How deceptive a lake was, especially on a warm, sunny day. It shimmered serenely, insensible to anything else around it, undulating in all its warm watery ribbons. It looked welcoming, friendly, even--threatened little of the thalassaphobic tremors of the ocean. The blues . . . so blue! The cobalt waters stretched forever toward a horizon that blurred so seamlessly with the sky that one could hardly find beginnings and ends. Kevin almost preferred the grays of winter. At least then, the lake looked closer to what it was: a cold, indiscriminate entity, profound and incomprehensible, inattentive to the safety of whatever entered its body. A lake was neither willing nor unwilling, hostile nor inhospitable. It moved senselessly, a thing blind and aimless, a brute force relentless and imperturbable, and any small outsider seeking solace within its perceived refreshment risked more than he knew.

All those years ago, that kid that'd ended up in pieces . . . he'd surely underestimated the lake.

But the natural world--or at least, what humans perceived to be the natural world--was none of it friendly. That was certain.

Kevin walked the paved path that ran along the lakefront. It hadn't been there when he was young, when he'd grown up in Port Killdeer, and even though the town could've benefited from a lot more change, this one thing was a surprising improvement. He'd roamed to the lakefront, the public pier, but rather than go down it he'd turned left and crossed the grass toward a few of the old pavilions. From there, he'd discovered a path for walkers and bikers that extended as far as he could see toward the marina, the breaker wall, the towers and steam columns of the soy sauce factory way in the distance (on any day when the wind blew just right, the odor from that factory made its way to Port Killdeer; that corn-nutty smell was linked to many of Kevin's memories).

The grass around the walkway was a bit long and swayed in the breeze that came in off the water. Every so often a biker or a jogger would pass Kevin, and he'd step aside as was polite, though he returned no greetings. While he was pleased to have the path, there was also something about it that deepened his despondency. He'd spent the last fifteen years under the curse of knowledge, aware that Port Killdeer didn't have any understanding of what it actually was, and yet being away had (in spite of his pessimism) paradoxically given him a bit of hope that somehow his hometown would reveal itself, that he'd return to find the entire place as defeated as he was, because if they knew . . . there was no way they'd be wasting time and energy making bike paths.

But the path was there, and he was benefiting from it, from just being alone and clearing his head. Seeing his brother again hadn't been terrible. Mike, though not particularly old, had aged considerably since Kevin had seen him last, presenting more as a fifty-year-old than the thirty-four he was. Years of continuous hard living and assholery had dulled his senses, too, so when Kevin had arrived at his childhood home, Mike had seemed startled but, after the initial shock, indifferent, which to Kevin was a massive relief. He'd expected argument, blame, anger . . . maybe even a physical altercation. Instead, he'd received a shrug and a look at Mike's back as he'd turned into the house, leaving the door open for Kevin. And the experience had improved when Mike had told him their father was gone. According to Mike, Don O'Connor had "married some loose woman come through town one summer" and soon after disappeared. So, all things considered, returning hadn't as of yet been too painful.

The only real problem was that Kevin had no idea what to do with himself. It'd been hardly twenty-four hours since he'd gotten back, since Heather had dropped him at his place. He'd almost wanted to ask her to come with him, as ridiculous as he knew that was, but once he'd seen the state of Mike, realized his dad wasn't there, it'd been fine. Still, wandering through the rooms of that building had been like wandering through a less sanguine version of his youth, where his present self already knew the story of his past self, knew that it didn't get better, it only got worse. Had he known where things would go, that leaving wouldn't actually mean getting away, he'd probably have killed himself before getting in his acquaintance's car and heading out.

Actually, he probably wouldn't have. Kevin wasn't one to act on his despair. Not anymore, anyway. Fifteen years had beaten him down. Now, he preferred to let his dejection chew at him from the inside, was prone to submission over resistance. Put simply, he was a coward, and he knew it. When the realization had really first hit him--or more like, when he admitted it all to himself--he'd almost fallen apart for good. It'd been a long time ago, back when he was homeless in Indianapolis, right after he'd fled from Port Killdeer due to what he and the others had discovered. The world had fallen in on him, and he surely would've drowned himself in the crumble of concrete and self-loathing had he not met Lyra.

God, she'd been beautiful.

Kevin reached a viewing area. The path sloped up over the water; the beach virtually disappeared as the land rose over it, creating a low bluff that continued for the rest of the foreseeable walk. No one used to come here; it'd all just been grass and brush. But the land had been cleared for the path. It was nice. Descending the stairs to a small platform, Kevin sat on a bench there and looked out over the water.

He'd come here to get out of his house, to occupy himself. Walking was second nature to him. He hadn't had a car ever. Sometime back in high school, he'd learned how to drive, and he'd obtained his driver's license, but he'd never had the kind of cash or credit to purchase a vehicle or insurance, and there'd always been someone around to catch a ride from.

