The God of the Woods - Chapter 6 - Read Online Free

Survival

Judyta

er alarm is sounding.H Judy opens her eyes, then closes them again. Just for a moment, she thinks.

“FOR CHRISSAKE, JUDY!” comes the cry from the other room. Her brother, incensed. “IT’S FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING!”

Her day begins.

• • •

She needs to move out. She knows this. She has the funds; she just needs the guts to tell her parents she’ll be breaking an unspoken rule. Among the Polish families of Schenectady, New York, a girl who moves out of the home before marriage is odd at best; a scandal at worst.

Last year, with her own money, she purchased a green VW Super Beetle with a sunroof. It was expensive—and impractical, her father said—but it gives her a feeling of independence. And it has a nice radio, an upgrade she’s now glad she insisted on; it keeps her awake for the two hours of her commute to the Preserve.

• • •

At seven, when she arrives, she finds that she’s beaten Denny Hayes to work.

Technically, B-tour starts at eight a.m., which means she has an hour to prepare for the day.

A trooper dozes lightly in a folding chair outside the Director’s Cabin, now the Command Post.

Judy puts her hand on the wrought-iron handle, depresses it, and opens the

door before the trooper opens his eyes.

“Morning,” Judy says.

“Oh,” says the trooper, rousing himself. “Badge?”

• • •

Overnight, the Command Post has been better established. The existing furniture has been cleared to the sides of the room, or pushed into the kitchen; a few folding tables and chairs have been brought in in their place.

A large chalkboard on wheels is pressed against one wall.

On it, someone has drawn a chalk line down the middle. On the left of the line, at the top, is written Bear Van Laar. On the right of the line: Barbara.

For a while, Judy stands in the center of the place, turning.

The walls are decorated with small prints of dogs undertaking various humanlike pursuits: playing poker and hunting and courting one another. The pictures have wrinkled and withered from their long battle with the dampness of the lake-adjacent air. The whole house looks as if it was decorated carefully and thoughtfully thirty years before, and then never once touched. A time capsule from the Second World War.

The only framed image that isn’t dog-related is a map of the Adirondack Park. In it, someone has inserted a tack right where Self-Reliance sits, on the bank of Lake Joan, close to Hunt Mountain.

A filing cabinet—brought in by the BCI, she guesses—sits in a corner, next to a few crates of folders, paper, pens—and bankers boxes. Five of them.

Labeled with words she can’t read from across the room.

Judy, alone in the Command Post, walks in that direction. Bends down.

Peter “Bear” Van Laar IV, reads the lettering on the box.

She lifts the lid. For the next hour, she reads the documents inside.

At the bottom are dozens of photographs. Several are of Bear from what must have been the year before his disappearance. Here, he grins from ear to ear, holding up a fish he’s caught; here, he looks off pensively into the distance, hand in hand with a woman Judy recognizes as his mother.

Against her will, Judy finds herself fighting tears, swallowing the tight knot forming in her throat. Something in Mrs. Van Laar’s expression reminds her of her own mother, who loves her children so fiercely that it sometimes feels like a weight.

At 7:50, Judy places the material back in order, puts the lid on the box, just before Captain LaRochelle enters the Command Post.

• • •

The first thing he does at morning briefing is point to the chalkboard—where both children’s names have been written.

“Who did this?” he says.

All of them glance at each other. No one owns up.

“Might have been one of the A-tour guys,” someone says.

Captain LaRochelle frowns. “Whoever did it,” he says, “don’t do it again.”

He picks up an eraser. Goes to work on the chalkboard. “We’re searching for Barbara Van Laar,” he says. “Bear Van Laar’s case is closed.”

Against her will, Judy’s eyes drift to the corner, where the bankers boxes full of evidence are resting.

On the now-clear chalkboard, LaRochelle begins to write.

Their prime suspect—still John Paul McLellan, at this point—is out on bail, awaiting his hearing for driving under the influence and felony possession of a controlled substance. Recognizing his status as a suspect in another crime, the judge in his case agreed to include a clause in his bail terms that prevents him leaving the county; he’s holed up at a local hotel until his next hearing.

Louise Donnadieu—whom John Paul claims was the one to ask him to dispose of the bag of clothing—is still in a holding cell in Wells, New York.

Her bail hearing will be today. He’ll ask the magistrate in her case, as well, to consider when setting her bail the fact that she’s being looked at for Barbara Van Laar’s disappearance.

Lee Towson, the other person named by John Paul, has still not been located; a BOLO has been issued for his car in the states of New York and Colorado, where he is rumored to have gone.

The rangers haven’t yet located the unknown figure in the woods, the one reported by the camper named Tracy Jewell.

“Could have been a hiker, even,” says LaRochelle. “The girl wasn’t far from Hunt Mountain when the unknown person provided assistance. But we’ll keep trying to track him down.”

Judy listens, trying to be attentive. But her late night and early morning are catching up with her, and she puts her fist under her chin to prop it up. Denny Hayes, across the room, looks her way, and she sits up straight.

Next, LaRochelle details the results of the work that C-tour and A-tour did overnight. They’ve got another clue to the puzzle of who Barbara’s boyfriend might have been, he says: A Susan Yoder, the director of the Emily Grange School, said Barbara had a male visitor in her room. Got in trouble for it. A witness thought it was a boy from town, but Barbara wouldn’t say. The C- tour investigator who learned of this will pursue the lead.

“Next,” LaRochelle goes on, “who was it gave me the clue about the paint on the walls?”

Judy, mildly embarrassed, raises her hand.

“That was brilliant,” says LaRochelle. “Look at this.” He walks to a table where gloves and a box are laid out. Puts on the gloves, lifts from the box an object retrieved from the Albany house. It’s a sketchbook, he says. Most of what’s in it seems meaningless: doodles of hearts and music notes and moons and stars. But toward the end of it, there’s something interesting.

He lifts the sketchbook into the air, so they can see it.

There on the page is a surprisingly skillful rendering of a room with several pieces of furniture in it. A bed, a dresser, a nightstand. Behind the bed is a wall; on the wall is what looks to be a design for a mural.

Judy frowns, trying to remember why the drawing looks familiar. And then it comes to her: this is Barbara’s room, at Self-Reliance.

The room with the freshly painted walls.

Captain LaRochelle confirms this to the rest of the investigators. Then he says: “We haven’t noticed anything suspicious on the page I’m showing you.

It’s difficult to discern what some of the pictures are, on this small scale. But our hope is that removing the pink paint in Barbara’s room will uncover something of interest.”

They’ve found a conservator from the Hyde Collection who’s coming to take a look, he says. Hopefully, they’ll be able to remove one layer of paint without damaging the other, underneath.

“Last thing,” says LaRochelle. Late last night, the BCI received a complete list from someone on staff of all the guests on the grounds, and a complete list from T.J. Hewitt, the camp director, of all the campers and staff.

He holds up a stack of manila folders. He’s xeroxed these documents for everyone. Those who’ve already been interviewed have a check mark next to their names. The rest, says LaRochelle, will be talked to methodically, either in person or—in the case of the children who’ve already been picked up by their parents—over the phone. Today, every investigator sitting before him will be assigned one segment of the camp’s population to pursue.

He passes out the folders.

“I want good notes today,” he says. “Legible notes. I want signed statements, if you can get them. And I want fast work. It’s already been more than twenty-four hours since Barbara Van Laar went missing.”

He pauses in front of Denny Hayes. “Hayes,” he says. “You’re working the lead desk from now on.”

He gives the last folder to Judy. But when she looks at the papers inside, she can’t find her name next to any segment of either list. She wonders whether to say something. Before she can, LaRochelle speaks.

“Investigator Luptack,” he says. “Your job today is to make a map of the house and the grounds. And to label every structure and every room with the name of its occupant during the hours of Barbara’s disappearance.”

• • •

Denny Hayes catches her eye before she leaves the Command Post.

“Hang on,” he says. “I’ll walk with you.”

Together, they head for Self-Reliance, Judy’s new possessions tucked under her arm. She drags her feet, just slightly.

He glances at her. “Tired?” says Hayes.

“No.”

“You know, you don’t have to get here so early,” he says. “No one’s

giving you extra points for that.”

“Okay,” she says.

“You live with your folks, you said?”

“I do.”

“Whereabouts?”

She hesitates. She’s never actually told any of her new colleagues how far she commutes, and she’s worried that revealing the gravity of the situation will make them worried about her ability to do her job.

She settles on an answer: “Schenectady. But I’m in the process of moving.”

Denny whistles. “Schenectady? No wonder you were falling asleep in there.”

“I wasn’t—” Judy hears the defensiveness in her tone. Starts over. “I’m all

right. I’ve never needed much sleep.”

Denny looks skeptical. “Okay.”

They walk in silence for a moment, and then Judy asks Hayes something she’s been wondering since their morning meeting.

“How’d McLellan get released before the counselor did? Louise?” asks Judy, and Denny says, “How do you think?”

Connections. Money. A lawyer father. Hayes has found out something else: in addition to serving as chief counsel for the Van Laars’ bank, McLellan Sr. is, in fact, the attorney who personally represented the family during Bear Van Laar’s disappearance in 1961.

Judy frowns. “Isn’t that unusual?” she says. “For a corporate attorney to get involved in a criminal case?”

Hayes shrugs. “People are legally allowed to be represented by whoever they want. I’ve seen some represent themselves,” he says. “The arrogant ones.”

Both of them look up, toward the great house ahead of them.

Then Hayes says: “Who do you like?”

“Who do I think did it?”

“Yeah.”

She thinks. “McLellan.”

“He’s my guess, too.”

She’d had less than an hour to look at the 1961 Van Laar files before Hayes arrived at the station, but it was enough to pique her interest on one point.

“I was wondering something,” she says. She stops, rephrasing. “Yesterday, when the investigator asked about Jacob Sluiter?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I looked through the Bear Van Laar files this morning, and I saw he was considered as a suspect in that case too.”

Hayes stops walking. Judy faces him.

“Just seems like a coincidence,” she says.

For a moment, Judy thinks Hayes is going to dismiss her. What was it LaRochelle said the other day? Don’t look for a zebra.

But instead Hayes sighs.

“It does,” he says. “I’ve been thinking that too.”

Then he says, “Between us? I’m the one who pulled those files on Bear.

The ones you were apparently looking through. I’m the one who wrote his name up on that board. And I think LaRochelle’s completely wrong, completely out of line, to consider Bear’s case closed. All of us in that room —except for LaRochelle—are thinking the same thing.”

Judy looks at him.

“Why do you think LaRochelle’s thinking differently?” she asks.

“LaRochelle was a lieutenant on that case,” says Hayes. “He was the one who pushed the theory the family and the press ended up buying. Solving the Bear Van Laar case ended up being career-making for him. Led directly to his promotion to captain. He probably doesn’t want to see that work undone.

“Besides,” says Hayes. “The Van Laar family’s happy with the outcome on that case. As in, they think they got the right guy. They’re at peace with it, you know? It’s hard to go back on that.”

Judy nods. She gets it—sort of. But if she were the Van Laars, she would want to know the truth. She says as much to Hayes.

“They’re a strange family,” he says. “Too many generations with too much money. It addles the brain. You ever notice how the children of rich people are never as smart as the parents? Never as ambitious, never as successful?

You gotta have something to strive for in life. What I think, anyway.”

They keep walking.

“You know,” says Hayes, “I’ll tell you something else. I don’t like that LaRochelle’s on-site every day. I should be the one running the show. And I’m not saying that out of ego. It’s just not good practice to have someone at his level running daily operations in a case like this.”

“How come?”

“Some of the guys at LaRochelle’s level are smart,” he says. “But they’re middle management now. Out of practice. Lot of ’em haven’t really worked cases in a decade. It might reassure the family when the big guns come in,” he says, “but it’s risky.”

Hayes turns back around, heading for the Command Post, where he’ll get to work organizing and numbering their leads.

Judy’s on her own to make her map.

Above her head, a helicopter is circling, its occupants scanning the terrain for any sign of life. To her right, a dive team is getting ready for a search of Lake Joan.

• • •

She approaches the main house. Outside it, she takes a knee, balancing the pad on the other one. She sketches the house from memory, placing inside each room the guests she interviewed yesterday.

When she’s finished, she stands up and walks past the front entrance of the house.

Yesterday, she spent her day talking to the guests; it’s time now, thinks Judy, to talk to the people who serve them.

For the first time, she knocks at the kitchen door. A small woman in an apron answers, holding a floured rolling pin in her hands.

“Good morning,” says Judy. The woman wipes her hand on her apron

slowly. Says nothing.

“Are you all right?” says Judy.

“Are you a police officer?” the woman asks.

“Investigator,” says Judy. “I’m Investigator Luptack.”

“But,” says the woman. “With the police?”

Judy nods.

The woman walks back toward a counter, sets the rolling pin down.

“Do you have a moment to talk?” says Judy.

Again, the glance around. “I do have a moment,” says the woman, lowly.

“Only it has to be your idea to talk, not mine. And it can’t be in here.”

• • •

Judy leads her through the kitchen door. Stops near the side of the house.

“Keep going,” the woman whispers. “The windows are open.”

They walk twenty paces more, until they are right at the edge of the lake.

Then Judy takes out her notepad.

Above them, the circling helicopter has begun making announcements over its loudspeaker: Barbara, your parents miss you. Barbara, move to a clearing. Barbara, get to high ground. Barbara, yell if you hear this. The sound makes her shiver.

The woman looks at her expectantly. “Aren’t you going to ask me questions?”

“Oh,” says Judy. “Name?”

“Jeannie Clute.”

“Date of birth?”

“June 12, 1947.”

“Occupation?”

This gives her pause. “Temporary cook, at the moment,” she says. “Prior

to that, homemaker.”

Judy glances up.

“Do you have children?”

“Yes. Three. A fourth on the way.”

Judy glances down, briefly, at the woman’s still-flat stomach.

“A husband?”

“Yes.”

“What made you take this job?”

The woman turns her face away. Suddenly, tears come to her eyes and spill over. She swipes at them. Angry.

“Foolishness,” she says. “I was wrong to take this job.”

Judy pauses. A sensation is beginning in her lower belly that she’s never felt before: some feeling that one piece of a larger puzzle is about to fall into

place.

“Why not?” she says.

“They’re bad people,” says Mrs. Clute.

“How so?”

“They let the wrong man take the blame when their son disappeared,” she said. “They let his name be ruined.”

