Senseless Acts of Beauty

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  Rodriguez really had been watching over her.

  Rodriguez was a good man.

  “There is another option,” Jolie said into the stretching silence. “If you want to avoid a trial, I could offer a lesser plea—”

  “No.”

  She knew that she’d spoken the word aloud because Rodriguez looked up at her with that black gaze. Until a few moments ago, she’d been afraid that laying eyes upon her rapist would bring it all back—not just the violence, but the horrible way she’d felt afterward. That unshakable belief that nobody cared for her. That Tess Hendrick, abandoned by her father and betrayed by her mother—the girl who played with fire—got exactly what she deserved.

  Now Tess looked straight into Rodriguez’s face and hoped someday the veil would be ripped from Sadie’s eyes, too. Maybe then Sadie would understand that, in the end, her birth mother chose to do not what was easiest, but what was right.

  “No plea deal.” Tess said. “I’ll testify.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When Riley posted the old high school photo on her social media account, she told herself she did it as a reminder to the Pine Lake girls that the time had come to make their reservations for the mini-reunion at Camp Kwenback. Riley adored this photo. It had been taken moments after she and her friends had thrown their mortarboards in the air. There were twelve of them, crushed together, laughing in the bright sun, and everyone sported pink hair—their senior year prank. The picture even included Tess, her mouth open comically wide as she photo-bombed the shot.

  On impulse, Riley tagged Sadie in the photo as well.

  A few days later, Riley posted a second picture, tagging Sadie again. It was a photo of Coley’s Point, a vista spot just outside town where locals went to camp. In it she and her friends couldn’t be more than thirteen. She was swaddled in a ridiculous puffy coat, her face unrecognizable under hat and hood and scarf, her arms thrown around a couple of other girls just as bundled. Tess was the skinny one wearing the mismatched hat, scarf, and gloves.

  Riley’s friends made all kinds of snarky remarks about that memorable evening, but Sadie didn’t say a thing.

  So Riley waited a week before posting the third picture. Sadie was probably getting ready for the school year, but Riley hoped to take advantage of these waning days of summer to capture the young woman’s attention before Sadie lost herself in the whirl of homework and clubs and events at her new high school in Ohio.

  It was another shot of Pine Lake, this time on the local baseball diamond. Riley sported a catcher’s uniform. The padding on her chest and guards on her shins made her look meatier than usual. Her helmet was falling off her head, and her hair was all sweaty, and she was about six inches off the ground as she leaped into the arms of another player—Nicole, the pitcher, all glossy dark hair—as they both screamed to the skies. They’d just won the regionals, the first time Pine Lake’s softball team had done that in three decades, and this picture had made the front page of the Pine Lake Ledger. Riley figured it would take Sadie a moment of searching to find the black shadow in the background of the shot, hunched against the chain-link fence, a lit cigarette dangling from Tess’s unsmiling mouth.

  Riley was sitting sat at her desk with a mountain of paperwork spread in front of her when an instant message finally blinked on the screen.

  Why r u tagging me in all these pics?

  Riley reached for the keyboard so fast she nearly knocked her coffee all over the contract she was perusing.

  I was thinking of you. I thought you’d want to see some Pine Lake history.

  Bad hair and ugly snow boots?

  You got me there.

  I know what you’re doing.

  Posting pictures for the amusement of my friends?

  Funny how the stegosaurus is in all three.

  Can’t pull a fast one over on Sadie, Riley thought. Maybe she should have mixed up the photos a little.

  Another message popped up. Is she feeding u these pictures? Telling u to show them to me?

  Tess is gone now. Riley hesitated, wondering how much to say, suspecting what Sadie wanted to hear. She went back to North Dakota.

  Tess left Pine Lake the day after she identified the man who’d assaulted her all those years ago. She’d told Riley she wasn’t running away. She just needed to make sense of a few things. Riley thought she looked tired but calm, like a marathon runner after stumbling over the finish line. Tess promised she would return in a few weeks to witness the post-indictment arraignment, the first in what would probably be a long, difficult road to trial. Riley had promised a room.

