House on Lake Hawthorne
No one can say Evan Hewitson did not lead a good life. The only child of a renowned criminal defense attorney and a managing editor for one of the top-selling fashion magazines in the world, he had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. His formative years were spent at the best private schools in New England. To him, childhood summer vacations did not mean a week at Cape Cod or a trip to Disneyland. They were entire months in France, England, Italy and as far away as Australia and Japan.
Life continued to be good for Evan once he crossed the bridge from adolescence to adulthood. After graduating from prep school, he attended Harvard where, rather than study law like his father, he pursued a career in medicine. He married well and established a successful medical practice. Although the marriage produced no children, neither he nor his wife seemed to mind. Given his hectic work schedule and his wife's many social commitments, there were not enough hours left in the day to raise a child.
Then one evening, shortly after the couple's twentieth wedding anniversary, Dr. Hewitson was in his office at the end of the day, sitting at his desk, staring out the window, apparently in no rush to go home. Mitchell Tunstall, his partner in the busy orthopedic practice, walked past the open door and stopped to speak to him.
"It's getting late. Are you going to pull an all-nighter?"
"No, I'll be leaving in a little while."
"Is something wrong?" Mitchell asked, taking a seat on the opposite side of the desk in a chair usually reserved for patients.
"I don't know," Evan confessed. "I can't put my finger on it, but something is not right. Do you know what I mean?"
"Not really."
"Say someone works in Manhattan and takes the Staten Island Ferry to work, passing by the Statue of Liberty twice a day, five times a week for x number of years. One day the statue miraculously changes. Now the torch is in her left hand and the tablet in her right. He looks up and notices something off kilter but doesn't quite know what it is."
"What in your life is off kilter?"
"Everything. My life, my career, my marriage."
"Whoa. Hold on a second, partner," Mitchell laughed. "My field is orthopedic surgery, not psychiatry."
"Maybe the trouble is not in my head. Perhaps what I need is an optometrist," Evan joked, getting up from his chair and reaching for his jacket on the coat rack.
The two physicians left the medical building, walked out to the parking lot and headed toward their cars.
"Have a good night, Mitch," Evan called. "I'll see you in the morning."
Dr. Tunstall returned the greeting in his usual affable manner, but as he watched his partner drive away, a frown appeared on his handsome face.
Two months later, Evan, still unable to identify what was wrong in his life, decided he needed to find a place where he could get away from it all. It was as though he had lived his entire life on an interstate highway, barreling along at eighty miles an hour. With his fiftieth birthday approaching, he felt the need to pull off at the next exit and take a quiet, leisurely drive along the scenic route.
The answer came to him when he visited the hospital to check on the recovery of a patient who had recently undergone a laminectomy.
"Any pain?" he asked after reading the man's chart.
"A little," replied the patient, a systems analyst at Morgan Stanley, "but nothing I can't handle."
"You seem to be healing quickly. I think we can get you out of here in a couple of days and start you on physical therapy."
"Good because even as we speak my wife is at our lake house preparing everything for my convalescence."
"You have a house on a lake?" Evan casually asked as he made a few notations on the chart.
"We used to have a place on Cape Cod when the kids were still at home, but after they went off to college, we sold it and bought the one on the lake. We couldn't take all that traffic going out to the Cape every weekend. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Being out on the water on a summer's night, not a sound except for crickets and birds, is pure heaven!"
His rounds at the hospital concluded, Evan Hewitson got into his Mercedes and headed back to his office. As he sat in traffic, listening to the clamor of the city around him, he recalled the conversation he'd had with the patient.
I could use a little slice of heaven myself, he thought.
By the time he pulled into his reserved parking spot in front of his office, the doctor had already decided to phone a realtor and begin searching for a secluded home with lake-front property.
* * *
"What did you say the name was? Lake Hawthorne? I've never heard of it," Evan said as he and Laverne Shuler, the real estate agent, were driving west on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
"It's not a very large lake, but it has great natural beauty."
"What about the house?"
