Summer at Forsaken Lake (9 page)

“Is it fast?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, I’m sure she’d scoot right along in a little breeze. These little boats are very popular in England, partly because they’re so stable. Hard to capsize. Thousands of
them, most homebuilt like this one. Your dad saw a picture of one in a magazine and sent away for the plans. Spent most of two summers working on it. Shame he didn’t—”

“Can you take us out on it?” Hayley interrupted. “It’s so cute.”

“
Adorable
, really,” added Hetty.

Nick scrunched up his face, scratching his chin and squinting at Nicholas and the twins. “Well, it may not be my place to say, but after all these years, I don’t think your dad would object to somebody finally finishing her up. It’s kind of a shame, her sittin’ up here like this. But I have to warn you, she still needs a good bit of work before she’ll be ready to sail. Think you’d be up for that?”

Charlie and Nicholas nodded enthusiastically.

Nick sighed. “Well, I suppose she’s been imprisoned long enough.”

“Why is it up here, anyway?” Hayley asked. “Why didn’t Daddy finish it?”

“Long story,” Nick answered, not offering to tell it.

“Does it have a motor?” Hetty asked.

Nick found an oar leaning against the wall and showed it to her. “Yep. Finest kind. Look, I think this one even has your name carved into the handle. H-E-T-T-Y,” he teased. “There’s a suit of sails somewhere in the house. Will bought them used from a fellow from Cleveland. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re probably in the back of that hall closet.”

“Is there anything you
don’t
have in that closet?” Nicholas asked.

Nick laughed. “You sound just like Lillie.”

Hayley cleared her throat to interrupt. “Um, don’t we have a little problem here, people? The boat is in a
hayloft
.”

“Oh, don’t let that bother you,” Nick said. “I got her up here; I can get her down. There’s a block and tackle around here somewhere we can use to lower her over the edge.”

Hetty walked all the way around the boat, then stood with her arms crossed. “She doesn’t have a name.”

“Hetty, the boat isn’t even painted yet,” said Nicholas. “The name won’t go on until last.”

“IMP!”
shouted Hayley and Hetty together.
Imp
was the name of the dinghy used by
Goblin
’s owner in the book to go between his mooring and shore.

“Please, pretty please, Great-uncle Nick—allow us to name her
Imp
,” said Hetty in the fake British accent she’d started using after reading
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
. “It’s
ever
so perfect.”

Nicholas and Charlie laughed at Hetty’s over-the-top plea.

“I thought you didn’t like books, Hetty,” said Nicholas.

“
Most
books,” she replied, doing her best to sound like a sophisticated English child. “That one is
quite
special.”

* * *

Nicholas was in his room reading over the faded construction plans for the Heron and suddenly feeling a little intimidated by the childhood version of his own dad. A movie. A boat. A girl, even. Who said she
loved
him.

Yikes. Not sure I’m ready for that
.

And all at the age of fourteen.

I have a couple of years to catch up
.

Nick knocked on the staircase and then slowly spiraled his way into the tower room. “Now I remember why I don’t come up here that often,” he joked as he sat on the edge of Nicholas’s bed and took a few deep breaths. “This room is meant for young people. Ah, I see you’re looking at the plans. Nifty little boat.”

“Did you have plans like these for
Goblin
?”

“Very similar. Building big boats is a lot like building little ones.”

“I wonder why Dad never told me about this,” said Nicholas.

Nick nodded. “Yes, about that. Tell me, Nicholas, did your dad ever say anything … well, about what happened the last summer he stayed here with me and Lillie?”

Nicholas shook his head. “It was something bad, right?”

“What makes you think that?”

Nicholas thought about the letter and all that it revealed about his dad, but decided that this wasn’t the time to bring it up. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling. You know, the movie—he didn’t finish that, and now this
boat. So close to being done. Something bad must have happened.”

“Not much gets past you, does it?” Nick said. “For tonight, let’s just leave it at that. It was all a long time ago. For now, I think your dad will be pleased that you’re going to finish up the Heron.”

“I’m going to keep it a secret from him,” Nicholas said. “I want it to be a surprise when … 
if
he ever comes out here.”

N
icholas woke with a start at 2:53 a.m. He had fallen asleep while reading an old
National Geographic
about Robin Lee Graham, the sixteen-year-old boy who sailed his boat,
Dove
, around the world, and wondering if he would be ready for a journey like that in four years’ time. He reached up and turned off his reading light, and was surprised that the moonlight pouring into the tower room was still bright enough to read by. Out on the lake, the lunar spotlight fell directly on
Goblin
, tap-dancing on the rippled surface of the cove.

He was about to turn away and try to go back to sleep when something far out on the lake caught his eye. He
blinked his eyes a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, but there was no doubt about it: someone was out sailing! By the time he saw it, the boat was nearly at the edge of his line of vision, and within seconds was out of sight. If Nicholas hadn’t at that moment looked at Aunt Lillie’s painting, mysteriously titled
2:53 A.M.
, which seemed to capture a moment exactly like the one he had just witnessed, he probably would have crawled back into his bed without another thought. But he did see it, and it was all just too much of a coincidence for him.

