Opposite the couch a wall with floating shelves held a flat-screen, a picture of their parents on their wedding day, and all kinds of computer equipment necessary for a one-woman office. Annette, a travel agent, had created an app for bed-and-breakfast inns around the world and, as such, had made a small fortune when she’d sold the app to a larger company. She still consulted and got some kind of fees off the app, and Bernadette thought she was financially set. At least for a while. Who would have guessed that her dreamer of a sister would become techno-savvy in her twenties?
Right now, though, her computer wiz of a sister was as freaked out as Bernadette. Maybe more so.
Annette locked the door behind her and then walked to the kitchen, where a teapot was beginning to whistle.
“What did Jo-Beth want?” Bernadette asked.
“For us to return to the scene of the crime, if you can believe that.” She started to pick up the shrieking kettle and then dropped it so fast it clattered back onto the stove. “Ouch! Shit. What’s wrong with me?” Finding a pot holder in a nearby drawer, she picked up the kettle again and poured hot water over a tea bag into a cup decorated with her app. “You want some?”
“I’m okay.” Well, on a broader scale that was a lie. She wasn’t okay at all, her insides were still feeling watery after Kinley’s call. Walking to the window, she stared through the glass and past a slit between two high-rises to the “view” of the water, where a white ferry boat was chugging across the sound and seagulls wheeled over its hull. “Jo-Beth wants us to go back to Camp Horseshoe?”
“I don’t think it’s even a camp anymore, not a working one, but yeah, she thought we should all go down there. She talked to Reva and Sosi and tried to call you, but she couldn’t get through. She hasn’t connected with Jayla yet, something about losing her number and e-mail, so she’s trying Facebook or Twitter, or something, but she wants all of us who were counselors at the time to meet down there.”
“And repeat the same old story?”
Annette was nodding as she turned on the kitchen faucet and ran cold water over her scalded hand.
“Ice works better,” Bernadette said.
“Does it? Okay. Good. God, this hurts.” She turned off the water, found a plastic baggie in a drawer, then crossed to the side-by-side refrigerator and opened the slim freezer door. As she filled the bag with the cubes, she said, “I don’t know if I can do it. I mean, essentially lie all over again.”
“Did we really lie?” Bernadette asked, guilt gnawing at her.
“Hell, yeah, we lied. And don’t say, ‘Oh, we stretched the truth,’ or ‘It was just a little white lie,’ because we both know better. And we knew it then. If we go back there, we have to make things right. No matter what happens.” She plunged her hand into the baggie of ice, then sharply drew in a breath, air hissing through her teeth. “Ssss! Man, that’s cold!”
“That would be the idea of the ice.”
“I know, I know. Wow.” She turned her attention from her injured hand for a second. “Jo-Beth said she wanted to set the record straight. Can you believe that? ‘Straight’? As if our stories were the truth.” Wiggling her fingers within the bag of melting ice, she said, “The thing is, I’m not sure I even know what the truth is now. We’ve been telling the same old story for so long, it’s like it really happened. Y’know?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Bernadette did know, unfortunately. In dealing with Jake, during the last months of the marriage when she was desperately trying hold them together, Jake would lie to her about what he did, about where he was, and the weird thing about it was that he believed his own words. When she would hit him with the truth, he’d seem stunned, as shocked as Annette had been when she’d plunged her hand into the ice, as if he’d told himself his own version of reality so long that he actually believed it. She definitely understood how lies could be twisted into one’s perception of the truth.
“This is too damned cold! How can anyone stand it?” Tossing the ice bag into the sink, Annette picked up her cup and began dunking the soggy tea bag up and down, and staring into the amber depths of her cup.
“Namaste.”
Annette frowned at her. “What? Oh, you’re trying to be funny.”
“A little.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe this is happening. Why now?”
“Because of the bones they found.”
“But according to Jo-Beth, they don’t even know whose they are. I mean, it’s crazy to assume it’s about when we were there.”
“Is it? Just this morning, before I came over here, I got a call from Kinley Marsh. She upset me so badly that I hung up on her and turned the phone off. That’s probably why Jo-Beth couldn’t reach me.”
