by Karen Dionne
I look at White Bear looming over me in an intimidating pose that he would never have adopted toward me when he was alive. It’s hard to believe that only yesterday I followed a set of tracks hoping I might see him.
“I’m sorry,” I say out loud.
I forgive you, White Bear replies.
It breaks my heart to hear him say this. White Bear may have forgiven me, but I will never forgive myself.
Run, he says.
The same word that sent me fleeing into the woods when I was a child. I would if I could. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that we are locked in a windowless room. Or that Diana took every conceivable tool I might possibly use to break free.
“Run where? How?”
Up.
I look up. Directly above White Bear’s head is a large, square metal grating. Behind the grating, a massive ceiling fan whirrs. I run to the door and find the switch that turns off the fan, then go back to the workbench and look behind and underneath it for something that I can use to pry off the grating—a screwdriver or a hammer would be ideal—anything that Diana might have missed. But there’s nothing.
Then I remember Charlotte’s car keys. I once saw my father use a key to pry open a can of paint. I’m not entirely sure how I can use them, but these keys are all I have.
I pull a wooden chair next to White Bear and climb from it onto White Bear’s shoulders, straddling his head and bracing myself against it while I sort through the keys on Charlotte’s ring for one that looks as though it doesn’t belong to her SUV in case it breaks.
Quietly, White Bear warns, though he doesn’t have to.
I slide the key between the edge of the grating and the ceiling and lever it back and forth. The grating doesn’t budge. White dust rains down as the ceiling material crumbles, and I realize I’ve caught a break; the ceiling is comprised of a single sheet of thin drywall. I could probably kick through it if I could get my foot in the right position.
I saw away at the drywall surrounding each of the screws that attach the grating to the ceiling until the cover breaks free.
Quietly, White Bear warns again.
I drop the grating onto the pile of rags on Diana’s work counter in case Charlotte is posted outside the door standing guard and push the fan to the side. I grab hold of the edges of the opening, climb up onto White Bear’s head, pull myself through, and crawl to where the drywall ends and peer over the edge.
No Charlotte. So far, so good, but now what? I am crouching on a wide beam twenty feet above the floor. I can’t drop down because I can’t take the chance of landing badly and twisting an ankle. The only way out that I can see is a louvered window at the far end of the barn.
I stand up and inch along the beam like a tightrope walker until I come to a small platform beneath the window. It’s not wide, perhaps eighteen or twenty inches, but it will have to do. I crouch on the platform and peer through the louvres. This end of the barn is dug partway into the hill where my parents are buried. I’m looking at a ten-foot drop at most. Easy—if I can get through the window.
I wiggle each louvre in turn until I find one that feels close to giving way. If I could get a running start, I’m sure that it would come apart with a single kick. But the tiny platform on which I am standing is too narrow for me to sit, let alone kick at this board with my feet.
I wiggle the board again. It’s definitely loose. There has to be a way to break through it. At some point Diana or Charlotte is going to come back to check on me. They might not go inside the workshop when they see that the door is still padlocked, but I can’t count on it. I have to get away. Now, while my sister still believes that I am secured.
I stand up and turn around with my back to the window and try not to think about what would happen if I were to fall. I reach behind my back and grab the louvre directly above the one that is loose with both hands and kick backward blindly. On the third kick, the board goes flying. I squeeze through the opening, dangle by my fingertips, and let go.
My feet hit the ground with more force than I expected. I go down, flailing wildly as I roll down the slope. I jump up and dust myself off and run to the corner of the barn to check the side yard.
A car door slams. I draw back. I can hear voices. One of the voices is male.
Trevor.
He’s come back as he promised, but his timing couldn’t be worse. He’s going to interview Diana and Charlotte. He will have no idea that he’s talking to a killer. Worse, Trevor is not going to accept whatever story Diana and Charlotte come up with to explain why I’m not available. He’s a reporter. He’ll start digging, poking, interrogating, and when he asks the wrong question, he’ll be dead.
“Come inside,” I hear Diana say. “Charlotte—will you see if you can find Rachel and tell her that her friend is here? She said she was going to visit our mother’s old observation blind,” she adds for Trevor’s benefit. “Poor thing. I’m not sure coming back was a good idea. She’s really torn up.”
If Charlotte does as Diana tells her to, she’s going to walk right past me. I retreat to the back side of the barn. But I can’t stay here. Somehow, I’ve got to lure Trevor away.
A raven alights on a branch above me.
“Are they still there?” I ask. “Is it safe to come out?”
The raven flaps its wings and flies away. I take that as a yes. I sneak the long way around through the forest and circle back to the lodge until I can see into the kitchen. Trevor and Diana are sitting at the table. Charlotte is presumably staying away to maintain the ruse that she is looking for me. Trevor seems relaxed. I don’t know what Diana is saying to him, but clearly, he’s buying what she’s selling. Diana is a master manipulator. Sometimes when we would go to Marquette, she’d target a stranger, such as a fast-food order taker or a clerk in a grocery store, and whisper to me what she was planning to make them say or do. Later, after they’d done exactly as she had predicted, I’d try to parse out how she’d accomplished it. I desperately want to tell Trevor not to trust her, and to warn him that he is her prisoner, even if he doesn’t know it. But as long as they are together, there’s nothing I can do.
