by Riley Sager
“What do you think of my little greenhouse?” Franny asks.
I take another look around, spying details previously missed. The statue of an angel half-consumed by ivy. The daffodils sprouting beside the creek. “It’s marvelous,” I say. “Too beautiful for words.”
“It’s my tiny oasis in the big city. I decided years ago that if I couldn’t live outdoors, then I’d have to bring the outdoors inside to live with me.”
“So that’s why you bought my biggest painting,” I say.
“Exactly. Looking at it feels like standing before a dark woods, and I must decide if I should venture forth into it. The answer, of course, is yes.”
That would be my answer, too. But unlike Franny, I’d go only because I know the girls are waiting for me just beyond the tree line.
Lunch is trout almondine and arugula salad, washed down with a crisp Riesling. The first glass of wine calms my nerves. The second lets me lower my guard. By the third, when Franny asks me about my job, my personal life, my family, I answer honestly—hate it, still single, parents retired to Boca Raton.
“Everything was delicious,” I say when we finish a dessert of lemon tart so tasty I’m tempted to lick the plate.
“I’m so pleased,” Franny says. “The trout came from Lake Midnight, you know.”
The mention of the lake startles me. Franny notices my surprise and says, “We can still think fondly of a place where bad things have occurred. At least, I can. And I do.”
It’s understandable that Franny feels this way in spite of everything that happened. It is, after all, her family’s property. Four thousand acres of wilderness at the southern base of the Adirondacks, all preserved by her grandfather after he spent a lifetime deforesting land five times that size. I suppose Buchanan Harris thought saving those four thousand acres made up for it. Perhaps it did, even though that preservation also came at a cost to the environment. Disappointed he couldn’t find a tract of land that contained a large body of water, Franny’s grandfather decided to create one himself. He dammed the tributary of a nearby river, slamming the gates shut with the push of a button at the stroke of midnight on a rainy New Year’s Eve in 1902. Within days, what was once a quiet valley became a lake.
The story of Lake Midnight. It was told to every new arrival at Camp Nightingale.
“It hasn’t changed one bit,” Franny continues. “The Lodge is still there, of course. My home away from home. I was just there this past weekend, which is how I happened upon the trout. I caught them myself. The boys hate that I go so often. Especially when it’s just Lottie and myself. Theo worries that there’s no one around to help if something terrible befalls us.”
Hearing about Franny’s sons gives me another uneasy jolt.
Theodore and Chester Harris-White. Such unbearably WASPish names. Like their mother, they prefer their nicknames—Theo and Chet. The youngest, Chet, is hazy in my memory. He was just a boy when I was at Camp Nightingale, no more than ten. The product of a surprise, late-in-life adoption. I can’t recall ever speaking to him, although I must have at some point. I simply remember getting occasional glimpses of him running barefoot down the Lodge’s sloped back lawn to the edge of the lake.
Theo was also adopted. Years before Chet.
I remember a lot about him. Maybe too much.
“How are they?” I ask, even though I have no right to know. I do it only because Franny gives me an expectant look, clearly waiting for me to inquire about them.
“They’re both well. Theo is spending the year in Africa, working with Doctors Without Borders. Chet will be getting his master’s from Yale in the spring. He’s engaged to a lovely girl.” She pauses, allowing the information to settle over me. The silence speaks volumes. It tells me that her family is thriving, in spite of what I did to them. “I thought you might already know all this. I’ve heard the Camp Nightingale grapevine is still fully intact.”
“I’m not really in touch with anyone from there anymore,” I admit.
Not that the girls I knew at camp didn’t try. When Facebook became the rage, I received friend requests from several former campers. I ignored them all, seeing no point in staying in touch. We had nothing in common other than spending two weeks in the same place at the same unfortunate time. That didn’t stop me from being included in a Facebook group of Camp Nightingale alumni. I muted all posts years ago.
“Perhaps we can change that,” Franny says.
“How?”
“I suppose it’s time I reveal why I’ve asked you here today,” she says, adding a tactful “Although I do enjoy your company very much.”
“I’ll admit I’m curious,” I say, which is the understatement of the year.
“I’m going to reopen Camp Nightingale,” Franny announces.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
The words tumble forth, unplanned. They contain a derisive edge. Cold and almost cruel.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That came out wrong.”
Franny reaches across the table, gives my hand a squeeze, and says, “Don’t feel bad at all. You’re not the first person to have that reaction. And even I can admit it’s not the most logical idea. But I feel like it’s the right time. The camp has been quiet long enough.”
Fifteen years. That’s how long it’s been. It feels like a lifetime ago. It also feels like yesterday.
The camp closed early that summer, shutting down after only two weeks and throwing lots of families’ schedules into chaos. It couldn’t be helped. Not after what happened. My parents vacillated between sympathy and annoyance after they picked me up a day later than everyone else. Last to arrive, last to leave. I remember sitting in our Volvo, staring out the back window as the camp receded. Even at thirteen, I knew it would never reopen.