Nicholas grabbed his sneakers, pulled them on quickly, and spun down the spiral staircase. He almost stepped on Pistol, who was stretched across the hall at the bottom of the stairs. The dog lifted his head long enough to watch Nicholas disappear out the front door, and then returned to chasing the slow-moving rabbits of his dreams.

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to see anything from the dock, Nicholas sprinted around the edge of the little cove to the sandy point of land that the twins had named Beach End, which came from
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
, naturally.

The breeze was steady but light, and Nicholas had sailed enough to have a pretty fair idea of where the boat
should
be when he reached Beach End and looked down the lake.

There was, however, not a boat in sight.

The moon had ducked behind a cloud, and for a few seconds he thought the blanket of darkness that had been thrown over the lake was the explanation. When the clouds parted, though, no boat appeared.

What the …? Was I dreaming?

He stayed there for a few minutes, letting his eyes get used to the darkness, but it made no difference. He tried to picture in his mind the shoreline north of where he stood—was there someplace a boat could hide? There were no docks or moorings for a good half mile, much farther than a small sailboat could have traveled in the short time it took him to get from his room to Beach End. It seemed to have just … vanished.

* * *

* * *

When Nicholas went down for breakfast in the morning, he found Nick already out on the porch, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

“Mornin’, champ,” said Nick. “Did you get some breakfast?”

“In a minute. I, um, wanted to ask you about something.”

Nick lowered the newspaper. “You saw it, didn’t you? The 2:53—that’s what I call it.”

Nicholas’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“Heard the screen door bang against the frame and looked over at the clock in my room. When I saw the time, I knew.”

“So you
do
believe in it?”

“Well, I believe that you saw a sailboat out your window. However, I believe that there’s a perfectly logical explanation for it. What happened when you got down to the lake?”

Nicholas shrugged. “It was gone. I thought maybe I dreamt the whole thing.”

“Do you remember anything about the boat?”

“It was a little smaller than
Goblin
, I think, but it did have a cabin. Normal-looking, I guess. I only saw it for a few seconds. Then the moon went behind some clouds and that was it.”

“Sounds about right,” said Nick. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Lillie never saw it again; you probably won’t, either.”

* * *

An hour later, as a delightful offshore breeze ruffled the water,
Goblin
paced impatiently at her mooring, like a dog on a leash waiting for its morning walk. But Nicholas and Charlie had turned their attention to
Imp
, which they had carefully lowered from the hayloft with a little help from Charlie’s teammates Zack Cooper and Ryan Crenshaw and the ancient block and tackle that Uncle Nick set up and operated. They were determined to finish the job that Nicholas’s father had started so long ago, even though it meant sacrificing precious sailing time aboard
Goblin
.

They set the boat upside down on some boards inside the barn and wedged a block of wood under each side to keep it from tipping every time they leaned on it. Uncle Nick supplied them with a shopping bag full of sandpaper and showed them how to sand with the grain of the wood, starting with coarse sandpaper and gradually using finer and finer grit. The wood seemed to come to life with just a few strokes, and the dull gray-brown surface quickly began to show signs of its original color and grain.

Zack and Ryan were supposed to stick around to help out with the sanding, but bolted when they realized that sanding was actual work.

“Sorry, Charlie, but I don’t do physical labor,” said Zack. “Helping you move the boat is one thing, but
standing there with sandpaper in my hand and breathing in all that sawdust, which is probably toxic? No way.”

Nicholas scoffed under his breath, “And you called
me
a city boy.”

“Uh, have fun, guys,” said Ryan. “See you Saturday, Charlie. Softball game over at the field by my house.”

“You should come, too, Nicholas,” said Zack. “Don’t worry, you can be on Charlie’s team—that way you don’t have to worry about her striking you out again.”

“Hilarious,” muttered Nicholas as they hopped on their bikes and rode off.

“Don’t let Zack get to you. He’s like that to everybody. And if it’s any consolation, he can’t hit my curve, either.”

* * *

For the next hour, they sanded and sweated, and sweated and sanded, in the dim light of the barn. Hearing a noise in the back of the barn, Nicholas moved closer to Charlie and whispered, “Don’t turn around. We’re being watched.”

She grinned at him from across the hull. “I
thought
those little monkeys were being awfully quiet. Where are they?”

“Behind the tractor. They must have snuck in the side door.”

“I should, like, kiss you or something. Really give them their money’s worth.”

Nicholas laughed nervously. “Yeah, that would be … I have a better idea, though. You just stay here; keep sanding.” Then he added, loudly, “I’ll be right back. I need to get something from Uncle Nick,” and walked out of the barn toward the house. Instead of going inside, though, he ran around the barn to the side door, next to Charlie’s painted strike zone. He slipped inside without a sound and ducked behind a pile of old farm equipment about ten feet from the twins’ hiding spot, where he waited for the perfect opportunity.

“Do you think Nicholas likes her?” Hayley whispered.