“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s better this way.”
Cassie and I step out of the car. Mitch must have seen us pull up because he stands on their small porch. I hope he has forgiven me, too.
I swallow back the guilt I’m feeling. “Hey,” I say with some hesitation.
“Hey,” he answers. “Are you here to interrogate my mother? Because I won’t let you.”
“No, I want to talk with her about the ghost.”
“I thought you said we weren’t going to tell her.” Mitch’s words are layered with sarcasm.
“Didn’t you already tell her?” I ask. “I saw her outside of the restaurant two days ago, and she said you had told her.”
“I only told her that we thought you were related. That’s it. I didn’t say anything else.”
“Please. I’m tired of the ghost wreaking havoc in my life…in all our lives. I think you were right, your mother can help.”
“Mitch,” Cassie steps up beside me. “You need to get over yourself. Why don’t you just tell your mother that we’re here, and see if she wants to talk with us?”
He shakes his head and scoffs. “Women.” Still, he turns and goes into the house.
“Nicely handled,” I tell her.
“Thank you.” She flips her hair and gives me a dazzling smile. “I’m not about to let Mitch or Isaac mistreat us. They’re a bunch of jerks as far as I’m concerned.”
Isaac.
I have to block out the hurt for a while longer. Sometime today, I will need to go to their house and say good-bye. If he’ll even let me in their home.
The screen door opens. Bonnie Blackstone steps out, holding a dishcloth. “Hello, girls. What a nice surprise. Please, come in.”
“Thank you,” Cassie says and glares at Mitch.
We enter and Bonnie offers us a seat. The four of us sit in her living room. I notice the small mole above her eyebrow.
“Would you like anything to drink?”
“No, thank you.” I realize that I’m the one who’ll have to start the conversation. “There’s been a lot going on, Ms. Blackstone. We wouldn’t bother you other than we think you can help.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much more than you.”
“The ghost of…the girl has visited me on several occasions.”
Bonnie Blackstone drops the dishcloth on the floor. She gives a half-laugh as if she’s unsure whether to believe us or not.
“It’s true, Mom. I saw Barbara with my own eyes.” Mitch looks over at me and nods. I see the relief on his countenance. It must have been difficult for him to keep this a secret.
“Wh-Wh-What? Why? This is impossible.”
“No, it’s not. You told me about the curse. How we’re in danger. And Ginnie is blood. She’s one of us, which means she’s in danger, too.”
Bonnie Blackstone doesn’t say anything at first. Her features display a variety of emotions, mostly disbelief and possibly fear. She eventually covers her face with her hands. “Barbara wasn’t pregnant.”
“Yes, she was,” I say. “Forty years ago, she was pregnant with Mitchell Hunt’s baby. She feared for her life. My grandmother, Rose Paxton, took that girl into her home. They reached an agreement that Rose would adopt the baby, and Barbara would act like the baby never happened. She feared that the baby would be in danger if members of her family knew.”
Bonnie Blackstone stares at me in shock and trepidation. “How in the world do you know that?”
“My grandmother told me.”
“Mom, don’t you see? Ginnie and her Dad are related to us. Doesn’t that mean they might fall to the curse?”
Bonnie stands up quickly, startling us all. “I’m sorry. You need to leave. This is too much.”
“Please, I need help. I don’t know what to do about the ghost. She wants me to find out what happened, but every time I try to figure it out, bad things happen. First, the car accident and last night, Ian was seriously injured. I don’t know how to find the answers.”
“And going to her isn’t an answer,” Mitch adds. “Not after all those beetles.”
“Beetles?” Bonnie asks.
“Yes,” I answer. “Since I’ve been here, these beetles have found me. As soon as I landed from the airport and was on my way up here, I dreamt about them for the first time. Last night, there were hundreds of the beetles at the gravesite.”
“Thousands,” Mitch corrects me.
“Millions,” Cassie adds.
“Oh my God.” Bonnie presses a hand to her heart and acts like she’s short of breath. “This is not happening.”
My cell phone rings. I see it’s Cassie’s number. “Why are you calling me?”
“Oh, I left the phone in the car.”
Gran.
“Hello?”
“Police just pulled into the driveway. I thought I should let you know.”
“Police? In what driveway?”
Bonnie and Mitch go the window. With one glance, Bonnie turns and pushes herself against the wall. “What am I going to do?”
There’s a knock at the front door.
The four of us stand like we’ve been caught red-handed. I don’t know what to think anymore.
The knocking continues. Bonnie Blackstone takes a deep breath and opens the door. “Ted? Hello, what brings you here?”
“Hello, Bonnie. I’m sorry to bother you at your home, but could you please come to the station with us. We have some questions.”
“About what?” she asks, but I can see her hands shake.
“We can discuss this at the station.”
“You can at least give me the courtesy to explain why you’re hauling me off to the police station.”
I hear Ted sigh. “We arrested Henry Hunt for reckless driving and attempted murder. He has released a statement about the true identity of your deceased sister. We need to confirm some new details.”
Bonnie Blackstone looks at her son and embraces him. There are tears in her eyes. “Whatever happens, know that I love you.”
