The Summer We Lost Her Page 29

  Can it be?

  Elise ducked underwater and swam nearer, coming to the surface as quietly as she could, lest she attract the wrong attention. Another flash of blue. Elise made sure to stay behind the dock in case anyone was watching from land. Bits of slimy plant life wrapped around her feet. She dove down, propelled herself underwater, and, with a mighty thrust, reached the end of the dock. She surfaced, worked herself to the corner to see, seated on the long side of the dock, leaning against the hut, the single most beautiful sight possible—a girl with messy blond hair who bounced her bare heels as she peered down into the water.

  Gracie.

  Elise waved frantically to her father, following behind her in the canoe, motioned that he should paddle to a ladder at the end of the dock, just around the corner from Gracie. Anyone could look out and see them. Anyone could try to stop them.

  Elise felt herself hyperventilating as she drew closer, willing with every stroke that no one would approach, that Gracie would stay put, that this would really be true. The stones were sharp beneath her feet as she struck land for a moment. Then the lake’s bottom dipped down again. She moved closer, close enough to see Gracie humming, to see her tiny toes painted in chipped navy, like her own.

  The bow of the canoe drew near the ladder.

  “Gracie. Honey. It’s Mommy.”

  Gracie scrambled to her feet. To Elise’s shock, she did so without crutches.

  Then the girl looked over toward the ladder and saw Elise’s father pulling the canoe alongside the dock. She started to whimper.

  “It’s okay, my big girl. Sweetheart.” Elise found land beneath her feet, but just barely. “That’s your grandpa . . . my dad. You’re safe now. We’re going to take you home.” Elise held open her arms. “I need you to jump. I need you to hold your breath and jump into the water, okay?”

  Gracie sat and scooted to the edge of the planks. “I’m scared.”

  “I know. But you’re going to do it anyway. Fall toward me.”

  “But I’ve never gone underwater.”

  “Hey!” A male voice, yelling from up on the rise. Elise looked toward a row of tiny cabins—it wasn’t Andy. It was a big bruiser of a man in a bathing suit and sweatshirt, coming out of his cabin. He started down the slope toward the beachfront. “What’s going on down there?”

  Warren was climbing onto the ladder.

  “Gracie, right now,” Elise shouted.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “This is the time, sweetness! Lean forward and let yourself fall. You must trust me, okay? Let yourself fall, and then we’re going to hold each other tight, okay?”

  The man was running now. Warren was halfway up the ladder, but an old John Deere salesman was no match for this person’s heft. “Andy!” the man called toward the main building. “Andy!”

  Waves from a faraway speedboat sloshed over Elise’s head and she lost her footing.

  “What if I go under and can’t find my way up?” Gracie said.

  “Baby, I won’t let you out of my sight. You’re going to drop down and we’ll both go under. But I’ll be holding you. I won’t let go. I’ll pull you up. I will not let anything happen to you. Ever. You can do it. I’m strong and you’re my girl.”

  Gracie looked back to see the fishing lodge guest running toward the dock. She tipped her upper body and, gripping the edge hard, locked eyes with Elise. Sucked in a big breath and, as her grandfather slipped back into the canoe and grabbed his paddle, she pushed away from the dock and let herself fall into her mother’s arms.

  The force pushed them both under. Elise grabbed Gracie first around the waist. Her feet hit the sandy bottom and she spun her daughter, took her hands. Through water the color of steeped tea, they saw beautiful suggestions of each other, bubbles escaping grinning mouths. In one heartbeat, Elise kissed Gracie’s face and pulled her daughter close. Gracie’s limbs wrapped around her tight, and with a mighty push, Elise shot them up through the water to burst into the dazzling yellow openness, the possibilities of a perfect summer sky.

  – CHAPTER 40 –

  Matt walked into the cabin to the smell of burned coffee. The machine had turned itself off long enough ago that the coffee had grown cold. He dumped the thick black liquid down the drain, then filled the carafe with warm, soapy water.

  A flash of movement down on the dock caught his eye. Matt went through the back porch and outside, down onto the path. An old man in a hat was bent over something in a canoe. Matt was about to call out, tell the confused tourist he had the wrong dock, when he saw Elise, hair wet and slicked to her head. Elise lifted someone up and turned around. Gracie.

