Page 8 of It Happened on the Lake

“Great.” She shoved again, this time planting her feet, ignoring the pain in her leg and throwing her shoulders into the task. The gate was heavy and had, it seemed, been closed for eons. With an effort, using all the strength she could muster, she forced the damned thing open. Old hinges creaked, but she was able to clear a space wide enough for her car.

Good enough.

“We’re in,” she said to the cat as she settled behind the steering wheel and rammed the gearshift into first. “Even if we really don’t want to be.”

Then she tested the bridge, walking over it and deciding it was still sturdy.

Sending up a prayer as the wipers slapped the rain from the windshield, she drove slowly to the island.

She made it.

The old piers and abutments held.

For now.

She parked in front of the garage and glanced up at the mansion, a huge, three-story monster of a house with a towering turret above it all.

“Home sweet home,” she said with more than a trace of sarcasm. “You’re gonna love it.” She glanced at the passenger side, where the cat carrier was belted tightly into the seat. Two gold eyes peered through the mesh, glaring at her suspiciously. “Trust me, this is gonna be heaven.”

Or hell. Yeah, more likely hell. But she wouldn’t utter those dark thoughts aloud. “Hang here for a sec,” she said, before realizing she was having a conversation with a cat.

A cat!

Not even her cat!

She’d inherited Jinx when her daughter had taken off for college.

“Awesome,” she muttered under her breath. Now she was stuck with the damned thing.

Well, so be it. This was her life now, and bringing Jinx here seemed only right. Cats had always been a part of this place. Gram had taken every stray that had ever wandered onto the island. “It’s a huge house, so why not?” Olivia Dixon had said, upon “adopting” an obviously pregnant calico when Harper was twelve.

She reached into her pocket for the keys, found the one for the front door, and forced it into the lock of the massive double door. With a click, the dead bolt slid out of place, and she pushed the creaking door open.

Everything in the house was as Harper remembered.

Just falling into disrepair.

The split staircase still wound up on either side of the wide foyer to the landing twelve feet overhead. But the banister was now dull, the handrail no longer gleaming. Some of the marble tiles in the floor were cracked. The wallpaper that had intrigued her as a child with its brilliant peacocks and peonies was now faded and peeling near the ceiling where cobwebs collected and draped.

All in all, the foyer was a mess.

And it didn’t bode well for the rest of the house.

Dropping her purse onto a dusty side table, Harper reminded herself that living here didn’t have to be a permanent plan.

As if you’ve ever had a plan in your life.

Face it, Harper, you fly by the seat of your pants.

All the plans you’ve ever made are just reactions to the mistakes you’ve made.

Ignoring the doubts crowding through her mind, she walked quickly through the arched hallway and straight to the back of the house.

Again, she hit a light switch. Several lamps responded to cast a warm glow over the dusty antiques, period pieces, and just plain junk that still filled the room. Gram’s things. Tiffany lamps and a fringed chaise longue straight out of the twenties mixed with club chairs and a sixties era console housing a TV/stereo combination.

How many hours had she spent in front of that thing watchingI Love Lucyor Walter Cronkite reporting the news?

Too many to count, she thought as she spied some of the dolls Gram had collected still propped on the furniture and all the religious paraphernalia from her Catholic childhood evident in the bookcases and walls.

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