Hidden Falls (19 page)

Sylvia chuckled. “Okay. No salad for you.”

“Then I accept your invitation to dinner.”

Sylvia’s next words were pure impulse. “Why don’t you stay the night in my guest room?”

Emma’s jaw moved back and forth. “I’ll think about it.”

“Fair enough.” Sylvia turned toward the kitchen, but not before she saw Emma pick up the magazine she had cast off only moments ago. Emma selected that magazine every time she came to Sylvia’s house, and each time declared it unreadable to the common person.

Sylvia returned to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and lit the gas burner underneath it. Leaning against the counter, she took five intentional deep breaths.

And then the phone rang. Sylvia snatched the cordless from the base and looked at the caller ID before pushing the button to answer.

“Good evening, Henry.”

“Hello, Sylvia. Just wanted to know if everything got sorted out at the sheriff’s office. You seemed surprised at the news this morning.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. I’m up to speed now.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m letting the police do their jobs.” Sylvia opened the freezer and dug for the bag of frozen pasta.

“What do you think they’ll find?”

If she knew that, she wouldn’t have to wait for them to find it. “I don’t know, Henry. They have a plan, but these things take time.” She moved a carton of ice cream and found the ravioli.

When Sylvia closed the freezer door again, her mother stood at the stove peering into the pot. “I’ve got to go, Henry. I’ll talk to you later.”

“You didn’t have to hang up on my account,” Emma said.

“I’m tired of being on the phone.” Sylvia opened a drawer for a pair of scissors to cut open the bag.

“You should be. You’ve been doing it all day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I picked up a magazine in there, but it’s all about being a mayor. Normal people don’t want to read that.”

“I’m a mayor, Mom,” Sylvia said.

“I suppose that’s why you’re on the phone all the time.”

“Well, today it is.”

“What’s so important, anyway?”

Sylvia watched for the pot to bubble. “Quinn.”

“Is something wrong with Quinn?”

Sylvia looked at Emma, and the familiar sadness over her mother’s memory gaps swept through her afresh.

Emma had known about Quinn’s disappearance. And now she didn’t know. This was happening more and more. Sylvia was starting to wonder how much longer it would be safe for Emma to live alone.

“How’s your appetite?” Sylvia decided to focus on dinner. The water was close enough to boiling that Sylvia dumped in the pasta.

“I’m famished. I’ve hardly eaten a thing today.”

The ache rose through Sylvia’s core. Emma had eaten enough lunch for two growing teenagers.

“This only takes a few minutes,” Sylvia said. “Why don’t you get plates out?”

Emma glanced around the kitchen. Sylvia pointed to the correct cupboard. Emma opened it and took out one plate. Immediately she realized she needed another. Now that she was in the cupboard, she also removed two water glasses and filled them at the sink. Normal motions, Sylvia thought, but not quite automatic.

“I’d like it if you would spend the night,” Sylvia said. “You like the guest room, don’t you?”

“It’ll do. Are we eating in here?”

“I thought we would.” Sylvia took a colander from a shelf and set it in the sink before lifting the pot to dump the water through it.

“Quinn disappeared, didn’t he?” Emma set the plates on the table.

Sylvia sucked in her breath. “Yes, he did.”

“I remember.” Emma sat down. “I remember a long time ago somebody disappeared. A whole family. Two whole families. No one ever heard from them again.”

Sylvia’s cell phone rang.

“That silly phone just doesn’t stop,” Emma said. “How do you stand it?”

Sylvia picked up the phone and, without looking at the number it displayed, turned it off. Even if it was Cooper Elliott, she would have to return the call later. Then she set the pot of pasta on the table and stuck a slotted spoon in it. “No more phone calls tonight. You can tell me the story that’s been on your mind all day.”

“I thought you were having salad greens,” Emma said.

Sylvia smiled. There was no predicting what her mother would hang on to these days. “I changed my mind. We’ll keep it simple. Tell me the story.”

“Which story?”

“About the families who disappeared.”

“I’m surprised you never heard your grandmother tell it.”