She’s finished crying. A hard look has replaced her tears, and she looks

into Judy’s eyes with conviction.

“What’s his name?” asks Judy.

“Was,” says Mrs. Clute. “He’s dead.”

“What was his name?”

“Stoddard,” says Mrs. Clute. “Same as mine.”

Judy’s mind works. It’s a name she knows from the bankers box she went through earlier this morning. “Carl Stoddard was your—”

“Father.”

Judy writes in her notepad. Truthfully, she doesn’t know what words she’s forming there—but she needs time to formulate her next question carefully.

To avoid frightening her off.

“Clute’s your married name?” she says.

The woman nods impatiently. She’s looking back at the house now, growing nervous, waiting to be noticed.

“Do they know you’re a Stoddard?” Judy asks.

“God, no,” says Mrs. Clute.

“Why did you take this job?”

She shifts. “Desperation,” she said. “Mouths to feed. You heard the shirt factory closed.”

Judy hadn’t. She doesn’t know what shirt factory Mrs. Clute is talking about. Still, she nods.

“Well, there’s no other work in Shattuck. It was this or move,” says Mrs.

Clute. “And where would we go?”

“Does the rest of your family know? The Stoddards, I mean.”

Mrs. Clute nods.

“My sisters understand,” she says. “But my mother isn’t speaking to me.

Said the whole family was rotten. That I’d regret it.” Mrs. Clute looks out at the lake. “Turns out she was right.”

“Mrs. Clute,” says Judy. “Do you have any idea where Barbara Van Laar has gone?”

This, the woman answers quickly. “No idea,” she says. “Truly. But I bet you her family does.”

Again, that sensation—instinct, thinks Judy.

“Why?”

“I’m speaking out of turn here,” says Mrs. Clute, “but when Bear Van Laar went missing, the family bungled the whole search from start to finish.

First thing was they didn’t call searchers in until hours after the boy first disappeared. By then there were footprints all over the place, and it had rained, and any hope of tracking him was lost. For the hounds, too, it made the work more difficult.”

She holds out the thumb of her right hand, as if preparing to tally all the ways the family had erred.

“Next,” she says, “they let us Shattuckers help, but after a week they sent us off. Flew in a team of searchers from the Sierra Madres, instead. Chartered a private plane and everything. Paid them handsomely, from what I heard.”

“Did they pay the local searchers, too?”

Mrs. Clute scoffs. “Hardly,” she says. “They were treated as if they worked for the family already. Even those that didn’t, those that missed their jobs to help. And the irony is, those searchers from California had no idea what they were doing. They’d never seen terrain like ours before. Never seen underbrush so thick. They turned tail and left without finding a single trace of the boy.”

She smiles, almost in triumph, and then becomes aware of herself.

“Now listen,” says Mrs. Clute. “I feel terrible for the family. If they’re innocent—which they very well might be—it’s an honest sin, what they went through. But what I’ll never forgive them for is not clearing my father’s name. After he died, they just let it be—presumed that he was the one who killed Bear. And that they’d most likely not find the boy, because you can’t ask questions of a dead man.”

She glances over each shoulder, and then continues. “I’ve seen someone on the grounds who was here before, when Bear went missing. LaRochelle’s his name. I remember him from when they were making the case against my father. He’s a liar. I wouldn’t trust him, if I were you.”

Judy keeps her head very still. To nod, even slightly, seems incorrect. But she understands what the woman is saying.

Mrs. Clute says, “Do you have children?”

“I don’t.”

“All right. Well, if you ever do, remember this conversation,” says Mrs.

Clute. “Remember my words. And ask yourself—would you stop searching as early as they did?”

Judy looks down, embarrassed suddenly by the depth of emotion in Mrs.

Clute’s gaze.

“Would you ever?” she says, once more.

Both are silent for a pause.

“I’ll have to go back inside now,” says Mrs. Clute. “Lots to do.”

Judy nods. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Anything else I should know?”

Mrs. Clute thinks. “Only thing I can think of is no one in that family likes that little girl. Barbara. Neglect, is what I’d call it. Before she went down to the summer camp, she used to wander into the kitchen for something to eat.

Lost-looking, in her own house. I’d feed her whenever I could. Her mother didn’t like it. Used to tell me to stop giving her food. I’d nod and pretend to be listening, but I always liked her visits. Barbara’s an odd girl, dresses strangely, but she’s the only one here who took the time to learn my name.

She’s a good soul, is what I think.”

“Thank you,” says Judy.

Mrs. Clute nods.

Judy remembers Hayes’s words from earlier. She’s been making good notes, but she wants to be certain she’s gotten her facts correct.

“Mrs. Clute, would you mind if I did my best to write up everything you told me? You could look it over, and sign it if it’s correct.”

The woman looks at her, horrified. “Never in a million years,” she says. “I don’t regret telling you what I told you. But that’s the only help I can give.”

• • •

This, Judy thinks, feels more important than the map does at the moment. She walks down to the Command Post, looking for Hayes at the lead desk.

Outside, two investigators are sitting on the steps, writing out statements on their clipboards.

“Hayes inside?” asks Judy, and one of them nods.

“Wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he says. “LaRochelle’s been letting him have it for ten minutes.”

Judy pauses. Muted yelling, through the door.

There’s no good place for her to sit.

“Would you tell him I’m looking for him when they’re done?” she asks.

“Sure, honey,” says the other. Not looking up.

“I’m Investigator Luptack,” says Judy.

“Great.”

• • •

While she waits for Hayes, Judy wanders the grounds of Camp Emerson, doing the work that LaRochelle assigned her that morning. She brings her pad of paper and her pen with her. She stops in front of every building she can spot, sketching its footprint, as if from above. She labels the ones whose use is clear.

When she’s finished, she turns northwest, toward a set of farm buildings that are no longer in use.

They’ve been searched thoroughly, she knows. And to the best of her knowledge, they aren’t used to house anybody.

Still—with nothing else to do until Hayes and LaRochelle are finished— she walks in their direction, pad of paper tucked under her arm.

• • •

There are four structures. Judy knows nothing about agriculture, but one seems to have been a dairy barn, its large doors open to the air outside.

Inside, the standing stalls still have that animal smell, though they seem to have been abandoned long ago. Above the barn is a hayloft; a rickety ladder lets Judy climb high enough to poke her head into it, take in the remains of several hay bales standing against the walls.

She descends.

Next to the dairy barn is a small building set up on legs, windowless.

Whatever its original purpose, it has since become home to rusting farm equipment. She enters it only briefly, then moves to the building to its west.

The interior of this third building, too, puzzles her at first: its floors are concrete and angle downward toward a drain. Perhaps, she thinks, this was

where horses were sponged after exercise? There’s a smell in here she can’t

identify, but it sets her on edge.

Then she looks up.

Five metal bars run from one end of the ceiling to the other. From these bars hang dozens of hooks in straight lines.

At last the smell makes sense to her: this was a slaughterhouse.

She stands there a moment longer, her body tense.

Then comes the noise: above her head, the sound of footsteps.

Tracy

urvival Trip was never announced in advance. It was, instead, sprungS upon them in this way: with an air horn, at 5:30 in the morning, just after sunrise.

All summer, they’d been coached. When the air horn sounded, they would leap out of their bunks and into their clothes, no shower in between, and run as fast as they could to the flagpole.

Whoever arrived first was given extra provisions; whoever arrived last was given nothing at all.

Barbara was up and dressed before anyone else in the cabin.

“Put warm clothes on over your uniform,” she whispered to Tracy, and then she was gone.

Tracy was not last in her group to the flagpole, but she was close to it. And therefore she received, inside the backpack a counselor handed her, only four cans of beans, and a full water canteen. She looked around: Barbara and Lowell Cargill were inspecting tarps, compasses, Swiss Army knives. And the two youngest in her group, who arrived at the very end, opened their backpacks to find them entirely empty. Tracy watched their faces: they were trying to be brave, but their chins were tight with stopped tears.

T.J. Hewitt stood at the base of the flagpole, overseeing the chaos impassively. Once every camper was holding a backpack, she shimmied a

small way up the pole and, planting the thick sole of her Danner boot on the cleat, lifted a bullhorn to speak.

“Survival Groups,” she said. “Your leaders will come to you shortly. But remember: they’re there only for emergencies. They will not help you in any other way. In general,” she said—here she looked around the meeting grounds for so long that it seemed as if she was trying to catch every camper’s eye—“you’re on your own. Good luck.”

From the center of the group, counselors began making their way outward toward the groups they had been assigned. Tracy scanned them, wondering who would come their way.

But it was T.J. Hewitt herself who approached.

“You’re with me,” she said.

• • •

Five minutes later, they set off.

T.J. was in the lead. Next came the youngest campers in their group. They fell in line like ducklings behind their leader, who looked back at them every so often, as if surprised or annoyed by their presence.

“Pretend I’m invisible,” she kept saying—and they’d drop back next to the rest of the group, only to return to T.J.’s side a moment later.

Barbara and Tracy and Lowell and his friend Walter—the oldest—walked four abreast. Tracy glanced sideways at Lowell from time to time, remembering what it had been like to sing in harmony with him, then blushing furiously at the thought of it.

Walking north, they crossed in front of the main house, Self-Reliance. In the windows, Tracy thought she could see people moving, and she said so to Barbara, who shrugged, looking straight ahead.

“They’re getting ready,” she said.

“For what?”

“They’re having a party. It’s the house’s hundredth birthday.”

“Are you invited?”

Barbara shook her head.

“I don’t want to go anyway,” she said.

• • •

They crossed the main road, and hiked an hour more, until finally T.J. stopped them.

“This is good,” she said. And then she walked away.

It was Barbara who broke the silence. “Open your backpacks,” she said.

Between the twelve of them they had: sixty-two cans of various foods, twelve bags of gorp, twelve water canteens, four small bottles of iodine tincture, nine tarps, four can openers, various knives, a roll of snare wire, ten ropes, and—the last item to come out of the last bag, and the item that drew the biggest sigh of relief—one box of matches.

Barbara stood up, inspecting the goods, making calculations about how to use it all. Then she glanced at T.J., who was leaning against a tree, one knee bent, the sole of her boot resting against its bark.

“Don’t look at me,” said T.J. “I’m invisible. I’m not here.”

She turned and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders, then walked thirty feet up a slight incline, where she found a relatively flat place in the earth and began to set up her tent. In a flash, she’d made her own fire, strung a hammock between two trees, and begun reading a book while boiling water for coffee.

• • •

By noon, the campers had set up too, with Barbara leading the charge. Not for the first time, Tracy marveled at how well she moved, how much she knew about the woods. She was the one to locate running water in the form of a nearby stream, to lead a small group to refill their canteens, with an iodine topper; she was the one to use ropes and tarps to make primitive tents, to clear a patch of ground, to frame a large circle with rocks. Then she sent the children off to find the driest wood they could find, and kindling too.

She was not much older than the rest of them—in fact, she was younger than Walter and Lowell—but to Tracy she seemed, that day, like a grown woman.

On the nearby rise, T.J. glanced up from her book from time to time, watching impassively, saying nothing.

When she was not following Barbara’s orders, Tracy sat on the ground and played a game invented by one of the younger children, a boy named Christopher who seemed sweet-natured and sort of frightened. He was eight years old: the youngest of the bunch. “The youngest in the whole camp,” he noted glumly.

• • •

At night, after dinner, they told ghost stories—avoiding any mention of Jacob Sluiter, or Slitter—who felt too real to be fun. Lowell told the one about Scary Mary, the gray-haired woman, a favorite ghost on the grounds. “Boy in my cabin said he saw her just the other night,” said Lowell—until one of the younger girls began to cry, and Lowell recanted. They sang camp songs instead, and then Lowell sang, a cappella, a beautiful mournful song about a sailor lost at sea.

Something wild was happening: Tracy could feel it. Yes, T.J. was just up the hill, but she was making good on her promise of invisibility. The children were in charge, then: all of them, but Barbara the most. In the absence of adults, they came into themselves in a way that made Tracy proud.

• • •

The tarp tents were assigned by Barbara. Tracy and Barbara would be in the first; Lowell and Walter would be in the second; the four youngest boys would be in the third—when they briefly protested the injustice of this, Barbara stared at them until they quieted—and the four youngest girls would be in the fourth.

At ten in the evening, it was chilly away from the fire.

That morning, following Barbara’s instructions, Tracy had put on sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a heavy sweater over her uniform before running to the flagpole. Most of the campers had also gotten that message from counselors and friends who’d tipped them off, but Christopher, the youngest, was shivering in his shorts and T-shirt.

Spying him, Barbara stripped off her sweatshirt and tossed it to him.

“Put it on,” she commanded.

It looked like a gown on tiny Christopher, but he grinned inside it, comforted.

There would be no sleeping bags on this trip; not a single camper had received one. Part of their job was to survive with a certain amount of discomfort.

“Listen up,” said Barbara. “If you wake up in the night and see that the fire’s getting low, it’s your job to stoke it, or load it with new fuel.” She paused to demonstrate, to point out where the makeshift woodpile was. She’d wrapped it in the one remaining tarp, in case of rain. “But don’t go wandering,” she said. “If you get lost in the dark, that’s bad for everyone.”

She paused, thinking.

“Another thing,” said Barbara. “Stick together. I mean keep your bodies touching overnight. You’ll be a lot warmer if you do.”

A few of the younger boys groaned.

“Fine,” said Barbara. “Freeze if you want. I don’t care.”

Someone giggled, and they all looked in the direction of her extended arm.

Christopher, the youngest, had curled up into a ball on the ground, his knees inside Barbara’s sweatshirt. He was fast asleep.

Barbara clapped. “Everyone who’s not me, Tracy, Walter, or Lowell,” she said. “Go to your tents. Bedtime.”

• • •

The camp settled. Even T.J., up on her crest, seemed to have retired: she’d let her campfire dwindle, apparently warm enough inside the sleeping bag she’d packed.

When the four oldest campers had finished tidying the site, Walter waved them toward him, toward the tent that had been designated his and Lowell’s.

“I brought something with me,” he whispered. In the dim light of the fire, Tracy could see the glint of his braces as he grinned.

Inside the tent, they sat up in a small circle, shaking with cold. Tracy’s teeth chattered anytime they were not clenched. She could only imagine how Barbara was feeling, down one layer, having donated it to Christopher.

Walter, a wiry, young-looking fourteen, apparently noticed too, for he removed the sweatshirt he was wearing and handed it to Barbara.

“No,” said Barbara.

