“I’m alive, Mom is alive,” he said. She couldn’t control the way her heart started racing. “How selfish—how oblivious are you? You don’t even care about us.”

  And she shattered. “It’s not about you!” Cassie shouted.

  Eyes wide, Bolt darted back, physically recoiling because Cassie had never, not once in all his life, shouted at him.

  She had been a loud child, had screamed at Mom, thrown tantrums when she had nightmares, but not with Bolt. Even at ten, when she had first seen the little pink-as-ham face wrapped in one of her old baby blankets, she had recognized it was Bolt’s turn to be the one with tantrums, his turn to be the one with feelings bigger than his whole body, and she had never begrudged him for it. Until now.

  “You couldn’t even stay with me for a couple of months,” she said, harsher than she’d ever been, and Bolt’s face turned stricken. “I’m not stupid. I’m not oblivious. I know the reason you’re staying down the hill instead of having the double-wide to yourself. You didn’t want to be stuck with me. You look down on me. You love me, but you don’t understand me. You don’t even try.”

  “You’re right,” Bolt snapped. “I’ll never understand you. You don’t even like it here—you hate the lake—so what do you care if it gets developed?” His eyes were welling up now, but she didn’t think he would cry. He would fight. “Why are you protecting it?”

  But Cassie had never been good at explaining things. Like how Grandad had despised the residents but loved the water, loved the trees and the land as a part of him. Bolt should have known already how Grandad’s mother died before Grandad turned six, the last one who remembered their homeland. That time had washed the memory of the old country out of his bones—even their old family name was discarded for a more American one—and Prosper had been his new homeland and history. Bolt didn’t know yet how complex an instrument the human heart was, the many ways it could love and resent and despise and cherish all in perfect symphony. So how was Cassie meant to explain it to him? All he heard—all he cared to hear—was that Grandad had left a wild, prodigious inheritance in the care of his favorite grandchild and nothing but old war medals and a pocketknife for Bolt.

  But Cassie was so tired of fighting to be understood, of explaining herself. And Bolt was like Mom: happy to fight forever.

  “I don’t want to sell to Mr. Daley, Bolt,” Cassie said finally. “The thought makes me feel—I can’t—” She shook herself. “But tell me what you’d like me to do.”

  Bolt’s face had turned to stone. He pushed past her and off the porch without a word and rushed down the hill into the dying light. It left Cassie winded. She retreated across the lawn, trudging toward the RV. The sun was falling quickly now, and shock was blooming into shame before she even unlocked the door and slumped inside.

  Flowers coiled in the windows again, and the RV reeked of vanilla and rosemary from the candle wax cooling on the counter. And there, planted in her rumpled bedclothes like a headstone in loose earth, the chest waited.

  * * *

  That evening, the sunset turned garnet depths to onyx, flat as a countertop. The water still caught the moon, which gazed wide-eyed up at itself from the dark ripples. Sitting on the back deck of the Big Dipper, Lark stared at it through the oculus of a telescope from the box she’d labeled with a large number sixteen. Even with all the things determined to distract her in Prosper—Dad’s terrifying warning, her worried family over at the Grand Destiny, the red lake, June—Lark was still doing what she’d come here to do.

  June. Lark pulled out her phone and snapped a quick picture of a telescope bravely inspecting the shallows at the end of her slip. She captioned it, water may be a little more brown now? and hit send.

  Many of these telescopes showed her the same old world, with varying degrees of magnification, warped only by yellowed lenses and wavy, convex glass. No elaboration, no explanation. But what was she expecting? Lark sighed, tucking another spyglass back into the box in its protective tissue. The breeze ricocheting off the fading red of the lake had a mineral smell. She shut her eyes, breathing in. It still stung her nose.

  Lark’s phone dinged with June’s response. Let’s go out tomorrow. She stared at it, the metronome of her heart speeding. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

  Aunt Valerie had come by that morning to check on her. She brought along enough food to cater a party. “You should come stay at the Destiny for a little while,” she suggested as she deep cleaned the Big Dipper kitchen. “Lord knows we have the room with the tourists run off.” Apparently Jeff Daley’s plans to remarket the red water as a major summer destination hadn’t quite come together yet, and most people were pretty put off.

