Daughters of the Lake

by Wendy Webb

  “I can’t imagine it.” Simon squeezed Kate’s hand. “Who could kill their own wife and baby?”

  Kate shook her head. “I know. But plenty of people do. You only hurt the ones you love, isn’t that the saying?”

  “I don’t get that they can’t pinpoint the time of death, though,” Simon said. “I thought they could tell exactly when a person died.”

  “My dad told me that the lake is so deep, so cold, and so clean—no algae or other organisms—that it can actually preserve bodies.” Kate lowered her voice. “He said that if you die and sink to the bottom of Lake Superior, it’s like you’re on ice. It’s hard to tell when, exactly, you expired.”

  In fact, beneath the lake’s glassy surface at that very moment, a graveyard of sunken ships littered the austere, rocky bottom, filled with the well-preserved remains of the sailors who had been carried to their deaths hundreds of years before. Local divers knew which wrecks were free of these tangible ghosts and which to leave in silent memorial to the unfortunate souls entombed there.

  “You mean, the bodies don’t look dead?” Simon asked.

  “According to my dad, they look dead all right,” Kate explained. “It’s just that they don’t—I guess decompose isn’t the right term—but they don’t break down. They’re intact.”

  Simon shuddered and crinkled his nose. The very thought of it was upsetting on many levels. A mother and a baby, frozen forever in the moment of their deaths.

  “The thing about this particular body is, it—she—is extraordinarily well preserved, even by the lake’s standards,” Kate went on. “She seems to have been killed just a few minutes before we found her. But that’s the other thing that’s not adding up. It’s what I was bursting to tell you. That nightgown she was wearing was at least ninety years old. It was made by a local company called Anderson Mills, which went out of business that long ago.”

  “So, she was into vintage clothing?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Kate said. “Is that thrift shop still open on Front Street? What’s it called?”

  “Mary Jane’s.” Simon nodded. “They’ve got a lot of vintage clothes.”

  “It stands to reason they might have stuff from Anderson Mills because it was a local company,” Kate said.

  “You’re right,” Simon said. “People cleaning out their grandmothers’ closets is how they get lots of their stock. I know I took boxes and boxes of Grandma Hadley’s things to them.”

  “This woman might have bought that nightgown there!” Kate said. “Maybe somebody on staff would remember her.”

  Kate took a sip of wine and wondered if Nick Stone had thought of that.

  Much later, after she and Simon had had dinner, ambled around town with a happy malamute, and polished off that bottle of wine, Kate was snuggled in bed. As she lay there, her vision—or whatever it was—of herself and Nick Stone played over and over in her head. It was so clear, just as clear as her memory of her conversation with Simon earlier in the living room. What did it mean? Did she know this man and not remember him? Was her mind playing tricks on her?

  She punched her pillow and turned onto her side, hoping for a dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Great Bay, 1902

  Addie’s screams woke her parents and the dogs, all of whom were at her bedside in an instant. The girl was sitting upright in her bed, dripping with sweat. Her ashen face was whiter than the sheets that were tangled at her feet.

  “Honey, honey,” Marie cooed, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “You just had a bad dream.”

  Addie stared at her, wild eyed, not quite realizing that she was home, safe in her bed, and not still enmeshed in those confusing dream images.

  Marie encircled her daughter with her arms and drew her close, rubbing her back, murmuring soft words of comfort into her ear. The dogs jumped onto Addie’s bed in their attempt to do the same.

  “You’re safe,” Marie said to Addie in her darkened room. “It was just a bad dream. Hush now, girl. “

  While Marie was comforting Addie, Marcus padded into the kitchen, lit the stove, and warmed some milk. He entered the room with a steaming cup, and all of them, father, mother, daughter, and dogs, sat on the bed for a moment while Addie sipped the warm milk.

  “I had such a bad dream,” Addie said, finally.

  “I guess you did.” Marcus smiled. “You woke the whole town. Now, drink the rest of that milk and settle back down. It won’t be morning for a few hours. The fish aren’t even up yet.”