“Take it,” said Walter. “I’ve still got this shirt on.” He pointed to the long- sleeved shirt he was wearing underneath.

“Besides,” he said, “I can just cuddle with Lowell tonight.”

And he slung an arm over Lowell, who grinned and shoved him off.

“What did you want to show us?” said Barbara.

Walter removed his arm from Lowell’s shoulders and lifted his remaining shirt. Underneath it was a flask he had strapped to his flank.

Tracy recognized what it was immediately. Her own father had a flask that he brought with him to the track. He kept it in an inner pocket of his jacket, nipped from it occasionally with no self-consciousness. Once, after a horse of his had won a race, he had offered it to Tracy, and she had been curious enough to take a sip. She still remembered the burn of it as it went down her

throat.

“Impressive,” said Barbara.

“Thanks,” said Walter. He unscrewed the top of it and swigged.

“What’s in it?” asked Barbara.

“Crème de menthe,” said Walter. “It’s the only booze my dad doesn’t keep track of.”

He passed it. All of them drank. Tracy took a small sip at first, and then a larger one. It was sweeter than what her father drank, and also more

disgusting.

She coughed.

“Shhhhh,” said Barbara. She grabbed the flask from Tracy and took a long draught, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Within minutes, the tent had become warmer. Tracy grinned in the dark.

All the worries she had ever had suddenly seemed several yards farther away.

Barbara was to her right; Lowell was opposite her; Walter was next to him. Tracy inched her foot, inside its sneaker, in what she suspected was the direction of Lowell’s, though she could not see. She was picturing what it would be like to feel his mouth on hers. When her sneaker reached his, she left it there, and it felt like putting a plug inside a socket.

“I’m bored. Let’s play a game,” said Walter.

“It’s pitch black in here,” said Tracy. She was thinking of cards, or checkers, or the pick-up sticks she had created for Christopher.

“Not like that. Truth or dare,” said Walter.

Barbara laughed softly.

Tracy knew what this was only from books and shows. She understood it to be a game that people her age played at things like sleepovers, but the only sleepovers she had had were with her cousins on her mother’s side, or with Debbie Finley, a neighbor girl whose mother worked nights. Those sleepovers hadn’t felt anything like this one.

Part of the feeling came from danger: all of them, Tracy felt certain, had at the back of their mind the image of Jacob Sluiter at the edge of the campsite, recently escaped, hungry and angry. But none of them would say his name: to say it felt disrespectful to Barbara. To the memory of her brother, the rumors that Sluiter was somehow involved in his disappearance.

“I’ll go first,” said Tracy, feeling reckless. She put her hand out for the disgusting crème de menthe.

“Truth or dare?” said Walter. The words felt like an incantation.

“Truth,” said Tracy, drinking.

“Who do you like?” said Walter.

And she understood immediately that she would lie. She thought about all the boys in her grade at her school in Hempstead.

“Philip DiGiacomo,” she said, naming the boy who was widely considered the cutest.

“Aw, that’s not fair,” said Walter. “Who do you like at this camp.”

“Too late,” said Tracy, happily. “Your turn. Truth or dare.”

“Dare,” said Walter.

Tracy thought for a moment. She wanted her dare to be creative, to be funny. She wanted to make the others laugh.

“All right,” she said. “Walter: I dare you to walk up to T.J.’s tent and make bear noises outside it.”

The boys fell into quiet laughter. Next to her, she could feel Barbara’s

head turn swiftly in her direction.

“That’s not a good idea,” said Barbara.

“Why not?” said Lowell. “That’s hilarious.”

From Barbara: a long measured pause. And then: “She’s got a gun.”

The other three fell silent.

“She almost definitely has a gun,” said Barbara.

“For what?” said Lowell.

“For exactly that reason,” said Barbara. “For bears and things.”

“Or for Slitter,” said Walter.

There was a long pause.

“Do you think that’s why they sent the counselors along with us this year?” said Walter. “Because he’s on the loose?”

“No,” said Barbara. “I think it’s just because so many parents complained.

T.J. says this generation is different from earlier ones. She says the parents are just more scared.”

More silence as the four of them considered this. Tracy didn’t think her own parents would be scared. But when she remembered the mothers of the other girls—in their patterned wrap dresses, their Weejuns—she believed that they would be.

“Well,” said Walter. “Not doing that. Any other ideas?”

Tracy racked her brain. She thought of having him finish off the flask— but she wanted more. She thought of having him kiss one of the others, or strip down and streak around the campsite, but she was worried about the precedent this would set—being terrified, herself, of being asked to remove

any article of clothing whatsoever—and so instead she said, “I dare you to tell us Lowell’s biggest secret.”

She could not see anyone’s face well, but she could tell Walter was thinking about how to respond.

“That’s easy,” he said, finally. “When he’s at home, he sleeps with the light on because he’s scared of the dark.”

He turned to Lowell. “But don’t worry, pal,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”

Tracy understood two things immediately: that this was not Lowell’s biggest secret; and that Walter would be loyal to him at all costs. Her heart sank. She had not meant to be unkind.

• • •

Thirty minutes passed. An hour. All of them were tipsy and warmer than they had been. Tracy’s good mood had been restored by the intimacies they had swapped: after running out of acceptable dares, they turned instead to truths, and in the small amount of time that had passed had learned more about each other than they had all summer. It was wonderful, thought Tracy, having friends like these, who seemed to see the parts of yourself you worked hardest to hide, and bring them into the light and celebrate them with a sort of tender ribbing that uplifted more than it put down. Lowell, she had learned, really was afraid of the dark; Lowell, despite his physical gifts, hated sports, to the horror of his football-playing father; Walter was terrible in school, had something called dyslexia, had a father who’d gone to Harvard and expected nothing less. She, Tracy, had disclosed how few friends she had at home, how the girls she went to middle school with were nothing like her; how her father had left her mother for Donna Romano, a cocktail waitress at the Adelphi Hotel; how her mother had become quieter, less boisterous in the wake of this event.

Each time a truth was told, they cheersed, they drank. They took turns stoking the fire when it got low.

The only person who seemed at all reserved was Barbara. She laughed quietly with them; she was engaged; but when it came time for her to tell her

truths, Tracy sensed that they were censored.

It was so freeing, thought Tracy, to trade intimacies with friends in this way; she felt almost bad for Barbara that she was having a different experience. And so, when it came time for Tracy to participate, she chose Barbara. And Barbara chose truth.

Unswervingly, Tracy asked the question she’d been wondering all

summer.

“Who’s your boyfriend?”

Silence.

In the background, the fire popped loudly, and Tracy jumped.

“The truth is,” said Barbara, finally, “that I can’t tell you the truth.”

In her voice there was anger: whether it was directed at her, or at the boyfriend, or at the world, Tracy wasn’t sure.

Barbara grabbed the flask from Walter and tipped it vertical. She finished

it.

Then she said, “Lowell. Truth or dare.”

Lowell thought. Opted at last for a dare.

“I dare you to kiss me,” said Barbara.

At the base of her neck, Tracy felt a cold sensation that she recognized as fear.

In the dim light from the fire, she could see Lowell’s broad shoulders, his forearms crossed one over the other on top of his tucked-up legs. He took one arm down and then the other, and then, with purpose, he got up onto his knees and leaned toward Barbara. He put his hands on either side of her face, and then he put his face toward hers and kissed her, and Tracy understood immediately that he had kissed many girls before; and that this was not a perfunctory, command-following kiss. This was instead a kiss with feeling, with desire. She wanted to turn away; she didn’t. This was her punishment, Tracy thought, for letting down her guard. She deserved it. She took it.

• • •

Walter made a little Oooh sound when the kiss ended, but that was all.

Then Barbara said she was tired, and Lowell agreed, and the four of them split up abruptly: the boys to tend the fire one last time; the girls in the direction of their tent.

Inside, Tracy was cold again. She shook. She turned onto her side, tucked her knees up into her sweatshirt, lay there curled up like a baby.

After a beat, she felt Barbara move closer to her, and then Barbara put her arms around Tracy’s side, hugging her from behind.

“Don’t,” said Tracy.

“I’m sorry,” said Barbara. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry, Tracy.”

She didn’t want to cry, but suddenly she was crying. It was out of shame more than anger: shame for ever thinking someone like Lowell Cargill might possibly be interested in her.

“Don’t cry, Tracy,” said Barbara. “Please. I’m sorry.”

Tracy closed her eyes. She was warmer now, at least; Barbara was correct that putting their bodies together was useful for retaining heat.

“Do you like him?” Tracy whispered.

“No.”

“Why did you do it?”

Barbara paused.

“I do bad things sometimes,” she said. “I have that problem. I think—what would be the worst thing I could do in this moment? And then I do it. Almost like I can’t stop myself.”

Against her will, Tracy understood what Barbara meant. She, too, had had those thoughts—the difference was that she was too afraid to act on them.

She imagined that most people were.

“You should get that examined,” said Tracy, and Barbara laughed a little.

Tracy smiled. Despite everything, she liked to make Barbara laugh.

“Oh, I have,” said Barbara. “My father has made me see a shrink since I

was five.”

“The same one?”

“All different. Every year there’s a new one. This year’s is Dr. Roth. I call her Dr. Sloth, because that’s what she looks like. She talks like one, too. Like

this,” said Barbara—and she did an impression of someone sluggish and dull.

“At least she’s a woman,” said Barbara, after a beat. “I like women better.”

“Me too,” said Tracy—though she wasn’t actually sure that this was true.

“What does Dr. Roth think is wrong with you?”

“Impulse control,” said Barbara. “I don’t have enough of it, according to

her. My father agrees.”

“You don’t get along with him.”

“Hah,” said Barbara. “The understatement of the year.”

“Is that why you came to camp this summer?” said Tracy. “To get away

from him?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

Barbara was quiet.

“To get away from all of them,” she said. “They’re having that party this summer, and I just didn’t want to be there for that. All their terrible friends. I

don’t like any of them.”

Tracy had another theory.

“Is it easier to see your boyfriend from camp?”

Barbara nodded. Tracy could feel her chin moving up and down against the back of Tracy’s head.

“Easier to sneak out,” said Barbara. “Up at the house, someone’s always awake.”

“What about your mother?” This was the most they had ever talked about Barbara’s family. Normally, she changed the subject. “What’s she like?”

Tracy said, pressing on.

A pause.

“She’s useless,” Barbara said. “She barely functions.”

“What happened to her?”

Barbara’s arms slackened a little around Tracy.

“My brother went missing,” she said, quietly. “And he never came back.

That’s what happened to her, I think. Because I’ve seen pictures of her from when she was a teenager, and she looked okay. She looked like a different person.”

Tracy put her hand over Barbara’s. She squeezed it. She could feel herself sobering up in the cold. She had the feeling that she would be embarrassed by some of this, or all of this, tomorrow; that it would be difficult to look at Lowell and Walter and Barbara. But for now, she used what remained of the bravery the alcohol had given her to lace her fingers through Barbara’s and pull her arm more tightly around herself.

“Did you know that, about my brother?” Barbara said. “Does everyone

know that?”

Tracy nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Silence.

“My mom thinks he’ll come back,” said Barbara. “But that’s a secret from my father. She only says that stuff to me. My father gets mad when she even

mentions Bear.”

“Do you think he will?” said Tracy.

“No,” said Barbara. “I don’t.”

In the dark, Tracy could hear Barbara opening and closing her mouth.

“What is it?”

“I think about him a lot. I wish he hadn’t gone away,” said Barbara.

“Do you wish you could have met him?”

“No. I mean, that’s part of it,” said Barbara. “I’ve seen pictures of him and he looked like a good person. Everyone says he was.”

She paused. Tracy held her breath, not wanting to break the spell.

“When I was younger,” said Barbara, “I used to have these imaginary conversations with him. I used to pretend he still lived with us, that I had an older brother who looked out for me. Protected me from my parents when they fought, or when they got mad at me.”

Tracy nodded. She—an only child—had had similar daydreams.

“But also,” said Barbara, “if he hadn’t disappeared.”

She did not finish the sentence.

“Then what?” said Tracy.

“Then I wouldn’t have been born,” said Barbara. “That would have been

better, I think.”

They were quiet for a long time.

An adult, Tracy knew, would have registered alarm, would have protested that life was worth living. But Tracy, at nearly thirteen, read the statement not as a cry for help, but as a statement of fact. And so she said nothing, and the two of them breathed together for a long time, until each one thought the

other had fallen asleep.

Suddenly, Barbara spoke again.

“What time do you think it is?”

Tracy held up her watch, angling it so that it caught the light from the fire.

“Midnight,” she said.

“Shit,” Barbara whispered.

“What?”

“I have to go.”

She sat up abruptly.

Beside her, Tracy sat up as well.

“Go?” she said.

Barbara was rummaging in her backpack, feeling inside it.

“Where are you going?” Tracy asked.

“Same place I go every night.”

She pulled out a small flashlight.

“Where did you get that?”

“I brought it with me from Balsam.”

“But how will you know where you’re going?” asked Tracy,

incredulously.

But Barbara scoffed.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I know every inch of these woods.”

And then she set off, past the fire, heading downhill. Tracy watched until she could see only the beam from the flashlight. Until even that was gone.

Tracy

racy slept fitfully, woken by cold and sometimes by the sound of one ofT the other campers tending the fire.

At some point, she opened her eyes to find that it was light out, and that she was still alone in the tent.

Tracy sat up quickly, afraid now. Everyone else was still sleeping. She tiptoed to Lowell and Walter’s tent, and leaned down next to Lowell, whispering his name until he opened one eye.

“Barbara’s not here,” she said. “She’s gone.”

Lowell blinked in the sunlight, rubbed his eyes, stretched.

“What are you talking about?” said Lowell. “I just saw her. She was getting more wood.”

Sure enough: from behind a little copse of trees came Barbara, arms full of branches, gathering kindling to fuel their morning fire.

She grinned at Tracy. Good morning, she mouthed.

• • •

Their plan for the day was to set up simple squirrel poles, which T.J. had taught them to do in their outdoorsmanship classes. Barbara, of course, oversaw.

By evening, the squirrel traps were empty of both bait and squirrels.

Someone had found a small patch of berries, but the walk to retrieve them had no doubt cost more energy than the berries themselves would provide.

The mood had changed. With nothing to do, they waited for dinner, for the small portions of canned beans and gorp that Barbara had reserved for the night’s meal. The younger campers were complaining of hunger; the older ones were annoyed.

