Page 90 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Yeah, enjoy your pit of darkness!” Wren called after him as Pippin disappeared down the stairs. She turned to her dad. “Listen, I need to figure out my birth certificate thing. But for now, I’m going to head to Lost Lake. It’ll take me a bit to get out there. I need to see if they find anything.”
“There’s too much fuss being made of all this.” Tristan shook his head.
“Dad, a little girl is missing.” He wasn’t that callous. He couldn’t be.
Tristan lifted his eyes. “Oh, I didn’t mean about Jasmine Riviera! I meant this whole idea there are bodies in that lake. People take the story of Ava Coons too far.”
“Says the man who names his bathroom after Mordor,” Wren muttered.
“Uncalled for,” her father retorted.
“See shoe. See shoe fit, Dad.” Wren snatched the water bottle from the counter. “We’ll talk later.” And they would. They had to. As of right now, Wren didn’t have an identity. Apparently, she was the only person that fact even bothered—which made it all so much worse.
The area around Lost Lake was more populated this afternoon than since the Coons family had lived here back in the 1920s. Aquick survey as she entered the area told her that neither Meghan nor Ben were in attendance—which was good. The people milling around seemed official. She recognized two guys from camp. Eddie’s officer friend, Bruce. The SAR organizer, John. Scanning, Wren didn’t see Troy.
The lake was smaller than Deer Lake. Its surface covered over a hundred acres, with most of the land surrounding the lake heavily wooded. This afternoon the sun was high, and the warmth saturated the area, sending rivulets of sweat down Wren’s back. She’d appreciated the long hike back to the lake for the time it offered to clear her mind. There were so many pieces rattling in there, it reminded her of a box of puzzle pieces that if one could just sit down long enough to piece together, the entire picture would make sense.
“Hey.”
Wren saw Troy approaching. His smile was ladened with sympathy, and he searched her face quickly before pulling her in for a hug. She accepted it but noticed how she didn’t feel like wrapping herself around him like she had with Eddie. That made sense, though, didn’t it? They shared their grief. Troy was an outsider looking in.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
Troy tugged at the brim of his baseball cap. “It was good. One kid sprained his ankle on the falls. We ended up at Lake Superior for an afternoon instead of spending another day at Black River Harbor.”
“Sounds like fun.” Her words sounded stilted even to her own ears.
“You doing okay? I wish I’d been here for you when Patty passed away.”
“I’m fine.” Wren wrapped her thumbs around her backpack straps that spanned her shoulders. She offered Troy a smile that was both assuring and intended to shut down the conversation before emotion crowded in. “I mean, we’ll be okay.”
“We?”
“Gary. Eddie. Me.” She stumbled over her proclamation.
Troy’s brow furrowed a bit, but then he nodded. “Yeah. That’s gotta be rough for the guys.”
“It is.”
“So, do you know why I was corralled into helping at Lost Lake today?”
Wren shot a sideways glance at Troy. No wonder he sounded weary. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t showered yet from his weeklong excursion with the campers.
“Wayne Sanderson apparently pulled strings with the authorities. He’s convinced they’ll find someone at the bottom.”
Troy frowned. “I didn’t hear there was any evidence that they thought Jasmine Riviera was actually ... well, dead.”
Wren lifted her hands in acquiescence. “I don’t know what Wayne might have provided to convince them. But they did find little Trina Nesbitt not too far from the lake. The stories of Lost Lake, you know ... Jasmine is still missing.”
Troy blanched. “The last thing I want to find at the bottom of Lost Lake is a kid.”
“I know.” Wren eased out of her backpack. They watched the leaders of the search party as they gathered their supplies and set up for the quest to explore the bottom of Lost Lake. “I don’t get how they plan to dredge it. The lake isn’t exactly small or shallow like a pond.”
“Lost Lake is a little over twenty feet deep,” Troy supplied, “so it’s doable. But I’m not sure how mucky the bottom will be. Muck and silt would suck a body deeper and bury them. If that’s the case, I can’t imagine visibility will be great.”
Wren supposed there was a lot more science involved in searching the bottom of a lake than she understood. She eyed the red inflatable boat with its small outboard motor. A man sat in the middle of the boat, fiddling with what looked like sonar equipment. That had to have been a pain to haul back here. Logging roads only went so far in; the rest would’ve had to have been hauled in on foot or maybe by ATV.
Troy pointed. “They’ll monitor the lake bed with the sonar and look for anomalies. If they find anything, they’ll send one of us down to check it out.”
