The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  I end up brokering a compromise between my suspicious mind and my squishy heart. I sit beside Franny but refuse to engage her in conversation. Right now, it’s the best I can do.

  Franny seems to intuit my unspoken rules and doesn’t press me for details about why I’m up so early. She simply talks.

  “I have to say, Emma, I’m envious of your swimming ability. I used to spend so much time in that lake. As a girl, you couldn’t get me to leave the water. From sunrise to dusk, I’d be out there paddling away. Not anymore, though. Not after what happened to Douglas.”

  She doesn’t need to elaborate. It’s clear she’s referring to Douglas White. Her much-older husband. The man who died years before she adopted Theo and Chet. Another piece of Vivian’s diary snakes into my thoughts.

  Don’t you think it’s strange that a dude who almost made it to the Olympics drowned?

  I push it away as Franny keeps talking.

  “Now that my swimming days are over, I observe,” she says. “Instead of being in the lake, I watch everything going on around it. Gives you a new perspective on things. For instance, this morning I’ve been keeping an eye on that hawk.”

  Franny leans back, putting her weight on one arm. The other emerges from her blanket and points to a hawk lazily circling over the lake.

  “Looks like an osprey,” she says. “I suspect he sees something he likes in the water. Once, years ago, two peregrine falcons made their nest right outside our living room window at the Harris. Chet was just a boy at the time. My word, was he fascinated by those birds. He’d stare out that window for hours, just watching, waiting for them to hatch. Soon enough, they did. Three eyesses. That’s what falcon chicks are called. They were so small. Like squawking, wriggling cotton balls. Chet was overjoyed. As proud as if they were his own. It didn’t last long. Nature can disappoint as easily as it entrances. This was no exception.”

  The osprey overhead suddenly dives toward the lake and, wings spread wide, slices its feet through the water. When it rises again, there’s a fish gripped in its talons, unable to escape no matter how much it wriggles and flops. The osprey swoops away, heading to the far side of the lake, where it can eat in peace.

  “Why did you reopen the camp?”

  I blurt it out, surprising even myself. But Franny was expecting it. Or at least a question similar to it. She pauses long enough to take a breath before replying, “Because it was time, Emma. Fifteen years is too long for a place to stay empty.”

  “Then why didn’t you do it sooner?”

  “I didn’t think I was ready, even though the camp was right here waiting for me.”

  “What convinced you that you were?”

  This time, there’s no pat answer at the ready. Franny thinks it over, her eyes on the lake, jaw working. Eventually, she says, “I’m about to tell you something, Emma. Something personal that very few people know. You must promise not to tell another soul.”

  “I promise,” I say. “I won’t say a word.”

  “Emma, I’m dying.”

  My heart feels squeezed again. Harder this time. Like it, too, has been scooped up by that osprey.

  “Ovarian cancer,” Franny says. “Stage four. The doctors gave me eight months. That was four months ago. I’m sure you can do the math.”

  “But there must be something you can do to fight it.”

  The implication is clear. She’s worth millions. Certainly someone with that much money can seek out the best treatment. Yet Franny gives a sad shake of her head and says, “It’s too late for all that fuss now. The cancer’s spread too far. Any treatment would only be a way of delaying the inevitable.”

  I’m stunned by her calmness, her serene acceptance. I’m the exact opposite. My breath comes in short bursts. Tears burn the corners of my eyes, and I hold back a sniffle. Like Vivian, I now know one of Franny’s secrets. Only it’s not dirty. It’s sad and makes me think of that sundial hidden away in the forest. That last hour truly does kill.

  “I’m so sorry, Franny. Truly I am.”

  She pats my knee the way my grandmother used to. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I understand how fortunate I am. I’ve lived a long life, Emma. A good one. And that should be enough. It is, really. But there’s one thing in my life that wasn’t fortunate.”

  “What happened here,” I say.

  “It’s troubled me more than I let Theo and Chet know,” Franny says.

