Free Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake by Jennifer Allison Page B

castle.
    Gilda decided it was time to do some serious research.
I need to know who Dolores Lambert really was
, she thought.

11

Shadows
    G ilda felt small and chilled as she wandered under the vaulted ceilings in the school library, amidst carved, dark-wood paneling and shelf after shelf of books. The library was practically empty; nobody studied at the long, wooden tables that were dimly illuminated by small lamps.
    Gilda rang a little bell at the circulation desk, but nobody appeared. Just as she was about to leave, she spied a row of books behind the librarian’s desk with the title
Our Lady of Sorrows
on each spine. She was in luck; she had found the old school yearbooks.
    Gilda snuck behind the circulation desk and swiftly located the book from Dolores Lambert’s freshman year. She didn’t have to look far for information about Dolores because the first page of the yearbook was dedicated to her.
DOLORES LAMBERT:
We knew you only a short time, but your spirit lives on with us
.
    Beneath the dedication a picture of Dolores peered out of the yearbook with a hopeful, puppyish smile. She looked as if she expected a pat on the head for cooperating with the photographer. Her blond hair was parted in the center and secured with a plastic barrette over one prominent ear—the last, early-morning touch of a mother who felt compelled to overaccessorize her daughter on picture day. Gilda wondered why Dolores hadn’t had the sense to rebelliously remove that barrette.
    Gilda flipped through the rest of the yearbook, searching for more information about Dolores. The interior pictures of the yearbook made the school seem like a boisterous, happy-go-lucky place—a bubbly contrast with the somber tone of the opening dedication to a drowned girl. Gilda perused photos of girls wearing formal gowns at dances, leaning toward the camera like bouquets of colorful flowers. There were pictures of smiling girls throwing snowballs at one another, playing instruments, dressing in costume for the school play, washing cars to raise money for charity, leaning together to share gossip in the lunchroom. Each photograph had a lively caption: “Having fun the ‘Our Lady’ Way!” “No ‘Sorrows’ in this bunch!” “Fun with hats!” There was a slightly disturbing picture with the caption “ ‘Kick the Freshmen’ Day! Sophomore Louise Daly gives the boot to Freshman Priscilla Barkley”—a picture that made Gilda wonder whether it was still a tradition to “kick the freshmen.” The book culminated with glamorous, professional shots of each girl in the senior class with several pages dedicated to their lists of “Remember whens”:
    Remember when Lilly Fontaine had never been in a single car accident?
    Remember when we wrote “WE LOVE YOU” on the blackboard in Mr. Panté’s class, and he never even noticed?
    Remember when Sonya Roberts DIDN’T have a Mystic tan?
    Remember when Cathy Jones tried to paint her white BMW pink using a felt-tip pen?
    Where had Dolores Lambert fit into this school? There was little information on the freshman class and virtually no evidence of Dolores, who apparently hadn’t taken advantage of the clubs and extracurricular activities that were photographed. With the exception of her school picture, her identity remained mysterious.
    Eager to continue her research, Gilda logged on to a computer and located a newspaper article about Dolores’s death:
    Bloomfield Hills Community Shocked by Drowning
    Students and teachers of Our Lady of Sorrows, a private school in Bloomfield Hills, are in shock at the news of Dolores Lambert’s death by drowning on the eve of Thanksgiving.
    Parents of the deceased girl alerted police when their daughter failed to return home from school. “She had been really busy working on a big school project, and she often got home late due to her study groups and extracurricular activities, so we didn’t really worry until it was too late,” Mrs. Frieda Lambert lamented, wiping