The souls of lost lake, p.26
The Souls of Lost Lake, page 26
The lake was smaller than Deer Lake. Its surface covered over a hundred acres, with most of the land surrounding the lake heavily wooded. This afternoon the sun was high, and the warmth saturated the area, sending rivulets of sweat down Wren’s back. She’d appreciated the long hike back to the lake for the time it offered to clear her mind. There were so many pieces rattling in there, it reminded her of a box of puzzle pieces that if one could just sit down long enough to piece together, the entire picture would make sense.
“Hey.”
Wren saw Troy approaching. His smile was ladened with sympathy, and he searched her face quickly before pulling her in for a hug. She accepted it but noticed how she didn’t feel like wrapping herself around him like she had with Eddie. That made sense, though, didn’t it? They shared their grief. Troy was an outsider looking in.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
Troy tugged at the brim of his baseball cap. “It was good. One kid sprained his ankle on the falls. We ended up at Lake Superior for an afternoon instead of spending another day at Black River Harbor.”
“Sounds like fun.” Her words sounded stilted even to her own ears.
“You doing okay? I wish I’d been here for you when Patty passed away.”
“I’m fine.” Wren wrapped her thumbs around her backpack straps that spanned her shoulders. She offered Troy a smile that was both assuring and intended to shut down the conversation before emotion crowded in. “I mean, we’ll be okay.”
“We?”
“Gary. Eddie. Me.” She stumbled over her proclamation.
Troy’s brow furrowed a bit, but then he nodded. “Yeah. That’s gotta be rough for the guys.”
“It is.”
“So, do you know why I was corralled into helping at Lost Lake today?”
Wren shot a sideways glance at Troy. No wonder he sounded weary. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t showered yet from his weeklong excursion with the campers.
“Wayne Sanderson apparently pulled strings with the authorities. He’s convinced they’ll find someone at the bottom.”
Troy frowned. “I didn’t hear there was any evidence that they thought Jasmine Riviera was actually . . . well, dead.”
Wren lifted her hands in acquiescence. “I don’t know what Wayne might have provided to convince them. But they did find little Trina Nesbitt not too far from the lake. The stories of Lost Lake, you know . . . Jasmine is still missing.”
Troy blanched. “The last thing I want to find at the bottom of Lost Lake is a kid.”
“I know.” Wren eased out of her backpack. They watched the leaders of the search party as they gathered their supplies and set up for the quest to explore the bottom of Lost Lake. “I don’t get how they plan to dredge it. The lake isn’t exactly small or shallow like a pond.”
“Lost Lake is a little over twenty feet deep,” Troy supplied, “so it’s doable. But I’m not sure how mucky the bottom will be. Muck and silt would suck a body deeper and bury them. If that’s the case, I can’t imagine visibility will be great.”
Wren supposed there was a lot more science involved in searching the bottom of a lake than she understood. She eyed the red inflatable boat with its small outboard motor. A man sat in the middle of the boat, fiddling with what looked like sonar equipment. That had to have been a pain to haul back here. Logging roads only went so far in; the rest would’ve had to have been hauled in on foot or maybe by ATV.
Troy pointed. “They’ll monitor the lake bed with the sonar and look for anomalies. If they find anything, they’ll send one of us down to check it out.”
“I thought dragging a lake meant sweeping a net across the bottom or something,” Wren said.
Troy offered a sad chuckle. “If only it were that simple.”
“Do you think they’ll find the bodies of the long-lost Coons family?” It was easier to focus on the lore of the place than picture little Jasmine sinking to the depths of the lake all alone. Innocent. Wren shivered.
Troy shook his head. “Ninety-year-old skeletons can only survive so long underwater.”
“I thought it took bones forever to decompose.” Wren shuddered at the gory topic.
Troy nodded. “Well, yeah, but think about it. Almost a century underwater? You might have a mandible left.”
Wren waved her hand. “Stop, okay? No more.”
