Rhonda remembered the third degree her mother had given her each time she came back from spending the night at Lizzy’s house: What did you do? How late were you up? Was Aggie there? Peter? Daniel?
Daniel.
Oh my God, she knew all along. Rhonda nearly said the words out loud. For an instant, she imagined placing her hands on her mother’s square shoulders, turning her around so that they were face-to-face, and saying, You knew what Daniel was doing, didn’t you?
She gripped the back of a kitchen chair instead.
“You sure we can’t give you a hand?” Clem asked. “There’s a lot of cleanup.”
“That’s okay, dear. Cleaning up is what I do best,” Justine said.
A chill ran through Rhonda, beginning at the scar on her forehead and racing all the way down to her toes. Cleaning up. Was it possible that Justine knew not just about the abuse but about what finally ended it? Had throwing away Lizzy’s bloody clothes been more than just simple housekeeping?
Rhonda squeezed the chair tighter.
“Can you turn that up?” Justine said, her back still to them. “I want to hear the weather.”
Clem turned the radio up and the DJ came on to give the top of the hour news. The lead story was that Ernestine Florucci’s body had been found by some campers on the north side of the lake early that morning.
Rhonda let out a squeaky sigh, felt her fingers slip off the chair.
“I’m sorry, Ronnie,” Clem said, still holding the radio in his hands. He set it back down on the counter carefully, like it might be a bomb.
Rhonda went out to the porch, where Suzy and Kim were giggling over their cards. “You girls want to take a walk?” she asked.
Suzy nodded, said, “I know where there’s a submarine.” Rhonda’s stomach went cold as she followed the skipping girls across the yard and down the path that led to their old stage.
Rhonda hadn’t been into the woods in years. Shortly after the play, they’d all stopped using the path that connected their houses, choosing to walk back and forth the long way, down the road. Now Rhonda understood why.
The woods seemed smaller, to Rhonda, closer somehow. The trees had grown, filling in and making the clearing darker than she had remembered, even on a bright day. She looked up, trying to recall which pine it was that Tock had shot her arrow from. She thought she could pick it out, but couldn’t be sure. They all looked nearly the same.
The girls climbed into Clem’s old Impala and Rhonda followed, squeezing into the front seat beside them.
“Where are we going?” Rhonda asked. Suzy was at the wheel in her dark funeral dress, her hair held back with a ribbon.
“To see the octopus,” Suzy said, matter-of-factly.
Rhonda looked to her right. The disarranged pile of wood that had once been their stage was black and sickly green with decay and moss. The police had pulled boards aside to expose the hole beneath. Rhonda turned away, unable to make herself look down into the hole they had once all taken turns hiding in. The hole where they changed costumes and which they used to make the most dramatic entrances and exits. Rhonda remembered falling in her dreams, how she thought she might never stop. She thought of her old retainer, pulled from that hole, held in an evidence bag now, packed away beside the remnants of Daniel’s T-shirt and jeans. She scanned the ground, wondering where they’d buried the bogeyman, struggled to remember what she’d written on her piece of paper. What had she been afraid of then? Peter not loving her? That she would grow old and forget things? Had she written something as simple as spiders? Or something far more sinister?
Under a few boards off to the side, Rhonda spotted a torn bit of cloth and recognized a piece of the painted scene from the play. Blue waves, a bit of palm tree, now blotchy with mildew. Their Neverland, was, Rhonda realized then, a lot like Ernie’s Rabbit Island.
SUZY BROUGHT THE sub gently to rest on the ocean floor. She, Kim, and Rhonda got out and sat in the bed of pine needles, which was actually soft sand. They sipped tea and ate small cakes. Rhonda looked around at the ruined stage, at the trees that enclosed the clearing. She thought, for a moment, that she had seen the flash of Tock’s flaming arrow pass in the corner of her eye. A bird squawked, and in its squawk Rhonda heard Peter Pan’s crow.
The octopus was a fine host and said many things that sent Suzy and Kim into fits of giggles. “Silly octopus,” they said. Then, all at once, Suzy got serious.
“The octopus says you can tell us about Grandpa Daniel now,” she said.
Rhonda froze, imaginary cake in her mouth, the invisible cup of tea spilled onto her lap.
“What about him?” she asked, her voice as calm as she could make it.
“Tell us a story about him,” the little girl asked.
“I’m sure your father could tell you lots of stories,” she said to Suzy. “And your mother, Kimberly, she could tell you what you want to know.”