  Addie did as she was told, grateful for the familiarity of it. She was here, in her own room with her own parents. Safe. Marcus smoothed his daughter’s hair, and before going back to bed himself, he rapped her doorframe three times for luck, the way he used to when she was young and afraid of the dark. “This calls the angels,” he would say to her. “Now they’re here, watching over you.” Addie smiled at the memory of it and felt better instantly. Marie wasn’t so easily soothed. Addie had never awoken in the middle of the night before in such a state, and it rattled Marie into wakefulness. It was familiar. Disturbingly so.

  She tucked her daughter beneath the blankets and sat with her, stroking her hair, until the girl fell into a shallow sleep. But Marie did not return to bed. No more sleep would come for her that night. She padded through the dark house to the kitchen. The stove was still hot, so she filled up the teapot. While the leaves were steeping, she retrieved the book from the hiding place she had selected for it years before, the third drawer down in her kitchen cupboard, where she kept her mother’s old lace tablecloths. Marcus certainly wouldn’t go rummaging around in there and happen upon it, nor would Addie without her permission. And there it was, a slim volume with a leather cover, weathered heavily by time.

  She carried both the tea and the book to her chair at the sitting-room window. Sinking down into the chair, she put the book on her lap and sighed. She must read the story now. Her own daughter was writing the next chapter.

  Marie had found the trunk in a dark and dusty corner of the attic when Addie was just a girl. Her parents had brought it with them from their former home—that and not much else. They had hurriedly packed up that horrible night, stuffing everything they could reach into the trunk, herding a young Marie out the door and quickly getting on their way. She had a vague recollection of her mother slipping the book in among more sensible things like bed linens and tablecloths and warm clothes, but when she’d stumbled across the trunk again, she hadn’t been quite sure she’d find it there. Her memories of that night so long ago were starting to fade with the passage of time. She definitely remembered her mother crying when they had to leave the china behind, but did she really take the book? Marie wasn’t so sure until she’d been brave enough to open it a few years ago. The trunk had been tucked away in the attic since the family arrived in Great Bay.

  Marie thought back to that time, the day she had first laid eyes on the boy who would become her husband, during a town celebration at the lakeshore on a particularly warm August day. She and her family had just moved to Great Bay, a tiny hamlet some two hundred miles down the lakeshore from their previous home in Canada. They had fled under cover of night after what had happened to her grandmother—Marie didn’t like to think about that horrible time in their lives—and her parents had vowed to make a fresh start for young Marie in a new town, where nobody knew their dark history. Her father was soon employed by one of the richest fishing families in town, and the three of them settled into a quiet routine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to call attention to themselves.

  That day in August was the annual end-of-summer celebration in Great Bay—the townsfolk gathered after a busy fishing season and gave thanks for their good fortune with a potluck supper. Everyone brought a little something to share, spread blankets on the rocky shore, and chatted about the glorious summer that had passed. While Marie’s father was introduced around by his new employer, and her mother was welcomed warmly by the neighborhood women, the
young people enjoyed the unusual luxury of swimming in cool—rather than icy-cold—water after a month of temperatures well into the nineties.

  Even the girls, dressed in daring new bathing costumes, ventured into the water, and with the blessing of her parents, Marie joined in the fun. She was up to her knees in the lake when she was literally bowled over by Marcus. He had been playing a game of catch in the shallow water with his brother, Gene, and was running toward an errant ball that was headed straight for Marie. His eyes on it instead of the girl in his path, he ran headlong into her, and the two of them were suddenly submerged, floating for a moment in a deep drop-off that Marie had not known was there. Beneath the water’s surface, Marie had opened her eyes and seen Marcus’s face for the first time. With his dark curls and olive skin, she thought he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. They were underwater for just a few seconds, but for Marie, the moment lasted forever—the stillness, the slight music of the water in her ears, the warmth of its embrace. When they made their way back onto shore, laughing, sputtering, Marcus apologizing and offering Marie his hand, she knew without a doubt that she’d spend the rest of her life with this boy.

