“You didn’t run into something on your own?”
“If I ran into a tree, you’d find blood on it.”
“True. But we haven’t found a bloody tree limb, either.”
“There was an inferno raging fifty yards down the shore,” I say. “And a lake right beside me. Two convenient places to dispose of a bloody tree limb. Someone else was there, someone besides Mrs. Haviland.”
“I believe you,” Gilcrest says. “And you should be a detective, Charlie. If you were, you’d know I have to follow the evidence. We’ll figure out who did this to you soon enough.”
A text beeps into his phone. He glances at the screen.
“Is that about Mrs. Haviland?” I ask.
“She’s still unconscious,” Gilcrest says, without answering the question. “I’ll want to talk to you later. Till then, do me a favor: Don’t play hero.”
After he leaves, I sit with nothing to distract myself but the questions he asked, and the tiniest seed of paranoia beginning to take root that I might be a suspect in my own assault. I wonder what Gilcrest imagines my motive to be and how he’d shape the details to build a case. It’s the same kind of work we do at the radio station when we create a narrative around a news story.
I imagine massaging this story and laying out the timeline, who I’d interview to fill in details, how I’d connect today’s events to what happened at Idlewood twenty-five years ago. I could plant red herrings by playing up Gilcrest’s suspicions of me.
I have questions for Gilcrest, too, ones about my father and Isaac Haviland’s murder. I want him to describe arriving on the scene at Idlewood, finding the bloodstains in the parking area, and discovering the rowboat floating offshore. I want to know when exactly he realized he’d stumbled into a homicide and how he earned the trust of my brother, a terrified twelve-year-old boy.
The curtain slides aside. A doctor scans my wristband and listens to my lungs again. “No concussion or skull fractures,” she says as she stitches up the wound on my forehead. “You’re lucky.”
“Will I have a scar?” I ask.
“Only in a good way. Adds character.” She types on my chart. “Don’t smoke for a week. It’ll exacerbate the cough.”
“What about weed?” I ask.
“Not even weed,” she says with a smile. “And call 9-1-1 if you get lightheaded or disoriented.”
I won’t be adding a 9-1-1 call to my hospital bills anytime soon. I’m not sure how I’ll pay forthisvisit. She walks me out of the ER and into the waiting room, where I spend a few moments signing forms. As we finish, I ask, “Could you give me a patient’s room number?”
I’d assumed Mrs. Haviland would be under guard, handcuffed to the bed, waiting for the DA to press charges, but there isn’t a single sign of law enforcement outside her hospital room. She lies in the bed, eyes closed, an oxygen line running beneath her nose. I settle into a chair beside her as my mother’s words from last night return to me:Bad marriages don’t have a good guy and a bad guy. We all play our parts. I played mine, and so did your father.
Something else my mother said last night also gives me pause. She’d assumed my father and Mrs. Haviland were high school sweethearts. Maybe they did have feelings for each other. Maybe the two friends had crossed the line.
“Did you love my father?” I ask, softly. “Have you missed him all these years?”
Mrs. Haviland stirs.
“You were at Burkehaven this morning,” I say as she groans and touches her face, somewhere between sleep and consciousness. “Who were you there to meet? Who was hiding in the woods?”
In the hallway, footsteps approach.
“Wake up soon,” I whisper. “I have some questions for you.”
Seton steps into the room, holding a coffee cup. “Charlie,” she says, “they told me you’d been discharged.”
I stand, my face flushed, somehow feeling as though Seton’s caught me in the middle of something I shouldn’t be doing. I wonder whatshe’d say to me if she heard the questions I just asked. I look down and shift my weight.
“What?” Seton says.
“I came to see your mother.”
“Well, she’s sedated, but the doctors say she’s out of the woods.”
Now that we’re alone, the detachment she maintained by the lake has been replaced by a kaleidoscope of emotion—concern and fear and apprehension for what the next few days might bring. “Do you mind a hug?” I ask.
