Senseless Acts of Beauty

by Lisa Verge Higgins

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A towel with a faded camp logo is the only clue that fourteen-year-old Sadie Tischler has to the identity of her birth mother. With her family life in upheaval, the reckless teenager runs away to the Adirondack camp, determined to find her mother and force her to take responsibility for the child she'd so callously given up. Tess Hendrick has a secret. For years, she has been following the life of the daughter she gave up for adoption, firmly believing that Sadie has a better home than she could have ever provided. Now, with Sadie on the run, Tess has no choice but to rush back to the hometown she swore never to set foot in again. But Tess's unexpected return has stirred up old memories, probing questions, and a dangerous investigation. The only way Tess can protect her daughter is to hide the ugly truth about the past-and deny, at all costs, that Sadie is hers. In this deeply moving new novel from Lisa Verge Higgins, the unbreakable bonds of family unknowingly guide two strangers in making difficult choices, adapting to momentous changes, and finally finding their way home again.

Release date: March 10, 2015

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

Maybe Tess would have noticed the police cruiser earlier, if she hadn’t been shaking so badly.


Slouched in her car on the shoulder of the highway, Tess glimpsed the black-and-white rush by again, this time on the opposite side of the road. She imagined the officer eyeballing her through the driver’s side window. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished away yet another ghost of her past, like the ones she’d been seeing ever since she’d left Bismarck—mirages of teenage runaways trudging on the side of the road, ghosts that had turned out to be nothing more than mile-marker signs, or a grocery bag snagged on a guardrail, or a yellow No Hunting placard nailed on a tree just beyond the shoulder.


But that police cruiser had been no ghost. Old instinct kicked in. She roused herself from the driver’s seat, shoved open the door with a boot, and unfolded herself onto the road.

A wave of dizziness forced her to slap a hand on the doorframe. She blinked in the rain splatter that painted the roads slick. She breathed and tried to keep the sight of the Adirondack pines upright where they belonged. She told herself she felt dizzy because she’d driven eighteen-hundred miles in four days in a car overdue for a tune-up. She told herself it was the gas fumes filling her brain. She told herself she felt nauseous because she’d fueled herself with nothing but Red Bull, beef jerky, and pink Sno Balls.

Anything was a better excuse for this nausea than the truth—that she’d morphed into a quivering mess the minute she saw the green exit sign that said Pine Lake.


She stumbled to the front of the car, slid her fingers under the hood, and released the latch. She raised the hood only moments before she heard the gravel pop of another car pulling up behind her own.

As footsteps approached, she muttered, “Morning, Officer.”

“Car trouble, ma’am?”

“It’s nothing serious.” Tess fixed her gaze on the workings of the engine, not the gray blur in the corner of her eye. “It’s just overheated.”

“If you drove all the way from North Dakota, I bet it is.”

Tess nodded and hoped he didn’t see her twitch. That license plate was sure to get a lot of attention in upstate New York.

He said, “That’s a long ride.”

“Yes it is, but I’ve done longer.”

Tess didn’t offer up any more information. She checked the perfectly good hoses and bent down to see the fluid levels. Back in Bismarck she drove an eighteen-wheeler for a living, so she’d been taught a lot about how to avoid jackknifing, but not a heck of a lot about the workings of a combustion engine. Companies didn’t want drivers to represent their companies covered with grease from crawling under their rigs. Still, she’d hung around with enough mechanics so she could fake it pretty good when she had to.

She had to fake it now because she knew from experience that officers of the law became suspicious of strangers who parked for no rational reason on the side of a quiet country highway…unless the car was disabled.

As the officer leaned forward to look under the hood, she dared to glance up from under her bangs to give him a look-over. She was still twenty-odd miles from her hometown, but it would be just her luck to stumble upon some officer who’d once slapped her in handcuffs. But this officer was dressed in regulation gray with a thick, black belt and a silly white hat. State police, not local law enforcement. A young officer, by the fresh color in his cheeks. Too young to remember anything about Tess Hendrick.

She’d better suck it up. If she could ever muster the courage to cross the town line, she was bound to be recognized, sooner or later.

The officer straightened up and said, “If this car’s disabled, you should set up flares or cones in intervals.”

