Lost (30 page)

“I know it’s been over 20 damn years,
and my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, but if she wasn’t a werewolf,
what the hell was she?” Ethan asked his friend. “We saw her change, Walt. We
saw what she was becoming. I’ll tell ya, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Fuck, I shot her three times, and she ran away—like it was nothing.”

Walt just
looked at him for a moment, “I know. I think a part of me figures she was just
on coke or something. You hear all those stories now of some junkie eating off
another guy’s face.”

“Am I being
ridiculous here? I mean what has really fucking happened? A woman’s house gets
broken into. They said a wolf’s nail was found at the scene. Maybe I’m crazy.
Maybe I’ve finally lost it.”

“What about the
animal report?” Walt reminded him. “We could talk to animal control, see if
they found something unusual.”

“Jesus H.
Christ!” Ethan wanted to smack himself. “I didn’t even think of that. Lord, I
got to get my damn head outta my ass.”

Walter just
laughed and added “Call animal control” to his to-do list.

“SHIT!” I had opened the back door of
the van, and a 2 liter of soda rolled out right onto my foot. “OUCH!”

I hopped around
a bit as the pain settled into a dull ache. Nothing broken, but dammit. I
almost chuckled. I don’t know how many times Brian had yelled at me to be
careful opening the van doors for just that reason. And just as many times I
forgot, and something fell on my foot.

“Way to go, Mom.”
Carey walked around to see what had happened. “Dad always told you—”

“Zip it!” I cut
him off. “I know. No harm done though. Just be careful when you open the Coke
later.”

The rest of the
kids had piled out already. Jimmy and Ant had run ahead to check out the dock,
and the girls tagged along behind them. Karie and Sam were waiting to get into
the van so they could help carry things into the house.

“Wow, we have a
lot of stuff!” Sam remarked looking at the large pile.

“Well,
hamburgers and hot dogs for close to 100 people, food for us, all our bags… not
sure what you expected,” I teased him.

He nodded and
started lifting bags out when I moved out of the way. Carey had opened the
house door, put down the stuff he carried, and was on his way back out. Sam was
walking into the house, arms laden with bags, and Karie was pulling things out
of the van.

I yelled to the
younger kids. “Jimmy! Ant! Girls! Now. Get over here and help!”

They looked up
at me when I called to them and came trotting over.

“Come on, guys.
Got a lot of stuff to bring in. Let’s go.”

When Anthony
and Sam were finishing the counters the previous weekend, they’d plugged in the
fridge and the deep freeze, so I was hoping they were ready to go. I had a lot
of stuff, and coolers weren’t going to cut it for five days.

“Hot in there!”
Sam came back out, fanning himself. “I turned on the A/C.”

“Good.
Hopefully it won’t take too long to cool off. We can always go for a swim, once
we get settled.”

“Yeah! Can we?”
The girls jumped up and down. “Let’s get our suits.”

The girls raced
off to dig out their bathing suits.

The cabin
wasn’t really a cabin. It was an old six bedroom house. I think Brian’s father
had bought it more for the lake access, but he had really done a lot to the old
place. He and Brian had completely gutted the kitchen. Brian had actually made
the cabinets himself, and Sam and I painted them—bottom was a bright, fun blue,
and the top was a neutral off-white. The flooring was old hardwood that Brian
had found. I think it was from an old barn. But it had a natural, weathered
look to it that I loved. None of the appliances in the kitchen were as nice as
what I had at home, but they were all less than 5 years old and in great shape.

We had a master
bedroom, and a guest bedroom, but the original layout just didn’t work. So
instead of leaving it as 6 bedrooms, we had done some work on it, and now it
only had 4 really good-sized rooms. We had knocked out walls and made two large
bunk rooms. Each room had four built-in sets of bunk beds so eight could sleep
in each room comfortably. Each bunk had little niches carved out for books or
personal belongings.

Brian’s father
hadn’t done much in those rooms. Rather, he left most of it up to me. He told
me to decorate it however I wanted. They built the beds. I did the rest.

In the boys’
room, the bunks had been sanded down, primed, and then painted a rich navy
blue. I had hung pictures that Carey had taken of the lake and house on the
wall. We had also put a beautiful, red rug Brian’s Mom had in the center of the
room. With the four sets of bunk beds in the room, there wasn’t much space for
anything else, but we had fit a desk and a large armoire in there.

The girls’ room
was pretty much the same, except the carpet was navy blue, and the beds were
red—nothing too girly. In the spring, the roses bloomed, so Carey had taken
pictures of them, and I had hung the pictures in the girls’ room.

I dragged my
bag up to my room and just stuck my head in each of the bunk rooms and smiled.
We needed to come up to the lake house more. It was a wonderful place. There
was so much of Brian there. Most of the projects had his hands on them in some
way. The kitchen cabinets were real masterpieces, beautifully done, detailed.
He had been so proud of them. The flooring, the bathrooms—they all screamed his
name and had his touch. This was supposed to have been our home.

“I said weird!” Ethan wanted to smack
the young animal control officer right in the face. “Weird. Was there anything
weird? The body, the tracks you noted… anything.”

“And I asked
what you meant by
weird
?” Penny Barnes gave him a scathing look. “I have
a degree in Animal Science. I
know
what weird means. I want to know
specifically what you’re looking for.”

Ethan started
to say something rude, but Walt put a hand on his arm and spoke up. “Just
weird. Let’s start with the body? What was it?”

Penny shot
Ethan another nasty look and turned to Walt with a huge smile on her face. “It
was a large cat. I’m guessing it was a stray, as no one has come forward. And a
cat this big, someone would know it was missing. I’m guessing it was close to
20 pounds.”

Walt made some
notes. “Okay. What killed it?”

