Headlights in the Lake
Tess stared out the window of the bus at the billboards slipping by.
With the index and middle fingers of her right hand, she tapped out SOS in Morse code on the arm of her seat over and over.
One hundred times. Then counted to fifty.
Then one hundred times again. And so on.
It only took a small part of her brain to keep up the tapping, so her mind wandered to Aunt Vivian.
Tess couldn’t decide if she was excited or worried or embarrassed about taking refuge at Vivian’s house.
She couldn’t even muster the energy to feel ambivalent.
She didn’t feel anything. But that lack of emotion gave her the chance to replay memories of Vivian, watching them like an in-flight movie.
And that was how, watching herself picking blueberries with Aunt Vivian, she had stumbled into the memory of the first of those three nights on Maxwell’s Island that haunted her still.
Nights whose sharpness of detail had never faded.
It had started as a perfect day on the lake.
Vivian and Marie had cooked breakfast, and when Tess came into the kitchen the smell of the bacon and the sound of the two women laughing together cocooned her in comfort.
They’d all sat outside to eat, and Vivian and Marie continued their joking—telling funny stories about things Harry had done.
“That time he fell in the lake trying to dock the canoe,” said Marie.
“When he tried to split firewood and got the axe caught in the log,” said Vivian, and they both exploded in laughter until Tess joined in.
“All right,” Harry said with a smile. “I could tell some stories on you two, you know.”
“But you won’t because you love us,” said Marie, leaning over to kiss her husband on the cheek and wipe a smudge of syrup from his face.
They ate for a few minutes in happy silence.
The bluebirds sang and a kingfisher perched on a dead tree limb that overhung the lake.
The cloudless sky promised excellent starwatching come nightfall, but until then the day stretched before them without cares or responsibilities—or so it seemed to eleven-year-old Tess.
Harry took her fishing after breakfast, paddling the canoe into a secluded cove on the north shore of the lake.
It was Harry’s special spot, and this was the first time he had ever brought Tess along when fishing there.
It had buoyed her spirits to be taken into Harry’s confidence in this way.
Tess had caught a smallmouth bass, which she had thrown back, and a rainbow trout, which, along with two other trout caught by Harry, Marie pan-fried for lunch, letting Tess hold the pan and slide the sizzling fish onto a plate.
“I think it’s time I started teaching you to cook,” said Marie, and Tess felt warmth suffuse her body. Being invited into Marie’s kitchen was as special as being invited to Harry’s secret cove.
In the afternoon, Harry read in the hammock while Vivian and Marie played cards on the deck, their laughs tinkling across the lawn all the way to where Tess sat on the dock reading The Hobbit.
Marie and Vivian often laughed together, but especially that day, Tess recalled.
She had wondered if they were telling more silly stories about Harry.
Tess occasionally dipped her toes into the frigid waters.
Even though it was already mid-July, it had been an exceptionally long winter, and the lake wouldn’t be warm enough for swimming for at least another week.
Later, Vivian took Tess to the other side of the island to gather blueberries while Harry and Marie took a nap. Tess had a pretty good idea from the smirks on their faces what “taking a nap” meant.
“Aunt Vivian. Is it true that you’re not my real aunt?” Tess asked as they crested the hill where the blueberries grew.
“Of course not, honey,” Vivian said. “A real aunt would be your father’s sister or your mother’s sister. But I’m something much better. You call me Aunt because there’s not really a word for what I am.”
“What’s that?”
“Your best friend and Marie’s best friend and Harry’s best friend.”
“Why do you and Marie laugh so much?”
“Your mother and I have always made each other smile and laugh and feel…happy.”
“Does Harry make you laugh?”
“Harry makes me think.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Ooh, look, this bush is full of them,” Vivian said. “You pick the low ones, and I’ll pick the high ones.”
“How did you and Harry and Marie meet?”
“Your father never told you?”
“Harry tells me stories and he tells me about science, but he doesn’t tell me about things that happened.”
“We were all at college together. Marie and I were neighbors in our dorm. One night she invited me to come along with some of her friends to see a play and the boy who sat next to her was your father.”
“Were they already married?”
“No, sweetie, they weren’t even dating yet.
But we started hanging out together. I talked to Harry about science, and I talked to Marie about art and history and literature, and Harry talked to Marie about love and marriage and family.
And together we all did what college students have always done—tried to figure out the meaning of life. ”
“And did you?”
“I think we discovered that life is all of that—physics and art and love and family. But most of all we discovered how to be friends.”
“And you still are,” Tess said.
“Yes,” said Vivian. “We still are.”
“I hope you’re always friends,” Tess said, taking Vivian’s hand as they walked back toward the house.
“So do I.”
That night, with a belly full of Marie’s blueberry pie, Tess lay on the dock with Harry calling out the names of constellations.
“What’s that bright red star?” she asked, pointing in the general direction of the sky.
“I’m guessing you mean Arcturus,” Harry said. “Also known as Harry Maxwell’s star.”
“It is not!”
“I didn’t say it was widely known as Harry Maxwell’s star, but here on the island it’s mine.
That was the first star my father ever told me about when I used to lie on the dock with him looking up.
He told me everyone should have their own star and that one would be mine.
So, Tess, whenever you need me, just look to the night sky and I’ll be right there. ”
“That’s silly.”
“Perhaps.”
“Why is Harry Maxwell’s star red?”
“Arcturus is a red giant.”
“What’s a red giant?”
