by Laura Wolfe
The fear cracking through her usually steady voice made me sit up.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep a lookout.”
Jenna gave a nod. Her footsteps creaked up the stairs and into her room. I heaved myself up from my seat, checking the locks on the doors and windows yet again and confirming they were secure. I paced toward the window across from the couch. Menacing clouds had gathered above the lake in dark shades of purplish gray. Although it was mid-morning, the light in the cabin was dim and dreary. I could have flipped on a lamp but doing so felt as reckless as shining a spotlight on myself. I huddled close to the wall, staring outside.
Without internet access, we hadn’t been able to check the weather forecast since we’d arrived. A storm was forming outside, and I wondered how severe it would be. The lake had turned black and angry. White-capped waves traveled across the surface and crashed to the shore. I ran through the items Charlotte had packed in her backpack and clenched my teeth. She hadn’t taken an umbrella.
I hovered at the edge of the window frame, scanning the wooded cliff leading down to the lake and searching for anything suspicious. I looked for any reason to crouch in a shadowy corner with the blade pointed upward, any excuse to wake Jenna. Only a gust of wind blew past, causing branches to groan and leaves to rustle and spiral to the ground. Even Marlene and Ed weren’t crazy enough to hike through the woods on a day like this.
I rolled back my shoulders, feeling lightheaded and unsteady. Although I had no appetite, I needed to eat something to keep up my strength. Making my way to the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator and found the bag of blueberry muffins Kaitlyn had brought. My fingers touched the sticky surface of the baked goods. I lifted the top one, placed it on a paper plate, and poured myself a cup of orange juice. My throat was dry and my blood sugar low. My eyes crept toward the tiny door in the wall. Behind it, Travis’s body lay in a rotting heap. The disturbing vision repelled me away. That horrible man was the reason all this had happened.
I hurried into the living room and set my plate on the table. The orange juice slid down my throat in gulps. I took a few bites of the muffin, realizing how famished I was. As I finished the food, the corner of Kaitlyn’s canvas tote caught my eye from beside the couch. I wiped my fingers on a napkin and retrieved the bag, which was heavy because of the photo album inside. It was the album we’d all been laughing over the other night.
I sat back down and opened the book on my lap. Sam and Kaitlyn stared back at me from a photo, their arms looped around each other, and the whole world laid out in front of them. My chest heaved. No one could have imagined their lives would be cut short. No one expected to die at age forty. But I was thankful they hadn’t known. That kind of knowledge would have been too devastating a burden for any of us to carry.
The rows of pictures caused tears to swell in my eyes. A painful realization seared through me—perhaps the best part of my life was over. I swiped away the wetness with the back of my hand and continued down treacherous memory lane. In the next photo, the five of us—me, Kaitlyn, Sam, Jenna, and Charlotte—stood shoulder-to-shoulder at a party, blue cups in hand and fists pumped in the air. Hope had filled our eyes back then. Life hadn’t smacked us down yet and shellacked us with the standard layer of cynicism that developed in one’s thirties.
I turned the page, finding photos from one of our many house parties on 14th Street. Some women I didn’t recognize stood in our living room with their arms around Jenna. It was early in the school year—a few months before the car accident. Judging by their tall statures and athletic builds, I guessed they were her soccer teammates. In another photo, Charlotte’s freshman-year roommate, Frida, hovered in our kitchen behind others who played beer pong. Frida seemed unaware someone was taking her picture. She wore her trademark expression—a frown pulling down her lips and a shadow of disapproval in her eyes. Charlotte and another guy who looked vaguely familiar made faces at the camera. Charlotte had dated him for a few weeks, and I tried to remember his name. Phil? Fred? No. That wasn’t right. It was hard to keep track of all the men Charlotte had dated, most of her relationships had been short-lived. I wondered where all these people were now.
Another group photo showed my housemates wearing skimpy clothes and overdone makeup, getting ready to head out somewhere. Maybe a party or a bar. I must have taken the picture because I was the only one who wasn’t in it. Those were the days before cell-phone cameras and selfies. Sam’s bright smile and Kaitlyn’s classic beauty struck me again. I tried not to think of the rolled-up blankets in the back of the minivan.