“I have them in the trunk,” she said, “but I don’t expect to be here much longer.”

“I think you may need a tow. These foreign cars—”

“I’ll know in a minute,” she interrupted. “I’m just checking how hot the engine is before turning it over.”

The engine wasn’t hot at all, making a liar of her. The macadam was sending off more heat around them, rain-drenched though it was, and the air had that too familiar July storm chill that made goose bumps rise on her bare arms.

The cop eyeballed her. Tess pulled out the dipstick to check on the oil level, her heart stuttering as thunder rolled in the distance. She wondered what he made of the feather tattoo that covered her shoulder, the cheese puff–stained skinny jeans, and the lines of Latin tattooed on the inside of her left bicep.

He said, “I’ve been doing my circuit, ma’am, and I noticed you’ve been parked on the shoulder here for a while.”

“Yes.” Damn it. “I didn’t want to burn myself on the engine so I waited until it cooled.”


“Well, this may look like a little country road to someone who’s driven halfway across the U.S., but it’s a county highway. Parking on the shoulders is prohibited, and dangerous.”

“Better to overheat on the side of the road than to stall in the middle of it. For safety’s sake, right, Officer?”

She met his eye the same time she mentally told herself stop. She couldn’t afford to tweak authority, her favorite sport when she lived around here. As if to prove her folly, the officer took a step back to glance through the car windows into the chaotic interior, no doubt searching for visible evidence—bags of weed, glassine envelopes, empty beer bottles, shotgun shells, cigarettes bought tax-free at the reservation in bulk for resale, something to give him an excuse to ask for her license and registration, to search the vehicle for incriminating evidence.


She wondered what he’d make of the gas mask in the backseat.

Think. Think like the adult you are, not the mouthy runaway you once were. Tess watched a drop of oil run off the end of the dipstick, trying to staunch the nerves that had abandoned her. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d thought she’d put all this behind her fifteen years ago. She thought she’d stuffed all those early, ugly memories in a box in some dusty corner of her mind, never to be referenced again. She hadn’t realized how tightly she packed them away until she glimpsed that sign. One glance was like a box cutter, and the memories burst open.


Enough.


She shoved the dipstick back in the oil tank. “The engine is cool enough now,” she said, knocking the prop loose. “I’d be grateful if you’d wait while I turn it over, just to make sure.”

She closed the hood and then walked a steady line around him. His nostrils flared like he was trying to determine if she were stoned or had been drinking. She probably looked like she had been, after all these days in the car, unwashed, holding her head at an angle because she’d pulled a muscle in the back of her neck, her lips chewed bloody with worry. She could hear the cop thinking, deciding whether he’d take the next official step, but she just kept striding until she pulled open the door and dropped into the driver’s seat.

She jangled her keys. “May I?’

He gave her an unconvincing nod and then slapped his hands on the rolled-down window as if to stop her from bolting. She shoved the key into the ignition. The car turned over and purred as she knew it would. She watched the dashboard as the red warning lights blinked temporarily, then, one by one, winked out.

She took a deep breath. “Sounds like everything’s back to normal.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry for the trouble, Officer. Next time I’ll remember to put out flares.”

“Where are you heading?”

“Boston,” she lied.

“That’s another two hundred miles.”

“I’ll make it before dark.”

“Forget Boston.”

“Sorry?”

“Get some sleep.” He pushed away and squinted toward the wall of clouds gathering over the far blue peaks. “This storm is spitting now, but it isn’t over. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. It’s dangerous to drive in this kind of weather when you’re exhausted.”

She wanted to blurt out that she’d driven a sixty-thousand–pound vehicle over slick roads during a High Plains snowstorm on less than the federally regulated amount of sleep. She could certainly handle a little mountain thunderstorm in a Volvo.

But the truth was that Boston wasn’t an option. She didn’t have any more options. All troubles always came home to roost, and that’s how Tess knew, bone deep, that the foolish, headstrong runaway she was looking for could be nowhere else but in Pine Lake.


“Plenty of hotels off the highway,” the officer said, slapping the roof of the car. “I’ll follow for a while, just in case that car fails on you. You take the next exit to Pine Lake, you understand?”