"I think it's just what you've been looking for. The nearest neighbor is roughly three-quarters of a mile away. You can see their house from your second-story window, but unless they're having a loud party or running a chainsaw, you won't hear them."
This was the third house that Laverne was showing the doctor. The first was in a trendy, upscale lake development for city people who liked to have barbecues on the weekends, and the second was in a gated community that catered to families and had a high population of children. Neither place had appealed to him.
"It certainly is off the beaten track," Evan observed as the realtor drove along the narrow, winding road through the thickly wooded countryside. "How do they take care of the roads here in the winter?"
"To be honest, most people close up their lake houses at the end of November and open them again in the spring, but there is a plow that comes through here when it snows."
"I suppose if I decided to take the place, I could buy a vehicle with four-wheel drive."
When Laverne pulled into the circular driveway in front of the house, Evan's initial impression was that there was nothing remarkable about the place. It was a basic bungalow, built in the Fifties, with a screened-in porch added during the Sixties and a garage in the Seventies. Despite its age, it was in good shape.
"The owners completely renovated the kitchen two years ago," the agent explained. "All new appliances, new cabinetry, new tiled floor."
The doctor's opinion of the interior was the same as that of the exterior. It was a nice, well-kept house, but not one that would ever appear in the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. It was not until Laverne opened the rear sliding glass doors and Evan stepped out onto the deck that the house-hunter saw the home's major selling point.
"This is absolutely beautiful!" the doctor exclaimed, enjoying the panoramic view of the lake.
"It's like we always say in the real estate profession: location, location, location."
"I can see my wife and I coming up here on weekends, sitting in that hot tub with a glass of wine, looking out over the water."
Laverne nodded her head, deliberately not speaking so that the potential buyer could fully appreciate the peace and quiet the lake house offered. Her strategy apparently worked. After several minutes of pleasant silence, the doctor turned to her with a look of dreamy contentment on his face.
"I'll take it," he said.
There was no attempt to haggle over the price of the house since the buyer could easily afford to pay the full asking price in cash.
* * *
The day Evan Hewitson closed the sale on his lake house proved to be a watershed moment in the doctor's life. Becoming the owner of a vacation property was but one change on that eventful day. In importance, it paled in comparison to the discovery that his wife had been having an affair with his partner. The fact that the two people closest to him had betrayed him did not bother him as much as the fact that he had not suspected a thing. Their relationship had taken him completely by surprise. Thinking back over the past two years, Evan couldn't recall a single word or look that had passed between the two that would have alerted him.
Have I been so involved in my work that I've become oblivious to all else around me? he wondered.
Being a fair-minded man, he accepted part of the blame for the problems in the marriage. In a magnanimous mood, he might even have forgiven both Alanna and Mitchell and kept his marital and business partnerships intact. However, his wife did not seek forgiveness. She wanted a divorce so that she could marry the man she now loved.
"I'm sorry it turned out this way," she apologized after Evan packed his suitcases at her request. "I still care about you, just not enough to keep the marriage going. Don't worry about the divorce. I won't try to bleed you dry. Mitchell has more than enough money for the two of us to start a new life in Seattle. He's already found a good position with a top-notch hospital there."
"Then I suppose there's nothing else to be said," Evan concluded without bitterness. "I'll phone my lawyer in the morning and let him handle everything."
With a final goodbye and good luck from both sides, a twenty-year-old marriage came to an end.
During the following month, Evan stayed in a room at the Hilton. While he was there, he thought about the direction he wanted his life to take. After much consideration, he decided not to buy out Mitchell Tunstall's portion of the practice. Instead, they would sell it in its entirely.
"What are you going to do?" Mitchell asked after the two doctors signed over their lucrative medical practice to a new group of orthopedists.
"I don't know. I thought I'd take a few months off, enjoy a life of leisure for a while and then decide what I want to be when I grow up," he joked.
"You're keeping that lake house, aren't you?"
"Yes. I've decided to make it my primary residence for now. I've had a decorator up there, making everything ready for me to move in. I assume you'll be heading west soon."
"I'll be going out there in three weeks, and Alanna will join me when things are settled here."
