“The outdoors. The fresh air.”
“The nonstop nightlife.”
She inches closer. “Yeah, there’s that.”
I hear Julian in my head, coaching me to get to the heart of the story. “Didn’t you grow up visiting the lake?” I ask.
Freya’s shoulders stiffen under her hostess dress. “How would you know that?” she asks.
“You’re the only TV star in town,” I say. “Who else would we talk about?”
“I’m hardly a TV star. I’ve barely booked a gig in a decade. Honestly, I almost never leave my co-op anymore, but in Hero I’m famous. Everyone knows everything about me. Maybe that’s why I enjoy it here.” Freya leans on the railing, a breeze blowing through her hair. “But yes, my family came to the lake. We stayed at Burkehaven Cove in a little cabin.”
“Paul Burke’s place?” I say.
“You know him?”
“Everyone knows everyone here,” I say.
“Well, Paul’s mother and my mother went to Miss Porter’s in Connecticut. We rented the cabin for two weeks every summer while the Burkes stayed at the farmhouse.”
I sip the old-fashioned, this time allowing the bourbon to linger on my tongue to keep from choking. Freya knew Paul back then. She probably knew everyone involved in the murder: my mother, Paul, but also Isaac and Andrea Haviland. My father, too. “There was an episode ofScene of the Crimeset on a lake,” I say. “Was it based on the murder that happened here?”
Freya steps away from me. “Tell me you’re not some true-crime freak.”
“That murder is the most exciting thing that ever happened in Hero,” I say, doing my best to feign casual interest. “People talk as if it happened yesterday. The guy who committed the murder, you must have met him.”
“Mark Kilgore,” Freya says. “Yeah, he was friends with Paul. He’d come to Burkehaven when we were staying there. Mark was nice. And I never believed what they said about him.”
That’s the last thing in the world I expected her to say, and I gulp the old-fashioned to mask my surprise, relieved by a fit of coughing that keeps me from spewing questions at her. She swears under her breath and retreats inside, returning with a glass of water. “You should stick to apple juice,” she says.
I drink the water down.
We all know what happened, Charlie.
But do we? My father is missing and presumed dead, but tonight he walked into the Landing and drank a beer. I have his pint glass in my coat pocket. And until tonight, no one’s ever suggested there could be another explanation for what happened on the lake. I wonder if I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear Freya’s words.
“What didn’t you believe?” I ask.
Freya tosses her hair as though she’s on the set ofScene of the Crime, playing Special Agent Gina Shock. “Let’s talk about something else. Or do something else.” She runs her fingertips along my forearm. “Have any ideas?”
I’ve waited twenty-five years to find out what happened next, and I can wait a bit longer. Besides, I’m not about to miss this opportunity with Freya, and it won’t present itself again.
“I suppose I do,” I say, and then my fingers are in Freya’s thick hair, and her hands are on my waist, on my belt, as she pulls me through the house, up those stairs to another steel door she unlocks with a code. She shoves me onto the mattress as doubts stop spinning through my mind and the steel door latches behind us.
“Are we in a safe room?” I ask.
“Off,” Freya says, and the room goes black.
I wake the next morning to something cold and wet in my ear. I shove Ginger’s nose as she paws at my chest and then makes her way acrossthe huge bed to where Freya lies beside me. Freya’s voice, huskier than last night, sounds through the impenetrable dark. “Ginger likes you.”
“All animals like me,” I say.
“On,” Freya says, and the recessed lighting slowly illuminates.
She props her head on a pillow, her hair tousled. She’s wearing a vintage T-shirt from the Pat Benatar Tropico tour, and I wonder if she’s wondering, as I am, how we wound up here, or when she might send me packing. I wonder if she’d be willing, as I am, to go at it again this morning. I move a lock of hair from her eyes, and she doesn’t flinch. A good sign.
“Out,” Freya says.
