Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  Whack! A wooden oar smacked the side of her head, and the breath she grabbed was half water driven up her nose. Her lungs seized then exploded in a choking cough followed by an involuntary gasp underwater. Her feet hit bottom and she pushed off, muscles burning, and burst through the surface, saw the side of the boat, and grabbed it. She was in air now, but her lungs were locked shut. A spasm pushed out water, and with an awful moan, she pulled in a miniscule stream of air that set off another paroxysm as time slowed to standing still. The side of the boat sank with her weight, and she hauled herself up on the heels of her hands, struggling to get as far out of water as she could, as if that would help her breathe.

  In the midst of her struggle, she was dimly aware of Alice in the water with her as the boat rocked and flipped. At the end of her strength, Regina pushed clear of the boat to open water, where claws on her shoulders pulled her under.

  A spark of anger drove her now. With a lifesaving burst of clarity, she knew better than to struggle for the surface. She turned in the water and drove her foot into Alice, finding little purchase but achieving separation, kicking free and away. She heard an animal grunting sound behind her but focused all her attention on getting breath. Coughing uncontrollably and dragging in each tortured breath, she staggered onto land and looked back at Alice standing thigh-deep in the water, a strong swimmer, never any danger she would drown, hair wet, clothes streaming, eyes burning with hatred in a classically beautiful face that was now old and ugly. A frustrated child. Mouth twisted down, lower lip stuck out.

  Still breathing in shrieks and gasps, Regina staggered toward the house, thudded up the wooden steps to the veranda, banged through the screen door, and hauled herself up the spiral staircase with both hands on the wide wooden banister. All the way up to the attic, leaving dark wet footprints on the fusty old floors. She landed with a thump in the padded seat of the desk chair, felt the warm old fabric sucking water from her skirt.

  Coughing and retching, she plunged into the pile of papers, scattered where she’d left them in little piles separated by her half-bewildered ideas. Her breath was coming steadily now, but her chest hurt from the harsh lake water in her windpipe. She touched her throbbing forehead and her fingers came away with blood, which she wiped on her side. Ink ran and paper rumpled as she rifled through the pages with wet fingers and found what she was looking for. On the letter, little pink stains bloomed as blood streamed from her forehead.

  Sorting through the words of her mother’s childhood physician, consulted by William Hannon after his daughter’s death in 1945, words rose from the page: willful, headstrong, and jealous. Downstairs, the back door opened and shut. Regina’s hair stood on end. Goose bumps rose on her arms. The letter was not about a three-year-old. With sudden inspiration, she rearranged the pages, plucked out the one that read at the bottom “the little girl Regina cannot be left alone,” and pulled the middle sheet to continue reading at the top of the next page.

  The little girl Regina cannot be left alone with her mother.

  27

  Who Knew

  Sophie said, “I saw her push her sister in the water.”

  Regina’s jaw dropped, eyes starting out of her head. “You saw what?”

  “No, not then! Not when she drowned. Another time. I pulled the poor, terrified little thing out of the lake.”

  Regina had finally calmed, sitting in Sophie’s sunny room at Mrs. Marsden’s, but now she leaned forward, breathless, nerves jangling afresh.

  Sophie sighed and looked out the window at the vegetable garden in back of the house. “Two little girls could not have looked more alike or been less alike. They both looked like you. Hair like gold leaf, their father used to say. Lucy, you know, was gingery, like Bebe. Those two little Wilcox girls though, they both had it. Blue eyes like Siamese cats. Peaches and cream skin.”

  Regina was still gaping. “You’re saying Alice pushed her sister in the lake?”

  “I don’t know anything, Regina. I wasn’t there.” Sophie sank back and traced her lips with thumb and forefinger, eyes clearly focused on the past.

  Regina touched a damp washrag to her forehead and looked at the fresh pink stain. “So what did you see?”