Although Evan bore Mitchell no ill will, he found it uncomfortable to hear his former friend and business partner speak so nonchalantly about the woman who was still legally his wife. At a loss of what to say given the awkward circumstances of their parting, Evan simply raised his right arm for a handshake.
"It's been nice working with you, Mitch," he said and then walked away, bringing to an end another chapter in the book that was his life.
* * *
Despite the fact that he had not been to the lake house since his initial viewing with the real estate agent, Evan had the sensation of coming home when he pulled into the circular driveway. As he inserted the key into the front door lock, he was not sure what to expect. He had given the designer carte blanche to furnish and decorate the place. Since it was to be his domicile on a full-time basis—at least for the foreseeable future—he hoped she had not chosen a modern décor that would feel more like a hotel than a home. When he saw the warm, rich tones of the mahogany furniture, he smiled with relief.
Well done, he thought. I can be quite comfortable here.
After putting his suitcases down beside the front door, he walked up the stairs to the larger of the two bedrooms. It, too, was furnished with traditional pieces. He opened the drapes that partially covered the large bay window, giving him an unobstructed view of the lake.
This is the reason I bought the house, he thought as he watched the sun glistening on the water.
After enjoying the view for several minutes, he went to his car, got the bags of groceries out of his trunk and brought them into the kitchen. He made himself a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee, which he took out onto the deck.
This is the life! he thought, eating a late breakfast as he sat back on the padded lounge chair.
Evan suddenly wondered what it would be like during the winter months. Would the isolation affect his mind? As his brain conjured up imagines of an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in The Shining, he spotted a movement on the surface of the water. He put down his cup and stared out at the lake. Someone was swimming. Evan naturally assumed the swimmer was his neighbor, but from a distance, he could not tell if the person was male or female, young or old.
There's a hardy soul! he thought. It's only the first week of June. That water must be damned cold.
The morning after Evan finished unpacking his belongings, there was a knock on his front door. He opened it to find a gray-haired woman carrying a covered cake dish.
"Hello," she said with a friendly smile. "I'm Nora Willet. I live in the house next door and have come to welcome you to the neighborhood—what there is of it."
"Won't you come in, Mrs. Willet? Can I get you a cup of coffee?"
"Thanks. I hope you like chocolate layer cake."
"I love it."
The two neighbors had a pleasant conversation out on the deck over coffee and cake. Nora told Evan that she and her husband were retired and lived at Lake Hawthorne three seasons out of the year, spending their winters in sunny Florida.
"Is your other home on the Atlantic or on the Gulf Coast?" Evan asked.
"Neither. We're inland."
"I'm surprised. I saw either you or your husband swimming in the lake yesterday, so I naturally assumed you ...."
"I don't know who you saw, Dr. Hewitson, but it wasn't me or Hank. We may live on a lake, but neither of us knows how to swim."
* * *
Over the next two days, there was a steady rain that kept Evan inside his house. He took advantage of the bad weather to begin reading Moby-Dick, something he had never gotten around to doing during his school years.
"Call me Ishmael," he read aloud from the first chapter. "All right. Ishmael it will be."
By the time Melville introduced the character Queequeg in the third chapter, Evan wanted a break from reading. He walked to the window and looked out at the raindrops bouncing off the wet deck. His eyes then travelled beyond the deck railing to the lake. Something was moving in the water.
Someone is swimming, he realized. If it's not my neighbor, who is it? The only other houses around are on the opposite side of the lake.
Evan turned away from the window, went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and got himself a can of Coca-Cola. Then he returned to the living room where he picked up the novel he had been reading. All thoughts of the mysterious swimmer left his mind as he immersed himself in the world of Ishmael, Captain Ahab and Starbuck, the first mate.
On Evan's third day since picking up Moby-Dick, the rain clouds passed. Believing he now knew everything there was to know about whales and the whaling industry thanks to Herman Melville, he put aside his novel and ventured out into the sunshine. Wearing an old pair of galoshes, he carefully made his way through the muddy back yard to the water's edge. There, he found a path that went along the perimeter of the lake and was struck with a sudden urge to go exploring.