Barbara, determined, set off one more time into the woods to check the traps. And in a moment, they heard a yell.

Tracy stood up. Across the campsite, she could see Lowell standing too.

And then he took off in a run toward Barbara’s voice.

The two of them emerged a minute later, grinning, shouldering two of the squirrel poles between them. From the poles hung the corpses of three red squirrels, swinging as they walked. One of them, Tracy saw in horror, was still twitching and scrabbling.

“Barbara!” she cried out. “Barbara, one’s alive!”

Barbara nodded.

“Grab a rock,” she said.

“Me?” Tracy said.

“Yes, you.”

Tracy looked around the campsite. She quickly spotted a solid-looking one, and held it up over her head for Barbara’s inspection.

“Good,” said Barbara. “Now take off one of your socks and put the rock

inside it.”

Tracy felt her stomach lurch.

“Do it,” said Barbara. “Come on, Tracy. If I have to put the pole down he’ll get away.”

Something in Barbara’s gaze told Tracy that this was a test, that to fail it would be catastrophic for their friendship. And so she complied, sitting down on the earth, removing a shoe and then a sock, putting the rock inside it.

With one bare foot she hobbled toward the frantic squirrel. The rest of the campers were quiet. She aimed her weapon, swung it like a bat toward the skull of the red squirrel until it no longer moved.

Raising her head at last, she saw that she was being watched: not just by her peers, but by T.J. Hewitt, up on her ridge, hands on hips, smiling down at

her in approval.

“Good job,” she called.

These were the only words she had spoken since declaring herself invisible.

Then, swiftly, she turned her back on them and crouched down to return to her tent.

• • •

Barbara was the one to butcher the squirrels, bending forward to work on a tarp on the ground.

When she was nearly finished removing the pelt, she shifted a squirrel carcass onto her lap and began to work off the remaining skin with a paring

knife.

The rest of them watched.

Later, no one would be certain quite how it happened—not even Barbara —but suddenly she was sitting very still, and on her right knee was the half- skinned squirrel, and inside her left thigh was the tip of the small knife she had been using.

Her hand was still holding its hilt. Reflexively, she extracted it in one similarly swift motion, and then said, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Sure enough: the wound lay dormant for three seconds, as if hesitating, and then from it a small pool of blood surfaced and then spilled.

“I shouldn’t have taken it out,” Barbara said, again. “I should have left it in there.”

Barbara had been wearing shorts, and so her leg was in full view. Rivulets of blood were spilling down the inside of her thigh, splashing onto the soil beneath her.

Some of the other campers backed away, heads in hands; others

approached.

“We should tell T.J.,” said Lowell.

“No,” said Barbara, quickly.

“Why not?” said Walter. “She said to. She said the only reason to get her was an emergency.”

“It’s not an emergency,” said Barbara. “I can handle it.”

She looked around. The blood dripping from her leg was making a pat-pat noise on the ground.

“Christopher,” she called. He had run away at the first sight of blood.

From his tent, now, he emerged, timid.

“I need my sweatshirt back,” said Barbara. “I’m sorry.”

He stripped it off hastily, ran it to her. With her knife, she severed one sleeve and wrapped it firmly around her leg. The fabric of the sleeve went quickly from white to pink.

For an hour or two, Barbara wore it, going about her business as before, seemingly unperturbed.

They ate squirrel for dinner, each given approximately one bite of meat, which boosted everyone’s morale, even if it did not lessen their hunger.

By late evening, Tracy noticed that Barbara seemed quieter than usual. She had no doubt lost a lot of blood; the sweatshirt sleeve had needed

replacement twice with other fabrics.

“Are you all right?” Tracy said.

“I’m fine,” said Barbara.

But her face was very pale. Tracy looked at her one beat too long.

“What?” Barbara said.

Behind her, Tracy could feel the gazes of the other campers turning in their direction. The campsite was silent.

“We have to tell T.J.,” said Lowell. He looked down at Barbara, inspecting her face. “I’m serious. You’ve lost too much blood. It’s not safe.”

“I’m fine,” Barbara said again, weakly.

But Lowell wouldn’t hear it. He strode off in the direction of T.J.’s campsite. Barbara called after him, once, but her voice was too quiet to be heard.

• • •

Ten seconds later, T.J. came running down the small incline between her campsite and theirs, carrying a large pot before her. She knelt down in front of Barbara, who was now on her back, apparently unable to hold up her head any longer.

After inspecting her charge, T.J. popped up onto her feet and looked around, assessing everyone.

Then, correctly identifying Lowell Cargill as the person most likely to be helpful in a crisis, she held out the pot in her hands, instructing him to stoke the campfire, and then to boil water over it. She, meanwhile, scooped Barbara swiftly into her arms, and then walked as quickly as she could back up the hill.

“Shout when the water’s boiling,” she called.

Then she and Barbara disappeared inside her tent.

• • •

By nightfall, Barbara was cleaned, sutured, fed, watered, clothed in warmer clothing, and much pinker in the face. She was also back with her peers at the campsite, already downplaying the severity of what had transpired.

Later, in their tent, Tracy and Barbara huddled together as before.

“Barbara,” said Tracy.

“What?”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

Barbara scoffed. “I would have been fine.”

“I don’t know,” said Tracy. “You didn’t look good.”

“I could have taken care of myself. I would have walked back to Camp Emerson if I’d gotten any worse. I would have walked all the way there and all the way back. No one needed to get T.J. involved.”

Strangely, Tracy believed her.

“Where’d you learn all that stuff?” said Tracy.

“What stuff?”

“You know. Trapping and putting up tents and all. Taking apart those squirrels. First aid.”

“Same place as you,” said Barbara. “T.J.’s classes.”

Tracy shook her head. “I don’t know what you know. I don’t think anyone does.”

Barbara was briefly quiet. “My family,” she said.

They were quiet then. There was more to the story, Tracy could tell. She didn’t press.

“Are you leaving again tonight?” said Tracy, whispering.

“I don’t think I can,” said Barbara. She shifted a little. “I don’t think my

leg will let me.”

She sighed.

“Is it all right that you don’t?” said Tracy.

She said this carefully: not wanting to repeat her mistake, to anger Barbara by pressing an issue she clearly did not want to talk about.

Barbara was silent so long that Tracy assumed she had fallen asleep. The extra clothes she’d been given by T.J. lent warmth to both of them, and Tracy felt herself growing sleepy, as well.

Then, in the dark, she heard Barbara exhale.

“Probably not,” she said, quietly. “It’s probably not all right.”

Alice

n the second day of Barbara’s absence, Alice wakes, her mouth aO desert.

She’s slept all night on her stomach. A patch of wetness has spread outward onto the bedspread from her mouth.

She knows something bad has happened. The feeling of it hovers; the fact of it hasn’t arrived yet. She sits up. Reaches for the tumbler of gin on her

nightstand. Drinks painfully.

She stands.

Barbara.

There it is. Her daughter has been missing since yesterday morning.

Five minutes later, Alice stands in the sunroom. She watches from the window: more parents arriving to retrieve their children, one week earlier than they’d planned.

Some—those who live in Albany or Niskayuna or Vermont—came yesterday to retrieve their children.

Others—the West Coasters, the Coloradans, those who had to catch a flight—are only arriving today, and they pull onto the Preserve with urgency in their rented or hired cars, horrified that their children have had to spend an entire night in a place where another child went missing less than twenty-four hours earlier.

• • •

She understands. She remembers feeling this way about Bear: that she would do anything to protect him. That she would physically harm anyone who dreamed of harming him. He needed her—that was the thing. He needed her, when no one had ever needed her before. He clung to her—a habit that Peter pathologized. But she had never been anyone’s protector before, and she enjoyed the feeling, indulging it in secret, whenever they were alone.

• • •

Behind her, someone enters the sunroom.

Without turning, she knows who it is.

She’ll be taken to Albany today, she understands. The Peters are getting her out of the way, as usual.

That’s all right. She likes being in Albany.

She can hear her son’s voice better there.

Alice

ear was bouncing with anticipation. Alice watched him through theB sunroom glass: the day that the Blackfly Good-by was due to begin, he always stationed himself on the front lawn, eager for company to arrive.

Now, he was turning cartwheels and throwing a baseball up in the air over and over again. He was singing a song Alice didn’t know, something he must have picked up at school. It struck her as funny, sometimes, that he had a whole life outside the home that she didn’t know about. He’s become such a person, lately, she said to Peter; and Peter rolled his eyes, as if he didn’t know what she meant. But he did. She knew he did.

At age eight, he was delightful, intelligent, curious, funny, and increasingly independent. It went beyond what she had hoped for; now she sometimes missed him, his constant presence next to her, his high clear voice calling Mamma eighteen times in a minute.

But Peter was thrilled. It was all that he hoped for the boy: self-reliance.

And one of the best parts of all of it was the way it had brought Peter and Alice together. Now they could sit still together, watching their son like a show. They began to enjoy one another’s company in a way they hadn’t before. She was older, for one thing: Alice was twenty-six that year. A respectable age, at last.

At times, now, she had the thrilling idea that her husband was falling in love with her—for the first time, actually. She was sad for the younger Alice, the eighteen-year-old who hadn’t known anything about the world; but she was happy for herself in this moment. It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.

• • •

Peter and his father had invited more guests than ever to that year’s event: thirty-seven, by Alice’s count. Every bedroom was assigned, and every room in every outbuilding as well. Due to the number of single men and women who could not share a room, they’d even had to commandeer some of the Staff Quarters; for the staff members they’d displaced, they rented two unoccupied summer homes five miles to the south, and provided them with cars.

The first guest pulled in, and Bear ran toward the driveway to say hello.

Alice, from her place in the sunroom, recognized the car immediately as her sister Delphine’s.

It had been three years since George’s death, and Delphine had continued to come alone for that time, always arriving in the same practical Buick that she staunchly refused to sell.

“Bear!” said Delphine. Through the glass, Alice could see the word as her mouth formed it. She and the boy had always had a special bond, a nice friendship. At each summer party, she treated him as an equal, brought paper and paint for him, sat with him for hours, talking with him about what he was learning in school.

Alice walked into the hallway, into the main room, where Peter and his parents were reading by the central fireplace.

“Delphine is here,” she said.

• • •

The crowd that year was eclectic. The usual suspects were there: the families of Peter and Alice; the Southworths, who would bring their toddler daughter, Annabel; the McLellans and their children; and also a handful of clients, and the obligatory artists.

Everyone complimented the food. Everyone complimented everything, actually; the decorations, and the flowers, and the musicians they had brought in, and the outfits that Alice wore, and Bear’s intelligence and good humor, and his handsomeness, too.

Throughout the week, Peter seemed different to Alice: his best self. He was happier, more enthusiastic. Relaxed, even. At times, she found him sitting on the lawn, reading a paper. Other years, he had seemed not to sit down at all.

• • •

One day, when most of the guests had gone for a hike up Hunt Mountain, Alice stayed behind. She was tired from a late night; she would take a short nap, she thought.

She went to her bedroom and stopped short.

Peter was there in her bed—awake.

He looked up at her. Surprised at first. Then he smiled.

“No hike?” he said.

“No,” said Alice. “I thought I’d rest for a bit.”

She waited, slightly nervous. The word rest was anathema to Peter; he didn’t enjoy resting himself, and didn’t appreciate it when anyone around him did either.

But he surprised her: “Come rest with me,” he said.

• • •

In the first year of their marriage, sex had been something requisite. There was always a mild embarrassment about it, on both their parts: from their first

moments alone together, she had never truly felt his desire, but something more akin to duty, or a sort of condescending charity.

When Bear turned one, Peter had had rooms furnished for her that were separate from his, in both their Albany house and at Self-Reliance. He didn’t include her in this decision; merely presented both rooms to her, saying his

insomnia required it.

Since then, she had slept alone.

Alice, still a young woman, sometimes felt desire so strongly that she did not know what to do with it. She lusted after friends, after strangers in the street. But, after a handful of rejections from Peter so brutal that they left her crying, she stopped making any attempt to engage him in that way. Attended to herself, instead, wondering if any other woman on the planet did what she was doing.

That day, though, Peter reached for her with a tenderness she had never felt before. He was gentle and forceful, all at once. She lay in bed with him afterward, astonished.

She cried: something she rarely let herself do in front of Peter.

“What is it?” he asked her, kindly.

She was crying, she said, because she loved him. And she did, in that moment: she loved him, and the life they had built together. But she was also crying because of all that she’d been deprived of to that point.

“Silly,” he called her, yet there was affection in his voice. And she let herself sink into him.

This, she thought, was what she had been wanting her whole life.

At last, it was here.

• • •

Everything was different. For the rest of the week, the two of them mooned after one another. Every moment they could, they sought one another out.

Peter slept in her room—the one he had made for her. He went to his, on the other side of the hallway, only to change and dress in the morning.

Even Bear noticed: he came to them once, taking both of their hands in his, grinning as he looked into their faces, as if he could sense their love.

• • •

Usually, the Blackfly Good-by took place from a Saturday to a Saturday.

That year, at their annual farewell dinner—a clambake put on by the staff in the traditional manner, on the beach—Peter stood up and called for everyone’s attention.

“Don’t leave tomorrow,” he said. “Stay an extra day.”

He looked around then, as if only just realizing the implications of his idea. “Warren!” he called—the name of the cook in those days. “Warren, we have enough food for tomorrow, haven’t we?”

Hesitantly, Warren nodded. It would mean more trips to town, Alice knew; it would mean a change in plans for all the temporary staff who had initially been contracted to work just the week.

But Peter had already made his decision. The guests had already cheered.

The dinner looked set to proceed, until someone on the periphery spoke up.

“Is that all right?” said Delphine. Everyone turned in her direction.

“Warren, did you have other plans?”

Silence.

The impropriety of this exchange was obvious to everyone on the beach.

What right did Delphine—a widowed woman, alone at the party—have to directly address a member of the Van Laars’ staff?

Suddenly, Peter’s father—who generally let his son run the show—stood up from the deep Adirondack chair he’d been sitting in with a spryness that would have been surprising in any other man of his age.

He addressed the group as a whole.

“Warren will be happy to accommodate you all,” he said. “As will we.

Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Barlow.”

• • •

In bed that night, Peter’s good mood was gone. A quiet fury had replaced it.

“What was she thinking,” he said, over and over. She, Alice presumed, was Delphine.

“She means well,” said Alice. “She’s just—she’s always been different.

Ever since we were children.”

Peter was silent.

