Two other members on the recovery team asked the crowd to back up. Johnny emerged from the water and dropped onto the beach. Chris followed a few seconds later and collapsed next to Johnny. Some of Johnny and Chris’s friends joined them. “Man, that was brave,” one of them said. Tank-top girl hugged Johnny.

A part of Caroline wanted to hug him too, tell him he was stupid and brave and how proud she was to be his little sister. The other part knew he’d only blow her off in front of his friends. And still, another part, a deep down unreasonable part, felt as if he had somehow failed her for not finding Sara alive.

*   *   *

The sheriff and the underwater recovery team talked with parents and potential witnesses. A man stood at the top of the high dive, surveying the lake. Four men on the recovery team, two in dry suits, loaded the boat and began searching the swimming area around the pier and diving boards. The process was slow, methodical. Caroline knew they had to search with zero visibility. And Sara was small, so small.

She had told the man from underwater recovery, the one who appeared to be in charge, she had last seen Sara on the pier. What she had wanted to tell him but somehow couldn’t, was to search deep where the diving boards were located, where Sara had overheard the boys daring each other to try to touch the bottom of the lake. But how could she tell him what she was afraid had happened without sounding guilty? When had adults ever listened to kids?

An hour passed.

The crowd gradually dispersed, or at least the regular crowd who had witnessed a similar scene in summer’s past. First-timers to the lake hung around, never having seen a drowning before. It sounded cruel, but sometimes it was hard to look away from something so horrifying. No one passed judgment on the onlookers. Let them look. Let them know what could happen. Let them understand that these were the dues collected by the lake in its splendor.

Megan pulled on Caroline’s wrist in an attempt to lead her back into the Pavilion. Caroline yanked her hand free. She wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the divers. After twenty minute shifts they’d surface, shaking their heads. She wondered if they could even reach the bottom. She didn’t believe anyone could.

She had witnessed a drowning three years prior, the man’s body gray and gorged in death. It had been a boating accident. He had fallen and hit his head on the side of the fishing boat when he went overboard. He was knocked unconscious and drowned. It was awful and sad, but this was different. This was a young girl swimming near the beach where other kids swim. People were around. Parents were watching. And bad things weren’t supposed to happen to kids.

Another hour passed.

Skillfully, the underwater recovery team continued their systematic search in the area where they believed Sara most likely went under. With zero visibility, they used a side scanner for the localized search, but it became apparent they would have to branch out and cover more territory.

Caroline’s stomach dropped and swayed with their every movement. From the gossip on the beach, no one could say for sure exactly when Sara had entered the water. No one had been paying attention. The part-time lifeguard had been on break.

Johnny and Chris and friends retreated to the beach steps to watch and smoke their cigarettes. No one talked. Megan stayed with Caroline as the whop, whop, whop of a helicopter sounded overhead. It circled the length of the lake a half dozen times. And then it was gone. The sun’s rays faded. Storm clouds had started gathering over the mountain, growing increasingly darker, blacker. The wind started to blow. But otherwise, the lake was silent except for the occasional splash from a diver emerging from what lay hidden below, coming up empty.

Megan’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, appeared. Mrs. Roberts placed a hand on Megan’s shoulder. “Come on, honey. It’s time to go.”

“Are you coming?” Megan asked Caroline.

“No,” Caroline said, and kept her eyes on the watercraft. She wasn’t ready to make the walk back to the colony where the news was sure to have traveled. The gossip would start as early as this evening, and she would learn more about the family who had lost a daughter to the lake than she had known about her own family. It seemed wrong. All of it was wrong, and she felt a deep sadness that left a dark and empty space inside her heart.

Perhaps this was how her mother felt, how it felt to be a grown-up. And she wanted no part of it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jo stood next to Eddie on the balcony of the bar overlooking the beach and lake. After hearing the screaming and rushing outside, they had remained quiet in the hours they had watched the scene unfold, unable to turn away, knowing the intimate details of each practiced step of underwater recovery by heart.

Shadows moved across the water, typical and somehow remarkable at the same time. A warm wind blew, and in the near distance thunder rolled. Eddie untied the red bandanna from around his head and replaced it with a black one.

“Look at him down there,” Jo said about Heil. “He acts like he’s king of the lake.”

Heil was directing his staff to clean up now that most of the onlookers had fled the beach when the storm clouds started moving in. Earlier he had ordered two of his workers to cook hotdogs and hamburgers for the underwater recovery team. No charge. He took care of the men as they had gone about their job, making sure to offer an endless supply of food and drink. A drowning wasn’t good for business, but it was even worse for business if Heil failed to show compassion and cooperation. He was president of the lake association and made damn sure everyone knew it. He walked around as though the entire lake community’s survival rested upon his shoulders. He was a large man, a fat man, an ever-so-loud man. It was impossible to ignore him.

Maybe Jo didn’t like him for these reasons, but she believed it had more to do with a gut feeling telling her not to trust what others deemed were his good intentions.

Eddie looked down at Heil and shrugged. After all, Heil was his boss.

“They should be coming in off the water,” he said of the underwater recovery team. It was too risky for divers to search in the dark, particularly with the threat of a storm looming. But at the last minute there was activity on the boat and another diver went under.

Jo leaned farther out on the railing, the muscles in her neck and shoulders tightening as each second passed. She spotted her daughter at the lake’s edge, but it was Johnny who was foremost on her mind. She had watched as he attacked the water, diving down and popping up, covering as much area as he could in his efforts to find the girl in time. He moved through the water, graceful and fearless as if the lake was an extension of his body, a part of his flesh and bones. Sometimes, long after the summer had ended and they were settled in their home and in their lives, Johnny would breeze by in his nonchalant way, and she would catch the smell of the lake on his skin and in his hair. It was as if the lake lived inside of him, what was good, cool, and refreshing, but tangled with something dangerous, too.

Lightning lit up the blackening sky in a one-two flash. The sheriff’s deputies appeared and cleared the beach of stragglers, including Caroline, forcing them to seek shelter.

Eddie ran his hand down his face. “Lots of new renters this summer,” he said, and returned his gaze to the recovery boat, the visibility fading in the waning light.

“Why doesn’t anyone warn them? Why don’t they tell them about the dangers of swimming here?” she asked, thinking about the diver, wondering whether he could feel the temperature drop through the dry suit as he dove closer and closer to the bottom. He would start at the farthest point from the boat and systematically work his way back, sweeping the area with his hands into a center line and then outward, double searching each section at a time, kicking up silt, making it that much harder to navigate, searching blind.