Page 74 of It Happened on the Lake

“I’ll call you,” Rhonda said, a little bit of panic in her voice. “We can have lunch. I’ll buy. Or dinner or drinks. Here’s my card.” She forced a business card into Harper’s hand.

Dear God, she really wanted this.

“I really don’t have anything to say.” Harper tried to pull the door shut, but Rhonda held it open.

“You know, Harper,” she insisted, “people would love to hear your story.”

“My story?” Harper repeated, her anger rising.

“You were the last person, or one of them, to see Chase Hunt and he’s still missing, and now his mother is . . . well, gone, and who knows what happened there.”

“I don’t,” Harper said, peeved as she jerked the car door closed, slamming it hard and swearing under her breath. Rain still dripping from her hood, she dropped the wet business card onto the passenger seat and started the engine. “What a pain,” she murmured as she shoved the gearshift into reverse and hit the gas, driving backward around the tiny woman just as Rhonda found the good sense to back off.

Thankfully.

Harper hadn’t liked Rhonda in high school, and so far her feelings hadn’t changed. In fact, her dislike had definitely sharpened.

At the edge of the parking lot, she slowed to let a passing bus go by and checked her rearview mirror.

Rhonda was jogging to a dark sedan.

Once the bus had passed, Harper gunned it. She didn’t need the local reporter following her, had experienced enough of that years before when her boyfriend went missing and Harper’s grandmother, the wealthiest woman in all of Almsville, suddenly died on her watch. There had been incessant phone calls and photographers collecting near the gate. They’d been relentless as they snapped pictures of the gargoyles, the long bridge, and the house on the island. Some of the more aggressive reporters had come by boat, docking and taking pictures of the back of the house, trying to get shots of Harper, the teenaged girl somehow involved in her boyfriend’s disappearance and grandmother’s death. Hence, the decision to send her to California.

At that time the tragedies of her family had been unearthed all over again—stories in the papers and on the local television stations revisiting her mother’s early demise and her brother’s accident.

It wasn’t going to happen again. Not from Rhonda Frickin’ DeAngelo or whatever her name was now!

She drove through the town’s streets, past the Nazarene church and the town square, a city park three blocks off the lake. Many of the businesses had changed. The Rexall Drug Store was now a pizzeria, and the auto parts store housed a garden center, but some of the mainstays survived, and she had to smile when she saw the marquee for Van’s Groceries, a friendly mom and pop corner shop that had been in Almsville forever.

She and Beth had ridden their bikes to Van’s for ice cream bars and popsicles when she was in grade school. They would prop their bikes on the bench outside the screen door of the shop, buy their treats, and eat them on that same bench as they swatted yellow jackets away and watched the traffic slow for the Stop sign at the crosswalk.

Evan had sometimes deigned to ride with them, though he’d been always screwing around, riding his bike in front of theirs, usually with no hands, showing off and sometimes throwing firecrackers. Beth had always been enthralled with his antics. Harper had thought he was a pain until their lives had been turned inside out.

Evan had been her rock when Mama died . . .

Her throat closed, and she blinked back tears as she cut the engine. She didn’t know, nor had she ever gotten any real answers regarding her own mother’s death.

Her family had always been tight-lipped about it.

Harper had only been a child when tragedy had struck and Mama had “gone to heaven” as Gram had insisted, but she’d seen her. That night on the dock. Through the haze of a fever and codeine, she’d witnessed what she now knew was her mother, wavering on the edge of the dock, a ghostly figure on Halloween night.

But her father would never speak of what happened.

And Gram, until her death, had been tight-lipped, as if she were protecting Harper somehow.

From what?she wondered as a child.

But the answer was simple: They hadn’t wanted her to know the truth.

Chapter 19

Before she got out of the car, Harper checked her rearview mirror to make certain Rhonda hadn’t followed her. It seemed unlikely. Rhonda was a reporter, not a stalker. But who would’ve thought she would have tracked Harper down by her license plate number and then sat in her car waiting for Harper to show up?

Seeing that the coast was clear, she dashed into the store, which, of course, had changed in the past two decades. But the old wooden floorboards still creaked, the apples and oranges were stacked in the woven baskets, even the oversized ice-cream freezer was still in its spot, next to a wall of newer glass cases. The deli counter displayed a selection of cured meats and cheeses in the case while a huge, silver meat slicer was at the ready on a table behind the counter.

Though the merchandise had changed over the years, the old grocery seemed familiar. Like home.

She bought some basic necessities, including some microwave dinners and paper products and a six-pack of soda before returning to her Volvo and climbing inside. She checked the parking lot and the cars on the street, as she half expected to find Rhonda DeAngelo Whatever tailing her.

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