The doctor had been walking for more than an hour and was about to turn around and go back home when he saw a woman's head emerge from the water. He was stunned by her sudden appearance.
"Hello, there," he called, fearful that the woman might be drowning. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Good," the doctor said with relief. "For a minute there I thought I was going to have to dive in and save you."
"That won't be necessary."
When Evan drew closer, he noticed the woman—somewhere in her early thirties—was strikingly beautiful even with soaking wet hair matted against her head and without makeup.
"My name's Evan Hewitson," he introduced himself. "I live in that house over there."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Felicity Pelham."
"You're the one I've seen swimming here several times this week."
It was a statement, not a question.
"Most likely. I swim here all the time."
"Would you like to come up to my house? I can make us both a cup of coffee?"
"I'm sorry. I can't come out of the water?"
"Oh, why is that?"
"Because I'm not wearing a bathing suit," she replied with a mischievous grin.
"Forgive me," Evan apologized, his face reddening with embarrassment. "I didn't mean to intrude."
"Don't worry about it," Felicity said and with a parting smile dove beneath the surface of the water.
* * *
Liberated from the pressures of his job and the social obligations of his marriage, Dr. Hewitson was free to enjoy a simple, quiet life of leisure. Living in the lake house, he was no longer subservient to time. He followed no set schedule, going to bed when he felt tired, waking without an alarm clock, eating when he was hungry. Many people would soon grow bored with such an existence, but not Evan Hewitson. It was a lifestyle he genuinely enjoyed.
By the time the summer came to an end, he had not only finished Moby-Dick, but he had gone on to read Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Scarlet Letter, Rob Roy, Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He had also completed nine jigsaw puzzles and watched all five seasons of The Wire and all six seasons of Lost on his DVD player.
His life was not totally sedentary, however. He walked at least a mile every day that it didn't rain. On those days when the ground was dry and he strolled along the side of the lake, he waved and called a friendly greeting to Felicity Pelham, who always seemed to be out swimming. But since she obviously did not believe in bathing suits, he never got close enough to hold a decent conversation.
This in no way means he was lacking human companionship. At least once a week, he had dinner with Nora Willet and her husband, Hank, alternating locations between their house and his own. Every Saturday night he drove into town and spent the evening at Marlowe's, the local watering hole, where he was soon numbered among the regulars.
One evening in mid-October, when the fall foliage was at its peak, Evan walked to the Willets' house, looking forward to the homemade lasagna Nora had promised to make. As he sat down at the couple's dining room table, Hank opened a bottle of merlot.
"We're having wine? What's the occasion?"
"I'm afraid this will be our last dinner together for a while," Nora replied. "We're closing up the house on Sunday and heading south."
"So soon? Winter is still two months away."
"We always spend Thanksgiving in Florida with Nora's sister," Hank explained. "And it usually takes us at least three weeks to get down there."
"Are you walking?" Evan laughed. "No one drives that slowly!"
"We stop at a number of places along the way," Nora said. "We spend a few days in New York, Alexandria, Myrtle Beach, Savannah—all the way down the East Coast to Florida."
"Sounds like a lot of fun," the doctor declared, as he reached for the bottled salad dressing. "I'll certainly miss the both of you while you're gone."
"We'll miss you, too. But before you know it, we'll be back."
"What do you plan on doing with yourself all winter?" Hank inquired.
"Except for the evenings I spent with you and your wife, I assume my life will go on as it has all summer. I still have a stack of books to read, puzzles to complete, DVDs to watch. If the roads aren't too bad, I'll still be able to drive into town and see my friends at Marlowe's."
"Haven't you ever considered dating again?" Nora asked.
"Hell, no! Pardon my language. The last thing I want is to get mixed up in another relationship. One failed marriage is enough for me."
"Who said anything about marriage? I was talking about your finding a nice woman to keep you company, someone to take to dinner and go to the movies with."
"Now, Nora," her husband cautioned, "leave the man alone. If he's not ready to dive into the water again so soon after his divorce, don't you try to push him."
"I only said ...."