“But we want your story,” Kim whined. “You knew him too.”
Rhonda thought about it. About these little girls, who had just watched a man they never met be buried. A man whose body the police had found bludgeoned to death in the woods. Their grandfather. Of course they were curious.
“Well, let’s see,” began Rhonda with some hesitation. “Once upon a time, your Grandpa Daniel decided that his son Peter—that’s your daddy, Suz—should be able to fly, so he made him a pair of wings…”
So Rhonda told the story, leaving out the part about Peter alone on the workshop roof, about Aggie coming at Daniel with a shovel. She found herself stretching the truth a little to say that yes, maybe Peter had flown that day, just a little bit, just enough. And, as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy. Daniel would be a saint now that he was dead. A beautiful man who made his child wings.
RHONDA AND THE girls got back in the sub and began moving toward the future, somewhere off at the edge of the horizon. They rose up out of the sea that was the past, out of the swell and surge of memory. Suzy was pulling at the gear shift, turning the steering wheel. Rhonda worked imaginary hand cranks and stopped occasionally to hold her two hands in front of her face, making them turn the periscope as she searched the horizon for some sign of the familiar.
“Land!” Rhonda finally shouted.
“Surface,” Suzy ordered. “We’re home.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my editor, Jeanette Perez, and to everyone else at HarperCollins who helped make this book a reality.
Thanks to Dan Lazar, my wonder-agent.
Thanks to Dudley and Janet Askew, owners and operators of The Maple Valley Café in Plainfield, Vermont. Much of the early work on this book was done at Table 8, fueled by their perfect omelets and awe-inspiring home fries.
Thanks to all my friends and family who have been so indulgent and supportive while I figure out this whole being-a-novelist thing.
And, of course, thanks to my readers. This book wouldn’t exist without you.
Credits
Cover design by Mary Schuck
Cover photograph by Jock Sturges
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS. Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer McMahon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Pub Edition © MARCH 2008 ISBN: 9780061807589
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
For Michael, who knows how to take things apart
Contents
Dedication
Present Day
Nine Years Ago
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part Three
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part Four
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Part Five
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Part Six
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Acknowledgments
Credits
Copyright
Present Day
“DISMANTLEMENT EQUALS FREEDOM.”
Suz is there, whispering the words in his ear, each syllable hot and twisted. She’s glowing, radiant, still twenty-one and burning with the fierce need to fuck up the world.
The dead don’t age.
He finishes the knot, his hands steady, without the slightest tremble, then climbs onto the chair and throws the rope up over one of the beams in the kitchen. Old, hand-hewn beams his builder rescued from a salvage yard. They’d reminded him of Vermont. Of the cabin near the lake.
In his mind, he goes back ten years, sees Suz coming up the path, stepping into the clearing, pole in one hand, string of fish in the other: bass, sunfish, trout. They glisten like jewels, strung on the braided nylon rope she’s carefully looped through their mouths and gills.
Suz’s walk is a dance, her movements fluid, the silk tunic she wears flutters around her, making it seem as if the wind itself is carrying her, buoying her along like a kite.
She winks at him.
He loves her.
He hates her.
He doesn’t want to be here, but there’s no way he could ever leave. Once you’re in her orbit, it’s impossible to pull yourself away.
The others gather around as she lays the fish out on the table to clean them. She pulls the trout off the braided rope, lays it flat on newspaper, and slides the knife in, slitting it open along its belly from gills to vent. The fish opens its mouth, sucking at air. Suz smiles, showing crooked teeth, pushes her fingers gently inside the fish, widening the opening with her hand. The skin stretches; the movement of her fingers produces a wet, tearing sound.
“To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart,” Suz says, tugging out a string of entrails, sticky and shimmering with rainbows, like oil on a puddle.
“YOU NEVER REALLY GOT it, did you, babycakes?” he hears her whisper in his ear.
“No,” he tells her, slipping the rope around his neck, pulling the postcard from his pocket to look at one last time. “But I do now.”
He steps off the chair.
The postcard falls from his hand, drifts to the floor in slow motion, turning: moose, words, moose, words—until it lands, the carefully printed words facing up, the last thing he sees before losing consciousness:
DISMANTLEMENT = FREEDOM
THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE
Nine Years Ago
WHEN TESS’S WATER BROKE, she was staring into the long-forgotten aquarium, her eyes fixed on the bodies of the frogs floating like lost astronauts in oversize spacesuits, something clearly not of this world. They were pale and spongy, having frozen and thawed with the cruel cycles of winter and spring. It was, somehow, to Tess, as if they were stuck in limbo, waiting to be rescued, to rise singing from their own tiny galaxy of stagnant water; calling out in deep, vengeful bullfrog voices, How could you leave us here? How could you forget?
