Haven Lake

by Holly Robinson

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

New from the author of Beach Plum Island... A natural-born storyteller presents a gripping story about grief, anger, and the healing power of love. 
 
Sydney Bishop hasn’t returned to Haven Lake, her idyllic childhood home, since a pair of shocking, tragic deaths shattered her family when she was only sixteen. Now a child psychologist engaged to marry a successful surgeon, Sydney has worked hard to build a relationship with Dylan, her fiancé’s teenage son, so she feels nothing but empathy when he runs away—until she discovers that his hitchhiking journey has led him to Haven Lake and her mother Hannah’s sheep farm.
 
Sydney returns to Haven Lake for the first time in twenty years to coax the boy home. Against her daughter’s wishes, Hannah offers to take Dylan in until he’s ready to reveal his own troubling secrets. Now, for Dylan’s sake as well as their own, Sydney and Hannah must confront the devastating events that tore them apart and answer the questions that still haunt their family—and the suspicious surrounding community—about what really caused two people to die on their farm those many years ago.

CONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED
 

Release date: April 7, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 464

Sample

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF HOLLY ROBINSON

Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

Visit us online at penguin.com.

ALSO BY HOLLY ROBINSON

For my husband, Dan, the keeper of my heart.
And for our children, Drew, Blaise, Taylor, Maya, and Aidan:
you make everything I do matter more.

CHAPTER ONE

Her cell phone buzzed, angry as a wasp in her pocket. Sydney debated whether to answer it. She’d forgotten her headset and Route 1 was crawling with cops. Still, what if it was something urgent?

She’d scheduled only two appointments on Wednesday, because the first was a school visit in Quincy and she knew she’d hit a nightmare of snarled traffic through Boston in both directions. It had been a good visit—the teacher was creative, even compassionate toward Sydney’s third-grade client—but now her nerves were on edge. She hated missing calls. You never knew when a client was going to be in crisis.

The phone stopped, but just as Sydney’s shoulders relaxed, it started vibrating again. That did it. She pulled into the parking lot of the Agawam Diner and glanced at the incoming number. Dylan’s school. Various scenarios played out in her mind: sixteen-year-old Dylan mouthing off in class, an unpaid tuition bill, Dylan throwing up in the nurse’s office.

She wasn’t Dylan’s stepmother yet, but she and Gary had been seeing each other for two years and planned to marry in October. She’d grown fond of Dylan, trying to spend time with him without pushing too hard. Since Gary was a surgeon and couldn’t take calls in the OR, she was listed as Dylan’s alternate emergency contact.

Outside, the May morning was chilly and the gray sky was spitting raindrops that pelted her windshield, making Sydney wince even though she wasn’t getting wet. “Hello, this is Dr. Bishop.”

“Ah, Dr. Bishop,” Gloria said. “I’m just calling to check on Dylan.”

“Yes? What’s the problem?” Sydney had met the school secretary a few times. She’d hate to be on the woman’s bad side. Gloria had a gladiator’s shoulders and an accountant’s passion for details. Every school should be lucky enough to have someone like that in the front office.

“I don’t know.” Gloria sounded peevish. “That’s why I’m calling. Is Dylan sick again? Is that why he went home after first period? You do realize, I hope, that this is his seventh absence in a month. It’s his junior year and he’s in two AP classes. He can’t afford more absences.”

Sydney was confused. “Wait a second. I dropped Dylan off myself this morning. Are you saying he’s not in school? He left?”

“Yes. No one has seen him since first period and he never signed out. I did try to call his father,” Gloria added. “Dr. Katz is extremely difficult to reach.”

Sydney felt her face burn at the rebuke. “I’m sorry. Gary’s probably in surgery.” She hated feeling so defensive, but she was new at this parenting thing and, despite her profession as an educational psychologist, always felt like she was getting it wrong. “I’m sure Dylan’s at home. Let me check. Did you try his cell phone?”

“We don’t keep student cell phone numbers on record,” Gloria said. “Students aren’t allowed to use cell phones during the school day.”