  “Really?” It touched her, for her family to want her at the motel.

  Aunt Valerie’s shoulders were tense; her head hung as they worked on the countertops. “I let Stu down. I waited way too long to come over here. What I saw once I did…” Aunt Valerie was very still for a moment, hands braced on the stove. Lark might have heard one impatient sniff. Finally, Aunt Valerie leaned back against the stove top to study Lark. Her aunt’s eyes watered. “This place got to your daddy. I don’t want it to get to you too.”

  Lark swiftly gave her prickly aunt a quick squeeze. It was like hugging an eagle: Aunt Valerie was bony, all talons and hard work.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Lark reassured her, though she felt something like panic when Aunt Valerie suggested she leave. Her aunt was definitely right—living on this ecological war zone couldn’t be healthy. At its most concentrated, the color had been gruesome. Even with the floral curtains pulled shut, sleeping on the bloodred lake in the houseboat disturbed Lark’s dreams, destabilizing her sea legs. There was the constant threat that the hull of the boat might dissolve and cast her into the slurry. “Honestly, I’m afraid if I leave, I won’t be able to finish this.”

  They’d gone back and forth a few more times, and Aunt Valerie had stayed most of the morning. Now the kitchen was spotless, and Lark was on her own again.

  There was a gentle splash somewhere close, a turtle breaching the surface. Lark laid the phone down and pulled the next telescope free. She hesitated with it in her hands. Dad’s call had been a warning not to do this; he wanted her to stop. But how could she, really? It still felt important. Time was running out. The telescope seemed to hum, warm temptation, an invitation only for her. Sighing, a soft surrender, Lark pushed it immediately against her eye to search for the source of the sound.

  Nothing at first, only the dim, fuzzy darkness of magnified space. She scanned the water near the deck’s edge for a disappearing turtle shell, saw nothing, and scooted closer. The seat of her jeans was damp with the mist collected in the rough deck carpet.

  Straight down, from far, far below her, there was a dull glint of gold. Lark lowered the lens, and instantly the hard wall of dark water obscured it again. The telescope thinned the lake’s veil, revealing something lost beneath it, under at least forty feet of water and ten years of sediment. She recognized it, of course. It had been hers.

  The golden houseboat with a tiny pearl on the prow had been a gift on her thirteenth birthday. Her first real piece of jewelry, Daddy had said. He’d been proud of it, a tiny Big Dipper, the soft surface of the gold pressed with every detail of the canvases, the windows, the painted stripes. The pearl, he claimed, had been spit from the mouth of the catfish in the Mosquito Bite. Full of magic. Except the latch on the chain inexplicably failed one afternoon a few months later, as Lark sat reading at the lake’s edge. Down the golden houseboat sank, fluttering on invisible currents, a descent much faster than Titanic’s. Lark had spent the rest of the summer diving, diving, searching for the magical gift, while her father shook his head regretfully at the loss. Now she could see it down there, winking at her, its chain flowing around it like shimmering, untethered rope. Just another lost thing in the deep.

  Lark’s fingertips paused inches above the surface of the water, far above the lost necklace. It called to her in a low, coaxing voice from below. But she somehow knew, if she dove, if her head went below the water’s surface, even for a moment, she’d never come up again.

  Quickly, she took up her phone instead, June’s text still waiting for her there. Okay sure, she tapped, her hands still shaking. Where?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Mosquito Bite’s barstools sagged, half-stuffed, compressed from the many rear ends they’d borne over the years. Lark wheeled in slow motion on hers, just two rotations, to take the place in—she spun, and there went Bud, pouring Jäger for an expectant tourist; the old jukebox, its neon arches flickering as one of those old fishermen prodded through hits; the mummified catfish, who supposedly spat up pearls. It was Saturday, the water was much less red, and the place was heating up. The bar was small, and soon there wouldn’t be an inch to breathe in. A band was just setting up on the low stage, a ragtag skiffle group with a washboard player and a big upright bass.

  It had still taken everything in her to drag herself out of that boat, escape the dream state that hung over the twilit lake. But as soon as Lark had gotten away, hauled herself into her Explorer, the night had bloomed with promise. The air itched like new clothes, slightly too tight, unbroken around her. Soon June would appear in the doorway, scanning over heads, and Lark would be the one she was searching for. The back of her neck tingled.

