Free Lake News by Barbara Delinsky

“What was that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat click.”
    â€œWhat click?”
    She listened again, heard nothing, sighed. “I must be paranoid.”
    â€œMaybe you should call Governor Dean.”
    â€œAnd have an aide tell me not to call there, either? I don’t think so. Why are reporters calling Lake Henry? What are they looking for?”
    â€œAnything they can take and twist to increase their sales. What do you want me to tell them?”
    â€œThat the story isn’t true. That Sullivan is lying. That I’m suing.” She paused and asked quietly, “What about Rose?”
    Rose was the last of the “Blake blooms,” as Lake Henry called the three Blake girls. She was a year younger than Poppy, which made her thirty-one. More relevant, she had been barely pubescent when Lily’s problems had peaked, too young to have a mind of her own, too young to question what her mother said and thought. Poppy had been far stronger even back then. She had been able to straddle the fence between Maidaand Lily, but Rose had been her mother’s mouthpiece from the start, and life’s circumstances had done nothing to discourage it.
    Rose was married, with three children. She and her husband, a childhood sweetheart whose family owned the local mill, lived on the piece of land that had been her wedding gift from the senior Blakes. Always close, Rose and Maida had grown even closer in the three years since Maida’s husband, the girls’ father, had died.
    Experience told Lily not to expect support from Rose. Still, hope lived eternal.
    Apparently it lived in Poppy, too, because—as though she had tried and failed—she said an uncharacteristically cross “Rose is an old poop. She doesn’t have an independent thought in her head. Don’t worry yourself about Rose, and as for the rest of town, I’ll tell them what to say if anyone calls. They don’t take kindly to having one of their own maligned.”
    â€œIt’s been years since I’ve been one of their own,” Lily reminded her. “They forced me out when I was barely eighteen.”
    â€œNo. You chose to leave.”
    â€œOnly because they made life unbearable for me.”
    â€œMom did that, Lily.”
    Lily sighed. She wasn’t up for arguing, not now. “I have to go to work.”
    â€œWill you keep me in the loop?” Poppy asked. “I know that Blakes have burned you, Lily, but I’m on your side.”

CHAPTER 4

    Lily refused to turn on the television. She didn’t want to see whether she was in the news, preferring to think that the story was already old. But when she reached the lobby dressed for work, the crowd of journalists outside was larger than ever. Dismayed, she took the elevator to the garage, but reporters were there, too, radioing her arrival to those in front.
    Resigned, since there was no other exit and she had to get to work, she lowered her eyes and walked quickly. She ignored the questions shot at her and kept her head down, letting her hair fall forward to shield her face from cameras. Still, the questions increased in volume and frequency, along with the click-and-advance of film as the media phalanx grew. The nearer she got to the club, the more they crowded in. When she was jostled so closely that it became hard to walk, she swung around with her elbows out.
    â€œLeave me alone,” she cried through the whirr of snapping cameras. She spun forward and continued on, but she might as well have saved her breath. The crowd came with her in a wave, badgering her with the samequestions, goading her into another outburst. She tried to blot them out by thinking of other things, but almost everything in her life just then led back to this moment, this trauma. She was close to tears when she finally reached the club.
    Mercifully, Dan was at the door, letting her in, shutting the press out. She went straight to his office, sank into a