  A new message blinked. U still there?

  Yeah, I’m still here. Phone ringing off the hook. Riley rolled her own eyes the moment she typed that. The only person she expected today was her mother, and she’d cleared the decks for that visit.

  Thinking of mothers, Riley found herself typing: The stegosaurus isn’t so bad you know, once you get to know her.

  You’re pushing it.

  Does that mean no more photos?

  Riley flexed her fingers, watching the box for something to pop up. It was a full minute before Sadie posted again.

  Whatever. g2g.

  Got to go. Riley typed a chirpy good-bye and added a happy face. She supposed “Whatever” was a whole lot better than “Stop.”

  Riley closed the window when a jangle of chimes brought her attention to the front door. Her mother strode in, thumbing the cell phone in her hand.

  “Sorry I’m late,” her mother said, as she hit a button then slipped the phone into her purse. “Remind me never to choose flowers for the luncheon tables with Betsy Muldoon. The woman has the attention span of a flea.”

  Riley patted the mountain on her desk. “I took the time to catch up on paperwork.”

  “I hope some of that paperwork is about the air conditioner.” Her mother tugged on the collar of her button-down shirt. “It’s like an oven in here, and there’s no hum coming from those vents.”

  The unit needed replacing, but Riley didn’t mention that. “It’s barely eighty degrees outside, Mom.”

  “You’ve always been a little lizard. But it’s so hot in here you could seriously grow weed.”

  “How about some sun tea?”

  “Yes. Let’s take it out on the back porch, shall we? Maybe we’ll catch a breeze off the lake.”

  Her mother’s sandals clicked across the floorboards as she headed toward the sliding doors. Riley slipped into the kitchen and poured two glasses of tea, taking her time adding ice. She felt a little shaky. She wasn’t so sure that the conviction she’d worked so hard to cultivate over the past week wouldn’t wilt under her mother’s scrutiny.

  Once outside her mother gave her a look as she took a glass off the offered tray. “No guests this week?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Ever the optimist.”

  “I’m booked for the Labor Day weekend. Claire, Nicole, and Jenna have already confirmed.” Riley slid the tray onto the table and took a glass for herself. “Dr. Jin says it depends on her patients; she’ll tell me closer to the day. Sydney’s coming, too.”

  “Are these lovely Pine Lake girls paying?”

  “Mother.”

  “It’s an honest question.”

  “Friends and family rate.” Riley sank into a chair.

  “You really are your grandparent’s granddaughter.” Her mother curled her legs up on the cushion. “I assume you asked me over to talk about your recent visit to Ben’s office?”

  Riley had thought she’d kept the secret well, but the tom-toms of Pine Lake beat constantly. “Yes, Mother, that’s exactly why I asked you here. I’ve made a decision about this place. I’ve put in a call to the Adirondack Land Trust.”

  Her mother’s head swiveled, her expression full of surprise.

  “Ah, the tom-toms didn’t beat the whole tale, I see.”

  “The land trust?”

  “Yup.”

  “The last time I spoke to
you, you had plans to update the lodge—”

  “Yes, I did.” Alice-in-Wonderland dreams, until she finally climbed out of the rabbit hole. “I thought you’d be thrilled that I was throwing off the albatross.”

  “But the trust will try to swallow up the whole place, make it a part of the nature conservatory.”

  “That’s the usual MO.”

  Her mother blinked. “But they’ll pay you pennies on the dollar, Riley. Not half the worth of the land, commercially zoned—”

  “Well, it is a charitable trust.”

  “I take it,” her mother said, as her glass dripped condensation on her well-creased capris, “that you never called that developer.”

  “On the contrary, I did. I heard what he had to say.”

  “Is this about your birds?”

  “Really, Mom!”

  “I just don’t want you giving up a chance at some financial security just to save some rare woodland owl or something.”