Troy leaned toward her. “You all right—?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. Then she quickly met his hurt eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s all so much, Troy. I don’t know . . .”
“Why’d you even come out here? It’s going to be hours, maybe even days. This isn’t a place for you to find any sort of resolution to Jasmine’s disappearance.”
“I know that.” She ran her hand over her forehead, wiping beads of sweat from it, then drying her hand on the side of her navy-blue trekking pants. “I just . . .” Wren searched for the words. She just what? Creepy woman in the woods had her convinced Ava Coons really did still exist somehow? Jasmine’s disappearance was linked to the Redneck Harriet doll with Wren’s name on her foot?
“I think I may be losing my mind,” she muttered.
Troy rubbed his hand on her arm. Wren stepped away. He dropped it, directed his eyes to the ground, and kicked at a rock. “You’re not losing your mind.” His affirmation seemed weak considering he didn’t know the concoction of a story swirling in her head.
“Do you know where your birth certificate is?” Wren asked suddenly.
Troy gave her a confused look at the abrupt subject change. “Um, sure. Yeah. I have it in my files at home.”
“Home as in . . . ?”
“As in Iowa. Where I was born. My parents’ place. I wouldn’t bring those types of records here to camp.”
“But you’ve seen it?”
“Sure. Haven’t you seen yours?”
“No.” Wren met his questioning stare. “No, I haven’t.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yeah. My dad seems to think my mom accidentally damaged it and needed to get a replacement. Pippin ran a search online and tried to reorder it. The state came back saying there’s no record of my birth.”
This time Troy’s expression darkened. “No record?”
Someone on the lake shouted. They both redirected their attention for a moment, then realized it was routine and nothing had been spotted. Wren turned back to Troy.
“None. That’s weird, right? I mean, I’m not overreacting by thinking it’s really odd.”
“Did you call your grandparents?” Troy asked.
Wren hadn’t thought of that. Mom’s parents lived in Oklahoma, but they might be able to shed some light on her birth. Maybe she hadn’t been born in Wisconsin like she’d thought. But then she would have thought her dad would’ve said something right away to clear up that misunderstanding.
“Diver!” someone shouted.
They both stilled.
With Troy as a backup diver, he would not be first in the water. They watched as a few men and women scurried along the shoreline. A diver flipped backward into the water from another inflatable boat. In the distance, a loon popped up from under the surface of the water, saw the group of searchers, then disappeared back under. Wren imagined the waterfowl speeding along underwater, well acquainted with the lake bed, having already seen long before whatever it was the dive team was going down to identify.
It seemed like it took hours. Wren lost track of time, and even as she and Troy made their way closer to the lake and to the controlled chaos, a mounting dread welled up inside her. Jasmine. Little Jasmine. The only sign of her had been the hoodie sweatshirt with some blood on it. Not a shoe. Nothing.
Wren prayed repeatedly in the quietness of her soul. Not here, God. Not here. Please don’t let them find her here.
A diver broke through the surface. They hauled him up into the boat. From the shoreline, Wren saw the diver remove his regulator from his mouth.
Walkie-talkie static filled the air. One of the SAR workers onshore lifted hers to her mouth. “Come again?”
“Nothing. Just an old trunk or something.”
“Were they able to open it?”
“Didn’t need to.” More static. “Top rotted through. It was empty.”
Thank God. Murmurs of gratitude rippled through the crew.
Wren sagged against Troy. She had been certain it was going to be Jasmine. Why she had felt so sure, she didn’t know. Maybe it was the expression on the woman’s face in the woods near the park as she’d stared at Wren the day Patty had died. No, it wasn’t evil that was in the woman’s face. It was the look of knowing. She knew. She knew what had happened to Jasmine. Perhaps to Trina Nesbitt as well.
But then wasn’t that how the old campfire story went? Ava Coons always knew. She saw, she took, and she didn’t return.
