Page 41 of The Lake of Lost Girls

Even more of my dadwithJess.

Mostly, they were from around our house. Simple captures of simple times. There was one of Jess eating a huge ice cream sundae at Carina’s Custard Stand downtown. It hadbeen a Mt. Randall institution, only closing a few years ago. I knew that my sister had loved Carina’s hot fudge brownies and dad would take her frequently. I only knew this because my paternal grandmother made a comment about it once before she died. She asked me if Dad took me to Carina’s Custard, too, and I didn’t know what to say. Because no, he had never taken me.

There were a few that were taken at Doll’s Eye Lake, Jess holding a fishing pole, with an excited smile, an orange paddleboat bobbing in the water behind her. I knew she and Dad used to spend hours out on that boat when Jess was little. Mom said once, as if by accident, that it was their “special time.”

After Jess went missing, I had been desperate to go fishing with my dad. To spend time with him. I wanted to paddle out to the middle of the lake like he had done with my sister a hundred times. I begged him. I had even cried. But he always refused. Mom scolded me, saying it made him too sad to go back there and to stop bothering him about it. So I never mentioned the boat, or going fishing, ever again. And now his boat—their boat—stayed in the garage, rusting beneath an old blue tarp.

Once, when I was around fourteen, Dad had been working late and Mom had too much to drink, she told me how inseparable Jess and Dad had been. I knew, on some level, that their connection had been deep. It was the way his face crumpled at the smallest mention of my sister. It was how he hardly ever came to the end of the house where my room, and Jess’s, were. Sometimes he’d stand at one end of the hallway, his body sagging, as if he desperately wanted to venture there, but couldn’t make himself.

And it was in the way that he loved me—a superficial kind of affection—never the deep, abiding tenderness I longed for from my father. In some ways, it felt like he was too scared to love me fully in case something happened to me, too. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

Mom said they were always together, at least up until Jess went to college. She blubbered that that had been wheneverything changed. Jess stopped calling home. She refused to see Dad. Mom said she changed almost from the moment she moved into her dorm. She only came home briefly from time to time. And when she did, she’d go up to her room for a while and then leave without saying anything. That’s why it was such a pleasant surprise when Jess announced she was coming home for my sixth birthday.

She whispered, her words slurring, “Your father has never gotten over her rejection. He wouldn’t say it, but Jess destroyed him. She broke his heart. He’s never been the same since she went missing. He took it personally. Like he should have saved her. Like it was all his fault she was gone.”

She had passed out soon after that and it was the last time she ever dared mention Jess and her relationship with Dad.

I hated to admit that hearing confirmation of the bond between Jess and Dad had made me jealous. I wanted what they’d had. I wanted the fishing trips and Carina’s hot fudge brownies. During my preteen years, I tried to build that same kind of relationship with him. But it wasn’t the same. Sure, he always told me he loved me. He dutifully came to my school plays and attended every parent/teacher night, but there was a distance that I could never bridge. It felt as if he was doing what was expected of a father, rather than out of any real desire for closeness. We never had anything that was only for us like he’d had with Jess. We didn’t have special trips or inside jokes. On paper, we looked the part, but scratch the surface and there was nothing really there.

Jess and Dad had been so much more, and it was hard knowing I’d never have it. In many ways, I never felt good enough because I wasn’ther.His perfect Jess.

So, I forced myself to focus on the good stuff. To find a way to enjoy the relationship wedidhave, even if it lacked substance. But it was difficult. The jealousy, the feeling of inadequacy, was always there in the back of my mind. And it didn’t stop me from missing what I could have had if it weren’t for my sister.

Dad loved me in his own way, but it was more than obvious as the years went by that it wasn’t as much as he loved Jess.

I closed the photo album, not finding anything but heartache in its pages. Yet I couldn’t help but feel I was missing something. It was driving me nuts.

I put the tiny book in the box and started to lug it back into the closet.

I shoved it into the farthest corner. One of them—the heaviest box—hit the wall with a hollow thud.

“What the—?”

I dropped to my knees and pulled the box back out of the way. I lightly tapped the wall, searching for the hollow sound. I knocked a little lower until I heard the sound again. There was a definite void behind the drywall. I knelt closer, noticing a small square cut out, barely visible to the naked eye, as it blended in with the rest of the wall.

Using my fingernail, I ran it along the grooves and slowly pried a thin piece of drywall away, revealing a small cavity.

“Jessie, you sneaky girl.”

I turned on the flashlight on my phone and peered inside. There wasn’t much, only a small pile of papers. I pulled them out. Then, sitting on the floor of Jess’s closet, I looked through them.

On top was a faded printout of what must have been Jess’s classes at Southern State. Next to them were grades. The report was dated December 12, 1998. It seemed my academic, straight-A sister was struggling to get Cs and Ds. She was even failing her English class. There was also a letter from Pi Gamma Delta dated March 14, 1999, stating she was on suspension because of her low GPA and she was no longer an active pledge. There was another letter dated the following month from the administrator’s office informing her that she had a scheduled meeting to discuss her academic probation.

I put the report and the letters aside and saw a receipt from the registrar’s office. According to the slip of paper, she had audited Introduction to Statistics for the spring semesterof 1999. I looked at the professor’s name and felt my stomach drop.

“Dr. Clement Daniels,” I whispered.

That was the name of the professor Ryan had said was involved with the other missing women. The same professor who, it looked like, had taught Jess statistics. Seeing his name among my sister’s secret things felt uncomfortable. My heart started to pound as I went through the rest of the items that had been hidden away.

There were tons of pictures. I didn’t understand at first why she hadn’t put these in her photo album until I realized what I was seeing. These were pictures of Jess, clearly intoxicated.

This wasn’t the Jess my parents knew and remembered.

I had no doubt she had put them in her hiding spot so our mom wouldn’t find them. Lord knows what would have happened if she had.

In one photo, she held an overturned Silo cup over her head, her top practically see-through with what must be beer, and her head thrown back in laughter. In another, her eyes were glassy and she was clearly drunk. She held up a shot glass to the camera.

I flipped to the last few pictures and I froze.

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