“Huh?” Sammy used the key she’d found to scratch a new constellation into the bottom of the houseboat. “Yeah. But it probably just swam away or got lost. It’ll turn up in a few days.”

  “Weird.”

  “Alligator gar can get up to ninety pounds. They break fishing rods.”

  Sammy chatted on, and Bolt stared at the rusted-out star patterns above, brooding. “Hey. Rig ever pull a knife on you?” Bolt murmured at last.

  “A knife? No.” Sammy was intense when she listened. She didn’t seem to blink very much. A lot like Mom. “He doesn’t like me as much as he likes you.”

  “Still.” Bolt’s nerves pricked at the memory of the blade’s sting. “You probably shouldn’t be alone with him.” There was something about Sammy that really brought the bully out in Rig.

  Sammy smashed the butt of the reefer into their canopy. “Sounds like you need to follow your own advice.”

  “Maybe.” Bolt army crawled out between the timber supports and stood on the edge of the water, black and oily. The boats sighed, knocking softly against each other. “He’s been strange lately. Everyone has. I wish I hadn’t come this summer.” He kicked a stone into the water.

  And something pale and round glistened under the lake weed.

  Bolt froze, heat flashing over his skin, then, just as fast, chilled air.

  Footsteps joined him at the edge. “What now?”

  The thing in the water was bloated like a marshmallow, visible because of the full moon only, catching the light. Moonlight swelled in an unmoving milky eye.

  “What—is that?” Sammy leaned in too, picking up a stick to give it a prod. “Oh my God—”

  And Bolt stared. From below the surface of the water, half obscured under the dock, a dead man stared back.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mitch slipped fresh loaves onto the bread shelf in the market. Their neat rows, the scent of recently baked wheat and rye, was comforting. He sipped his coffee, flipping an inventory page on his clipboard. With the water shifting from shades of red clay to more natural greens and blues, business was in a modest uptick. Monday mornings were quiet at the resort, the restaurant closed, the market restocking. A perfect opportunity to reorient for a new week. Mitch hefted the box of new baked goods he had spent the early hours gathering from his regular circuit of local grandmas. Betty Martin’s blueberry muffins had been so warm when she packed them up for him that they’d broken a sweat in their individual plastic wraps. Mitch liberated one, half of it disappearing in one enormous bite. A figure darted through the market from the motel, moving quickly for the door.

  “Morning, Bolt,” Mitch called, waving. “Hungry? I—”

  But before he had an opportunity to offer anything, Bolt was gone.

  Strange.

  Mitch went back to work. He was peaceably fitting ground beef and pork chops into the market’s refrigerators when the bell chimed again. He turned to find Cassie standing in the doorway.

  She was flushed with late-June heat, rosy under her freckles. Her braid was bunchy on one side, and one of the buttons on her linen shirt had been fastened wrong, but the fabric looked soft from across the counter. “Mitch,” she said, resting a familiar steadying hand on the counter. No one said his name like she did; no one else could gentle all those hard letters the way she could. “Is Bolt here?”

  He hadn’t seen her since that night, since she’d appeared at his house after midnight, when those jackals destroyed her hives. In the moments he’d lain in bed since then, he’d closed his eyes and felt the force of her face, its warmth, the hard insistence of her forehead against his cheek. “No,” he managed, stuffing a package of 80 percent lean ground chuck onto a chilled shelf. “I saw him a few minutes ago, but he didn’t say a word to me.” He hesitated a moment. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better.” She tapped her fingers on the counter. “Where could he be?” They wore anxiety similarly, Cassie and Bolt. It stirred their thoughts, made their jaws tight, and blinded them to the rest of the world. It sat like a layer of grease over everything else.

  Mitch raised his shoulders, helpless. “Restaurant’s closed Mondays, so I bet he’s down at the marina.” That was the brilliance of Bolt’s summer plans—there was no one person who was explicitly responsible for knowing where he was, what he was doing. The privilege of being generally well-behaved. But at seventeen, that kind of free range came with risks.

  Cassie nodded, staring at the whorls in the countertop. “He found out about the land and Daley’s offer. And now he’s mad. And I don’t know how to fix it.”

