She pulled the covers off the bed and sat on the floor wrapped up in them, staring out the window. The view wasn’t much, just the parking lot and the dumpy strip mall next door, and a few houses and then the open fields started, the rolling hills all the way out to the horizon. She didn’t see a lake, but somewhere the lake was out there too, and Taylor was there, trapped in the black water below the ice. That was all she knew right now. She should have asked Paul more. He was lying on the ground and Colleen was talking to the girl, almost shaking her, asking her what her precious little darling had done, ready to clean up the latest mess he’d made. “How?” she’d finally asked him, after the first wave had knocked her senseless, after the snow had soaked through the knees of her pants, and her throat was raw from screaming. She’d crawled over to him and demanded to know, just as the ambulances were cresting the hill, their lights strobing across the snowy lake.
