Page 6 of The Souls of Lost Lake
He searched her face for a moment, his expressionless. “The girl?” he finally asked.
Wren nodded. “I can’t imagine...” She let her words drain away.
Eddie’s response was matter-of-fact. “It’s not the first time someone has gone missing in the woods. There are thousands of acres out there.”
“That’s what scares me.” Wren thought of the little girl in her dreams, body sprawled like a dejected mass. She couldn’t help the shiver that passed through her. “She’s just a kid, Eddie.”
“And she’s not yours.” Eddie squeezed the calf of her leg through the blanket.
To anyone listening, his words would sound cold and unfeeling, but Wren understood. Eddie didn’t know how to polish the truth into something tolerable.
“I know she’s not mine,” Wren replied, “but her parents have to be going mad.”
“And we can help in the morning.” Eddie removed his hand from her leg. So platonic, but yet the loss of it made Wren want to snatch it back. “You won’t do anyone any good by losing sleep over it. They have people looking tonight. You need to do your part and get some rest so you can help with the search in the morning.”
Truth. Fact. Eddie was right.
“Okay.” Wren nodded.
“K.” Eddie nodded back. “Get some sleep now.”
“I will.” Wren watched Eddie as he headed out of the room. Snuggling back into her pillows, she pulled the sheet and blanket up until they were tucked under her chin. But she didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t want to close her eyes. The visions from her dream haunted her with eyes wide open and could only become worse again if she closed them.
Little girl dead.
The shoreline. Lost Lake. Wren knew it. The old lake that for decades had been rumored to exist. A few locals claimed they’d found it. Campfire stories made Lost Lake seem like a vortex ofevil. Eddie’s dad claimed to have rediscovered it with his buddies years before when they were in high school, before handheld GPS was a thing. They had returned Lost Lake to the map. It wasn’t a lost lake anymore. GPS coordinates would make sure it never got lost again. Yet Lost Lake was a place of haunting, of almost mythical lore. Its aura, if nothing else, sucked people into the wilderness and tried to trap them.
Wren turned on her side and curled her knees up against her stomach.
People got lost in this wilderness. Just as they did in life. Lost in a vast acreage of hiding places that claimed souls like time claimed lives.
She stared at the wall, unwilling to close her eyes just yet. She should be thankful. She still had her dad and her brother. This internal feeling of restlessness had never made sense to her, and even here, at the Markhams’, where she felt the most at peace, Wren still felt lost.
It would be even worse when Patty died.
“Here. Coffee.” Eddie pushed a mug toward her as if it would magically solve the world’s problems.
Wren sipped, considered, and swallowed. Perhaps it would.
“It’s strong.” There was a thank-you hidden in her complaint as she balanced on a barstool at the Markham kitchen bar, leaning on its cold granite top. It kissed the skin on her bare forearms.
“After that nightmare you had last night, I should’ve added whiskey.” Eddie swept errant coffee grounds onto the floor with a callused hand, his back to her as he cleaned the French press. His morning hair was tousled, streaked with blond and light brown tones that would make any woman jealous of the natural ombré.
Wren stared at his back. So familiar. Eddie had always been there, changing the course of her life in little ways that had a large impact. When she’d first arrived at Deer Lake Bible Camp, herfather had split his time between his role in developing educational courses for staff development and campers requesting camp-provided speakers and educators, along with teaching English literature courses at an extension of the University of Wisconsin.
Camp staff was a different type of life most didn’t understand. Especially larger camps like Deer Lake. Because staff was needed year-round, mission support raising had become part and parcel with running the place. But Dad wasn’t keen on fundraising or “living off someone else’s dime.” He’d never judged people like the Markhams, who were one hundred percent supported by mission funding—Eddie’s dad being the camp’s maintenance manager. Instead, Wren’s father had maintained a frenetic pace of professorship and camp education, until finally he’d succumbed to the necessity to fully invest in his position at camp. When Wren was a freshman in high school, he’d resigned as professor, so that now he rarely left the camp’s grounds. Royalties from books he’d published, reinforced by his PhD in literature, made up for what he needed financially.
His first love would always be literature. Specifically focused on Tolkien. Hence her name Arwen, which Eddie had immediately shortened to Wren. A slight gesture, yet it had instigated an entire Bible camp’s worth of staff to call her the same, much to her Tolkien-loving father’s chagrin.“Arwen,”he’d correct them. Even so, everyone seemed to prefer Wren. She wasn’t a Tolkien fan herself. Not like her older brother, Pippin. Even her mother had adopted the family obsession, having a custom-made sign to hang over each doorway in their house.
Wren’s bedroom had been dubbedRivendell.
The Green Dragon Innwas the family kitchen.
Mordor—Wren’s personal favorite for the humor in it—was her father’s bathroom.
“So about that nightmare?” Eddie broke into her thoughts. He leaned against the kitchen sink, eyeing her. There wasn’t anything remarkably handsome about his face. His eyes were a generalbrown. He was at ease, too, about his mom, her breast cancer, and that she was in hospice care. He had a quiet disposition that Wren envied. That sort of faith was rare. The accepting sort. The kind that honestly believed God was God, nothing was out of control, and life carried on far beyond the immediate one.
This was also why Wren had never dated Eddie. They were too different. He was too cavalier.Unaffectedmight be the better word. Instead, while she would always need Eddie in her life, Wren was three months into a relationship with Troy. He understood the emotional side of her faith, the side that struggled, and he shared it. Troy was an adult version of a Hemsworth brother, with his sensitive eyes, masculine brawn, and overall gentle-giant persona. But Troy was out in the wilderness. Searching for the missing girl. Like everyone else, except for her and Eddie.
