Start reading Girl in the Lake
Prologue
I meant to get out early, but I slept in, dragging myself out of bed with Dylan still snoring. I put on a T-shirt and shorts, laced up my sneakers, and stepped outside. It's mid-morning now, around nine o’clock, but the birds are still chirping, the insects are still buzzing, and the clear blue water is calling my name.
Still, my body resists the call. I drag my legs out of the cabin. I had just woken up, but I know that the exercise will do me some good. I've gotten into the groove of running a little bit at a time. When I'm not running, I'm walking, just getting the steps in. It feels good to be alone first thing in the morning, engaging my body. Instead of placing pressure on myself to run a certain amount I just walk or run, listen to whatever I want to on YouTube, a podcast, an audiobook, anything at all.
I love the freshness of the air up here. It's at least twenty degrees hotter down in the desert but just being in the relative cool for a couple of days is enough to reset, recalibrate. This is exactly what I wanted.
I don't even mind; in fact, I enjoy that Dylan is not here. It’s a little bit of time alone with my thoughts and my body. Looking out onto the shore of the lake there is nothing but blue water, pine trees, and a rocky shoreline just behind me. I get a stitch in my side at my waist and bend over in half to gather my breath. My AirPods stop cooperating or maybe the internet connection isn't great, so I pull them out of my ears. I suddenly hear a voice out in the distance.
"Help! Help!" a woman yells, waving her arms at me.
Despite the stitch, I push myself forward into a loping run, not sprinting, but faster than I would have run for exercise.
Quail Lake is surrounded by a glacier meadow with smooth, silky grasses embedded into the forest floor, broadening widely all around. I run along the mossy bogginess of the rocky shore, rough in parts, weedy in others. These meadows are where the butterflies and flowers make their home as close to the beginning of the water as possible.
The beach runs for some distance, cleared out a bit for swimming where the moss rarely gathers on the smooth stones and boulders. Here, the sod is plushy and crowded with daisies, gentians, and various species of grass, as well as an explosion of flowers and butterflies. It's hard to describe the exquisite beauty of this carpet that lines the lake, none of which I notice as my heart speeds up and I race toward the woman in need of help. Her waving slows down a little bit as I get closer. Then she seems to let out a sigh as I approach her.
"I found a girl. She's dead!” the woman yells and points to the legs of a young woman. Her head is being caressed lightly by the wavelets at the edge of the lake. I rush up to her and take her pulse, immediately hating to confirm the fact that she is, indeed, gone.
Chapter 1
Summers have a distinctive smell because of the heat that comes off the sidewalk. When you walk under an overarching oak tree, the small breeze picks up your hair and tosses it in your face. Bees buzz around all the blooming flowers and the neighborhood is filled with the smells of citrus, life, and hope.
The new year begins when summer comes. At least that's what I always used to believe. It's like a rejuvenation in nature, and I don't even live anywhere where it's particularly cold. In the deserts, the summers are long and hot. People tend to escape to the ocean or up to the mountains.
Dylan and I are driving up the winding, curvy road to Quail Lake, about an hour and a half drive from home. The last time I was here, about six weeks ago, I was working a case, but today, we're on vacation. Five glorious days off and nothing but bright blue skies, a crystal-clear lake, and seventy-five degree weather to enjoy.
The pines are starting to get taller and taller and when we stop at an overlook, the orange desert, punctuated by rows and rows of palm trees, spreads out in all directions below us. It's the place I call home but also the place that I won't miss for a weekend.
Dylan's recovery is going a lot faster and smoother than anyone thought. After he was transferred home, I helped take care of him. His parents came as well and helped us with whatever he needed: dinners, groceries, and everything else since I was still working my crazy hours. Due to his injuries, Dylan is off for a couple of months at least.
He moved into my house, because it was bigger, so that everyone had a room. His parents left a couple of weeks ago, and it was just the two of us, and he no longer needed so much daily care. He could walk around on his own. To give him credit, he's been really pushing the boundaries of his recovery; walking as much as he can every day, even trying to lift weights, basically making recovery his full-time job.