Right, Sydney thought, thinking of every kid who came into her office texting with the urgency of bomb technicians defusing explosives. “I’m sure that’s a very good policy on paper,” she said before she could stop herself, then rang off.

Dylan’s cell phone went straight to voice mail, so Sydney called the house. No answer. She tried Gary’s cell next; of course it went straight to voice mail, too.

What if something was really wrong with Dylan? She left a message and decided to wait a few minutes to see if Gary would return the call. That would at least give her a chance to grab some lunch in the diner to go; her hands were shaking, though whether from nerves or hunger, she couldn’t tell.

Her office was in a historic brick mill building on the Merrimack River that had once housed a family of famous New England silversmiths and was now a beehive of medical specialists. There were five practitioners with Sydney in the Children’s Mental Health practice—a psychiatrist, two other psychologists, and two social workers. And Ella, of course, the secretary who mothered them all. Right now, for instance, Ella was tirelessly helping Sydney plan her wedding.

At her desk, Sydney wolfed down the turkey club, chips, cookie, and soda she’d hastily picked up at the Agawam—bad, bad girl, inhaling carbs and sweets instead of slimming with salads—then paced her office. Five more minutes. Then she’d phone Gary’s secretary and ask her to page him in the OR.

From the window of her second-floor office, the Merrimack River looked oddly flattened out, like a sheet of metal beneath the heavy gray sky. She loved working here because the view made her remember the history of this area, and how manufactured goods had once been transported from factories in Lowell and Haverhill up this river to Newburyport. Everything from combs to carriages had then sailed across the ocean to Europe on clipper ships built right here.

The magnolia trees along the riverbank were in bloom. The pink blossoms reminded Sydney of how her mother once convinced her as a child that fairies used them as teacups. This wasn’t an entirely happy memory, so Sydney shook it off as tension pushed like a fist against the back of her neck. She was having trouble taking a full breath.

Sydney recognized the onset of a panic attack and began talking herself down from the proverbial ledge. She’d learned to do this in therapy years ago: You’re happy, she reminded herself. What’s past is past. You’re beyond all that now.

This positive self-talk helped ease her breathing, but Sydney couldn’t banish her immediate worries. Why had Dylan left school without telling anyone? Some of the other kids at school had cars, licenses. What if he’d gone off in somebody’s car, and even now the car was nose-first in a tree?

Another possibility: Dylan could really be sick. Feverish. Even unconscious. There had been a meningitis outbreak at one of the universities recently.

A more likely explanation: Dylan was just ditching classes. But that idea led her down a dark mental corridor to her fear that Dylan’s increasing disinterest in school, his lack of engagement in anything beyond computer games, was related to Gary marrying her.

She had a client coming at two o’clock. It was nearly one now. Did she have time to drive home to check on Dylan?

Whatever she did, she’d better let Gary know what was going on. Maybe he’d take charge. Dylan was his son, after all. That’s the way it should be. Sydney had vowed she wasn’t going to be one of those stepmothers who took over. She’d seen too many of those in her practice.

She phoned Gary’s office again. To her relief, the receptionist said Gary was out of the OR and put him on the phone.

“Hey, sweetie. I was just about to call you back,” Gary said. “What’s up?”

The sound of his deep voice, slow and with a hint of Virginia, calmed her. Gary would know what to do. She heard him chewing and smiled. Probably wolfing down one of his cardboard-tasting fiber bars for lunch. There was a reason Gary still weighed the same at forty-six that he had in college.

Sydney wished she could say the same, but no. She was ten years younger than he was, but her curves kept getting curvier. “Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but Dylan’s school called and he’s not there. Have you heard anything from him?”

“I don’t think so. Hang on.” Gary put her on hold, then came back on the line. “Nope. No missed calls on my cell, and Amber says he hasn’t tried the office. When did he leave school?”

“After first period. He’s not picking up his phone. I think one of us should go home and look for him.”

“He’s probably just playing hooky. It’s a perfect rainy day for computer games, right?”

“I don’t know. It does seem like he’s been sick a lot lately. And you know he’s not eating enough.”

