Silence. Neil heard the slow, measured breathing behind him, even a faint wheeze during exhales. But no words. “Are you going to just stand there and stare?” said Neil.
Still nothing. The sagging skin hung from the jaws, and the double chin seemed more pronounced than Neil remembered. The head had gone from balding to bald. The arms hung lifelessly at the end of slouched shoulders. The look gazing back at him was hard to describe. Puzzled, perhaps. Or maybe confused, unsure, or contemplative. Maybe deliberating. That’s what it looked like. Deliberation. Neil had seen the same look hundreds of times on the faces of jurors and judges. It was deliberation, and Neil knew he was the one being deliberated over.
“I’ve been dead since the day Chris took his life.” Charlie Wilcox’s voice fluttered, as if he were anxious or scared. The soft-spoken man sounded older, more fragile than Neil remembered. Neil wanted to turn and face Wilcox, but his legs barely had the strength to keep him standing, let alone spin himself around. He’d have to settle for his reflection. “Was your death just another part of this charade?”
Wilcox remained silent, just staring at him. Neil grew impatient, infuriated. Hadn’t he been through enough?
“You might say that it was a charade inside a charade.”
Her voice was piercing in the otherwise silent room. Neil hadn’t heard her come in. He couldn’t see her reflection in the window and assumed she must be by the door. He caught a faint whiff of jasmine. Neil imagined Sammy, with her hair draping over her shoulders, standing within the door frame. Probably had her arms crossed, leaning against the jamb.
Wilcox turned away, walking slowly toward the door. “Where’s he going?” asked Neil as he heard Wilcox leave the room.
“He’s seen what I brought him here to see,” said Sammy.
“You said he was dead.”
“He’s as good as dead. We’d been planning this a long time, but Dad began having second thoughts, deciding a couple weeks ago that he couldn’t go through with it. He’s been staying in a nearby motel. I convinced him to come this morning to see how much you’d suffered.”
Neil felt the slightest of touches as she moved past him. She stepped between him and the window, turning to face him. He could only imagine what he must look like. His hair was probably wild, he hadn’t shaved in days, and he’d pissed his pants. Did she realize how humiliated he was feeling? “Why’ve you come back?”
A smile formed on Sammy’s face, the same one that once teased him in his childhood. But the eyes were different, darker and more malevolent. “To see you one last time.”
“End this . . . please. I’m exhausted. I’m filthy. I want to go home.” He knew it was probably the truest thing he’d ever said. “Get me down, please.”
“Do you remember my father? Not the man you just saw, but the man he was eighteen years ago?”
“Uh, maybe.”
“Describe him.”
He didn’t know what she was playing at. He assumed that he was meant to suffer a little longer. “I don’t know. He was . . .” Neil stalled. His head was swimming, probably from a lack of sleep. What should he say? The only thing he recalled was thinking that Wilcox was a moron back then. Just an ignoramus who wobbled around the camp fixing the shit that Neil and his friends broke. He’d never been kind to the old caretaker. Now Sammy wanted him to describe her father. What should he say?
“Handy with tools.” Neil was grasping at straws. “Good at fixing stuff. Look, can we talk about this after you get me down?”
“Tell me more.”
What did she want him to say? Should Neil tell her how he had made her father change dozens of lightbulbs by destroying them with a BB gun? Or maybe how many times he’d cut the ropes on the rope bridge? “More? Sammy, I don’t know what else to say. Can you just get me—”
“Tell me!” Her voice was like the crack of a whip in the otherwise silent room. The smile was gone, replaced by a steely grimace.
“He was . . . was happy to be here. Happy to be working at the camp.” That’s all he could say. He didn’t really know what else she wanted to hear.
“Happy. That’s an interesting choice of words. Very apt. He was very happy . . . until the day Chris died, the day my half brother died. From then on, I’ve done nothing but watch him spiral downward into a morose shadow of the man he once was.” She looked down, examining something on the floor. Neil couldn’t tilt his head to see what it was. “When my Mom died, he promised her that he’d take care of Chris, raise him to be a good man. It wasn’t easy for him, being a single parent of two kids. But he did the best he could. After Chris died, he felt as if he’d failed.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “Dad’s got cancer. They’d given him only six months to live. He’s had only one regret in life. That he didn’t save Chris.”
“I’m so sorry. I really am.”
Sammy said, “You know why Chris never gave you up to the camp supervisors?”
He shook his head.
She looked away toward the window. “He was desperate to fit in. Always awkward in social settings, that was the Chris I remember. Just wanted people to like him. You and your friends were popular, and he was afraid that he’d be hated if he ratted you out.”
She turned back toward him. Her eyes were looking at Neil again. They were dark, so very dark.
Sammy said, “My father and I started planning this when he got his diagnosis. Faking his death wasn’t all that hard. We only needed to convince your four friends that he was dead. No one else needed to know.” She half-smiled. “No need for fake death certificates and all that. Just a small fake ceremony and an urn full of ash. Easy enough. Even necessary, you could say, to get your friends to cooperate. Sympathy for a grieving daughter sucked them right in.”
She’d tricked them. He’d known there had to be a reason they’d betrayed him. “You must be pretty pleased with yourself.”
