Chapter 5

Georgia drove the shore road again at first light with the letter folded inside her coat. This time she knew what she was looking for. Past the campground, a right turn onto a gravel lane. Birches. A row of rusted mailboxes. A trailer camp, three trailers deep. One of them had smoke coming out of its chimney. A red pickup she did not know sat by the door. Georgia parked and sat there a minute with both hands on the wheel. Then she got out and crossed the frozen gravel.

She was ten feet from the door when it opened. A woman stood in it with a dish towel in her hand. Thinner than she remembered. Gray at the part. A burn scar up her forearm. Five years dead. Alive. Colleen.

Georgia's knees went. "You're-" "Georgia." Nobody moved for a long moment. Then Colleen stepped back and held the door open. "Come in before the neighbors see."

Inside it was small and warm and neat. A cot by the window with a book on it. A second cot folded and put away under the first. A bowl of canned peaches on the table. Georgia stood in the middle and could not sit down. "Five years," she said. "I know." "You let me bury you." Colleen set the towel on the counter. "You had to bury me. That was the whole point."

Then Colleen told it. The night the boat went down, Wade had taken Emory out to check the lines. Colleen went along. The bilge plug was out of the boat. Somebody had pulled it. The ropes were loose and the pump was dead. Wade went down with it fast. Colleen got Emory and swam for the breakwall in the dark. She looked back once. Wendell's truck sat on the shore road with its lights off, just watching. She knew what it meant. If she surfaced, she was a witness, and witnesses can be handled. But a drowned sister cannot. So she stayed drowned. She took the boy and kept moving. Three trailers in five years. She cut his hair herself. She taught him to cover the mark. She told him never to say her name. Not to a stranger. Not to a teacher. Not to anyone. Because a name could bring the county, and the county would hand him back to the man who sank the boat. Georgia sat down then. On the floor, on the mat by the door, with her back against the wall.

"Why is your handwriting in Wendell's desk?" Colleen looked out the window. "I wrote him once. Three years ago." "What did you say?" "I said I knew what he did. I said if he ever touched the boy I would come for him." "What did he do?" "Nothing. He never answered. He didn't have to. He already had my name on a paper saying I was dead." Georgia understood the whole shape of it then. Five years ago her husband drowned. Her son and her sister did not. And the man she had trusted to run her dock had spent five years making sure nobody ever looked.

Colleen walked her back out to the truck. Then she said the thing Georgia had not thought to ask. "Wendell filed with the county. Two weeks ago." "For what?" "To have Emory declared legally dead." Georgia turned around in the cold. "Why now?" "Because the trust comes open in January. Dead boy, open trust, and he's the guardian on the paper." Georgia stood with her hand on the truck door. The fog was lifting off the lake. A hearing. Monday. She had three days. She looked at her sister. "Would you sign a statement? What you saw that night?" Colleen looked at the water for a long time. "Then I'll get my coat."