“Yeah, well, if he’d play sports and get off the damn computer, he’d have a better appetite and a healthier immune system.”

An old argument. Gary could be right. At the same time, Sydney secretly sympathized with Dylan, who was clearly irritated whenever his father brought up his own stellar sports records. Gary had been a Division I pitcher and had a trophy case in the den to prove it. He’d been drafted by a major-league team senior year, but had chosen to go to medical school instead.

“Do you want to check on him, or should I?” she asked.

Sydney could hear Gary tapping something into his computer, probably checking his schedule. He was the king of multitasking. She admired this quality, though less when she was only one of his many tasks.

“I hate to ask, but could you possibly do it?” he said. “I’ve got two more surgeries this afternoon and the patients are already prepped and waiting.”

“Sure, no problem.”

They exchanged a quick note about dinner—salmon, Gary’s turn to cook, thank God—and hung up. Sydney glanced at her watch. She’d drive home, have a quick word with Dylan, then call the school on her way back to the office, reassuring them that everything was under control.

Tonight, though, they’d have to sit down for a family meeting, find out what was really going on. Gloria was right: this was junior year. Dylan couldn’t afford to blow his final exams.

She went out to the reception area, where Marco Baez was talking with Ella and flipping through his mail, making Ella laugh. Sydney had joined the practice eight years ago after earning her doctorate in educational psychology; her specialty was assessing school performance problems and evaluating children for learning disabilities. Marco was the clinical psychologist in the group. He had joined the practice last year; she had already referred several of her most troubled clients to him with positive results.

She had also seen the effect he had on women. Marco—with his soccer player’s wiry build and curly black hair—turned heads whenever mothers were in the waiting room. Even the older teachers sat up straighter to adjust their sweaters during school meetings he attended.

Sydney was amused by him, but nothing more. Marco was fun to have around and good eye candy, but he was a player socially as well as on the soccer field, judging by the various attractive women she saw accompanying him to office parties. She’d been there and done that. She didn’t need any more players in her life.

“Hey, Ella, I’ve got to run home,” she said, “but I should be back before my two o’clock.”

“Okay,” Ella said. “Want an umbrella? It’s nasty out there.”

“No, I’m fine. The car’s close.”

“All right. See you later.”

Annoyingly, Marco dogged her out of the office and into the hallway, where he stood too close as she waited for the elevator. “You okay?” he asked.

Sydney sighed. It was often a drag working with other mental health professionals. Nothing went unnoticed and they were always checking in with one another. It was like being screened at an airport, only this was an empathy check; she’d prefer a quick X-ray anytime. She’d gone into educational testing precisely because it was the most analytical field of psychology.

“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just Gary’s son, Dylan. He left school and we don’t know where he is. I’m going home to see if he’s there.”

“I’m sure he is,” Marco said.

“You don’t know one thing about him.”

He surprised her with a grin. “You’re right. I apologize. I only said that because I want it to be true for your sake.”

“Me, too.”

“Nobody could be a better friend to him than you are, Sydney.”

“I’m not trying to be his friend. I’m trying to be his stepmother.”

“To a teenager grieving his mom like Dylan is, a good friend might be more important.”

Sydney jabbed at the elevator button. “Gary says I baby him.” She hadn’t meant to confide this to Marco, or to anyone, but the hallway was empty and here he was, Dr. Sympathy with his spaniel eyes. “He says Dylan needs to man up and play sports, get off the computer.”

“Depends on what he’s doing on the computer,” Marco suggested. “For some kids, that’s a social lifeline. Or a future career. I’m sure Bill Gates spent plenty of time on the computer in high school.”

Interesting. Sydney would have pegged Marco as one of those ban-the-computer types, with all of his big talk around the office about building good family communication skills. But there was no time to get into that now. The elevator arrived and Sydney stepped into it, ready to face whatever waited for her at home.

•   •   •

He hadn’t expected it to be such a freakin’ drag to hitchhike. Dylan had caught a ride with one of the seniors from his school in Hamilton to the center of Newburyport. From there he’d walked up Route 1 to Route 110 in Amesbury, where he’d stood for two hours in the rain by the on-ramp to Route 495 with his cardboard sign reading “Seattle” in dripping Magic Marker. Finally a guy in a battered pickup truck pulled over.

