Authors: Susan Lewis
Sallie Jo broke into a smile as Justine shared the memory. “That sure used to happen,” she confirmed. “Wealthy people would arrive from Chicago or Indianapolis bringing half their households with them in train cars for the summer.”
“My grandma must have told us about them,” Justine murmured, still sensing the evanescent recollection. She looked around the scrambled web of bindweed, ivy, split tree branches, and rotting leaves. It would have been less overgrown when she and Rob played here. They’d have been able to see the sky; sunlight had poured in on them, which would be right, considering the time of year they used to come here.
“So what are you going to do now?” Sallie Jo asked as they headed back to the car.
“Get in touch with my mother,” Justine replied. “And my brother. He’ll be as stunned as I was to find out Grandma’s lake house not only still exists but is still in the family.”
“Any ideas on why your mother would want to keep it a secret?”
“None, but if you knew my mother…” Astounded all over again, she cried, “I can hardly believe that she’s owned it for thirty years and never told us. I don’t think she’s even been here in all that time.”
“Would you know if she had?”
Only half listening, Justine said, “Do you think it might be built on an Indian burial ground? I know there are supposed to be lots of them around here.”
Sallie Jo looked doubtful. “Why? Are you thinking it might be haunted?”
Justine gave a laugh as she threw out her hands. “I honestly don’t know what I’m thinking, and I guess I won’t until I speak to my mother, and even then…She’s very good at avoiding the issue if she wants to, and the issue of my grandmother is one she’s been avoiding for most of my life.”
As soon as Sallie Jo dropped her and Daisy off, Justine went straight to her computer, uploaded the photographs she’d taken, and sent them to her mother and brother with a message saying,
This is Grandma’s house on Lake Maxinkuckee. It appears to be in very good nick judging by what’s visible from the roadside, especially as it probably hasn’t been lived in for thirty-odd years (still checking that out but if you know anything, either of you, perhaps you’d care to enlighten me). According to the records, Mum, you are the owner. I’m presuming you know that, so intrigued—do we have a mad relative you’re hiding away? What’s the big secret?
Having no time for anything else, she grabbed Daisy again, put her in the car, and set off to collect Lula. She hadn’t even reached town by the time Rob rang.
“What the hell?” he cried. “I just saw your email. Are you sure about this?”
“As sure as I can be. Sallie Jo checked the records and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt—our mother owns the lake house and has done since Grandma died.”
“That is so…Actually, I don’t know what it is apart from beyond stupefying. And it’s in good nick, you say?”
“The garden certainly is. We couldn’t get close to the house, so I’m not sure about that.”
“Do you think someone’s living there?”
“No idea. There’s no front drive as such, so no way to get a car in, and the only gate in the fence is pedestrian and heavily padlocked.”
Rob was clearly having as much trouble taking it in as she was. “You know what I’m starting to think,” he said, “is that Grandma might have ceded the house to Mum—you know, to avoid taxes or something—and maybe she’s still there.”
Justine almost swerved into the ditch. “That’s crazy,” she shrieked. “Why would she say her own mother is dead if it isn’t true?”
“I have absolutely no idea, but unless she comes up with a reasonable explanation as to why she’s never told us she owns the house, I’d say your next task could be to find our grandmother’s death certificate.”
Justine flinched at that. “This is starting to get very weird,” she commented. “Actually, I think the next step is to find out if the place is occupied. Mum should know, but as I don’t have much faith in her telling us anything, I’ll let Sallie Jo carry on with her investigations.”
After a pause, she added, “I don’t suppose you recognize the house from the shots I sent?”
“No,” he replied. “What about you? Did it do anything for you while you were there?”
“Not the house, but I found some old railroad ties in the woods opposite, and they gave me a kind of flashback. We used to play there, making out we were rich people with our own private train car. Do you remember it?”
After trying to conjure up his own memory, Rob said, “Not really, but I’m younger than you…Oh God, listen, I have to go—I just couldn’t wait to ring when I got your email. We can catch up later if you like. If you hear from Mum, get in touch straightaway.”
“I will,” she promised. “It’ll be interesting to see if I do.”