Her heart, her breath, and her stomach all crowded up to her throat.

“Yes, Officer. I will.”

*  *  *

Man, it was cold for July.


Inside the cabin, Sadie pressed into the corner as the wind sucked warmth through the uneven boards. She shrugged deeper into her soaked hoodie and blew into the fibers, trying to heat her stiff fingers. If she’d known it was going to rain like this today, she would never have set out to walk the miles to the grocery store. But the last of the peanut butter was gone so she had no choice but to risk the curious gaze of the storekeeper as she rang up Sadie’s collection of granola bars, apple juice, Pop Rocks, skinny tampons, and a single roll of toilet paper.

No way was she using leaves.


Now she glimpsed a line of beaded blood on her arm and realized she’d scratched herself on something—a tree branch or a stuck-out nail—while she was rushing back to the cabin in the rain. The Pop Rocks rattled in her backpack. They were rattling because she was rattling, the bones of her knees knocking together. She couldn’t just keep sitting here and hope the rain would end. None of the camping books had warned her about how sudden the rain could come in the Adirondacks but they all warned about hypothermia. She was supposed to put on dry clothes and seek shelter.


Groaning, she shoved the backpack off her lap. She gripped the windowsill to help stand up, straightening out her cramping legs. Through the trees she saw the lake, gray and churning in the downpour. She saw the sweep of the back lawn, the empty picnic benches, and, finally, when she squinted, the wide porch of the main lodge of Camp Kwenback.

Inside that fancy log cabin, folks were clutching mugs of hot chocolate with three inches of marshmallows melting on top, sprawled on a couch just in front of that big fire. That’s what she’d be doing, anyway, if she were inside. When she first scouted the place a week ago, she’d glimpsed the fireplace, the couches, and the redheaded woman offering coffee to a guest. There was even a bookshelf full of books in there, probably novels about smart girls who solved mysteries without being forced to haul their fourteen-year-old butts into the wild.

There was more truth in those novels, she thought, than in the wilderness guides she’d filched from the library. Those books had you believing that the Adirondacks were everyone’s free grocery store, full of blueberry and wild blackberry bushes that were always ripe. Now, if she were eighteen years old, she could walk right up to Camp Kwenback and ask for a room. When you’re eighteen, you’re an adult, supposedly you can do anything. Well, she knew an eighteen-year-old boy whose momma still washed his clothes. Sadie had been washing her own clothes since she was ten. Being an adult at eighteen was just another stupid rule set up by the A-thor-it-ees. Like no flip-flops in school or ten points off if you don’t write your name on an assignment.

You just going to shiver and whine about it, Sadie Tischler? It’s not like she had a choice. If she banged on Camp Kwenback’s back door right now, looking like some scraggly homeless person, the owner would call the police for sure. Sooner or later, she’d knock on that door. When she did, she wanted to be strong, confident, and sure.


Her stomach growled. She slapped a hand over it, focusing back on what was important right now. Shelter, food, sleep.


Sadie squinted across the back lawn toward a dim gray shape on the other side that she knew was a shed. Inside that shed was a big metallic machine that gave off heat when it was running. Around it there was a space just big enough for her to curl up and get some sleep uninterrupted by roving raccoons or biting flies or rain. That’s where she’d dry off, have something to eat, take a nap. If she could just get to the shed without being caught.

Sadie assessed the distance between here and there, looking for places where she could hide so she wouldn’t be seen from those glowing windows. The safest route was to skirt the woods the long way around, but the idea of all that walking made her head feel woozy. Better to be casual about it. The folks inside that camp were probably happy around the hot fire, not staring out at the lake looking for girls who should know better than wander in the rain. She would just walk across the back lawn like she owned the place. She had a lot of practice pretending she belonged wherever she happened to be.

It was a plan.

Once outside the tumbledown cabin, the rain hit her like someone had opened a fire hydrant. She flattened against the wall to try to use the eaves as protection, but all it did was snag her hoodie on splinters. Spitting rain out of her mouth, she pushed away and counted seconds as she headed into the open.