"Speaking of diving into the water," Evan quickly interrupted, hoping to put an end to the current topic of conversation, "maybe I'll finally get to make friends with Felicity Pelham—assuming she's still here in the winter."
An uncomfortable silence descended on the room as a look of concern passed between Nora and her husband.
"What's wrong? My intentions are pure; I assure you. I'm talking innocent friendship, not a torrid love affair."
His hosts remained speechless despite Evan's attempts at humor.
"Did I say something I shouldn't have? Is Felicity Pelham persona non grata at casa del Willet?"
"It's a subject we don't joke about," Nora explained, unwilling to look her guest in the eye.
"I'm terribly sorry. I certainly didn't mean to offend either of you."
"You didn't offend us," Hank said. "Let's just forget all about it, shall we? Pass me another slice of garlic bread, will you, Nora?"
The three friends then discussed the Willets' upcoming trip and the places they planned to stop along the way. They joked and laughed as usual, but Evan was all too aware of the proverbial elephant in the room.
* * *
After Nora and Hank left for Florida, Evan began to experience the feeling of isolation. There were only sixteen houses on the lake. His and the Willets' were on the narrow southern shore, and the other fourteen were located in the wide northern portion, a more desirable area because of its large manmade sandy beach. In the four months he had lived there, the doctor never met anyone from the north shore.
Then, with the autumn temperatures steadily dropping, Evan drove into town one afternoon to purchase firewood from a local hardware and garden supply store.
"Two cords ought to do it for now," he told the clerk. "My main source of heat is oil, but a fire in the fireplace makes the house cozy."
"I know what you mean," the clerk replied. "There's nothing like warming your hands near an open fire when the temperatures are down in the single digits."
"This is my first winter here, so I'm not sure what to expect yet."
"Where do you live?"
"On Frog Hollow Road which is on Lake Hawthorne."
"You don't say?" the clerk asked in surprise. Then he called to a woman in the back of the store, "Nellie, here's one of our neighbors from across the lake."
After introductions were made, Nellie said, "I'm surprised to see you in here. I thought those two houses were closed up during the winter."
"The house next to mine is; the owners are retired and head south in the winter."
"More snowbirds, huh?" laughed Orrin Lumley, her husband, who was not a mere clerk but the owner of the establishment.
"As for me," Evan explained, "I moved to the lake in June."
"A weekend home?" Nellie asked.
"No. I live there, for now anyway. I'm at a stage in my life where I feel a change is needed, but I haven't quite decided yet what I want to do."
"You got a job?" Orrin asked. "Because if you don't I could always use help around here. This place isn't exactly Lowes or Home Depot, but I do a steady business."
"Thanks, but I just sold my medical practice and my Boston brownstone, so I'm pretty well set financially."
"I should think so," Orrin replied.
"You know," Nellie said, "it gets pretty lonely around here in the winter. Why don't you and your wife stop by some evening for dinner? We close up here at five during the off-season."
"Thanks. I'd love to. I'm no longer married, so I live alone. And now with the Willets away, I'm beginning to feel like the last man on earth," Evan laughed. "I'll bet even the redheaded swimmer in the lake is about to desert me."
Nellie and Orrin's reaction to his mention of Felicity Pelham was similar to that of the Willets. They turned and looked at each other with a mixture of surprise and uneasiness on their faces. When another customer approached her husband, Nellie took Evan into the backroom to talk in private.
"What do you about Felicity Pelham?" she asked.
"Not much. I see her swimming in the lake all the time, rain or shine, warm temperatures or cold. I asked my neighbors about her once, but neither of them wanted to talk about her."
"You've actually seen her? You're sure it wasn't a reflection on the water or some other trick of the imagination?"
"Of course, I've seen her—many times, in fact. I've even spoken to her. That's how I know her name."
Nellie's eyes widened with wonder.
"You spoke to her!"
"What is she a distant cousin of the Loch Ness Monster?" Evan laughed.
"You really don't know the story of Felicity Pelham?"
"No. I never heard the name until she told it to me back in June. Why? Who is she?"
