Dee Dee wasn’t the type to offer comfort. Years of nursing had a way of desensitizing her. She considered herself tough, thick-skinned, detached. But she wasn’t unkind. It was just that life on the lake had hardened her. But she understood the woman’s anguish whether she wanted to admit it or not. The woman had lost her child, and Dee Dee knew all about loss.

“There, there,” she said, and patted the woman’s back. The woman collapsed farther into her arms, and it was all she could do to hold the two of them up. The woman continued to burrow in close, wanting the kind of affection a child seeks from a parent.

“Okay, okay,” Dee Dee said. It was then she recognized the scent of the lake on the woman’s skin, an odd mix of earthiness and sunshine and whatever was rotten on the bottom. It was the identifying factor of anyone who had spent any time here, anyone who the lake had claimed as its own.

“Come inside.” She led the woman into the kitchen, where she helped her into a chair. She set a cold glass of lake water she had pumped from the well onto the table. “Drink,” she said.

The woman gulped the water down. When she finished, she wiped her eyes with the doll. “It’s me, Pattie,” she said, and choked back a sob. “Pattie Dugan. You used to babysit me.”

Dee Dee’s hand flew to her chest, surprised at hearing the name of the little girl she had babysat all those summers ago.

“It’s Patricia now. Patricia Starr. My daughter, Sara…” She shook her head, unable to continue.

Dee Dee ran her fingers through her hair, trying to get ahold of the situation. It took a second or two for the shock to wear off, but once it did, something that had gripped her chest all these years loosened. She gazed into the woman’s blue eyes and saw the child she used to be. The guard she kept in front of her heart had lowered just enough for her to reach out to Pattie, Patricia, and hug her tight. It was the most affection she had shown anyone in quite some time.

“I always wondered what happened to you,” she said. She had babysat Pattie every summer since she was three years old. It was as though she were seeing her long-lost daughter for the first time after an unwanted, painful separation.

Dee Dee had so many unanswered questions, she wasn’t sure where to start. She pulled back and collected herself. She had waited a long time, a lifetime, for Pattie to return, and now she wanted answers. She put a pot of coffee on and sat across from her.

“Start from the beginning,” she said. Patricia told her about her parents, their divorce, and later, her awful marriage to Kyle, his affair, how she was alone, how she had no place to go, how she ended up back at the lake after all these years.

“It never left me,” Patricia said. “This place. The lake. It lived inside of me and became a part of me if that makes any sense. I thought by coming here, I would be saved from everything wrong in my life. I believed me and Sara would finally be happy if I could just get us back to the one place I always felt safe.”

Dee Dee understood better than anyone what the lake could do to you, how it could take ahold of you like a lover, drowning you with its beauty, how the mountains could blind you until you could no longer see that there was a whole other world out there, waiting for you, but by then it was too late, and you were too far gone to notice. No, it wasn’t safe at all.

“Why did you wait so long to come to me?” she asked.

“I had planned on coming our first night here. I was going to bake a pie. But Sara…” She broke off. “I swear, I only turned my back for a second,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. Everything happened so quickly.”

Dee Dee reached for Patricia’s hand. “It’s not your fault. A second is all it takes for accidents to happen around here.” She sat quietly for awhile, letting Patricia cry.

When Patricia was able to collect herself, she lifted her head and started talking about Sara. She told Dee Dee about her pregnancy, how Sara had been an easy baby and an even sweeter child. She told her stories about Sara’s determination to tie her own shoes, how she loved bedtime stories and drawing pictures. She talked about Sara’s wild imagination and Sugar, the imaginary Doberman that lived in their attic. “One time during a snowstorm—you know the kind of storm you get around here in the mountains with a foot of snow—well, Sara insisted Sugar got out. She had me driving all over the neighborhood in the middle of the storm looking for her imaginary dog. And I did it. I did it for her. I’d do anything for her.”

She continued telling Dee Dee story after story about her daughter, their adventures, until Dee Dee felt as though she knew everything there was to know about the child. Hours later, when Patricia was talked out, clearly drained, Dee Dee suggested she lie down.

When she was sure Patricia was asleep, Dee Dee lit a cigarette and stepped onto the front porch. She stared out at the water. And for the first time in a long time, she let herself cry.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Caroline stormed into The Pop-Inn. Her heart was pounding, and she was out of breath. Her shirt was soaked with sweat, and she was pretty sure so was the pad between her legs. The thought made her queasy. She wasn’t ready for her period, not now, not with everything else making her life so miserable.

The screened-in porch was empty. She tore through the family room and found both Gram and her mother at the kitchen table. They looked up when Caroline barged in.

“What happened to you?” her mother asked.

Gram shot her mother a dirty look and rushed to Caroline’s side. “Your hand is bleeding,” Gram said. “And why are you so sweaty? What happened?” She removed the baseball cap and felt Caroline’s forehead with the back of her hand.

Caroline turned her head away. “I’m fine,” she said.

“No, you’re not. You’re overheated and you’re bleeding.” Gram pulled her by the arm and stuck her hand underneath the faucet at the kitchen sink. Once the dirt was washed away, she inspected the cut on her palm. “It doesn’t look too bad. You won’t need stitches.”

Gram poured a glass of lake water from the jug and handed it to her, which she gratefully accepted. She stared at her mother over the rim and gulped the water down in defiance, remembering her mother’s agitation the last time she filled the jug from the well. When the glass was empty, she wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and said, “Mom, I have something to ask you.”

Her mother eyed her. “What’s going on?”

“You should sit down,” Gram said to Caroline.

“No, I want to stand.” She turned toward her mother.

“But you’re burning up,” Gram said.

She ignored Gram and stared at her mother. “Is Johnny named after Billy?”

Gram was the one who sat down. Her mother’s face paled, the dark shadows in the hollows of her cheeks growing darker, blacker, like the look in her eyes.

“Sit down, Caroline,” her mother said.

The tone of her mother’s voice normally would’ve made Caroline do whatever it was she was asking, but not this time. She crossed her arms. “Answer my question. Is Johnny named after Billy? His real father.”

Gram gasped.

“He is, isn’t he?” she asked her mother. She turned to Gram. “And you knew this entire time,” she said. “You were supposed to be on my side.”

“Oh, Caroline,” Gram said. “It’s not about taking sides.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” her mother said.

A small part of her couldn’t believe her mother wasn’t jumping all over her, shouting, Of course not! Johnny is your father’s son. But she wasn’t doing that, and something inside of Caroline shattered. She heard Pop’s saying again: Be careful what you wish for.

“Please, sit down,” her mother said. “Let’s talk about this calmly.”

“I can’t believe you.” Caroline stomped her foot like she used to do when she was three, throwing a tantrum whenever she didn’t get her way. “Gram?” she asked. “Is he or isn’t he my brother?”