8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Grady Marlow
S unsets on the lake are breathtaking. Lala always capitalized on the photos she would take of Lake Hollow properties as the sky splashed its glorious purple and pink hues. Money shots she’d say. She had a lot to say about everything. Her advice follows me everywhere, “ Make your story bigger than just yourself, choose courage over comfort, and (the hardest for me to believe) life has a way of working out.”
How does Lala’s life being cut short work out? It’s not fair. None of it has been fair.
I can’t pull myself away from the window of the cabin as the sun sinks in the sky. Remembering countless sunsets spent by the lake with Lala. Her predictions of the weather for the next day pouring out of her, her raucous laughter as she would tell me stories about her day.
Numb. I just wish I felt numb, but my feelings are in technicolor.
“ First it hurts then it changes you .”
The pain blazes a path through all the happy memories, distorting it all. I don’t remember the last time I felt at peace. Felt washed clean of the past.
Wilder doesn’t know half of my betrayals. The way I turned on him or the reasons why.
If I focus on all the loss, I’ll drive myself mad.
Sara. Katie. Carlotta.
Honestly… Wilder, too.
Now I’m grappling with being a ‘to do’ crossed off Remington’s bucket list. Why the hell does she even have a list?
Fuck a rockstar-check.
Then fuck with his head-check.
In retrospect I wish I’d walked away before I heard her tell Cal about what we had done. But my brain wasn’t processing normally. Losing Lala, dealing with dad’s long held grudges, and talking to the hospital staff-I wasn’t prepared for any of it. There’s no way to even know what her wishes were. Thank God my older brother is willing to start the planning for her funeral. My concentration is shot.
I didn’t walk away when I should have in part because my thoughts have been dominated by Remi lately. Remi and Wilder. When I realized he was hovering close at the hospital as a show of support, the feelings I’ve carefully held deep inside of me threatened to emerge. Then he refused to give any of us an explanation or deny the accusations leveled at him. Making me tuck those fucking errant emotions right back inside.
I owe Sara the respect of distancing myself from someone that could’ve harmed her.
Even if what I’ve told myself for years is fraught with doubt now. He’s still Wilder… the same person I spent my childhood with, but there’s a melancholy in him that’s crystal clear to see in his eyes. A weariness in his movement. Some of the cockiness is tempered with regret. I see it for what it is. He’s beating himself up.
As I’m heading back to the kitchen to grab a beer, a knock comes from the screen door at the side of the cabin. The light burned out a couple days ago, so I don’t see Remi carrying a covered dish with the shadows of two people behind her until I’m steps away. What the hell? A whine comes from her dog who is turning in circles with his tail wagging as I approach. “Hey? What’s going on? What’s this?” I ask as she hands me a still warm pan covered in tin foil.
She shrugs her shoulders giving me a big smile, “I tried my hand at lasagna. Okay,” rolling her eyes she points her thumb over her shoulder, “with some help. Cal happens to know his way around a kitchen. Ceily had nothing to do with it. Promise.” That’s a relief. The spongy meat brick she dropped off is still sitting untouched on the counter. It was sweet of her to try.
Charlie clears his throat. “We thought you could use some company, too. Can we come in?”
I can’t help but glance to the south at Wilder’s cabin, hoping he doesn’t see this, but his bike hasn’t been parked there since I returned this afternoon. For all I know he left town for good. Even if that’s for the best, it makes me feel like garbage.
The dynamic between Charlie, Cal, and Remi is… interesting. Cal has never been one to show affection, but he sticks close to her side, hanging on to her every word. Charlie on the other hand seems at ease, friendly towards me, careful to watch Remi’s reactions. It’s been years since I’ve been around both Charlie and Cal. My last interaction with Cal blew up in my face.
A screaming match over Sara. Accusations that I was covering up for Wilder’s actions the night before she was found. But he doesn’t understand that I’m the reason the police focused on him. I screwed over both my best friends. I didn’t protect Sara, and I told the police Wilder’s secret. That he was having premonitions that would actually come true.
I didn’t think it was public knowledge where I was staying, but another unannounced visitor stands at my door today. A stern look on her face, a badge hanging from the belt around her waist. Opening the door, I address her, “Can I help you?”
A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. I was hoping to avoid police interaction this time around. No such luck.
“Grady Marlow?” I nod at her. “I thought so, I just wanted to be sure. Do you have a moment to talk?”
Do I have a choice?