“Kinley who? Oh, God. She was one of the campers, wasn’t she? Yeah, yeah. Now I remember. I think she was in Monica’s cabin,” she added soberly.
“Right.”
“She was the one who always hung around and looked like she needed braces. Had a close friend in my—our—cabin. Mine and Nell’s. That girl’s name was . . . God, what was it. Real common, I think.” Annette’s eyebrows drew together as she thought. “Smith—no, Jones. Sarah Jones. That was it. A real pain in the butt, always poking through everyone’s stuff, including mine.”
“Sounds like you.”
“Hah. She really pissed Nell off, though. Nell was always having to corral her, get her to stop.” Annette discarded her tea bag into the sink and took a sip from her cup. “What did Kinley want?”
“Essentially the same thing Jo-Beth does. To talk to me. Us. All of us, I’d guess. She’s a reporter now, looking for a story. A big one. She thinks this is it. She didn’t say as much, but I could hear it in her voice.” Bernadette then explained about her phone call from Kinley, and Annette fell silent. Listening. Drinking her tea. The wheels turning in her head.
“You think we should go down there, to the camp? Talk to the reporter and the police?” Annette asked when Bernadette finished.
“I don’t want to, but I think if we don’t go down and straighten this out, the reporters and police will come to us.” Bernadette didn’t want that. She’d moved, gotten on with her life since the divorce and the embarrassment of Jake’s affair and quickie marriage to his pregnant girlfriend. Her jaw clenched at that thought. Such a betrayal! God, the man had no decency.
“I’m trying to get a full-time teaching position, not just subbing. I don’t need any negative publicity right now, or ever, for that matter.”
“So you don’t want to return to the scene of the crime?” Annette asked.
“There was no crime.”
“Keep repeating that and maybe you’ll believe it. You’re good at it.”
Their gazes clashed and Bernadette knew what her sister was thinking. To that dark time in their own family life. She was talking about Mom. They both knew it, but Bernadette couldn’t think about their mother’s death, the pain that had destroyed her, how she’d suffered in the end . . . not now. She glanced at a picture on the wall, one of their mother as a young woman, standing and squinting in the sun, each hand holding one of her children’s, Bernadette to the left of her, Annette to the right. That’s how Bernadette wanted to always remember her.
“If we don’t go, I suppose we’ll look guilty,” Bernadette muttered reluctantly.
“So now there really was a crime? Otherwise no guilt, right?”
Bernadette dragged her gaze from the photograph and glared at her sister. Geez, Annette could be such a bitch sometimes.
And so can you, Bernadette. . . .
She closed her mind to that horrid, nagging voice that always brought up her shortcomings. She didn’t have time for it now. No recriminations. No letting her past cloud her judgment. She had to think. To get through this. And she needed Annette’s help.
But arguing with her sister never did work. Annette was too analytical. “So, can you get away?”
Annette shrugged, her silent accusations seeming to have evaporated. For the
moment. Bernadette knew all too well that they would return. “I consult now,” Annette said, “which means I make my own hours and can work from my mobile devices, phone and iPad. I’m just not sure I want to dredge up all that old stuff again.”
“Me neither, but . . .”
“Yeah.” She tossed the dregs of tea into the sink and dropped her cup in an ever-growing pile of dirty dishes. “Maybe it’ll be a good thing, kind of like a spiritual cleanse, you know?” She paused. “Namaste.”
Bernadette smiled thinly. Withdrawing her phone from her pocket, she saw that she had three messages. All from Jo-Beth. Great. She glanced up at her sister and held up the phone for her to see. “I don’t think either Kinley or Jo-Beth are just going to fade away.”
“Nope.”
“So I guess we’d better start packing.”
Annette pulled a sour face. “Let’s do this thing, then.”