“It’s a very old star, much older than our sun. When it gets old it cools off a little bit, which is why it looks red, but it also expands. Arcturus is about twenty-five times the size of our sun.”
“That’s big.”
“Not really,” said Harry. “It looks big in our sky, because it’s only about thirty-six light-years away. But some red giants get much, much bigger.”
“How big?”
“Hundreds of times bigger than our sun.”
“No wonder they call them giants,” Tess said.
“Our sun will be a red giant one day.”
“Does that mean the sky will turn red?”
“It means there won’t be a sky. The sun will be so big it will probably reach all the way to Earth, and even if it doesn’t it will be close enough to incinerate the entire planet.”
“You mean burn it up?”
“Yes, burn it up.”
“And we’ll all die?” Tess asked, a tremor in her voice.
“None of us will die from a red giant,” Harry said with a chuckle. “It’ll be at least five billion years before that happens.”
“Good,” said Tess, “because I want to know how my book turns out.”
Visions of the sun engulfing the earth kept Tess awake that night, so she crawled onto the window seat and tried to read The Hobbit by the faint light of stars.
But the red giant kept pushing Bilbo and his companions out of her head.
She didn’t like the idea of Earth burning up, even if she wasn’t living on it anymore.
What would happen to the blueberries and the dock and the hammock and the cabin?
She felt almost angry at the stars as she stared out the window, so she shifted her gaze from the heavens to the opposite shore of the lake, where the boat landing and the gravel road that led to civilization were mere smudges of charcoal in the starlight.
They sometimes went days without seeing a car arrive or a boat depart from the landing, but tonight, Tess saw a pair of headlights, bouncing in the distance—tinier, at first, than many of the stars overhead.
She had never seen anyone drive to the boat landing this late at night, and she watched as the headlights gradually grew and she could just hear the rumble of an engine through the open window across a mile of smooth black lake.
She expected the lights to stop moving when they drew level with the landing, but they kept coming toward her.
And then their angle changed, and they shone through the water of the lake and the noise of the engine stopped.
What had been two distinct lights merged into a faint glow on the surface of the lake, which then faded to near blackness.
Tess was just about to return her eyes to the stars when she suddenly realized what had happened.
She leapt to her feet and ran for the front door, hearing its annoying squeak as she pushed her way through and dashed toward the dock.
Without the slightest thought for how an eleven-year-old girl would save someone trapped under the lake in a car a mile away across icy water, Tess dove off the end of the dock.
The cold water sucked the breath out of her.
In the warm waters of late summer, Tess was a fair swimmer; but just this afternoon her toes had gone numb after a few seconds in the lake.
A cloud rolled across the moon as she gasped for breath only to find her mouth full of water.
Disoriented in the darkness, she couldn’t find her way back to the dock, and the weight of her sodden flannel pajamas pulled her down.
Numbness crept through her limbs, and she began to slip below the surface, unable even to tread water.
She thought she’d better shout, but then she felt the water covering her mouth, her nose, her eyes.
Reality had started to fade and then something pulled her hard and the next thing she knew she was lying on the dock coughing and shivering, Harry panting next to her.
In front of the fire, wrapped in blankets and sipping hot cocoa, her mind slowly surfaced, and she heard her parents and Vivian talking.
“She could have drowned,” said Marie, sniffing.
“She would have drowned,” said Harry, “if I’d gotten there ten seconds later…I can’t even think it.”
“You heard the door?” asked Vivian.
“That damn squeaky door saved her life,” said Harry.
“The door I asked you to oil this afternoon,” said Marie. “Thank God you ignored me.”
“I didn’t ignore you,” said Harry. “I had the can of WD-40 on the counter and then the phone rang, and I forgot about it.”
“Who called?” said Marie.
“Richard.”
A call on the island was a major event. Cell phones didn’t work there, and they often went for a week without hearing the jangling of the landline.
“Are you feeling warmer?” asked Marie, sliding down next to Tess and putting an arm around her.
“They drowned,” said Tess, tears leaking out of her eye. “I just know they drowned.”
“Nobody drowned,” said Marie. “Your father saved you.”
But Tess could feel the blood in her veins again and the whole scene reappeared before her—the lights coming toward the lake and then into the lake.
“No,” said Tess in frustration, jumping up and throwing off the blanket. “They did drown. They must have drowned.”
“Tess, honey, calm down,” said Marie.
“You’ve got to go!” cried Tess. “You’ve got to go find them!”
“Find who, sweetheart?” said Harry.
“The people. The people under the water.”
It hadn’t been people under the water. Just one person.
Tess finally managed to explain through her hysteria what she had seen, why she had jumped into the lake.
While Vivian and Marie tried to calm her, Harry phoned the police and then jumped into the tiny outboard motorboat and raced toward the landing.
They all knew he would either find a wet, shivering motorist who had narrowly escaped death, or a body strapped into a vehicle.
Tess felt certain it would be the latter.
She watched as the flashing red and blue lights arrived twenty minutes after Harry landed on the far shore.
An hour later, he would return with the news, but Tess already knew.
Someone had died and she had watched it happen.
Later that night, though she had been banished to bed, she heard Harry talking to Vivian and Marie.
A teenager had driven a pickup truck into the water, apparently without even slowing down.
He had been wearing a seat belt, and the windows had been rolled down.
Tess had never heard the word suicide, but it didn’t take her long to figure out what it meant.
What happened on the lake that night hadn’t been an accident.
When she finally fell asleep, Tess dreamed of lights—of a giant red light that swallowed up the earth and of two white lights that disappeared into the water. And the next day, the voices began.