Daughters of the Lake(72)

“How so?”

“Our lady—Addie—ended up in the water,” he said. “With the baby. The last time anyone that we know of saw her—who was it? The maid on the day she went missing? She was pregnant and alive. How did she and the baby get in the lake?”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Later, when Nick was on his way to the precinct and Kate was back at Harrison’s House, she and Simon sat together in the parlor as she filled him in on the events of the day.

As soon as she mentioned the possibility of a mistress to Simon, she felt tears stinging at the backs of her eyelids.

“It really makes you wonder,” Kate said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. “That a man would commit murder, kill his own wife and child, for the chance of a life with a mistress. I just can’t believe it. What a waste.”

“Oh, honey, that’s the oldest story on earth,” Simon said. “It happens all the time. I don’t suppose our dear great-granddaddy would’ve taken too kindly to one of his employees running around on a very pregnant wife. That likely would’ve gotten Jess Stewart fired, at the very least.”

Kate rubbed her temples. Her head was beginning to pound.

“If Jess wanted to keep his life, his employer, his house, and his standing in the community and all of that, but just with a different wife—or without any wife, for that matter—he had one option,” Simon said. “Make himself look like the grieving widower.

“It’s really the perfect plan,” he continued, studying one of the articles. “Coming back into town a day earlier than scheduled. Oh, but this witness testified that he was on the Sunday train.”

“I just can’t believe he cheated on her,” Kate said, her voice wavering. “I know what I saw in the dream, but why would he do that? They were so much in love! He loved her his whole life. They were children together! I read it in the testimony of the trial. All their lives! Why would he do something so heinous and stupid?” A flood of tears overcame her, and she covered her face with a napkin.

“Katie, look at me,” Simon said. “You’ve got to pull yourself together. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic here, but you need to realize that this thing happened almost a century ago. To people you don’t even know.”

“But I do know her,” Kate insisted. “I am her. I can’t explain it. This is personal. It’s me. I know that I need to put this thing in perspective, but I—” She stopped short, unable to continue.

“I think I know what this is about,” Simon said. “It’s Kevin, isn’t it?”

Kate looked up from her tear-soaked napkin. “Kevin?”

“You’re internalizing this whole thing because the husband cheated on Addie, just like Kevin cheated on you,” Simon said. “Those tears you’re crying, they’re for your own marriage, your own dreams he shattered to bits.”

Kate considered this and blew her nose. “I guess I’m lucky I didn’t end up like Addie,” she mused.

“Damn straight,” Simon concluded, shuddering. “Listen, this is only natural. You’re grieving. And you’re exhausted. It seems to me that you need a long, hot bath. How would that be? I’ll take Miss Alaska for a walk, and you just settle into a nice, hot tub.”

Truth be told, Kate thought, a hot bath sounded like heaven.

“I’ll do that,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table.

Steam from the hot water filled up the chilly bathroom, and Kate leaned over the tub and breathed the vapor into her lungs. A slow breath in, a slow breath out. Calm down. Relax. Simon was right. It was all in the past. Almost a century in the past. It wasn’t happening now. It wasn’t happening to her. All this emotion was related to her own breakup. She slipped into the water and submerged herself.

Kate laid her head on the back of the massive tub, closed her eyes, and floated. Soon, she could feel her body rocking back and forth on the waves, undulating up and down, to and fro, taken with the whims of the wind and the tides. She was a seashell, a piece of driftwood, a loon floating lazily on the surface of the Great Lake. Nothing can hurt you here. You are with me now. I will keep you safe, here, with me, my daughter of the lake, until it is time. Kate was enveloped in loving arms and held close, wrapped in a watery blanket, falling down, down, down. Sleep, my daughter, sleep, until it is time.

Kate felt the water entering her lungs, but instead of stinging like a thousand knives, stealing her breath and suffocating the life from her, she felt as though she were a baby, prebirth, floating in the watery embrace of her mother’s womb, remembering the comfort and warmth of breathing in the liquid that, once long ago, had surrounded and sustained her when she was a fetus awaiting the moment of birth. She opened her eyes, somewhere, in some other place, and saw, through the darkness, a billowing white gown. A baby cradled in her arms. A school of tiny fish swimming around and through the strands of her hair. She heard a heartbeat, a soft thudding in the distance.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Kate awoke to Simon shrieking as he pulled her up from under the water. Kate coughed and sputtered until the water cleared from her lungs. Simon sat down, hard, on the floor next to the tub. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, shaking his head. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”