The Lake of Lost Girls

by Katherine Greene

“It’s hard to escape the memory of someone who has become perfect through the very act of remembering them.”

If you weren’t from Mt. Randall, you’d never find it. But if you were from Mt. Randall, you knew it well.

So the killer is from Mt. Randall.

trying to remember what it felt like to be young and carefree. Before life led you down ugly paths and the people you loved twisted into someone unrecognizable.

I wished so much that I could remember her better.

And it was in the way that he loved me—a superficial kind of affection—never the deep, abiding tenderness I longed for from my father. In some ways, it felt like he was too scared to love me fully in case something happened to me, too. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

Jess and Dad had been so much more, and it was hard knowing I’d never have it. In many ways, I never felt good enough because I wasn’t her. His perfect Jess.

Dad loved me in his own way, but it was more than obvious as the years went by that it wasn’t as much as he loved Jess.

I could never summon my anger when it counted. It only ever came out in wild, unpredictable ways. But the people, the men, who deserved my rage, never received it. I was conditioned to want their regard. Their tenderness. As much as I loathed to admit it, I would turn myself inside out in my desire to claim it.