“Mom?” Mitch is shaken, too. “What’s going on?” he asks Mr. Fulton, as his mother leaves.
“I’m sorry, Mitch,” Mr. Fulton answers.
I stand at the door. When Mr. Fulton sees me, he says, “I just sent Pete out to your grandmother’s house. We have the suspect in custody who caused the accident. You need to get home.”
Cassie and I step outside. “Do you want to come with us?” Cassie asks Mitch.
“No, I’m going to drive to the police station and wait for my mother.”
“Everything will be all right,” I say and hug him.
“Why did she act…guilty?” The emotion is visible on his face.
I take out the two pictures. “Don’t be upset with me, okay?”
He nods.
I show him the two pictures. “See the small mole right above the eyebrow?”
“Yeah. My Mom’s always had it.”
“Barbara had the same mole?”
Mitch keeps studying the pictures.
“Do you have any pictures of Bonnie…your mother from when she was little?”
“Or any pictures of the two of them together?”
“I’ll be right back.” After a few minutes, Mitch walks out the front door, holding a picture frame. “Mom keeps this in her top drawer.”
Two smiling teenagers pose for the camera. They’re twins, no doubt about that, but their demeanor is completely different. The twin on the left smiles shyly at the camera, much like the girl’s school photo I have in my hand. The other twin acts much more confident with chin thrust out, her nose pointed up, and a confident glint in her eyes.
“Look,” Cassie points at the confident girl on the right. “No mole.”
From the angle, I can’t see the mole either. I study the twin on the right, and the mole is definitely above the right eyebrow. “Mitch?” I ask. “Which one is your mother?”
He slowly points to the twin on the right, then stops. He take
s the frame from my hands and opens the back. “The one to the right is Barbara. The one on the left is Bonnie.”
I hold the two photos up while Mitch holds up the picture frame. “What does this mean?”
“Your mother is the girl who went missing,” Cassie answers in a way that says she can hardly believe it herself.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“It explains why you can’t believe your mother would do any harm,” I say. “Because your mother wouldn’t. The question is if your mom is Barbara Blackstone, what happened to Bonnie?”
Mitch hands me the frame. “Wait right here.” He goes back into the house.
Gran calls from the car. “We need to leave, girls! The police are at our house!”
“One more minute!” I yell back.
My cell phone rings. It’s Dad. “Hi, Dad. I know I’m supposed to be home.”
“The police are here.”
“Yes, I ran into Mr. Fulton. We’re on our way.”
“Where are you right now?”
“Gran asked me to take her to mass.”
There’s a pause. “Virginia?”
“Yes?”
Dad sighs into the phone. “I just wanted to say…”
“It’s all right, Dad. You have every right to be upset with me. I haven’t been entirely honest, and that’s not good. But I hope you know that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“No, stop that. It’s…It’s not your fault. Let’s just talk when you get back. Drive safely.”
“Gran won’t let either of us drive.”
“Smart woman. And Virginia?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Cassie’s grinning at me. “See? Told you he’d calm down. Face it, Ginnie, you have one awesome Dad.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Too bad that calmness didn’t rub off on my Mom.”
Mitch walks back outside, carrying a yellowed, aged book. “This is one of our tribal legends books. It’s a history, so to speak. I remembered something about when a person dies, an animal will represent a person’s soul in the land of the living. The animal that represents a person resembles the true nature of their soul.” He flips through pages. “I might be wrong. Mom taught me the pages of this book a long time ago. And I didn’t think much about it until last night with those swarms of beetles. Here it is.”
He shows us the page.
“We are all one in spirit, soul, and body…” Cassie reads aloud. “Look. The pictures are a butterfly, a deer, a bear…there’s no beetles.”
“The pictures are just examples,” I say. “But Barbara Blackstone wouldn’t have those ugly beetles as her spirit, would she?”
“Girls!” Gran yells. “We have to go.”
The three of us stand there, looking at one another.
“We can meet up later,” Cassie offers.
“It’ll need to be tonight because I leave tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Dad’s sending me back to London. Things have gotten a little crazy around here, and I think he wants me out of this situation.”
Mitch sighs, “I hate to say it, but maybe he’s right.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m a nuisance, huh?”
“No, Ginnie. It’s not that. I want you here, but this ghost. If it’s not Barbara, then it’s Bonnie. And I’m afraid that what she wants with you isn’t good.”
“He’s right,” Cassie says. “If Bonnie Blackstone is haunting you, it’s not because she’s happy you’re her niece.”
“But what about all of you?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Mitch says. “But first, I’m going to the police station. It’s time I learn who my mother really is.”
34
Officer Pete is waiting for us at Gran’s house.
Once again, Dad, Uncle Doug, and Aunt Sue are sitting in the living room, only this time Pete sits with them. When we enter, Dad goes first to Gran and hugs her neck. Then he hugs me. “How was mass?”
“Very Catholic,” Cassie retorts and sits next to her parents.
Gran goes to say something but instead goes to leave the room.
“Mom?” Aunt Sue calls. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to lie down. I’m pooped.”
Dad leads me to a chair. “Go ahead, Pete.”