"I'm really looking forward to this trip," Dylan says as we pull up to a small one-bedroom cabin overlooking the lake. "Wow, this is amazing. Look at this view. Thank you so much for getting it."
"Well, let’s hope that it's not completely a shambles inside," I say. "Sometimes the listings can really exaggerate how nice they are."
"Don't be silly," he says, giving me a squeeze. "It's going to be great. Whatever it is."
We park in the small driveway and walk up the stairs. He insists on carrying both of our heavy backpacks filled with laptops, chargers, and all the other electronics we can’t be without.
The expansive patio that wraps three-quarters of the way around has a beautiful view of the lake in all its bright blue glory.
"I can't wait to go down there," I say.
We paid extra to not have to cross the road that circles the lake. All it requires is a walk down the narrow trail and we are at the sandy beach below. We stay on the porch, taking in the view, watching an eagle fly by as well as a couple of large mountain ravens. I hear the honking of some geese down by the water and I know that I found the perfect place for our little getaway.
"I'm so glad that you were able to take this time off," Dylan says. "It's well deserved."
"I was getting a little overwhelmed with the cases and the workload. I thought that's why I left LAPD, right?"
"Well, you don't control these things, especially when everyone else is out, but you really deserve to relax. These five days are going to be glorious."
"Yes.” I nod. "Amazing."
We walk inside and we're greeted by tall ceilings, an open concept cabin, floors, walls, and ceilings made of knotty pine, and a reclining couch facing the TV and the view of the lake.
"Look at that. You can sit here watching Netflix and still get a nice view."
"I know. I can't wait," Dylan says, wincing a little bit as he puts down the backpacks.
We haven't been intimate since his accident, and that's another thing that both of us are undoubtedly looking forward to. Spending some romantic time together.
The bedroom is to the side of the living room but has a similarly expansive view of the lake since it has French doors that open onto the porch and a bay window on the far side. The tall ceilings with the fan make it the perfect temperature.
I tell Dylan to wait here, not to bother going up and down the stairs while I get the rest of our stuff. He tries to protest, but I tell him that I don't need him getting hurt and he can help by making lunch. As bad as the pain has been, Dylan has struggled more with not being useful. It takes a couple of trips up and down the steep steps to get our suitcases and four Trader Joe bags up to the cabin.
Dylan quickly starts to put everything away into the refrigerator, pulling out the salad fixings to make something for our lunch. We drove up early in the morning so we could have a whole day here. I quickly text the owner, tell him that everything's great, that we love it, and that I'll be in touch later if we need anything. Our vacation is now ready to begin. We eat lunch on the porch looking out at the lake below, and after a tasty lunch of arugula salad with poached eggs, a side of strawberries, and Trader Joe’s cucumber dill dressing for me and Caesar for Dylan.
We change into our bathing suits, grab our towels, put on flip-flops, and head down to the beach. The sand is soft, yellow, and we’re the only ones here. I lay out my towel, grab my iPad, and begin to sunbathe.
"Aren't you coming in?" Dylan asks.
"I’ve got to warm up a little bit, but you go."
He pulls off his shirt and heads down to the water dipping his toes in and then turning back to me. "It's amazing, the perfect temperature, come on in. I can see all the way to the bottom."
I've always loved swimming in lakes. There's something peaceful about them that's so different than battling the waves of the ocean. They can be muddy bottomed or perfectly clear, but I love the stillness of the water. Something about it puts me completely at ease.
Quail Lake was formed by the snow that falls here in the winters and the scattered rainfall the rest of the year, so the shoreline varies a lot depending on how much of a drought Southern California is having. The shoreline has been decreasing steadily, but last winter we got a lot of snow so it was replenished and it's almost back to where it was originally.
I get up from my towel and take a few barefoot steps to the edge of the water. The sand is soft under my feet, but the sand disappears a couple of feet under the water and the lake bed itself is rocky until you get out deeper where the silt and vegetation take over.
