The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

43 : Blaire

B L A I R E

•

Hours after Jacob's outburst, I'm still shaken. His rage, his accusations, the hatred in his eyes – I can't forget that. I can't let go of how angered he was by my very existence, my place in this town. I almost asked Sukie for a lift home, after telling the others the whole story; Sara whipped up a vat of yakisoba for lunch and came out to sit with us as I explained what Sukie and I figured out.

Turns out it's pretty draining, repeating the story over and over when it hurts so much. The food helped.

But I didn't ask Sukie to drive me home in the end. I need the walk to clear my head, but when I leave her house, after she holds me and we kiss and she promises to call me later, my feet carry me in the opposite direction. I don't even know where this road leads, what there is at this end of town, but I plug in my earphones and load up my next episode of The Anchor Lakey, even though it's so far behind what we now know.

I'm not paying attention to where my feet are going. The road is carrying me, winding towards some unknown destination that I hope isn't Jacob's house, and I am powerless to resist the call of the wild.

Wispy clouds disperse. Hot sun beats down on my face, warming my scalp and no doubt burning my exposed arms, and sweat starts to prickle on my forehead as I power on down the winding lane.

And then it comes to an end. This road leads to one place and one place only: the church. The one that collapsed in 1694, killing everybody inside – including Nicholas and Isabel White, husband and daughter of Temperance Key's granddaughter. This cemetery is the one that was partially buried in 1669, an avalanche that killed Temperance's grandson, Michael Key, and his mother, Norma. This is where so many of my family members are buried, their bodies laid to rest in the town that killed them.

The trees, thick with fresh spring leaves, provide much needed shade as I walk around the church, the one that has stood solidly ever since it was rebuilt in 1697. It's still more than three hundred years old, the bricks covered in moss and bright flowers sprouting up the walls; stained glass windows glow under the sun, warm reds and oranges and blues that look like little fires.

It's a beautiful day. One of so few nice days I've had since I moved here, and it's been almost six weeks since I swapped London smog for a Scottish loch. A crisp breeze waves through the leaves, raking my hair away from my face as I follow the unofficial yet well-worn path that weaves through the graves. Some are overgrown, decades since anyone last visited them, dating back to the 1800s. Even earlier, too.

I spot one from 1752, and I follow a line of crumbling, battered headstones – most of them are illegible, eroded by rain – until I find one from 1769. The solar eclipse. The grave belongs to Rebecca Smith, a name I've seen in Elizabeth's book and in my family tree. She was Simon's daughter, Temperance's great-great-great-great granddaughter, only five years old when she died on the shore of Anchor Lake.

Here lieth the body of Rebecca Smith, who died June 4th 1769 in the 5th year of her age. Daughter of Simon and Matilda. Sister of Emily.

Not all of the graves are here. There's nothing from before 1769 that I can find, or at least identify, and I highly doubt anyone would have wanted to memorialise Temperance Key. I run my fingers over the worn inscription on Rebecca's grave, and I keep walking.

It takes a while to find Emily's, fifty years after her sister's death. She's buried with her son, Oscar, one of the six children killed by a freak lightning storm, and I have to take a moment to gather myself. Emily lost her six-year-old to one of Anchor Lake's tragedies, just like Elizabeth did, and she lost her life twenty-five years later.