Holding the door open as I step out of her way, I answer her, “Sure. What’s this about?”
She looks around the cabin, before turning my way with a tight smile. “Let me start by saying that I’m sorry to hear about your aunt’s passing. I knew her since we were kids.”
“Thanks. I didn’t catch your name.” She hadn’t offered, but I’m leery of what can be misconstrued by her or anyone else carrying a badge with an agenda.
Handing me her business card she responds, “Detective Julia Hemminger. Carlotta and I were good friends, but that’s not the only reason I’m here today.”
Of course not. “Oh? Do you want to sit down?”
After we’re both settled in recliners that look out the large picture window of the cabin onto the lake, she tells me that one of the accidental drowning cases from six years ago has been reopened for investigation based on new information. “I realize with the amount of time that has passed you may not be able to remember. Please just do your best. I'd appreciate it.” She pulls a small tablet from her leather messenger bag, typing away she asks, “In your original statement after Sara Truitt was found, you felt sure that Wilder Lee was the last person who would have been with her that Saturday night.”
Purposely staring at the lake, I quietly say, “That’s what I said.”
My dread doubles as she sucks in a breath, pausing before continuing, “Was that the way you remember it now? That the last time you’d seen Sara she was at the Bends with Wilder and the two were verbally arguing.”
When weren’t they fighting? That day it was Wilder ignoring her most of the day, then questioning who he was talking to and what he’d be off doing while she was forced to go to Cal’s baseball tournament an hour away. “For the most part… but he wasn’t the only one there at that time. I was, too.”
She nods to herself. “You had said you had your older brother drop you off at Wilder’s cabin around ten pm Saturday night after a family wedding you’d attended. You’d seen them fighting, decided to walk home.”
I wish that was what had happened. Fuck I wish I could go back and change it.
“Uh, I… when I talked to the cops I may have been in shock. It didn’t happen quite that way.” I can’t tell her this. I just fucking can’t. “Sara was really angry. We both tried to reason with her, but she walked off towards home. Neither of us followed her.” That’s still not the whole truth, but God help me… I can’t say it. “It was around eleven or so.”
Detective Hemminger leans back in the chair, setting the tablet down as she crosses her arms. “It’s been a long time; I understand that details can get fuzzy. Was there anyone else in the area at that time?” It’s hard to tell if she knows anything. I guess that’s the point, neither of us are showing our hands.
She knows I lied.
“No. No one else.”
For several seconds she scrolls on her tablet, peering out the window a few times, before she sighs, and says, “The Truitts lived across the old bridge in the HollowWood development at that time, right? A good four miles from The Bends?”
Yeah, she knows something. “Yes.” What good does any of this do now?
She veers off topic, discussing with me the newly renovated Funpark. Telling me she never understood the appeal of the bumper boats. “My husband and I took our kids there a couple of weeks ago, the place got a major upgrade. If you go, try the food truck, the brisket sandwich was out of this world.” She shares the fact that her detective husband had been involved with the original investigations. As she stands to leave, she asks me out of nowhere, “You knew Susanna Ross, right?”
I can’t place it right away. “I vaguely recognize the name… who is that?”
She finishes zipping up her bag. “She was the first person to drown the same summer as Sara Truitt and Katie Gibson.”
Oh. Oh, fuck. “I remember her.”
The giggly girl that followed Cal around like a lost puppy that summer. Her family stayed here at The Bends for the first and last time that year. “She was in a boating accident, right?”
Turning and looking at me with a lowered brow, her mouth puckered up, she asks me, “Where did you hear that? That it was a boating accident?”
The same way most of us got the news around town-word of mouth. “I’d heard it from someone after it happened.” Another tragedy for the nuts in town to blame on the Lake Hollow curse. “She was swimming at the Bends near her cabin and a boater hit her.”
“Who told you that?”
It could’ve been anyone. Odds are the story changed five times before it ever reached my ears. Another thing about small towns, you can hear the same thing from ten different people ten ways. “I don’t remember.”
“That’s not what happened to Susanna Ross. She drowned, no substances found in her system, no obvious injury to her. A Lot like Sara Truitt, and Katie Gibson.”
“Not a boating accident?” My pulse picks up. Something feels off… wrong…
“No.” She frowns slightly as she continues, “The Ross family contacted the sheriff’s office in relation to information your aunt shared with them. Her death is being investigated.”
This summer is about to expose a lot of liars.