Dylan is about knee-deep in, waves to me, and gives me a wide smile. Something about swimming in the lake, something about being here makes me feel like a child at camp, the carefree time that summers represent in youth. They're fleeting and you have to make sure you savor each moment.
Dylan's burns are still quite visible, especially in the bright afternoon sunlight, but he doesn't seem bothered by them and I'm not either. His scarring is getting better, but I wonder if they'll ever go away completely.
Scar tissue is different from regular skin; it doesn't pain the same, doesn't heal the same way, and it's thicker. I don't mind it of course. I still love Dylan the same, unconditionally, but I just don't want him to feel strange about it, bad about himself for no reason.
I wade into the water, Dylan takes a few steps further out and then dives in. When he comes out, he waves; he switches his hair to one side with one swoop, his eyes glistening in the sunlight. A smile lights up his whole face and I realize that this is the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with.
"Come in. What’s taking you so long?" he yells and waves to me.
I slowly put one foot in front of the other. The water is not cold, far from it, but it's a little chilled and I always take a long time and torture myself when entering any cool body of water. As my legs slowly go numb, and it spreads up to my waist, I force myself to put my shoulders under and let out a little yelp as I do.
"Ah, that feels good.” I smile. Dylan pulls me into his arms and gives me a kiss. Our mouths touch and when he pulls away, I pull closer and kiss him back.
"I missed you," he says.
"Me, too."
He tugs at the top of my swimsuit and with one pull of the string the top part of the one-piece falls down.
"What are you doing?" I laugh, loving the feeling of the freedom of my naked body against the water. I look around to make sure that no one is around. It's Thursday, midday, and we seem to be the only ones here.
Still, I try to pull my top up to tie it again, and he pulls me close and feels all around and flips me around and kisses me again. The bottom of my hair has fallen into the water, even though I hadn't planned on getting it wet, but I like it that way. It feels good on my neck and body. Then I turn around, but when he reaches over to tug at my bathing suit again, I push and splash him, a wave of water washes over him and he just cracks up laughing.
"Don't start a war you can't finish."
A tsunami hits me in my face, drenching every strand of my hair. I give up trying to stay dry, wipe my eyes, and then lie down on my back and float peacefully, looking at the bright blue sky with a few little puffs of clouds out in the distance. As I float under the pine trees, I listen to the songs of birds, chirping away, one trying to outdo the other, and I realize that there's no more perfect place to be than right here, right now.
Of course, Dylan splashes me again, breaking the reverie and I can't let him get away with it. I tackle him, push him under the water, and he does the same to me. We come up for air laughing. Our bodies are wrapped around one another, feeling like teenagers, as opposed to thirty-somethings.
"I've always wanted to go to camp," I say as we struggle for breath and call a temporary truce.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes. Someplace like this, you know, away."
"Your dad never signed you up?” Dylan asks.
"No, I don't even know if it occurred to him. By the time I got to high school, I was too cool for something like this, but secretly I always wanted to go to sleep away camp, stay in a cabin with like, four girlfriends. We would talk about boys, do arts and crafts, and be kids."
“Yes, it was great."
"Don't tell me you did that."
"Yes. Three summers in a row starting sixth grade, and then I was a camp counselor."
"Oh my God. How was it?” I ask.
"As amazing as they show in movies, minus the drama. I mean, there was a little bit of drama, who liked who, trying to hook up with the girls and trying not to step on your friends' toes if they liked them and you liked them, too, but other than that, it was just awesome. My parents were having a bit of trouble then, arguing a lot, talking about divorce. It was nice to have this place to go to, and when I got to be the camp counselor it was just ultimate freedom. I was the one who was in charge, making the rules, helping the younger kids, and I always thought it would be fun to open a camp when I got older to capture that mood and create those memories for other kids."
"Wow. I had no idea about this, about you, Dylan."
