Page 32 of Lake Hollow Curses

I could be having an out of body experience, as my heart zooms along dangerously, my limbs are tingling. I don’t want to tell them what I’ve hidden, it feels important enough… the detective’s warning dire enough… that I should continue to keep it to myself.

Grady and Wilder tell us what Gary Marlow said about Daniel Gibson. As they go back and forth relaying the story, I watch Charlie’s reaction. He’s stunned. At one point jumping up, telling them it’s all lies. “No way. It’s a lie. Carlotta, my parents… no one, has ever said anything like that. All the stories Lala told about Daniel were loving, fond memories. It’s a fucking lie.”

“How could not a single person ever comment about Daniel’s supposedly bad behavior if it was true?” Cal asks as he sits on the arm of the recliner. “This town gossips about a parking ticket, there is no way a scandal like that gets swept under the rug. I don’t want to insult your dad, but I don’t believe it, either.”

Wilder sighs. “I felt the same way, but while Gary Marlow may be a crabby asshole, he isn’t a liar.”

Giving us a minute to process the information, Grady stares out at the moonlit lake before turning back to us. “What do we know… what have each of us found out this summer?”

My mind is still grappling with the fact Gary Marlow is saying Daniel was a psychopath. That he had hurt Carlotta, ended her pregnancy.

Grady talks over the guys all debating the merit of the news his dad shared, “Stop. Hey, hold on. I didn’t believe it until I started to think about some things she’d said in the past. She said more than once that people will hide their darkest secrets from the world, which always made me feel like she was speaking personally. I’d asked her once why she’d never had kids, and she said that her first baby was ‘taken from her’ early in her pregnancy. There… there were signs. Not to mention that the rift between our families makes more sense to me now,” he says the last bit to Charlie.

Charlie shakes his head; his face is pale. “It was over land. All of the problems were over a land dispute. My dad got pushy pissing your dad off.”

“It started long before that and you know it.”

“Technically, it’s always been about the appropriation of land, all the way back to our great grandparents. Long before Carlotta or Daniel were born.” Charlie sits next to Cal. “I, for one, don’t buy it. Your dad is making it up. Maybe he has to justify why he wasn’t around for Lala or why he didn’t do more when she passed away.”

“Can we get back on track here?” Wilder asks as he puts an arm around my waist. “You okay?” he whispers into my ear.

Nope. Okay is the last thing I feel right now. I’m nervous that telling Cal and Charlie about the letter could be a mistake, that letting them know about the diary… we could be tipping one of them off. I’ve never been more conflicted in my life.

Pulling Carlotta’s letter from his pocket, Wilder says, “It all starts with this… Lala left this for me. Both Remi and Grady have seen it.” I didn’t expect him to give them the letter to look at. The panic in my face when I peer at Wilder isn’t eased when he doesn’t look too certain of what he’s doing either.

I murmur under my breath, “What. Are. You. Doing?”

“If it’s one of them, it’ll push them to do something. If not, then we can try to figure things out together.”

Their reactions are both of shock, tears fill Charlie’s eyes. “Why would she think it was one of us?”

“I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.” Cal’s hand rubs over his cheek. “What the actual fuck?”

I expected them to both act surprised, to feel slighted. There is no trace of a suspicious reaction. “That’s not all…” Here goes nothing. I hate that I never told Charlie this when it happened. That I kept it from him, and he’s going to feel hurt. “When the electrician came to work on the light switch problem in the bathroom of our cabin, they had to cut away a piece of the wall, there was a diary inside it.” Charlie perks up, but I cut him off before he can ask anything. “It belonged to your sister. It was Katie’s.”

He puts his head in his hands. “You found a diary belonging to my sister?” When he looks up at me, I see a gut wrenching hurt, as he says, “You found something like that and never told me, because…” He shakes his head. “I don’t, I don’t understand what’s happening here…”

Cal rests a hand on his back while he says, “What was written in her diary? Where is it?”

It takes all the strength inside me to tell them I handed it over to Detective Hemminger, that I didn’t know what else to do. I had read it, she named who she saw kill Sara, but it was water damaged and unreadable. No one in this cabin looks any better than I feel. The words are absorbed and it’s like that ticking bomb I’ve felt under our feet. It’s blown, leaving in its wake the shattered remnants of distrust, hurt, and disbelief.

“Sara was killed,” Cal’s voice sounds detached.

Even if it’s been suspected by most of the people in Lake Hollow over the years, the confirmation seems like more than he can bear right now. He bends over his knees, his hands fistedin his hair, a loud bellow lets loose from him that makes me jump. “Noooooo!”Grady quickly moves to his side, crushing him against him, while Charlie in a daze grabs his hand. Wilder and I watch on, frozen. The pain is too much to witness, but I can’t leave Cal, and Wilder holds me tight not wanting to leave me.

Time lapses as we grieve as a group.

They know, just as Wilder, Grady, and I, that none of it was accidental. It’s not a whispered rumor anymore, it’s not a paranoid passing thought. It’s all connected, it was all done by someone, and they were pointed at as the culprit.

Everything starts getting tossed around.

“She had evidence, but someone got into her office and took it…,” I offer forth.

“Katie was acting weird after Sara’s death, I should’ve realized…,” Charlie says wiping tears away.

“The meds, that was really strange, tell them about the medication I found…” Grady pokes him.

Pulling his phone out, he tells us about Grady finding a broken open metal lockbox full of Potassium Chloride vials and syringes. It was in things Lala left for Grady that came from Lala’s. Mitchell had packed it up.

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