  “What do you think happened to them? To Vivian and the others?”

  “I don’t know, Emma. I really don’t.”

  “You must have some theory. Everyone else does.”

  “Theories don’t matter,” Franny says. “It’s no good dwelling on what happened. What’s done is done. Besides, I don’t like being reminded of how much that disappearance cost me in so many ways.”

  That’s a sentiment I can understand. Camp Nightingale was forced to close. Franny’s reputation was sullied. The taint of suspicion never entirely left Theo. Then there was the matter of three separate lawsuits filed by Vivian’s, Natalie’s, and Allison’s parents, accusing the camp of negligence. All three were settled immediately, for an undisclosed sum.

  “I wanted to have one last summer of things being the way they used to be,” she says. “That’s why I reopened the camp. I thought if I could do that successfully, with a new mission, then it might ease the pain of what happened fifteen years ago. One last glorious summer here. And then I could die a content woman.”

  “That’s a nice reason,” I say.

  “I think so,” Franny replied. “And it would certainly be a shame if something happened to spoil it.”

  The ache in my heart fades to numbness as yet another thing Vivian wrote in her diary commands my thoughts.

  She definitely suspects something.

  “I’m sure it won’t.” I try to sound chipper when I say it, hoping it hides the sudden unease overcoming me. “Everyone I’ve talked to is having a great time.”

  Franny tears her gaze away from the water and looks at me, her green eyes untouched by illness. They’re watchful, probing, as if they can read my thoughts. “And what about you, Emma? Are you enjoying your time here?”

  “I am,” I say, unable to stare back. “Very much.”

  “Good,” Franny says. “I’m so pleased.”

  Her voice contains not a hint of pleasure. It’s as chilly as the slight breeze that gusts across the lake and ripples the water. I pull my robe tight around me, fending off the sudden cold, and look to the Lodge, where Lottie has emerged on the back deck.

  “There you are,” she calls down to Franny. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine, Lottie. Emma and I are just chatting about camp.”

  “Don’t be too long,” Lottie says. “Your breakfast isn’t getting any warmer.”

  “You should go,” I tell Franny. “And I should probably wake the girls in Dogwood.”

  “But I haven’t finished my story about Chet and the falcons,” Franny says. “It ends not long after those birds emerged from their eggs. Chet was obsessed with them, as I’ve said. Spent all his free time watching them. I think he truly grew to love those birds. But then something happened that he wasn’t prepared for. Those eyesses got hungry. So the mother falcon did what mother falcons are known to do. She fed them. Chet watched her leave her perch outside our window and fly into the sky, circling, until prey appeared. It was a pigeon. A poor, unsuspecting pigeon probably on its way to Central Park. That mama falcon swooped down and snatched it in midair. She brought it back to the nest by our window, and as Chet watched, she used that sharp, curved beak to tear that pigeon apart and feed it to her babies, piece by piece.”

  I shudder as she talks, picturing flapping wings and downy feathers floating in the air like snow.

  “You can’t blame that mother falcon,” Franny says matter-of-
factly. “She was simply doing what she needed to do. Taking care of her children. That was her job. But it broke Chet’s heart. He watched those squawking little eyesses too closely, and they showed their true natures. Some of his innocence was taken away that day. Not much. Just the tiniest bit. But it was a part of him he would never be able to get back. And although we don’t talk about those falcons, I’m certain that he’d say he regrets watching them closely. I think he’d say that he wished he hadn’t looked so much.”

  Franny climbs to her feet, struggling slightly, the effort leaving her body quivering. The blanket slips, and I get a peek at her rail-thin arms. Pulling the blanket around herself, she says, “You have a good morning, Emma.”

  She shuffles away, leaving me alone to contemplate the story of Chet and the falcons. While it didn’t sound like a lie, it also didn’t quite have the ring of truth.

  It might have been, I realize with another robe-tightening chill, a threat.