The page crinkled as I turned it again. I blinked at the image in the top row. I leaned close to my former boyfriend, Dan, who I’d dated for over a year. He’d dumped me a few weeks after Jenna’s accident, complaining I was too preoccupied. Dan had been handsome though, with thick, dark hair, kind eyes, and a rugged voice. He’d been an English major, and I wondered what he was doing now. How would my life have been different if the accident never happened? If I’d married Dan instead of Andrew? Thinking about a parallel universe where Dan and I were madly in love with two kids who weren’t Marnie and Wyatt made both my head and my heart hurt.
I moved to another photo across the page, where Kaitlyn and Derek held up enormous ice-cream cones. They’d met junior year. Love at first sight. My chest caved for Kaitlyn’s husband, for the family man who hadn’t yet received the devastating news that the love of his life was dead. I remembered so clearly the night he and Kaitlyn met. It was at the same October house party I’d been thinking about yesterday.
I flipped the album’s page, pulling my thoughts away from the night Kaitlyn found true love. The scene should have been happy, but the vivid memory felt devastating instead. I forced my eyes down the page, seeing a photo of Jenna and Charlotte dressed in sleeveless Hawaiian-print shirts, with bright plastic flowers tucked behind their ears. I’d gone to that luau party, too. It had been at a fraternity and I vaguely remembered snapping the photo before we left. A page later, a close-up of Charlotte wearing black from head-to-toe stared back at me. A metal piercing looped through her nostril, and a thick layer of charcoal eyeliner rimmed her eyes. She puckered at the camera with inky lips. Her boyfriend of the month had broken up with her days or weeks before, but I couldn’t recall if her new look was the cause or the effect of the breakup. Her eyes were empty and unfocused like someone faking happiness. Nothing like the Charlotte I knew today. Thankfully, her morbid phase had been short-lived. She had spent the following summer interning at a physical therapy rehab center in Madison. By the time we’d all returned for senior year, Charlotte was back to jeans, colorful shirts, and glittery eye shadow that highlighted her flirtatious glances. Jenna didn’t live with us anymore by then, although we saw her often. She’d opted for the privacy of a one-bedroom apartment.
I flipped back to the front of the album, finding a snapshot of Charlotte, Kaitlyn, Sam, and I. We sat in the stands at the soccer complex, holding a giant poster board sign that read: Go, Jenna #22! I smiled at the image of Sam—the peace sign on her tie-dyed T-shirt and the failed attempt at dreadlocks in her stringy hair. I studied my young face, which still carried baby fat. My eyebrows were thicker and my hair shinier. Pure joy lit my eyes. I’d been so carefree then, my biggest worry whether or not to skip a few hours of studying to enjoy a night out with my friends.
The next photo showed Jenna on the field in her blue-and-gold uniform, rushing toward the ball with single-minded determination. Her blonde hair had been longer then and pulled back into a sporty ponytail. We’d gone to a few of her home games at Valley Fields that year, but I remembered this one in particular because the weather had been perfect that fall night, and Jenna had scored two goals. After the game, we’d celebrated with pizza at Campus Café, making fun of Sam and her sad dreads. I still remembered the smell of the vinyl leather booth and the way my stomach ached with laughter. In so many ways, that night could have been yesterday. In others, it felt like twenty lifetimes ago.
A gust of wind blew past the cabin and an object hit the window, causing my body to go rigid. Something had moved outside, although I didn’t know if it was a person or a swirl of leaves skittering past. Crouching forward, I slid the album from my lap and resumed my post next to the window. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean anything. Anyone outside who wanted to harm us would probably be hiding. My fingers trembled, fumbling through the air as if searching for the missing rifle. I scurried back to the table and grabbed the knife.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Unable to identify the noise from outside, I leaped from my crouched position and took the stairs two at a time to wake up Jenna. But with each step I took toward my sleeping friend, an alternate version of events edged into my mind. Halfway up the staircase, my feet stopped, my shoulders suddenly weighed down with dread.