  Elise had their daughter.

  He was already running.

  Grinning so hard her eyes were pulled nearly shut, a dripping wet Gracie tentatively half-walked, half-skipped toward him. He scooped her up and held her tight, spinning her around and around. He caught sight of Elise as he turned. Her face streamed with tears.

  – CHAPTER 41 –

  Elise pressed her face into her daughter’s shampooed hair, arms closed tight around the lithe little body on her lap. She closed her eyes and inhaled. There was a point, she thought to herself, when you no longer tried to contain the swell of your joy. It was simply too big and no longer yours to hoard. It emanated outward, upward. In her case, through the porch roof, the tips of the trees, all the way up to the pinky-gold light in the sky.

  The evening was perfect. The table littered with dishes and wine bottles, a huge pot of spaghetti sauce drying up on the stove. Joni Mitchell playing on the stereo. Matt had made a big fire. Gracie was seated on her mother’s lap and holding on to her father. She was watchful, wary—she hadn’t said much, and the consensus was not to push her. She’d open up when she was ready. There hadn’t been a moment, however, when she wasn’t touching one or both of her parents. Or that one of them wasn’t touching her. Smelling her. Kissing her.

  Seeing Gracie in a dress provided by her abductor was more than Elise and Matt could take. Their daughter was fully bathed and in her own jeans and hooded sweatshirt now, with thick socks. One blessing had been Gracie saying she’d changed her clothes in the Kostick cabin bathroom.

  Conversation was kept deliberately benign.

  Elise had no idea how Cass and River had worked themselves into the reunion, though it was no real surprise. Cass walked around snapping photos and fussing with dishes. River had started a big puzzle on the floor by the fireplace.

  “I picked you up a nice chocolate cake in town, Gracie,” said Cass as she went into the kitchen with dirty plates. “River says every kid on earth loves chocolate cake. Do you think that’s true?”

  Gracie pulled her mother’s arm tighter across her body, like a seat belt.

  “I always liked onion cake when I was a boy.” Warren winked at her. “I could make you one tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Onion,” Matt repeated. “That sounds terrific.”

  River, by the fire, groaned. “That’s dis-gusting.”

  “Not if you make it with pickle icing,” said Warren. “And then you lay a few anchovies across the top for decoration. How does that sound, Gracie?”

  River rolled on the ground, feigning nausea.

  “It looks best if you lay a few worms or beetles around the plate,” Warren elaborated, topping up wineglasses. “For garnish.”

  “Can you have it ready for breakfast, Dad?”

  “Absolutely. Breakfast is when onions really bloom.”

  Gracie cracked the hint of a smile.

  “Cake for breakfast, huh?” said Cass, nudging Matt. “You going to help make it?”

  Without waiting for her husband’s response, Elise turned her gaze back to her daughter.

  “I prefer chocolate,” Gracie said quietly.

  “Well. I am honored,” Cass said as everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Every word Gracie spoke bolstered their hopes that she was going to be okay. “I’ll bring it in.”

  Gracie sat
forward. “What’s going to happen to Andy?”

  Everyone went silent. Elise rubbed Gracie’s knee. “We don’t know, hon. He did a very bad thing.”

  “He’s a kidnapper!” said River, triumphantly. He used puzzle pieces as imaginary guns and shot the air. “He’s going to jail.”

  “For real?” Gracie seemed worried. “He taught me to fish with a stick.”

  Warren leaned over, his elbows on the table. “Did you catch anything?”

  Gracie shrugged.

  “Your grandpa will teach you to fish. Like your mother used to do when she was your age,” Matt said.

  Elise glanced at him, the nod to her family catching her by surprise.

  “I still have your mother’s rod,” Warren said. “You can use that.”

  He kept it.

  A car honked from the road. Ever since Warren had placed the call to Dorsey to tell him they had Gracie, Seldom Seen Road had been crawling with police, media, and curious neighbors and tourists, some of whom came in vehicles, some on foot. Apparently, the same thing was happening at their home in Montclair.