"Felicity Pelham was accused of witchcraft back in 1690. To determine her guilt or innocence, the local magistrate ordered her put to the water test. The Puritans believed that because witches spurned the sacrament of baptism water would reject their bodies and prevent them from submerging. According to this logic, an innocent person would sink like a stone, but a witch would simply float on the surface."
"Either way ...."
"... it didn't end well for the accused."
"What happened to Felicity Pelham?"
"According to eyewitness accounts taken at the time, she was stripped, bound and thrown into Lake Hawthorne. Her head immediately disappeared beneath the surface. It was common practice for a rope to be tied around an accused witch's waist so that the body could be extracted from the lake. However, when the magistrate finally ordered the sheriff to pull her out, there was nothing at the end of the rope. Felicity was never seen again."
* * *
Before returning to his house, Evan stopped at the county library and checked out several books on local legends. Once home, he popped a frozen pizza into the microwave, poured himself a glass of fresh apple cider and sat down at the kitchen table to eat and read. He took a bite of his pizza and then opened to the index of the first book.
Felicity Pelham was mentioned on pages 118 to 125. Those eight pages essentially told the same story that Nellie had relayed to him. In fact, after reading the details given in the first two books, Evan learned little more about Felicity other than the fact that she was an unmarried woman and the daughter of the village blacksmith. There was no mention in either text about who had accused her of witchcraft or why.
After finishing his lunch, Evan took the remaining three books with him into the living room. He sat down in his rocking chair and opened the next one, which, to his delight, included an entire chapter on the accused witch. According to the author, the unfortunate woman was denounced by the village minister who claimed she had attempted to bewitch several male members of his congregation.
And they drowned the poor woman for that? the doctor thought with the contempt most modern people feel toward the harsh Puritan beliefs that sent many an innocent man and woman to the gallows or to the stake.
The fourth book offered no additional information, but the fifth and final tome was to present the most thorough description of the events that occurred back in 1690. Of particular interest to Evan was the name of the magistrate who ordered Felicity Pelham to be put to the water test: Miles Branford. Branford was an old New England name going back to the early settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was also his mother's maiden name.
I'm a descendent of Horatio Branford, the first Branford to come to the New World. I must be related to the magistrate in some way.
A quick visit to a genealogical website confirmed his suspicions. Miles was the third surviving son of Horatio Branford and Evan's tenth great-grandfather. This revelation required a drink, and something stronger than apple cider. He got a bottle of Jameson out of his cabinet and poured himself a shot.
"Wait a minute!" he said aloud, putting the shot glass down on the kitchen counter. "What's wrong with me? I saw a woman swimming in a lake—that's all. Despite her name—if in fact it was her name, and she wasn't pulling my leg—I'm sure she's got nothing to do with this witchcraft legend. After all, that was more than three hundred years ago."
Still, as much as he tried to convince himself to see the logic of the situation, a nagging doubt persisted.
The following day, Evan went out on his deck and gazed out over the lake. He stared for close to ten minutes before he saw a familiar movement. He ran down the steps and across the back yard to the edge of the water.
"Felicity!" he shouted. "Where are you? I want to talk to you."
He heard a splashing sound and saw a series of ripples spread out over the water, but no one rose to the surface.
* * *
Throughout the months of November and December, Evan continued to take his daily walks, weather permitting. Although he often saw disturbances in the water, he never encountered Felicity Pelham in the lake.
"Do you really think anyone would be crazy enough to go swimming in this cold?" he asked himself.
At the end of December, he flew to California to spend the holidays with his sister and brother-in-law in San Francisco. As much as he enjoyed being with the only family he had left, he was glad to return to his house on Lake Hawthorne. As he sat in front of the crackling fire, with a January storm rattling his window shutters, the doctor couldn't imagine ever living anywhere else again.
The following day was cold but sunny. The wintry mix that had fallen during the night coated the trees with ice that glistened in the sunlight.
It looks like a winter wonderland out there, he thought, admiring the scenery from his bedroom window.
