“Now, keep an open mind. She’s dead. We all know she’s dead. No one can survive underwater for an entire day and night.” Heil looked around for consent. “So what I’m proposing is a sure way to recover the girl. Although it may seem gruesome, I assure you it’s not. Not really. It’s practical. It’s using our very own resources, and it won’t cost the taxpayers or community any money.” He paused, a pleased expression on his face. “It’s free.”
“What is it?” someone asked from the crowd.
Another shouted, “I know what you’re suggesting.”
A woman said, “I don’t understand. What is he talking about?”
“Now, calm down.” Heil beckoned the group. “We can find that little girl by ourselves and quickly. We’ve done it before.”
The crowd collectively gasped, but nodded, understanding what Heil was suggesting. “It’s like when that Hawke boy drowned. What was his name?”
“Billy,” someone said. “Yeah, that’s right. Billy.”
Jo opened her mouth and closed it again when Gram squeezed her thigh.
“There are reasons we use the technology we have,” the man from underwater recovery said, his face now etched in a permanent frown. “We don’t want to jeopardize any possible forensic evidence.” He looked to the sheriff, and once again the sheriff nodded.
He continued. “We have the side scanner. If you just give us a few more hours, my guess is that we should be able to find her by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
The crowd began to rumble their dissent.
“That’s another day the beach stays closed.”
“What about the fishing boats?”
“It’s costing us money.”
“Find her now by any means possible.”
“It’s best for everyone.”
Gram’s hands were curled into two tight balls, her knuckles white. She turned to Jo. “Barbarians. Every last one of them.”
Heil held up his hands in an attempt to quiet the crowd yet again. Sara’s mother appeared in the doorway, and a hushed silence spread throughout the room. Her face was drawn and hollow. She looked much older than she was. The man from underwater recovery rushed to her side.
“I want you to find my baby girl,” she said to him. “I want you to get her out of that damn lake.”
“We will, ma’am.” He took her arm, and before she could address the crowd, if she even wanted to address the crowd, he ushered her out the door and down the stairs to avoid a scene. The sheriff followed them out.
The mob stayed seated with their eyes cast down, unwilling to look at one another. Several seconds of an uncomfortable silence ensued until one of the women, Mrs. Hofsteader, stood to leave. She and her husband, Cal Hofsteader, owned one of the cabins on the lake directly across from the Pavilion. She tapped her husband’s shoulder, and he followed her out the door. Other women began to gather themselves, collect their purses, accepting it would be another day of waiting. Most of the men followed, but Stimpy and a few other fishermen huddled in the corner of the bar.
Jo turned to Gram and motioned in the direction of Stimpy and the fishermen. “What do you think they’re up to?”
Gram stared at the men. Their heads were bent together, and they were whispering. “I think they’re going to take matters into their own hands,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Caroline was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and cookies when Gram stomped through the door. Caroline’s mother marched in behind her. Both were in a huff over something, and Caroline stared at them, making a quick mental list of her actions in the last few hours, trying to determine if she was to blame for their foul moods.
Looking back and forth between Gram and her mother, and not coming up with anything she might have done to make them mad, she hoped they weren’t fighting with each other. She had been aware of a rift between them ever since she was little. She couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t there, this thing she couldn’t name. She couldn’t always see it in their eyes or hear it in their words, but she felt it, an invisible storm rumbling in the air around them.
“So now what?” her mother asked.
“Now nothing,” Gram said. “We wait like the rest of them.”
Her mother crossed her arms. Gram poured a glass of lake water from the jug in the refrigerator. Her hands shook when she raised the cup to her lips.
“What’s going on?” Caroline asked, startling both women. It was as though they hadn’t seen her sitting there.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Gram said, and shot Jo a look.
“Is it about Sara? Did they find her?” Caroline had spent the day with Megan, sitting on the public docks and watching underwater recovery, waiting. Initially, she had gone to the Pavilion but the sign tacked to the doors read CLOSED.
Gram sat next to her and patted her arm. “Not yet, but they’ll find her soon.”
Johnny waltzed into the kitchen, the screen door banging behind him. He smelled of cigarette smoke and something else, something funky Caroline associated with a boy smell, wet and doglike. Gram must’ve smelled it too, and she crinkled her nose at him.
“I’m going to change,” Gram said, and stood, leaving them in the kitchen.
“You need a shower,” her mother said to Johnny.
He smelled underneath his arm and shrugged but headed to the bathroom anyway. He pushed the back of Caroline’s head as he passed by, making her spill milk down the front of her T-shirt.
“Jerk,” she said, grabbing a napkin and catching the milk on her chin.
“Would you two knock it off?” her mother said.
“I didn’t do anything.” Caroline hated the whininess in her tone. “He started it.”
“Baby,” Johnny called.
“Am not!” she yelled back at him.
“Enough, Caroline.”
“Why don’t you ever yell at him? Why is it always my fault?”
Her mother sighed and covered her face. “It’s not always your fault, okay? And you’re right.” She dropped her hands and smiled. “Your brother can be a real jerk sometimes.” She brushed the hair from Caroline’s face.
Caroline’s chest opened as she looked up at her. Her mother was so beautiful when she smiled. She wanted to tell her, but she was too afraid she would take it the wrong way. Everything she said, good or bad, her mother misunderstood.
“What?” her mother asked, and furrowed her brow. “You’re looking at me funny.”
Caroline opened her mouth to talk, not knowing what words would come out. There was so much she wanted to say now that she had her mother’s attention. She was scared and feeling so alone. “I should’ve watched her,” she said about Sara. “She was on the pier, and I knew her mother wasn’t paying attention.” She looked down at her hands and waited for her mother’s reaction.
Without saying anything, her mother sat next to her and wrapped her arms around her. It was a rare embrace, and Caroline clung to her, elated to gain her mother’s affection even though the reason for it made her feel terrible. “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
Her mother pulled back and took Caroline’s face in her hands. “She wasn’t your responsibility.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said, but still, it felt that way.
Gram walked into the kitchen, now wearing polyester pants and matching cotton shirt. She yanked open the refrigerator door, not realizing she had interrupted a rare mother-daughter moment. “Who wants dinner?” she asked.
“I have an errand,” her mother said, and stood. She touched Caroline’s shoulder, pausing to give it a squeeze before she fled for the door.
* * *
Caroline lay on her bed and listened. The cabin was quiet except for the murmur of the small TV coming from Gram’s bedroom. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but it was too early for bed. And it was too late to be out with friends. It was the time in-between when she was either too old for certain things or too young for others, a time when there was nothing for a girl her age to do. She wondered what was happening down at the lake, if people had gathered or if everyone had stayed home. Where was her mother?