Chapter 5
In this abyss of shadows, the cold granite walls press against my back, and the stale, oppressive air suffocates any hope of escape. I can feel the dampness seeping through the thin fabric of my clothes, clinging to my skin like an unseen adversary.
—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks
As soon as her sister left the house, Ava let out a long, ragged breath.
She felt pummeled, bruised, with that greasy nausea curling around in the pit of her stomach again.
“I truly don’t have to stay here,” she said to her grandmother. “I don’t want it to be a problem for you with Madi. I could always look into booking a vacation rental somewhere in town or over the pass in Sun Valley. I’m sure I can find something with decent summer rates around one of the ski resorts.”
“I doubt it. Nothing is cheap around here anymore. We’re starting to have as many tourists in these parts during the summer as we do during the winter these days.”
She had noticed during her occasional visits home to see Leona that the crowds spilling over from Sun Valley to the protected community had increased year-round.
“I’m sure I can find something. Or I can always go back to Portland. This visit was a whim anyway, because I didn’t like being alone at our apartment without Cullen.”
Leona’s stern look beetled her brows. “Don’t be silly. You’re staying right here. You need to work things out with your sister.”
“Work things out? Seriously?” Bile rose in her throat, the nausea that had been ever present since her husband had packed his things and left. She swallowed, trying to will it away. “I’m not sure that is going to happen. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.”
“She might, if you told her the truth.”
Ava caught her breath, suddenly on guard. “What truth?”
“About why you really published the book.”
She shifted her gaze away and blinked hard, not trusting herself to meet her grandmother’s gaze. Ava was lousy at lying and Leona was eagle-eyed about that kind of thing.
“Isn’t it obvious? I wanted fame and fortune. That’s what Madi thinks. Isn’t it what you think, too?”
“No. I think there might have been a deeper issue.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
Ava chose silence rather than try to lie further to Leona.
After a long pause, her grandmother picked up a couple of boxes and headed for the door. “Fine. Keep your secrets. I’ll remind you that I raised two children of my own. I have been lied to by far better than you, my dear.”
She didn’t want to lie to her grandmother, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her the truth, either.
She had too many secrets. Sometimes her entire soul ached from the weight of carrying them all.
“I don’t have any secrets left,” she lied to Leona. “I threw everything out there in Ghost Lake.”
“Not everything.”
“Not everything,” she finally agreed. “Still more than I should have, according to Madi.”
“You are dealing with your past the best way you know how. Your sister is doing the same.”
Her grandmother studied her closely, her eyes filled with so much sympathy Ava had to fight the urge to rest her head against her shoulder and cry.
“Now,” Leona said gently. “Why don’t you have a rest and unpack your things while I work on dinner for us? Later, you can catch me up on everything that has been going on since your book came out.”
Where to start with that? The past few months before and after the book release had been a whirlwind of media requests, interviews, social media buzz.
In the midst of all the chaos, like water inexorably dripping away at sandstone, had been the steady, heartbreaking erosion of her marriage, the one stable thing she thought she would always be able to hold on to.
I feel like I’ve spent the past three years married to a stranger. Why didn’t you tell me any of this?
The memory of her husband’s voice, low with suppressed pain, scraped along her nerve endings with painful clarity.
After the fact, she could think of a dozen things she might have said in response. Instead, she had withdrawn inside herself, all of her porcupine quills aquiver as she became defensive and self-protective.
Because it is part of my past. It’s not who I am now.
Cullen’s voice had been more sad than angry. Don’t you see, Ava?What happened to you during those six months at Ghost Lake made you who you are. Now that I’ve read the book, I can see so many things more clearly. I would have understood. You had to know I would have understood. Instead, I feel as if you have spent every moment we’ve been together hiding your true self from me. You never completely trusted me. Us. Did you?
The memory of the hurt and betrayal in his warm brown eyes knocked into her like a wrecking ball. She felt lightheaded suddenly, a mixture of exhaustion, regret and fear.
“Take a rest.” Leona touched a cool hand to Ava’s face. “Everything feels better after a little nap.”
“It’s close enough to bedtime. If I nap now, I’ll never go back to sleep.”
“I’m the same way. I get it. Well, unpack your things and then come down and you can help me in the kitchen.”
Her grandmother bustled away and Ava sagged onto the bed, eyes closed as she tried to push away more memories that crowded in. Cullen’s silence as he packed his things for his summer fieldwork. The thick tension in their apartment as she tried to think of some way to fix everything that had been rent apart by her words in Ghost Lake.
Her phone rang. Sylvia again, she saw on the display. She let it go to voicemail, but it immediately rang again.
With a sigh, she answered. She couldn’t avoid the woman forever. “Hello.”
“There you are! I was beginning to worry, darling. I thought maybe the Coalition might have come looking for you.”
She shivered, even as she knew that was highly unlikely. The Ghost Lake Survival Coalition had completely cracked apart after that final shootout fifteen summers ago. The thirty-odd core members of the prepper cult that had temporarily taken up residence deep in the Sawtooth Mountains had been arrested or fled long ago.
The leaders, including the man she had been forced to marry when she was only sixteen years old, were still serving prison sentences for shooting and wounding two federal officers and for killing an innocent man who simply had been trying to help her and Madi.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a hectic few days.”
Oh, and my life is falling apart. So there’s that.
“Where are you, Ava? You sound like you’re a million miles away.”
“I’m in Idaho. I came to visit my grandmother for a...for a few weeks.”
“Oh. How far are you from...you know. Where everything happened?”
She closed her eyes. She was never very far away, at least in her memories. “About an hour.”
“I wonder if you could go there and take some pictures of you holding the book there. It would look great on your socials.”
That was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do. She would be happy never going into those mountains again, though how she expected to reconnect with her husband when he was in roughly the same area remained a mystery.
To her relief, Sylvia didn’t wait for an answer, quickly moving on to the reason for her call.
“Your publicity team is so upset about having to cancel the tour. They’re wondering when they could reschedule.”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Next month? Two months?”
How about never?
She couldn’t say that, unfortunately, as much as she might want to. Part of her deal with her publisher entailed her agreement to participate in promotional events, including the ten-city book tour she had ditched.
“What about early August?” she suggested. “I only need to wrap up in time to return to my classes around the twenty-second.”
“That might work. It’s only six or seven weeks after you were originally scheduled. I’ll talk to them and get back to you. If the book tour conflicts with the start of the school year, maybe you could get a substitute for a few weeks. Or better yet, take a sabbatical or something.”
Ava hated the idea of someone else starting the school year with her students and of missing those important first few weeks of the school year.
She didn’t feel as if she had many options, though.
“How are you feeling?” Sylvia’s brusque, down-to-business New York accent softened.
“Better,” she said. She didn’t want to lie to yet one more person in her life. Fortunately, Sylvia couldn’t see her over the phone.
“Oh, I’m glad. Maybe a few weeks of rest are exactly what you need.”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“I have more fun news. Looks like Ghost Lake is on the short list for several of the big book-club picks. My prediction is that, at this rate, you’re going to stay on the bestseller lists all summer long and into the fall. So maybe August is good timing for a tour after all.”
“Great news,” Ava said, even as her stomach protested.
“It’s so exciting. There’s nothing I love more than when one of my clients writes a phenomenal book that the world adores as much as I do.”
They spoke for a few more moments about print runs and sell-throughs, before Ava was able to end the call with more vague promises.
She turned her phone to silent, moved a few more boxes off the bed and lay down for a moment, staring at the ceiling and wondering how she would endure the summer when she felt so physically and emotionally wretched.