“Not positive.
There were marks on it.” She made a swiping motion with her hands. “Like a big
cat clawed it. I have no exotic pet reports—and we have had a tiger before. So
if I had to venture a guess, I would say it was a large feral dog, and it
happened to get the cat at just the right angle to open it up like that.”

Walter and
Ethan exchanged looks, and Ethan spoke up. “Is it
weird
that the body
was dumped on a patio? I mean, wouldn’t a feral dog take it back to its den, or
whatever it’s called?”

Penny decided
to be nice. “That would’ve been my guess, but… say one of the kids left some
food out for the dog at some point, or even if someone had just left some food
out, say after a cookout, and the dog found it… It wouldn’t be unheard of for
the dog to bring a gift, if you want to call it that.”

Ethan scoffed.
“Some gift.”

Walter ignored
him and continued. “What about the tracks? Your notes said they were larger and
looked more like wolf tracks.”

She nodded.
“Not many dogs can make tracks that big. A St. Bernard, Great Dane, that’s the
size we’re talking about here. But to keep it simple, a dog of that size will
have a wider chest than a wolf. Because of that, a dog’s stride is usually
larger. But these tracks… The stride was way off for the size.”

“Do we have
wolves around here?” Walter was scribbling furiously. Ethan was just soaking it
all in.

“We have had
some coyotes with wolf DNA, which is due to possible crossbreeding further
north. But coming into someone’s yard… No, I’ve never heard of that.”

“See!” Ethan
smacked his hand down on the counter. “
That’s
what I meant by weird!”

He was exhausted, but he’d made it up to
the house. He had actually gotten there before she did.

He couldn’t
explain it, didn’t know how he knew where they were going, but as soon as he
heard they were going to the lake house, he knew where to go. He knew which
route to take, how to get there. He could picture it in his head.

When he got
there and didn’t see her van, he was confused, but 10 minutes later she pulled
up. The kids barreled out of the van and ran to the lake, and he smiled.

He stepped
forward, and then stopped. Images flashed in his mind. The youngest boy—he saw
him jumping off the dock into the waiting arms of an older man. The boys
laughter rang in his head.

“Jimmy.”

“JIMMY!” I yelled up the stairs. The
kids had all gone upstairs to unpack their things and get settled. I threw
together sandwiches, which the girls were scarfing down, already dressed in
their swimsuits.

I had put my
bathing suit on when I took my bag up earlier, and I had on one of Brian’s old
work shirts over top of it.

“We’re coming,
Mom!” Jimmy yelled back down. And a second later, I heard feet running down the
stairs.

Jimmy and Ant
came charging into the kitchen with Carey, Sam, and Karie following at a safe
distance.

“Okay, Mom. I
gotta ask…” Carey began. “You didn’t name me after a girl, did you?”

I was confused.
“What?”

“Carey? Karie?”
He pointed to himself, and then across the kitchen to Karie.

Sam was trying
in vain to hold in loud laughter. “You are so gullible!”

“Wait, what am
I missing here?” I asked.

“Sam had Carey
convinced that you liked my name so much, you
borrowed
it, but just
changed the spelling,” Karie told me.

“You suck.
Dickhead.” Carey threw a wooden spoon at his older brother, who ducked.

“Excuse me?
Watch it!” I smacked Carey on the back of the head.

Sam chuckled,
and Carey rolled his eyes.

“So what’s with
my name?” Carey asked, waiting.

“It was my
grandfather’s middle name,” I told him, a ghost of a smile on my face. “After
your grandma died, my mom… Well, my dad wasn’t the most affectionate man to
begin with. When my mom died, he sort of checked out.”

I didn’t talk
about my parents much. There were a lot of painful memories. But my grandfather
was the one bright light in my life when I was younger.

“Didn’t
you
have
a grandma?” Jessie asked, chewing.

“I did, but she
died before I was born. But my Grandpa Roberts, your great grandpa! He was so
much fun! And after my mom died… Well, he was the one that always hugged me
when I cried. He came to all my school plays. He even taught me to drive. His
first name was Bryant, and since that was too much like your dad’s, we decided
to use his middle name—Carey. You’re named after a good man. One of the best
I’ve ever known,” I told him, leaving no room for argument.

Sam stopped
laughing and gave Carey a look that said, “Gotcha!”

Carey just
flicked him off.

I sighed,
shaking my head. “Alright, guys. Enough!”

“Yeah. Hurry
up!” Maggie interjected, wanting us all to get moving.

I held my hands
out to the girls. “Come on. Let’s go. You guys finish up and bring the plates
to the sink. And
behave
!”

And with that,
I took the little girls outside.

I had brought towels out while the girls
were eating, and they were stacked on the picnic table. The girls ran ahead and
kicked off their flip-flops, while I unbuttoned my shirt and threw it on the table.
Since the kids all loved to swim and run around, I had opted for a one piece—my
Nike racing suit. I didn’t want anything popping out.

“Race you!”
Maggie told Jessie, who gamely took off.

I laughed at
the girls and ran after them, easily passing them, and I ran right off the dock
into the cool water. I surfaced just in time to see the girls jumping into the
air and splashing down next to me. All the kids had learned to swim there.
Brian and I taught them as soon as they showed an interest. Jimmy had jumped
off this very same dock for the first time right into the arms of Brian’s
father. That was right before Mark passed away.

I heard a door
slam and saw the rest of the kids running out. Clothes and shoes went flying,
with only Karie stopping to get her shorts off. The boys didn’t even pause, and
soon they were flying through the air. Sam and Carey executed perfect dives.
Jimmy and Ant tried to follow, but theirs simply weren’t as clean. Karie walked
up and looked at the water. Her younger brother splashed her, getting her
soaking wet. She gave him a sly look and jumped right near him, doing a
cannonball and sending up a wave of water.

It was simply a
perfect moment.