Part 1 (1/2)
Stolen in the Night.
Patricia MacDonald.
To the Boggle girls:.
Anne, Carmen, Craig, Harriett, Kate, and Terryl- for the pleasure of your company.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
A writer needs all kinds of help. Special thanks to Anne McKenna for explaining the language of Moliere. Thanks to M.J. for finding me that dress. Thanks, always, to Art, who gives me the bad news and forgives me the fallout.
Stolen in the Night.
CHAPTER 1.
Holding her breath, nine-year-old Tess DeGraff ascended toward the s.h.i.+mmering green light, sparkling strands of bubbles streaming in her wake. She broke the surface and let out a shriek that was half yelp of pain, half pure exultation.
”Tess, Phoebe, swim closer to the dock,” Dawn DeGraff called out to her daughters from where she sat on a blanket on the gra.s.sy bank. Dawn was cradling her youngest, three-month-old Sean, and talking with another couple who had arrived at the lake, their toddler in tow. But her attention never wandered far from her children.
Tess looked around and caught the eye of her thirteen-year-old sister, Phoebe. Phoebe's wet blonde hair was plastered to her head. The bliss in her eyes mirrored Tess's. They exchanged a conspiratorial glance and both began to dog paddle ineffectually in the direction of the dock.
All of a sudden, Tess felt something tugging her ankle, dragging her down, and she screamed. The tug gave way, and her father surfaced beside her with a wide grin.
”Dad, you scared me!” Tessa cried, pummeling his broad chest with her small fists. Rob DeGraff laughed and caught both of his slippery, squealing daughters up in his arms. For a moment the three of them clung together, suspended in the cold waters of the peaceful lake. Tess could see gooseflesh on Phoebe's downy arms, and the pink beginnings of a sunburn across her nose. Phoebe smiled, keeping her lips together to cover her braces. But her eyes gleamed and danced.
”My beautiful fis.h.i.+es,” Rob said.
Phoebe, too old at thirteen to linger long in a parental embrace, wriggled free and began to do the backstroke across the dark surface of the lake. Her long blonde hair floated around her like golden tentacles.
Tess redoubled her grip on her father's neck and surveyed the mirrored surface of the icy lake waters, reflecting the jagged, deep green trees of the forest on the mountainside. Above them the August sun was bright and the air as hot as it ever became in New Hamps.h.i.+re's White Mountains. Her gaze traveled the sh.o.r.eline and came to rest on a group of teenagers, girls in bikinis and boys in swim trunks or blue jean shorts, cl.u.s.tered on boulders at the water's edge. They all seemed to know one another except for one, good-looking, muscular young man, Tess's sixteen-year-old brother Jake. A beautiful blonde girl in the group gasped with delight, and an overweight, red-haired kid led the jeers as Jake swung out over the lake on a rope tied to a tree branch, let go with a whoop, and pulled off an aerial somersault before plunging into the sparkling water. On the other side of the lake a few fishermen in boats floated on the placid surface. Otherwise the whole beautiful expanse of Lake Innisquam seemed to belong only to her.
”I love it here,” Tess whispered in her father's ear.
”Me, too, Tess,” Rob said contentedly as they hung linked together in the water, their legs treading.
They had left their apartment in Boston early that morning eager for the journey. They were a family with more energy and curiosity than money, and camping was their travel and vacation solution. Rob and Dawn had married when they were both students at Boston University. Now Rob was an a.s.sistant professor of physics at MIT. The family still lived in the sunny, book-filled, rambling apartment on Commonwealth Avenue that the couple had once shared with an a.s.sortment of roommates. Dawn had her own business making whole-grain baked goods for a university co-op, and the children were used to negotiating city life, but they were also experienced campers.
Today they had arrived at their National Forest campsite a little after noon and set up their area with an efficiency born of experience. This year Dawn was occupied with the baby but the girls were able to take up the slack. While Tess and Phoebe pumped up air mattresses and gathered wood for the campfire, Rob enlisted his grumbling sixteen-year-old son to help him set up the tents. Jake had reached a rebellious age. He showed no interest in his studies, despite the fact that academics were so important to his father, and he could hardly be persuaded to come along on this trip. He had a summer job on a constuction crew and he insisted that his boss couldn't spare him. Only Dawn's pleas that he come with them on one last camping trip had finally elicited a begrudging grunt of acquiescence.
Rob and Jake pitched two tents alongside each other.
”Why do I have to sleep with those two?” Jake had complained.
”So that Sean won't wake you kids in the night. And so that the girls will have you there to look out for them.”
Jake continued to grumble, but his father did his best to ignore the mutterings.
By the time Dawn had p.r.o.nounced their campsite homey and served lunch on the red cedar trestle table, everyone was tired, sweaty, and in a hurry to get to the lake. They tramped through the woods to the lakesh.o.r.e together, but as soon as they arrived, Jake spotted the group of teenagers and boldly headed in their direction.
Tess looked over again at the boulder that Jake was scrambling up, wresting another turn at the rope from a pale-skinned boy with black hair. ”How come Jake's over there with those kids?” Tess asked. ”He doesn't even know them.”
”He just wants to be with kids his own age,” Rob said.
”How come he's screaming like that?” Tess asked.
”Cherchez la femme,” Rob said, smiling.
”What does that mean?”
”I think he's trying to impress the girls,” said Rob.
Tess frowned disapprovingly at the shrieking teenagers. She glanced up at her mother on the hillside, her tanned legs extended in front of her as she chatted with the woman on a neighboring blanket while the woman's husband, looking pirate-like with long black hair, stood nearby, watching their toddler play at the water's edge. ”Who are those people Mom's talking to?” Tess asked.
”I don't know. Probably some other campers. Hey, what do you say we give Mom a chance to get in the water?” Rob suggested.
Tess nodded, and she and her father pointed themselves toward sh.o.r.e and began to swim.
On the blanket, under the shade of a maple tree, Sean was dozing while Dawn and the other young woman, a fair-skinned blonde, chatted. Tessa and Rob came up the gra.s.sy bank to where they sat.
”Hey, you two,” said Dawn, her broad smile lighting up her face. ”Annette, this is my husband, Rob, and my daughter Tess. Annette and her husband, Kenneth, own that inn we pa.s.sed near the entrance to the campground.”
”Oh really,” said Rob, reaching out to shake her hand. ”You run the place yourselves?”
”I run it, mainly,” said Annette. ”Ken's trying to write, so when my parents left us the inn, we decided to move up here so he could have more time to work.”
”I think that's everybody's fantasy, to own an inn like that,” said Dawn.
”It's a lot of work,” said Annette with a small sigh.
The black-haired man strode to the water's edge, swung his protesting toddler up in his arms, and climbed the gra.s.sy hill to rejoin the adults. ”Kenneth Phalen,” he said, setting the toddler on the ground and extending a hand to Rob.
”And Lisa,” his wife reminded him, pointing to the little girl.
”Nice to meet you both,” said Rob. ”Your wife says you're a writer. What do you write?”
Ken shook his long hair back. ”Well, I've had a couple of short pieces published in magazines. But now I'm working on a novel.”
He seemed ready to launch into a long explanation but Annette interrupted, turning to Rob. ”Dawn tells me you're a professor at MIT? That's impressive.”
”a.s.sistant,” Rob demurred.
”Still,” she said.