Page 83 of It Happened on the Lake

Yet curling up in the room where her mother had grown up wasn’t exactly calming. Harper wondered if she should settle into one of the guest rooms on the second floor. But those rooms, too, held their own particular ghosts. “Let it go.”

She unrolled the old zippered bag over the double bed and tossed her pillow to its place near the wooden headboard where, years before, she had carved Chase’s initials surrounded by a heart.

How silly, she thought now. How over-the-top in love she’d thought she’d been. Love at seventeen and eighteen was something far different than it was when another twenty years had passed.

Or so she imagined.

It seemed like eons since she’d been in love. Really in love.

If she ever had been.

In the adjoining bath she stripped and tossed on an oversized black T-shirt from a KISS concert she’d attended years before, then ran a damp washcloth over the parts of her face that weren’t bandaged. Brushing her teeth was more of a chore than normal. Since the pounding in her head hadn’t subsided, she opened the medicine cabinet to see an ancient thermometer, a rusted pair of scissors, Band-Aids from the sixties, and an old bottle of aspirin. She picked it up, looked for an expiration date, but it was too old to even list one.

Twenty years and degraded?

Probably not a good idea.

She dropped the bottle into the empty trash can near the toilet.

As she closed the cabinet door, she caught her reflection in the mirror.

The phrase “death warmed over” came to mind. Her skin was sallow, the bandage over her chin no longer bright white, the one near her eye beginning to fray. Deep circles were visible under her eyes, one of which was swollen a bit, a major bruise developing over her cheekbone. Even some of the blood vessels in the white of her eye had broken. “Lovely,” she said. No amount of makeup would improve her much. Well, too bad.

Yawning, she rubbed the strain from her neck, then unzipped the old sleeping bag she’d had since the first years of her marriage. From its depth she pulled out one framed picture she’d brought to Oregon, her favorite snapshot of Dawn, at about eight. Her front teeth were too big for her slim face, her brown eyes wide and sparkling in the Southern California sunlight, her hair a deep gold at the time and seeming to sprout from a black mouse-eared hat. It had been their first trip to Disneyland, and Dawn had been over the moon.

How long ago it all seemed now.

Crrreaak.

The sound echoed through the house.

Again.

Her heart stilled.

She didn’t move a muscle.

Waiting.

Did she hear rustling? Something moving? A door quietly opening?

Or was it a step protesting against someone’s weight?

She swallowed hard and told herself that she was imagining things, that whatever she heard wasn’t out of the ordinary and was probably amplified by the simple fact that she was alone. She just wasn’t used to the sounds the old house made.

Quietly, she set the framed picture onto a night table.

Old houses settled.

Still . . .

“Hello?” she called from the landing outside her bedroom door, and her voice seemed to echo down the well. Heart suddenly pounding, she glanced up at the dark turret, then down the winding stairs. She saw nothing but darkness.

Anyone could be lurking in the shadows.

“Is anyone—?”

No one answered.

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