  The police had been gracious. After Gracie was checked over at the hospital—never sliding off Elise’s lap—and found to be physically unharmed, they’d allowed the Sorensons to go home and settle in before they asked too many questions. For that, Elise was grateful. No such compassion from the press, however. The phone in the kitchen had been ringing constantly since they got home. Every media outlet in the country wanted to give their audience a long-awaited happy ending. Elise had taken the phone off the hook.

  Cass brought in the cake and dessert plates. “I love you with this beachy look, kiddo. Very natural. Very Adirondack.” She leaned across the table, touched the soft strands of Gracie’s washed but unbrushed hair. “Don’t you think, Matty?”

  Yes, Matty, don’t you think? Elise held her daughter tighter.

  “Did you try to get away?” River came to stand close to Gracie. “Did you ever punch stupid Andy and kick him?”

  A loaded pause. Gracie swung her feet back and forth. “Andy said there were so many bears in the woods, if I tried to leave I would get eaten because they’re starving to death. And he said when you stop trying to sell the cabin, that’s when he would bring me home.”

  Matt and Elise looked at each other quickly. That was what this was about—the sale?

  “Why did you get in a stranger’s car? You’re not supposed to.” River had returned to his puzzle on the floor. “Everyone knows that.”

  “He wasn’t a stranger!” Gracie cried. She wasn’t going to stand for being made to look uninformed or naive. “Plus, he promised me a turtle with a broken leg.”

  Elise and Matt were dumbfounded. Matt spoke first. “That was what did it? You got into his van because you wanted a turtle?”

  “I wanted Paulie’s turtle. Andy said we could catch up to Paulie and he’d drive me to camp after.”

  Matt rubbed his jaw and processed this. “You wanted it. And I said no.”

  “Don’t.” Elise reached out to squeeze Matt’s hand. “She’s here with us now. Nothing else matters.”

  “What’s wrong?” Gracie asked.

  “Everything is so right, nothing can ever be wrong again.” Elise kissed the top of Gracie’s head. “Daddy’s just unbelievably glad to have you home. Like all of us.”

  Gracie accepted this. Then wiggled off Elise’s lap. “I want to check on my animals.” On the hearth were Gracie’s twenty-five tiny animals, warming their hopeful faces. Gracie hoppity-skipped across the room, using the furniture for balance. She knelt and, one by one, pressed each toy to her chest, closed her eyes, and rocked it back and forth. Set it up on the hearth again, told it to be good or else, and picked up the next.

  She stopped with her brown and white cow. “Andy used to work at Grandpa Nate’s cow farm, Daddy. He said it was the only time he was in the paper. He showed me the picture. The same one as in Grandpa Nate’s office.”

  Matt and Elise looked at each other. Both pushed their chairs back and rushed to Nate’s office. There, in the faded photograph from the Adirondack Times, standing slightly behind Nate and a farmer—Andy. A boy on the edge of manhood.

  “Oh my god,” Elise said. “It is him.”

  “He was there when it was all happening,” Matt said, thinking back to Andy’s words, that last day on the roof. An eye for an eye is what happens eventually. “All that time, he knew what Nate was doing to his borrowers. How he got those farms.”

  * * *

  WHEN MATT CAME down from helping Elise get Gracie into bed, Cass was on the sofa, feet tucked beneath her. The puzzle box was on her lap, and she was handing River pieces that might fit. Warren was stoking the fire, had it roaring once again. A cooler, more insistent breeze had gathered, ruffling the pages of the old magazines on the coffee table.

  Warren looked up. “Everything okay?”

  Matt nodded. “What a gift to see her snuggled under the covers, those crazy animals all around her pillow. I won’t ever need a single thing after tonight.” He topped up all the wineglasses, including Elise’s, still on the dinner table.

  Cass stood. Tilted her head toward the back door as if to signal that Matt should make an excuse to go down to the water together. No way. Not a chance. He pretended not to notice. And when Elise’s father went to take another log from the old iron log holder, Matt jumped forward to help. “Have you ever heard of an upside-down fire?”

  – CHAPTER 42 –

  It was Monday evening. The rear balcony of the store-top apartment on Main Street overlooked a strip of grassy wilderness between the back of the buildings and Mirror Lake. If one looked straight down, the view was of the alley, the trash cans, and parked cars. But sitting, the view was everything one could hope for. And Lyman—or his sister—had done it up nicely: lights on either side of the back door, two navy Adirondack chairs, and a planter overflowing with ivy and evergreens.

