Missed Connections (19 page)

"Are you heading for Endless Lake?"

"Yes." She did not want to talk to him but since he asked the question in a voice that was not only strong but carrying, she had no choice. "Where are you heading?"

"The same place. I spent all of my summers there except for the ones I spent in Europe. Now I live there year-round. You would think I would get sick of the place, but it is hard not to like a town where everyone owes you something."

The gloating satisfaction in his voice made the hair on the back of Marie's neck curl. Maybe-Anne across the aisle looked over, a slight frown on her pretty face and Marie's conviction grew. It was Anne, it was.

"That seems like a good reason to stay away."

He snorted and muttered something but Marie tuned him out. The seat next to Anne's, the one beside the window, was empty. Grabbing her courage and her bag Marie made a move. She lurched to a standing position and stood beside the seat, cleared her throat and asked if she could sit down.

"Go ahead. I'll just scoot over if you don't mind."

"Not at all." Her voice was not familiar but then she could not remember Anne ever saying much other than giving a few answers in classes. "I'm Marie."

"Anne," Her hand was as cool as lake water. "I couldn't help but overhear you saying you are going to Endless Lake."

"Yes, where are you headed?"

Anne's smile was soft but brilliant; it lit her face up. "The same place. I'm doing some research on the ghost stories there. How about you?"

"Did you say you are researching ghost stories?" Marie wracked her brain for a polite way to bring up the subject of where they had gone to college. "Are you a writer or a… um… one of those people who go into haunted places and checks for ghosts?"

"Do you mean a paranormal investigator?" There was a hint of laughter in Anne's voice. "Do you believe in that sort of thing?"

It was a loaded question and Marie knew it. "I'm not really sure, to be honest."

"I'm not a paranormal investigator, just the regular old-fashioned kind. I'm a cop, but I am on vacation. What about you, what is taking you up to Endless Lake?"

"Nothing as glamorous as ghosts I'm afraid. I'm a marine biologist and the company I'm working for is running tests on the state's fresh water lakes. I got this assignment out of sheer luck."

"So you get a working vacation?"

"Yes. Is this trip a working vacation for you as well?"

There was a harrumphing sound from the man across the aisle and a low pitched but clear swear word. Anne cocked an eyebrow and opened her book again. Marie sat, wanting to speak but unable to. The pages provided a polite distance between them and she had the feeling that that was exactly the way Anne wanted it.

The time ran on. Marie opened her tablet and played a few games, read a couple pages from some of the books she had laid in and meant to read but never quite got around to, but restlessness soon took over. She shut the cover of the tablet and stowed it away in her bag.

Outside the window, the landscape rolled by—small towns perched on the edges of a vast ocean, large cities with Victorian houses jostled close to industrial buildings. High hills thick with trees pressed close and Marie shivered.

More little tourist towns flashed past. Clam shacks and tacky souvenir shops with brightly colored inflatable floats and body boards, garish tee shirts and huge hookahs crowding their windows fought for space next to tattoo shops and chain hotels. An occasional tiny motel, a relic from days long past, cropped up here and there, most of them bearing names like Sail Inn, The Sea and Sand and so on.

Over all of those things her own reflection rode—a pale ghost in distorted glass. Her dark brown eyes and black hair looked familiar but the glass made her lips look stretched long and wide.

They left the shore behind and climbed the hills. The trees grew thicker and heavier. Pines dropped needles past the windows and Marie cradled her head in her hands, wondering how best to start a conversation with Anne again.

The train lurched to a stop. The tiny station was an hour-long stop and most of the passengers began to stand and gather their things. Anne slid her book into her bag and stood, her slender hands going to the small of her back.

"I think I will see if the little diner over there has anything better than the stuff they are offering in the dining car. Maybe you want to go with me?" Marie asked.

"I was thinking the same thing actually," Anne said.

They ordered a huge lunch: fried clams, French fries, coleslaw and bread along with tall glasses of tea followed up by slices of apple pie with a flaky crust and lots of cinnamon and nutmeg spicing the tart fruit.