“She has good qualities, too. She’s very good with Bear,” said Alice— thinking frantically of anything she could say to mollify her husband. “She’s always been kind to him. She sits with him, you know. She brings him toys every time she comes.”

“The presumptuousness of that woman,” said Peter. “I know she’s your sister, Alice, but I’m not certain we can keep inviting her.”

He turned over, away from Alice.

Tentatively, she put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. Then he stood up. He put his robe on. He walked out of her room, across the hallway, and into his.

She didn’t want the spell of the week to be over. She didn’t want to go back to the way they’d always been.

• • •

She hadn’t had as much to drink that week as she normally did; she’d been happily distracted by Peter’s attention. But the final Saturday of the Blackfly Good-by—when she realized Peter would not be coming out of his room— she took a glass of wine at lunch, and continued to refill it in the kitchen whenever she had a moment to herself.

By four o’clock, the smell of the air had changed. Rain was coming, everyone said.

The staff had been busy all day, bringing bags of groceries back from town.

At some point, somebody proposed an outing on Lake Joan: it would be their last chance to boat before the storm. And so the decision was made, and everyone retreated to their rooms to change.

Bear would enjoy that, thought Alice. And she set off to find him.

For most of the week, he’d been running here and there with John Paul and Marnie McLellan; she could go long stretches without seeing him. She’d never paid so little attention to him as she did that week; she’d never had anything to distract her the way that Peter had. It was all right, she told herself. Bear, too, was having fun.

Tessie Jo Hewitt was part of their group as well. Slightly older than the rest, she seemed to be their leader. Alice wasn’t certain, but she thought it possible that Vic Hewitt had assigned his daughter the task of acting as babysitter for the other children.

Alice didn’t find Bear in his room, or in any of the McLellans’ rooms.

She looked down at the beach, and in the boathouse, where two of the staff were readying several watercraft for that afternoon’s excursion.

“Have you seen Bear?” she asked them, but they hadn’t.

• • •

She saved Peter’s room for last. For one thing, she thought it unlikely that her son was there: Bear and his father had become closer, lately, but really he was hers alone. Peter seemed always to look at him from a distance, even when they were in the same room.

She walked down the carpeted hallway of Self-Reliance, listening for children’s voices, for the voice of her son.

She stood outside Peter’s room, her ear to the door.

And then, hearing nothing, she turned the knob.

Judyta

nside the now-abandoned slaughterhouse, Judy stands silent.I She listens: more footsteps. Five, six, seven in a row.

Toward the back of the shadowy room, she sees a staircase leading upward into darkness. If she were in a movie, she thinks, she’d head in that direction.

But all of her training tells her not to go solo toward a potential threat, and so instead she backs out of the structure.

In the daylight, headed in the direction of Camp Emerson, she breaks into a jog.

• • •

Fifteen minutes later, Judy stands next to Denny Hayes and Captain LaRochelle on the dirt driveway. Across from them, a squadron of six state troopers—guns drawn, backs to walls—enters the structure two by two.

“This feels unnecessary,” whispers Judy, and Denny turns and shushes her.

“Captain’s orders,” he says.

When the last of the troopers has disappeared out of sight, Judy feels the weight of what she’s done.

For three long minutes, she looks up at the sky. Down at the ground.

How many footsteps did she actually hear? Just a few, she thinks. And were they loud? Not particularly. Could they have been something else? A

tree, tapping on the roof. Acorns falling. Dozens of possibilities occur to her, until at last the troopers file out of the slaughterhouse, relaxed now.

The two at the front cross the dirt road to talk to Captain LaRochelle.

“Found the culprit,” says one.

“Family of squirrels,” says the other, grinning.

LaRochelle clears his throat. “That’s it, huh? You sure?”

“Yeah. We searched the whole upstairs.”

LaRochelle says nothing. Then, not looking at Judy, he turns to Hayes.

“I was interrupted during a conversation with Mr. Van Laar,” says LaRochelle. “So I think it best that I return to him now.”

He strides off.

Judyta

ack at the Command Post in the Director’s Cabin, Denny HayesB positions himself at the front of the room, preparing to pick up where he left off with the small group of investigators gathered before him.

The superintendent, he says, is not happy with their efforts so far. The Adirondack Search and Rescue Team—a crew of civilian volunteers—is being dispatched to do a Type Three search today in the surrounding woods, after EnCon’s failure to locate anyone, or anything, yesterday.

“Any leads from this morning?” Hayes asks.

The other investigators glance around. The looks on their faces are clear: not much.

One says: “Couple kids have said they’ve seen a woman in the woods in the past. This summer and other summers, too. Apparently she’s a local

legend. Ghost-story type of thing.”

Hayes blinks.

“Ghost story about a woman. Noted,” says Hayes. “Anyone able to tell us more about what this ghost looks like?”

The same investigator says, “Older woman. Thin. Gray hair. That’s all I

got. Aside from what they call her.”

“Which is?”

The investigator, chagrined, makes a display of inspecting his notes. Reads

it off: “Scary Mary.”

“Scary Mary,” says Hayes.

The investigator nods.

“Anyone else?” says Hayes.

Silence.

“Everyone says Barbara was well-liked,” says another investigator. “No quarrels with anyone, that I’ve heard about.”

Hayes looks more despairing than ever.

Still feeling humiliated from her earlier mistake at the slaughterhouse, Judy weighs whether to produce in this moment the information provided by Mrs. Clute, the cook. Already, she imagines, she’s being talked about on the grounds. Being called incompetent. She’d prefer to tell Denny Hayes in private. But Hayes looks poised to break up the meeting, and so she raises her hand.

“Put your hand down, Judy,” says Hayes. “You’re an investigator, not a

student. Go ahead.”

She flushes.

“There’s a cook up at the house who had something to tell me,” she begins. “Turns out she’s the daughter of the man said to have abducted Bear

Van Laar.”

For a beat, no one says anything.

Then an investigator who hasn’t spoken yet says: “Carl Stoddard?”

Judy nods. She recognizes him: he’s the oldest investigator in the room.

The one who, yesterday, asked LaRochelle whether Jacob Sluiter was under consideration for Barbara’s disappearance.

“I worked that case,” the man says. Confirming what everyone assumed.

Judy makes a note to talk to him, whenever she can get him alone.

“Why on earth,” says Hayes, “would Carl Stoddard’s daughter be working for the Van Laars? That doesn’t make sense. In either direction. They wouldn’t want her here, that’s certain. And she probably wouldn’t want to be here either.”

“She uses her married name,” says Judy. “Clute. She said the Van Laars don’t know who she is. Said she took the job out of necessity, after her husband lost his. They’ve got a lot of kids. Another on the way.”

“And what did she have to say about Barbara’s disappearance?”

Judy thinks about how to phrase this. “She said Barbara’s family never treated Barbara well. Neglected her, sort of. But she didn’t have any theories about where she might have gone.”

“Anything—inappropriate? Anything beyond neglect?” asks Hayes.

“Not that she mentioned,” says Judy. “But I guess she might not have known everything. This is the first summer she’s been here.”

“And what did she have to say about her own father?”

The room feels as if it’s holding its breath.

“She said Carl Stoddard was framed,” says Judy. “Said there’s no way he did it. But he died of a heart attack before he could be exonerated, and the Van Laar family just sort of let it be assumed that he was the one responsible, based on only a few pieces of evidence.” She pauses. “I guess Captain LaRochelle agreed. And that’s the story that was presented to the public,

too.”

Quiet.

Judy glances at the investigator who worked the original case.

“Goldman,” says Hayes, and the investigator turns. “What do you think?”

Goldman thinks.

He glances over his shoulder—looking for LaRochelle.

“I never liked Stoddard for it,” he says. “But don’t ask me that in front of the captain.”

“Did Mrs. Clute sign a statement?” asks Hayes, turning to Judy. “Will she go on record?”

“No,” says Judy, quickly. “She practically ran away when I asked her.”

“Still,” says Hayes, “thank you, Investigator Luptack. That’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard today. She must have trusted you to tell you that.”

He holds her gaze. Then: “Anything else? Anyone?”

The door swings open suddenly. In walks Captain LaRochelle.

Immediately, the mood in the room changes. Goldman busies himself with files. Two of the other investigators head outside. And Judy realizes that all of them have made a silent decision: they won’t say anything in front of LaRochelle again—not without telling Hayes privately first.

Captain LaRochelle doesn’t ask any questions about what’s transpired since he’s been gone.

Judyta

he Adirondack Search and Rescue Team, LaRochelle announces, hasT found something up by the observer’s tower at the top of Hunt Mountain. Inside and outside the nearby cabin, a huge number of beer bottles have been collected. And from these, usable fingerprints have been taken.

And from these, five have been matched with John Paul McLellan.

But there’s more.

Someone called an anonymous tip into the station at Ray Brook: apparently, John Paul McLellan was known to be staying in the vicinity of the Van Laar Preserve—not just for the weeklong celebration at the house— but for the whole summer. Making it probable that the boyfriend Barbara Van Laar was going to see in the observer’s cabin each night was, indeed, McLellan.

“So that’s it,” says Goldman. “Between that and the bloody uniform.

McLellan’s our guy?”

There’s a hitch, says LaRochelle. Because McLellan and his lawyer father have made a separate allegation: it was Louise Donnadieu, Barbara’s counselor, who asked McLellan to dispose of the bag.

The contents of which, adds LaRochelle, are currently being analyzed for blood type by forensics.

“So we’re pointing at McLellan,” says Goldman. “And McLellan’s pointing at Donnadieu?”

“And a kid named Lee Towson,” says LaRochelle. “Kitchen worker.

McLellan says he and Donnadieu were a pair.”

Around the room, a clearing of throats.

“Anyway,” says LaRochelle. “Until we get the blood analysis back, let’s just keep following the leads we have.”

• • •

Around the Command Post, investigators stand. LaRochelle leaves to return to the main house.

Slowly, the room clears. When it’s empty, Denny Hayes turns to Judy.

“Let me see that map,” he says.

Judy retrieves the pad of paper from the wall she’s leaned it against. Hayes takes it, inspects the several pages she’s drawn on: the house, the camp, the outbuildings. Names above the buildings she was able to populate.

Hayes asks for a pen. Writes Unoccupied above the farm buildings. Judy’s face reddens. For a long while, he says nothing. Then he points to a northern spot on one of the maps. “Let’s add the observer’s cabin here,” he says. “We can add McLellan’s name to it.”

“Why wouldn’t Louise Donnadieu have known McLellan was on the grounds all summer?” says Judy. “Weren’t they together?”

“No idea,” says Hayes. “Maybe he lied to her.”

“Where does she think he was?” asks Judy.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “But we can find out. She’s still in Wells until they remand her to Albion. I’ll stop in.”

Judy nods. “What about McLellan himself?” she says. “Do you have tabs on him?”

Hayes confirms that they do. One investigator from every shift has been assigned to sit in the parking lot of the hotel he’s staying in, keeping a lookout for him and his parents.

“The problem is,” says Hayes, “no matter how much evidence we stack up —without a body, or the living girl, he’s unarrestable. All we have him on are fairly minor charges. A DUI. Possession. With a lawyer father, that’s not

gonna keep him in our sights for long.”

“But the uniform,” says Judy.

“Still maintaining the Donnadieu girl asked him to dispose of the bag that held it.”

• • •

At nearly seven p.m., exhausted, Judy finally walks to her car.

She points her Beetle down the long dirt driveway of Self-Reliance, then left onto State Route 29, heading south. Now that Judy is alone, there is nothing to distract her from her earlier humiliation, and she presses her eyes closed against it, briefly. Says Goddammit several times. All those state troopers. Captain LaRochelle himself. Hayes. All of them watching her, skeptical. Laughing, even.

If she had just walked up those stairs, she thinks. If she had just listened longer.

Her eyes are heavy. It’s been a long day in the heat. When she was promoted to investigator, she hadn’t realized how much more human interaction she’d be tasked with. As a trooper, she’d enjoyed the long stretches of solitude that came with sitting at the edge of the highway, waiting.

She turns up the radio as loud as she can take it. Van McCoy commands her to Hustle. Sleepily, she tries to comply.

• • •

Judy wakes up with a jolt. It’s full dark. She’s still on Route 29. Her hands are in her lap. The car is turned off. She’s still alive.

But apparently, she pulled to the side of the road and fell asleep, without having any memory of doing so. Without locking her doors.

A sudden rush of adrenaline and fear.

Imagine, thinks Judy—imagine if she hadn’t pulled over.

Wide awake now, Judy puts her blinker on, checks her blind spot, and pulls back onto the road.

Up ahead of her, she notices a sign: Shattuck Township, 6 miles.

Beneath it, two small icons: food and lodging.

• • •

Judy makes a right at the foot of the off-ramp. After a minute, she spies a tiny roadside motel: neon sign outside it; in-ground pool nearby.

The woman at the front desk is reading a novel. She looks up when Judy enters.

“I was wondering if there might be a room available?” says Judy.

The woman nods.

Judy feels self-conscious, suddenly. She isn’t sure how often single women check into motels around here, but she imagines the ones who do are a certain type.

So she volunteers, unasked: “I’m a police officer. An investigator. I’m working on a case nearby.”

“Okay,” says the woman. But she looks slightly more interested than she

did before.

“Are there phones?” Judy asks.

“There are,” says the woman, “but the ones in the rooms only connect to the front desk. If you wanna call out, you gotta use the pay phone over there.”

She points.

• • •

Her mother answers.

“Judyta?” she says, without waiting.

“Hi, Ma.”

“Judyta, I’ve been worried sick. Please tell me you’re all right.”

The sound of her own name in her mother’s voice—her mother, who came over at fifteen, who worked so hard to drop any trace of an accent, who refused to speak Polish to her children, who despite all of this still bears the weight of strangers clocking her as foreign—suddenly makes Judy want to cry.

“I’m all right, Mama. I’m just tired. Long day today.”

She can hear her father in the background, asking, What time will she be home?

“Ma,” says Judy, “I know Daddy won’t like this. But I have to move out. I can’t live at home anymore. Not with this job.”

Silence. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at a motel. It’s called”—Judy checks the sign above the counter —“the Alcott Family Inn. It’s close to the case I’m working.”

“At a what?” says her mother. “Judyta Luptack, did you just say you’re at

a—”

“Don’t tell Dad,” says Judy. “Please.”

In the background: Where is she? At a what?

Her mother sighs lengthily. Then she says: “She’s at a friend’s house, Marty. Someone who lives closer to the case she’s working.”