"Well, we've been dating for a little bit, but you don't know everything."
"Still, I'm really surprised.”
"When you have good experiences, you want to give back, you want to create that for someone else."
"Is that something you seriously considered?"
He nods a little bit. "Yes, I never had the startup money. It's expensive, insurance, the place, especially California in particular. It's just a lot to rent the space, and I was, what, detective? In San Francisco I could barely pay the rent, and then a firefighter, worse hours, better conditions until you get burned alive that is, but still no money to really do something like this."
“Yeah, I get it," I say.
"You want to drive around? Want to see if there's a camp like that here? Maybe look it up online?”
"They don't actually let you join as an adult. You know that, right?" he jokes, tilting his head.
I push him under the water again. I wait for him to come up and he doesn't. I wait a few more beats and then something grabs onto my ankles and pulls me down. I let out a scream, right before my mouth is muffled by the water.
When he lets go, I start to laugh, and that's when I actually choke.
"Okay, a few deep breaths," he keeps saying as I continue to cough. "Sorry, I didn't realize I was going to actually drown you."
"You didn't, you didn't," I say when I’m finally able to catch my breath. "Just kind of went into the wrong pipe."
"Who knows, maybe it's something that we'll be able to do with our kids," he says, after a long pause. "Even if I don't start a camp, we should definitely send them to one."
"Our kids?"
He nods. "Yes. You want to have kids, right?"
I bite my lower lip. My answer to that question was always no, but, with him posing it, it suddenly becomes a maybe.
"You'd be a great mom. I know that you think that you wouldn't. You didn't have an example and your dad wasn't really that involved, but you would be, I know it. You're fun, you're easygoing. You don't worry about things that don't matter. What more could a kid want?"
He leaves that thought hanging in the air as he pushes me under again. I take a big gulp of water and spit it at him. When I come up for air, we both laugh and the birds above our heads chirp and the sun continues to shine.
For a little while there, everything is as happy as it could be.
Chapter 2
While Dylan and I sit around on the porch eating the s’mores that we made in the small fire pit, I tell him how I used to feel about summers.
It felt like I would wait for them forever, but they would be gone in an instant. I just count down the days backward until finally, it was summertime.
I would want to seize the days, but after a week of being lazy, you kind of fall into this trap of doing nothing.
I spent most summers in a public pool. The days that it rained, I felt like I got cheated because that was one less day of pool time that I could’ve enjoyed.
“Yes, I spent a lot of time in camps and at a lake just like this one, but in Northern California,” Dylan says. “Big sequoias. Fun times. I made some good friends. Most of them work in the tech industry now, making a lot more money than I do.”
"Do you ever regret going into police work?"
"Yes, all the time. So, I don't do it anymore."
"I know about your partner, but what about everything else?"
"I don't love it, Charlotte. I mean, I know you enjoy your job, I know you don't complain about it, but I never felt that way. I went into it because my brother was missing and I thought it was something that I could do to help, if only I knew more about the process. Well, I realized that the investigators were telling me the truth and until more evidence comes in, I’ll never know what happened to him."
He brings up his missing brother in the casual kind of way that he has in the past, but I know that it gives him a lot of pain.
Dylan’s brother disappeared as an adult and those are the hardest people to find, mostly because investigators and law enforcement agencies feel in some cases that adults can go missing if they want to, and this is correct in some ways.
They don't have to reply to their parents or their siblings requests to be in touch.
They don't have to tell them what's going on.
They don't need updates.
It's their right to disappear.
That's a very different case from what happened to Kelsey, my friend, who went missing when she was thirteen years old.
I've told Dylan about it, the case, and he occasionally brings it up.
"You still in touch with her?"
"Yes, we’ve been texting back and forth. It's kind of fun having this friend from the past."
"That's good to hear," he says. "You have any idea why the DNA doesn't match?"
"No.” I shake my head. "No clue. I need to get her parents’ DNA but, of course, the police up there aren’t willing to share it. I reached out to them, told them about the predicament, and they think that if the DNA doesn't match, then it's not her."
