Page 120 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Nesbitt?” Eddie interrupted. “Like Trina Nesbitt?”
Wayne looked between them, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Isla is my sister. She’s Trina’s grandmother. She’s not been the same since Trina disappeared. She knew—knewher son-in-law didn’t take Trina, not like her daughter and the police were convinced. Especially when she got word four years ago that he’d died and there was no trace of Trina.”
“Next you’ll tell me she’s related to Ava Coons.” Wren was having difficulty keeping up. She was getting chilled again as the blanket was losing its warmth.
Wayne laughed hesitantly. “No. No, she’s not. In fact, Ava Coons left these parts decades ago. Story says she either vanished into the woods or moved. Most of us like to opt for the vanishing partbecause it’s ... well, it’s more interesting. Anyway, Isla has spent years—years—looking for Trina in those woods. Near Lost Lake. That the search party found Trina, well, it crushed her.”
“She never came forward with any of this.” Eddie’s observation echoed Wren’s thoughts.
“No.” Wayne shook his head and sighed. “And that’s been my error in judgment, I’m afraid. Isla—she’s gone downhill since Trina disappeared. I-I needed to protect her—or felt like I did. So I tried to be her liaison of sorts. With the police. Keeping her uninvolved and being her voice. Until I found out—well, I’m sorry, I had no idea what Isla was doing. Today, she told me that she’d seen where Jasmine was, and that she’d left you information in hopes you’d link Jasmine to Ava Coons’s place, since that’s where Jasmine was first being held.”
“Before Pippin moved her because of the search party?” Eddie asked.
Wayne nodded. “Exactly. Then she started researching on her own. At the library. About Pippin.”
“So she knew all along it was Pippin who had Jasmine?” Eddie’s question was barbed.
Wren reached out and touched his arm.
“No, no, it’s okay.” Wayne shook his head. “She was suspicious of him. She’d seen him in the woods. She’d seen evidence of Jasmine being at the cabin, but hadn’t seen Jasmine herself. So Isla was putting pieces together, but you know how it is. The police hadn’t done anything—at least in Isla’s mind—to find Trina. Why would they believe her theories about Pippin—without proof?”
“She must have been desperate.” Wren remembered her standing in the Markhams’ driveway. Chasing her in the forest. “Why didn’t she justtalkto me? Why the cryptic notes at night—or running away?”
“She doesn’t trust many people anymore.” Regret etched itself across Wayne’s face. “When people get lost, taken, or just disappear—when there’s no answers—we all respond differently.Some of us can’t process things but through our own muddled ways. And she’s not ... she struggles with mental illness. It comes and goes, and she’s, well—” Wayne cleared his throat—“earlier today, she told me what she’d done. How she tried to help you connect it all together. That she’d found the newspaper article about you as a missing child when she was running searches on Pippin—the Blythes—and found out they’d come from Stanford, California. She started putting pieces together and thought—wasn’t sure—but she thought that baby might be you. Then Jasmine was tied to Pippin. You were tied to Pippin. Trina was tied to Pippin. That’s when I called the police.”
Wren’s eyes slid shut.
Wayne hesitated. “For what it’s worth,” he explained honestly, “Isla didn’t know where Pippin was keeping Jasmine. She was searching—all this time too. He had Jasmine well-hidden after he moved her from Lost Lake.”
“So it was Pippin who told you all where to look for us?” Wren opened her eyes to meet Wayne’s direct gaze. She looked to Eddie.
“Yes.” It was Eddie who answered then. “Pippin didn’t bother to try to hide anything once the police arrested him.”
“Why Jasmine?” Wren whispered, tears crowding her throat.
Eddie’s reaction was empathetic. “It’s been ten years.” Eddie rubbed his palm over her arm, careful to avoid the wounds on her wrists. “Ten years since your mom passed. It must have revived his need to take care of her. With a girl—to make everything okay. It’s why he took Trina. When she didn’t survive . . . well, a decade anniversary of her death acted as a trigger.”
Wren laid her head back on the pillow. “Mom. He always looked out for Mom.”
Eddie and Wayne exchanged looks, but it was Wayne who responded. “We’re all lost in our own ways. Some of us just hide when we shouldn’t. We hide in our grief, in our minds, in our pain ... in the woods, like Isla ... or in a story, like Ava Coons.”
48
Ava
He hadn’t explained who Emmaline was. It had been apparent that Noah wasn’t ready. A few days later, with her body having caught up with rest, and her throat showing green-and-yellow bruising from Widower Frisk’s attempt to strangle her, Ava was back in front of the general store, perched on a barrel. She sucked on a peppermint stick, only this time she stared into the distance at the white steeple of the church. Living with Hanny had been a blessing, sure, but it didn’t feel like home. The parsonage didn’t feel like home. The old Coons cabin ruins? Even home didn’t feel like home.
A few townsfolk skirted by her, eyeing her out of the corners of their eyes. Yep. She was still that questionable Coons girl, prob’ly up to no good. Takin’ a shine to the preacher, now that didn’t sit well either. ’Course, they didn’t know that Noah had hardly seen her of late, and truth be told, sitting on top of the barrel sucking that peppermint stick, Ava was hurtin’.
Sarah Sanderson had come and gone into the general store. She’d walked past Ava with her chin tilted so high, if it rained, she’d drown. Lofty princess. She knew she’d started the gossip that had wound up with two folks dead. She’d known it that day Ava had sat at her kitchen table. Prob’ly felt some guilt, which was why she’d been willing to stay out of things. Ava wondered if Sarah had beenright. If, in another life, they could’ve been friends. But then Ava’d figured that most women weren’t friendly. Not really. They all spat and hissed behind each other’s backs instead of being a place each other could find warm welcome and belonging. Seemed like the world was a cow pie short of an all-out mess. People just makin’ up stories to suit themselves while ruining lives along the way.
“Ava Coons.” The store owner stuck his head out. “Got a letter for you.” His brother was the mail carrier, so Ava assumed that in small-town fashion, her letter had been dropped inside the mercantile when the mail carrier had seen her perched on the barrel.
She took it. Turned it over.
Emmaline.
Ava ripped into it with a vengeance. She’d not expected the woman to write to her.