  Mitch rested a hand on her back. “He was going to find out about the land eventually, Cass. That’s a lot for a kid to take in.” Her braid tickled his thumb. “He has to learn what it means.”

  She leaned against him. “I don’t think he cares. And I can’t blame him for it. For wanting to escape. When I was young—” She pressed her lips together. “I’m tired of fighting him and this place.”

  “He cares,” Mitch said gently. “He cares about you. It’ll work out.” He racked his brain for something more to say, to breach the subject of that night. The way she’d looked up at him—but it wasn’t an easy thing to capture in words.

  “Hey.” He loped to one of the boxes waiting to be unpacked and rifled through it. Out came the little package, all wrapped in parchment paper. It had to be ordered special, and he never bought enough to sell. He took it to her. “Remember? None better.” The goat cheese came from a couple of counties over, soft and creamy, massaged with home-grown herbs. Cassie enjoyed so few luxuries imported from outside their little plot that each was special.

  Cassie took it, folded her hands around it. “Thank you,” she said, and this time, when she looked at him, she looked a little less troubled. Her eyes were brimming, full of silent thoughts he couldn’t interpret. “You remember what I like.”

  She was so burdened, always had been, by things she couldn’t seem to share. Even as a little girl, she’d looked out at the world with those huge serious eyes. When Mitch used to browse in Mr. Fairchild’s rusty toy shelves, her rare smiles were always the best treasure to be found. They were like a silver shimmer beneath tarnish—the light had to be just right to catch it.

  “We could cook something together,” he suggested, as casually as he could. “On the Fourth of July. Maybe…watch those fireworks they keep talking about.”

  Cassie gazed at him, and then he saw it, the beginnings of a silver-shimmer smile. “All right.”

  The door opened again, letting in a blast of hot air.

  “Good morning, good morning!” blustered the man in the doorway. It took Mitch a moment or two to recognize him as Jeff Daley. He was in desperate need of a shave, and the collar of his polo shirt was half flipped over itself against his neck. In the quiet morning, his voice rang loud.

  “Morning,” Mitch replied, dragging his gaze away from Cassie’s. He sounded impatient to himself. “You’re sure out early.”

  Daley stared at his wrist, where, normally, a Rolex nestled. “Early riser,” he put in, a jovial smile setting like Jell-O in a mold.

  Mitch sniffed, almost wincing. There was a rank smell heavy in the air around them. Even worse, maybe, a palpable tension, as if every muscle in Daley’s body were pulled taut.

  “Mr. Daley, have you seen Bolt at the marina?” Cassie asked, leaning an elbow on the counter, closer to Mitch. “I was hoping to catch him this morning.”

  He glanced at her, just a quick flash. “My ex-wife is coming down this evening. Been planning it for a month. I’m making dinner. And I—did the strangest thing.” He laughed a bit. “I like to age my own steaks, you know. That’s just a little thing I like to do. I enjoy it, you know.”

  Mitch raised an eyebrow, catching Cassie’s eye.

  Daley went on. “But this time. This time…” He dug around in a back pocket and withdrew a large graying mass. It looked like an organ, something pulled out during a delayed autopsy, until he flopped it onto the counter. Cassie heaved and pressed a hand to her mouth, pushing back a step in revulsion. The rib eye was mottled, the meat stinking and slick, covered with mold and maggots. “I left them too long,” he murmured, the undercurrent of cheer not totally eclipsed at the sight of it. “Would you just look at that.” His voice had shifted, a low growl now beneath it.

  There was a long pause. Mitch searched for something to say. The audacity of tossing rotting meat on his freshly buffed countertop was stunning. But Daley’s expression, that unhooked stare, made it difficult to know how to respond. “So, uh, you’re looking to buy some replacements?” Mitch gestured at the meat shelf. “I just got in some choice cuts from the butcher on the highway. Really…nice.”

  Daley nodded distantly, steak already forgotten, because his eyes were now clamped on Cassie.

  They all stood there for a moment in silence.

  “Have you changed your mind yet, Miss Cassie?” Daley barked out suddenly. “We could make Prosper a good, good place. Otherwise we’re all going under.”