Dylan hesitated before getting into the truck. He’d seen plenty of those movies where the idiot kids get sliced and diced by some masked guy with a chain saw. But the driver of this truck wasn’t evil looking. Just some old dude with paint-spattered work boots.

“Don’t see many hitchhikers these days,” the guy said as they rattled up the highway ramp.

“Yeah, well, school’s out for summer and I’m headed out west to see my girlfriend.”

Lies and more lies today. But Dylan liked the vague sound of “out west” and the old guy didn’t seem to care. He just nodded like of course that’s what a sixteen-year-old kid would be doing on a Wednesday morning in May, then merged onto the highway without bothering to glance at the oncoming traffic.

The truck lurched as the old man shifted the clutch, but Dylan wouldn’t let himself cling to the dashboard like some pussy as they took the corner on two wheels. He wouldn’t let himself worry about the stink of booze on the guy’s breath, either. How drunk could somebody be at eleven in the morning?

“So what about you?” Dylan asked. He’d read somewhere that you should make conversation with potential sociopaths so they’d bond with you and not want to slit your throat. “What are you doing with all that stuff in the back?”

“Selling shit for scrap.”

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at the truck bed. It was piled high with enough metal parts to build a submarine. Maybe this was a line of work he could check out once he got to Seattle, if Typhoon Entertainment wouldn’t hire him as a beta tester. That was his dream: to test video games for a living and design them himself one day. He had a couple of apps he was working on now.

The driver talked about his own hitchhiking experiences as they rattled west. Dylan could hardly make out the words over the bum muffler, but most of the stories involved bloody bar fights or getting “some great pussy like you wouldn’t believe.” Dylan mostly tuned him out, nodding and saying, “Wow, cool,” or whatever, to keep him talking. The farther west they drove, the more distance there was between Dylan and his so-called life.

He wouldn’t let himself turn on his phone. He was done with phones. Nobody could track him down and that was exactly the way he wanted it.

The driver—who at some point said his name was “Mack,” like that was a real name—eventually dumped Dylan off in Fitchburg, where Mack said he needed to gas up before heading north to New Hampshire, to whoever in the universe bought scrap metal and probably paid Mack in beer.

Mack pointed toward the entrance ramp to 495. “You’re gonna want to wait there, like you did for me. Don’t hitch on the actual highway or the cops will snatch you up.”

Like Dylan didn’t know that already. But he thanked the guy and even offered him money for gas. Mack waved him off. “You need it more than I do, kid,” he said. “Seattle’s far. Might as well fly to the moon.”

If there was a way to leave the planet entirely, Dylan would do that. Instead, he hefted his backpack onto his shoulders and started walking slowly up the road in the rain, wondering if he looked as pathetic as he felt: a skinny, no-ass kid in a Doctor Who T-shirt and expensive soggy sneakers traveling alone to a destination that really did seem as far as the moon.

It was raining hard enough that Dylan wished he’d brought that stupid raincoat Sydney was always nagging him to carry to school “just in case.” It was a North Face jacket—she knew most of the kids at his prep school wore that brand—but Dylan refused to wear it for exactly that reason, even though he did feel kind of bad about her spending all that money for nothing.

Having Sydney around was okay most of the time, but Dylan didn’t need her nosy questions. She couldn’t fool him. That mom act she put on was totally for Dad’s benefit. Other women had tried getting on Dad’s good side, too, hoping to trap him. Who didn’t want a rich surgeon for a husband?

Besides, with Sydney around, he could feel the memories of his mother wavering, like some kind of fading hologram. He didn’t want that. Especially since Dad showed no signs of wanting to remember Mom at all.

Even before Sydney, Dad had trashed Mom’s clothes and stuff. Pictures, too. Or maybe he’d burned them. What did Dylan know? Anyway, every family photo except the one Dylan kept hidden in his dresser drawer was gone. That one was of Dylan sitting on Mom’s lap and blowing out the candle on his first birthday cake. You could tell from the picture that she was going to help him blow out the candle and get his wish.