Each second was the next thing on the list. First, when she reached the shed, she would peel off her wet clothes and hang them on the corners of the furnace thingie. Second, she would paw through her backpack and put on anything dry. Third, she would press herself against the metal to get toasty until she felt herself thaw. Fourth, she would drink two juice bags. Fifth, she would eat the little blueberry pie she’d bought, the one that couldn’t be stored for long anyhow. There was no one around to care anymore if she ate dessert before dinner.

She waited to hear the squeal of the sliding door, footsteps on the porch floorboards, a shout out to stop. It was weird to be out in the open after a week and a half of hiding. She kept marching with the rain pounding her face, while the fog crept up from the lake like some bad black and white movie, her mind working up excuses just in case she were caught.

When she reached the shed, she hurled herself in and shut the door. Her breathing sounded loud inside. The place had a tangy smell, a basement smell, copper and oil and dampness. Already it was warmer. Dropping her backpack, she sank to her knees next to the rumbling machine and flattened her cheek against the metal.

The rules screamed in her head—shelter, food, then sleep—but the hum of the machinery worked on her like a lullaby.


*  *  *

The kid looked like a nestling bird dumped out of a tree in a storm.

Riley Cross knocked off the hood of her slicker and then reached for the bulb chain. When the light flooded the shed, she smiled right away so that the girl wouldn’t be scared. Blinking, the girl had crouched into a defensive posture, backing up until she was practically behind the generator.

Riley said, “One heck of a storm, huh?”

Water dripped off the girl and joined the growing puddle at her feet. The rubber toe of one sneaker had separated from the canvas. The girl’s eyes, an unusual pale green, were bug-wide.

“It’s hard to know when a rain like this is coming,” Riley continued, glancing out the small, high window. “Sometimes you can smell it in the air. It’s ozone; it smells sweet, electric. Or if you look to the west, sometimes you’ll see a blue glow atop the mountains, which is the first of the lightning.”

The girl didn’t move as a wet shoulder slipped out of the neckline of her sagging hoodie.

“You can tell if you watch the birds, too.” Riley swiped at her wet coat, shaking her dripping hands dry. “They get real quiet. Still, I’ve lived here pretty much all my life and even I can’t always predict when a storm like this is going to come. But you’re not from around here, are you?”

Riley would know if she were. Pine Lake wasn’t a big town, and it seemed like half of it consisted of her own relatives. The rest she’d gone to school with. And she knew this girl wasn’t with the growing number of tourists renting the little cape houses or camping in the Adirondack woods beyond the borders of Camp Kwenback. She’d glimpsed the girl several times, at a distance, walking alone in the woods, her curly, puffed, and coppery ponytail bobbing.

The girl still didn’t answer. She tensed up, bracing her legs like a Carolina wren sensing the approach of a rival. The girl really could use a change of clothes, along with a solid meal. Maybe more than one. Riley remembered the sandwich that had gone missing from Mrs. Clancy’s lunch tray on the picnic table last week. And the chip wrappers she’d found discarded in the corner of one of the old cabins. It was probably a good thing that the girl was wary of strangers, but Riley wasn’t sure it was just wariness in that gaze.

“Listen, I’ve got a fire going inside.” Riley gestured in the direction of the main lodge. “And I’m about to make myself some hot chocolate. Why don’t you come on into the lodge and join me? You can use my phone if you want to call someone.”

The girl didn’t move. If anything, she shrank back deeper behind the generator. Wet as she was, Riley didn’t want her to press back too far and get tangled up in the wires. There was a good chance squirrels and chipmunks had made lunch out of the rubber insulation, exposing the live insides.

“Ok, then, come on in whenever you’re ready.” Riley pushed open the shed door and then pulled her hood over her head. “The sliding back doors are always unlocked. I’ll have some hot chocolate waiting for you, just in case.”

Riley walked out, letting the door bang shut behind her. She strode across the squishy lawn with the rain pouring over her bill-cap. This wasn’t Camp Kwenback’s first runaway. She’d figured the girl would be inside within five minutes, maybe ten.

It took forty.