  Sophie’s eyes did not return to the present. She continued as if talking to herself. “A little girl was never more celebrated than Alice when she came along, the Paces’ first and only granddaughter. Lucy had two miscarriages and a stillborn, you know. It was as if the whole family held their breath for a month after Alice was born, they were so afraid the baby wouldn’t live. And then what joy. She looked like a little angel.”

  Regina barely breathed, hanging on every word.

  “Alice was five when Eugenie was born. It was a difficult birth, and Lucy was terrified she’d lose the baby. Uncle George was terrified he’d lose Lucy. I don’t suppose much effort was made to comfort Alice. Certainly she didn’t get the attention she was used to. Even the Paces were worried to distraction about Lucy and the baby, little Eugenie.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Aunt Emily went to see if she could help, and she took me with her. I was twelve when Eugenie was born. I had lost my own mother not long before that, so I was a little overwhelmed too. I remember it as a scary time. Emily thought about little Alice—just five years old—but we couldn’t make it up to her. I do remember that she was more angry than frightened. I don’t believe I have ever seen Alice truly frightened.”

  “No? I’ve seen her hysterical.”

  “Oh, she would cry and scream. But she could turn it off too. It was always a little calculated, I thought, when she was a child. On and off like a faucet. Aunt Emily said as much to me once. Turns on and off like a faucet. She never said that in Uncle George’s or Aunt Lucy’s presence of course.” Sophie examined the spotted backs of her hands, then dropped them in her lap. “They were both fine, Lucy and the baby. But then there were two beautiful little girls, and the rivalry was intense.” Her eyes met Regina’s. “On Alice’s side. Alice looked like an angel. Eugenie was an angel. You always reminded me of her.” She smiled gently, and Regina blinked in surprise.

  “Me?”

  “You have the same kind of looks and you were a sweet child, like Eugenie. Always wanting to please. It made you happy when anybody else was happy. That was your God-given nature. And when anybody else was unhappy, it always made you cry. You were a little doll.”

  Regina ducked her head with a rueful smile, uncomfortable with praise. “I thought I was difficult.”

  “You! Difficult!” Sophie laughed.

  “But—there was a letter. Not exactly a letter. A note. From a Doctor Carter. Do you know who that is?”

  “Oh yes. He was the Wilcoxes’ family physician. Tell me about the letter.”

  “It’s about a child. What to do with her. A child who was willful, jealous, and headstrong. I thought it was about me. I thought Papa consulted Doctor Carter because he didn’t know what to do with me. But I had the pages out of order. I thought it said I needed constant watching because I was so bad.” Regina ran her fingers through her hair and blew out a sigh. “He was talking about Alice when she was ten. Not me when I was three.”

  “Willful, jealous, and headstrong.” A wry smile. “It’s not a bad description.” Sophie leaned forward to pat Regina’s hand. Then she sat back and her eyes grew distant as she recollected. “I watched those two little girls many times, right up until Eugenie died. Alice was fiercely resentful of her little sister. The Wilcoxes were lovely people, but they were blind about those girls, especially Alice. They gave Alice everything, and the Paces gave her even more. Then they were just as extravagantly adoring of their second baby girl.” Sophie narrowed her eyes. “I don’t doubt Alice wished her sister had never been born. I saw her slap her sister more than once. I saw her push her in the water, and when Eugenie tried to climb out, Alice pushed her back in.”

  “My God,” Regina whispered. “That must be how it happened.”

  “Euge
nie was a tiny thing, and five years younger than Alice, who for all her delicate looks, has always been as strong as a horse.”

  Regina shivered, remembering the strength of her mother’s grip. “Her parents didn’t do anything about it when Alice treated her that way?”

  “Well, in the first place, Alice didn’t do that kind of thing in front of other people. Neither Lucy nor Maisie watched them as closely as I did. I told Lucy once that Alice wasn’t careful enough with Eugenie. I sugarcoated it as best I could because Lucy wouldn’t hear a word critical of Alice and I knew it. I made it sound like Alice didn’t realize she could accidently hurt Eugenie, who was so much smaller. Aunt Lucy laughed it off. She said, ‘Oh, sisters squabble.’ Squabble!”