A pause. What friend of hers lives all the way up there?

“Honey,” says her mother. “Just be safe, all right?”

“I will be, Ma,” says Judy.

• • •

The room is perfectly adequate: flowered bedspread, flowered curtains, framed pictures of flowers on the wall.

She collapses into bed without taking her clothes off.

Judyta

he wakes up to the sound of knocking on the door. She wakes slowly,S trying to remember where she is. Then she grabs the clock on her nightstand, terrified that she’s overslept.

It’s only six a.m. Judy is relieved—and annoyed.

She stands, still wearing her suit, now rumpled, and goes to the door.

Through the peephole, she sees a middle-aged man, his hair combed into a neat side part. He wears a short-sleeved dress shirt, tan, and a brown tie. He holds an umbrella above his head.

She looks past him, into the parking lot beyond the covered walkway outside all the rooms, and sees that it’s pouring. Bad for the search, she thinks, automatically.

She opens the door, keeping the chain lock on.

“Hello,” says the man. “Are you Miss Luptack?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Bob Alcott,” says the man. “Can I trouble you for a second?”

From behind the cracked, chain-locked door, she nods.

He glances over his shoulder, into the downpour soaking the parking lot.

“I wonder—you mind if I come in?”

“I do mind.”

He pauses. Explains: he’s the husband of the woman working the desk, he says, and a co-owner of the Alcott Family Inn. He’s also a history teacher at the nearby central school.

“Beatrice said you were a detective,” he says. “And that you’re working a

case nearby?”

She nods.

“Is it the Van Laar girl?” he asks her.

She keeps her face still.

“It’s all right,” he says. “You don’t have to answer. But if you are, I’ve got

something to tell you.”

“I’m listening,” says Judy.

“It’s about her brother,” says Bob Alcott. “Bear.”

Louise

ouise, in Wells, awaits her transfer. She’ll be sent to Albion, hours to theL west, near Rochester—farther away, in fact, than Louise has ever traveled.

She can’t see the rain outside, but she can hear it. She closes her eyes.

Imagines Barbara in the woods: pictures her alive, then dead. Wills herself back to the cabin called Balsam, the night before Barbara Van Laar went missing. Pictures falling asleep in her little cot there, the faint lapping of Lake Joan in the near distance, the cool sharp air of evening. Camp Emerson, she realizes with a twinge of sadness, is the place she has felt the most at home in her life.

She wishes Jesse could go there. Just one summer, she wishes he could go.

“Donnadieu,” says a voice, and Louise gets to her feet. Ready for her transfer.

Instead, the officer unlocks the cell door.

“Somebody posted bail for you,” he says.

Tracy

ack in her father’s rental in Saratoga Springs, Tracy Jewell stands in theB living room, a book in her hands. She is alone for the first time in three days, her father and Donna Romano having finally gone back to the track.

Now she lowers the blinds halfway and opens the windows halfway and points all the fans in the house in her direction. The pleasant smell of new rain comes in. She prepares an elaborate snack for herself, places it on the floor beside her. Two months ago—before she had ever heard of the Van Laar Preserve, or Camp Emerson—this was the way she anticipated spending her summer. Today, it feels like a letdown.

For an hour, her book goes unread.

She’s thinking of Barbara Van Laar, running through every exchange they had, racking her brain for evidence that might help to bring her home.

• • •

There is one memory she returns to over and over. In early August—just after their return from the Survival Trip, the week before Barbara went missing— Tracy and Barbara had been walking back from a woodsmanship class to begin their free hour, when Barbara had an idea.

“Follow me,” she said.

“Where?”

But Barbara only grinned, and veered east, toward the beach.

• • •

The day was one of the most beautiful of the entire session. Barbara didn’t stop at the beach, but swerved northward, toward the woods that bordered the beach, passing the boathouse along the way. The sun came through the pines in golden shafts, casting spotlights here and there across the ground. At a certain point, Tracy understood where they were going. Under normal circumstances she would have felt afraid—she was typically a follower of rules—but at Camp Emerson, under the influence of Barbara, she had begun to feel reckless.

At the conclusion of their brief, silent hike, they were facing a parking area, full of cars; beyond it, the southern wing of Self-Reliance. A side door was propped slightly open; through it strode a maid in uniform, wheeling a cart of laundry around a corner, out of sight.

It took Tracy a moment to notice movement on the lawn that sloped down to the lake, but a handful of voices drew her eye in that direction. A large number of people sat on chairs and chaise longues. They held glasses in their hands, and their voices were loud and merry. This, Tracy realized, was the hundredth-anniversary party that Barbara had mentioned.

Tracy withdrew immediately behind a tree.

“Barbara,” she whispered.

“Relax,” said Barbara. “It’s happy hour. They’re definitely sloshed.”

She strode forward, turning only when she realized Tracy hadn’t followed.

“Come on,” she said. “The only people we have to watch out for work for my parents. And they won’t tell even if they do see us.”

• • •

They entered the house through the open side door. Along the hallway were two rows of doors. In the ones left open, she could see made beds, framed paintings, animal skins, and mounted heads.

Every so often she took several running steps to keep up with Barbara, who was walking with intention toward what Tracy thought would be her room—but instead she led them into an enormous kitchen.

She opened the refrigerator and brought out several good things to eat.

Then, setting it all before them on a nearby counter, she commenced.

“Dig in,” said Barbara. “Are you hungry? I’m always starving.”

Tracy followed suit, more cautiously. She had never before seen a girl eat with the abandon of Barbara Van Laar, who shoved food into her mouth with an open palm. She chewed loudly and swallowed vigorously. Tracy watched, fascinated.

When Barbara had taken her fill, she left everything out on the counter —“They won’t know it was us,” she said—and then retraced her steps down the same hallway through which they had entered.

Suddenly there came two voices, male and female. Unswervingly, Barbara opened a door on their right and pushed Tracy into a small broom closet. It was so small that there was only room for one.

“Stay cool,” said Barbara, closing the door behind her. Through the crack beneath the door, Tracy could see her shadow move away, and then the sound of a door hinge creaking softly someplace down the hall: Barbara taking shelter elsewhere, she supposed.

Tracy breathed as quietly as she could. She was terrified of being caught, being punished. If at the start of camp she had wanted to be sent home—well, that feeling was gone now, replaced by a firm desire to remain at Camp Emerson for the duration of the session. To learn everything she could learn from Barbara Van Laar.

The footsteps that accompanied the voices were growing louder. She held her breath, listening. Had they gone? She waited thirty seconds. Longer.

Then, just as Tracy searched fumblingly for a doorknob in the dark, she heard one name, uttered by the woman: Peter. In her voice Tracy heard what she assumed must be desire.

More noises, inscrutable to Tracy, and then the quick continued patter of those footsteps, one perhaps chasing after the other, and then true silence for some time.

She jumped when the door swung open. Bright daylight made her squint.

There was Barbara, standing before her, gesturing with her head in the direction of the side door.

She was holding a paper bag in her hands.

She looked enraged.

What happened? Tracy mouthed, but Barbara only shook her head furiously and strode off.

Tracy followed her silently, glancing left and right, gulping the house with her eyes.

She wanted to see Barbara’s room. She wanted to see the rest of the house.

She wanted to know more about what she had heard, those whispering voices.

But Tracy’s curiosity about all of these things was overruled by her discretion. She understood instinctively that Barbara would not appreciate questions along these lines, and so she said nothing, even after they’d reached the woods. Tracy panted as she walked. At a certain point—right before they reached the beach—Barbara finally stopped and turned.

“They painted my room,” she said. “Those motherfuckers painted my room.”

The word felt like a slap. Tracy had read it, but she’d never heard it spoken.

“I’m sorry,” she said—though she didn’t fully understand.

“All that work,” said Barbara. “All that work.”

She sank down into a squat. Put her face in her hands.

Slowly, Tracy lowered herself as well.

“What work?” she said, after so much time had passed that her knees had begun to throb.

But Barbara only continued with her rant.

“That’s probably why they let me come to camp,” said Barbara. “So they could get in there and paint it over without my permission.”

She stood up and set off again abruptly.

“Pink,” she said. “They painted my damn room pink.”

“Why do you think they did it?” Tracy asked. She was, once again, running a little to keep up with her.

“Oh, for their guests,” said Barbara. “For the party. God forbid someone witness any creativity in that house.”

She spun around again. The bag she was holding in her hands had become a weapon, swinging at the end of her arm like a bludgeon.

“The funny part is,” said Barbara, “they invited all these artists and writers and actors. But they’re the entertainment. The decoration. No one takes them seriously.”

• • •

They reached Balsam moments before the end of free hour. Louise and Annabel were waiting to lead them to the commissary for dinner.

So grateful was Tracy not to have been caught that it took her several hours to remember something. After lights-out, she lay in her bunk, growing more and more curious, until finally she couldn’t stop herself. She leaned her head over the side of the bunk.

“Barbara,” Tracy whispered. “What did you bring back in that bag?”

There came a little pause.

And then: “What bag?” whispered Barbara, in the dark.

Louise

ouise, freshly bailed out of jail, once again finds herself in a car withL Denny Hayes—in the front seat, this time. Though she has tried to persuade Hayes otherwise, he’s driving in the direction of her mother’s house.

One of the conditions of her pretrial release is that she will remain at one known address, and adhere to a six o’clock curfew. The only address Louise could provide upon being taken into custody was her mother’s.

Now, they ride in silence toward that house.

Abruptly, Louise says, “Do you know who bailed me out?”

Denny looks surprised. “Don’t you?”

“No. All I heard was a lady did it. That’s what the trooper told me.”

“Your mom?” Denny asks.

“I guess so.” She doesn’t want to let herself be hopeful. She’s barely seen her mother outside the house for several years. She’s never known her mother to have more than five dollars in her billfold at one time.

“You’ve changed a lot since you were a kid,” says Denny.

She tenses. To her, it feels like the opening of a come-on. Alone in a car with any man, she feels a threat in her body.

But he continues, reassuring her. “You were such a happy little thing.

Always had the sunniest smile on your face when I came around.”

They’re approaching the crest of a hill that’s familiar to Louise from all of her trips home. The small center of Shattuck comes into sight, briefly, and then disappears once more.

“You remember when I took the two of you to Storytown?”

Louise is startled.

“You must have been six years old,” he says. “Thereabouts. I picked you and your mother up and we drove down to Lake George together. Your mother was quiet. But you were so happy. You were jumping up and down.

Bought you an ice cream and it fell off its cone. Bought you another one straightaway. Couldn’t stand the look on your face.”

Sharp tears come to Louise’s eyes and she wills them to be gone. Why, she wonders, is she crying? And the answer comes to her: it’s the idea that anyone in the world ever took care of her, Louise, rather than the other way around.

She does remember that day, though she didn’t know it was Denny Hayes.

In her memory it was just another one of her mother’s boyfriends, someone whose name she avoided using because she didn’t want to mix it up with anyone else’s. Of all the men who ever came around to see her mother, that one was the only one who ever did anything nice for her without demanding a favor in return.

• • •

Out front of her mother’s place, Louise regards the house alongside Denny Hayes. Two of its shutters are missing altogether; another one is hanging at an angle. So much mail has piled up in the mailbox that a stack of waterlogged envelopes now sits on the ground beneath it, the postman having given up.

She’ll have a talk with Jesse about taking responsibility for that. At least he should be bringing in the mail.

“Looks just the same,” says Denny, charitably.

“Thanks for the ride,” Louise says, and gets out of the car. She hopes he’ll leave. But he, too, exits, stands, adjusts his shirt and pants.

• • •

Louise rattles her key loudly in the lock, letting anyone inside know she’s about to enter.

She hopes Jesse isn’t smoking anything upstairs; her first sniff of the kitchen tells her he isn’t.

“Mom?” she calls out. “Mom, I’ve got some company here.”

A pause.

“Who is it?” Her mother’s voice is creaky with disuse.

“Denny Hayes,” calls Louise.

She waits. She can very easily imagine her mother saying—Who? It’s been years, and the years have been hard.

“Just a minute,” her mother calls, instead. And Louise hears her ascending the staircase, slowly.

“Is Jesse home?” Louise calls, but there’s no answer.

• • •

When her mother comes down again, she’s fully dressed. She’s wearing makeup for the first time in years.

Shameless, Louise thinks, but secretly she is reassured to find her mother still capable of making this effort.

Denny’s face changes upon seeing her. Softens. “Well, hi, Carol,” he says to her. “Been a long time, hasn’t it?”

The sound of her mother’s Christian name awakens something hurt inside Louise. She hasn’t heard the word said aloud much in recent years.

Louise’s mother looks back and forth from Louise to Denny.

“You a cop now, Denny?”

“I was a cop back when I knew you,” says Denny. “Don’t you remember?

A state trooper.”

She thinks.

“I guess I do remember that.”

“I’m a senior investigator now,” says Denny. “I got promoted, and then promoted again.”

“Well, congratulations,” says Louise’s mother.

Then, realizing something: “What’s my daughter done?”

Louise tenses.

“I thought—” says Louise. But she stops herself. She blinks rapidly, willing unexpected tears back into her skull. After all these years, she thinks; how could she have let herself hope that her mother would come through

with bail?

“Denny?” says her mother.

Denny glances at her. “Well,” he says, “I guess I’ll let Louise tell you about that. Being that she’s over eighteen.”

Her mother is still, sharp-eyed. She looks more sober than Louise has seen her lately; whether this is intentional or a coincidence of timing, Louise isn’t certain.

“Carol,” says Denny, “would you mind if I had a few words with Louise?

In private?”

“I guess that’d be all right.”

Her mother retreats to the other room.

Alone together, Louise and Denny face off.

“Louise,” says Denny. “I gotta ask you two things before I go.”

She waits.

“You know I’m an old friend,” he says. “And I hope you can trust me to do the right thing. I don’t think you’re guilty of anything to do with Barbara Van Laar. And I want to help you get out of the mess you’re in. Do you believe me?”

She keeps her head still. She does and does not trust this man.

Unbothered, Denny proceeds. “First question. Where did John Paul McLellan tell you he was staying this summer?”

“All over the place,” says Louise. “He was visiting friends. He wanted to spend the year traveling before going to law school.”

Denny nods. “What if I told you, instead, that for a large part of this summer he was most likely staying right at the top of Hunt Mountain?”

It takes Louise a moment to process the information.

“I’d believe anything about him now,” she says.

Denny nods. Sympathetic.

“What’s your other question?” Louise asks.