A different camp could have survived the scrutiny. But Camp Nightingale wasn’t just any summer camp. It was the summer camp if you lived in Manhattan and had a bit of money. The place where generations of young women from well-to-do families spent their summers swimming, sailing, gossiping. My mother went there. So did my aunt. At my school, it was known as Camp Rich Bitch. We said it with scorn, trying to hide both our jealousy and our disappointment that our parents couldn’t quite afford to send us there. Except, in my case, for one summer.
The same summer that shattered the camp’s reputation.
The people involved were all notable enough to keep the story in the news for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Natalie, the daughter of the city’s top orthopedic surgeon. Allison, the child of a prominent Broadway actress. And Vivian, the senator’s daughter, whose name often appeared in the newspaper with the word troubled in close proximity.
The press mostly left me alone. Compared with the others, I was a nobody. Just the daughter of a neglectful investment banker father and a high-functioning alcoholic mother. A gangly thirteen-year-old whose grandmother had recently died, leaving her with enough money to spend six weeks at one of the nation’s most exclusive summer camps.
It was Franny who ultimately received the bulk of the media’s scorn. Francesca Harris-White, the rich girl who had always befuddled the society columns with her refusal to play the game. Marrying a contemporary of her father at twenty-one. Burying him before she turned thirty. Adopting a child at forty, then another at fifty.
The coverage was brutal. Articles about how Lake Midnight was an unsafe place for a summer camp, especially considering that her husband had drowned there the year before Camp Nightingale opened. Claims that the camp was understaffed and unsupervised. Think pieces blaming Franny for standing by her son when suspicion swirled around him. Some even insinuated there might be something sinister about Camp Nightingale, about Franny, about her family.
I probably had something to do with that.
Scratch that. I know I did.
Yet Franny shows no ill will as she sits in h
er faux forest, outlining her vision for the new Camp Nightingale.
“It won’t be the same, of course,” she says. “It can’t be. Although fifteen years is a long enough time, what happened will always be like a shadow hanging over the camp. That’s why I’m going to do things differently this time. I’ve set up a charitable trust. No one will have to pay a penny to stay there. The camp will be completely free and merit-based, serving girls from around the tri-state area.”
“That’s very generous,” I say.
“I don’t want anyone’s money. I certainly don’t need it. All I need is to see the place filled again with girls enjoying the outdoors. And I’d truly love it if you would join me.”
I gulp. Me? Spend the summer at Camp Nightingale? This is far different from the commission offer I had expected to receive. It’s so outlandish I start to think I’ve misheard her.
“It’s not that strange of an idea,” Franny says. “I want the camp to have a strong arts component. Yes, the girls there will swim and hike and do all the usual camp activities. But I also want them to learn about writing, photography, painting.”
“You want me to teach them to paint?”
“Of course,” Franny says. “But you’ll also have plenty of time to work on your own. There’s no better inspiration than nature.”
I still don’t get why Franny wants me, of all people, to be there. I should be the last person she wants around. She senses my hesitation, of course. It’s impossible not to, considering how I sit stiff-backed in my chair, fiddling with the napkin in my lap, twisting it into a coiled knot.
“I understand your trepidation,” she says. “I’d feel the same way if our roles were reversed. But I don’t blame you for what happened, Emma. You were young and confused, and the situation was horrible for everyone. I firmly believe in letting bygones be bygones. And it’s my great wish to have some former campers there. To show everyone that it’s a safe, happy place again. Rebecca Schoenfeld has agreed to do it.”
Becca Schoenfeld. Notable photojournalist. Her image of two young Syrian refugees holding hands while covered in blood made front pages around the world. But more important for Franny’s purposes, Becca’s also a veteran of Camp Nightingale’s final summer.
She noticeably wasn’t one of the girls who sought me out on Facebook. Not that I expected her to. Becca was a mystery to me. Not standoffish, necessarily. Aloof. She was quiet, often alone, content to view the world through the lens of the camera that always hung around her neck, even when she was waist-deep in the lake.
I imagine her sitting at this very table, that same camera dangling from its canvas strap as Franny convinces her to return to Camp Nightingale. Knowing that she’s agreed changes things. It makes Franny’s idea seem less like a folly and more like something that could actually happen. Although not with me.
“It’s an awfully big commitment,” I say.
“You’ll be compensated financially, of course.”
“It’s not that,” I say, still twisting the napkin so hard it’s starting to look like rope. “I’m not sure I can go back there again. Not after what happened.”
“Maybe that’s precisely why you should go back,” Franny says. “I was afraid to return, too. I avoided it for two years. I thought I’d find nothing there but darkness and bad memories. That wasn’t the case. It was as beautiful as ever. Nature heals, Emma. I firmly believe that.”
I say nothing. It’s hard to speak when Franny’s green-eyed gaze is fixed on me, intense and compassionate and, yes, a little bit needy.
“Tell me you’ll at least give it some thought,” she says.
“I will,” I tell her. “I’ll think about it.”
3
I don’t think about it.
I obsess.
