Crystal Lake State Park, with its limpid water and long, sandy beach swarming with other children, had proven to be their favorite place to swim. Like dogs, Freya and Tom wanted most to be with others of their kind, making the same easy, momentary friendships.
While Kay set up a blanket on the grass, Freya and Tom ran immediately to the water. Tom, in particular, had marveled at the freshness, how he could open his eyes under the surface without burning his retinas. A London child, he’d only experienced chlorine or, once in Hastings, salt. “Mum, Mum!” he’d come running to tell her on their first outing here. “It doesn’t have any taste. It’s just water!”
She watched them swim out to the buoys marking the edge of the swimming zone. Freya, with her long arms like sculling oars, made sure, deft strokes. Tom, the product of multiple swim classes, had a workman-like skill, his feet out-boarding behind him. They were good swimmers, she noted; some of the local kids couldn’t even doggy-paddle. Out beyond the buoys, the lake spilled placidly south, water-skiers and wake-boarders, kayaks and canoes.
Around her, other families dabbled infants on the lake edge or fired up the park’s cement grills. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, cigarettes, sun-tan lotion, beer—the olfactory potpourri of mid-July.
Somewhere further along the beach, under the sugar maples, a man laughed, a loud, manly guffaw. Kay saw him, large, round-bellied, bare-chested, waving a pair of barbecue tongs about. He belched, and his son, a square-shaped boy of ten, laughed in the same blunt way, then mimicked the burp. Father and son cackled in joy.
Kay sat on her blanket, pulling her hat down to shade her eyes: out there, rounding the buoy and turning back toward the beach, Freya and Tom swam with their sleek wet heads. She could hear the burpers still laughing. Another man, tall and lean, entered her view and, for a moment she thought it was Ben Comeau. Instinctively, she touched her hand to her hair.
As he walked toward her, she could see more clearly now his lankiness, his hair dark because it was wet, he was only 17 or 18. The boy turned to a friend, laughing, and they pivoted toward a group of girls further down the beach. Kay watched them for a while, their new bodies and new voices, they laughed and flirted. Just beyond them: Tom and Freya now on the sand, intent on a sand castle. She closed her eyes against the sun’s bright glare and she had the impression of Michael: he was there with her, beside her. They were lovers in a hotel room, clean cotton sheets, and her body was lean and brown. He marveled at her.
Then the light changed; the sun now surfed the tops of the surrounding hills. There was the slightest shifting down in temperature. Kay startled with the revelation that she’d fallen asleep. She sat up. Though the mass of children had begun to thin out, there were still a dozen or so splashing in the shallows on a flotilla of cheap plastic rafts. Her eye tuned to her children. She’d know them anywhere. But she did not see them. The water beyond the swimming buoys seemed heavy, oily in the evening light.
Standing up, she walked to the beach, scanning. Perhaps they had gone to the lagoon around the corner. Perhaps they were up at the swing set. She walked quickly, refusing to panic. But they were at neither place. She ran back to where she had last seen them, then waded into the water: “Freya! Tom!”
They were not there, she knew this. They were gone. But she shouted again, “Freya! Tom!” and then turned like a cornered animal, still calling their names. Freya Tom Freya Tom Freya Tom Tom Freya.
A man was there—the fat, burping man.
“Ma’am, ma’am, what do they look like?”
“Freya’s eight, Tom’s five. Blond, slim. Both. She’s in a green swimsuit. His is red. They were just here, they were just here!”
“Don’t worry. There’s a ton of kids.” His hand was on her arm, making the connection. “I’ll go up to the ice cream stand and check the bathrooms, okay.”
He peeled away. He must have told other people, check the lagoon, check the parking lot, check the playground—Kay had a sense of purposeful dispersal taking place around her. She kept running, shouting along the shore. Just 20 feet off shore, just beyond the benign sand, the lake got deep. They wouldn’t swim out, she was thinking. Unless they thought they’d make for a far shore, a rocky outlet on the eastern edge, or the docks to the west. But Freya—surely—had a good sense of Tom’s limits: he’d never make it that far.
She knows better, she knows better. Kay kept thinking this of Freya, even as a new idea formed, that, yes, she knows better, she’s swimming him out, she’s swimming him far out on purpose, a vengeful, siren sister, to where choices winnow in the glacial depths.