  “Y’all got any Wiseacre?” Lark called, catching Bud as he scuttled by.

  Bud grinned his stubbly grin. He was missing a tooth or two, but he’d never relinquished his roguish charm, polished and smooth from years behind that old bar. “People get real loyal to those Memphis beers, don’t they?” He ducked for a frosty mug, then turned to pour from one of the taps.

  Another glance at the door. Lark bent over her phone to check the time and found a rare text from Mitch waiting for her. He wrote messages like he hadn’t participated in very much online communication since his AOL instant messenger days. Saw ur friend Trayce in grocery little bit ago. Said hey and ppl r havin a bonfire 2night.

  Lark had a sip of her IPA, snickering over the message. Thnx cuz snds kewl g2g ttyl, she typed back. She hadn’t been out to the bonfire pit in a long time. Trayce had been one of her weekender gang. Last Lark had heard, he was in law school down in Dallas. Probably just here for a quick visit.

  The legs of the stool beside her creaked against the floor, and a cloud of flower scent filled the air—not perfume, with its perfectly crafted chemistry, but new blossoms too fresh to be bottled. “Hey, sailor. Hope you weren’t waiting long.” June had joined her, hair loose and effortless, wearing dark red lipstick, bold and peppery.

  Lark’s heart kicked into warp drive. She patted the barstool she’d been staunchly defending. “How’s it going? You seem…”

  June radiated pure energy, a rocket leaking fuel. “I’ve been gardening actually. Just a little. There’s this graveyard out behind the church—not important.” June’s beer arrived, and she took it before tilting it Lark’s way. “Cheers.” The glasses clinked pleasantly when they met, Lark’s already half defrosted.

  “Every time I don’t see you for a few days, I figure you skipped town,” Lark admitted, their knees brushing. “On to the next adventure. But now you’re gardening? I’m impressed, city girl.”

  June glanced away with a shrug, the corner of her mouth turned up. She bumped their ankles together.

  “Hey,” Lark said, nudging her ankle right back. “I heard there’s gonna to be a bonfire out in the woods tonight.”

  “A bonfire?” June perked up, a dangerous light sparking in her eye, the kind that drew moths to ecstatic deaths. “Here I thought we were the only two youngsters out here. Can we go?”

  Lark snickered, tugged into the deadly flicker. “Bud?” She rapped her knuckles on the bar, catching his attention by a miracle. Everyone else was absorbed in the band’s wild hoopla. “Can I get a couple of shots of the special?”

  The “special” turned out to be some nefarious moonshine brew that had Lark doubled over with laughter, her head whirling. They closed their tabs, leaving Bud a good tip—June, introducing herself as a former bartender, insisted loudly and proudly. And then they were tripping their way down the worn path to the usual place.

  June took her hand, spinning them until they nearly got lost in the trees. “That stuff is poison.” June tugged Lark on as if she knew the way. “City bars water down their drinks.”

  “Right?” Lark could already smell the crackle of dry brush. The orange glow of the blaze reflected on nearby trunks. Music drifted out to meet them on the breeze. “Just hope these people don’t ask me about Dad or anything.”

  “Ask about his telescopes? Why not? My dad collects Persian cats. That’s way more out there.” June braided their fingers into a loose hold.

  “Not that.” Lark snorted, squeezing her hand so hard, she probably cut off the circulation. “About how he…” But June didn’t know about any of that. Even now, Lark hadn’t said a word. She might have never said the words aloud to anyone. Pine needles tickled her skin.

  “Go on,” June said, nudging their shoulders together. Her eyes were kind and open, campfire warm. They staggered to a halt under the low boughs. Cicadas hammered the air around them.

  There was no humor now. Why had she ever said a word? But she’d held her breath for months and said nothing. She planted her feet, kept them there in the pause. June’s warmth was thawing her out, and Lark, suddenly, impetuously, wanted to speak. “Can I really tell you?” she asked. “It might be too much.”

  “I like ‘too much,’” June said.