“Oh, they were all a little too eager to join in.”
She was trying to shift the blame. Neil knew his friends better than that. They wouldn’t have gone along with this if they’d known the whole truth. They just wouldn’t, would they? They’d all been tight. They’d been best friends throughout their childhood. Granted, Neil hadn’t seen them for eighteen years, but people don’t change that much. Los Cinco Amigos would always be Los Cinco Amigos, right? They’d all agreed, follow you down. It had been their motto, their creed.
Neil’s thoughts began to twist toward an unsettling truth. When he’d left that last year, he’d turned away from them. He’d left them behind . . . and they hadn’t followed. They hadn’t followed him, not like they always had. And, worse than that, they hadn’t waited for him either. Neil came this weekend expecting everything to be the same, expecting them to fall in line behind him like they always had. He assumed that the power he had over them as a teenager would still be there, still reign supreme. He had thought they’d pick up where they left off. But they’d changed . . . and he had not.
Sammy was smiling like she knew what he was thinking. There was still an unanswered question lingering between them.
Neil had to know. “You come back to gloat? I’ve had all I can take. How many times must I say sorry? I admit it, okay? His death was my fault. Cut me down.”
“It’s confession time, Neil. You have a mysterious power over me, you know that? I’ve spent months planning this weekend, and I thought that I’d accounted for every detail.” Her smile was gone. “But I didn’t account for how I’d feel seeing you again. Eighteen years ago, I fell hard for you. I loved you. That night when you came to the cabin, it was a dream come true. I’d wanted you just as badly as you wanted me. But after you left that night, Chris came to the cabin. He knew you’d been with me.” She turned and walked to window. She turned to face him, leaned back against the window frame, and folded her arms. Her eyes looked him up and down, and one corner of her mouth rose int
o a half-smirk. Her gaze left him feeling ashamed and humiliated.
Sammy continued, “He told me everything you’d done to him. I had no idea and didn’t believe him at first. Thought he was just jealous. But . . .” Her voice faded for a moment. Then, she bowed her head. “I hated you after that night. Hated you for what you were doing to Chris. After his death, I spent years despising every fiber of your being. It consumed me, even breaking up my marriage. You destroyed everything in this world that I loved. My half brother. My father. This camp. My marriage.” There was another pause. “But when you showed up here Thursday night, you stirred up some deep hidden desire. I had second thoughts about going through with our plan. But when we had sex the other night, it all became clear.”
She moved back across the room. Slow and deliberate. So close now that he could feel the heat radiating from her body. Was she going to let him go? Her gentle touch was on his chest, so light and intimate.
“I never told your friends what I really had planned. They’d never have gone through with it if they knew. You asked me why I came back. I guess I owe you that much.” She glanced at the floor, and then looked up into his eyes. “I’ve come back to be your guilty conscience.” Her hand touched a small silver medallion around her neck, tugging hard on the chain. Funny, he’d never noticed it before. The chain snapped, and she allowed it to fall to the floor. “Neil, it’s time for you to die.”
Epilogue
The sun crept up over the trees, shining down on Lake Friendship. Sammy watched the light dance on the water’s surface, blazing flames rolling with each ripple and wave. Her hands were buried deep within the pockets of her gray sweatshirt. The color had seemed somehow appropriate when she pulled it on the night before. It matched her mood.
A few wisps of her hair fluttered in the gentle breeze blowing across the lake. The air was crisp and moist, the result of a passing shower in the middle of the night. It hadn’t taken long for Sammy to find the loose board where Neil had stashed Chris’s diary. The discovery of the small leather book brought with it a compulsion to be read, and read it she did, finishing it around four in the morning. Afterward, she’d sat listening to the sound of the rain pattering against the roof and window of Redwood Lodge, remaining in the cabin until sunrise.
The turning of each page drew a picture of a Chris Bateman Sammy had never known. So much had happened during those last three summers that Chris had never shared with her. She’d always thought they were close, but she had never known how much he was hiding. Depression. Isolation. The suicidal thoughts. The struggles with his sexual identity. She’d never realized how troubled her half brother had been.
He detailed each prank that Neil and his friends had played on him. It pained her to read each account and left her feeling as if she’d betrayed Chris because she’d fallen in love with Neil. But there was something more in the diary that disturbed her. Chris seemed to take a certain perverse pleasure in the abuse. It had become his way of feeling accepted. The pranks had been cruel to the extreme, but to Chris, they’d become an affirmation of approval from Neil and his friends. It was why he never told anyone about the abuse. He’d become a tormented soul, torn between his need for acceptance from his peers and his own humility. The incompatibility of the two had only served to foster the dark depression that had already taken hold, leading him down the path toward self-destruction.
She watched the water caress the beach with a gentle wave, lapping quietly at the sand. The diary hung at her side from limp fingers. How could she not have seen it? How could she not have known? Her infatuation with Neil Brewster had blinded her to everything else for three summers. Sammy cursed herself for allowing a teenage crush to distract her from seeing the truth. If she’d known, she wondered, could she have saved Chris?