And Kay became certain, even as she lifted her gaze higher and further, out beyond the buoys, the glittering, slow water, the water skiers cutting the surface, they’d be unable to see two small heads, like otters, the spinning blade of the boat’s propeller—
Freya, Freya, Tom, Tom. Kay waded further in, the water up to her chest. Kay hadn’t loved Freya enough as a baby. Kay had been gone, assignments in Yemen, Congo, Zimbabwe and when Kay came home to Nairobi Freya hesitated to leave the ayah, Kay kneeling down in the doorway, open armed until Freya conceded, trotting across the floor and Kay would bury her in, curl her in, but always, always Kay suspected her daughter’s sense of obligation.
In the deeper water, she realized her mistake: the lower perspective gave her less visual scope.
“Freya! Tom!”
Her voice was drowned by the whining of outboards. One, in particular, headed in her direction. It was the fat man, a little dingy with a tiny motor on the back. He held out his hand, she stepped in. He leaned toward her, an intimate proximity, to speak over the sound of the engine: “Do you think they would be swimming out here?”
“I think so. I think they’ve got some crazy idea.”
“Kids.” He rolled his eyes and turned up the throttle, heading for open water.
“They can’t be that far,” he said. “How long’ve they been missing?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at her.
“I was watching them, I was there, they were there, but I was, I don’t—” Kay bit her lip. “But Freya knows, she knows not to go far.”
“And you’re sure they swam out. They didn’t go with anyone.”
Kay turned to him. Anyone, he was anyone. Of all the times Kay had told Freya and Tom not to go with strangers, and she’d done just that. Here she was with a stranger, in a boat, in the middle of a lake, losing sight of shore, a woman who knows better, who certainly knows worse. How easy it was to make a bad decision. Then a random thought, completely unhinged, entered her mind: Ammon. Ammon had taken her children. He had taken them into the dark woods.
A torrent of words—hammer, squeal, duct tape, tarpaulin, earth, socket, bone, surgical, pig. She forced her eyes open, gritted her teeth.
The fat man piloted the boat out, slowly, nosing toward the shore, then back again to the center of the lake. Twenty minutes, half an hour—how long had they been gone. Kay had no concept of time. An hour? Multiply minutes by Tom’s doggy paddle—
“Is that them?” The man pointed to a rocky outcrop. Kay could just make out two small figures, two points of light.
“Yes. Oh God.”
Closer in, Kay could see Tom’s arms around himself. He was shivering, his face worried and uncertain. And Freya attempting to cover her fear with her casual jut of the hip.
Kay turned to the man. “How do I look?”
He squinted, confused.
“Do I look angry or worried?”
“You look scared shitless.”
“I don’t want to look scared, because I’ll scare them.” She tried out a smile.
“Now you look scary.”
Kay tried again, without the smile.
“Better,” he nodded. “Try adding some annoyed—they’ll know it’s all right if you’re annoyed with them.”
Her face felt tight with effort, a mask of skin obscuring the hundreds of muscles pulling on opposite directions, emotions that only had names in other languages like German or Japanese. If she knew those languages she could express all these feelings in dire conflict with each other.
“My son went missing in the woods,” the man said. “It was hours. We were going nuts. Your mind makes up stories, always the worst. It turned out he’d fallen asleep in a pile of leaves.”
Freya and Tom didn’t move. Kay had the sense they were watching her carefully. The man decelerated, the dingy bumping gently against the rock.
Kay held out her hands, one to each child. “You want a lift back?”
Tom grabbed her fingers. His lip wobbled. His eyes were teary. Kay thought he would fall into her arms, but he moved past her and into the boat. The man put a towel around his shoulders. “Long swim, huh?”
As she took Kay’s other hand, Freya lowered her eyes. “I didn’t think it was so far.” She was working hard to keep her voice steady, as if nothing was wrong. “I had to pull him most of the way in. He couldn’t swim anymore.” She stepped in the boat, Kay took another towel from the man—how grateful she was to him. He was looking at her and she could feel the tears burning in her eyes.
He gave her a quick answering smile. “Annoyed,” he whispered. She blinked away the tears before Freya could see, pulled the towel tight around her daughter.
“Have a seat. This nice man will take us back to the beach.”
“I’ve never been in a boat before.” Tom held the gunwale.
“Thank you,” Freya murmured, looking up at the man. “Sorry for the hassle.”
On the way back to the beach, Kay regarded the back of her daughter’s head. She wanted to kiss it; she wanted to smack it. She thought about herself in the basement with the hammer. She thought about her daughter out there in the deep water of the lake, the moment when her peevish wish became a terrifying possibility. The moment when she realized she would not always be good.