The lanterns drift down toward the lake as, one by one, the candles flicker and go out. Soon we’ll need to retrieve them from the water. “Was it you who hid Dad all those years?” I ask.
“That’s the type of question you don’t want answered,” my mother says, a hint of warning in her voice. “It’s the kind of question that takes you from the light.”
My mother’s suddenly older, her hair graying, the scars around her neck red and inflamed. Blood spews from a gash in her forehead. “You did this,” she says as she gasps for breath. “Everything that happened is your fault.”
Above us, a candle flickers as the final lantern plummets toward the water.
I sit up, awake, sweat pouring down my face.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I try to shake away the images from the dream as I rub the imprint of the dock’s wooden slats from my cheek.
Out on Burkehaven Cove, a man paddles a blue kayak along the shore until he faces the wreckage. The site of the fire continues to draw onlookers and will continue to do so until Reid erases the scar by building a new house.
“Was this your place?” the man asks.
He could be a reporter. A few have lurked around town, looking for an angle on my mother’s death even as the locals shut them out and the news cycle moves on. Or he could simply be taking a morning paddle. I suspect it’s the latter.
“I live in the next cove,” I say.
“You own your place?”
I do now. Along with half of Reid Construction. I haven’t begun to dig into the business side of things, or learn how many other Vance Moodeys are out there, waiting to be paid. Each time I bring it up with Reid, he deflects the conversation, though I did get access to the books. Maybe I’ll find some answers there.
“It’s a family cabin,” I say.
“I’m renting for the week,” the man says. “Got in last night. We come every year—same week, same house, Saturday to Saturday. The first morning, I get out on the lake and see what’s changed, and what’s the same.”
I wish he’d paddle away, but the wreckage seems to draw him closer. “Let’s hope no one got hurt here,” he says, in a way that makes me wonder if he’d rather hear the gruesome details of a painful death.
Eventually, he tells me to have a nice day and zips across the cove. As much as I wanted him to leave, I want to be alone with my thoughts even less. I linger on the hours and days after my mother died, the events that led up to my visit to the station, to my interrogation.
I think about the night I got out of the hospital and went to the Landing rather than staying at Idlewood. I should have noticed my mother hadn’t returned from wherever she’d gone. And the next day, when Gilcrest brought me here to Burkehaven, I should have been wary of his offers to help with the podcast. He has the recording of what I told him that morning. And I can picture him behind the steering wheel of his SUV when he dropped me off outside the Landing, the way his expression changed when he read the text that came through on his phone. That must have been when the arson investigation transformed into a homicide. It was the instant my whole life changed, though I wouldn’t know for another few hours.
Later, after Freya burst into the police station, after Gilcrest admitted my mother was dead, I stood in the lobby of the station as the news washed over me. Seton stepped out of her office, and I heard myself saying, “You knew. You knew and didn’t say anything.”
“This isn’t on the chief,” Gilcrest said. “She was doing her job.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Seton said as Freya pulled me toward the door.
Outside, a reporter from the local news station waited with a cameraman. “Keep your head down,” Freya said. “Get in your car and leave. Don’t let them figure out your name.”
Then she transformed into a TV star, flashing a smile and tossing her hair. With her tailored suit, she’d dressed the part of Gina Shock, and she provided enough of a distraction for me to make an escape. As I sped away in the Volvo, I caught Freya in the rearview mirror, pausing long enough to let the cameraman capture her in action. It would be alengthy enough clip to run on the evening news along with a caption that read??Beloved TV star caught up in local tragedy??.
The following few days went by in a blur as we planned a memorial service, and I learned more about my mother’s death. She didn’t die in the fire or from smoke inhalation, which, I suppose, came as a relief. The medical examiner’s report indicated she died from blunt-force trauma to the head, maybe from the same tree branch used to assault me. Or maybe with one of the many two-by-fours that lie around a construction site. Or maybe from a beam that fell from the ceiling.
A pair of teenagers stumbled on her car, backed into a thick copse of trees. My mother, it turns out, hadn’t driven to Finstock.
While I remained in a state of shock, Reid threw himself into planning the memorial service. He made lists and wrote the obituary and served as the family spokesman by reaching out to old friends. When we met with the minister, he answered her questions. And though he asked whether I wanted to speak at the memorial service, he seemed relieved when I declined.
The day before the service, I tried to take my mind off things by sliding under the Volvo to assess the damage to the rusted-out floor and sussing out which holes to patch. A stone popped from beneath a tire as a car pulled up beside mine, and a pair of familiar-looking leather sneakers stepped onto the rutted ground. Duncan Gilcrest leaned over and peered beneath the car.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
“Not without my lawyer,” I said.
“These questions aren’t hard,” Gilcrest said, back to playing good cop. “And they may help me solve the case.”
