“I shouldn’t have asked about him,” I say.
“You should have, though. It’s part of your story. Keep asking. Keep pushing until you find that story you want to tell.” Hadley nods at the phone. “It’s good to have a passion. Don’t let anyone stop you. Ever.”
Her footsteps retreat down the dock and along the shore as the light fades from gray to black and the first of the evening’s bats flits across the sky. In the distance, a coyote howls into the night, as though going in for the kill.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A full moon rises over the lake as I save the conversation with Hadley to my phone. I’m not sure which parts of this story I’ll share with the world, but I’ve invested too much at this point to walk away. And Hadley’s right: It’s good to have a passion.
I start a new recording. “Tonight, my aunt talked about turning disappointment into opportunity, though she admitted she had the benefit of hindsight in her favor. I wish I had that hindsight right now. I don’t know what to do about my brother. Whether he’s guilty of what I accused him of tonight, he’s definitely guilty of mismanagement, probably fraud. Maybe we can work those things out between us. Maybe we’ll have to sell Idlewood, after all.” I pause, surprised when the next words catch in my throat. “Freya Faith left for New York. I’ll miss her. Maybe I cared about her more than I wanted to admit. I appreciated having someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who had nothing invested in what’s happened to my family. I enjoyed listening to her sing and watching her smoke. I got off on learning how to shoot a rifle.”
Something in the water brushes along my foot. I’ve been coming to the lake long enough to know it’s a sunfish or a bass, but I pull my feet out, let them dangle over the surface, and imagine Hadley in her dorm room in California all those years ago, possibly still weighing a transfer to Kingston State. I wonder if it was my mother who called to tell Hadley the happy news about the pending marriage, or what my mother knew or suspected about Hadley’s relationship with my father, and whether she cared.
“Being left behind leaves a hole,” I say into the phone, “and I barely knew Freya. How did my aunt Hadley feel when she heard my father had started dating my mother, that they were getting married and having a child? How long did the disappointment—the resentment—linger?”
I remember Freya drawing a line in the dirt connecting Hadley’s name to my father’s. Two and a half decades ago, my father and Isaac Haviland were friends, and then they weren’t, and then one of them lay in a pool of his own blood, and the other fled. Now, a house burns. And my mother’s dead. Paul and Reid and Andrea Haviland straddle both stories. Duncan Gilcrest, too. Hadley was in Kosovo, dancing with the Swiss ambassador. But she was here, too, on the lake, even in her absence. That can’t be the story she wants me to tell.
“Has Hadley ever truly let those feelings of resentment go?”
I stop the recording, slip my shoes on, and make the return journey through the woods. As I emerge into Idlewood Cove, the full moon reflects off the inky water. By now, my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and I swear I catch movement on the dock even though Reid finished his swim a while ago. I dread returning to the cabin. As with Hadley and my mother, Idlewood now sits between Reid and me, a burden we’ll have to face together.
A single light from the cabin shines through the dark. In the water, something floats on the surface, but before I can take it in, a noise begins from the dock, low at first, reverberating across the cove as it rises to an anguished wail.
My feet begin to move on their own, picking up pace as I shout Reid’s name. I sprint through the parking area and across the footbridge. Overhead, the trees close in, blocking any moonlight. I slam into something solid and fall back, landing hard. I scramble onto all fours, my heart pounding.
Heavy breathing fills the darkness.
“Who’s there?” I say.
I touch the screen of my phone. In the sudden light, a bearded face leans over me. It’s my father. His face is scratched, his glasses askew, hisclothing sopping wet. This is no figment of my imagination. “I tried,” he says. “I should have seen this. I should have known.”
Off in the distance, a police siren sounds as the screen goes dark.
“What did you do?” I ask, tapping the screen again.
This time, my father’s gone, his footsteps retreating through the trees.
The phone rings and Seton’s name flashes across the screen. “Are you coming for him?” I say.
“Where are you?” Seton asks.
“At Idlewood. By the dock. My father was here. He’s hiding in the woods.”
“Stay exactly where you are,” Seton says. “Don’t let Reid know I’m coming, Charlie. I need to talk to him before he makes things worse for himself.”
The call disconnects. I shove the phone into my pocket and face the cottage. My father was here. He’s alive, and my guess is that Reid has known all along.
“Seton’s coming,” I shout toward the house. “I need the truth, Reid.”
And I need it before the police arrive, before the questioning begins, before Paul steps in to play lawyer and Reid stops talking to protect himself.
But I can buy time.
“Come to the dock,” I shout, running to the boat and tearing at the cover.
We’ll retreat onto the lake. Seton will need to bring in the police boat or circle the lake in the helicopter until she narrows in on us with the floodlight. By then, I’ll have asked my questions, and I hope Reid will have answered.
I release the lines and jump into the hull. The boat drifts from the dock as Seton’s cruiser skids to a stop on the shore, her lights flashing. She runs across the footbridge and edges onto the dock, her hand poised over her Taser. “Where’s Reid?” she asks. “He needs to tell me where he was this afternoon.”
