24. Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-four
Cal Truitt
P ulling to a stop in front of the Gibson’s house, Remi gives me a weak smile. “What? What was that face for?” She’d been jabbering a mile a minute, but as we drew closer to Charlie’s parents’ house her mood flipped.
She looks out the window at the sprawling lawn leading to the dock holding two jet skis, two pontoons, a runabout, and a fishing boat. Their covered boat garage houses two more boats, one a Chris Craft wooden antique boat that gets taken out only once a year. “Don’t you ever feel nervous being here? There’s a lot of expensive looking breakables in their house. Um… house sounds wrong, mansion, estate, villa… uh, chateau.”
Chuckling, I respond, “Maybe it would if Charlie or Mitchell ever lorded it over anyone, but they don’t. Charlie spends more time at the townhouse I’m renting than here.” If I want to be honest with myself, when I was a kid this place and Charlie’s parents made me nervous. It was all bigger than life. But the longer I’ve known them, those fears faded away. I get it though. This place is more opulent than the Lake Hollow Country Club.
“Come on, Rem, your surprise awaits.”
“Does this mean you’re giving me the toys you confiscated from my gift bag back?” She squints at me, while opening the truck door. “Hmm?”
Not yet. I have plans for those.
I jog away from her, looking over my shoulder with a smirk. “Not a chance, sweetheart. I’m holding them ransom.”
Charlie pulls the door open before we’re at the oversized wood and glass doors. “It’s all set up,” he tells me quietly while we follow him into the basement. I’m still irritated that he did this and then told me. It had been my plan to begin with. Another aspect of our friendship that I’d forgotten about. The appropriation of my ideas. Maybe he doesn’t even get that he’s doing it, but he has the resources to make things happen, so he jumps on it.
She squeals and races towards the huge terrarium set up with tree bark, lake themed toys, and three desert rain frogs. The type she’s talked about several times to me. They aren’t cheap, each was just under a hundred dollars, specially shipped, then there is the whole set up of a thirty-gallon tank for the terrarium, equipment to keep humidity high, the bottom filled with cypress mulch. Charlie scattered the lake themed toys of boats, anchors, inner tubes, and hanging swings around the terrarium.
Remi has her hands over her mouth cooing, tears falling down her cheeks. “You guys… th-this.” She hiccups before sinking to her knees to look at the weird little fuckers. They look like angry little avocados.
Charlie looks at me with a huge smile. “It was all Cal’s idea.” Maybe he’s learning. “What are you going to name them?” He takes a knee next to her to look in at them. “They’re busy little fellas.” Yeah, and unsettling to see up close.
I keep back a few steps as she goes on and on, “... like to burrow. I watched a video of an army of them, that’s what a group of frogs is called by the way, playing hide and seek.” Her excitement is cute as fuck.
On the third shift we worked together at the Funpark, she found a little frog on the dock next to the bumper boat pond. She told me it was a pickerel frog because of the square spots on its back. Her knowledge of frogs is extensive as she told me; there are over five thousand species of frogs, they don’t drink water they absorb it through their skin, and male frogs use their croaking sounds as a way to attract a female. I listened as she told me about one of her mother’s failed relationships with a herpetologist that worked for a Conservation initiative in Florida. He gave her a stuffed frog when she was seven, specifically a desert rain frog which he told her was his favorite. Even though he left after a few months, the frog meant something to her. She’d take it everywhere. When her mom realized she still had it she tossed it, still angry at the dude that didn’t want to be in a relationship with her anymore because she kept disappearing.
Both Charlie and I watch as she plucks one of the tiny frogs from the tank, tapping the back end that looks like an indented butt. “Dat ass… look at how chonky he is. I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming.” She asks if Charlie ordered any insects for them. Rearranging some of the contents of the tank, she wiggles in joy. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you a million times over. Now, I need to come up with a gift for both of you that’s just as good. That’s not going to be easy.”
We both tell her that wasn’t the point. When Charlie and I discussed it, my real reason was a growing sense of protectiveness over her wellbeing… mentally as well as physically. Helping heal her past disappointments, is high on my list. Charlie wanted to see her happy. Simple, but valid.
“We’ll get it to your cabin. Grady said he’d help. We may need his muscles,” Charlie tells her.
“The fuck? I’m plenty capable of helping you get that delivered to her place.” His wink my way, and follow up with laughter makes it clear he’s trying to mess with me.
“Do you think Droolius and Squiggles will like them?” She pets a finger over one, while placing another in her cupped hand. Not waiting to hear our responses, she says to them, “I hereby name you Sir Hops A lot, and you can be Snoop Froggy Frog, you little chonkity chonk are MC Hopper.”
Could she be more magnificent? I think not.
Charlie tells her that we’ll be right back, while he has me follow him back upstairs and out onto the patio overlooking the lake. “I need to run something past you,” he says with a serious look on his face. Sitting on the retaining wall around a vast flower bed, he continues, “I can’t get this off my mind.”
Taking a seat on one of the wrought iron patio chairs, I lean forward with my elbows on my knees. “Okay? What’s going on?”
“You know how I told you that Wilder had a vision where he said ‘Mia’?”
I nod. Getting ready to be irritated. Ever since he and Mitchell met with Hemminger, Charlie keeps talking about the drownings.
“Cal, what if…” He hangs his head letting a breath out, before looking back at me, the muscles in his jaw clenched. “What if we’re wrong about trusting him? I thought his visions were always something that was going to happen. What if he’s seeing things he’s done? I never pushed Remi to tell me what made her think he couldn’t be responsible for any of the drownings, but what if he made something up? I’m getting a really bad feeling about all of it.”
Not this again.
“The timing of his return to Lake Hollow, Carlotta’s accident-it’s all too coincidental. Then I ran into Ceily yester-”
I cut him off, “I’m done. I’m sick of all the conspiracy theories and rumors.” I stand up throwing my hands in the air. “I’ve heard it all a thousand times… maybe there is a dangerous undercurrent on the north side of the lake making it unsafe for swimming, or Lakeside park is a portal to the underworld and an evil spirit is killing people in the lake, or there is a murderer hiding among us, or maybe just maybe not one of these deaths have been related and they’ve been terrible accidents. Stop dredging all of this up. Since you met with Hemminger, it’s like you’ve become an amateur detective. I’ve had enough. Stop.”
Charlie stands up, his eyes filling with tears. “I didn’t expect that reaction.”
We look at one another for seconds. My best friend, hell he’s like a brother, will never get it. He’s had Mitchell and I was left without Sara… alone. My parents tried; they did. But we were all gutted. Nothing was the same. It’s just lately that I feel like I want to live again. I want life to continue, to get better. To stop going through the motions, putting on fake cheer.
Remi gave me that.
“You lost your sister, too. Why doesn’t this matter to you more?” Charlie asks me quietly.
“That’s a fucking asshole thing to say. Maybe I’m just fed up with living in the past.”
The tension between us doesn’t feel like it’ll dissipate without apologies, but seeing Remi talking to her new pets wrings some of it out. “Blep… that’s right blep.” She turns to wave us closer. “They really do have the funniest little faces. Look at them just physically blobbing. Oops… no, no Sir… we don’t bury our friends.”