“How well did you know Lee Towson?”

Louise flushes. The name alone brings desire into her body.

“Not well,” she says.

“Were you, y’know. Together?”

“No.”

“You have any idea where he might have gone?”

“No,” she says. In fact, she’s been wondering this too.

“You’re sure.”

“Why?”

“Well,” says Denny. “Normally I’d keep this to myself. But because

you’re an old friend, I’ll tell you.”

Louise waits.

“Apparently,” he says, “Barbara was sneaking out of the cabin every night to meet someone she called a boyfriend. You know anything about that?”

She shakes her head. Truthfully, she doesn’t.

“There’s more,” says Denny. “Did you know that Lee Towson was incarcerated once?”

She’d heard a rumor about that. It’s one of the many things that have been said about Lee at Camp Emerson; it only added to his allure. Hesitantly, she

nods.

“You know what it was for?”

“Dealing grass?” she says.

“Statutory rape,” says Denny Hayes.

She freezes. She doesn’t know what statutory means.

As if reading her mind, or expression, Denny continues: “Intercourse with a girl sixteen years of age or younger.”

Louise says nothing.

“So you’re sure you don’t know where he is?”

“I’m sure,” says Louise.

“Well, if you think of anything else. Here’s my card.”

She takes it into her hands.

“Guess I’d better head out,” he says. She pictures him going home to his family, his wife and children. She feels suddenly jealous. If she had had a father like Denny Hayes—or a mother, hell—she might have made something more of herself.

“Anything else you want to ask me or tell me?” says Denny.

“Yeah,” says Louise. “If you find out who it was that bailed me out. Will

you let me know?”

“I will,” says Denny Hayes.

Tracy

he evening of the final dance, the girls of Balsam got ready together inT an elaborate ritual that served as the culmination of all the grooming skills they’d taught one another over the course of the months they’d been combined. Buckets of water were brought out to the porch; legs were shaved.

Outfits were selected from among the several each camper had brought for occasions like this one. Finally, makeup was applied, with precision, by the undisputed master: Barbara Van Laar herself.

Louise and Annabel, who’d been getting ready in their small separate room, emerged and gasped loudly when they saw their charges. How grown- up they all looked; how different from the start of the summer.

Tracy understood. They were different, it was true: they’d grown a year in two months. They’d formed an alliance.

• • •

In the Great Hall, Tracy danced with everyone in Balsam, and everyone who’d been on her Survival Trip, and most of all with Barbara. Mitchell, the swim instructor, had brought in three friends from Schenectady, and together they served as a mediocre band. Lowell Cargill was someplace in the room, she knew, but it wasn’t until Mitchell and his friends played “I Honestly Love You” that the frenzy in the community room slowed and then stopped,

and Tracy became aware, suddenly, that the people around her were pairing off. Even Barbara, who had so far been her constant companion, had been asked to dance by someone else: a boy named Crandall who was widely considered to be, aside from Lowell, the most sought-after male camper at Camp Emerson.

Suddenly alone in the middle of the dance floor, Tracy panicked. And then, quickly, she ran to the periphery and stood by the food table.

She didn’t actually see Lowell anyplace. Perhaps he had gone outside for fresh air.

“I hate slow songs,” someone next to her said.

She turned her head.

There next to her was someone she recognized as a kitchen worker, a good-looking twentysomething man she’d seen walking, from time to time, with her counselor Louise. Lee, his name was.

“Me too,” said Tracy.

“They’re so embarrassing,” said Lee. “One minute you’re out there having fun with your friends, and then the band decides to make things difficult for everyone by slowing it down. It’s sadistic, actually.”

Tracy wasn’t certain she knew what sadistic meant, but she nodded anyway.

“I gotta get back to the kitchen,” said Lee. “You look great, by the way.

Cool dress.”

“Thank you,” said Tracy. And then he was gone.

It was only after he left that she saw Lowell, across the room, wearing the type of absurd broad-collared polyester suit that the boys brought for dances and that still, despite everything, made her heart speed up.

He stood still as a statue against the opposite wall. He was looking at a couple in the center of the room: Barbara Van Laar and her partner. And on his face was an expression of pain.

• • •

Outside. That’s where she wanted to go. Out to the fresh pine and the soil and the smell of the lake. Out to the light of the moon on water.

When no one was looking, she seized her moment, and left.

She walked into the dark. There were surprisingly few lights across the grounds of Camp Emerson at night.

Suddenly, in the dim night, there was movement. Someone walking across her path—someone she recognized. Annabel, their CIT, dressed in her clothes for the dance, was heading north.

There was nothing up there, thought Tracy, except the main house.

Barbara’s house. Annabel’s parents were staying there this week, Tracy knew; maybe that’s why she was heading in that direction.

Tracy for a moment considered calling out—Annabel was supposed to escort them back to Balsam at the end of the dance—but the determination in her stride gave Tracy pause. Better not to say anything.

• • •

And then her own name was called, interrupting her thoughts.

She turned. Walked in the direction of the voice that was repeating her name.

On the beach, in the moonlight, she saw Lowell’s best friend. Walter. He was sitting on the sand, looking dejected.

She sat down next to him, lowering herself toward the earth. Until that summer, she had never felt at home in the house of her body. Never felt graceful, like Barbara, like the Melissas, like Lowell Cargill.

“You too?” said little Walter. His arms were around his knees; his chin

was on his arms.

“Me too what?” said Tracy.

“Sad?” says Walter.

“Oh,” said Tracy. “No, not really. I’m fine.”

Walter was silent.

“Are you?” said Tracy.

He nodded. She could barely make it out. But she knew, without asking, why he was.

“You know,” said Walter, “he asked Barbara to the dance. But she said no.”

Tracy sat very still, letting his words settle over her. She had known ever since the Survival Trip that Lowell wasn’t interested in her, whatever she might have thought before. It was Barbara whom he loved. Still, hearing it knocked the breath out of her all over again.

“He was torn up about it,” Walter continued. “When she said no, I mean.

People like Lowell aren’t used to being rejected.”

He wasn’t trying to be cruel; Tracy was certain of this. Most likely, he assumed that Barbara would have told Tracy already. They were, after all, a pair at Camp Emerson. Just like Walter and Lowell were.

The silence between them persisted awhile, until Tracy heard Walter sniff loudly, once. He was crying, she realized.

“He’s amazing,” said Walter. “Isn’t he.”

Louise

he saw everything. She sat on the edge of the stage that overlooked theS community room, watching her campers in all of their triumphs and failures, the ones having genuine fun, the ones pretending to have it.

If she believed in a God, it was in one who functioned something like Louise in this moment: rooting for her charges from afar, mourning alongside them when they were rejected, celebrating every small victory that came their way. She noticed the lonely ones, the ones at the edge of the crowd; she felt in her heart a sort of wild affection for them, wanted to go to them, to stand next to them and pull them tightly to her side; and yet she also knew that to intervene in this way would disrupt something sacred that—at twelve and thirteen and fourteen years old—they were learning about themselves and the world. And this, too, was how she thought of God.

• • •

At a certain point she began to play a game in her mind, counting each one of her charges, picking a name and scanning the crowd until she found the person in question. With every name she chose she was successful, until she got to Annabel.

She couldn’t find her counselor-in-training anyplace in the room.

In retrospect, this would make a different kind of sense to her; just then she chalked it up to her suspicion, that session, that Annabel had met a boy.

Earlier, she had noticed that Annabel was getting ready with particular care. In theory, the dance was for the campers, but in prior years Louise had often seen counselors and CITs pairing off there, too. Going out into the dark woods for a few minutes, or an hour. Coming back flushed.

This, she suspected, was where Annabel Southworth had gone. And from her place on the stage she smiled, happy that Annabel, too, had found love, or at least infatuation, at Camp Emerson.

Judyta

ho’s everyone?” asks Denny Hayes.W It’s noon already, and this is the first time she’s seeing him. He’s half in and half out of his car when she launches into her updates, the new theories she’s formed since this morning.

“The whole town,” says Judy, now. “Every person in Shattuck thinks the wrong man was blamed when Bear disappeared. And that the Van Laars were too quick to accept it.”

Hayes tilts his head in the direction of the Command Post in the Director’s

Cabin.

“Come on,” he says. “I need coffee.”

Together, they walk. He glances at her.

“Judy, were you wearing the same outfit yesterday?”

She flushes. “Don’t remember,” she says.

It’s still raining, on and off, and her hair and clothing have gotten soaked and partially dried several times over. She must look like a drowned rat, she thinks.

“Judy,” says Hayes. “Where exactly did you hear this about Bear Van Laar?”

She tells him what happened last night, and early this morning.

He raises an eyebrow. They’ve reached the Director’s Cabin now, and he holds the door open for her. Judy goes inside first. Reflects for a moment on the time-capsule decorations, the World War II–era kitchen appliances, all of which clearly predate the director herself. Judy has seen her only a few times, wandering about the grounds. Each time, she’s looked beside herself with anguish. More distraught, thinks Judy, than the Van Laar parents themselves.

Hayes pours himself a mug of coffee. Holds one out to her, as well.

She takes it. She’s never been much of a coffee drinker—it’s something she associates with older people, with her own father—but since being on the Van Laar Preserve, she’s begun appreciating its bitterness and warmth, which now cuts through the wetness of her hair and clothing.

She sips. Grimaces. Sips again.

“So who does the town of Shattuck think is to blame?” says Hayes. “If Carl Stoddard was innocent.”

“Well, according to Mr. Alcott, there are two prevailing theories.”

“I’m all ears.”

“The first,” says Judy, “is that Jacob Sluiter did it.”

He looks at her. “Weren’t you the one asking me about Sluiter yesterday?”

“Well, yes,” says Judy. “But—it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Good old Slitter,” Hayes says. “The bogeyman of the North Woods. I’ve heard him blamed for every death—accidental or intentional—from here to

Rochester.”

He leans against the counter.

“It’s not crazy,” Judy says. “Think about it. The majority of Sluiter’s killings took place not far from here. And all of them in the early sixties, right when Bear disappeared, and right before Sluiter was caught.”

“True.”

“And now,” she says, “he’s escaped, right at the same time that Barbara Van Laar goes missing. Am I saying something wrong?”

She stops, annoyed. Hayes is laughing.

“You’ve got the bug,” he says.

“What bug?”

“It’s a good thing,” he says. “We’ve all got the bug. Go on.”

“The second theory is more popular in the town,” says Judy. “And it’s one

you won’t like to hear.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s more—controversial, I guess,” she says. “It’ll make more

waves.”

“Go on.”

She sips from her coffee, steadying her nerves.

“Mr. Alcott says that the majority of people in Shattuck—the ones who don’t think Sluiter did it, anyway—think that Bear’s grandfather is to blame.”

She expects him to scoff. Instead, he turns and looks out the window, his hands on the counter next to the sink. He’s quiet for long enough that she gets

worried.

“Are you all right?” she says.

“I remember that theory,” says Hayes. “I remember it being spoken of, when the boy went missing.”

Judy stares at him. Why hadn’t he mentioned this before? She had —interviewed the man, her first day here. According to Hayes, he was a minor player. Someone above suspicion. Frantically, she searches her memory for anything he said that sounded suspicious, but all she can remember is his demeanor: Dismissive. Impatient. Unkind.

“What happened?” Judy asks. “Was he interviewed back then? Did anyone in the BCI think he did it, too?”

“According to the records I’ve been going through,” says Hayes, “some

did. But no one pursued it.”

“Why didn’t they?”

Hayes pauses. “Well,” he says. “Couple reasons. Carl Stoddard seemed pretty suspicious to everyone, according to some of the guys here who’ve been around long enough to remember. He was the last person to see Bear.

There was some carving that was found—a whittled bear—that Bear had apparently been carrying just before he disappeared. That was the only trace of the boy that was ever located. Turned out Stoddard had been the one teaching him to whittle. Everyone thought he had a kind of obsession with Bear.”

Judy waits.

“Second,” he says, “the Van Laars’ attorney liked him for the crime. And he was aggressive from the start.”

Now it’s Hayes’s turn to wait for Judy to catch up.

“McLellan,” says Judy.

He nods.

“Senior,” says Judy.

Hayes nods again.

Judy thinks. “Can I take this lead?” she says.

“Bear’s grandfather?” says Hayes, and Judy nods. She can talk to people like him, she thinks. She knows how.

“All right, as long as you don’t scare him off,” says Denny Hayes. “He’s right up there at the main house, as far as I know.”

• • •

Before she can set off, there’s a knock on the front door of the Director’s Cabin, and Investigator Goldman comes in, panting, shirt untucked.

He looks from Judy, to Hayes, to Judy again.

“Either of you any good with kids?” he asks—doing his best to phrase the question neutrally—but his implication is clear. Judy, as a woman, will take this one.

Judyta

utside the Director’s Cabin, a tiny boy is waiting with his parents.O “Mr. and Mrs. Muldauer,” says Hayes. “This is Investigator Luptack. She’ll be speaking with Christopher, if that’s all right.

Mrs. Muldauer—brown-haired, bespectacled, nearly as tiny as her son—

looks nervous. “May we come along?”

“Of course,” Judy says. “Come on in.”

Hayes stands outside the Director’s Cabin, serving as a guard while Judy works.

Inside, Judy pulls forward a downtrodden sofa that’s been shoved against a wall; she offers this to the family, and pulls up a hard folding chair to face them. As he sits between his parents, Christopher’s legs stick straight out into

space.

Judy takes out her notepad and pen.

“What brings you here today, Christopher?” she says.

He’s silent. He looks down at his knees.

“Go ahead,” says his father.

Nothing.

“How old are you, Christopher?” Judy tries.

Nothing.

“Twelve? Thirteen?” she says. She smiles a little. Joking.

“I’m eight,” he says, in a voice so low she can barely hear it. “I’m the

youngest camper at Camp Emerson.”

“Did you like camp?” Judy asks.

“No, I hated it,” he says. Above his head, his parents glance at one another.

“Chris,” his father says, refocusing him. “Can you tell the lady what you told us? She has other things to do.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Muldauer,” says Judy. “Christopher can take his time.”

And he does. Thirty seconds pass. A minute.

“Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me what you told your parents?” asks Judy.

“I don’t want to get them in trouble,” he says.

“Your parents?”

“My friends.”

There is pride in his voice as he says it. This is a boy, Judy understands,

who doesn’t have many of those.

“Who are your friends, Christopher?”

“Barbara and Tracy,” he says, so quietly she isn’t certain she heard him

right.

