I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

  “You want me to sell this place, don’t you?”

  He was silent. The birds called to the morning sun, but all Margaux wanted to do was shut it out.

  “Jesus, Mark.”

  “Think of what we could do with the money.”

  “Ryan’s the one who wants to sell. Not Sean.”

  “Sean will do whatever you ask him to.”

  She put the phone down again and stared at it. This was exactly why she didn’t want to have anything to do with this decision. Why she’d wished for years that her father had extended the trust that had bound him to it and took the decision out of their hands. Instead he’d dropped them all into an Agatha Christie novel, but there wasn’t any Hercule Poirot to help them. Not even a Hastings in sight.

  Mark’s voice continued to rise from the phone.

  “You could quit teaching . . .”

  She cupped her hand over her mouth. “Mark?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Mark? I’m losing you . . .”

  “I’m here; I’m here.”

  “The signal . . . cutting . . . later . . .”

  She reached down and ended the call. A moment later, the bell started to ring.

  Amanda

  July 23, 1998—Midnight

  When Ryan finally broke the kiss, my lips felt bruised. He’d started off slow, we both had, but before long I was pressed up against him, his fingers inside my shirt rubbing the fabric of my bra, then pushing it aside. And then I was in his lap, my legs straddling his hips, feeling his erection through my pants. I didn’t feel like myself, and I didn’t care. I just wanted this feeling to go on forever.

  He laid his head against mine. We were both out of breath.

  “I wasn’t expecting,” he said. “I didn’t . . .”

  My faced flushed brighter than it already was, and I climbed off him. My underwear felt wet and tacky. I was worried he could smell me, that he’d be disgusted by it. I moved down the rock from him and stared out at the inky lake. The numbers on my watch glowed. It was midnight. It had been half an hour since Ryan arrived. It had taken only thirty minutes to turn me from an innocent girl into a slut. I could hear Margaux’s voice telling me not to think of myself that way, but I couldn’t help it. My mom would kill me if she knew about this.

  Kill me dead, as Margaux and I used to say. Like there was another possible result of killing.

  I kept waiting for Ryan to say something, but all he did was pick up a rock and toss it into the water with a sideways throw that sent it skipping once, twice, and then a third time before it sank. I felt like that rock. Tossed aside. Every part of me wanted to sink from view. Maybe the water could take away the heat that was all over my body.

  “You okay?” Ryan asked eventually.

  “Yes.” My voice shook, and I hated myself. This was what Margaux had been warning me about this whole time. Caring about Ryan was a fool’s choice, and I’d been fooled.

  He came closer to me and lifted a piece of hair away from my neck. “I like this part of you.”

  He brushed his hand along my skin. I could feel the goose bumps rise under his fingers. Why couldn’t I control myself around him? Would I get better at this as time went by?

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his breath tickling me. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  I turned. He looked so perfect sitting there, so exactly like I’d imagined him all those nights in my bed, the palm of my hand pressed between my legs, that it didn’t feel real.

  “That’s the problem,” I said, more candid than I wanted to be. “There’s nothing I don’t want to do.”

  Amanda

  Margaux

  Ryan

  Mary

  Kate & Liddie

  Sean

  9:00 p.m.

  Lantern ceremony

  Lantern ceremony

  Lantern ceremony

  10:00 p.m.

  On the Island

  On the Island

  On the Island

  Crash boat

  11:00 p.m.

  Back Beach

  Back Beach

  On the Island

  Midnight

  Back Beach

  Back Beach

  6:00 a.m.

  Secret Beach

  Secret Beach

  CHAPTER 19

  MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY

  Mary

  Mary was in the barn when the bell rang. That same, sharp eight beats Sean had been sounding out for as long as he’d been at camp. It felt as if it were ringing in her head. That was because of the alcohol. She didn’t drink much these days, never had. But last night, she’d felt like drinking. Felt like being someone other than herself. Doing something different. Sitting there in the lodge, with Margaux and Sean, watching the fire, that had been almost perfect.

  She’d woken without the need of an alarm, long before the bell, years of training overcoming the lack of sleep. She’d dressed silently in the house, Ryan’s snores loud enough to cover the quiet tread of her feet. She walked up the tranquil road to the barn. These early mornings were one of the things she loved about riding. The need to rise. The way the day greeted you. The fresh smell of the hay in the barn.

  Cinnamon was glad to see her, eager for her morning exercise. She could easily imagine the same scene at her own barn, a few miles away, where the camp’s eight horses were now stabled for the winter. She’d brought them over to her barn last weekend. She’d asked a stable hand to look after them for the weekend so she didn’t have to go back and forth. Next week, a truck was coming to collect and move the camp hay.

  She watered Cinnamon, saddled up, and climbed on. They’d taken the old path up behind the barn. It hadn’t been cleared properly this year, and so they’d picked their way through it, ducking under low-lying branches and skirting downed logs.

  She turned around on instinct when they reached the boundary line. The land next door was still a working farm, one of the last in the area. The Carters would have a similar fight to theirs when the next generation inherited.

  Though not quite the same. No, the MacAllisters had always done things differently.

  She still couldn’t quite believe the steps her father had taken. To have thought that all these years about Ryan, and to have never said a thing. Had Ryan always been their prime suspect? Or had they gone through all of them, one by one? Swift had said that her mother didn’t know about the plan, and Mary could believe it. Her mother was too watercolored to have turned her mind to such a gory topic. “It’s easier to ignore than to engage” had been her mother’s sage advice when Mary was being bullied in elementary school. As if you could control whether you were bullied or not by having the will to ignore the taunts. She didn’t blame her mother though. Being invisible had worked well for her. Why not her children?