  24

  The morning painting class is spent in a state of distraction. The girls arrange their easels in a circle around the usual still-life fodder. Table. Vase. Flowers. I monitor their progress with disinterest, more concerned with the bracelet that’s once again around my wrist. I’d managed to fix the clasp with some colored string from Casey’s craft station—a stopgap measure I suspect won’t last until the end of the day, let alone the rest of the summer. Not the way I’m constantly twisting it.

  I’m made nervous by all the activity drifting through the building like a tide. Becca and her budding photographers marching in from the woods. Casey and her crafters stringing slim leather necklaces with beads. All these girls. All these prying eyes.

  And one of them knows what I did fifteen years ago. A fact I’m sure I’ll be reminded of sooner rather than later.

  I give the bracelet another tug as I stand next to Miranda, examining her work in progress. When her gaze lingers on my wrist, I pull my hand away from the bracelet and look out the window.

  From the arts and crafts building, I have an angled view of the Lodge, where various members of the Harris-White family come and go. I see Mindy and Chet bickering about something as they head to the mess hall, followed by Theo trotting past on a morning jog. A minute later I spot Lottie gingerly guiding Franny toward the lake.

  Right now, the Lodge is empty.

  Franny’s story returns to me, whispering in my ear.

  He watched them too closely, and they showed their true natures.

  I know I should heed her warning. This won’t end well. Even if I do get answers, there’s no guarantee my conscience will rid itself of guilt. But I’ll never know if I don’t try. Not knowing is what brought me here. Not knowing is why I kept seeing Vivian all those years ago. It’s why I saw her last night. This is my only chance.

  “I need to take care of something,” I tell the class. “I’ll be right back. Keep painting.”

  Outside, I slip away to Dogwood and retrieve my phone and charger. I then make my way to the Lodge, moving at an awkward half run, torn between being inconspicuous and being speedy. In truth, I need to be both.

  At the Lodge, I knock on the red front door, just in case someone returned during my jaunt to the cabin and back. When seconds tick by and no one answers, I give the doorknob a twist. It’s unlocked. I check to see if anyone is nearby and possibly watching. No one is. Quickly, I tiptoe inside and close the door behind me. Then it’s through the entrance hall and living room before veering left into the study.

  The room is roughly the same size as Dogwood, with a desk in the center and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves where our bunk beds would be. The wall behind the desk is covered with framed photographs. There’s an air of neglect about the place—like a museum that’s not very good at upkeep. A thin layer of dust covers the Tiffany lampshade on the desk. There’s a thicker coat of it on the rotary phone, which looks like it hasn’t been touched in years.

  I lower myself onto my hands and knees, searching the walls for an outlet. I find one behind the desk and plug in the phone charger. Then I stand in the middle of the study, wondering where to look first. It’s hard to decide without Vivian’s diary to guide me. I recall her writing about how she managed to sneak something out of the study, which means there could be multiple possible clues here.

  I head to the bookshelf on my left, which holds dozens of thick, musty volumes about nature. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Audubon’s Birds of America. Walden by Thoreau. I grab a thick purple book and examine its cover. Poisonous Plants of North America. A quick flip through its pages reveals pictures of lacy white flowers, red berries, mushrooms colored a sickly green. I doubt these books are what Vivian was referring to.

  I turn next to the desk, giving its phone, lamp, and blotter calendar a cursory glance before reaching for the three drawers stacked from floor to desktop. The first drawer is the usual menagerie of pen caps and paper clips. I close it and move to the middle one. Inside is a stack of folders. They bulge with documents, their edges brittle with age. I flip through them. Most appear to be receipts, financial statements, invoices for long-ago work on the property. None contain a hint of scandal. At least nothing that Vivian could suss out during a brief bit of snooping.

  In the bottom drawer, I find a wooden box. It’s just like the one Vivian showed me during our outing to the other side of the lake, only better preserved. Same size. Same surprising heft. Even the initials carved into the lid are the same.