"You believe that it is?"
"I know it is. I saw her in the flesh. She's Kelsey Hall. I mean, she looks a little different, but it's her."
"What about the memories? She doesn't have that many, right?"
"Yes, that's true, but she remembers me and a lot of details from that night. We talked about it."
"What are your plans?"
"Next time I can squeeze some time off, I'm going to go up to Seattle where her parents live, meet up with them, talk to them, ask them for their DNA to see if maybe we can match it up.”
“And what if they say no?”
“If they say no, that's a bigger problem.” I shrug.
I reach into the bag of marshmallows and pop one into my mouth without bothering to melt it.
Dylan looks at me like I'm a barbarian.
He's the kind of person who takes his time roasting it, slowly turning it and making sure that it doesn't get burned and it's equally toasted on all sides. Me, I'll torch it, bite into it, wait for the gooey part in the middle to come out, and chew through the cold bits on the outside.
If there were a metaphor for our different personalities, our approach to marshmallow-toasting would be it.
I take a Hershey square and pop that in my mouth.
"You know it tastes better if it's all together, right? You know that, right?"
"Yes, but it tastes pretty good as individual ingredients as well."
"Yes, but the whole point of toasting marshmallows and making s'mores is the experience."
"Well, you were doing your part and taking forever, and I didn't want to wait."
I point to the small tabletop, marshmallow fire pit that we're sharing.
Since California is in a perpetual drought, there’re no big fire pits allowed anywhere near the forest, so this is the best we can do.
"What do you think about a little skinny-dipping?"
"What?”
The lake is all ours, and the moon's about to come out.
"Come on, it'll be fun."
"You mean, no bathing suit?"
"No."
He shakes his head and grabs my hand.
He puts the metal cap on top of the fire pit, and I let him drag me down to the lake.
There's a little breeze coming off the water.
It tosses my hair from side to side, and I take off my flip-flops and step into the water.
Dylan's way ahead of me.
He pulls off his shirt and then unbuckles his shorts.
"You're really going to go skinny-dipping?"
"Yes. Do you see anyone out here?"
"What about all of those houses with the lights on? They could see you."
"Not really. We have no lights on and there’re no lights on around here. The only ones who will see us are the fish. Come on, take off your clothes."
He walks back out and when I hesitate, he pulls off my tank top.
I'm not wearing a bra and he exposes me to the breeze, pulling down my shorts.
He grabs my hand again and pulls me into the water.
It feels cool as I descend under, my hair floating briefly on top before sinking down.
Dylan walks over and kisses me, cradling my head in his hands.
"I love you," he whispers. "I love you more than --"
He hesitates. For a second, I wonder if he's thinking about saying ‘more than I've loved anyone’ and then not wanting to tell a lie.
He frowns slightly.
Dylan was married for a while, many years ago, and his wife tragically died in a car accident.
We haven't talked about her much, just a little, and I'm the first serious relationship that he's been in since.
"I love you to the moon. I love you more than anything, and I want you to know that you complete me," he whispers.
He kisses me again.
"What does that mean? To you, I mean?" I ask, pulling away. "I'm not trying to be smart or clever but I’m just seriously asking you the question.”
“Until we met, I didn't realize how lost I was, how confused my life was. It feels like it makes sense with you in it, and I just want you to know that because I'm planning to be in your life for a long time."
I kiss him back.
"Look, you complete me, too," I whisper. "And I love you."
We lose ourselves in our bodies, in the water around us.
He feels me everywhere and our hands and legs intertwine with one another.
We kiss underwater and we kiss above the water under the moonlight, and the world has never made more sense than it does at this very moment.
Then we drag ourselves to the shore and into bed.
We make love on the sheets, not caring that they're getting drenched with our wet bodies.
I sleep a long time, well into the morning, and the thing that wakes me is the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen and the aroma of eggs cooking on a skillet.
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