I thought again about how Kaitlyn had ended up floating lifeless in the lake. What had led to her murder? Questions I’d previously answered and tucked away had now dislodged, flitting around my head like bats emerging at dusk. When Ed and Marlene discovered Travis’s dead body in the cellar, wouldn’t they have yelled or screamed at the shock of the sight? Wouldn’t they have wanted to remove their friend’s body from the dank space? They could have killed us all as we slept if they wanted us dead, but they hadn’t. The tiny door to the cellar was wedged shut and clamored when it opened. I wondered, again, how Jenna hadn’t heard any commotion last night if she’d been awake.
The picture in my mind tilted, turning my world on its head. A warning pressed against my chest, two cement blocks pushing me away from the upstairs bedroom where Jenna napped. I backtracked down the steps and fell into the couch, pulling the photo album close to me. My fingertip quivered as I ran it over the photos.
I studied Jenna's soccer picture a second time, noting the look of freedom on her face. It was a few months before the car accident destroyed her dreams. Jenna had had hopes of playing professionally, and she’d been talented enough to do it. But after the accident, her soccer career was over. The car crash fractured her leg. Then Pete shattered her heart. The university honored her scholarship for senior year. Still, Jenna turned inward toward her studies in our final year of school, opting to live by herself. I met her once or twice a week for lunch or dinner that last year of school, so I knew that her nearly perfect grades had soared even higher. She graduated with honors and continued on to law school. Despite her dramatic tendencies, I’d never seen her sulk or look back. She must have realized what she’d lost, though. Or had she been repressing her grief and anger all these years?
Jenna’s comment from the other night replayed in my mind: “Looks like everyone’s life turned out rosy and perfect, except for mine.” It hadn’t been the words themselves, but the bitter edge to her voice that made my stomach lurch. My head had snapped toward her like the sail of a boat caught in a shifting wind.
Was it possible Jenna still harbored anger and resentment about the car accident so many years ago? On top of that, there’d been Sam’s confession about the mug, Jenna’s most cherished relic of her deceased mom. Sam admitted to lying about having broken it. The deception might have been less devastating if Sam had owned up to the truth a week or a month after it happened. But twenty years had passed since she’d first told Jenna the lie. The rest of us had kept up the story about the missing mug, covering for Sam. Jenna must have felt betrayed the other morning. Less than twenty-four hours after Sam revealed the truth about the mug’s ending, someone strangled her to death.
Suppressed feelings were dangerous. I’d seen it in my clients many times. The longer a person pushed back their emotions, the more intensified those feelings became, multiplying and expanding over time until they had nowhere to go but outward, sometimes violently. I’d practically forced Jenna into the car that wintery night twenty years ago. I wondered how often she thought about the accident and my negligence. Her assurances of forgiveness had sounded sincere. But, then again, Jenna was a terrific actress. She’d lied flawlessly to Marlene and Ed. Jenna had studied acting in her younger years when drama had been her second love behind soccer. She’d even appeared in a handful of commercials as a child, moving on to numerous high school productions, including Mary Poppins, just as she’d mentioned yesterday. Could she be putting on an act now?
My eyes landed on another photo next to the one of Jenna on the soccer field. Jenna and Pete. The golden couple. They wore matching athletic clothes, maybe just returning from a workout. Jenna’s teeth flashed white in the light of the camera as Pete leaned close to her, his blue eyes shining. I perched on the edge of the couch, running my fingertips over the scratchy fabric as my body filled with dread. The glassy eyes of the deer head watched me from the far wall, conjuring up the same lifeless look I’d witnessed in Jenna’s eyes after Pete had dumped her. He’d left her stranded in her bed with a bum leg.
I tried to push away the notion of Jenna as a threat, but more troubling facts emerged from the dark corners of my mind. Jenna had barely slept this weekend. Maybe she’d been awake last night because she was luring Kaitlyn down to the lake and drowning her. A forty-year-old attorney killing her friends seemed dubious. Yet here I was, with two of my closest friends lying lifeless in the minivan and another corpse in the cellar. Unlikely things happened sometimes.