Riley had all but given up when she heard the squeal of the sliding door. The girl slipped in and hesitated on the all-weather rug, shivering. When she was crouched back against the generator, Riley had estimated the kid to be about twelve years old, but the girl unfolded to a good five foot two, all stick-thin legs, awkward proportions, easily on the far side of a skinny thirteen.

“Go ahead and kick off those sneakers.” Riley gestured to a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate sitting on the raised bricks of the hearth. “That’s been waiting for you. Glad you decided to join me.”

Riley took the soaking hoodie out of the girl’s hands and saw goose bumps riddling her thin arms. All the girl wore underneath the jacket was a ribbed tank and a pair of jean shorts. Riley held out a hand for the backpack, but the girl just held the strap until her knuckles went white.

Riley dropped her hand and hung the hoodie on a nearby hat tree. “I’m Riley. What should I call you?”

“Sadie.”

The girl spoke the name in a firm voice and then watched Riley’s face. Riley sensed that a great deal of thought had gone into the decision whether or not to tell her.

“Pleasure to meet you, Sadie.” Riley wondered whether the name was real. “First time in Pine Lake?”

“Yeah.”

The girl followed her to the fireplace, looking all around her. Riley took it all in, too, trying to see it through Sadie’s eyes, the soaring pine rafters with their glossy sheen and dark pine knots, the rustic hearth made with local stone, the six-foot taxidermy bear that flanked the fireplace on one side, and the wide, sweeping antlers of a moose mounted above. But Riley’s eye inevitably caught on the duct tape holding the antlers together, the floor that needed refurbishing, the game table held stable by a rubber-banded deck of cards under the leg, and the glass-topped coffee table with the nicked edges. The 1970s no doubt wanted those faded plaid couches back, if she could ever afford to buy new ones.

At least she’d lit a fire. A nice fire always drew attention away from the failing zoo vibe and made the room cozy, timeless.

Riley slid a hip on the raised hearth and gestured for Sadie to sit on the other side of the tray of food. Sadie sat, dropped the backpack between her feet, and then seized the cup of hot chocolate. After drinking deep, she palmed the grilled cheese and took an enormous bite. The girl’s eyes drifted closed like she’d never tasted anything so good.

“So,” Riley began, as Sadie swallowed half the sandwich, “is there anyone I can call for you? The phone lines aren’t down yet, but I wouldn’t count on that for long.”

Sadie shook her head and buried her face in the hot chocolate again. Riley wished she’d at least topped it with a layer of marshmallows. The girl needed some real meat on her bones. Riley considered making another sandwich in the kitchen, but she had a strange feeling that, if she left the room, there was a good chance Sadie would wolf down the last of the sandwich, shrug into Riley’s own slicker, and then disappear back into the rain. After all, the girl had stolen a lot of things in the past couple of weeks.

Ah, yes. One theft had to be addressed. “Hey, Sadie, you wouldn’t happen to have my Leica in that backpack, would you?”

Sadie froze with the mug between her hands.

“My binoculars,” she explained, shrugging. “I have several pairs, some old ones that I really should give away. I don’t mind if you borrowed a pair at all, especially if it were for bird watching. But the Leica are my particular favorite, and I’ve really been missing them these past few days.”

Placing the mug down, Sadie tugged on the zipper of her backpack. “I was going to give them back.”

“I know.”

“I borrowed them,” Sadie said, as she pulled out the binoculars, “because I heard something screaming in the middle of the night.”

“A screech owl, I bet. Scary call, I know.” Riley took the binoculars, cold and damp, hoping the rain hadn’t gotten into the optics. “Did you find him? By the big oak? By the marshy area?”

“He’s somewhere near that beaver dam.”

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

Sadie shrugged and gave her a look like she was wondering if Riley were dealing with a full deck.

Riley was used to that.

“Well, that owl is almost as beautiful as the crane you folded for me.” Riley gestured toward the reception desk, upon which lay a bowl full of her mysterious visitor’s origami. “I put that crane in with his brothers and sisters.”

“I didn’t want you to think it was stolen.”

“I know apology origami when I see it.”

“It wasn’t—” Sadie stopped herself. She lifted the mug, then lowered it once she realized it was empty. She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling. “Thanks,” she finally said, “for letting me…borrow your binoculars. Can I ask you,” s. . .