Not that he did. Whatever wishes he’d made as a one-year-old couldn’t have included a dead mother splattered on the highway the month he turned twelve. Happy birthday to him: a mother mangled in a car that looked like an accordion after it flipped over in a ditch.

Dad tried to keep Dylan from seeing the pictures in the newspaper, but of course they were all around the Web. His mom had been driving her friend’s cheap shitbox Kia; her friend hadn’t died, only Mom at the wheel. Dad hadn’t let Mom take her BMW. He’d hidden her keys because he didn’t want her driving home drunk. Irony alert: Mom would have probably lived if she’d been driving her own car.

An hour later, he finally caught his second ride. A boxy Subaru. Parental hand-me-down, Dylan guessed, since the driver was in his twenties and wore a striped skater hat and jeans. A skateboard was belted into place in the backseat like a kid. Next to it sat a duffel bag, unzipped and vomiting clothes. The car reeked of pot and the kid was smiling and shaggy. If this guy were a dog, he’d be jumping on Dylan and wagging his feathery tail.

“Hey, bro, I can take you to Greenfield,” he said. “Not far, but it’ll get you out of the rain for an hour.”

“Cool.” Dylan dropped his backpack on the floor and climbed in, hoping the guy wouldn’t mind a puddle on his passenger seat.

The driver, Brooks, seemed oblivious. “Seattle, huh? From Greenfield you should go south on Ninety-one and hit the Pike. If I were you, I’d stop in Amherst and sleep at UMass. Somebody there would let you into one of the dorms. You could sleep in a lounge, start again in the morning. Trust me. You do not want to be thumbing rides in the dark, man. Nobody will pick you up. Or, if they do, it won’t be the kind of person you want to ride with.”

So far, Dylan had avoided toll highways, not wanting cameras to capture his image on film. But he pretended to go along. He could figure out an alternate route later. Right now he just needed to dry off.

Brooks was a senior at Worcester Polytech studying chemical engineering. He was on his way to visit his girlfriend at UVM, he said. “You should totally head north with me and see Vermont before you hit Seattle. Vermont’s got it all going on: mountains, green pastures, waterfalls. It’s a fucking paradise.”

“Sounds sick.” Dylan didn’t want to admit that his father had a ski chalet in Vermont and was always bugging Dylan to go up there. Skiing was the very last thing Dylan was good at, right after any sport involving a ball or a stick. “But I’ve got business to take care of in Seattle, you know? I’m applying for jobs in the gaming industry.” He hoped he sounded older than he looked.

It didn’t matter. Brooks was all over that answer. He slapped the steering wheel. “Good for you, dude! Fucking too true! That’s what all the great ones did: Dell, Zuckerberg, Gates. They didn’t bother slogging through pointless college classes, did they? They just fucking dropped out and made their fortunes. That takes cojones.”

Brooks lit a blunt, offered it to Dylan, who shook his head. “My girlfriend, man, she’d skin me if I didn’t finish my degree,” Brooks said. “She already thinks I’m a slacker. Women, man. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

Dylan nodded. He didn’t understand much about girls, but he knew this: Brooks was right. If you were stupid enough to fall in love, that girl had you by the balls.

He would have done anything for Kelly. Any fucking thing. But it hadn’t mattered. Whatever he’d done, or wanted to do, wasn’t enough. Kelly hadn’t just broken his heart. She’d shredded him, chewed him up, spit him out, and stomped on him with her spike shoes before setting fire to his head.

Brooks left him off at the Route 2 rotary in Greenfield, where headlights and taillights blurred in the rain like streaky yellow and red ribbons. From above, Dylan imagined the rotary would look like a giant dizzying pinwheel, like the one his mom had bought for him at the Topsfield Fair a month before she died. It was still hanging from the curtain rod in his room.

Dylan had left the pinwheel behind, proof he was done with grief. He could miss his mom, fine. But he wasn’t going to be the sort of dumb ass who cried—actually cried—like he had in front of Kelly. Never again.