  CC

  Charles Cutler.

  The name slips into my head without warning or effort. One look at those initials and it’s right there, summoned at will. I lift the box from its hiding place and carefully turn it over. On the bottom are four familiar words.

  Property of Peaceful Valley.

  I turn the box back over and open it, revealing a green velvet interior. Nestled inside are photographs.

  Old ones.

  Of women in gray with long hair draped down their backs.

  Each one assumes the same pose as Eleanor Auburn, minus the clutched hairbrush.

  This is where Vivian got that picture. I’m certain of it. It’s merely one of what appears to be two dozen. I sort through them, unnerved by their uniformity. Same clothes. Same bare-wall background. Same eyes made dark by despair and hopelessness.

  Just like the one of Eleanor, the back of each photo has been marked with a name.

  Henrietta Golden. Lucille Tawny. Anya Flaxen.

  These women were patients at Peaceful Valley. The unfortunates whom Charles Cutler rescued from squalid, crowded asylums and brought to Peaceful Valley. Only I have a gnawing suspicion his intentions weren’t so noble. A chill settles over me, increasing with every name I read until I’m practically numb.

  Auburn. Golden. Tawny. Flaxen.

  Those aren’t last names.

  They’re hair colors.

  I’m struck by a dozen different thoughts, all clashing together in my brain. Scissors in that crumbling box. The broken-glass sound they made when Vivian turned it over. Watching Allison’s mother in that guilt-inducing production of Sweeney Todd. A character sent to bedlam, at the mercy of wardens who sold their hair to wigmakers.

  That’s what Charles Cutler was doing. It explains these women’s long locks and why their last names went unwritten, as if the only important aspect of their identity was the color of their hair.

  It makes me wonder if any of them knew the purpose they served. That they weren’t patients but commodities, ones who surely saw none of the money Charles Cutler received from wigmakers. The idea is so distractingly sad that I don’t realize someone has entered the Lodge until a voice rings out from the entrance hall.

  “Hello?”

  I drop the photos back into the box and quickly replace the lid. The motion sets the charms on my bracelet clicking. I press my wrist against my stomach to silence them.

&nbs
p; “Is someone in here?” the voice calls.

  “I am,” I say, hoping it will cover the sound of me closing the desk drawer. “Emma Davis.”

  Springing to my feet behind the desk, I find Lottie in the doorway. She’s surprised to see me. The feeling is mutual.

  “I’m charging my phone. Mindy told me I could do it here if I needed to.”

  “You’re lucky Franny’s not here to see you. She’s a stickler about such things.” Lottie sneaks a glance behind her, making sure Franny is indeed elsewhere. Then she creeps into the room with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “It’s a silly rule if you ask me. I warned her that girls are different now than they were back then. Always glued to their phones. But she insisted. You know how stubborn she can be.”

  Lottie joins me at the desk, and for a heart-stopping second, I think she knows what I’ve been doing. I brace myself for questions, perhaps a thinly veiled threat similar to the one Franny offered this morning. Instead, she focuses on the framed photographs cramming the wall behind the desk. They seem to have been placed there in no discernible order. Color photos mingle with black-and-white ones, forming a wall-size collage of images. I spot a grainy picture of an imposing man in front of what I presume to be Lake Midnight. A date has been hastily scrawled in the picture’s lower right corner: 1903.

  “That’s Franny’s grandfather,” Lottie says. “Buchanan Harris himself.”

  He has a hugeness so many important men of that age possessed. Big shoulders. Big belly. Big, ruddy cheeks. He looks like the kind of man who could make a fortune stripping the land of its trees and then spend that money creating a lake just for his personal enjoyment.

  Lottie points to a birdlike woman also in the photo. She has big eyes and Kewpie doll lips and is dwarfed by her husband. “Franny’s grandmother.”

  “I heard she drowned,” I say.