Excerpt from Chapter 1
Monday, August 1

The five of them met for dinner. The table overlooked the lake and the surrounding mountains tipped with white.

Matt had lost weight, was shaving every day and wore his black hair cut short. He said, “It would be nice to stay for a few more days.”

Christine said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve been to Jasper. And the first time I’ve seen a grizzly.”

Daniel, her brown-haired boyfriend, was taller than Christine, slender and introverted. He was finally beginning to feel relaxed enough around Lane to open up. “The grizzly was incredible.”

Lane nodded. “It was a thing of beauty. A hunter.” It’s good to be talking about bears instead of cancer, surgery, scarring, fatigue and what the last doctor had to say.

“Okay, tell us what you’re thinking.” Arthur looked out over the water. His new exercise program was beginning to pay off. His belt had two old cinch lines in the leather to prove it. It hadn’t, however, helped him grow back the hair atop his tanned head.

“I was thinking how it’s good for all of us to be here. I was thinking I’m glad you don’t have to have chemo. And I was thinking we should go to California next. Maybe San Diego.” Lane looked around the table, gauging the reactions of four people.

“Can Daniel come?” Christine asked.

“Can we stay close to the beach?” Matt asked.

Lane’s phone began to vibrate in his shirt pocket.

Arthur smiled. “That’s not what I asked you. That’s not what you were thinking. You just changed the subject again.”

“You really want to know what I think of grizzlies?” Lane asked.

He felt their curiosity pique and the resultant attention shift in his direction.

Lane ignored his phone. “The bear was afraid of us, yet we fear it. It’s a hunter. It’s very good at what it does. And it makes us feel like prey. Still, we’re not the endangered species.”

“Like you,” Matt said. “You’re a hunter.”

“And people fear you,” Daniel said.

Lane picked the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.

Christine grabbed it from him and put it to her ear. “Hello?” She slapped Lane’s hand away as he reached to take the phone back. “Hi, Keely. How are you? Yes, we’ll be back tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon.” She listened for a minute, then said, “I’ll pass the message along. He’s right here, but we were in the middle of a good conversation, and he was using your call as an excuse to avoid answering a tough question. You know how he avoids answering the questions he doesn’t want to answer? I’ll get him to call you right back.”

“What’s up?” Lane asked.

“I’ll tell you when we finish this conversation.” Christine curled her fingers around the phone.

“Could I have my phone back, please?” Lane motioned with his open right hand.

“No.” She put the phone on the table, covered it with a napkin and put her hands over top.

Lane looked at Arthur, who was getting his spark back after a double mastectomy. It had been a long haul. There was the shock of the diagnosis, the operation and recovery from surgery, then the chemo and all of those lovely side effects.

Arthur said, “She wants some answers. You expect the same from us. Remember your big speech about us being honest with one another?”

“Okay. What do you want to know?” Lane refilled his coffee from the carafe at the centre of the table.

“Do you admire the grizzly because it’s a hunter like you?” Matt asked.

“Or because it’s feared and misunderstood?” Arthur asked.

“What about the fact that it’s nearly extinct?” Christine asked.

Lane joined in on the laughter.

Daniel said, “Of course it’s not because male grizzlies sometimes kill male cubs.”

Christine glared at Daniel. “How did you know that was what the call was about?”

Christine will forever be leaping to conclusions after the way she was mistreated in Paradise, Lane thought, then asked, “About what?”

“Keely said they found the body of a missing boy. She thinks it may be related to one of your unsolved cases.” Christine lifted the napkin and handed him the phone.

Chapter One

It’s only June, but the grass in the pastures and ditches is already sunburnt and dead from the drought. Smoke hangs in the air, a constant reminder of the burning forests in the north, around Loon Lake. The water in this lake, Brightsand Lake, is lower than anyone’s ever seen it. A few yards from where we sit, new rocks break the lake’s surface, like seedlings emerging from the soil. I’ve never seen these rocks before—they’ve always been submerged.

Luke Cherville is leaning back in his lawn chair, his beer growing warm. Luke likes to savour his booze rather than just tip it back. His skin is already turning a deep brown, filling me with a mix of admiration and jealousy. Luke, like his sister Jen, is all high cheekbones and leanly muscled limbs. I could almost throw up. I really shouldn’t complain, though, since I’m dating him.

My own fair skin is burning despite the sunscreen. I dip my floppy straw hat in the cool water and flick my bangs out of my eyes. Time for a cut.

The sun is my enemy. Not only does it roast my skin, but it makes my hair and nails grow like weeds. And it bleaches my black hair red, which is fine until the summer is over and my roots come in black again. Hence the silly grandma hat, which, though unstylish, solves both these problems.

