“Oh, yeah…that. Well, you’re very welcome. If you have any other surgical needs, feel free to come see me.”
McKenna laughed, and instantly, the air around us grew thin. It was as though we’d been unknowingly smothered by a heavy fog that vanished without warning. It was easier to breathe and, based on the soft sigh following her tapered giggles, I assumed she’d felt it, too.
She pointed to the embroidered crow on the front of my shirt, the words Black Bird Resort stitched above and below it. “You work here?”
“And live here. My dad owns the place, and I help him run it.” When the dense air that had enveloped us dissipated, it seemed to have taken all the tension with it. I took a swig of my beer and relaxed against the wooden pole behind me. “How’d you hear about Black Bird?”
“I read about it somewhere.” She shifted her gaze across the lake.
It wasn’t entirely impossible that a paper or magazine would mention the area, though I did find it a bit surprising. It wasn’t like anyone around here seemed to care about the history that lay beneath these waters. Then again, maybe it had been written by someone who’d passed through, someone who’d wanted to share the story of the town that had vanished over forty years ago.
Before the reservoir, no one lived around here. These were nothing more than bare mountainsides that surrounded a dying town. But once the valley filled with water, houses began to pop up all around. The sad part was that none of the residents had any connection to the submerged land beneath the glistening surface. So I couldn’t exactly blame them for not treating it like a piece of valuable history when it didn’t have any significance to them. To everyone around here, it was a body of water they could see from their back decks that added to their property value.
But to me, it was the buried ghost town of Chogan.
Full of drowned secrets and sunken promises.
The more I thought about it, the more it plagued me. Curiosity consumed me until an even mixture of anger, resentment, and pride swirled within my chest. I’d already begun making bets with myself as to who could’ve written about it and who I knew, without a doubt, didn’t write it. “Where did you read about it?”
McKenna shrugged, keeping her attention across the lake. “In an old book I found.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“In my grandfather’s attic. Why?” That didn’t answer much, but I decided against pressing McKenna for more. For some reason, she didn’t act like she wanted to talk about it. Either that or she didn’t find it important enough to discuss. Regardless, it’d have to wait.
Moving on, I pointed to the water around us. “Did it explain that this used to be a city?”
Her spine stiffened a second before she turned her head and stared right at me, into me, almost through me. The deep lines next to her eyes as she focused on me, as well as the way her lips remained relaxed and slightly parted, made me wonder if she had some connection to this place. But the way she blinked at me, slowly, methodically, left me believing that her connection was with me rather than the lake. I became convinced that she could read me like a book and fill in the blank spaces with her own words.
It made me ask, “Do I know you?”
She licked her lips and tilted her head to the side. I was positive she was about to say yes, agree with me that we’d known each other at some point in time, but she didn’t. Instead, she fluttered her lashes rapidly, as if clearing her thoughts, and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Have you been here before?” I was desperate to find out how I knew her.
She answered by shaking her head.
“Did you grow up around here? A nearby town, maybe?”
Her posture appeared to soften, her spine not as rigid, yet her curious expression remained. “No. I was born and raised in Mulberry—about six hours south of here. This is the first time I’ve ever been to these mountains.”
“But you agree…we somehow know each other.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t even know your name.”
I wanted to point out that I’d been convinced of knowing her prior to learning her name, but I decided against it. There was no reason to freak this girl out on her first day here, especially if I had any hope of figuring out who she was. “Drew Wheeler. Does that help?”
“Sorry,” she whispered with the slightest shake of her head, sympathy clinging to her expression. “I guess I just have one of those faces.”
That couldn’t have been it. There was nothing generic or common about her. Everything from her eye color to the dimple on her chin to her name was unique. There was no doubt in my mind that she was one of a kind. And I refused to think otherwise. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something familiar about you.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” A smirk tugged at one corner of her mouth, and humor lightened her tone. She jerked her chin in a silent gesture toward the lake, keeping her gaze steadily on me. “So are you going to tell me about this town beneath Lake Bennett?”
I cringed and sucked in air through clenched teeth. “You should probably know that we don’t refer to it as that around here.”
Her face pinched in doubt, but she didn’t argue. “Then what’s it called?”
“Crowe’s Lake,” I said with pride.
She shrugged, and it was the first time since I walked up to her that she showed any sign of timidness. “It’s not my fault that I don’t know that. I wanted to take the boat tour, the one that takes you out on the lake and gives you the history of it all, but when I went to sign up, it was sold out.”
“Yeah, that one fills up fast this time of year. The boat is small and only runs twice a day. This is our busiest week with it being the Fourth of July and all, so we typically book up quickly.” We ran into this issue every single year. We only had so much room, and it didn’t make sense to spend money on another boat just to accommodate this one specific week.
McKenna smiled, though it was clear as day that it was to hide her disappointment. However, she didn’t seem to let it get to her. Instead, her attention wandered toward the water softly lapping against the dock below us. “So, Drew…what can you tell me about Crowe’s Lake?”
I smirked at her correction and the emphasis she used while my stomach did somersaults at the sound of my name on her lips. “This whole area used to be well-known for its agriculture. It had a lot of land for farming, and with the river running by it, it was a pretty popular place for fishing too. But between the mid-fifties and late sixties, the town grew smaller and smaller, meaning it produced less and less. Its popularity had dwindled until it could barely sustain itself, and eventually, most of the residents moved away, choosing to live in busier, more developed cities.”
“Why?”
I usually hated it when someone interrupted my explanation, yet for some reason, it didn’t bother me when McKenna cut me off to ask questions. “Things change, I guess. Farming is a hard job, lots of manual labor, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people got tired of sweating for pennies when they could sit in an office and make two, three, maybe four times the amount of money.”
“So they just turned it into a lake because everyone moved away?”