That Lake House Summer by Deb Logan

Author:Deb Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WDM Publishing

Chapter Four

A few days before we were due back at the Rochester Airport for our return flight to Tulsa, Jessie disappeared.

Evan and I had been trying to find some alone time to explore the exciting new connection we seemed to be building, but between Mom and Dad’s refusal to allow me to leave the lake house, and Jessie’s uncanny ability to interrupt, we’d been totally thwarted. So my first thought upon hearing that Mom couldn’t find her was, “Good! Maybe now Evan and I can grab a minute alone!”

Imagine my guilt when she was still missing hours later.

Evan called his dad — unlike me, he had a working cell phone, and a group of men gathered to search the trails near the lake house. Tommy and I donned swim suits and searched the water around and under the dock. Mom scoured the house from top to bottom, even checking the attic and crawl space which none of us had bothered with all summer.

No one found any sign of her. Jessie had simply vanished.

Exhausted by fear and guilt, I dropped into one of the overstuffed chairs in the front room and closed my eyes. As I relaxed, a shiver ran down my spine and a corresponding tremor moved through the floor boards beneath my feet. I froze, remembering my initial unease with this house. But we’d been here nearly a month, and since I’d made my pact with it that first night, I’d been at ease. Had something changed? Had the house broken our agreement and harmed Jessie?

Rage flared, coursing through my veins. If the lake house had hurt Jessie, I’d make sure it was razed and the ground beneath it salted!

As if understanding my unspoken threat, an image formed in my mind. Becca. The little girl I’d been writing stories about for the past month. One of her adventures had communicated itself to me with such intense sorrow, such soul-wrenching sadness, that I hadn’t tried to write it down. I knew I didn’t have the skill with words to convey her emotions, but I’d never forget that dream.

It occurred to me now that my dreams of Becca had begun almost immediately after I’d made my deal with the house. They couldn’t be related, could they? Was Becca somehow tied to this house?

Was the house trying to communicate with me now? Through Becca?

“Do you know where Jessie is?” I asked the little girl in my mind.

She nodded, and once again my heart was flooded with the sad devastation of that unrecorded dream.

I jumped from my comfortable chair and raced for the kitchen, calling for Mom.

“What?” she cried. “Have you found her?”

“Not yet, but I have an idea.” I pointed to a cabinet door hidden below the worktable that sat along the wall the kitchen shared with the front room, the wall that housed the fireplace in that other room. “Did you look in there?”

Mom looked blank. “No. I didn’t even think of it. It’s out of my line of sight.”

I nodded. “But it’s not out of Jessie’s.

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