Northwest Angle Read Online Free PDF Page A

pushed her toward the cabin door.
    “But the boat—”
    “Forget the boat, Rose! Get moving!”
    They went out onto the bow platform. Twenty yards of angry water separated them from the shore, and the distance was rapidly increasing. Waves swept over the decking under their feet and rain peppered them hard as pebbles.
    Inexplicably Mal stripped himself of his life jacket. “Take my hand!” he cried.
    She did and they hit the water together. She was surprised to find that her feet touched the rocky lake bottom, but they didn’t stay there long. The next wave lifted her and threatened to carry her out. Mal gripped her hand. Freed from the buoyancy of his own vest, he was able to hold himself against the waves, and he pulled her with him as he slogged to shore. They grabbed on to the pair of rocks where the stern anchor still sat wedged, and they watched the houseboat spin into the bay. A limb the size and thickness of an elephant’s leg flew from the island and crashed through the window next to the helm station. In the next instant, with a sinking heart, Rose saw the houseboat suddenly rise up in the grip of the storm. The windward pontoon cleared the water, and the boat began to flip.
    Then a miracle happened. Or what, afterward, Rose always thought of as a miracle. As quickly as it had come, the wind died. With a great splash, the lifted pontoon fell back onto the water, and the houseboat continued a placid drift into the lake.
    In the quiet that followed, Mal said, “Rose, I’m hurt.”
    “Where?”
    “My ankle. I turned it when we came in.”
    “Let me see.”
    She helped him lift his leg from the water. He wore shorts, and his feet, like hers, were bare. She saw the swelling immediately.
    “Does it hurt much?”
    “Like hell. But that’s not important. You need to get the boat, and we need to find the kids.”
    She looked toward the open water. The houseboat was already a hundred yards distant and drifting farther as she watched.
    “I’ll be back,” she said.
    “I’m counting on it.” He managed a brief smile.
    She hated to leave him but knew he was right. She kissed him once, then began to swim.

FOUR
     
    I t had been a hard year and she’d needed this vacation. She’d been content to let her father and Mal control where they were and where they were going. Lake of the Woods? Fine. One of the largest lakes in North America? No problem. In the middle of fucking nowhere? Terrific. No, I don’t want to know anything about the charts or the lake channels or the islands more numerous than the stars. I just want to relax.
    Until now,
Jenny thought, staring at the lumps of wilderness she could see from the rocky beach where she stood. Now she wished she’d listened and taken note.
    Great journalist I am,
she thought bitterly.
All that useful information, in one ear and out the other.
    She had no idea where she was on that vast lake. No idea which direction she’d been going with her father or from which direction they’d come. She’d been too deep in her own goddamn worries to let go and be a real part of the gathering.
    And now she was lost. And her father was out there somewhere. Lost, too?
    She almost thought,
Lost forever?
but wouldn’t let herself go there. They weren’t lost, none of them. Not her father or Anne or Stephen or Rose or Mal. They were somewhere out there, safe.
    “But that’s exactly what you thought about Mom, and she’s dead.”
    She said this out loud, startled at the sound of her voice in all that numbed stillness. The effect was devastating. Her legs went weak, and she sat down on the little beach and didn’t feel at all the sharpness of the stones beneath her. She stared dumbly at the water, which was calm now and choked with debris.
    Yeah, she’d hoped along with everyone else—
believed
along with everyone else—that after her mother disappeared she would be found and she would be safe. But it hadn’t been that way. All their hoping, all their praying, all their