37
“Did they find anything?” Meghan floundered as she leaped from the picnic table outside the canteen. Wren hadn’t expected to be accosted by the desperate mother on her return to camp. Being at Lost Lake and watching the slow-going process left her feeling more defeated than if they had actually found something—someone. It just seemed no matter what avenue they took to find Jasmine, they came up short. Even a shoe. Couldn’t a diver have at least found a shoe? In no way, shape, or form was Wren wishing Jasmine’s body would be located, but any clue to help urge the search onward would sure be a positive next step.
“They haven’t found anything.” Wren shrugged off her backpack and dropped it on the wooden deck of the canteen.
Meghan collapsed back onto the bench next to Ben. His black hair stuck up in various directions, outing his nervous habit of running his hands through it. His bronzed skin and dark eyes were a sharp contrast to Meghan’s blond hair. Wren had seen pictures of little Jasmine. She looked a lot like Ben, only she had her mama’s fine bone structure.
“They’re using all the tools they have on hand,” Wren assured the bereft parents.
“But not finding anything is good, yes?” Meghan looked between them.
Ben nodded. “Sí. If they find nothing, then we pray Jasmine isn’t there.”
After a few comforting but likely empty words, Wren moved away from their table, fumbling in the front pocket of her pack for her phone. Her shoes crunched on the gravel as she crossed the camp’s main drive toward the lodge and the offices. Thumbing through her contacts, she found her grandmother’s number. She hadn’t seen her grandparents in years. They lived on a small ranch, and traveling wasn’t in their budget, nor was it practical to leave the animals they boarded to pay her family a visit. Mom had never been that close to her parents, Wren recalled, yet she also remembered the two times they had spent a winter vacation in Oklahoma visiting the ranch. Pleasant memories. Her grandparents had been warm. Friendly. In comparison to her highly educated and bookish father, her grandfather seemed normal.
Wren paused on the walk outside the lodge building. She wanted to check in with her dad one more time about her birth records. But first . . .
“Hello?”
Her grandmother’s voice broke through, and Wren smiled in spite of herself and the circumstances.
“Grandma!”
“Arwen, is that you?”
“It is.”
“Well, land’s sake, honey! We haven’t heard from you or your brother in months!”
“I know.” Wren bent and fished a candy bar wrapper from its tangle in the grassy edge of a flower garden. “Sorry about that.” She stuffed the wrapper into an outdoor garbage receptacle.
“How is everyone? Your dad?”
“Oh, we’re fine,” she lied. Pleasantries were easy fibs, and Wren didn’t want to relive the raw agony of loss with her grandmother over the phone. She didn’t want to revisit the stark reality of Jasmine’s disappearance.
“Good. Your grandpa’s dog just had pups the other day. Blue heeler puppies are the darndest little devils.”
“Are you keeping them?” Wren fought her way through the pleasantries.
“Oh no. No, we’ll sell them once they’re weaned. Of course, there is a wee little one your grandpa has his eye on. She’s wrapping herself around his little finger. So I wouldn’t doubt if one of them escapes being sold.”
Wren laughed.
So did her grandma.
There was a moment of silence. Wren paced in front of the lodge’s entrance. She shot another staffer a smile as the person passed by and lifted a hand in a wave. She toed a dandelion in the grass.
“Arwen, what’s going on? What do you need?”
Her grandmother was perceptive.
Wren squatted down to finger the dandelion. “So, I had a few questions. About my birth.”
“Your birth?” There was honest confusion in the older woman’s voice. “All right. I’m not sure what I can offer. We weren’t around when you were born.”
“Well, Mom had me here in Wisconsin, right?”
“No, they were living in California. Your father was teaching at the university. They moved to Wisconsin . . . ohhhhh, I think about a month after you were born?”
“Oh.” That was news to her. She’d known about California in her parents’ past, and even that Pippin had attended his early years of school there. But she’d not known it was where she’d been born. “My birth records would be in California, then.”
“What do you need your birth records for? Getting married?” There was a teasing lilt to her grandmother’s voice.
“Funny.” Wren mustered a smile, even though her grandmother couldn’t see her.