  The barn came back into view. Traditional, red. Raised by some long-forgotten farmers whose names were faded entries on the property register. Inside were generations of carvings from her family and those who came before. Names in hearts. Declarations of independence. An honor roll of winning show horses. Faded ribbons from the events she’d attended so many years ago. Her mother had introduced her to the love and care of horses in this barn. How to brush a coat. How to gentle. They’d spent hours together here, mostly quiet, away from vie
w.

  Being invisible.

  Maybe that’s why she was the only one of them who was close to her mother growing up. Her parents were of the generation that didn’t believe in being friends with your children. They were there for support and discipline, and whether they liked you or not was not part of the equation. Though it had frustrated Mary at times, it had never bothered her the way it did the rest of the kids. It was only as an adult that she’d had regrets, too late to change now. Perhaps if she’d known her father better, if they all had, he wouldn’t have felt able to punish them in this way. Even though it was Ryan who was on the outs, they were all being put on trial. What kind of father would do that to his children?

  But of course she knew what kind of father he was: the kind who’d raised someone who could take a blunt instrument to Amanda’s head.

  Mary guided Cinnamon into the last paddock before the barn. When they were halfway through it, something spooked her. Cinnamon reared up and almost spilled her to the ground. She gripped Cinnamon’s mane, her heart pumping.

  “Shhh, girl. Shhh.”

  She patted her neck and spoke softly as the horse pawed at the ground. There was something near the fence that she didn’t want to go near.

  “Is someone there?” Mary called out, but the only response she received was the slight echo of her own voice against the red broadside of the barn. When they were small, before the twins followed them everywhere, she and Margaux used to run through the building, calling each other’s names and laughing as the barn answered back for them.

  She slid off Cinnamon’s back and lifted the reins over her head so she could lead her on foot. She patted the white blaze above Cinnamon’s muzzle. “It’s okay, girl. No one’s there.”

  But even as she said this, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She was so used to being alone that she had a sixth sense when someone else was around, as if she could feel the displacement of the air, the extra mass of another person.

  “Ryan?” she asked the fence. “Sean?”

  Because it was a man she was sensing, that earthy smell they seemed to have, still clinging to them from when they were boys, tickling her nostrils.

  Cinnamon neighed behind her, egging her on.

  “Come on, whoever it is, this isn’t funny.”

  Mary was up on her tiptoes now, tensed and ready not to react when whoever it was jumped out of his hiding place. A MacAllister family specialty, that was. The terrifying of one another. She never understood the appeal.

  She reached the fence. The buzz of crickets filled her ears. She felt almost dizzy. The grass was long up against the barn, bleached out by the summer, the kind of rough you’d lose a thousand golf balls in. She stood as still as she could. She knew someone was there; she could swear she could hear him breathing. But where was he? What was he doing? Why wouldn’t he show himself?

  Cinnamon neighed behind her again, louder this time, a warning. There was a sound like a shot behind her. She turned on instinct, but again, nothing. She took another step forward, and now she was at the fence. She held it with shaking hands and swung it open. Swoosh! A large bird took flight, its wing brushing against Mary’s face. She muffled a scream. She felt her knees buckle. She leaned against the fence, closing her eyes. It was okay. It was nothing. Only a bird, a bird.

  She regulated her breathing and opened her eyes. There was a dog standing there, its tongue out, a white spot around its left eye. Buster. Buster, her parents’ half-feral dog. He must’ve been what Cinnamon was reacting to, the breathing she’d heard earlier. She recognized it now, that half pant, half wheeze that had led her parents to put him out of doors in the first place because her father claimed he couldn’t sleep with that sound in the house.

  Mary brushed the grass off her riding pants, her hands unsteady.

  Terrified by a bird and the family dog.

  What was this place doing to her?

  • • •

  Maybe she was lonely, Mary thought as she walked down the road after stabling Cinnamon, her riding boots kicking up dust. It wasn’t something she thought about often, other people, what she was missing keeping to herself. Especially these last few years. She had her horses and her students, the occasional talk with a parent who wanted a detailed update on how their precious daughter was doing. That felt like enough contact most of the time.

  But then last night, staying up late, talking to the two people who knew her best . . . that felt like something else. Like something reminding her of what her life could be, rather than what it was.

  She wasn’t sure why she deprived herself of other people. She and Margaux used to be as close as they were in age. “Irish twins,” people called them, until the real twins came along and ruined everything. But that closeness had evaporated over the years. Maybe it was Mary’s fault, maybe Margaux’s.

  Probably Mary’s. After all, she could hang out with Sean whenever she wanted; he was only a few miles away. But she’d trained herself not to think of that, to ration out her contact with him.

  And there, as if she’d conjured him with her thoughts, was Sean, standing on the porch, the gong of the morning bell still clinging to the air. Even though he was dressed like he always was, he looked older than forty-five. The years between them felt somehow larger than they ever had when they were all at camp together.

  Sean saw her and waved. She waved back. Had she said something last night she regretted? Her memory was hazy.

  She didn’t go to him. Instead, she turned left toward the Craft Shop. She wasn’t sure what drew her there, other than that it was the place she’d spent the most time in outside the barn. They all took after their mother this way, drawn to the arts. She liked working with paper and glue, the colors that could take shape with a bit of application.

  Like the rest of camp, the building was made of thick plywood. Not a building that was palatable anytime but summer. She flicked on the lights. One side was devoted to crafts, the floor covered with a confetti of paint. On the other wall was a long row of rough bookshelves. