.” Then she sighed. “Well, maybe we all are, you know? Maybe we’re all cursed.”

“I guess. You know that the lake was once called the Lake of the Dead.”

“I heard that. Good thing they changed it, or I’d never sell a house around here.” Beth laughed at her own joke and took another step back, the heel of her boot sinking into the wet mulch of Gram’s rose garden, so she could get a better look at the upper story of the house.

“Be careful,” Harper warned.

“Why?”

“That’s the spot where Gram buried her cats.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“Jesus. Gross!” Quickly Beth moved to stand on the asphalt again and regarded the skeletal vines with horrified eyes. “Oh. My. God. You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. Every time a cat died, she buried it and planted a rose on it. I think you were standing on Long John’s grave. You remember him? Silver tabby with a crooked tail?”And the cat your husband might have used for target practice, she thought, remembering her father’s words.

“Take a look. There should be a little engraved marker by each of the rose bushes. Gram even planned elaborate funerals for each of them.” Harper remembered having attended the “ceremony” for the calico with the striking markings. Gram had named that gorgeous cat after the screen icon Marilyn Monroe.

“Seriously?” Beth glanced down and saw the small headstone, no bigger than a baseball. “Oh man, that’s sick!” She inched farther away from the garden. “First the gargoyles, now this?”

“She bought special roses, each one symbolic of the cat.”

“I’ve heard enough! You have a strange family, Harper, and no, I didn’t know any of your grandmother’s damned cats. Just that she had a ton of them. Too many. It was odd. Way odd. Borderline wacko.” She gave the rose garden another skeptical look. “You might want to keep that information—about the rose garden—to yourself, especially if you decide to sell.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know,” Beth said. “Your family is even weirder than I thought.”

Weirder than you’ll ever guess.

“Okay, so let’s get serious. Really, what’re you going to do with this house and the island? I mean, the whole damned island! You own it outright now, right? Creepy kitty cemetery and all.”

“Right.” The terms of her grandmother’s estate were pretty much public knowledge in Almsville, leaked years ago to the newspaper at the time of the scandal surrounding her death.

“And the guesthouse?” Beth asked. “Where you lived—well, most of the time. That’s part of it?”

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