It wasn’t until she was pulling up at day care ten minutes later that she realized she hadn’t told Rob about the email she’d found in her old account this morning.
It didn’t matter. The account was deactivated now, the way it should have been when she and Matt had removed themselves, Abby, and Ben from Facebook and Twitter. So if anyone had any further plans to intimidate her, they’d find their messages either bouncing straight back or falling into a bottomless void.
—
A week later, still having received no reply from her mother, Justine agreed that Rob should go round to Camilla’s Chelsea home and demand some answers. He went that very day and called Justine straight after. “You’re going to love this,” he told her, as soon as she came on the line. “According to the housekeeper, Mum’s away filming on some remote Hebridean island, so it’s possible she hasn’t even got your email yet.”
“And you really believe that?” Justine scoffed as she climbed into Sallie Jo’s golf cart to start a planned tour of the town.
“Let’s say it’s very convenient,” he agreed, “but she’s definitely not there, because the housekeeper invited me in to take a look if I didn’t believe her. Any news on occupancy of the house yet? Ghost, mad relative, or Grandma?”
“No record of anyone being in residence, which the gardening company has confirmed to the best of their knowledge, although one of them said he was sure he’d seen a face at the window a couple of times.”
“Get out of here!” Rob laughed. “Is her name Bertha, by any chance?”
“Bertha?”
“Rochester’s wife. Who pays the gardening company?”
“OK, you’re going to love this, because we just got an answer to that today. Apparently it comes from a firm of lawyers in New York who also pay the property taxes, which—I hope you’re sitting down for this—amount to twenty-eight thousand dollars a
year
. Every year.”
There was a beat of shocked silence before he said, “You have to be kidding me!”
Justine ran on. “It probably won’t surprise you nearly as much to hear that the lawyers are not at liberty to divulge the name of their client.”
“But you asked if it was Camilla Gayley?”
“I did and was given the same reply: not at liberty, blah blah…How about here?” she cried to Sallie Jo as they approached the root-beer stand on North Lakeshore, closed for the winter.
“Where are you? What are you doing?” Rob wanted to know.
Justine knew this was going to baffle him. “We’re in Sallie Jo’s golf cart organizing a scarecrow placement for the Fall Fest,” she replied.
She almost felt his double take. “A what? For what?”
“We’re choosing where to position scarecrows for the autumn festival that Sallie Jo set up last year to promote local businesses and charities. However, if you’re picturing things like Guy Fawkes, or Wurzel Gummidge, or sorry old broomsticks that hang around in fields, think again. These scarecrows are more like giant dolls or puppets, and they’re beautifully made by local kids at school or with their families. Lula and Hazel are making a mermaid.”
“Sounds impressive. So is Lula with you?”
“No, she’s at home working on said scarecrow with Hazel and Petra Yates, one of the high school students who lives nearby. I think you met her while you were here.”
“I believe I did. Tall girl with mousy hair and a bit of a lisp?”
“That’s her, but she recently changed her hair color to a whiter shade of pale.” The erroneous words snatched at her harshly. It was a song Abby used to sing, taught to her by Matt, and she had no idea why she’d said that when what she’d meant was lightish shade of pink.
“I’ve no idea what color that is,” Rob was saying, “but I’m just a bloke. So what’s the next move with the house?”
“You tell me. We can’t do anything without keys unless we break in, and we’re not keen to try that until we’re totally sure no one’s in there. Do you have any idea when Mum’s supposed to be back from this Hebridean junket?”
“No, but she can’t stay there forever, so it must be any day now.”
“OK, let me know if you hear anything.”
“Same goes for you. Enjoy the scarecrows,” and he was gone.
“Mother done a disappearing act?” Sallie Jo asked sardonically as they turned into the Academies’ grounds, where she’d come to drop off a bag one of the students had left at the café.
“It would appear so,” Justine replied, “but she can’t run away from it forever.”
“I hope not. It’s got us all crazed with curiosity, that’s for sure. I won’t tell you some of the things folks are saying, you won’t want to hear it, but David’s theory is that she comes every summer to meet a secret lover whose wife has some kind of disability so he can’t leave her.”