  “I’ve got more important things on my mind right now.”

  “Well, I’m dumbfounded. Last time we discussed this, you were in your complete redheaded mode, determined to make this place work at all costs.”

  “Instead I’ve filed for bankruptcy.”

  The word lay in her mouth like ashes. Riley couldn’t seem to swallow the taste away.

  Her mother said, “Riley?”

  “Ben is filing the appropriate papers,” she explained. “Camp Kwenback will soon have temporary protection from its creditors while I work things out.”

  “With the land trust.”

  “With whoever will give me a chance to keep the place afloat a little longer, and yes, that just may be the land trust.”

  “They’ll change the zoning so no one can ever develop it again. They’ll swallow it whole.” Her mother threw her arm out to the pine woods, stretching on either side of the lake. “Every acre of it will be annexed into that.”

  “Every acre but one, I hope.”

  Her mother slid her glass on the table. She planted her elbows on her own knees and then did what Riley dreaded the most. She released a long, weary sigh.

  This time Riley chose to shoot first. “Mom, when was the last time you were in the attic?”

  “For goodness sake, what on earth are you—”

  “It’s full of old boxes. Grandma was as much a pack rat as Grandpa, in her own orderly way.” Riley flattened the arches of her feet against the edge of the glass table and pressed back so the chair tipped onto its back legs. “Figuring I was going to lose the place, I started the process of cleaning it out. So I went upstairs and opened some of those old boxes. I found ledgers dating back to the turn of the twentieth century.”

  Her mother ran her fingers across her brow, like she was smoothing out a headache.

  Riley said, “Did you know a Vanderbilt slept here in the early twenties?”

  “Yes.”

  Riley started. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “He was a third cousin to the Commodore’s grandchildren, far from the money tree.”

  “But he was a Vanderbilt. You don’t think that would have been worth a nice plug on the website? ‘Come stay where the Vanderbilts played.’”

  “Forgive me, Riley, but I’m failing to see what this has to do with the land trust and…bankruptcy.”

  “I made more than one discovery up there.”

  Riley didn’t know if her mother would appreciate the thrill she’d experienced paging through all those ledgers. Sitting up there with a patch of sun passing across the floorboards, she’d seen an older, different Camp Kwenback come to life in her mind. It made her realize that no place was immutable—and it was fruitless to fight against evolution.

  “What I found,” she continued, “concerned the boathouse.” She squinted at it through the trees to focus on the bleached piles, the coiling twig work. “Apparently, it was built by William West Durant around the turn of the twentieth century. The story was written up in the Pine Lake Ledger in nineteen nineteen. That builder did a lot of work in the great camps—the ones everyone knows. Camp Uncas. Camp Pine Knot. Sagamore Camp.”

  “Riley, those camps are all National Historical Landmarks.”

  “Exactly.”

  Her mother lifted her head from her hands. “You want landmark designation for the boathouse.”

  “And the lodge, as well, as an associated building. I’ve already spoken to someone in the State Parks and Recreation Department about the survey and evaluation process, just to get the ball rolling.”

  “But—”

  “I’d have to tear down the cabins.” She couldn’t look at them, stretching in steps down the east side of the compound, remembering the hanging laundry, the tumble of toys, the families sitting under the trees watching the sunset. “I’ll have to tear down the Viking obstacle course, the rope climb, the tree house by the marsh. Probably the swing set and the dock around the bend”—every structure bringing another sunlit memory—“but with landmark status pending, the Trust should be willing to split the lot, let me retain the main lodge, the boathouse, maybe even the mini-golf. They’d still get nearly thirty acres at a bargain, and I’d still be the proprietor of a small—possibly viable—suddenly historic inn.”

  Riley shot up from her chair and strode to the rail to grip it in her hands. Her face was hot, and not from the warmth of the August afternoon. Speaking the idea aloud again—this time to her mother—made her realize how far afield she’d strayed from rationality. Old Ben Eason had been kind when she’d outlined her idea, lowering his gaze so she wouldn’t see his skepticism, but she was used to that. She’d experienced that every time she’d handed a bank officer her business proposal.