  “I’ve always heard that Maisie was asleep and Eugenie fell in the water.”

  “That was what Alice said. No one else was there. Maisie may have been asleep or may have just not been watching for a minute. It only takes a couple of minutes for a small child to drown, Regina.”

  The hairs tingled on the back of Regina’s neck. Always afraid someone was watching her. Guilt. Not fear. Not trauma. Stealth.

  “Maisie was a perfectly nice girl,” Sophie added. “Poor thing, she was fired.”

  “And hanged herself.”

  Sophie closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she leaned forward. “I’ll tell you something else. Eugenie was a timid little girl. She didn’t like the water. I always had to coax her in.”

  Regina felt the blood drain from her face. “And you never told anybody what you suspected?”

  “I asked questions at the time, and Alice cried and Lucy became very angry with me and Uncle George sided with her. I apologized and he and I remained on fairly good terms, but Lucy never forgave me for questioning whether there had been even unintentional involvement on Alice’s part. And Alice, well, she never cared one way or another about me before it happened, and she couldn’t abide my presence afterward. Oh, I suppose I always saw her dark side and she knew it. She’s not stupid, you know.”

  Regina felt a tickle of blood and touched the washrag to her forehead again.

  “You should show that to a doctor.”

  “It’s nothing.” But she looked at her hands, thinking, it’s not nothing.

  “And I tried to warn William.”

  Regina looked up in surprise.

  “Years later. Alice was seventeen. He was five years older than I was. I went to stay with the Wilcoxes that summer and William came to see me. I loved him, Regina. But I knew I had lost him the minute he laid eyes on Alice Wilcox. Oh, you have no idea how lovely she was back then. She came riding up on her little bay mare, and William’s jaw just literally dropped. I was worried for him, because of what I knew about Alice. I tried to broach the subject, but he refused to hear it. He was in love.”

  Regina hung her head and thought about the love letters from the thirties, as Sophie continued. “I agonized over it at the time. I loved William and counted on marrying him. But I could see that he’d fallen for Alice. When I suggested that something was wrong with Alice, he leapt to her defense. And of course you know how it must have sounded. I was losing the man I loved to another woman, and I tried to tell him she was not what he thought. I was in a hopeless position. And what did I know? I had suspicions that were too awful to say. Everyone said Alice suffered so much because of being there when her sister drowned. For me to blame her… can you imagine what an awful thing that was to even think, let alone to say out loud?”

  “She was a child and may not have understood what she was doing. But our Eugenie, my sister Gigi, was Alice’s daughter. That’s different! How could she?”

  “Oh, Regina.” Sophie’s face crumpled, and a soft moan escaped her. Then she sighed. “The story is as old as Medea.”

  Regina snatched a sharp breath. “Oh my God. Sophie… I came across letters you wrote to him. In the 1930s. I read them. I’m sorry. But you said in one of the letters that Alice never knew.”

  “She did though.” Sophie’s face was grim. “She found out.”

  “How?”

  “I always wrote to his post office box. If you read the letters, you know we broke it off in 1939 when I married Henry. I wrote again a few years later. I didn’t know he’d closed the box, and the postmaster redirected it to Blue Lake. Alice saw it first and read it.”

  Regina breathed, “Oh,” a picture forming in her mind of Alice by the water, looking at something in her hand, Gigi tugging at her skirts.

  “I hardly knew your sister who drowned, but I know she was the apple of William’s eye.” Her face sagged. “When I heard that child had drowned, my blood ran cold.”

  “Do you think he knew?”

  “He never said so, but he asked me what I’d meant to tell him all those years before. He aged in front of my eyes.”

  They sat in silence until Regina roused. “But nobody did anything.”

  “He did what he could to protect you.”

  “He gave me away rather than hold her accountable.” The words were bitter on her tongue.

  “She was his wife, Regina, and he didn’t know for sure. Nobody saw anything either time.”

  They both fell silent, then Regina returned to her own grievance. “They always said I was too much for her. That I was difficult.”