  She and Marcus still lived in the same house her parents had bought all those years ago. As newlyweds, they had moved in with her mother after her father’s death. He had been well enough to walk Marie down the aisle but died shortly thereafter, leaving her mother, Vivienne, with a sickness that could only be described as a broken heart. She was weakened by the loss, permanently it seemed. From the moment of his death until the moment of hers, she could never take a full breath in, nor could she exert herself to any degree. Even the simple act of cooking the nightly meal was too much. It was as though her life force was seeping away, bit by bit. The townspeople thought it was grief, but Vivienne knew it was more than that. Her soul was longing to be free of its confines to join her beloved husband once again. She was incomplete without him, and had no wish to walk through life as half of a whole. Before the new year dawned, she would be gone.

  She had but one request on her deathbed. “Bury me at sea,” she whispered to Marie just days before she died. “Don’t put me in the ground. I don’t belong there. I want to go back into the water.”

  “You don’t want to be buried next to Father?” Marie’s eyes stung as she quickly blinked away the tears.

  Vivienne shook her head. “He’s not in the ground, child. That’s just the shell of his body. Your father is waiting for me, beyond. The reunion . . .” Her words evaporated into a deep sigh as she smiled, imagining it.

  A burial at sea was not the Christian thing to do, but it was her mother’s last wish, and Marie was determined to carry it out. So she and Marcus huddled together and came up with a plan. When the time came, they would tell the townspeople that, sick as she was, Vivienne had asked to make one last trip to their former home to see family and friends. Marcus and Marie would take her in Marcus’s fishing boat, and, as far as the townspeople in Great Bay were concerned, Vivienne would perish on the trip. Meanwhile, Marcus and Marie would take her mother’s body for one last sail, way out into the vastness of the lake.

  Late one autumn afternoon, Vivienne called her daughter to her bedside. “It’s time,” she managed to say. “Take me down to the lake, child.”

  “But, Maman,” Marie protested, holding a cool cloth to her mother’s fevered brow. “You should rest here, in bed.”

  Vivienne just shook her head. “I want the last sight I see in this life to be the water.”

  So Marcus scooped her out of her bed—she was nothing more than skin and bones by that point—and carried her down to the lake, Marie trailing close behind. As daughter sat with mother at the lakeshore, Marcus readied his fishing boat, hoisting its single sail and making a comfy nest out of blankets and pillows.

  “What do you say we go for a ride, Vivienne?” He smiled so tenderly that Marie’s eyes stung with tears. He set her mother in the nest of blankets in the back of the boat, and Marie scrambled alongside her. In no time, they were off.

  They sailed straight out into open water, aided by a gentle tailwind. The lake’s surface was as still as glass as they skimmed along. Marie held her mother’s hand and watched Marcus as he steered the boat, keeping a sharp eye on the horizon. As the setting sun illuminated the sky with fiery shades of purple, pink, and red, Marie thought: Maybe now is not the time. Maybe she will stay with us awhile longer. But it was not to be.

  Vivienne’s eyes shone with tears, and a smile lit up her face. “Pierre,” she whispered, extending one trembling hand. Then she laid her head on her daughter’s shoulder, sighed deeply, and it was over. Or, for Vivienne, just beginning.

  “Is she gone?” Marcus asked.

  Marie held her mother’s wrist, but there was no pulse. She listened to her chest for a heartbeat but heard only silence. Her skin was already beginning to cool. There was no life left.

  When they slipped Vivienne’s body overboard, Marie did not say a prayer, not a conventional one anyway. “Sleep well, Maman,” she said as she watched Vivienne’s body sink under the water’s glassy surface.

  So the trunk sat, mostly forgotten, until something drew Marie to it again when Addie was a little girl. She hadn’t touched the trunk since her family had tucked it into that dusty corner, decades earlier. Was the book still there? Had it ever been? She’d opened the trunk and dug through the layers of linens until her hand hit something smooth and hard. She’d slipped the book under her apron and stolen back downstairs to the kitchen, where she’d put it in the drawer with her mother’s lace tablecloths.