Kelly had tweeted his pathetic whimpering to the whole world: “Skeleton Boy is leaking in front of me right here on the sidewalk! Ew!”

It wasn’t just raining, now. It was bucketing. Brooks had given Dylan a trash bag to put over his head and backpack to keep him dry. Wearing it made Dylan feel like a homeless meth addict, so he took it off as soon as the Subaru joined the kaleidoscope of lights, leaving its own trail of red and making Dylan wish he’d gone to Vermont after all.

•   •   •

Somehow, the lambs had squeezed through the wrong gate instead of following their mothers. Now they were in the upper pasture, separated from the ewes happily grazing in the lower fields and bleating as if their little hearts were broken. Meanwhile, their mothers were enjoying their uninterrupted gorging on tender new green grass.

The noise was shattering Hannah’s concentration. To make matters worse, it was raining hard, the water needling the surface of the pond below the barn that Allen had dubbed “Haven Lake” when they first bought the farm. The rain had already filled the tractor ruts with icy puddles.

Hannah suddenly had an idea based on something she’d read in a book: she could try tricking the lambs to follow her through the gate into the lower pasture.

She shed her yellow oilskin jacket, shivering a little as she got down on her hands and knees in the mud in her white T-shirt and jeans, feeling cold and stupid as she began baaing like a sheep. Never mind. Nobody was here to see her. She only needed to fool one lamb into following her through the gap in the fence and the rest would follow.

Hannah baaed again, feeling perfectly sheepish, and suddenly thought of Rory. Her brother-in-law had loved animals. Rory would have helped her find humor and grace in this moment, as he had in everything. Well, almost everything.

“Forget your perfect offering,” Rory used to say. “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

It was a quote from one of the folk songs Rory used to sing in high school. Funny how often she’d been thinking about him today. And Allen, too. Then again, it was a rainy day in May. Even after twenty years, Hannah still felt a piercing grief when spring brought the rain like this, when everything reminded her about Theo and Allen being gone. After Theo died, everything fell apart, as if the boy had been holding their community together.

The cops—the whole town, really—had blamed the adults on the farm for Theo’s death. Not only Lucy, Theo’s mom, but Hannah and Allen, too. “With ownership comes responsibility,” one cop said. As if she didn’t know that already. Life on Haven Lake was one chore after another, until every night she went to bed and was afraid to let herself lie flat, knowing the ache would crawl up the sore muscles of her back and shoulders like a live, gnawing animal.

A lot of outsiders viewed the farm as a commune where drifters and druggies congregated. “It’s because those people are heathens,” Hannah had heard one woman say in Shelburne Falls a few days after Theo died. “They had it coming, living the way they did. Nobody was watching those children.”

That was untrue, especially where her own daughter was concerned. Hannah had carried Sydney in a cloth sling for months, like she was still part of her own body instead of a separate creature, the baby’s white-blond curls tickling Hannah’s chin as she cupped Sydney’s hard, hot head in her hand to protect it as she worked, pulling weeds or taking bread out of the oven. She’d taught Sydney how to read and write, how to swim and ride a horse. She’d watched Sydney fall in love with Theo and then nearly die of grief.

Her daughter’s decision to leave the farm after Theo and Allen were gone still set off a noisy, percussive symphony of sorrow, anger, and hurt. Once triggered, those emotions reverberated up Hannah’s spine like an orchestra out of tune.

She gave herself a mental shake. No sense living a life of regrets. She’d done enough of that already. Besides, the sheep needed her now.

That was the thing about farming: you had to focus on the weather, the plants, and the livestock and forget about your own pitiful, small self.

One of the lambs was finally approaching her. She’d named this one “Casper” because he was one of the few snowy white ones in this year’s crop. Too bad he was a little ram. She’d had to castrate him. There wasn’t much call for rams these days. Another couple of weeks and she’d have to truck him up to the broker who sold the rams as meat. Sad, but one of the practical aspects of raising sheep.

Hannah kept up her steady baaing. Finally Casper nosed through the gap. The other lambs were soon jostling around him, piteously bawling for their mothers until the