Necessary Action. Julie Miller
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the engine, he’d fallen overboard, and the eddies near the dammed-up Wheat River power plant had dragged him down to the bottom. It had been a horrible, unfathomable tragedy.
But she’d caught her aunt and uncle in too many lies lately. She’d seen things she couldn’t explain—arguments that hushed when she entered a room, trucks that arrived in the middle of the night to take handcrafts or baked goods to Kansas City, fishing excursions where no one caught a thing from the well-stocked lake. And maybe most importantly, her uncle’s control was tightening like a noose around her life. There were rules for living on the farm now that hadn’t been there when she’d been a teenager, and consequences for breaking them that bordered on abuse.
Yes, there were bound to be flaring tempers as they transitioned from a simple working farm to a stopping place for tourists from the city seeking outdoor fun at the lake’s recreational area or a simple taste of country life without driving farther south to Branson and Table Rock Lake. There were reasons to celebrate, too. The farm had grown from a few family members running a mom-and-pop business to a small community with enough people living on the 500-acre property to be listed as an unincorporated township. But Uncle Henry still ran it as though they were all part of the same family. Their homes and small businesses were grouped like a suburban neighborhood nestled among the trees and hills. Instead of any warm, fuzzy sense of security, though, Melanie felt trapped. There were secrets lurking behind the hardworking facades of the family and friends who lived on the Fiske Family Farm.
Secrets could hurt her. Secrets could be dangerous.
When she’d hiked out to the cove to look for fourteen-year-old bloodstains or evidence of a heroic struggle to stay afloat after the engine had blown a softball-sized hole in the hull of the boat, Melanie hadn’t expected to find new waterproof seals beneath the tattered seat cushions that closed off the storage wells. The first fiberglass live well she’d checked had been wiped clean. Blessedly free of snakes, this second storage compartment also smelled like bleach.
Only this one wasn’t completely empty.
Curiosity had always been a trait of hers. Her father had encouraged her to read and explore and ask questions. But her uncle didn’t seem to share the same reverence for learning. The last time she’d been caught poking around for answers up in her uncle’s attic, she’d been accused of stirring up painful memories of a lost brother, and not being grateful for the sacrifices her aunt Abby and uncle Henry had made, taking in an eleven-year-old orphan and raising her alongside their own daughter. Melanie had moved out of the main house that very night and things had been strained between them ever since. And though she wasn’t sure how much was her imagination and how much was real, Melanie got the sense that she had more eyes on her now than any bookish, plain-Jane country girl like her ever had.
Squinting into the thick forest of pines and pin oaks and out to the glare of the waves that glistened like sequins on the surface of the wind-tossed lake, Melanie ensured she was alone before she twisted her long auburn hair into a tail and stuffed it inside the back of her shirt. Then she knelt beside the opening and stuck her arm inside the tilted boat’s storage well. The water soaking into the knees of her blue jeans was warm as she stretched to retrieve the round metal object. Her fingers touched cold steel and she slipped one tip inside the ring to hook it onto her finger and pull it out.
But seeing the black ring out in the sunlight didn’t solve the mystery for her. Melanie closed the live well and sat on the broken-down cushion to study the object on her index finger. About the circumference of a quarter and shaped like a thick washer with a tiny protrusion off one edge, the round piece of steel had some surprising weight to it. Unravaged by nature and the passage of time, the ring couldn’t be part of the original shipwreck. But what was it and how had it gotten there?
With a frustrated sigh, she shoved the black steel ring into her jeans. Her fingers brushed against a softer piece of metal inside her pocket and she smiled. Melanie jumped down onto the hard-packed ground that had once been a sandy beach and tugged the second object from her pocket as she retrieved her boots and socks.
It was her father’s gold pocket watch. She traced her finger around the cursive E and L that had been engraved into the casing. A gift from her mother, Edwina, to her father, Leroy Fiske had never been without it. From the time she was a toddler, Melanie could remember seeing the shiny gold chain hooked to a belt loop on his jeans, and the prized watch he’d take out in the evenings to share with his daughter.
But the happy memory quickly clouded with suspicion. The workings of the watch had rusted with time, and the small photograph of her mother inside had been reduced to a smudge of ink. Melanie closed the watch inside her fist and fumed. If her father’s body had never been found, and he always had the watch with him, then how had it shown up, hidden away in a box of Christmas ornaments in her uncle’s attic?
Had this watch been recovered from the boat that fateful night? Why wouldn’t Leroy Fiske have been wearing it? Had it gone into the lake with him? Who would save the watch, but not the man?
The whine of several small engines dragged Melanie from her thoughts.
Company. She dropped down behind the boat to hide. Someone had borrowed two or three of the farm’s all-terrain vehicles and was winding along the main gravel road through the trees around the lake. Maybe it was one of the resident fishing guides, leading a group of tourists to the big aluminum fishing dock past the next bend of the lake, about a mile from her location. It could be her cousin Deanna, taking advantage of her position as the resident princess by stealing away from her job at the farm’s bakery and going out joyriding with one of the young farmhands working on the property this summer.
“Mel?” A man’s voice boomed over the roar of the engines. “You out here? Mel Fiske, you hear me?”
“Great,” she muttered. It was option C. The riders were out looking for her. As the farm’s resident EMT-paramedic, she knew there could be a legitimate medical reason for the men to be searching for her. Minor accidents were fairly common with farm work. And some folks neglected their water intake and tried to do too much, easily overheating in Missouri’s summer heat. But she really didn’t want to be discovered. Not here at her father’s boat. Not when her aunt had asked her to leave the past alone, since stirring up memories of Henry’s brother’s drowning upset her uncle when he needed to be focusing on important business matters. Finding her here would certainly upset someone.
Like a swarm of bees buzzing toward a fragrant bed of flowers, the ATVs were making their way down through the trees, coming closer. Melanie glanced up at the crystal blue sky and realized the sun had shifted to the west. She’d been gone for more than two hours. No wonder Henry had sent his number-one guard dog to search for her.
It wasn’t as if she could outrun a motorized four-wheeler. She glanced around at the dirt and rocks leading down to the shoulder-high reeds and grasses growing along the shoreline. She couldn’t outswim the men searching for her, either. Her gaze landed on the sun-bleached wood dock jutting into the water several feet beyond the reeds. Or could she?
Melanie unzipped her jeans and crawled out of them. After tucking the watch safely inside the pocket with the mysterious steel ring, she stripped down to her white cotton panties and support bra and sprang to her feet. With a little bit of acting and a whole lot of bravado, she raced onto the listing dock and dove into the lake.
The surface water was warm with the summer’s blistering heat, but she purposely swam down to the murky haze of deeper water to cool her skin and soak her hair so that it would seem she’d been out in the water for some time, oblivious to ATVs, shouting voices and family who wanted her to account for all her time.
She didn’t have to outswim anybody. She just had to make up a good cover story to explain why she’d gone for a dip in her underwear instead of her sensible one-piece suit. Melanie was several yards out by the time she kicked to the surface.
As she’d suspected, she saw two men idling their ATVs on the shore near the footing of the dock. The bigger man, the farm’s foreman and security chief, who thought shaving his head hid his receding hairline, glared at her with dark eyes. He waved aside the other man, telling him to move on. “Radio