  “What I believe he said was that she could not take care of you. She was ruined by it, whatever happened. You were a lovely, active, healthy little girl. A beautiful child. And Mary loved you.”

  “No one ever told me anything.”

  “What could I have told you, darling? That in my heart of hearts I suspected your mother was complicit in the deaths of her own sister and yours? That you were removed from her for your own protection? How could I say it? I tried to tell you it wasn’t your fault. It was all I felt I could do.” But she added, “I am so sorry. I have always known how inadequate that half-truth was to you.”

  “Well, I believe I know the truth now. I think she drowned both of them.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” She felt a rill of blood run down to her eyebrow and caught it with the washrag.

  “Let me see if Ellen has something I can put on that.”

  While Sophie bustled off, Regina looked down at her dress, still damp, drying in great creases. Sitting in her wet clothes in the attic, staring at the letter and mopping at the blood that streamed from her forehead, she’d heard Alice come back in the house. Hands shaking uncontrollably, she had stopped at the top of the attic stairs, listening.

  Her mind told her that this was an old woman—a wiry, strong old woman, but an old woman. She was herself a strong young woman, Alice’s physical match, and no longer unsuspecting. The moment of danger had passed, but she could not shake off the terror gripping her. An old terror she had felt before.

  You were hiding.

  She descended from the attic slowly, hair-trigger alert, nerves jangling up and down her arms, fingers trembling, knees weak, and reached the hall. Empty. The door to the master bedroom was ajar. Easing up to it with dread, she saw the back of Alice in her soaking wet dress, peering through the curtains, a puddle forming at her feet. Regina slid past the door silently and skittered down the stairs, heart pounding.

  She started to run out the door but halted with her hand on the knob. With a wary glance up the stairs, she called Mary, whispering, “Mary, you have to come.” Then she slipped into the study and closed the door.

  Interminable minutes later, she heard the front door, then the study door opened.

  Mary gasped when she saw Regina. “What happened to you?”

  “Alice hit me with an oar.”

  Mary half-laughed. “What?” Then her face changed and she touched Regina’s forehead, face unreadable.

  “She tried to kill me.”

  “No.” But Mary sat down heavily. “Where is she?”

  “In her room. I’m leaving. I can’t stay here right now.”

  “What
are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And now Sophie, patting Regina’s forehead with cotton and hydrogen peroxide, was asking the same question, “What are you going to do?”

  Regina flinched at the sharp sting. “I don’t know.”

  “You can stay here.”

  Regina stood, paced, then stopped. “No, I’m going back there.”

  No more running away.

  Ignoring Violet’s curious glance, Regina trotted back downstairs, face and hands bloody, hair disheveled, in her rumpled dress, carrying only her car keys. Minutes later, she was back at Blue Lake. She steeled herself, opened the front door quietly, left it open. She dropped her car keys on the side table, and a murmur of voices in the dining room fell to silence.

  Heart in mouth, she moved to the archway and stopped. Alice. Mary. Robert.

  As if she’d been punched in the stomach, she was unable to breathe, let alone speak, as she took in the scene. Alice in her usual place, hair slightly damp but tidily arranged, silver curls framing her exquisite face. Mary frozen in the act of serving sandwiches.

  Robert, at Alice’s right hand, in black suit and clerical collar, was first to speak. “You look like a crazy person.”

  “It’s my fault,” Alice said gently. Solicitous. “I told you,” speaking to Robert, “I fell from the boat, and I’m afraid the oar flew right out of my hand.” She placed her hands on the table as if she might rise and come to Regina, but made no further effort.

  Regina, close to blacking out, turned her tunnel vision onto Robert.

  Before she found words, Mary said, “Ree, you can’t—”

  Regina turned away unsteadily, one hand on her stomach, lifted the phone from the hall table and carried it into the study, stretching the cord. She dialed a number that came to her rescue out of memory, magically, information that she didn’t know she possessed until she needed it. Laura answered on the second ring.