Patrice pretended not to hear Stacy rant about watching her younger brothers, Brandon and Kevin. She'd thought of asking Stacy to get the chips, but she knew she'd complain about that, too.
'You use me like a slave, Mom!'
Patrice and her children had packed up early that morning for a fall picnic at Brier Lake, just to the west of Cherrystone. She knew that cold weather would come in a flash and that day might be the very last day before rain, snow and bundle-up weather. Patrice was 35, with red hair that she wore long, with bangs that made her daughter cringe whenever they were out in public.
'You need a makeover, Mom!' Stacy said. Although mostly teasing, she wouldn't have minded if her mom did change her hair from her decidedly un-chic '80s hairdo.
'Oh, I don't know, I think I look hot'
The response brought an exaggerated gasp.
'No one's mom is hot,' Stacy said, with a smile more mean than sweet.
Patrice made her way across the almost deserted field that bordered the parking lot. No more than a half dozen cars huddled by the main pathway down to the lake. Her silver Prius gleamed in the sun, screaming out loud to the world that she loved the earth.
She pressed the trunk key into the lock, and it popped open. She stared into the blackness below and her heart sank.
'What the--? '
The chips were gone. She had left them at home on the kitchen counter.
'This is the kind of day I'm having,' she said, closing the lid. 'Stacy's going to blame me for this.'
As she slammed down the trunk, she heard a scream.
'Mom!'
It was Stacy's voice. She turned around and looked for her daughter.
'Mom! Come here quick!'
Patrice squinted into the late afternoon sun, the light blinding her with the shimmer of gold off the lightly rippled surface of Brier Lake.
Something was wrong.
'Stacy! Kevin! Brandon!' Patrice called out. She started running to the spot where she had left her children, but they weren't there. Instead, about fifty yards away, she saw them huddled at the water's edge. The low sun had wrapped them in a halo of light. Were all three there? She ran as fast as she could, losing a flip-flop in the process.
'What is it? Brandon? Kevin?'
'We're fine, Mom,' Stacy called out, her voice breaking, as she turned around to face her mother. 'Oh, Mom!' She lunged for Patrice, who gladly held her daughter. At that instant Stacy was no longer a flippant teenager. In the space of the time it took for Patrice to go to the car, Stacy was once more a little girl-a scared little girl. She started to cry and pointed to a lily-pad-tangled spot about ten yards from shore.
Floating among the degraded greenery of a fall patch of aquatic plants was the swollen figure of a child, a teenager. She was facedown, her blonde hair swirling around her in the water. Her skin looked waxy and white. Patrice craned her neck to get a closer view.
No, it wasn't a child, but a woman. She could see a wristwatch and wedding band.
The boys just stood there, their eyes fastened on the floating corpse.
'Want me to poke her with a stick?' It was Kevin, her 8-year-old, who she once caught eating canned dog food off the broken end of a hula hoop-with his older brother Brandon urging him on.
'I'll get a stick for you,' Brandon said.
Patrice's heart was racing just then. She shook her head and gently pulled her brood away from the frothy edge of the lake.
'Let's go back to the car,' she said. 'I need to call the sheriff.'
Emily's cell phone vibrated on her desk and she looked down at the small LCD screen. An electronic envelope rotated across the screen. She had a new text message. She snapped open the phone. It was from Jenna. She knew so even before she opened it. No one else sent text messages to her. Certainly no one over 25 could even work the tiny keys and create a message.
One of our BZs drowned last night. At the Kappa Chi house.
Call u tonight. Strange.
