performed an eerie ballet close to shore. To their right, the darkness of the cypress grove grew impenetrable just a few feet beyond where they walked. All around them, leaves rustled, branches swayed, and twigs snapped as who-knew-what nocturnal creatures moved about. Insects whirred in never-ending chorus. The soprano piping of dozens of tree frogs was underscored by a bullfrog duet from the direction of the water. Not far ahead, where the ragged-edged lakeshore curved back toward itself, monuments to long-dead Archer family members tilted this way and that atop a kudzu-covered bluff. A long-ago patriarch’s marble crypt gleamed faintly through the darkness. Surrounding it, the aged stone markers looked like ghosts themselves. Fingers of diaphanous white mist rose above all.
Spooky? Oh, yes. Although she would never admit as much to Sara.
‘‘Is that the lake where your mom drowned?’’
Trust her sensitive, imaginative child to hit upon the one topic that Olivia really did not want to talk about just at that moment. The death of her mother had been the defining event of her childhood. It had changed her in a moment, like a catastrophic earthquake instantly reshapes the topography of the land. And yet, although the memory of the pain was sharp and strong even so many years later, she could conjure up no memory of how she had learned that her mother was dead, or of who had told her. No memories of her mother’s funeral, or her stepfather, or the Archer family in mourning. It was as if her memory banks, where the events surrounding her mother’s death were concerned, had been wiped clean. All she knew were the bare facts: Her mother had drowned at age twenty-eight in that lake.
The same lake from which voices now seemed to be calling to her.
‘‘Yes.’’ Olivia set her teeth against the sudden stab of loss remembered, and ignored the icy tingle of dread that snaked down her spine. She would not give in to the morbid fear of the lake that had been the bane of her growing-up years. She had always imagined that it was waiting to get her, to suck her down beneath its shiny surface as it had her mother. Her cousins, once realizing that she was afraid of the lake, had tormented her with it unmercifully, even going so far as to throw her in on one memorable occasion. Now, after so many years in hiatus that she had nearly forgotten about it, the fear threatened to rear its head again. Threatened, bull, she admitted to herself with chagrin. Just setting eyes on the lake once more had brought it back in full, ridiculous force.
Run away. Run away.
Firmly she told herself that she was too old to be afraid of a body of water, even if it was dark and even if voices did seem to be coming from its vicinity. After all, she was twenty-six now, a divorced mother who had been the sole support of herself and her daughter for nearly seven years. A grown-up. Definitely a grown-up.
‘‘After your mom died, your stepfather kept you here with him until he died, and then his family took care of you until you married my father, right?’’
Sara knew the tale well; a somewhat edited and greatly glamorized version of her mother’s history was her favorite bedtime story. During the last few lean years in Houston, both Sara and, if Olivia was honest, Sara’s mother, had needed the dream of better times and better places to cling to.
‘‘Yes,’’ Olivia agreed, groping about among the bits and pieces of information currently capable of being accessed by her tired mind for some means of changing the subject. Tonight, walking through the cypress groves that ringed aptly named Ghost Lake, drawing ever nearer to the Big House and the reunion with the Archers that she had both longed for and dreaded for years, her past was no longer a fairy tale with which to beguile a little girl into sleep. It had suddenly become all too real.
‘‘What’s that?’’ Sara’s voice went high-pitched with surprise.
Mother and daughter stopped and
Spooky? Oh, yes. Although she would never admit as much to Sara.
‘‘Is that the lake where your mom drowned?’’
Trust her sensitive, imaginative child to hit upon the one topic that Olivia really did not want to talk about just at that moment. The death of her mother had been the defining event of her childhood. It had changed her in a moment, like a catastrophic earthquake instantly reshapes the topography of the land. And yet, although the memory of the pain was sharp and strong even so many years later, she could conjure up no memory of how she had learned that her mother was dead, or of who had told her. No memories of her mother’s funeral, or her stepfather, or the Archer family in mourning. It was as if her memory banks, where the events surrounding her mother’s death were concerned, had been wiped clean. All she knew were the bare facts: Her mother had drowned at age twenty-eight in that lake.
The same lake from which voices now seemed to be calling to her.
‘‘Yes.’’ Olivia set her teeth against the sudden stab of loss remembered, and ignored the icy tingle of dread that snaked down her spine. She would not give in to the morbid fear of the lake that had been the bane of her growing-up years. She had always imagined that it was waiting to get her, to suck her down beneath its shiny surface as it had her mother. Her cousins, once realizing that she was afraid of the lake, had tormented her with it unmercifully, even going so far as to throw her in on one memorable occasion. Now, after so many years in hiatus that she had nearly forgotten about it, the fear threatened to rear its head again. Threatened, bull, she admitted to herself with chagrin. Just setting eyes on the lake once more had brought it back in full, ridiculous force.
Run away. Run away.
Firmly she told herself that she was too old to be afraid of a body of water, even if it was dark and even if voices did seem to be coming from its vicinity. After all, she was twenty-six now, a divorced mother who had been the sole support of herself and her daughter for nearly seven years. A grown-up. Definitely a grown-up.
‘‘After your mom died, your stepfather kept you here with him until he died, and then his family took care of you until you married my father, right?’’
Sara knew the tale well; a somewhat edited and greatly glamorized version of her mother’s history was her favorite bedtime story. During the last few lean years in Houston, both Sara and, if Olivia was honest, Sara’s mother, had needed the dream of better times and better places to cling to.
‘‘Yes,’’ Olivia agreed, groping about among the bits and pieces of information currently capable of being accessed by her tired mind for some means of changing the subject. Tonight, walking through the cypress groves that ringed aptly named Ghost Lake, drawing ever nearer to the Big House and the reunion with the Archers that she had both longed for and dreaded for years, her past was no longer a fairy tale with which to beguile a little girl into sleep. It had suddenly become all too real.
‘‘What’s that?’’ Sara’s voice went high-pitched with surprise.
Mother and daughter stopped and
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