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I want the lie.
We move to the bow, where I lean out, catching the spray as I focus on the distant green and gray mass that slowly takes form as Hemlock Island. When I see it, my heart speeds up, and I find myselfleaning forward until I can just make out the solar panels atop the house.
People talk about their “happy place,” and I thought that was sentimental nonsense until Kit brought me to Hemlock Island. It wasn’t just that he’d bought me a damn island as a wedding gift. He somehow figured out exactly the sort of place my soul longed for, even when I didn’t know it myself.
And now someone is fucking with that. I’ve stomached renters’ intrusions and incivility. I’ve chirped “Accidents happen!” when my things are destroyed. I’ve weathered the screaming when I politely inform renters that I can’t get someone out until morning to fix somethingtheybroke. I’ve endured the bad reviews complaining because I lock up my personal boathouse… and I’ve endured those locks being broken, my kayak and paddleboard used. But this? Staging weird ritualistic shit as a prank? Scaring off the guests I desperately need?
This I will not endure. I’m going to find who the hell is behind—
I freeze. I’ve been gazing up at the wooded bluff where I like to sit and write, my legs dangling over the rocky edge, surf crashing below. Now I’m gazing at that spot… and someone is gazing back.
My foot slides as I reel backward. Kit is there in a heartbeat, catching me. For a second, I let myself stay there, secure in his embrace. Then I grip the railing, straighten, and stare up at the bluff, searching for what I’d seen.
“Laney?”
I snatch the binoculars and fumble to get them up to my eyes. My gaze sweeps the top of the bluff. I stop at a tall tree stump, scorched by a lightning strike. Through the binoculars, it is clearly a stump, but when I lower them, it looks like a human figure.
“Laney?”
Madison’s there with Jayla, joining Kit in frowning at me.
“I thought I saw a…”
I see their faces, and I anticipate their reactions, Jayla thinking I’m just spooked, Kit worried, in case I really did see a person.
I didnotsee a person. I have an overactive imagination—that’s why I’m a writer. When I’m stressed, it’s an explosive combination.
“A moose,” I blurt. “I thought I saw a moose.”
“On the island?” Jayla says.
“Hey, they can swim,” I say, forcing my voice light.
“They can also dive,” Kit says. “They eat along the lake bottom.”
“Mmm, unproven,” Madison says. “That’s one of those weird facts that gets passed around, but it may not actually be true.”
“Ugh,” Jayla says. “Can you please stop educating this child, Laney? She was so much more fun when I could tell her that vegetables would make her hair curly, and she’d believe me.”
“I never believed you,” Madison says. “I just humored you.”
As they keep bantering, I turn to look at the bluff again. There’s just that blackened stump. That’s what I saw.
It must be.
THREE
Hemlock Island. The name refers to water hemlock, the deadliest plant in North America. It’s not supposed to grow this far east, and certainly not on an island in the middle of Lake Superior. We suspect someone planted it here long ago. Kit bought the vacant island from a holding company that didn’t even know about the hemlock. It was the locals who warned Kit about it, and he’d used that detail to lower the price, claiming the island was fairly teeming with a highly toxic plant and that’s why no one ever built there.
Not true. There’s a single patch of hemlock in a marshy area. Before the holding company bought the island, it’d been owned by our cleaner Nate’s family, having been passed along through the generations, who only used it for tent camping. Then the holding company made Nate’s great-grandparents an offer they couldn’t refuse, put the land up for sale at double that price, and anyone who could afford it was turned off by the remoteness.
“It never sold because it was waiting for you.” That’s what Kit said the first time he brought me here, and… is it weird that even while I laughed, part of me felt as if he was right?
While Kit docks the boat, Jayla and Madison hang back, chatting, and I stride toward Hemlock House. She is a thing of beauty, in away I never imagined a mere building could be. Scandinavian in design, sleek and minimal, blending into the scenery with thick wood beams and walls of windows that give amazing views from all sides.
I climb onto the massive front deck and punch in my door code. Once the whir sounds, I zip through to disarm the alarm. I stop myself at the last second and confirm the red light is on. Yes, the alarm was engaged. Everything is fine. The house is empty.
Why wouldn’t it be?