  Lark took a breath. It was a big risk. She thought of them scaling that boat out in the junkyard, rung by rung, then perching aloft beneath the constellations together. That fearlessness. That piercing sting of joy.

  She plunged.

  “My dad broke down out here on the lake,” she murmured. Even now, Daddy’s face swam before her eyes. She could hear the echo of his panic over the phone a few days ago. “It was a few months ago. He was on sabbatical, alone on the boat, just him and the collection…”

  Lark forged ahead, speaking low and fast. “When he looked through the telescopes, he started to see…more. Not just magnified but hidden things. Secrets.” Lark stared so hard at June, it was almost a glare. “And I see them too. When I look through his spyglasses, I see the world differently. And at first I thought it was just us being, like, sick or something. But I don’t believe that anymore. I believe Daddy.”

  June didn’t look skeptical, only serious. “What do you see?”

  “It’s hard to explain… Memories?” That wasn’t quite it. She charged on. “You know when you’re listening to an old record and it’s warped or scratched, and the needle will skip? And—this sounds so stupid.”

  “No.” June’s voice was steady. “Go on.”

  “It’s like this place is the battered record, playing the same old song,” Lark forced out. “And the telescopes…with the telescopes, I can see the skips. The left-out bits.”

  “And the left-out bits aren’t gone,” June murmured. “Just passed over.”

  Lark nodded. “With my dad…” Her throat tightened, and her voice betrayed her raw, nervy tears. “I guess they showed him too much. The telescopes. There are bad things to see out here.” She searched June’s face there in the darkness. “He went too far and just couldn’t stop. I think—” Hospital bed. Fluorescent light. Weathered hands worrying sheets. Lark’s voice didn’t make it past a whisper. “Because he hurt his eyes. On purpose. I think by then it was the only way to escape.”

  June shivered, pulling them to a stop. Cloaked by trees, she watched Lark and waited.

  Lark hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen him for another week, until he was safe and sound in the hospital, his face carefully bandaged. But the telescopes had all seen it. And Aunt Valerie had found him. She’d seen the blood that flaked off the wall in the hallway, that was still dried in the corner of one frame, the picture where Lark peeked over the back of the houseboat from the water, pink goggles strapped on her forehead.

  Lark took an unsteady step backward, her back scraping tree bark. “But he was right, damn it,” she snapped. “He didn’t make it up. Something real is going on.”

  “Hey. Come here.” But it was June who moved, wrapping her arms around Lark, guiding her head to rest against her neck. “And you’re here alone, taking care of it so your mom doesn’t have to,” June read in her silence, in her unsteady breath. “I believe you, sweetheart.”

  Lark hid there against her skin, shivering from somewhere deep within. “It’s like a glue trap down there. It caught Dad. It—”

  “Yo! Is there somebody hiding over there in the woods?” called somebody brandishing a Solo cup. “What’s up, y’all?” Scattered laughter. There were probably a dozen or so people out there. When Lark and June didn’t respond, no second call came.

  “We can ignore them.” June retreated just enough for the bonfire light to catch in her hair and glow on her collarbone. “We can get another drink. Dance. Leave. Catch a bus. Whatever you want.”

  Someone was playing a guitar now, quietly strumming beside the bonfire, but it soothed her. Lark thought again of the boat waiting for her, ready to swallow her whole. “No,” she said, steadying herself. She smiled feebly. “Let’s just hang out for a little while. Being with you…helps.”

  June watched her, and whatever conclusions she came to seemed to settle somewhere deep inside her bones, making vital changes so that when she curled her hand against the back of Lark’s neck, it was more like a beloved habit than the first time. “Then let me help.”

  Many bonfires had burned in the usual place, for a long time before Lark had started hanging around out there as a teenager. Aunt Valerie and Daddy had definitely come out here when they were young, and Lark could almost see their spectral selves in that clearing among the crowd of locals and weekenders mingling in the fire’s glow. Aunt Valerie would be eternally gathering brush, eyes never leaving Diego, quietly lounging with the older kids. Daddy would’ve stood where the part between treetops was widest, eager to tell any newfound and short-lived friend about the planet Jupiter. It burned above her now with a stubborn brightness, a beauty mark next to the broad white face of the moon.