Take her back, the timid voice said suddenly in her mind. Kris knew it was not referring to the modest shopping area behind them. Take Sadie back to Black Ridge and get her the help she needs. Take her to see someone—
She doesn’t need a shrink, Kris shot back. She needs time away. With her mom. I can help her.
To their left, dense forest stretched into impenetrable shadow, the thick cover of leaves refusing all but the narrowest rays of sunlight. It was an uncanny sensation. She knew that the south end of Jefferson Park merged with the shoreline, yet this road had somehow avoided the park, even as she drove in a direction that had to take her through it. The forest had inexplicably engulfed them. Both the park and the lake were nowhere to be found.
She’s right, her shadow voice purred. You can’t do this alone.
Kris picked up speed, anxious to escape the darkness.
In the distance, she saw a growing light, like a brightening star. She knew this marked the merging of CR-134 with the original River Road. Years ago, she had ridden in the back seat of their station wagon while her parents drove this same stretch. But the fear did not subside. She could not shake the feeling that when she reached that light, she would be somewhere else with no idea of how to get back.
She pressed the toe of her boot harder onto the accelerator, pushing the Jeep faster. Up ahead, the light expanded, growing larger and brighter as her speedometer arced higher.
And then she was out of the tunnel. Sunlight engulfed her in its warm embrace. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, and in the sliver of empty space between the mound of luggage and groceries and the ceiling, she saw where they had been. It was not a tear in the fabric of time and space, but a strip of forest that cut through a shallow valley at the far end of Jefferson Park.
Kris let out a slow breath. Woods still surrounded the road on both sides, but the coverage was thinner. Dappled sunshine played across the windshield.
Leaning up slightly in her seat, Kris realized Sadie could see her reflection in the mirror.
“It’s okay,” Kris told her. “Everything’s fine.”
Sadie did not look away. She stared at her mother’s reflection with the expression of someone who knew they were being told a lie.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS JUST after one in the afternoon when the Jeep pulled into the front drive, flattening the weeds that grew up through the two inches of dirty white gravel.
Kris brought the car to a stop, shifting it into park and killing the engine, but she did not move. One hand remained on the gearshift, the other with a finger resting against the ignition button. She stared through the windshield just as a shadow fell over the lake house. Without the golden glow of the sun to give it life, the house looked like a corpse tossed into a weed-filled ditch to—
Rot.
The word made even less sense to her now. After all these years, why would her father want to abandon this place? He knew that when his drinking finally finished toying with his liver and decided to off it once and for all, the lake house would go to his only child, just like his home in Blantonville and the meager retirement funds that made up his “estate.” So why let it fall into ruin knowing that—to use it or to sell it—Kris would have to fix everything Hargrove could have easily maintained?
Unless he thought I wouldn’t come back here.
It was true she hadn’t even asked about the lake house since their last summer here. But if he suspected she would never use the place herself, that left only two options: let Hargrove try to sell it or …
Let it rot.
No. Her father had always been a practical man. Buying a summer home, even one as modest as this, had been the one extravagance he ever allowed himself. Plus, there were too many memories associated with the house. Good memories of fun and love and family.
The door at the back of her mind creaked open.
Not all good, the dark voice sang.
In the back seat, Sadie’s seat belt clicked as she unbuckled it. There was a soft zipping sound as it retracted into the plastic wall.
“Hand me that iPad, would ya?” Kris asked.
Sadie looked down at the device beside her on the seat. She stared at it as if she had forgotten what it was, and then she held it out for her mother to take.
Kris made sure it was powered down. She slid the iPad into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “Sorry, kid, no Wi-Fi means no iPad. We’re unplugged. Think you can handle that for the summer?”
Sadie said nothing. Before the accident, losing her device privileges would have resulted in, at the very least, a pouty “No fair!” But now it seemed she couldn’t care less.
Kris gave a sharp sigh and climbed out of the car. As she had done a thousand times before, she opened the rear side door and waited as Sadie slipped down from her booster seat. Gravel crunched as Sadie landed on her dingy white Converse.
Kris slammed the door and crouched down so that her eyes were level with Sadie’s.
“Help me carry in the groceries?”
Sadie nodded obediently.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Kris bit her bottom lip between her front teeth. “The house is kind of gross, isn’t it?”
Another pause, and then Sadie gave her head a small nod, her curls bouncing like weak springs.
“Well,” Kris said, “we’re going to fix that. Together. Okay?”
An equally timid nod of the head, quicker this time.
“Okay. Good.”
Kris took the tips of Sadie’s tiny fingers in her own, running the pad of her thumb over the shiny surface of Sadie’s nails. She remembered holding Sadie’s hand just after she was born, the digits impossibly small, her entire hand curling around Kris’s index finger and squeezing as if asking, out of some preternatural instinct, if she were safe.
Kris gazed up at the dilapidated lake house. Sound in his mind or not, her father had let it fall to ruin. But she would restore it. She would bring the house known as “River’s End” back to life.
The metal bucket clanked loudly as it was set into the sink basin, and a plastic bottle went glug-glug-glug as a healthy dose of Pine-Sol spread across its bottom. Kris turned on the faucet, and the bucket instantly filled with suds.
“Go wild,” she said as she held the mop out to Sadie.
Her daughter stared up at her skeptically.
“Seriously,” Kris told her. “The entire floor is your canvas and this mop is your paintbrush. Get to work, Picasso.”
Sadie’s lips spread into a smile.
Kris felt her heart flutter in her chest.
A smile!
An actual smile!
How long had it been?
Kris did not want to entertain the question. The equation was too easily solved.
The top of the handle towered a good twelve inches over Sadie’s head as she carefully dropped the mop into the sudsy water. The bucket jiggled in place, threatening to fall over. Sadie shot a concerned look to her mother.
Kris smiled. “For real, you can dump the whole damn thing. It’ll just make the floor cleaner than it already is.”
Sadie’s furrowed brow, seemingly chiseled into stone up to that point, relaxed, her eyes widening with the look of a child who had just realized there were no consequences to her actions. She pulled the mop head from the bucket and slapped it down onto the kitchen floor with a wet smack. Kris watched as Sadie slopped the mop’s wet cloth fingers across the large cracked tiles, and she felt a tingling warmth rise into her chest like embers kicked into the air by a fire that refused to die.