Page 103 of The Souls of Lost Lake
He kissed her again. This time, Noah was gentler. His lips held hers. Then he pulled back. “I’m not sorry.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected.
Noah ran his finger down her cheek. It left a fiery trail on her skin, traversed over her tears, and left Ava feeling alone when he pulled it away.
“You’re not alone.”
Ava shook her head. “I am.”
“Youwere. You’re not anymore.”
Ava backed away from him. His words filled a hollow in Ava. A chasm that had formed in her that day she huddled in the cellar and listened as her family died. But it also terrified her. With aloneness came the security of only fending for oneself. With togetherness, she would have to care, have to listen, have to put down roots. And while that was everything she wanted, it was everything she was afraid of.
Ava did the only thing she knew how to do.
She ran.
42
Wren
She’d texted Eddie but had heard nothing. A quick jaunt to the Markham house confirmed it was intact, with no damage or evidence of a break-in. But there had to have been, considering Redneck Harriet had last been in Eddie’s possession in the house. Wren looked for the hidden key under the garden gnome. It was there. She noticed the imprint of a foot near the gnome, and it was smaller than a male foot. Immediately, the image of Ava Coons was blazing in Wren’s mind. She’d been here. The woman in the woods. Smart enough to find the hidden key.
Wren snatched the key from its hiding place and hurried to the front door, inserting it in the lock. Sure enough, there were two muddy footprints just inside the door. A quick call to Gary, who thankfully answered, confirmed he wasn’t aware of anyone who would have accessed the house. An hour later, the police met her there, surveyed the area, filed a report, and shrugged a little since there was no evidence of anything broken or stolen. Wren showed them the doll that was lying facedown on the passenger seat of her truck. After she explained it had been taken, the police pointed out that it had also been found and now returned. There really wasn’t much they could do.
Annoyed, Wren sped a bit too fast on the gravel back roads,clattering over the wooden bridge that spanned Lily Pond, and headed for Tempter’s Creek city limits. Once there, she pulled through a corner coffee shack and ordered a strong quadruple-shot hazelnut latte and was perturbed enough she didn’t even ask for almond milk but instead upped it to a breve. Sipping it, she headed for the library. A little brick building with a selection of pre-2010 books and a limited selection of more current releases. But they had free Wi-Fi, and no one would look over her shoulder. She hadn’t said a word about the previous night and the doll to either her father or Pippin. This morning, Wren hated to admit, there was an even wider chasm between her father and herself. He’d poured his coffee in silence, hefted his laptop bag to his shoulder, and driven off to camp to welcome a new speaker for the upcoming week’s family camp.
It didn’t take long for Wren to get settled at a table near a shelf full of large-print Danielle Steel novels. She tugged the paper that had been pinned to Redneck Harriet’s dress from her bag.
October 9, 1996
It had to mean something, regardless of who had broken into the Markham home and who had left the doll at the back door of the Blythe home.
She started by punching the date into Google. As figured, the results were general and generic. Everything from zodiac signs to “what happened on this day.” Wren took a long sip from her latte. It was thick and milky and strong. She swallowed, glanced up at a mother and child passing by the table, then redirected her attention to her laptop.
Think, Arwen. Think.
She looked back at the note.
Look in the paper.
Wren considered it for a moment.The paperprobably meant newspaper. Okay. She typed in the website address for the Tempter’s Creek newspaper and checked to see if archives were available online. Surprisingly, there were. Rather good for a Podunk townpaper. Wren jabbed in the date, and an image of that day’s paper appeared. Skimming it, she noted the weather report, an article about a local high-school athlete who was on their way to earning state in wrestling, and a story about the tavern league.
Disheartened, Wren sagged in her chair. Of course, that was too easy, too simple. She racked her brain trying to place any semblance of meaning onto the date. Something that she would recognize. Aside from it being the year she was born, there wasn’t anything...
Wren straightened. The year she was born. Ava. Arwen. Whoever the woods-woman was, she was trying to communicate that there was some connection between Ava Coons and Wren. She’d tied it back to Redneck Harriet, who bore Arwen’s name on her foot and had been found in Ava Coons’s cellar.
October 9, 1996.
Two months after Wren had been born.
According to her grandmother, Wren was born in California, where her dad had been a professor. She bent over her laptop.
Stanford, California.
She added the date.
Several pages pulled up about a university, some economics... Wren refined her search to seek the title of the local newspaper. Once she found it, she pulled up its website and clicked on their archives.
