PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The lake seemed like an impossible ocean. Though it was nestled in the hollows of the northern mountains just as Mallory Dent had expected from its outline on her map, its endless expanse was nearly beyond her understanding now that it lay before her. As she drove toward it, the knots in her shoulders earned by hours behind the steering wheel untied. She had been anticipating the lake over the course of her thirteen-hundred-mile journey north. Now that she was here, she had a sense that it had been waiting for her too.
After another glance at the hand-drawn map her real estate agent had sent, she turned off the highway onto the main street of the town of McNamara, smiling at the friendly clapboard buildings that lined the road. The late-afternoon sun winked in the plate-glass windows like a jocular uncle as she passed. She breathed in deeply and tasted pine. The unseasonably warm fall weather was like a kiss of greeting. She hadn’t expected it to feel so pleasant this far north. Or so familiar.
Twenty-seven hours before, when she had placed the last of her husband’s belongings into a trash can beaded with precipitation, she had been chilled to the bone with the coming onslaught of the gray, wet Vancouver winter. As the afternoon sun beamed through her windows, the back of her neck was damp again but with sweat rather than cold rain. Her brown hair hung heavy, like an arm slung around her shoulders.
Tension continued to ebb from her body. Now that the feeling was dissipating, she realized how worried she had been about her decision to purchase a home in McNamara. For two months, she had been numb, her emotions nothing more than intellectual exercises, remote and curious, even while she planned the biggest move of her life. Though she’d known she was taking a risk when she bought a small ranch house sight unseen in the little town beside Loss Lake, fifty miles inland from the rugged northwest coast and more than a thousand miles north of Vancouver, she had told herself it was a gift to be so reckless. She was alone now. She could make her own mistakes. Graham was dead.
The thought of her husband clawed at her throat like a small animal. She swallowed hard, then tapped the brakes of her silver sedan at the only stoplight in town, which was inexplicably red despite hers being the only car in sight. The pause gave her the opportunity to look at her surroundings more closely.
To her right was an old-fashioned hardware store. Its display window was jammed with sun-faded plastic Adirondack chairs and beach balls. Rakes and leaf bags were piled haphazardly on the side, suggesting a contentious clashing of the seasons. Further evidence of the infiltration of autumn were the hand-drawn pictures of jack-o’-lanterns strung from the roof. Their jaunty expressions provided a sweet charm to the scene. Her cheeks flushed with unexpected pleasure, as if it had been her own child who had drawn the decisive yet wobbly lines on the paper pumpkins. The feeling was odd and unexpected. She and Graham had decided not to become parents when they had married ten years ago. As a forty-year-old widow, it was now both biologically and socially unlikely that would change. But the thought reinforced her deepest hope about her new life. In McNamara, anything was possible.
Beside the hardware store was a tiny real estate office. Mallory saw the name Betty Barber, the same woman who had sold her the house, painted on the sign dug into the small patch of immaculate white pebbles out front. It made sense. The town didn’t seem large enough to need more than one person selling houses. Through the gap between the buildings, a trail wove its way toward the shining water of Loss Lake. Mallory had been told that the lake was man-made, unexpectedly caused by the failure of a dam farther upstream in the mid-1970s. Apparently, the water had flooded the valley like a tidal wave, trapping trees below the surface and submerging everything in its path. Despite what remained in its depths, the lake looked as picturesque as a postcard.
On the other side of the street, there was a small grocery store. The exterior of the building—light-brown shingles and big windows covered with flyers boasting sales and bargains—was nondescript, but something about the place seemed welcoming. She promised herself she would return to it soon. Never before had her time seemed such a luxurious, ample commodity. Without the encumbrances of school, work, and relationships, she could explore her new community at leisure. Graham’s death had given her freedom in the worst possible way. She had to try to make the best of it despite the guilt that clung to her like sticky cobwebs.
The directions that Betty had provided indicated that her new house was located a few miles west on the same sandy shoreline that bordered the main street to the north. The light turned green, and she pressed the accelerator. She had never lived by herself, much less owned a home on her own, free and clear. She had moved from her parents’ house into a college dorm, then found a shared residence with a few of her fellow nurses post graduation, where she had stayed until Graham had proposed. The idea of stepping into a house that was wholly hers was unimaginable. She unrolled her window, and the scent of the trees became stronger. Her body was absorbing pieces of this unfamiliar world with every breath. As the car rolled forward, the pressure of becoming someone new became more daunting than exciting.
“You can do this,” Mallory murmured like a mantra. She recited the next steps of the directions in her mind. Turn left at the gas station on the corner, then take the first right onto the dirt road. Betty had told her to use a tree that had been struck by lightning as a landmark, which had seemed strange, but after about a mile on the bumpy road, she spotted the wizened trunk and branches that had been snarled and stunted by a storm. Betty was right. It was unmistakable even for a city girl like herself. She turned fast, and the back of her car swung out violently. As she righted the wheel, her heart was beating hard enough to feel in her fingertips. When her tires gripped the dusty road once more, Mallory’s courage returned. Steadying the vehicle made her feel as bold as a race car driver. She had never driven on an unpaved road in her life, and the jolts beneath her wheels reminded her of what she had already overcome to get to this place.
She drove faster. The two buildings on the right-hand side of the road blurred in the corner of her eye as her car flew by. The road sloped down and then up, obscuring her view of the water she knew was in front of her. Her attention was drawn to the dense stretch of forest to her left that threatened to swallow up the road. The trees were tall and tight, a mix of green, red, and orange. In some places, their branches knit together like a sweater. Dappled sunshine flickered across the dirt road. The mischievous shadows disguised the hollows and ruts, forcing Mallory’s eyes to adjust to the change in the light.
As she continued down the road, the forest rose up on the right-hand side of the road as well, forming a tunnel of bark and leaves. Strangely, the trees here were encompassed by a tall chain-link fence. From what she remembered of the map Betty had sent, Mallory knew this fence marked the southern edge of her hundred-acre property. One hundred acres of forest and beach. It was too huge to comprehend on a piece of paper, let alone stretching out in front of her. Mallory had grown up in Vancouver. Properties there were not measured in such vast terms, and prices were incomparable. The money from the sale of her and Graham’s house had been enough to buy the house and property outright, making her the second largest landowner in McNamara, her real estate agent had trilled. Mallory had been sickened at the idea that Graham’s death had resulted in her wealth. She pushed aside that fact as she passed tree after tree. Knowing that each of them belonged to her was surreal after a lifetime of limited urban lawns.