Page 105 of The Souls of Lost Lake
A black-and-white picture of a baby stared back at them. The headline sent a wave of horror through Wren.
Missing: Taken from park, 2-month-old baby girl. Search continues with no leads.
“What is that?” Meghan’s inquiry was natural.
Wren drew in a carefully controlled breath. If she wasn’t cautious,she could go into a tailspin like Meghan, and take Meghan right along with her.
“Wren?” Meghan’s hand came down on Wren’s forearm.
Wren stared at the familiar baby. The eyes. The cheeks. The hair that, while a shade of newspaper gray in the picture, was a brilliant red in real life. She’d seen this baby in other pictures. There was even one hanging in the hallway of the Blythe home.
“It’s me,” Wren whispered.
“What?” Meghan frowned.
Wren tapped the black-and-white photo of the baby. “That baby is me.”
Meghan stared intently at the headlines, at the picture, then back to Wren. “You are—you’re the—you’re the missing baby?”
Wren couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. White dots filled her vision. She heard Meghan calling her name, a distant echo. Her eyes could barely filter the words below the headline.
Authorities say the window of time making it probable to find the missing baby has expired. The FBI is cautioning parents to monitor their children in the Stanford area, as the kidnapper is still at large. If anyone has any information, please call the Stanford Police Department.
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Ava
Ava plunged into the clearing. The lake stretched in front of her, its dark waters the grave marking of her family. She knew. She sensed in her gut it would not be long before those of Tempter’s Creek who were sure she was guilty would descend on this place. This time not to learn what had happened to the Coons family, but to string her up. If not by her neck, then by her soul. They’d haul her in with no evidence but their own concocted realism. She’d be at the mercy of a judge, a court, and God knew what would happen then. Fine. Let it be. She was tired. Exhausted. Shaken.
Ava waded into the water, allowing the cold to wash over her legs, soak through her shoes, and saturate the hemline of her dress. She reached forward, fingers outstretched, as if by doing so her family’s bodies would rise from the watery depths. Their cold gray corpses reaching back to her just as they had in her vision. Covered with weeds and silt from the bottom of the lake, but family all the same. Ma, Pa, Ricky, and Arnie...
She fell to her knees, the water splashing up and dotting her face, matching her tears. Ava was surprised Noah hadn’t followed her. She’d expected to hear him crashing through the woods behind her. But with that kiss and promising hope had come the shatteringreality of their demons that dogged their steps. Hers, the Coons family’s demise. His, Emmaline? Who was Emmaline? Had she received Ava’s letter?
Ava ran her wet hands through her hair, loosening it from her braid. “God, you may as well take me. Just throw me in the water and hold me under.” It was a challenge to a God who was supposed to make sense in a place of confusion. The only sense Ava could make of anything was death. There was finality in it. An ending. This living thing? It was nigh on exhausting. Heartbreaking.
She tried again. “Don’t you have an angel up there what could come down and just make me die?”
Ava looked up to the sky. Clouds. Fluffy. Blue sky. It was really beautiful here. She could understand why her family had homesteaded in this place so far out from Tempter’s Creek. She could see why someone would want to disappear into these woods—to vanish, to never be seen again. There was a peace here, in spite of the echoes of violence that had bled into its very soil.
“You up there listenin’ or are you asleep?” Ava raised her voice.
No face of God shone down and fulfilled her expectation. No angel of death came to meet her request. She wasn’t brave enough to do nothin’ that dramatic herself.
“I don’t want to die anyway,” Ava muttered. Her mouth twisted as she grew aggravated at the tears that were just plumb set on coming today. “I just want your help. You know?” She thought of the painting of Jesus in the parsonage sitting room. So nice-looking, really. Peaceful. A bit like Noah, if she was honest. That gentle softness that hid an underlying passionate protection of fierceness. “Maybe just—dosomething?” Ava prayed.
She heard him before she saw him. Not God, but Widower Frisk. When she saw him, she stiffened. He’d shaved his beard. But this time he didn’t wear a floppy hat pulled down to his nose. She could see his eyes. Small, narrowed. She knew those eyes. But she didn’t recognize his face without his bushy beard that had covered three-quarters of it since the day she’d met him. He stood on theshoreline behind her. Hunched shoulders. Wearing overalls, not unlike the ones Ava was accustomed to wearing.
She struggled to her feet in the water and faced him.
“What do you want?”
“Whack, whack, whack,” Widower Frisk cackled. He didn’t try to disguise his voice, didn’t hiss or whisper. His words were bolder than that night in the church or the day he’d landed his fist against the side of her face.
Ava pushed through the water and back to shore. She hated the widower in this moment. “You killed ’em. Jipsy. Matthew Hubbard. Didn’t you?” Anger sucked away Ava’s fear.
Widower Frisk rocked back and forth on his feet. He rubbed wrinkled, callused hands together. “You’d like to pin that on me, wouldn’t you, you little witch?”
Ava’s feet cleared the water.