I could think of plenty of reasons for Jenna to want to kill me, but I struggled to come up with why Jenna would want to kill Sam or Kaitlyn. Revealing the truth about a broken mug didn’t seem like enough of a motive. But maybe I’d overlooked something. Maybe something had happened between them years earlier that had only just resurfaced.
“Looks like everyone’s life turned out rosy and perfect, except for mine.”
What if Jenna had simply snapped? Everyone had a breaking point. She could have been jealous of the full lives Kaitlyn and Sam had built for themselves. Her resentment could have been accumulating for years, violently bursting forth once she had us trapped in this remote location. I remembered how Jenna had pushed for a rental that was “off the grid,” how she’d encouraged me to pull the trigger on Travis and then grabbed my arm. Had she made the gun go off on purpose? Was this all part of her sick game?
I thought back to the morning Sam lost her life. Jenna had been napping on the couch while I’d slept upstairs. But had anyone actually seen her there? The board games on the deck had absorbed Charlotte and Kaitlyn’s attention. Jenna could have followed Sam into the woods and returned before anyone knew she was gone. The former soccer player would have been plenty strong enough to overtake her unsuspecting friends.
And this morning, something else had bothered me. Jenna had raced down the hill behind me to get to Kaitlyn’s body. How had she done that with her injured ankle? I’d been too overwhelmed with grief to question her. Was it possible Jenna had faked her injury from the zip-line fall? Was her bad ankle a ploy to distract us? Maybe she was using her injury to make us think we couldn’t hike out from this place. As long as Jenna couldn’t walk long distances, at least one of us was trapped here with her. It was a perfect cover.
Rain pelted against the window, and I thought of Charlotte burrowing through the downpour. I touched the photo with my finger, telling myself that my theory of Jenna murdering her friends was absurd. If Jenna was out for revenge, wouldn’t she have killed me first? It was my negligent driving that changed the course of her life. I’d betrayed her after that too. My actions had been more devastating than Sam’s lie about the mug.
I gripped my hands together, digging the edge of my fingernail into my skin. This dreadful weekend was making me crazy. The stress was causing me to invent stories that weren’t true. Jenna wanted to get out of here just as much as Charlotte and I did, maybe even more so. Jenna was a successful attorney who lived a glamorous life in New York City. She wasn’t married with kids like the rest of us, but she was happy with the life she’d built. That was more than I could say for myself most of the time.
Footsteps creaked from upstair
s and plodded toward the bathroom where water splashed into the sink. A minute later, Jenna hobbled down the steps, her short blonde hair matted to her head. She spotted me as she descended, the paring knife dangling from her fingers. I reached for the handle of the butcher’s knife, reminding myself she was the same Jenna I’d always known. A loyal friend of over twenty years. Still, a sliver of doubt nagged at my insides. I hated myself for not being able to shake away the lingering suspicion, but after recent events I’d be stupid to trust anyone too completely.
“Did you sleep?” I asked.
“Kind of. Somehow, I feel even more tired now.” She stepped into the kitchen and removed a can of soda from the refrigerator.
As she walked back into the living room and joined me on the couch, I searched her face for any sign of guilt, but her dazed eyes stared blankly toward the window. “Wow. It’s really raining out there. I hope Charlotte is okay.”
The sky had darkened and rain pelted against the roof. I pictured Charlotte trudging through the downpour over the muddy dirt road, all alone. “I’m worried about her.”
Jenna’s fingers tightened around her drink. Her lower lip twitched, and I thought she might start crying. I hadn’t seen my strong friend so vulnerable since the days following the accident, and I realized she was just as terrified as me.
I shifted toward her. “I was looking at the photo album when you were sleeping. You were really an amazing soccer player.”
Jenna pressed her lips into a smile.
I swallowed away the dryness in my throat. “There’s something I’ve meant to tell you, and I just wanted to say it now because, well, let’s face it. Who knows how much time we have left?”