Unscathed

I knew later on, when Mina showed me the video footage from her phone, I would probably flip out. But for now, I was going to keep things calm and level-headed until we reached the lake. I had to.

I was lost in my thoughts as Mina and I drove in silence. I was seemingly on auto-pilot as my truck veered to the windy dirt back road leading to state park that housed the lake.

“Is this it?” Mina asked, looking around. Tall birch and pine trees towered around us in the dark sky. “It’s so… rural and desolate.

I smiled, but there was no happiness in it. “That’s the way Dad liked it. He’d bring an old cane pole out here and his tattered box of lures and sit for hours, drinking and fishing. We had a small metal fishing boat too at one point, but he sold it a few years back.”

Mina looked at me, puzzled. “So he would just sit on the dirt and fish?”

I laughed. “You’re such a city girl. Yes, lots of people stand or sit on the edge of swamps and lakes here and fish. It’s not uncommon.”

I put the truck in park and we got out. We were literally parked on gravel and dirt, and as I helped Mina out, I shook my head at her footwear. She had on those little flat shoes that looked like ballerina shoes and I somehow knew I’d be hearing something about her ruined footwear before the day was over.

“Yuck,” she said, walking gingerly over the dirty ground.

“You can take your shoes off and leave them in the truck if you want,” I said, pointing at the little silver things on her feet.

She wrinkled up her nose. “Aren’t there snakes out here?”

I chuckled. “Oh yeah.” I was glad I had my boots on. “Should have told you to wear sneakers, sorry.”

“I’ll leave them on, thank you very much,” she said in that accent of hers.

I motioned for her to take my hand as we wandered from the dirt parking lot and over a small crude wooden fence that separated it from the lake. She had her phone in her hand and had switched it on to video as we walked. With one hand she held mine, with the other she held the phone in front of us. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the screen or even ask if he was still here.

We walked along the shoreline and I looked out over the lake. The sun was starting to come up, a deep orange and pink sunrise painting the edge of the water where it met the sky. A warm, humid breeze blew through us and I watched as it lifted Mina’s hair off her face. Her ponytails were gone (thanks to me earlier) and her hair looked so pretty down, especially with the pinks and reds reflecting off its white-blonde surface.

“What?” she asked, looking up at me.

I moved some hair from her face. “Nothing. You look pretty in the sunrise.”

She blushed and looked down. “So, this is where your dad fished?”

I looked up. “It’s just up here. Just keep your eyes peeled for anything – and I mean anything – that looks out of place.”

“He’s still here, Jax,” she said quietly, sensing my unease from earlier.

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say.

She nodded as if she understood, and we walked a little further down the muddy shoreline. There were plenty of discarded beer bottles, liquor bottles, and cigarette butts and I wondered why nobody had been out here to clean them up. I supposed they could have been left here the night before and nobody had gotten a chance to clean them up yet.

“Okay, here,” I said, coming to a long wooden pier. “Dad used to take his fishing gear and walk out to the end of the pier and sit here for hours, fishing and drinking. But like I said, I’ve come out here three or four times and turned up nothing.”

She looked at her phone and bit her lip, then looked back up at me. “He is walking down the pier, Jax.”

I shivered again and led Mina by the hand down the wooden planks, wondering what in the hell I was going to find on the pier. I could see down its long length. It was probably twenty feet long and there was just nothing there. Still, I walked down it, dragging Mina by the hand behind me, her phone up at the ready.

I got to the end of the pier and looked down into the water. I peered over the edge carefully, but I didn’t see anything there on the edge or on either side. I looked up and saw nothing but the huge lake, and a few homes scattered on the other side of it. A lot of them were nice-looking cabin type homes with fancy cars parked on the side and boat slips in their backyards.

The sun was beginning to come up now, and it cast a breathtaking orange glow on the lake’s surface, which was as still as glass.

I looked once again into the water and around the pier, then at Mina. She had her phone up in the direction of the lake houses on the other side and she slowly lowered the phone and looked at me, her face white as a sheet.

“What?” I breathed, afraid to ask.

Her eyes were wide as she flicked them in the direction of the homes. “That is my aunt and uncle’s cabin right there. And there are two shadows standing in front of it.” She held up the phone and made me peer at the screen. I could clearly see a tall smudge and a smaller one.

