Free Cancel the Wedding by Carolyn T. Dingman Page B

I feel responsible since I was the one who broke the news to you about the lake. You’re kind of my problem now.”
    I laughed. “Sorry about that. I can be a lot of trouble.”
    â€œThat’s the impression that I’m getting.” He teased. “See you in a bit.”

SIX
    Logan and I got to the library as soon as it opened and Elliott was already there sitting at a long table in front of a laptop computer. I set up my stash across from him and organized everything around my seat to my very specific liking. I looked up and saw that Elliott and Logan were staring at me.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    They both started laughing. It’s not like I had researcher’s OCD or anything. So I had a few pens and some paper? Maybe a notebook, with some pockets and dividers. I didn’t pull out a label maker or anything.
    Elliott poked at the pens, unsettling their straight line. “Do you ever get a wild hair and write outside the lines?”
    â€œOh okay, mocking from the guy who writes notes on his hand.” I lined the pens back up.
    Where was the old librarian saying shush when you needed her? This particular librarian, whose name was Bitsy—yes, Bitsy, swear to God—couldn’t have been older than thirty and never once told either one of them to shush. In fact, at the moment she was shouting directions about the wireless printer from her desk at the front of the room.
    Logan plopped down next to me and booted up her laptop. “I think we should look for stuff about the lake first, right? I mean that’s just like so weird that there’s all that stuff under there. Graham said there’s an old church steeple from the town that’s still floating around in the lake.”
    I glanced over at her. “When did you talk to Graham?” She ignored me.
    Elliott shook his head. “That thing sank to the bottom years ago. It’s become a bit of a local legend and ghost story. Kids on the lake say they can hear the bells ringing at night.”
    I shuddered involuntarily at the thought of some haunted church steeple floating around the water ringing its bells. Or even worse, sitting at the bottom of the dark lake looking up at you through the silty, green water.
    Logan and I searched the Internet for information while Elliott dug into the newspaper archives. After a few hours we had an emerging picture of the lake and its formation.
    In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of the New Deal. The TVA was tasked to develop solutions to problems occurring down the length of the Tennessee River valley. They were innovative in finding new ways to deal with power production, river navigation, and flood control.
    The creation of man-made lakes along the river and its tributaries provided jobs in that desperate time of the Depression. The dams also provided power production and ushered a vast number of people into the modern world with electricity.
    The dam at Lake Huntley was the last one built before the TVA switched their efforts to nuclear power plants. Poor Huntley, the last kill before the carnivore went vegetarian.
    In 1963 the dam was approved and construction began on the diversion tunnels. There were some poignant photographs of the town of Huntley after it had been abandoned. Although to call it a town was a bit of an insult to the word. Huntley was merely a crossroads with six or seven buildings near the intersection. The largest was a hardware store, which seemed to double as the town’s soda fountain and possibly the post office. There were also two churches and an old storefront that looked like a dress shop. A few other buildings rounded out the tiny town but we couldn’t make out what they had been.
    In the black-and-white photos the signage was being taken down, and in the foreground one of the wooden churches had been jacked up onto a flatbed truck and was in the process of being moved. In the next set of