And they stank. God, how they stank. They reeked of cruel abandonment. Of things gone terribly wrong.
It was the first of May and Tess and Henry had hiked up to the cabin to take a look around. What they were looking for exactly, neither of them could say. And even if they could have named it, this thing that they hoped to find, they wouldn’t have dared utter it out loud.
They were a week away from Tess’s due date and the trip had been her idea. She thought they should visit the place one last time—the cabin where they had conceived their child, where so much of their lives had both begun and ended. The building, and everything in it, had been abandoned nearly eight months before—the night Suz died—just left as it was, nothing taken with them but the clothes on their backs, the summer of the Compassionate Dismantlers left entombed within the cabin walls.
The building was a hunting camp built sometime in the late sixties and the only access was up an old logging road, impassable by car most of the year. Henry and Tess opted to walk up, as the road was still soft and muddy from snowmelt and spring rains. The cabin itself sat in a clearing at the top of a steep hill—a simple single-story box twenty-four by thirty feet, with a gable roof that made room for a sleeping loft. The outside was sheathed in plywood once painted red, now warped and faded by years of snow and rain, chewed through in places by porcupines with a taste for wood, glue, and the sweat of human effort. The roof was rust-splotched tin, layered with years of pine needles and maple leaves that had formed a rich compost where baby maples sprouted and grew, stunted, with no hope of ever fully developing.
They arrived in the clearing out of breath, their shoes caked with mud, blackflies buzzing around their heads like angry halos. Several times on the way up, Henry had suggested they turn back. He was worried about the strain on Tess, who had a difficult enough time traversing flat surfaces with her large belly, much less mountain climbing. Surely it couldn’t be good for her or the baby. But Tess was determined to stick to the plan, to make it to the top.
To the right of the clearing was the path that led down to the water. The lake and the land around it was a protected watershed area and threatening TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs were nailed to trees every twenty-five feet or so. The lake, referred to on maps only as Number 10 Lak
e, was not accessible by the main road and theirs was the only cabin even close. About fifty feet up the driveway to the cabin, there was a turnoff leading to the little beach they used, but the brush and weeds made it almost impossible to recognize it as a road. In any case, you’d never make it to the water without four-wheel drive and a lot of clearance. They’d never attempted it in Henry’s van, sure they’d lose the exhaust system or put a hole in the gas tank. The entire summer they spent there, they never saw a single person anywhere near the lake.
TWO TRASH CANS LAY tipped over outside the cabin, their contents scattered in a wide swath: rusted cans, wine bottles, plastic containers torn to shreds. Henry picked up a ripped-open Hershey’s syrup can.
“Bears,” he said.
Tess nodded, gave a little shiver as she scanned the treeline at the edge of the clearing. Henry dropped the ruined can and touched his wife’s shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way. She wasn’t expecting it, and jumped, startled. As if his hand was a thick brown paw with razor-sharp claws.
“Sorry,” he muttered, knowing already that he’d been right all along: they shouldn’t have come.
Above the rough-hewn door (which Henry found to be unlocked, just as they’d left it at the end of August) were the words THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE. It had been painted in dripping black letters the week they’d moved in, mid-June of last year, when they were all sure they were going to have the most exciting, important summer of their lives. The words were a way of marking the building as theirs, the way gangs tagged their home turf with graffiti. Henry couldn’t remember who had painted them—him, Tess, Winnie, or Suz—and this surprised him; he had already forgotten a piece of their puzzle.
Circling the cabin, like alligators in a moat, were the cats. Yes, he’d forgotten the cats too; they both had. Not forgotten them exactly, but just assumed they’d gone elsewhere, found some other home. They now seemed more wild than tame—mangy, skin and bones, their fur dingy, their eyes weeping, ears torn. At first, just a few, then more gathered, until Henry and Tess were surrounded by ten or twelve feral cats, half starved, who seemed to remember that these were the people who’d once fed them. The cats mewed and screeched, their voices ragged and pleading as they circled Henry and Tess, followed them inside, hopeful, insistent. Henry kicked at them, while Tess hurried to the kitchen.
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