“We found the man driving the truck from Saturday night. His name is Henry Hunt, and he is Mitchell Hunt’s brother. According to his statement, he was trying to scare Ms. Paxton, but he did not want to harm the girls.”
“Yeah right,” Dad scoffs.
“That’s the other thing,” Pete says almost like he’s apologizing. “It seems Mr. Hunt is accusing Ms. Paxton of the death of Barbara Blackstone.”
There’s a collective gasp in the room.
“We’re looking into his accusations and claims. I wouldn’t worry just yet. Right now we’re interviewing Bonnie Blackstone, who he also charged with the death.”
I leave the room and go out the back door, heading for the dock. Sitting down at the end of it, I stick my feet in the water and look out across the lake to where the yellow tape still marks the spot. It’s hard to believe that I have only been in Michigan a little over two weeks. And tomorrow I’ll be leaving. A part of me is scared to stay. Bonnie Blackstone wasn’t a good person, and she has to have ulterior motives for pursuing me. Even in my dreams, I feel terrified. If I go back to London, normalcy can ensue. There’s Alisa and Mum and…who am I kidding? I don’t want to leave. Not with everything up in the air like it is. Not with me just now discovering that my biological grandmother is still alive. Not after my friendship with my cousin is flourishing. Not without making things right with Isaac.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say out loud.
The dock creaks, and I turn around to see Dad walking toward me. He sits down, takes off his sandals, and puts his feet in the water next to mine. I see he’s holding the note I wrote him last night. We don’t say anything for a long time. There’s something about Pigeon Lake that quiets the soul. At least in the daytime.
“Virginia,” Dad says. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about my outburst this morning. I took my anger and hurt over what your grandmother had revealed to me, and I took it out on you. I thought if my daughter hadn’t been snooping around, I wouldn’t be this hurt. I had to cool down before I saw that all you were doing was trying to find the truth. Like a scientist.”
“I shouldn’t have lied.”
“No, you shouldn’t have, but I understand why you did. Who knew that such a mystery lay within the forest here? I grew up in this very house and was completely oblivious.”
“You were born here,” I say.
He nods. “That’s what Mom tells me. So, clarify a few things.”
“I’ll try.”
“What happened to bring about all this?” He motioned to across the lake.
“The first hike I went on I felt a cold wind and a presence. I don’t know how to describe it. I told myself that I was merely a city girl in the middle of a massive forest, but one of my pictures showed an outline of a person. I didn’t think anything of it—or tried not to—but Mr. Fulton and you had discussed at dinner about a ghost in these woods. And it was like I couldn’t shut my brain off.”
“We’ve experienced some weird things, but I always chalked it up to being goofy kids. One time when we were teenagers, we were hiking across the lake, and I felt chilled all of a sudden. I was walking near one of the sharp edges of the forest, looking to see where’d be the best spot to hang a rope. You know, for swinging and jumping in the water. Next thing I know, I’m falling off the edge and toward the bottom of the cliff. Luckily, my arm still held one of the thick branches, and I didn’t let go.”
“You never told me this! Did someone push you?”
“I can’t say. Ted swears it wasn’t him or Tommie, the other friend we were with. But it happened right after I fel
t chilled. Anyway, I didn’t even think about it.”
“At the dinner with the Fulton’s, you two talked about what happened after graduation.”
“Well, everyone in these parts knew that the forest was supposedly haunted. I don’t think Sue ever really ventured into the woods, but I loved them. Your Gran and Grampa always kept a close eye on me, but they never outright told me no, as long as I was with someone. That night after graduation, we decided to camp in the woods, which we had never done before. We decided to see if the ghost stories were real.”
“And interestingly, you’ve never shared any of this with your daughter.”
“I wasn’t exactly hiding it from you. I didn’t think too much about it.”
“What was your conclusion? Did you and Mr. Fulton see the ghost?”
“Something was out there that night, but I always wondered if it was one of our friends pulling a prank. I don’t know. I’m a scientist. I’m not too superstitious. That said, I’m not so arrogant that I can’t admit that there are mysteries of the world that cannot always be explained or solved. That’s why I still consider myself a man of faith.”
“Right. Which explains making your only daughter endure Catholic school.”
“Haha, you survived.” Dad pauses. “It was a big blow to learn about…you know, events of the past.”
“It doesn’t have to change anything. Gran and Grandpa will always be your parents.”
“It does change things. Somewhere out there is my bloodline. People who are related to me—people related to you—and for forty years, I had no idea. I could have had relationships and contact with them. It’s a big deal.”
“I guess it is. I wasn’t trying to uncover it. I had no idea. I’ve only been trying to avoid bugs, dead bodies, and ghosts. How was I supposed to know it led to some humongous family secret?”
Dad and I sit side by side for a few minutes, both lost in our thoughts.
“This is probably really hard for Gran. She loves us a lot.” I rest my head on Dad’s shoulder.
“I know she does,” he says. “I honestly don’t know what to do or say.”
“You don’t have to say anything right now. Just be there for her. No matter what she raised you and took care of you. So just be there.”
Lake of Secrets Page 27