“What happens now?” I shuddered.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Mina

"You won't find your father out here," a voice said, cutting the morning silence in two. Jax and I whirled around and gasped at the sight of my uncle standing at the foot of the jetty. He wore a sweater and black loose-fitting jeans. His hair was matted and flat on one side where he had been sleeping.

"Uncle Rob," I breathed. Jax squeezed my hand. "What...?"

"What am I doing here? I own the cabin on the other side of the lake," he said, his face white and unreadable. "But you already know that, Mina, and that wasn't going to be your question. You want to know what I'm doing right here – out on this jetty."

"Yes," I frowned. Had he known Jax's father? I wondered.

Jax glanced at me then back at my uncle.

"We're more alike than you think, Mina," Uncle Rob said. "I've wanted to talk to you about it, but I've never been able to find the right time or the right words. Or perhaps I was just too darn scared."

"Scared of what?" I asked him.

"I know you see the marks," he said, looking straight at me. It was like Jax wasn't even there on the jetty and holding my hand.

"The marks?" I frowned.

Uncle Rob saw the puzzled look on my face and smiled as if he understood. But there was a sadness I could see in his eyes, too. "You call them something else. What is it? Blurs? Dirt?"

"Smudges," Jax cut in. "Mina calls them smudges."

"She told you about them?" Uncle Rob said, looking at Jax for the first time. It was like he was pretending he wasn't there, but I couldn't figure out why.

"Mina says she sees my dad in those smudges," Jax told him, squeezing my hand tighter still.

"That makes sense," Uncle Rob said, nodding his head slowly as if something had fallen into place – like he had made some kind of connection.

"Did you know my father?" Jax asked.

"Not very well," my uncle said, looking away from Jax and down into the water that shone red like a vast pool of blood beneath the rising sun.

"How then?" I asked.

He took a deep breath as if considering his answer or searching for the right place to start. "I've seen marks – smudges – since I was a child," Uncle Rob finally said, sliding his hands into his jeans pockets to warm them against the early morning chill. "But I don't need to tell you how that feels, do I, Mina?"

I slowly shook my head, feeling shocked and confused by what my uncle was telling me. I thought I had been the only one feeling scared and bewildered in private, only now to discover that my uncle – someone I loved and respected – had been suffering like me too.

As if reading my mind, he looked at me and said, "If it's any comfort, your mother used to call me a freak too when I was a boy. I made the mistake of confiding in her once – she was my older sister, after all. But she never understood..."

"She knew about the smudges?" I gasped, suddenly feeling angry and more confused and hurt than ever before. "So she knew I was telling her the truth, but still she refused to believe me – still sent me away."

"That's why your mother sent you away," Uncle Rob said sadly. "She sent you to me. She couldn't understand you, but thought that perhaps I could. Two freaks together, huh?" He shot me a wry but knowing smile.

I didn't feel like smiling. Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I learnt of my mother’s true betrayal.

"I guess, just like you, Mina, the marks come and go," he continued. "Years can pass without seeing them. I hadn't seen a mark for ten years or more, and then...."

"And then what?" I whispered.

"My precious little girl, Summer was knocked down and killed in that hit-and-run," he said. His eyes glistened wet with tears in the warm glow of the rising sun. "It was a few weeks later that I saw the first mark. I was taking a picture of your aunt, and there it was – a mark on the lens just over her right shoulder. I didn't need to check my camera lens for scratches or imperfections, I knew what that mark was, and I suspected I knew who it was."

"Summer?" I said.

"Yes, but I didn't know for sure," he explained. "The mark was very faint. That was until..."

"Until what?" I cut in.

"Until I was up here at the lake," he said. "At first I thought that the marks were clearer here because Summer so loved to come up here with me – it was a place she connected with. But it wasn't the place Summer was connecting with, it was a person."

"Who?" I asked Uncle Rob, who was staring at Jax.

"My dad?" Jax breathed.

Uncle Rob nodded. “Yes,” he whispered.

“That’s bullshit,” Jax said, letting go of my hand. “What possible connection could there be between my dad and your daughter?”