Trap Door by Sarah Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

sooner or later.
    “Yep,” he agreed. “Laying back in the tall grass waiting for me, no doubt.”
    Ellie kept driving over rocks and through the potholes with which the lake road was so plentifully furnished. The trees on either side were young hardwood—poplar, maple, and white birch with its papery bark curling off in strips. We passed a turnout where the local kids came to fool around, beer cans littering the tire ruts in the soft earth.
    Without being asked, Ellie stopped; I hopped out, grabbed the cans and other trash—fast-food wrappers, mostly—and tossed them in the bed of the truck for later disposal at home. Once upon a time I got angry when I did this; now I just thought they’d learn someday.
    After all, if I had, anyone could.
    “That’s why this is the only place I finally can take care of the situation,” Jemmy went on when I got back in. “’Cause this is where
he
is. For now, though, I just need a spot to lie low.”
    We cut through a swamp where ancient black stumps hunkered among the yellowed stalks of last year’s cattails, then followed a narrow track through the trees. Past tall pines and charcoal-gray mounds of enormous granite boulders jutting along the lake’s shore, the trail cut between a pair of pin oaks.
    It continued through an old iron gate I had to unlock, then past a pair of hunter’s huts each with its woodpile, outhouse, and spark-guarded metal chimney.
Trail’s End,
said the rough sign on one. Jemmy smiled as we took the final turn into the last clearing.
    “Perfect,” he breathed. We got out into the silence broken only by the occasional
chuk-chuk-chuk!
of a kingfisher on a branch somewhere over the water, waiting for an unwary perch. The air smelled sharply of last autumn’s fallen leaves soaked by recently melted snow, and of the ice-cold, intensely mineral-laden lake.
    Jemmy turned in a slow circle to take in the pristine forest scene. Trees, water, sky… directly ahead stood the cedar-shingled cottage with blue-checked gingham curtains tied back at its windows, dwarfed by the big old trees.
    The curtains were made of cloth that had been sold off for pennies when the local weaving mill went out of business years ago. A scarred chopping block made out of a chunk of rock maple stood nearby, wood chips scattered thickly around it. Stepping past Jemmy, I unlocked the door and we went in.
    “Nice,” he observed, looking around. The whole downstairs was a single pine-paneled room with a woodstove, plus a small kitchen area equipped with a gas stove, a primitive icebox, and a hand pump over the sink. “This is excellent.”
    Furnished with mismatched chairs brightly painted in primary colors, sofas covered with crocheted throws we’d bought at thrift shops, and bentwood tables each bearing an oil lamp and a book of matches, the cottage was so authentically Maine-woodsy you half expected a moose to be standing outside the window looking in.
    Which many mornings there was. “I’ll get a fire started,” said Ellie, taking my newspaper and gathering sticks of kindling from the wicker basket under the stairs.
    Her voice sounded odd, as if something unpleasant had occurred to her. I waited for more but she merely crouched by the stove with her back turned, crumpling up news stories.
    Jemmy stepped out onto the deck, a rustic affair of graying lumber bolted together atop concrete footings. Silently he gazed at the nearby lake’s edge. A look of puzzlement spread on his face.
    “Didn’t there used to be a pier right down there?” he asked. I’d brought him here once. “And is it just me, or is the water a little… ?”
    “Higher, yes,” I replied, stepping out to stand on the deck beside him. After the spring melt of the record snow we’d endured over the previous winter, the lake was a good deal higher even than it had been last fall.
    “Three feet since you saw it last, as a matter of fact,” I told him. “We’ve had a lot of rain.”
    Better than drought,