I slip through the trees and take up a hiding place near the access road. When Trevor leaves—if Diana lets him leave—she has to let him leave—he’ll drive right past me. When he does, I’ll be ready. Hiding and waiting is far more passive than I’d like, but I simply have no way to get his attention. If I show myself, Diana will kill me, and then she’ll kill him. Or perhaps she’ll kill him first to torment me. All I can do is hope that Trevor is holding to the cover story we devised, that they’re only talking about the lodge, about how beautiful it is and how it was constructed, and that he isn’t repeatedly wondering aloud how long I’ll be gone and why I’m not coming back. A slim hope, since I can’t imagine him leaving without seeing or speaking to me first, but I can’t bear to consider the alternative. If anything happens to him, and Scotty is left alone in this world, I will never forgive myself. Assuming I’m still around.
As the sun goes down and the lights in the lodge come on, the temperature drops. I try not to think about the abundance of winter coats and hats and mittens in the mudroom. I rub my arms to warm them and creep back to the lodge—because now that it’s dark out, they can’t see me—and look in the windows. Trevor and Diana are sitting in my parents’ chairs in front of the fire. Charlotte has pulled up a third chair to join them. Everyone looks relaxed. If Trevor suspects that something is wrong, he’s not letting on. Go outside, go outside, I repeat over and over in my head until at last, they get to their feet. Shortly after, the front door opens. I draw back into the shadows as Trevor heads for his Jeep. My heart thumps—unreasonably so, I realize now, because the idea that Diana might never let him leave was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
But Trevor doesn’t open the driver’s-side door. Instead, he goes around the back of the Jeep to the cargo area and takes out a ba
ckpack—his “emergency pack,” he told me during the drive from the hospital, which he keeps packed with toiletries and a change of clothes in the event that he needs it when he is chasing down a story—and goes inside.
I feel like crying. He’s going to spend the night. I should have known that he wouldn’t leave without me. His kindness and friendship are going to get him killed. I don’t know what he said to convince Diana to let him stay. All I know is that with every passing minute, the danger increases. If he doesn’t leave now—tonight—he’s never going to make it out alive. Scotty will lose the only person who truly cares for him, and it will be my fault. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.
I settle in to wait. It is now dangerously cold. I can’t sit down because the cold coming up from the ground will chill me worse than the air, so I pace in a circle until the lights go out. Judging by the size and position of the moon, I’m guessing it’s around eight o’clock. Diana might go out to the taxidermy workshop to check on me before she turns in for the night, but I’m betting she won’t. Tormenting me by leaving me alone overnight without food and water and a means to use the bathroom is exactly the kind of thing that she would do.
I go over to Trevor’s Jeep and quietly open the back door to search the cargo area for a blanket. Everyone in the Upper Peninsula carries emergency supplies during the winter in case their car breaks down or they get stuck in a snowbank. Thankfully, Trevor is no exception. In a corner of the cargo area, I find a lovely woolen blanket.
I pick it up—then my eyes widen. Beneath the blanket is a rifle.
TWENTY-FIVE
THEN
Jenny
By the time we turn down our access road and pass through the security gate, the snow has stopped. If it weren’t for the icy accumulation packed into the windshield wiper wells, no one who’d spent the morning at the lodge would guess that at this very moment, Marquette is experiencing a blizzard. Marquette sits on the south shore of Lake Superior, and because of the lake-effect snows, has the dubious honor of being the third snowiest city in the continental United States. Last winter, the city was literally buried under a record-breaking two hundred inches, which translates to a staggering 16.7 feet. M-28 east of the city was closed four times due to blowing and drifting snow—and it’s the only way into and out of the city from that direction. Residents are used to snow—skiing and snowshoeing and ice-fishing and snowmobiling are all popular winter activities, as are more creative outdoor sports such as fat-tire biking and ice golfing—but last winter was bad even by their standards. Cars were buried, schools and businesses closed, roofs collapsed, and the drifts on the Northern Michigan University campus reached the third-story dormitory windows. Peter’s grandfather used to say that it took a special kind of person to live in the Upper Peninsula year-round, and I agree.
But while the day has turned sunny, my disposition has not. The discussion with Dr. Merritt was sobering, to say the least. Peter and I have yet to reach a decision, but we both know what that decision has to be. Our daughter has killed twice with impunity. We can’t let her kill again.
As if to underscore the point, as we approach the gun range, there is a gunshot. Max shooting by himself, I presume, because Charlotte is away with Rachel for the day. Char will be upset that she missed him. One of the drawbacks of living without a telephone is the difficulty in making plans. Charlotte recently confided that she and Max have been talking about getting married. There was a time I would have argued against it, and I still believe she could do a lot better, but who am I to say what my sister should or shouldn’t do? I haven’t exactly been a paragon of wisdom when it comes to knowing what’s best for my family. Anyway, once Diana is gone, there will be no reason for her to stay.
“Sounds like Max is at the gun range,” Peter remarks. “Do you mind if I join him?”