Marie gathered her courage and asked, "Where are you from? I mean I hear a little bit of accent in your voice."

"Atlanta. I grew up there, but I live in New York now."

"So do I." That was the exact opening that she needed. "I went to Auburn College, which is not that far from Atlanta."

Anne's face closed like a fist. She beckoned the server over and even though Marie protested that she would be happy to buy her lunch, Anne insisted on paying for her own. Marie knew that there was some reason that Anne did not want to discuss Auburn so as they headed back toward the waiting train she asked, "What part of the city, do you live in if you don't mind my asking."

"Midtown," all the friendliness that had developed between them at lunch had dissolved like sugar cubes in a rainstorm.

"I live in Greenwich Village. I looked at a lot of places and I really considered Midtown too, but Greenwich Village is so much quieter than most of the city. I guess that sounds odd; why move to a city if you really want quiet?"

Anne did not answer; she just waited for Marie to take her seat then took her own, opened her book and barricaded herself behind it once more.

*~*~*

Over the next few days Marie saw Anne occasionally. She was usually walking down one of the small shop-lined streets or sitting on the shore, staring out at the water. There was always a look of intense concentration on her face and they never spoke to one another. Marie could have sworn that Anne was deliberately ignoring her. Once Anne even ducked into a store just as Marie was about to ask if she were free for dinner.

Despite Anne's avoidance of her, Endless Lake enchanted Marie. The historic homes along the lakefront, the old clay tennis courts, and the winding trails that led to the homes that nestled further back in the dense forest all interested and excited her. She went out on one of the ghost walks and got caught up in the fevered excitement of it, she took a sail with a couple of bored college-aged men who pointed out the center of the lake and told her about the monster that lived there.

Soon afterward, she rented a boat and began to collect her samples. She scraped algae and dove low to check for life below the waves. By the time she went back to her tiny room in the cheapest bed and breakfast in town every evening, she was bone-weary but in a good way.

Her room rate included a late 'light' supper that usually consisted of teas, coffees or sodas, small pastries and tiny sandwiches packed with all manner of things. Her favorite was the salmon and boiled egg sandwiches that were as tasty as they were smelly. Supper sat on a small sideboard in the informal living room and while she was rummaging through a selection of tea bags and eyeing a particularly plump deviled ham sandwich, a voice spoke up behind her.

"I saw you swimming out near the center of the lake today. Aren't you afraid you'll get eaten by the monster?"

She turned to see Louisa Goren, the owner of the B&B, staring at her, an amused expression on her pretty face. Louisa was the kind of woman who automatically made people smile. She was petite with a mop of iron-gray curls that rioted all over her head and a ready grin. She also had a penchant for bawdy jokes, wearing brightly colored scarves and talking to her boarders as if she had known them forever.

"I'm more afraid of drowning. The current is really strong out there, it's pretty unusual."

Louisa strolled further into the room and said, "A lot of people have misjudged the lake over the years and gotten caught out there. I was a little girl when Callie Branson and a young woman from away drowned. My brother was one of the ones that found them the next day, tangled up in some mooring lines down by the Holloway house."

Marie took a healthy bite of her sandwich. She had decided to skip the long lines and wait times at the local restaurants, and she was starving. "They went too far out?"

Louisa's brow furrowed. "No, they decided to go swimming in a storm. None of us could ever understand it. Cal was a lifeguard so she would have known that the water would get too rough for a person to be out there. Maybe they thought it was an adventure or something, who knows?"

Curiosity piqued Marie asked, "Who was the other girl?"

Louisa opened a small plastic container then took out a golden brown and moist scone dripping with butter and stuffed with currants. "You should try these, I make them fresh. That girl… her name was… Jessie. That's it, Jessie. She was from away but I don't think I ever knew where. She came up with Ryan Holloway for a weekend and spent most of it doing her best to avoid him, not that anyone could blame her. She should never have gotten mixed up with Ryan or come up here." Louisa sighed. "Everyone knew he was all but married off to Cissy Green anyway; my mom always said he brought her up just to ruffle his own mother's feathers."