  Now it was time to read the old tale again.

  “I’m sorry, Maman,” Marie whispered, “but this can’t stay hidden forever.” Then she watched out the window as the moonlight glistened on the lake until the sun’s first rays penetrated the darkness.

  The next morning, after Marcus and his brother had headed onto the lake to gather up the day’s catch—it wouldn’t be too long before the encroaching ice ended their season for the year—Marie sat with her daughter in front of the fire in the living room.

  “Do you remember your dream?” Marie asked.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” Addie said with a nod, shuddering. She drew a shawl around her shoulders, shielding herself from the cold she still felt within.

  Marie waited for her daughter to continue, but she didn’t. Silence fell between them.

  She held out the book to Addie. “It was written, or written down, you might say, by my grandmother. I think it’s time you read it.”

  “Your grandmother?” Addie leaned forward. “Truly?”

  “Truly.” Marie smiled, nodding in the direction of the book.

  Addie grasped it and ran one hand along the soft leather cover. It smelled of the past somehow. She opened it and saw yellowed pages of faded, handwritten words. “The Daughter of the Lake,” she said, reading the title aloud. “Is this a storybook?”

  “It is a storybook, yes. After you’ve read it, we’ll talk about what kind of story.”

  Addie curled her legs up underneath her as her eyes settled on the first page, squinting to make out her great-grandmother’s spidery, purplish scrawl, and she began to read.

  The Daughter of the Lake

  Long, long ago, on the shores of the greatest inland sea, lived a beautiful girl, the daughter of a French Canadian fur trapper and his young native bride. Her name was Geneviève, after the trapper’s own mother, and with her jet-black hair and shining, deep-blue eyes, she was considered to be the most beautiful girl in their village, not only for her physical beauty but also for her disposition. Life was not easy in that time and place—harsh winds blew off the lake year-round, and snow piled up in the winters, when food was scarce. People worked hard to survive. Yet Geneviève was a sunny little girl, always smiling and laughing, never cross or angry. She brought great joy to her parents—she was the apple of her father’s eye—and to her entire village as well.

  As sh
e grew older, Geneviève begged to accompany her father on his trapping trips. She missed him when he was away for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. She wanted to see the world, or at least her corner of it, and she longed to sit in her father’s sleek and sturdy canoe as he paddled across the glistening water. But it was the one thing he denied her.

  “You are too small yet,” he would say. “It’s too dangerous for a little one out on the big water. And the land is no better. Bears, Geneviève. Mountain lions!”

  She would always accept his denials with good grace and humor, throwing her arms around him and saying, “Maybe next year, Papa.”

  “Next year” finally came. Geneviève had grown into a young woman and was being pursued by all the young men in the village. Evening after evening, one or another of them would appear at their door, wanting Geneviève to sit on the porch with them or accompany them on a stroll. Her father grew increasingly worried by this—he thought his girl was much too young for such things—and one evening he spoke to her mother in hushed tones. “I must travel to Wharton, a week’s paddle down the shoreline, to meet with the fur trader there. I know of friendly outposts all along the route with people who will be happy to take us in. Perhaps getting the girl away from here for a time will quiet things down.”

  “I know she’ll be safe in your care,” her mother said, and it was decided. The next morning, they set off.

  Geneviève sat in the front of her father’s canoe, taking in the water’s fresh scent. She loved how it sparkled as the sun hit its surface, and how the shoreline changed from sandy to rocky to dense woods as they paddled along. She dragged her hand in the cool water and looked at her reflection over the side of the canoe. After several days of travel, they arrived in Wharton, where they sought out the local fur trader, who offered them accommodations in his home. As her father conducted business with the man, Geneviève soaked in a hot bath prepared for her by the fur trader’s wife, who understood that a girl would enjoy such an indulgence after a long trip. Then Geneviève settled into the soft featherbed in her room and fell immediately to sleep, not realizing that her father had not returned.