  “No,” Cassie said, nothing but hard refusal in her voice. Her face was very white. “I won’t change my mind.”

  “All of us. Right under.” Daley’s hand seized up and out, like he wanted to grab her. But he stopped. He blinked too deliberately. He blinked again. Mitch watched the flutter of his fingertips, dreading how they might, in an instant, wrap around Cassie’s throat. Was he drunk? Was there some essential medication he’d forgotten to take? His other hand rested on the fetid meat. Slumping, slack-shouldered, so all his force was in that resting arm, he ground the steak into the counter. It squelched with roadkill wetness. “It’ll all. Be. Because of you.”

  “Go home, Jeff,” Mitch said.

  Jeff Daley opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever words he seemed to want to say, they didn’t make it out. But his eyes never left Cassie’s face.

  Mitch crossed his arms, taking a single step in. He had a full four inches of height on Daley and thirty or more pounds. “Just go on home.”

  Finally, the rotten meat forgotten where it lay, Jeff Daley went out the way he’d come.

  * * *

  “Blueberry,” Lark bellowed into the Grand Destiny kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen window, Aunt Valerie shot her a stern look. After drying her hands, Aunt Valerie marched into the restaurant.

  “Child. You cannot eat three pieces of pie,” she huffed. “Where are you putting it?”

  Lark thunked her head on the counter.

  Aunt Valerie surrendered and stomped over to the case and then dragged a slice of blueberry pie out. It was comforting to be here at the Destiny, with the familiar hum of the freezers, the faded maps of the lake lining the wood-paneled walls. Somewhere, the industrial dishwasher chugged. It was a dead shift at the restaurant, a Monday night just before closing. Diego had dropped in during pie number two to deliver an industrial bag of flour, sugar, cornstarch, and the last of the summer figs sold from the fruit stand by the highway, which the same feather-haired old woman had been running since Lark was a toddler. He’d looked from Lark to her pie and given her shoulder a sturdy pat on his way back out the door.

  Aunt Valerie clunked the pie on the counter in front of Lark. “You want ice cream on it?”

  Lark nodded without lifting her head.

  “There now.” Aunt Valerie cleared her throat. “I’ll just go heat this up for you.”

  This place had always been a part of her life. Lark remembered being lifted into a high chair, her legs kicking, her wormy fingers catching carrot sticks. Aunt Valerie had made special pies for her birthdays, and packed fried chicken into to-go boxes for her, and changed the channel on the TV in the lobby so she could watch the Disney Channel with Mitch while Dad and Diego caught up. This was a safe place for her, now much safer than the Big Dipper. The whole day prior, she’d nursed a hangover on the houseboat, packing the telescopes wedged into corners of the cuddy, her head pounding, her heart broken. The walls around her seemed to swell and sag, bending in, the pressure of the water too much for them. She half expected the hull to buckle in and trap her.

  Chocolate cream and then Dutch apple hadn’t quite solved the weight of June’s words, her heady invitation and its sharp withdrawal. God, Lark had been this close. Maybe June had offered, if carelessly, Lark’s last chance at escape. But Lark had said no, and it had opened an incredible chasm between them. And the thought of that distance, a breach June might not bother to leap, filled Lark with a gut-deep misery. June might be gone already.

  “Has Cassie been helping you with the telescopes?” Aunt Valerie called, and Lark heard the microwave whirring behind her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lark replied dully. She had received a rather rushed but exacting appraisal for the latest box of telescopes that morning. Cassie had offered to buy more than half of them for the shop. “Haven’t seen her much, but…don’t know how I’d do any of this without her.”

  “Well.” Aunt Valerie delivered this offer with the pie à la mode. She paused. “Anything else you want to talk about?”

  Lark sat up, arming herself once again with her fork. She nudged the ice cream scoop and wiped at her face. “Pie is better than people,” she said. She sounded hoarse to herself. “People just let you down. They leave. They—get lost in things and pick that over you.” Daddy had looked too deeply at the very least. He hadn’t protected her from this. “And then it’s…just you again.”

  Aunt Valerie sighed and went to pour herself a glass of tea. Her anxiety over Lark’s unhappiness was making the resort anxious; the ceiling fans, clearly trying to be helpful, were whirling so quickly that they swung and bucked.