“Barbara and Tracy?”

He nods.

“Christopher,” says Judy. “The most important thing right now is finding Barbara and bringing her home. If she did something bad, we can address that some other time. But anything you can tell us will help us to keep Barbara

safe.”

A pause.

“We all went into the woods together,” says Christopher.

“When?”

“For Survival Trip.”

He explains it to her. Lists all the people in his group. Explains how their campsite was laid out.

“We were there three nights,” says Christopher. “And I have this problem that keeps me awake. So two of the nights I saw Barbara go out of the tent she was sharing with Tracy, and it looked to me like she was walking into the woods. But then a weird thing happened.”

“What was it?”

“Well, she turned around,” says Christopher. “I watched her. Her flashlight would go off and it was like she’d wait awhile, out in the dark. And then a while later, her flashlight would go back on, and she’d walk back in our direction. The first night I thought she’d just gone to pee or something.

But she walked past our campsite, all the way past it.”

“Where was she going?”

“Into T.J. Hewitt’s tent,” says Christopher.

“T.J.? The camp director?”

He nods.

That same low thrumming begins in her abdomen. The feeling she got when she was talking to Mrs. Clute. The bug, Denny Hayes calls it.

“And how long did she stay there for?”

“I don’t know,” said Christopher. “I always fell asleep before she came out. In the morning, she’d be back at our campsite.”

“Thank you, Christopher,” says Judy. “This is really helpful. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

“She got hurt on that trip,” says Christopher.

“Barbara?”

He nods. “She was skinning a squirrel. She had an accident with the knife.

She hurt herself bad. T.J. was the one who fixed her.”

“Anything else?”

“It kept happening,” says Christopher. “Even after we got back. I saw Barbara going to T.J.’s cabin every night.”

This he says quietly, with a certain resignation. At eight, he already understands the implication of what he’s saying—or at least that it isn’t right.

For a child to go to the abode of an adult, late at night, in secret.

He looks as if he might cry.

“You’ve done a really brave thing, Christopher,” says Judy. “You’re a brave person. Thank you. I only have one more question for you.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the problem you have?”

He looks at her. Doesn’t understand.

“The problem you have, that keeps you awake?”

“Oh,” he says. His face turns a deep red. “Oh. I wet the bed.” He’s practically whispering now. The father puts his hand on his son’s shoulder.

“It happens,” says Judy. “You know, I wet the bed when I was a kid too.”

“You did?”

She didn’t. “I did.”

“If I can stay awake long enough,” says Christopher, “I can go to the bathroom one last time, after everyone else is asleep. Usually that helps.”

“I bet it makes you tired, though,” says Judy, and Christopher nods, with dignity.

• • •

Just before the Muldauers leave to go home, Mrs. Muldauer pulls Judy aside.

She speaks in a whisper.

“We heard from a friend that this camp was the best around. And heaven knows the people who attend have good taste. But,” she says—inclining her head toward Judy’s, seeking out her eyes—“if I had seen the camp director in advance, I might have had second thoughts.”

Judy keeps her face very still.

“Especially if I had a daughter. Do you understand what I mean?”

Judyta

ll work the lead on the grandfather,” says Hayes. “You go talk to T.J.”I’ To his credit, he can tell that momentum is on Judy’s side.

“We need good notes,” Hayes reminds her, before walking away.

Judy nods, and then she walks toward the Staff Quarters, to which T.J.

Hewitt has been relocated, ever since her house became the Command Post for the BCI.

• • •

T.J. Hewitt, her short hair disheveled, swipes at her face, as if she’s just woken up from sleep. She wears a white undershirt and cutoff blue jean shorts. She’s barefoot.

“Sorry,” says T.J. “I’m out of it. I haven’t been sleeping much.” She stretches.

Then, perhaps noticing Judy’s expression, she goes still. Sits up straighter.

“How can I help you, Investigator Luptack?” asks T.J.

Judy thought about her opening question on her walk over. Something open-ended, she decided; something neutral.

And so she begins: “Miss Hewitt—”

“T.J.”

“Excuse me. T.J. Can you tell me about your relationship to Barbara Van Laar?”

T.J. shifts. “Pretty sure I told Investigator Hayes all about it already,” she says.

“Well, would you mind telling me?” says Judy. “I’m trying to catch up.”

T.J. clears her throat. “I’ve known Barbara since she was born.”

“How old were you at that time?”

“Fourteen.”

Her voice is quiet. She looks just to the left of Judy’s head as she speaks, so intently that Judy turns her head briefly to see if something, or someone, is behind her. But the only thing she sees is the unfinished wood of the wall.

“And did you spend much time with her prior to her arrival at Camp

Emerson?”

“I did.”

“Can you describe the time you spent with her?”

T.J. looks down. “At first I was her—babysitter, I guess you’d call it.

From the time she was born.”

“Here?”

“Here on the grounds, yes,” says T.J. “All summer long. Every summer.

It’s what I was paid to do.”

“So you’ve been here your whole life?”

T.J. nods. “It’s my home.”

“What brought you to the Preserve to begin with?”

“My father was groundskeeper and camp director,” says T.J. “I took over both jobs when he began to lose his memory.”

Judy notes this.

“What about when the Van Laars were in Albany?” she asks.

“Well, I was in school for Barbara’s earliest years,” says T.J. “So I stayed here. But I never went to college or anything. So I was pretty free starting at seventeen, when Barbara was three. I’d travel with the family. Go down to Albany when the parents had to go out of town.”

“And you were close with Barbara.”

T.J. nods.

“We are. Yes.”

“Was Barbara a difficult child when she was young?”

T.J. laughs a little. There is a sort of ruefulness on her face, in her voice, that Judy suddenly finds unsettling.

“God, no,” says T.J. “She was the best kid. She and her brother both. Just

nice, nice kids.”

Judy pauses.

“So you were close with her brother, too?”

“Yup. We were closer in age. I was twelve when he,” says T.J., and then stops. “When he disappeared. He was eight.”

It’s warm outside, but Judy suddenly feels cold.

“How would you describe the Van Laar children’s relationship with their parents?” asks Judy.

“Depends which kid you’re talking about. And which parent,” she adds.

“Let’s start with Bear.”

“Well, his mother loved him,” says T.J. “Loved him more than anything.

Never been the same since he left.”

“And his father?”

“His father,” says T.J. “Now his father, that’s a hard one.”

She seems genuinely to be thinking of how to phrase something.

“You know, his father loved him too, in his way,” says T.J. “But it was like Mr. Van Laar thought of him as one of his bonds. Something only worth having around because of what it’ll become later. If that makes sense.”

Judy makes another note.

“What are you writing?” T.J. asks. “Are you writing about me?”

“Well, I’m writing down what you’re saying.”

“Who’s gonna see that?”

Judy hesitates. “For now, just me,” she says. “And possibly my colleagues in the BCI. But eventually, it’s possible that it could be used as some kind of evidence. And that would be a public record.”

T.J. nods. For a moment, Judy wonders if she’s going to clam up, stop talking.

She puts the pen down. Instantly, T.J. looks comforted.

“What about Barbara’s relationship with her parents?” says Judy.

T.J. thinks for a long time.

“I don’t know if nonexistent is the right word,” she says, at last. “But it’s

close.”

Judy pauses. Stalling for time.

“Is that the reason she got close to you?” Judy asks, quietly.

She knows better than to show her whole hand, at this point. She wants to

see what T.J. will say on her own.

“Maybe,” says T.J.

“How close would you say you were?”

“Well, that’s difficult to describe.”

“Let’s start here,” says Judy. “I know she came to camp this summer. Was that her idea, or yours?”

“Hers,” says T.J. “All hers. She wanted to get out of the house. Didn’t want to go to the big party they were planning.”

“Why do you think that was?”

T.J. takes a deep breath. “You know how much money the Van Laars

have, right?”

“I have some idea of that. Yes.”

“You know they sent their daughter off to boarding school last year with two outfits and no winter coat? You know they give her no spending

money?”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Either they don’t remember,” says T.J., “or they don’t care. I’m the one who comes around. I bring her extra food for the weekend, bring her books and records she likes. I drive down there anytime I can. I take care of her. No one else does.”

“While she was at camp,” Judy says, “how many times did you see her?”

“Well, every day,” says T.J. “I saw all the campers every day. I’m always around, you know. Always fixing something, planning something, whatever

it is.”

“And at night?”

T.J.’s gaze goes back to the wall to the left of Judy’s head.

For some time, there’s quiet in the cabin.

“Investigator Luptack,” says T.J. “I think I know what you’re implying.”

T.J. scoots to the edge of the bed, puts her hands on her knees. Leans forward, looking directly at Judy now.

“I know what people say about me down in the town. Maybe they’ve even said it to you during your investigation.”

Judy keeps her face blank.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I dress a certain way, is what I mean. I talk and walk a certain way.”

“All right.”

“Barbara is like a little sister to me,” says T.J. “Prob’ly the closest thing I’ll ever have to a kid of my own, if you want to know the truth. I love her.

But not in the way you’re implying.”

Judy lets T.J.’s words sit in the air as long as she can.

Then she says, quietly, directly: “We have an eyewitness willing to testify that they saw Barbara going into your cabin in the middle of the night. Every night.”

It’s the first time, as an investigator, that she has ever challenged someone she was interviewing.

It’s also the first time she’s ever bluffed; she has no idea whether Christopher will go on the stand. Whether his parents will let him.

For a moment, T.J. turns red; her whole face flushes, and then her neck, and then the top of her chest.

And then she stands. She walks across the room, kneels down next to her

brown boots, begins lacing them.

“T.J.,” says Judy.

“I’m not dumb,” says T.J. “I know what it means when someone’s got a theory they’re working, no matter how wrong they are. And I also know I have no legal obligation to stay here and talk to you. So come back to me when you’ve got a warrant for my arrest.”

She stands up and walks out of the room.

Judy, increasingly desperate, stands too, and calls after her down the empty hallway.

“What’s your theory?” asks Judy. “Do you have a theory about where Barbara went?”

T.J. stops. Puts her hands on her hips. Turns, reluctantly.

“Can I tell you something?” she says. “Woman to woman? Something

you’ll keep out of that notebook?”

Judy lowers it to her side.

“John Paul McLellan is your man,” says T.J. “I can’t tell you how I know that. But I do.”

Jacob

vernight, he’d retraced his steps along the river, walking downstreamO this time. Toward dawn, it had begun to rain.

Normally he slept outdoors in daytime, but today he wanted the comfort of a home, a bed, a meal under a roof. And so at some point he found a promising house, apparently empty, and went into it.

He’d gone to the pantry first. Found it disappointingly empty, but for a large container of Quaker Oats that he cooked into a porridge on the electric stove.

Next he went into all of the bedroom closets. This, in his experience, was where people tended to keep their arms and ammunition, tucked on high shelves in bedroom closets, out of reach of children. And there they were: two double-barrel shotguns, three boxes of shells.

Too bad, thought Jacob. He would have preferred a pistol; the shotgun would be hard to carry. But it came with an ammo sling, which he loaded with the shells. Loaded a gun up, too.

• • •

It’s four in the afternoon, now, and he’s slept all day. He rises from the bed, loaded shotgun in his hands. And suddenly he hears the creak of a floorboard.

He stills.

As quietly as he can, he moves to the far side of the bed and gets down behind it. From there, he points the shotgun at the bedroom door.

He’s familiar with this position. It reminds him of hunting as a child.

The door swings open. Unswervingly, he fires—but no one has been hit.

No one, apparently, ever intended to walk through the threshold of the

bedroom.

Was it a trap? Jacob can’t be sure.

And then, from behind him, a voice says, “Don’t move.”

He freezes.

Through the open window by his head, a police weapon is pointing in his direction.

Judyta

he walks up the hill, her head filled with new information from T.J. toS pass on to Denny Hayes.

Good notes, she thinks, were all he asked for—and she has none.

So she goes around to the lake side of the house, ready to find herself an Adirondack chair, to sit down and write everything T.J. said before it leaves her mind.

• • •

She is disappointed, when she arrives, to find that one chair is already occupied.

From behind, the woman in it looks unfamiliar. But she turns, and Judy recognizes her suddenly: it’s Mrs. Van Laar Sr. Barbara’s grandmother. The wife of the man who had spoken to her so dismissively during her first hour on this job—the man who has, as of this morning, become one of their top suspects.

“Sit down,” says Mrs. Van Laar. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Judy complies. She bends her head to her notebook, feigning work. But in her mind, she formulates question after question—anything that might illuminate some aspect of this woman’s husband.

Mrs. Van Laar speaks before she can.

“Beautiful view,” says Mrs. Van Laar.

“It is,” says Judy.

“This is my favorite place to sit on the whole Preserve. And my favorite

time of day,” says Mrs. Van Laar.

Judy nods.

“I imagine the view brings back memories for you,” says Judy.

Mrs. Van Laar pauses, as if thinking. Then she says, “Not really.”

Judy is still shuffling quickly through ideas for an opening when Mrs. Van Laar stands from her chair and sets off toward the main house.

“Mrs. Van Laar,” says Judy, unwanted pleading in her voice.

Slowly, the woman turns. Her expression is still pleasant.

“I just—I haven’t had a chance to speak with you since our first day here,” says Judy. “Is there anything further you’ve thought of that you’d like to add?”

Mrs. Van Laar opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks back over her shoulder, as if making a decision.

Then she says: “Have you had a chance to interview Vic Hewitt?”

The name stops Judy. Hewitt she knows, of course; it’s the first name

that’s unfamiliar.

“Is that—” she says.

“Tessie Jo’s father,” says Mrs. Van Laar. “The first director of the camp.”

Judy frowns. Tessie Jo. She scans the notes she just took, searching for what T.J. had said about her father during their interview.

Memory loss, she wrote.

“I didn’t realize he was,” says Judy.

“Still alive, yes,” says Mrs. Van Laar, reading her mind. “Perhaps you should interview him. He’s such an interesting man. And he’d like the

company, no doubt.”

“Where can I find him?” asks Judy.

“These days he lives in the Director’s Cabin with his daughter,” says Mrs.

Van Laar. “She cares for him.”

Judy shakes her head. “We’ve taken that over, ma’am,” she says. “It’s our Command Post now.”

Mrs. Van Laar looks directly at Judy. “Well, dear,” she says, “I suppose you’ll just have to investigate. Isn’t that what you do?”

She turns and disappears inside the dark, cool house.

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The God of the Woods — VI. Survival

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