Evan put on his warmest winter jacket, hat, gloves and boots and went out for a walk. A layer of ice covered the lake, and he wondered if it was thick enough for ice-skating. He fondly remembered that when he was a child, his parents used to take him to the Boston Common Frog Pond to skate, but he hadn't been on the ice in years.
As he walked through the snow, reminiscing about his childhood days, Evan heard a sound coming from the direction of the lake. He walked to the water's edge and listened. There was a distinct tapping sound. Leaning forward, he brushed away the powdery snow. Through the translucent layer of ice, he saw the face of a woman in the water beneath.
Someone fell in the lake and is trapped beneath the ice, he thought, jumping into action. I must break it and get her out before she drowns.
He turned and found a large rock. When he brought it down on the ice, it cracked and shattered into hundreds of pieces. The woman, apparently still alive, climbed out and stood naked in front of her stunned rescuer.
"You are the descendent of Miles Branford," she said. "The one I have waited for all these centuries."
"Who are you?" the doctor managed to ask.
"As I told you when we first met, I am Felicity Pelham."
"That's impossible! She died more than three hundred years ago."
"I was arrested, questioned and tortured and then thrown into the lake. Had I come to the surface, I would have been hanged."
Evan shook his head, trying to deny her words.
"It's all true. How else can you explain why you've always seen me in this water but never seen me go in or come out? Or how I could survive below the ice, without freezing or drowning?"
Finally, the doctor could no longer ignore the evidence of his own eyes.
"I'm profoundly sorry for what they did to you, and for the role my ancestor played in unjustly persecuting you."
Felicity Pelham laughed, but it was an expression of malevolence rather than merriment.
"Who said my punishment was unjust? If I were a mere mortal woman, there would have been a dead body at the end of the rope, but there wasn't. No, I was guilty of the charges against me. Rather than face certain execution, I cast a spell on the lake to protect me from my enemies."
"Are you saying that you were, in fact, a witch?"
"Yes. Surely you didn't think that all those who were accused of witchcraft were innocent victims?"
"If what you say is true, why did you stay in the water so long? And why have you come out now?"
"Magic has strings attached. I had to remain in the lake until the spell could be broken by one of Miles Branford's bloodline—you."
"Well, I'm glad I could be of help. Even if you are a witch, spending three hundred years in a lake is payment for your crime."
"I'm glad you feel that way. Now I won't regret what I must do."
Despite the thick down parka, the wool hat and the insulated gloves, the frigid cold of the water took Evan Hewitson's breath away. As the weight of the wet garments and the heavy winter boots pulled him down, he watched in horror as the witch smiled down at him, closed the hole in the ice and walked away.
* * *
The Willets returned from Florida at the end of April, long after the last snows of winter had melted and the frozen lake thawed. As usual, it took some effort to make the house livable again.
"If you put the groceries away, I'll remove the dust covers from the furniture and vacuum the rugs," Hank offered.
Once all the rooms were cleaned, the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator stocked and the debris left over from the winter storms removed from the yard, Nora decided to invite Evan to their house for a homecoming dinner. She phoned several times a day over the next five days, but there was no answer. Finally, she took a walk to his house. No one was home.
When Hank spoke to the patrons who frequented Marlowe's, he learned that no one had seen Evan since January.
"I thought he'd be back come March," the bartender said, "but he wasn't. Most of his friends here think he just up and left. Probably couldn't take the solitude at the lake and returned to Boston."
The mailman disagreed with their conclusion.
"If he had decided to go back to the city, why didn't he ask the post office to forward his mail? There's something fishy going on here. If you ask me, someone is going to find his body out there in those woods someday."
After the doctor's car was discovered locked in his garage, there was a state police investigation into Evan's disappearance, but no leads were ever uncovered. His house on Lake Hawthorne was eventually boarded up, and his whereabouts remain a mystery to this day.
Every once in a while when Nora Willet sits out on her deck and admires the serene beauty of the blue lake glistening in the sun, she imagines she sees a man swimming just north of the area where her neighbor's vacant house stands boarded up.
"It's nothing," she tells herself and turns away. "Just an optical illusion."
Oddly enough, when Salem goes swimming, he does the dog paddle.