“Okay. You’ve got her number. Let’s call Jo-Beth.” The more Bernadette thought about it, the more she wanted to return to Oregon. What had happened twenty years ago at the camp, how the counselors had handled it, had never set well with her. They’d all been young and scared and stupid. And they hadn’t been sure what had happened to either Elle or Monica. They’d merely comforted themselves with the thought that they would both show up sooner or later. At least she had . . . and she’d been wrong. It was time to make things right, no matter what.
Annette headed toward her bedroom, but paused, hand on the doorframe, and glanced over her shoulder. “Your capitulation . . . it happened pretty fast. Doesn’t have anything to do with Lucas Dalton, does it?”
“No,” she denied quickly. Too quickly.
Annette’s eyes narrowed, accusing her of the lie.
“Really. I don’t even know where he is.”
“I know about you two, at the camp.”
“So you’ve said.” Bernadette didn’t add that she suspected Annette had experienced a major crush on Luke at the time. It was old news, too.
“And I figure your feelings for him might have been part of the reason Jake and you, well . . . you didn’t make it.”
“I haven’t seen Lucas Dalton since the day we left Camp Horseshoe. I have no idea what he’s doing.”
“Oh, right. You haven’t talked to Jo-Beth yet. She said he’s the law down there now, a deputy or detective or something.”
Her heart squeezed painfully. “It doesn’t matter,” she lied.
Annette regarded her knowingly, then she walked into the bedroom. Bernadette was left to try to tamp down the sudden rapid beat of her heart. Yes, she’d fancied herself in love with Lucas twenty years earlier, and yes, she’d never truly forgotten him, but she’d buried him, along with as many memories of that time in Oregon as she could. Buried them all way down deep as she tried like hell to get over the emotional detritus of that summer. But now it was all rising up again, the sins of the past about to reveal themselves and Lucas Dalton was there, front and center.
God help her.
CHAPTER 10
Camp Horseshoe
Then
Reva
“Whatcha doin’?” Kinley asked. She was carrying a stack of dirty trays from the cafeteria as she sauntered into the camp’s kitchen.
Reva, butcher knife in hand, looked over her shoulder quickly and spied the girl’s sharp eyes staring back at her. Damn it. Reva had thought she’d been alone. Cookie was out for a smoke on the back porch despite the No Tobacco rule at Camp Horseshoe, and the girls on mess duty were supposed to be wiping down tables in the cafeteria. But the nosy Marsh girl, along with her little friend Bonnie Branson, who was either crying from some emotional trauma, sniffing due to her allergies, or pouting because she didn’t get her way, was with her. Reva didn’t like either girl, but she pasted a smile on her face and said, “Cleaning up.”
“With that?” Kinley asked, staring at the long butcher knife Reva had quickly returned to the magnetic rack bolted onto the wall above the ancient stove, where a huge pot with a quart of leftover spaghetti sauce was congealing, the odors of garlic and tomato sauce hanging in the air.
“It was dirty.”
Bonnie scowled. “It didn’t look dirty.”
“That’s because I just washed it,” Reva said, lying easily. She picked up the huge pot and poured the contents into a Tupperware container. Avoiding the truth had become a nasty habit, but one, she knew, she wouldn’t break anytime soon, not with that ghost of a girl missing since the night before. She slid on the plastic lid and burped the container.
One eyebrow cocked suspiciously, Kinley snagged an apron from the cupboard near the back porch and tied it over her slim figure. She was a tiny thing, not yet developed, no boobs visible. Her front teeth were gapped and her red hair, which probably fell to the middle of her back, was done up in pig tails. She seemed awkward and gawky, but there was something about her, a keen, suspicious intelligence, that bothered Reva. She was always prying, asking questions with just a hint of sarcasm, as if she honestly thought she was somehow smarter than the older girls. Yeah, Reva hated the little twerp.
