Daughters of the Lake(14)

That day, Simon was standing in the doorway waiting for her.

“Well, it’s about time.” He enveloped Kate in a bear hug as Alaska bounded inside. They stood, holding each other for a long moment before he whispered, “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Kate said, but knew he wouldn’t buy it.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you’re good.” He pulled back and squinted at her. “Everyone’s good after their world falls apart. Now come over to the bar and sit down and tell me everything. I’ve got a bottle of wine with your name on it. I’m pouring, you’re talking.”





CHAPTER SEVEN

After dissecting Kate’s situation with her husband, Simon crinkled his nose at her.

“There’s something else that you’re not saying. I could tell the moment you got here. Out with it.”

Somehow, he always knew. There was no use trying to keep anything from him.

“I’ll tell you,” Kate said. “But you’re going to think what I’m about to say is really strange.”

“Strange in what way?”

Kate shifted in her chair. “Strange in a ‘Kate needs a straitjacket’ sort of way.”

“Well, this sounds good.” Simon raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “What is it?”

Kate took a deep breath, wondering if she could actually utter the words. “It’s about something that’s been happening to me.”

“Will you just spill it?” Simon said, refilling Kate’s glass. “You know you want to talk about this, so just say it, already. How bad can it be?”

“The thing is, I’ve been having these dreams.” Kate exhaled, and then the whole story came out in one long, continuous stream. How she had been dreaming of a woman for the past three weeks, how she had found that same woman’s body washed up on the beach in front of her parents’ house, how she knew there was a baby in the folds of the woman’s dress.

She had said it all out loud, told someone else. The strange events of the past few weeks had been given voice. Her experience was a tangible thing now, the words forming substance and becoming something greater than simply a notion in Kate’s head.

“Well?” Kate asked. “What do you think?”

“Why doesn’t this kind of thing ever happen to me?” Simon wailed. “The dead simply don’t want to communicate with me, and I find it highly offensive.”

Kate laughed out loud. “Either that, or I’m just crazy. There’s that possibility, too.”

“It’s certainly bizarre, I’ll give you that,” Simon said. “You’ve had recurring dreams about a woman’s life. Looking in the mirror in the dreams, you see her face reflected back as your own. You’re her, in a way, in the dream. So it’s very personal, right?”

“Right,” Kate said. “It feels absolutely personal. Intimate. You’re right, it’s like I am her. Or she’s me. In the dreams, we’re the same person.”

“Are you absolutely sure it’s the same woman? The one dead on the beach and the one in your dreams?”

Kate nodded. “Completely sure. It’s her. There’s no doubt.”

“Do we know when, and how, she died?” Simon wondered. “She was in the lake, so, obviously she drowned, right?”

“I don’t know.” Kate winced as the words left her lips and a twinge of heat radiated in the small of her back. “Johnny Stratton is investigating.”

Kate gazed out of the window, looking down the street toward the water. The face of the beautiful, serene woman in her dream, superimposed over the harsh sight of that same face, dead, lifeless, on her beach, screamed inside of her head.

“Johnny’s already questioned me, sort of, in connection with all of this,” Kate went on.

Simon grimaced. “Why would he do that?”

“I reacted rather badly when I saw the body,” Kate admitted. “It seemed to him that I knew more than I was saying.”

Simon reached across the table and took her hand. “You didn’t tell him about the dreams, did you?”

Kate shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone but you. I’m sure he thinks I’m involved in this somehow, but I have no idea what I’m going to tell him when he starts asking more questions.”

“If only you knew who she was,” Simon mused, staring out the window.

With that, Alaska padded into the room, carrying her leash in her mouth.

“I guess you’re being taken for a walk,” Simon chuckled.

Kate stood up and stretched. “It’ll feel good to get a little exercise, actually,” she said. “Care to come along?”

A few minutes later, they were meandering through the darkened streets of Wharton. A whisper of autumn was in the air, and the chill refreshed Kate’s spirits.

Simon and Kate talked about other things for a bit, their parents, how things were going at the inn, but their conversation drifted to the dead woman on the beach again, almost as though she was calling them back.

“I want to find out more about who she was and who killed her, but I don’t quite know what to do first,” Kate said. “I can’t do any research without knowing more about her.”