“It doesn’t sound familiar,” Sylvia said. She spooned food onto her mother’s plate and watched the ravioli slide into formation along the curves of the dish.

Emma picked up her fork. “It was during the Depression. So long ago. I was hardly old enough to be aware of what was happening. I suppose that’s why I don’t remember too much. People were so poor, and there were no jobs. Your grandfather lost his furniture store on Main Street.”

Sylvia had heard that story. “Is that when he became a barber?”

“He’d been a barber before the store, I think. But that was before I was born. After the Crash, people did anything just to survive. Some of them moved away.”

“They went to stay with extended family, I suppose.” Sylvia stabbed a piece of ravioli.

“No doubt. But moving away is one thing. Dropping off the face of the earth is another.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your grandmother used to talk about two families who left right around the same time. The odd thing was, one of them had money when no one else seemed to have any.”

Sylvia chewed. The story didn’t matter. She only wanted her mother to feel she was listening.

“I can’t really remember much more.” Emma took a bite.

“That’s all right. If something comes to you, maybe we can write it down. The Hidden Falls Historical Society might be interested.”

“It’s so dark outside,” Emma said. “As soon as it gets dark, I start thinking about going to bed.”

“If you stay here tonight, you can go right to bed.”

Emma nodded. “That has some appeal.”

They finished eating. With a fresh nightgown over one arm, Sylvia went into the guest room and waited for Emma to emerge from the bathroom.

“I need something to read,” Emma said. “I can’t fall asleep without reading.”

One of Sylvia’s earliest memories was of her mother propped up in bed with a book when Sylvia woke thirsty one night. “Do you feel like a mystery?”

Emma was always a voracious reader. It was possible the story she was working so hard to reconstruct was an old plotline from decades ago, a book about the Depression.

It didn’t matter.

6:19 p.m.

The water kindly lifted the rowboat and nudged it toward the shoreline, requiring very little from Dani Roose as she rowed. Nearly ten hours on the lake yielded six fish she had released back—and the seventh she kept for her dinner. Lapping lake water soothed her spirit. As the bow knocked against the pier, regret flashed for half a second that she had not stayed out another thirty minutes. Dani secured the oars, a task that announced the finality of coming off the lake.

Grabbing the rope from under the bench, Dani took a long step out of the boat and up onto the short pier. She tied the boat to a steel post her grandfather had sunk decades ago for this purpose. Dani wished she were still using his boat, but the wood had weathered and crumbled and Dani hadn’t been able to keep it seaworthy. He would have been proud of the way she restored this one, though.

Dani rotated toward a brushing sound behind her but saw no one among the trees that marched in formation between the water and her cabin. She checked her knot before lifting her rod and reel in one hand and the trout in the other. It wasn’t far to the cabin, and her grandparents had made sure a path through the trees would be lit by low-set solar-powered lights once the sun faded. On some days, like this one, Dani couldn’t believe her good fortune that her two cousins still living in Hidden Falls had no interest in the cabin. She could have it to herself whenever she wanted.

Though slight, the noise she heard now was louder than the animals that made their habitat among the trees. Dani peered again but saw nothing but a leaf taking its autumnal journey toward the ground. She spent enough time alone in these woods to know the sound of another human wending through them. But she saw nothing.

She continued up the path and came to a log bench her grandfather had notched together to sit under a favorite tree and watch the lake.

A woman sat on the bench, and a few feet from her a man stood with a digital camera around his neck and an impressive zoom lens.

Nicole Sandquist and Ethan Jordan. Dani had been a couple of years ahead of them in school, but Quinn invited groups of students to his house often enough that everyone knew Ethan and Nicole lived in the next block. Were they still together after all these years?

Ethan stood very still, capturing a view of the lake in fading light. Dani held her pose while he tinkered with the camera settings. Finally, he looked through the huge lens and snapped several pictures. Dani stepped toward the bench. Ethan was already setting up another shot.

“Looking for something?” Dani said.

Ethan lowered the camera away from his face and glanced at Nicole.

“Don’t you recognize her?” Nicole popped up from the bench. “It’s Danielle Roose.”

