Faithless Read Free Page A

couple of your calls.”
    “Jeff,” she stopped him. “I just assumed you were tied up. It’s no big deal.”
    “What is it, then?”
    Sara crossed her arms, suddenly feeling cold. “Dad knows.”
    He seemed to relax a bit, and she wondered from his relief whether he had been expecting something else.
    He said, “You didn’t think we could keep it a secret, did you?”
    “I don’t know,” Sara admitted. She could tell something was on his mind but wasn’t sure how to draw him out. She suggested, “Let’s walk around the lake. Okay?”
    He glanced back at the house, then at her. “Yeah.”
    She led him through the backyard, taking the stone path to the shore that her father had laid before Sara was born. They fell into a companionable silence, holding hands as they navigated the dirt track that cut into the shoreline. She slipped on a wet rock and he caught her elbow, smiling at her clumsiness. Overhead, Sara could hear squirrels chattering and a large buzzard swooped in an arc just above the trees, its wings stiff against the breeze coming off the water.
    Lake Grant was a thirty-two-hundred acre man-made lake that was three hundred feet deep in places. Tops of trees that had been in the valley before the area was flooded still grew out of the water and Sara often thought of the abandoned homes under there, wondering if the fish had set up house. Eddie had a photograph of the area before the lake was made and it looked just like the more rural parts of the county: nice shotgun-style houses with an occasional shack here and there. Underneath were stores and churches and a cotton mill that had survived the Civil War and Reconstruction, only to be shut down during the Depression. All of this had been wiped out by the rushing waters of the Ochawahee River so that Grant could have a reliable source of electricity. During the summer, the waterline rose and fell depending on the demand from the dam, and as a child, Sara had made a habit of turning off all the lights in the house, thinking that would help keep the water high enough so that she could ski.
    The National Forestry Service owned the best part of the lake, over a thousand acres that wrapped around the water like a cowl. One side touched the residential area where Sara and her parents had houses and the other held back the Grant Institute of Technology. Sixty percent of the lake’s eighty-mile shoreline was protected, and Sara’s favorite area was smack in the middle. Campers were allowed to stake tents in the forest, but the rocky terrain close to shore was too sharp and steep for anything pleasurable. Mostly, teenagers came here to make out or just to get away from their parents. Sara’s house was directly across from a spectacular set of rocks that had probably been used by the Indians before they were forced out, and sometimes at dusk she could see an occasional flash of a match as someone lit a cigarette or who knew what else.
    A cold wind came off the water and she shivered. Jeffrey put his arm around her, asking, “Did you really think they wouldn’t find out?”
    Sara stopped and turned to face him. “I guess I just hoped.”
    He gave one of his lopsided smiles, and she knew from experience that an apology was coming. “I’m sorry I’ve been working so much.”
    “I haven’t gotten home before seven all week.”
    “Did you get the insurance company straightened out?”
    She groaned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Okay,” he said, obviously trying to think of something to say. “How’s Tess?”
    “Not that, either.”
    “Okay…” He smiled again, the sun catching the blue in his irises in a way that made Sara shiver again.
    “You wanna head back?” he asked, misinterpreting her response.
    “No,” she said, cupping her hands around his neck. “I want you to take me behind those trees and ravage me.”
    He laughed, but stopped when he saw she was not joking. “Out here in the open?”
    “Nobody’s around.”
    “You