Justine shook her head and gazed around at the grand red-brick buildings with their smartly turreted roofs, so pristine and elegant they might have been built a mere decade ago rather than a century or more. The late afternoon sunlight was burnishing everything as golden as the changing leaves, lending it an almost illusory feel. She was mesmerized by the air of learning, the sense of privilege and history, achievement and authority that emanated like rainbows from the Huffington Library, the Dicke Hall of Mathematics, the Eppley Auditorium, the Vaughan Equestrian Center, the wavelike structure of the new rowing center. So many buildings, more facilities than she’d ever seen at a high school, and then there were the sports fields: football, polo, lacrosse, baseball, hockey, the golf course, sailing school, tennis courts…There seemed no end to the sheer magnificence of the place, sitting like a grand duke with his illustrious retinue of pupils and scholars on the banks of the legendary lake.
Would things have turned out differently if Ben and Abby had grown up here, gone to these Academies?
She wanted Lula to study here one day, and felt sure Matt would agree.
Waiting in the golf cart as Sallie Jo ran into a dorm building to deliver the lost bag, Justine tried to find the source of the music she could hear that seemed to be coming closer. At last the musician came into view, and she felt immediately entranced by the unexpected vision of a young female student, no more than sixteen or seventeen, walking beside the water playing the bagpipes so expertly she must have been playing them for years.
Abby would have been entranced too…
“OK, that’s done,” Sallie Jo declared, jumping back into the golf cart and starting the engine, “and with locations sorted for all six of our scarecrows when they’re ready, I reckon we can head back to find out how the mermaid’s coming along.”
As they drove Justine could feel the almost palpable air of excitement that was building around town now the festival was so close. People were stopping their cars all over the place to admire the scarecrows already in position, while giant bales of hay had appeared in the town park to create a straw pyramid for the children to climb. There was to be a bounce house too, and later would come the thrill of a haunted castle. Apparently everyone was signing up for a moonlight canoe paddle on the lake, and the free wine and cheese social at the old hardware store was sure to pull in the crowds. The weekend was crammed with so many events that Justine could only wonder how many Lula was going to fit in. Knowing her, she’d want to do everything from pumpkin painting to pony rides to dressing up Daisy for the pet-costume parade. She’d been talking about nothing else for days, and as Justine watched and listened and loved her with all her heart she was aware of the sadness inside her growing so heavy it was hard to bear. She longed to throw herself into the community, to be as much a part of it as she sensed Sallie Jo would like her to be, that Lula needed her to be, but if anyone knew the truth about her, if they had any idea, no one would want her there at all.
After arriving at Café Max and swapping the golf cart for Sallie Jo’s car, they drove on out past the cemetery and down to the lake before turning along the track toward Waseya.
“Who’s that by your mailbox?” Sallie Jo wondered as they drew closer.
Recognizing the older woman with neat gray hair and slightly stooped shoulders, Justine said, “It’s Elise Gingell, one of my neighbors.”
“Oh sure it is,” Sallie Jo realized. “Hey, Elise,” she called out, coming to a stop beside her. “Is everything OK?”
Turning round, the old lady broke into a friendly smile. “Everything’s fine, Sallie Jo. I was just leaving one of our newsletters for Justine.”
Sallie Jo muttered through her smile to Justine, “Good luck with that.”
“So sweet,” Justine muttered back as she got out of the car. Though she had a fairly good idea what the newsletter was about, her heart still sank when Elise put the leaflet into her hand:
Marshall County Right to Life News.
“You’re very welcome to join us for our next monthly meeting,” Elise told her kindly. “I know I won’t be able to persuade Sallie Jo, but I’m hoping you’re someone who sees things our way.”
Before Justine could summon the right response, the old lady continued. “The meetings are the first Tuesday of each month at seven p.m. You’ll find us in the Laramore Room at Plymouth Public Library—”
“I’m sorry,” Justine broke in more forcefully than she’d intended, “but I’m afraid my views don’t correspond with yours.”
Elise blinked, as though not sure if she’d heard correctly. “Is it something you’ve really thought about, dear?” she asked in her sweet granny way.