  As Lyman had led Matt through the apartment, they’d passed a walker, an assortment of pill jars on a table. A closed bedroom door.

  “So, Andy Kostick.” Lyman shook his head, his glasses perched in his hair. “Felt sick when I heard it on the news yesterday. Like I should have sensed something was off with him. Guy lived right next door until last week.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Matt said.

  “All to prevent your sale?”

  “That’s what the police say. To rattle us.” Matt glanced at Mirror Lake. “He figured a resort so close to his own property would ruin his business. Fishing lodge wants a whole lot of quiet.”

  “I was on the back roof that morning. You know how your roofline is—different sections added over time. Andy did head out for coffee, but he came back quick. That’s what I told the police. If he was gone any longer than he should have been, I didn’t notice.”

  “None of us suspected him.”

  “I was home when they checked his apartment.” Lyman motioned to the darkened balcony next to his. “Not sure they ever went out to his fishing lodge, though.”

  “They did. But it was pouring rain, and since Andy wasn’t high on their list . . . we’d all said he was on the roof.”

  “I’ll tell you, though—I never saw him look twice at your daughter.”

  If Andy knew about Nate, he knew what Nate had done to Lyman’s family. All he’d been waiting for was an opportunity. Matt had been blaming Elise when it was his own grandfather’s avarice that had likely laid the seed for Andy’s actions. Wreaking havoc from the grave, even.

  “Anyway. Your little girl is home.”

  “Elise and I are eternally thankful. It all could’ve ended much, much worse.”

  They sipped beer, looked up at the pine boughs waving in the breeze.

  “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.” Matt sat forward and pulled out his grandfather’s ledger book. He flipped to the Lyman page, pointed to the original loan amount. “I don’t like the deal my grandfather struck. I mean, how do I even k
now your land was worth thirteen thousand?”

  Lyman glanced at the number and met Matt’s gaze. He waited a moment before speaking. “Don’t tell me you’re after more money, ’cause that would make you insane.”

  “It was a bum deal. And then you’ve got to consider the taxes we’ve paid all these years.”

  “Tell me this is a joke.”

  Matt had no choice but to make some sort of peace with who his grandfather had been. Jeannie had returned a call he’d made to her that morning to ask whether she could pull strings on the land severance issue. There were few people more connected in the village than Jeannie Robbins. She was more than happy to help do anything to prevent another resort from setting up on the east side of the lake. But before Matt hung up, she’d insisted he hear her out on the topic of his grandfather. “I’m going to say one last thing, and I want you to listen. Whatever else you take from what I’ve told you, this is the most important. No one person is all good or all bad. Who your grandfather was to others does not change who he was to you. The man lived and breathed his grandson. You were everything to him until his last breath. And nobody can take that away from you.”

  “I’m dead serious,” Matt said to Lyman. “You’ve been saving for a property for you and your sister. Pay me back the thirteen grand and I’m willing to eat the taxes.”

  Two bats swooped by and lost themselves in trees. “And that leaves me where?”

  Matt held out his hand to shake. Lyman took it and started to laugh. “What the hell am I shaking on, Sorenson?”

  “Upon receiving your check, I’ll have been repaid in full. Which will officially make you the owner of one twenty-acre farm off Old Military Road and half an acre of waterfront on Lake Placid, just north of our place. I am not going through with the resort sale. After you refused a percentage in lieu of land, I found a way to come at it from a better angle. I’ve decided to sever the land first and sell only my family’s original plot on the lake. All the other plots will be returned to their rightful owners or their descendants. It will take a bit of time to officially divide the waterfront land, but feel free to use it as your own until such time. Once it is severed, you can do with it whatever you like. Live there, sell it, place it under conservancy protection. You may remember there’s a small yellow cottage on your lake property, sits out over the water on a jutting rock. I’ve never been inside, but I looked through the windows. Looks like a living/dining space and kitchen, then two small bedrooms all on one floor. Heated by woodstove. Dry and in relatively good shape; whoever built it did a great job. Roof’s taken a beating but looks solid. There’s a bunch of keys in my grandfather’s drawer. I’ll see if any of them work. But it’s yours. And you might as well make use of it.”