As a brisk wind blew in her face, Sammy knew this would be the last time she stood along the edge of Lake Friendship. With too many memories lingering among the trees, she never wanted to see Camp Tenskwatawa again. There was nothing keeping her here. What had once been the best days of her childhood were forever tainted, leaving her with nothing but a mind full of guilt.
Sammy fished into her pocket for a lighter, and then, raising the book in front of her, ignited the corner of the diary. As the pages began to burn, she heard a car pull up somewhere behind her in the distance. She glanced over her shoulder, saw the Lexus stop by the edge of the parking area, and frowned. Why is he here? she wondered.
Holding the diary by two fingers, she watched the flames engulf the pages. When Sammy felt the flames nipping at her hand, she let the burning book fall to the sand. It continued to burn, the leather blackening. Footsteps approached, but she didn’t turn around.
Patrick said, “Is he gone?”
“Yes.”
He halted beside her, his eyes following hers to the burning book at their feet. “Is that—”
“Yes.”
“Did you read it?”
Sammy could’ve told him the truth, but she didn’t want him asking questions. It was hard enough for her to comprehend what she’d read in the diary. She wasn’t about to burden Patrick with it as well. “No. Better to let his secrets die with him.”
Wisps of black smoke drifted up from the smoldering pile of burnt paper and charred leather. Watching the flames dwindle into nothing, Sammy felt an emptiness sweep over her. Everything that she’d lived for was now gone. The smoking remains of the leather book were all that remained of her lifelong pursuit for vengeance, leaving her to wonder what she had to show for all her toil. So much had been lost, and she felt as if nothing had been gained. Her half brother was gone. Her father was gone. The man she once loved was . . .
Patrick said, “You gonna be okay?”
Without turning to look at him, she said, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Watching him suffer like I did.”
“It couldn’t have been easy.”
“It just went on and on, as if it would never end.”
“Are you glad it’s over?” he asked.
Sammy turned from the lake. “Not sure I feel anything.”
Patrick frowned, folding his arms. “I wonder where Neil is now. Probably back in New York, licking his wounds and cursing our names. Do you think he’ll ever change?”
Sammy hesitated for a moment. “He could be at the bottom of the lake for all I care.”
Patrick laughed. “We can only wish.”
Sammy lips broke into a smile. She found the irony to be almost too funny. “Why’d you come back?”
“Don’t know. Maybe to see if he’d survived.” Patrick shrugged. “Was going to come back yesterday, but I decided to hold out in case any police were lingering.”
She was quick to reply. “He wasn’t here when I came back.” Then she wondered, had she replied too quickly?
A strong gust of wind blew across the lake into their faces, forcing Sammy to close her eyes and turn away. When she turned back and glanced down, she found that the wind had blown the book’s ashen pages across the lake’s sandy shore line.
“How’s your father doing?” Patrick asked.
She jerked her head toward him in surprise. “You knew?”
Patrick slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Come on. Did you really think I wouldn’t?”
“Did the others know?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. How is he?”
She hesitated, remembering the heartbreak she’d felt when she’d returned to the motel to find that he’d left.
“Gone. He left a note. Said he loved me, but . . .” She paused to draw in a deep, emotional breath. “I’d gone one step too far, and he didn’t want to see me anymore. He wants to die alone.”
Patrick reached for her, drawing Sammy into an embrace. They stood quietly on the edge of the lake while she cried into his shoulder. When her tears subsided, she pushed away, turned her back to him
, and folded her arms.
“He was right. All I’ve done is throw salt in an open wound.”
“It’s over now. Time to move on.”
Patrick began to walk back to his parked Lexus. He halted for a moment and turned back toward her. “There’s one thing that puzzles me.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What’s that?”
“When we were playing football, Neil saw someone watching us. Wearing one of those red ball caps Chris always wore. And he claimed to see the same thing in a canoe on the lake. Was that you?”
Sammy shrugged. “No. Not me. You sure it wasn’t one of the other guys?”
Patrick shook his head. “It wasn’t us. Hmmm, maybe Neil was feeling guiltier than he was letting on.”
He turned away and walked to his car. Pulling the door open, he looked down at her. “You leaving? I can drive you back to the cabin to get your car. Maybe we can grab dinner?”
Sammy looked at Patrick and smiled. It was time for her to leave. There was no point in remaining any longer. “Yeah, give me one second. I’ve got something I have to do.”
She walked to the water’s edge. Fishing in her pocket, she pulled out a small cluster of keys. Gazing at them in her hand, her eyes traced the Mercedes logo on the topmost key. It, along with the rest, would no longer be needed. Sammy drew her arm back and threw them into the air. They spiraled out over the lake and splashed into the water about fifty feet from shore. A smile crossed her lips as she remembered what she said to Patrick just a few minutes earlier. “He could be at the bottom of the lake for all I care.”
Sammy watched ripples race from the point of impact, forming ever widening circles on the water’s surface. She whispered, “Farewell, Neil.”
Her gaze drifted up to the opposite side of the lake, freezing on a solitary figure standing among the trees. She couldn’t make out any details, but the red cap stood out like a beacon within the foliage. The sight of it made her shudder. Could it really be—?
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