The two girls began scraping trays, food scraps being pushed into one plastic bin, trash into a lined can positioned near the sinks, silverware dropped into a tub of hot, soapy water waiting in the sink. The kitchen with its low, sloped ceiling was painted white and was nearly spotless. The stove and refrigerators were older, “classic models” resembling something seen in reruns of The Brady Bunch. They were gleaming, polished to a bright shine. Miss Naomi, the reverend’s wife, insisted on it, spouting the old axiom about cleanliness being next to godliness, but Reva didn’t buy it. Fortunately, the cook, a bear of a woman with huge, pillowy breasts resting atop a distended stomach, always complied. “Cookie,” as she was called, though her name was Magda Sokolov, wore Coke-bottle glasses, support hose, and a hair net meant to control her steel-gray, always permed hair. The net was an awful spidery-web type all the kitchen helpers were supposed to use if they didn’t pull their hair back.
Cookie, who blatantly ignored the ban on smoking, was the sole member of the kitchen staff. The campers and counselors did a lot of the work, either in the meal preparation of chopping and mincing and peeling under Magda’s watchful eye, or cleaning the kitchen and cafeteria to Miss Naomi’s impossible standards.
Reverend’s wife or not, Naomi Dalton was one stuck-up bitch, at least in Reva’s opinion.
For now, she left the knife and concentrated on the kitchen cleanup. Pissed that the girls had seen her touching the sharp blade, she wondered if she’d get another chance to pocket it. Maybe after Kinley and Bonnie left for sing-along and prayer a bit later, Reva could “borrow” it. If she could just avoid Cookie’s watchful eyes. Kinley cast another look in her direction, but Reva pretended interest in swiping a rag dipped in bleach over the counter. That smarmy little Kinley didn’t miss a trick, but hopefully, she’d let the whole knife thing go and find something else to snoop into.
Oh, yeah, because life is so exciting here at Camp Horseshoe, where you get to listen to sermons every day, do mind-numbing crafts, and work your butt off doing chores. Even to ride a horse, a camper had to comb it, feed it, make certain it had water and its hooves were in good shape before checking on the condition of the saddle and bridle. And then there was cleaning up after it. Not to mention all the silly songs they had to learn and the flag ceremony and Bible study.
Kinley was giving her the eye. Ostensibly scraping trays, the girl was watching Reva’s every move as she loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the surfaces and scrubbed the stove. It was as if the girl had a sixth sense about anything out of the ordinary. What a pain.
Finally, the girls were finished. They stripped off their aprons, then tossed them into an overflowing laundry basket that another set of campers would tend to in the morning. Bonnie, a whining slouch, was in a hurry to leave the kitchen.
Good.
But Cookie had finished her cigarette and was toddling into the kitchen agai
n. “You about done?” she asked, her Russian accent still apparent. She picked up the container of leftover sauce and swept her gaze over the stove.
“About.”
“Humph.” She carried the container to the refrigerator on the back porch, returned, and eyed the counter where she spied the scraped, but still-dirty trays.
“Why are these not in the dishwasher?”
“I’m getting to them.”
“First you wash everything, all the plates and silverware and trays, then you wipe down the counters. Otherwise, what is the point?”
Crabby old hag.
“Miss Naomi. She is particular. She likes it”—she struggled for the right phrase and came up with—“spotless, so close to God.” With a snort, she went to the long stainless-steel counter where the trays were stacked, and turned on the water. The pipes creaked and water, hot enough to steam, flooded from the spigot. Then she began rinsing each tray. “Kids, what do they know?” she muttered. While her back was turned, Reva snagged the knife. She slipped the long blade into the deep pocket of her apron and prayed the older woman wouldn’t catch on as Reva pretended to work at removing nonexistent grease on the stove.
But Cookie was busy with her task and mumbling in Russian, probably cussing out the little twerps who hadn’t finished their job. Good. A real knife would be a great prop for the little prank they were planning. Reva warmed just thinking about it.
“You!” Cookie suddenly shouted over her shoulder. “Reva! You sweep now. Then mop.”
“Sure,” she agreed, tossing her cleaning rag into the bin with the other soiled linens. Nervous, she was beginning to sweat as she passed Magda on her way to the screened-in back porch, where in the dirt below the steps were a dozen butts of recently smoked cigarettes. A crow, looking for crumbs in the dirt, squawked and flapped his big wings, flying into the low branches of a pine tree to glare at her. Reva hardly noticed.