Franny’s offer dominates my thoughts for the rest of the day. But it’s not the kind of thinking she was hoping for. Instead of pondering how wonderful it might be to go back to Camp Nightingale, I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t return. Crushing guilt I haven’t been able to shake in fifteen years. Plain old anxiety. All of them continue to flutter through my thoughts when I meet Marc for dinner at his bistro.
“I think you should go,” he says as he pushes a plate of ratatouille in front of me. It’s my favorite dish on the menu, steaming and ripe with the scent of tomatoes and herbs de Provence. Normally, I’d already be digging in. But Franny’s proposal has sapped my appetite. Marc senses this and slides a large wineglass next to the plate, filled almost to the rim with pinot noir. “It might do you some good.”
“My therapist would beg to differ.”
“I doubt that. It’s a textbook case of closure.”
God knows, I haven’t had much of that. There were memorial services for all three girls, staggered over a six-month period, depending on when their families gave up hope. Allison’s was first. All song and drama. Then Natalie’s, always in the middle, her service a quiet, family-only affair. Vivian’s was the last, on a bitterly cold January morning. Hers was the only one I attended. My parents told me I couldn’t go, but I went anyway, ditching school to slide into the last pew of the packed church, far away from Vivian’s weeping parents. There were so many senators and congressmen present that it felt like watching C-SPAN.
The service didn’t help. Neither did reading about Allison’s and Natalie’s services online. Mostly because there was the chance, however slim, that they could still be alive. It doesn’t matter that the state of New York declared all of them legally dead after three years. Until their bodies are found, there’s no way of knowing.
“I’m not sure closure is the issue,” I say.
“Then what is the issue, Em?”
“It’s the place where three people vanished into thin air. That’s the issue.”
“Understood,” Marc says. “But there’s something else going on. Something you’re not telling me.”
“Fine.” I sigh into my ratatouille, steam skirting across the table. “I haven’t painted a thing in the past six months.”
A stricken look crosses Marc’s face, like he doesn’t quite believe me. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“So you’re stuck,” he says.
“It’s more than that.”
I admit everything. How I can’t seem to paint anything but the girls. How I refuse to continue down that path of obliterating their white-frocked forms with trees and vines. How day after day I stare at the giant canvas in my loft, trying to summon the will to create something new.
“Okay, so you’re obsessed.”
“Bingo,” I say, reaching for the wine and taking a hearty gulp.
“I don’t want to seem insensitive,” Marc says. “And I certainly don’t want to belittle your emotions. You feel what you feel, and I get that. What I don’t understand is why, after all this time, what happened at that camp still haunts you so much. Those girls were practically strangers.”
My therapist has said the same thing. As if I don’t know how weird it is to be so affected by something that happened fifteen years ago and fixated on girls I knew for only two weeks.
“They were friends,” I say. “And I feel bad about what happened to them.”
“Bad or guilty?”
“Both.”
I was the last person to see them alive. I could have stopped them from doing whatever the hell it was they had planned to do. Or I could have told Franny or a counselor as soon as they left. Instead, I went back to sleep. Now I still sometimes hear Vivian’s parting words in my dreams.
You’re too young for this, Em.
“And you’re afraid that being back there again will make you feel even worse,” Marc says.
Rather than answer, I reach for the glass, the wine catching my wobbly reflection. I stare at myself, shocked by how strange I appear. Do I really look that sad? I must, because Marc
’s tone softens as he says, “It’s natural to be afraid. Friends of yours died.”
“Vanished,” I say.
“But they are dead, Emma. You know that, right? The worst thing that could happen has already taken place.”
“There’s something worse than death.”
“Such as?”
“Not knowing,” I say. “Which is why I’m only able to paint those girls. And I can’t keep doing that, Marc. I need to move on.”
There’s more to it than that. Although he knows the basics of what took place, there’s still plenty I haven’t told Marc. Things that happened at Camp Nightingale. Things that happened afterward. The real reason I always wear the charm bracelet, the birds clinking each time I move my left arm. To admit them out loud would mean that they’re true. And I don’t want to confront that truth.
Some would say I’ve been lying to Marc. To everyone, really. But after my time at Camp Nightingale, I vowed never to lie again.
Omission. That’s my tactic. A different sin entirely.
“This is all the more reason for you to go.” Marc reaches across the table and clasps my hands. His palms are callused, his fingers lined with scars. The hands of a lifelong cook. “Maybe being there again is all you need to start painting something different. You know the old saying—sometimes the only way out is through.”
* * *
—
After dinner, I return to my loft and stand before a blank canvas. Its emptiness taunts me, as it’s done for weeks. A wide expanse of nothing daring me to fill it.
I grab a palette, well-worn and rainbow-hued. I smear some paint onto it, dab it with the tip of a brush, and will myself to paint something. Anything but the girls. I touch the brush to the canvas, bristles gliding, trailing color.
But then I take a step back and stare at the brushstroke, studying it. It’s yellow. Slightly curved. Like an S that’s been squished. It is, I realize, a length of Vivian’s hair, the blond streak doing a little flip as she retreats. There’s nothing else it could be.