  Valerie scraped her kitchen stool over and sat opposite Lark with her tea. “People leave,” she agreed heavily, and Lark saw Mitch’s dad in her eyes, in the delicate nest of lines around them. No one knew about absence better than Aunt Valerie and this rickety old motel. This had been a family business, generations, and now they weren’t here. All loved, all temporary. “Lord knows they make mistakes. They slip up. Your daddy…struggled. Maybe he forgot he was loved.” She had a long drink of her tea. “Maybe we let him forget.”

  Lark held an enormous bite in her mouth, her eyes shut. Maybe she could just disappear into the sensations of hot and cold, tart and sweet, crust and berry. She had forgotten him, a little, when she was in Memphis, flitting between the self-centered musical world of the record shop to her apartment, where she and her friends stayed up late, drank, laughed, went out on Beale. Wrapped up in her life, it had been easy to excuse not calling him as much, not pressing him when he sounded distant or lonely. Dad was always dreaming, bubbling over with his own ideas, his private musings that sailed over other people’s heads. She thought his magnificent imagination insulated him, made him safe. She’d misunderstood how vulnerable he really was.

  Aunt Valerie’s voice shook slightly when she continued, “But we go on. We have to.”

  “How?” Lark managed, her voice thick with pastry.

  Valerie had already nearly exhausted her capacity to sit, so she grabbed the cleaner and rag to wipe the counter. “How what?” she asked gruffly. “Going on just happens, honey. It’s happening right now.”

  “Is it?” Even outside it, Lark felt the weight of the houseboat anchoring her. She felt the bonfire’s treacherous heat. “I feel like I’m just stuck in it. All of it.”

  Valerie scrubbed rings and crumbs down the well-worn surface. How many hundreds, thousands, of times had she done it? “It can feel that way.” The dishwasher hummed through yet another cycle of dishes. Surely even Aunt Valerie got caught in a rut sometimes. “But you’re going to be okay.”

  Lark had no answer for her, words concealed behind a chewed lip. She had another bite of pie, mostly ice cream. Here Lark was constantly in the rich gumbo of her own feelings, hard to untangle now that they stewed together in the pot. June…Daddy…all set to simmer.

  “Now where’s Bolt gone to? I think he’s avoiding me.” With her usual helper MIA, Valerie put Lark to work cleaning the tables, lifting the chairs, collecting the ketchup bottles. An evening routine that had lasted decades. When the floor was mopped and the crust prepped for morning, Valerie walked Lark out, roast beef and turnip greens wrapped up for her.

  “You know,” Aunt Valerie said at last, as they stood on the threshold, “you’re not your daddy, honey.” She hit the lights, rustling her keys. “People are always gonna hurt you, let you down. Hell, you’ll let them down. But…keep the door open.”

  * * *

  Bolt woke up sick inside, lake water damp on his sheets again. In his dreams, he saw the dead man’s eyes, their glassy, marbled plea.

  He would forever remember last night in sick jolts. The taste of bile in his mouth. Being so cold that no amount of sun could ever warm him. Hissing at Sammy to “cover it up, throw some leaves over it—” before grabbing her arm and towing her away. They’d run all the way back to the marina, Sammy peeling off there with a darting dragonfly glance at him. Bolt had stumbled into his room to vomit again in the toilet.

  He needed to tell someone, but his immediate urge had been to hide, and he still felt it. He didn’t even know why he couldn’t say a word, except for how wrong it felt. How much it felt like another bad dream. And the choking fear that he might lead someone out there only to discover it had been a trick of the lake. The fear that whatever was getting to Rig, to Mr. Daley, to Grandad, even to Cassie all these years, was finally coming for him too.

  Yesterday, Sunday, he’d missed getting up early to make pies with Val. The thought of her egg-custard pie, as yellow and bright as a full moon, of uncooked dough dotted through with butter—he couldn’t face it. He wished he’d never seen it.

  Bolt had never been brave, not really. Being adventurous or outgoing didn’t count. He was a coward in the ways that counted.

  The sun burned on his shoulders all day, yet inside, some part of him was still just as frozen, just as immobile and cold as the body.