  But she didn’t have that much history with Ben. Standing half in the sun, with her mother listening behind her, she felt the shadow of a hundred thousand other failures darken her mind.

  Her mother murmured, in an oddly neutral voice, “Landmark status could take a long time to establish.”

  “It’s going to be a lot of paperwork,” Riley admitted. “And I’ll have to make sure the proceeds from the land sale to the Trust can cover the cost of running the lodge, at least until I figure out a way to make the lodge viable, or at least until preservation loans become available.”

  “Landmark status,” her mother mused, “could mean special tax treatment, too.”

  “Uh-huh. I could bypass Pine Lake Union Bank when I need to hire an artisan to replace rotting boards.”

  “You won’t be able change anything, not a door, not a window, not a twig—”

  “There’ll be no mediation pagodas or golf carts on the hiking trails.”

  “Just the way you want it.”

  Riley realized she was holding the rail so tight that her knuckles had gone white. She had her back to her mother so she couldn’t see her face. Riley could hear only the rattling of the ice in her glass, the rustle of her clothes as she shifted her position, the creaking of the wicker chair. Riley’s heart was beating far faster than it should, faster than she’d wanted it to beat. She’d told herself that her mother’s opinion didn’t matter, but her gut clearly thought otherwise. Nobody wants to be a failure in anyone’s eyes, especially in the eyes of those they love.

  Her mother mused, “You know, I never liked this place.”

  Riley dared a half turn.

  “Oh, it’s lovely now,” her mother said, as she absently toasted the backyard, “worn to a nub, yes, but it’s quiet and we’ve got the whole place to ourselves. But I remember how it was in its so-called glory days. I remember racing between the lodge and the lake, right up and down these steps, right here. I was constantly delivering dry towels to shivering children and drinks to their parents, always forced to smile and be happy no matter that sweat was dripping down the middle of my back, mosquitos were biting, and so were some of those children, once they were out of their parent’s sight. It’s been nearly forty years since I worked fourteen-hour days here, but I still twitch eve
ry time I walk through the door.” Her mother shook her head. “So what brought on this sudden decision of yours?”

  “Utter financial desperation?”

  “Riley, you’ve taken sudden right turns before, but there was always a trigger and it was never money.”

  Riley knew her mother was referring to when Riley left her job—and Declan. Riley looked down at her fingers, a tiny bead of blood oozing from where she’d taken on a splinter. She wasn’t sure it was quite the right time to tell her mother the other decision she’d made about her husband.

  “Don’t mistake me, Riley,” her mother said into the silence. “Finality can be a good thing. Making a decision, even a crazy one, can be a good thing. But, Riley, I know you right down to the high arches in your tapered little feet. You need a push to make any decision. I’m just wondering what pushed you over the line this time.”

  Riley chewed on her lip for a moment, wondering how to explain everything that had happened since she’d returned from Ohio. She hadn’t said a word to her mother about Sadie or all the drama that had happened here over the summer. She wasn’t sure she wanted to compound the crazy by telling her mother about the moment she found Sadie perched like a wet fledgling in the shed, to when Sadie had looked up at her with those green eyes and asked if she was her mother, to the hours she’d spent in the car with the broken young runaway, trying to gather together all the shattered shards of her heart.

  Instead Riley said, “Did you see what Tess did to the mini-golf?”

  “I did.” Her mother stretched out the word like she was stretching out her patience. “It’s like one of Bud’s hoary old stories come to life.”

  “When I first saw those bears under the moon, I knew that preserving this place—or at least a small part of it—wasn’t just for my own sake.” Riley leaned back against the rail, testing it with her weight. “Tess showed me that. She also taught me that you can’t run away from making a decision forever. Sometimes you just have to commit, no matter how difficult the choice.”

  “I wish you’d told me about Tess.”

  An uneasy prickle spidered up her back.