“Just Dani.” Dani shifted the grip on her rod. “You’ve come a long way in your taste in cameras since you worked on the yearbook.”

“It’s beautiful out here.” Ethan raised the camera and pressed a button. The camera took a series of shots. “It always was.”

Dani couldn’t dispute that.

“I was always a little jealous your family had this place,” he said.

“I’m the only one who comes out here now.”

“Forgive us if we’re trespassing.” Nicole took several steps toward Dani. “We’re looking for Quinn.”

“He’s not here.”

“You’ve been out here all day?”

Dani nodded. “Since last night, actually. On the lake mostly.”

“And you haven’t seen or heard anything unusual?”

“Besides the two of you turning up like a blast from the past? No.” Until a few minutes ago, Dani hadn’t spoken to a soul all day. Irritation stirred at the interruption to her peaceful retreat.

“We’ve been hiking all afternoon,” Nicole said, “trying to remember the places Quinn liked to go.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Dani conceded. “I thought he would come out here today, but he didn’t.”

Ethan was framing another shot, this time toward the woods.

“Aren’t you wondering where he is?” Nicole burrowed both hands in her jeans pockets.

“Relax. He’s fine.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t seen him.” Ethan still peered through his camera.

“I haven’t. But I know him pretty well these days.” Dani reasoned she knew Quinn light-years better than these two did, acting as if they could swoop back into town and be his favorites again. “He needs some space. Being the center of attention at a banquet is not his thing.”

Nicole ran one hand over an ear, taming her hair. “I don’t think you’ve heard the latest.”

“What’s that?”

Ethan braced his camera with a hand under the long lens. “He smashed his car into a tree.”

Dani almost dropped her fish.

“It’s true,” Nicole said. “I saw it myself. But he wasn’t there, so he must have wandered away on foot.”

Dani carefully set her rod and reel on her grandfather’s bench. “When you say ‘smashed’ …”

“The tree won the fight,” Ethan said.

“Yes, that’s true,” Nicole said, “but he walked away. We just have to find him.”

Dani picked up her gear. “What’s with all the photos?”

“We may need to look at them more closely,” Nicole said. “You know, something that might spark a memory of where else Quinn might go.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dani said.

“I wish it weren’t so.”

“No, I mean I don’t believe your theory.”

Ethan took his camera off his neck. “Danielle—”

“Don’t call me that.” Dani waved her fish at him.

His phone played a few bars from
The Odd Couple
theme song, and he looked at the screen. “Sorry. I have to take this.” Ethan put the phone to his ear and wandered away.

“Something tells me his phone rings a lot,” Dani said.

Nicole nodded. “He’s trying to get more time off work so he won’t have to leave before we find Quinn.”

“What about you?”

“I brought a project with me. I can work from here for a few days.”

“Quinn will turn up when he’s ready.”
And he wouldn’t like you fussing over him.

Nicole paced four steps and turned. “Maybe. But the accident raises a lot of questions.”

“I haven’t eaten all day,” Dani said, “so you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course, but—”

“Stay as long as you like,” Dani said, “but Ethan won’t have much light left for his pictures.”

She hadn’t come to the lake to be chatty, and she wasn’t going to get caught up in a web of false anxiety. The condition of Quinn’s car didn’t change anything.

Dani stepped from one stone in the path to the next without being tempted to turn her head and look back at Nicole and Ethan. They hadn’t really been her friends in high school, and they didn’t know Quinn now.

A
swoosh
made her freeze midstep and hold her breath. The sound was coming from the woods. Something was out there. Or someone.

9:28 p.m.

Lauren knocked on her aunt’s front door.

Sylvia opened the door and a bath of yellow light spilled onto the porch. “Oh, Lauren. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“That’s all right.” Lauren followed Sylvia into the house. “If you’re too tired, we don’t have to do this tonight.”

“No, I’m not tired. And you need to know where things stand with the fair.” Sylvia swept her gray-speckled hair off her forehead.

“I’m still hoping for good news.”

“We have to be prepared. You have a job to do.”

“I’m mostly just trying to keep busy. If I sit around and think about things … well, you know.”

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting. You walked all the way out here only to go back into town.”