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again he expected to see anger or at least embarrassment. He saw neither. Instead it looked like she was about to cry.
    “Are you all right?”
    She clenched her lips together and nodded. “I’ll be fine. I’m used to it.” She sent him a weak smile. “She’s not really like that, you know. She’s just . . . hurt. And she’s been hurting for a very long time. I just don’t know how to make it better. I thought that . . .” Margaret looked back at him, as if remembering she wasn’t alone. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with all our family’s woes. I just didn’t want you to think I’d raised a monster.”
    He smiled back at her. “I wouldn’t think that at all, Mrs. Collier. Besides, Rainy seems to have a particular fondness for your daughter, which says a lot.” Although in this particular instance, he might doubt his mother-in-law’s judgment.
    Margaret clutched his arm. “Yes, well. I guess I’d better go in. But I’m glad I saw you. I wanted to invite you and your daughter over for supper Saturday night.”
    “That’s nice of you, Mrs. Collier, but I don’t think your daughter likes me very much. . . .”
    “Drew—first, call me Margaret. Second, Caroline doesn’t seem to like anything very much unless it’s a column of numbers. Just give her time, and maybe you’ll see what I used to see when she was a young girl.” She patted his arm. “I’ll see you and Jewel at six then.”
    It wasn’t a question and he realized he wasn’t expected to answer, either. She said good night and he watched her go back to the house, noticing how she stopped at the back door and squared her shoulders before entering in the exact same way her daughter had done minutes before.

CHAPTER 4

    C AROLINE HEARD THE CALL OF THE LOON IN THE DARK OF HER dream and she stirred, picturing the long, sleek body of the water bird sluicing into the deepest parts of the lake, down to the invisible places that lived only in her memories and pushed insistently at the placid surface of her life.
    Opening her eyes, she crossed to her window and stared out across the lake where Hart’s Peak sat shadowed under a full moon and heard the loon again, its call something between a cry and a laugh. She remembered the times she and Jude had slipped their canoe into the black water in search of the elusive bird, always disappointed but gratified, too, knowing that this was a secret adventure they shared while their parents slept: a quest to look for something they couldn’t see. Their loon—they called it that even though they were never sure if it was the same one—returned to the lake each summer, even though it wasn’t supposed to. Loons, Jude explained, summered in Canada and the northern states, not the mountains of North Carolina. But each summer the loon called, and she and Jude went out to find it.
    Straining her eyes, Caroline tried to make out the profile of Ophelia, of the smooth stone forehead that remained unlined over the centuries as she stood sentinel over the lake that bore her name—never aging, never dreaming, never living; just being. Thinking of the mystical woman made her sad, and the restless feeling of the past weeks fell on her again. Silently she slipped on her fuzzy slippers and ancient terry cloth robe and moved through the house to the back porch and down to the dock.
    The loon called again, and Caroline watched as its dark shape moved across the surface of the lake, hearing the flap-flap-flap of its feet against the water as it gained momentum to drag its ungainly body into the air. During Caroline’s awkward adolescent years, her mother had likened her to the loon: ungainly and clumsy on land, but sleek and powerful in the water. She hadn’t been all that upset, because even back then she had recognized the truth in it. Caroline’s swimming had been her refuge from being an awkward teenager, and she had the trophies to prove it. She didn’t know where those trophies were anymore. They