I do mind. I hate the gun range, hate rifles, hate shooting, hate killing. Just the thought of my husband holding a weapon turns my stomach. But if blowing up tin cans will help him blow off some of the morning’s tension, I’m willing to grant him this concession. As for me, I want nothing more than to crawl into bed and bury myself under the covers and make this day go away. At the same time, the idea of being alone in the house with Diana fills me with dread.
“I’ll come with you. Just to watch,” I add when Peter raises his eyebrows.
As he pulls over and parks, another gunshot splits the air, followed immediately by three more.
“That’s some fast shooting,” he says. “I wonder what kind of rifle Max is using.”
I have no idea and couldn’t care less. But as we walk toward the gun range, the reason for the multiple shots becomes clear: Max is not alone. There are three others with him. Four people holding rifles silhouetted against the sun. It looks as though the gun range has been invaded by an army.
Peter squints. “It’s Charlotte and Diana,” he says after a moment, which doesn’t make sense because Charlotte took Rachel to Manistique and Diana isn’t allowed to set foot on the gun range. “And is that Rachel?”
“Rachel is with them? My God.”
I don’t know which is more shocking: that my eleven-year-old, animal-loving daughter has been coerced into learning how to shoot, or that the twenty-year-old psychopathic daughter I am about to turn over to police as a murder suspect is standing next to her holding a rifle.
We take off running.
“Mom? Dad? What are you guys doing here?” Diana says when she sees us. “I thought you were going to Marquette for the day.”
“Obviously.” For a moment, I am so stunned I don’t know what else to say.
Then I do. I whirl on Charlotte. “How could you? How could you bring my girls here? How could you let them shoot?”
“It’s okay,” Max breaks in. “The girls know all about gun safety. And your Rachel is a pretty good shot. A total natural.”
I can’t believe Max is so cavalier. In addition to a con man and liar, is he also an idiot? When I think of all the times that we made allowances for him for Charlotte’s sake, I realize that my daughter’s isn’t the only bad behavior I’ve indulged.
“How could you?” I berate my sister again. “You know how Peter and I feel about guns.”
She tosses her head. “Of course I do. Why do you think we only bring the girls here when you’re gone? What are you doing back so soon, anyway?”
“Don’t put this on me. You knew. You knew I would never approve, yet you did this anyway.”
“It’s only target practice. It’s not as though we’re teaching them to hunt. But even if we were, lots of kids know how to shoot. You’re too protective. You need to give them a chance to make mistakes. Children need room to breathe in order to grow.”
“Says the woman who’s never had kids.”
“Not fair. I don’t have to give birth to know how to raise them. You’re not a bear, yet you claim to understand them.”
“It’s not the same thing at all, and you know it.”
I stop because I can feel myself slipping and I don’t want to lose control in front of my girls. Rachel looks positively terrified. As for Diana, as always, it’s impossible to know what she’s thinking.
Max smirks. I don’t know if this is because he’s enjoying seeing Charlotte and me going at it like a couple of boxers, or if he’s smirking out of nervousness. It doesn’t matter. The smirk is enough.
“As for you, take your stuff—all of it—the rifles, the ammunition—and don’t come back.”
“You’re firing me?”
More like throwing him out.
“You can’t do that!” Charlotte exclaims. “I won’t let you.”
As if she could stop me.
“I’m not going to say it again. Max—pack it up and clear out. Diana, Rachel—leave your rifles here and get in the car. As for you . . .” I turn to Charlotte and stop. I take a deep breath, think about the las
ting impact of what I was about to tell her, which was to leave with her no-good boyfriend and never come back, and dial it back. “You can do what you want.”
Charlotte looks at me steadily for a long moment and turns her back. I feel like crying. If only she had respected our rules, none of this would have happened. Going behind our backs and deliberately doing something we’ve forbidden, teaching my daughters to disobey us, putting a rifle into the hands of a psychopath and teaching her how to shoot it. I’d laugh if the whole thing wasn’t so terrible. I brought my family here to keep them safe. Now my sister has done the opposite.
We drive to the lodge in silence. As Peter pulls up and parks, I turn to the girls in the back seat. “Straight to your rooms, both of you. Stay there until we say you can come out. Your father and I need to talk.”
Diana opens her door and heads off in the direction of her taxidermy workshop. Then, evidently remembering that the workshop is padlocked, she heads for her painting studio in the barn.
“Let her go,” Peter says. “Rachel? Are you hungry?”
She shakes her head and runs off toward the woods. For a moment, I am stunned by her disobedience.
“Rachel!” Peter calls as he starts after her.
“Let me handle it,” I say. “She’s going to the observation blind, I’m sure of it.”
As I hurry after her down the trail, gradually, my equilibrium returns. I don’t blame Rachel for running into the forest. It’s my comfort place, too. I hate that she had to hear and see all that she did.
Then again, she’s not entirely innocent. She’s eleven. Old enough to know right from wrong. When Max or Charlotte or Diana suggested that she come with them to the gun range, she could have said no. It appalls me to think that my daughter has been so corrupted by the adults in her life that not only has she learned how to shoot, according to Max, she’s good at it as well.