"Why would he do that?"

"There has always been something off with those folks. Ryan hates his mama as much as he loves her. They are a strange pair. They still live up there in the house; they lost everything but that at some point. Most of us are just waiting for them to either die or run out of money. They are not the most popular people in town."

Marie let a bite of the scone melt on her tongue. It was perfect, fresh, rich, and just sweet enough. "You said Jessie was trying to avoid Ryan."

"Any woman with a brain avoids Ryan Holloway. Even now at his age he's a grabber and slapper. Just a few nights ago he goosed one of the new girls waiting tables over at the country club."

"I hope she smacked the hell out of him."

"Not if she wanted to keep her job she didn't. If you see him coming get out of the way, he's a malicious old fuck. The same goes for Denna Holloway, his mother. She's as evil as they come."

Marie was surprised, she had never heard Louise say anything remotely ugly about anyone or seen her so angry. "I will. Why would they fire the waitress?"

"Because until Ryan and Denna drop dead, this is still the town the Holloways built. Thankfully, Denna cannot live much longer—nature just won't allow it—and Ryan's drunk his liver down to the size of a spring pea from what I hear." Louisa seemed to remember she was talking to a guest; her eyes darted to the door way and she changed the subject, asking about life in New York City and other things.

Marie finally excused herself to go to her room. Her eyes felt gritty and her body ached from exhaustion but she had trouble sleeping. She kept wondering why a lifeguard would choose to swim out into a nearly bottomless lake on a night when it was storming.

*~*~*

Anne was standing near the edge of the lake. The sky was denim blue, fat clouds gamboled across its high arch and the water was a glittering sheet that stretched as far as the eye could see. The sails on the boats were puffed full of the mild wind and the smell of mineral-rich mud rose up from the shallow water near the shore.

Anne's hair was up in a loose knot and her thin body had the beginnings of a good tan. Her red swimsuit was a modest thing, a boy-short bikini bottom and halter top reminiscent of the nineteen fifties. Marie walked up beside her and said hello.

Anne pushed her dark sunglasses up onto her head. "How's the job going?"

"Good, thanks. How's your research coming along?"

The conversation felt stilted and shallow. Marie wanted to say a thousand other things. She wanted to say that she had never stopped thinking about her. That she regretted, immensely, her cowardice in never saying hello. That the shape of Anne's breasts, small and perfect, drove her mad, that she hungered to kiss her.

"What do you think of that house?" Anne asked instead.

Marie turned her back to the softly whispering lake and squinted up at the two-storied house a few yard ahead. It was a plain house—painted white with green trim, long windows on both floors and little decoration. "It looks like a lot of the houses here."

"Yes it does."

The door banged open and Marie winced. The old man from the train came out onto the porch and leered at them before his gaze went to a gaggle of teenaged girls strolling past in tight and tiny bikinis. He grinned nastily and Marie muttered "What a pervert."

"Ryan Holloway."

"I'm sorry?"

"That's Ryan Holloway."

"I heard about him."

"Yeah, I think they give every female tourist the lowdown. It probably cuts down on scandals and lawsuits." Anne grinned, but her eyes stayed flat and unamused. "I think it probably comes written into the travel brochures."

"I think they should put it in if they haven't already."

"Wouldn't life be easier if all the places we went to had a warning about what or who could hurt you?"

"Did someone hurt you at Auburn? Is that why you left?" The words struck the air and fell, hard as bricks, in the space between them. A stricken look crossed Anne's face and remorse flooded through Marie. "I'm sorry, I should not have said anything it's just that I used to see you there, walking and in class—we had English Lit together, you sat a few rows ahead of me—and you were so beautiful,
are
so beautiful I was afraid to even say hello to you and I always wished I had."

"I wish you had too. Nobody spoke to me too often. I wish I remembered you but the truth is I spent most of my time there trying not to listen to people talking to me. Or about me."

"Why?"

"You didn't grow up in the South, did you?"

"No, I'm from Ohio."