The Silence at Fog Lake

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

The whole fellowship hall smells like green beans that have been cooking all day and seasoned with fatback. My stomach grumbles.

I take my plate down the line the way I always do.

Beans, cornbread, a slice of country ham.

Sister Pauline puts an extra spoonful of banana pudding on a small plate at the end of the line and tells me I don’t eat enough.

I tell her I’ve got a woman at home who says the same thing, and she laughs like it’s the first time she’s heard me say that.

It isn’t. I say it most Wednesdays.

That’s the thing people don’t understand about a place like Fog Lake. You don’t earn trust here. You accumulate it.

Twenty years of casseroles and folding chairs and standing in the rain at gravesides, and one day nobody can remember a version of the church that didn’t have you in it. I’ve been on the building committee since before some of these young mothers were born.

As I walk toward the long tables where people are eating, I pause.

A flyer has been pinned to the corkboard by the coffee urns.

100th HOMECOMING—OCTOBER 18th. They’ve got the Renshaws coming, all the way from Lawrenceburg, and there’s a line under the date about bringing your own chairs for the lawn.

October. Homecoming. The Renshaws.

Three things lining up all at once.

I swallow hard and keep walking, looking for an empty seat.

At several tables, the talk is about Jacob Morgan. It’s been that way for three weeks, and it’ll be that way for three more. Somebody’s cousin knows a woman at the courthouse. Somebody else heard the district attorney is pushing Jacob to give up names.

Jacob Morgan had kidnapped a local boy. The boy is now safe and at home. Jacob is in jail.

The community, however, is still in shock.

I let the conversation go past me. I have no use for a man who couldn’t hold his nerve. Jacob practically led the police right to him. He didn’t stick to the plan, and he could have messed up everything. Didn’t he realize that?

Idiot. I watch my expression, careful not to show my grimace.

Then I turn my attention to the people around me. To two people in particular.

Shelby Dawson is at the end of the last table with her back to the room. She’s pretty in an ordinary sort of way, with brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail and a face that usually looks younger than it does tonight.

She had her gallbladder out five days ago and probably shouldn’t even be here. She’s moving carefully, one hand drifting toward her middle every so often when she thinks nobody’s watching.

Her son is six years old—and small for his age. He’s under the table with a Matchbox car, running it along the crossbar. She keeps checking on him.

I set my plate down across from her. “You didn’t get any banana pudding.”

“I’m not hungry.” Shelby pushes a green bean around her plate without looking at me.

“Sister Pauline will take it personally.”

She almost smiles. Then she doesn’t.

I don’t ask. That’s the whole trick, if you want to call it a trick. You don’t ask. You sit down, and you eat your food, and you let the silence get long enough that the other person can’t stand it anymore and begins to spill things.

It takes Shelby about a minute and a half to start talking. “He called again.”

I break off a piece of cornbread. She’s talking about her ex-husband, Mikey. She likes to talk to me about him. I can only guess her friends have grown tired of listening to her complain.

I haven’t.

“Did he?” I ask before taking a bite of my cornbread. It’s delicious.

“Sunday night. Then twice yesterday.” She turns her fork over. “He says he’s got a lawyer now. He says our arrangement isn’t fair to him, and he’s going to do something about it.”

“Stop answering him.”

Her gaze jumps to mine. “What?”

“Let him leave messages. If he’s angry enough to say something he shouldn’t, better to have it in his own voice than yours.”

Shelby goes still. “You think it’ll come to that?”

I keep my tone mild and concerned. It’s the same tone I always use with her. “I think a man who won’t leave a woman alone usually keeps on not leaving her alone.”

Under the table, the boy runs his car up the leg of his mom’s chair and makes a sound like a siren. She reaches down without looking and puts her hand on his head.

“He’s Preston’s father.” Her fingers move through the boy’s hair. “I keep thinking he wouldn’t take him. Whatever else he is, he loves Preston.”

I take my time with the cornbread. “Maybe he wouldn’t. But you don’t want to find out you were wrong after he’s already driven away with your son.”

That does it. Something goes out of her shoulders, and something else comes into her face.

Fear.

I put it there.

Two months of nudging her toward the same conclusion. Don’t trust him. Keep Preston close. Pay attention when his father gets angry.

None of it has been a lie exactly. That’s the beauty of it.

Now if something happens, everybody will already know where to look.

I almost smile at my brilliance, but I don’t.

Brother Dale claps his hands at the front and announces prayer meeting will start in ten minutes. Chairs scrape against the floor, and somebody’s baby starts crying.

Shelby stacks her plate on Preston’s and stands. “Thank you,” she tells me. “I mean it. I don’t know who else I’d talk to about this.”

“That’s what we’re here for.” I must have one of those trustworthy faces. I’ve been told that before.

She takes Preston by the hand, drops their paper plates into the trash can near the sanctuary doors, then heads inside. Preston is still running the car through the air over his head, banking it around the corner of the doorframe.

I finish what I want from my plate and toss everything else in the trash.

Pauline catches me before I reach the sanctuary. “You heard anything from Nora?”

Nora Loveless isn’t here for the third Wednesday running. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

I shake my head. “Can’t say I have.”

“Poor thing.” She glances around before lowering her voice. “That family’s been through enough for ten lifetimes. I just hate that she’s staying away from church now. Seems like this is when she’d need people around her the most.”

“People handle things different ways.”

“I suppose.” Pauline pats my arm. “Still, you’d think she’d want the church supporting her.”

“You’d think.”

She heads into the sanctuary.

I don’t. Not yet.

Two nights ago, the light in the Loveless house was on until nearly three in the morning. It was the same downstairs light that usually goes dark before midnight.

People don’t stay awake until three when they’re at peace.

They stay awake because something is bothering them. Because they’re asking questions. Because a thought won’t leave them alone.

And Nora Loveless has already lived through enough to know that sometimes the thing keeping you awake is the thing you should be paying attention to.

Nora is going to be a problem. That’s why I have to keep an eye on her.

I glance once more at the Homecoming flyer.

October 18th.

It will be here before I know it. And it will be glorious.