When he'd first met Lyra, he'd been embarrassed about the state of his life, but she'd been entirely accepting of who he was, where he was, because she hadn't been any better off--they'd both been in a shelter, she running from abuse and addiction. None of the details mattered to Kevin, anymore, under what exact circumstances they'd met or how he'd been encouraged for her sake to pull himself together if only to take care of her. They'd gotten on so well, almost as if she'd been able to read his heart; they'd accepted one another in all their confusion and dispassion, tapped into the ache of one another's pasts without requiring particulars, and the physical connection they'd found almost immediately was intensified by the emotional connection. He'd begun working, eventually set up in an apartment. They'd talked about a future together--marriage, even! Kevin had never thought of himself as the marrying type. He'd seen what it'd done to his parents, to so many others' parents, and yet Lyra made him believe anything was possible. He'd been devoted to her; she'd needed him, would've been lost without him. That had been the best part of their relationship--he'd mattered to her. She'd assured him of that, day in and day out. She'd been a perfect doll, and he'd been her guy. Lyra had called him her everything.

But apparently everything hadn't meant much of anything. Lyra had left him out of nowhere, not met him one night, not returned his calls, nothing. He'd been sure she was dead or in trouble, went to the police and everything, but they couldn't find her, and then one day about two weeks later, she'd shown up and told him she'd met someone else, someone who could better support her.

And that was that.

Why it was coming back now, Kevin couldn't say, but it created a dull ache in his chest, a pain he'd thought was burnt to ash and incapable of reviving. Perhaps being home recalled to him what might have been, and yet, even as he sat there pondering the past, gazing out over that impossibly blue water, Kevin knew at his very core that whatever whirlwind he'd spun with Lyra, it had always been dust. None of it could've worked out. His course was set, had been set since that particular summer. He couldn't escape what he knew was coming, and after Lyra had left him, he'd been more sure of that than ever.

Oh, but she'd been absolutely gorgeous. How she'd moved, her body small and agile, her skin smooth as satin, her dark dreads, an adorable septum piercing and rainbow of tattoos pretending at toughness. The routine women he'd cycled through his bed for years after Lyra hadn't been close in comparison.

Heather. Kevin sighed. Whatever they'd been doing . . . he wasn't sure what it was, only that it'd made some weird sense in his senseless existence. He'd liked to have said that Heather deserved more than him, that everyone deserved more than him, but the whole concept of deserving was fallacious; it implied there was some sense of reason or justice, some entity beyond them all that meted out what was deserved, good or bad. The notion that people merited any compensation for their actions was juvenile; the notion that any cosmic power beyond human comprehension cared what happened to them was cruel.

Nevertheless, Kevin wondered how Heather was faring with her family. He knew he'd see her again, that it was just a waiting game, now, until Crystal contacted him. He hoped it was soon, because he had no idea what to do with himself now that he was back. There was no point in pretending, no reason to go about making any sort of plans. He was at the mercy of others, of fate, of that unfathomable, impossible thing that lay dark and presumably latent at the very heart of all of everything.

He ran his fingers through his black, unkempt hair, reached into his pocket for a cigarette and his lighter, and tried to clear his mind of the past and present, to take in the sunshine and the clean air--lake air was so different than any other air, really, so pure. He'd probably head back after this smoke. There wasn't any reason to continue down the path. He knew what lay farther down that way: houses. Big wooden houses. Jeremiah had lived over there. He recalled how they'd met there, once, long ago, when everything had still been an adventure and they'd believed they could be the detectives to solve a murder mystery, something to tell future grandchildren. Jeremiah's family had been . . . odd. Very religious, crucifixes and icons everywhere. And good God, the kid's father! Jeremiah had hurried him past, mentioned something about an accident, but the man had looked like something out of a horror movie, no face or anything. Kevin wondered whether he was still alive.

Inhaling, leaning forward, Kevin caught sight of the pebbled shoreline, which hadn't been visible when he had his back against the bench, and he saw that something had washed up, there. His initial thought was that it was a bleached chunk of driftwood, not uncommon, but then the water flushed up gently around it and moved the thing in such a way that it gave Kevin pause.

So he stood, and he tossed his cigarette butt, and he swung a leg up over the observation platform's railing. Stumbling a bit down the steep incline, about fifteen feet, Kevin approached the thing. Sunlight pressed against him, here, full and strong, and the water glittered merrily as the light danced across it. Ignoring the inch of water that slithered up around his shoes, that wet the hem of his jeans, Kevin approached the object of interest. Had he been observing himself, he would've noted how much louder his breathing became, how his hands trembled as, with his tennis shoe, he rolled over the dead body of a waterlogged white cat.