I’d met him, and as it always went for me, I’d read him.
What I read was that he was beyond impressive.
Part of that was that he listened. He understood my need for privacy, how deep that went, not only as a part of my character, but also my business.
I couldn’t have a bodyguard breathing down my neck.
He got that too and improvised.
In other words, on that score, I was good.
But I digress.
The new issue I’d noted was after I’d walked down the stairs from dealing with my bedroom.
I looked left, through the jumble of furniture and boxes, through the rear wall of windows and beyond, to the large deck at the back of the house.
And there she was.
Drifting through the late afternoon mist like the heroine from a David Lynch movie—dark-haired, willow-limbed, ethereal.
It was not because I had two grown daughters that my chest tightened, and my body listed toward the back doors with an urge to rush out and gather her to me, draw her into the house, and then spend however long it took for me to feel she was safe outside my care, hissing and spitting at anyone who came near her.
I was transfixed.
She seemed caught up in the vision of the mist rolling across the lake, mist that was encompassing her.
But then she suddenly turned, her eyes coming directly to me.
My chest burned.
She lifted a hand so slowly toward her throat that the effort seemed to pain me.
She didn’t touch her throat. Her hand kept going and turning, palm my way, at the side of her neck.
It was a peculiar wave.
I then jumped at the abrupt movement when she dropped her arm then sprung through the trees, disappearing on her way down to the house below.
The only one on the lake that was like mine now was.
Inhabited.
Awake.
And alive.
One
Considering
I stood in the upstairs room that would be my office.
It had a view to the lake.
It needed shelves.
New paint.
The desk I’d bought didn’t work. I’d need to donate it. Find something else.
This was an issue.
Three days, and my careful plan was out the window.
This was not usual for me.
I planned.
I assessed the plan.
I streamlined the plan.
I carried out the plan.
I did not, under any circumstances, deviate from the plan.
The lake house had other ideas.
A kind of fog had overtaken me, like the mist that was so often on the water (and as such, one did not have to reflect too long about why the local town was called Misted Pines).
In the zone with all of the activity, I’d managed to get much of the kitchen unpacked while the movers were there, continuing to work after they were gone.
And it must be said, since it had become a marker for my week, after the girl was there…
And then she was gone.
But meetings with four contractors (none of whom I liked), hooking up my internet, sorting my computers and televisions, Hawk Delgado and two men on his team, Mo Morrison and Axl Pantera, coming personally to do another walk-through of the place and have a “sit-down” with the FBI and their local guys who would be the first responders, and my wandering mind had led me to being off schedule.
Significantly.
The kitchen was unpacked.
And yesterday’s rejig of the schedule to fit my frame of mind (meaning I didn’t concentrate on one area until it was complete as I had planned—instead I did a rotation of unpack two boxes, move to next area, unpack two boxes, move to next area) only found me distracted. Wandering from the projects at hand to sit with my laptop on my lap, going through websites and making lists of things I wanted for the cabin.
New lighting.
Tile.
Appliances.
Deck furniture.
Bathtubs.
Or alternately, simply staring out the back windows to where the girl had been.
The less people involved, the better. In fact, I’d been taken off site while the internet and AV people were doing their work, so they wouldn’t see who lived in that house.
The contractors had signed lengthy NDAs (a wasted process, I would not be using any of them).
This wasn’t the only reason I was unpacking myself even if I could afford someone else to do it.
I’d always been that person, even after Camille begged me not to be.
When they were growing up, we had a house cleaning service that came in and did the heavy lifting once every two weeks.
Other than that…it was just us.
My girls, Fenn and Camille, made their beds (as did I), and I did our grocery shopping.
And cooking.
And tidying (until the girls were old enough to do it).
It was just who I was.
I didn’t want to lose touch with that person. I didn’t want my daughters to be other than that person.
Unless they were very foolish, my money would mean they’d never need for anything, and they would want for very little, until the day not only they, but their children, and perhaps their children’s children, died.
I set about making them not foolish.
I had two ex-husbands, or in current vernacular, two baby daddies, who thought I was mad. It was part them being fathers, part them being men, and part them being successful men, they’d wanted to spoil our girls.
However, we had one daughter who was an air force pilot and another who was finishing a master’s in social work.
Therefore, as you could see, I was not mad.
But I couldn’t exactly be that person.
Not anymore.
Not (entirely) by my own design, I had not been hidden, low-profile, in thirty years.
I needed to be that now.
The FBI had, as they’d told me they would, backed off. Delgado and his cameras and his team and his local contacts, “Who are tight, Ms. Larue, that’s a guarantee,” were on the case.
But I had been in that house, almost constantly, for four days straight. I was for all intents and purposes shut in, if not snowed in, and I could already feel a Shining coming on.
I needed to get on my computer and do it not looking at paint colors and lake house interior Google searches (they were all too light and carefree anyway—that vibe didn’t go with the Blue Velvet/Riverdale one I was searching for).
And I needed not to obsess about that girl who I had seen, at the same time I wasn’t sure I had.
It felt like she was a ghost.
And the fact not one mover noticed her, considering how beautiful she was, exacerbated that feeling.
But my computer could take me away.
I could escape there.
Always.
I’d done just that for twenty years.
Very successfully.
However, there it sat on a desk that was too big and too modern for that space, and I couldn’t find the motivation to open a new document in Word and let it flow.
On this thought, my phone rang.
Considering it did, as all others were blocked or silenced, it meant it was one of the girls, one of the exes, or one of the others—those being someone on Hawk Delgado’s team.
Or the FBI.
Obviously, I took the call.
Because it was the FBI.
“Agent Palmer,” I greeted.
“Ms. Larue,” she replied. “I wanted to follow up on the situation with Sheriff Dern.”
Good Lord.