Still Waters: A Novella

It’s 1980. And there’s a church steeple at the bottom of Lake Lanier.

Sixteen-year-old Keisha Montgomery sees it on her first night at the lake house — straight lines where straight lines shouldn’t be, sixty yards from the dock, twenty feet down. Her parents call it a summer house. Her father, a civil rights attorney, says he’s there for work.

Then Mae appears on the dock.

She’s also sixteen. Cotton dress, bare feet. Dead since 1912.

Mae has been waiting decades for someone willing to sit still long enough to see her. She has a story to tell — about a boy who told a lie, about Night Riders carrying torches, about a thousand Black people driven from their homes, and about the sheriff who flooded their graves to bury the evidence.

Neurodiverse before anyone knew what that meant, Keisha must decide what to do with the truth. Because the sheriff is still alive. His grandson is the boy asking her to the drive-in. And the entire county is built on bones nobody wants to name.

Some secrets refuse to stay buried.