Brightsand Lake is a large oval, and we sit on the northeast shore. A couple feet from where we lounge, cold springs bubble up from the reeds, rusting the sand and chilling the water. My Aunt Bea painted one of these springs. Soft mineral formations like aquatic cities within the springs, the tall grasses standing guard around the pools. The canvas has been hanging in her kitchen since before Mom got sick—more than five years now—but every time I look at it, I notice more details.

North of us is the main beach, a mile of golden sand dotted with people and beach blankets. On the west part of the main beach, sandbars are pushing out of the water like the ribs of a starving whale. People have planted their lawn chairs on the sandbars and lounge with their feet in the water.

I’ve been coming to this park for as long as I can remember. Dad and I used to ride our horses here in the early spring and late fall, when the campers weren’t around. We’d take the short­cut along Crocus Ridge and through Aunt Bea and Uncle Will’s pastures, gallop down the jack pine-lined fairways of the park’s golf course, then follow the winding road deeper into the park, through the black spruce and poplar. When we reached the main beach, we’d stop our horses and watch, silent. Sometimes white-tailed deer would emerge from the forest, edge up to the lake for a drink. Then we’d lope down the beach, the horses’ hooves flinging clumps of wet sand like kids having a food fight. Deer would startle, bound back into the woods.

In the off-season, the park was ours. But after my mom died, we stopped riding our horses here. I can’t tell you why, exactly. I didn’t ask Dad if he wanted to, and he didn’t suggest it.

My life is divided in two. The time before my mom died, and the time after. The time before is set, like a bug stuck in hardened amber. The time after keeps growing, changing. Almost unrecognizable from the life I thought I’d have.

Today, though, I can pretend everything’s as it should be. I can even imagine that Brightsand Lake Park is mine again. At least this rocky strip of beach. I dip my hat in the water again.

“Luke, I’m so hot.” I sigh.

“Well, let’s go out there.” Luke puts his drink down, stands up.

We slide into our sandals and wade out slowly, trying not to slip on the slimy rocks. We are nearly waist deep when Luke pretends to fall. When I reach for him, he pulls me into the icy water. I squeal, come up gasping for air, blinking water out of my eyes. Luke stands back laughing at me.

“YOU SON OF A BASTARD! YOUR ASS IS GRASS, SEABASS!” I tackle him. We’re both laughing as we go under again. In the struggle, I nick my left calf on a jagged rock. Luke is pushing me under, still laughing, while I watch my blood drift through the water, a thin line of rusty smoke. Fascinated, I trace its progress with my eyes. And suddenly I see it.

Floating toward us. Face down. Fishing line trails from the left leg. She’s a boat gone adrift.

Long dark hair drifts like seaweed. Hides her face.

Is it her?

Not her. No. No. No.

The arms hang down. Long thin fingers. Ring finger missing. Something under the nails. Dirt? No. Paint. Dark blue.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Two days ago. I saw her. Just saw her.

I thrash, arms smashing water.

“What the hell, Darby?” Luke says.

“Oh, God! Bea! Bea!” Run for her. Run. Help. Help her. Water slows me.

He is clutching my arm. His hands, they’re strong. Holding me back. Rage hot as the sun.

“Let go! Let go! Help her! Let me—I need, she needs…”

“Darby, don’t touch her. She’s … it’s too late.”

I’m retching into the lake. Luke’s hands in my hair. Roaring. My throat burning.

Then the strangest thing happens. I’m still screaming, but I start to feel distant from myself, like a part of me is observing everything. Broken in two.

A wisp of wind stirs the cold, glassy surface of the lake. I tip my head back, howling now, like a feral dog. The sun glares down from the cloudless sky.

The heat in my body disappears. I watch the vomit slowly drift apart in the numbing water, see some of it bump against my left hip. Food for the jackfish.

"What the hell?"

Daryl swerved to avoid running over something on the road, then stopped.

"No way. There's no way."

He got out of the car to take a look. He stood over it for several minutes, trying to allow the image to register.

"Good fuckin' lord."

It was a hand. A person's hand. Not a plastic Halloween costume hand or a prosthetic hand. It was a human hand. He thought for a moment it was a glove, the way it lay with the fingers stiff, pointed upward and curled in. A Ski-Doo glove. But the fingers were too small and each of them was twisted in a certain way, with individual knuckles and such. The colour of the hand was like Fruit Bottom Yogurt -- wild berry or mixed berry. The hand itself was not scarred or cut. The fingernails were clean and well manicured, short and wide. It was a man's hand.

He decided he'd better pick it up and take it with him.