“Well, honey, just submit a request to the California Department of Health. They can reissue a certified copy, and then you’ll be all set. I’m sure things were lost or forgotten after your mom passed away.” Grandma’s voice broke for a moment. She collected herself. “I wish I could help you more. We just weren’t that close to your father and so . . . things were distant then, as they are now.”
“Were you around when Pippin was born?” The twelve-year gap between them made Wren wonder if things had ever been different before she’d been born and before her mom had experienced miscarriages.
Grandma was quiet a moment and then, “We were. Your parents met here in Oklahoma, you know, where your mother was raised. But shortly after Pippin was born, your father earned his position at the university. It was his dream. I knew their move to California would put distance between us, but I didn’t expect it to be distance in more than just miles.”
Wren picked the dandelion and spun it between her finger and thumb. “Did they just get busy?”
“Yes?” Grandma responded as if she were questioning her own memories. “Tristan never wanted anything as much as he wanted to become a professor at a place of higher education. Your mother—she simply wanted to be a mother. With Pippin, she completely lost herself in him, but then came the miscarriages . . . and I was far enough away. I wasn’t there for her.”
Wren waited, sensing there was more.
Grandma cleared her throat over the phone. Wren heard water running in the background, then the sound of a glass being filled. “I wanted to fly out to California after the sixth miscarriage. Well, I wanted to after the first, but your mom insisted it wasn’t necessary. By the sixth, Pippin was already eleven, and I think your mom was afraid I’d try to talk her out of trying again. She was probably right. Six? Six miscarriages take their toll on a woman’s body. Her hormones, her mental capabilities, all of it. And people don’t understand how traumatic one miscarriage is, let alone sequential ones.”
“But then I came along and saved the day.” Wren heard the lackluster humor in her voice.
Grandma chuckled. “When your mother called me to let me know about you, you were already four days old! A total surprise to your grandfather and I! We had no idea, but she told us she didn’t want us to worry and be burdened anymore, so she and your father had agreed to keep the pregnancy quiet until a child was born healthy. Pippin even got on the phone and told us all about you. He was excited—well, as excited as Pippin ever gets.”
“And then they moved a month after?” Wren studied the dandelion. She’d read somewhere that dandelions weren’t actually weeds but flowers. It was a random thought. Maybe a deflection against the growing wariness in her gut.
“Yes. They did. Your father took a new position at a smaller private college there in Wisconsin and then, as you know, when you were in grade school, he moved you all to the Bible camp.”
So her father had downgraded. Each position he took held a lesser educational integrity—or at least according to how Wren knew her father would interpret them. “Why did Dad want to leave his dream position at a California university for a private school in Wisconsin?”
Grandma half snorted into the phone. “Now you’re asking the million-dollar question we’ve asked for years. It doesn’t matter, though. In spite of not seeing you all nearly as often as we wanted to while you were growing up, Tristan has done well.”
Wren snapped the flower off the dandelion’s stem. Unlike Grandma’s generous impression of Wren’s father, Wren knew him better. Her father wouldn’t simply forgo the prestige of a position without the draw of another equal or better opportunity. He might be in charge of an entire camp’s biblical education department, but that wasn’t even his PhD wheelhouse. He prided himself in his intellectual prowess of English literature, his specialized expertise of Tolkien . . . but a Bible camp in the sequestered Northwoods of Wisconsin? It didn’t lend itself to his own natural interests.
“Thanks, Grandma,” Wren concluded as suspicions danced in her mind.
“You bet. Oh, and honey?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be too hard on your parents for not keeping things straight with your birth certificate. Times were tough back then, and your mom—she wasn’t in the frame of mind to be organized. Even when you were in grade school . . . you probably never knew, but she struggled. With depression and the like. I always wanted her to be seen by someone. I suggested once to your father that maybe she was bipolar. She had such mood swings. But neither of them would have anything to do with it. She said she had Pippin, and she had you, and that was all she needed.”
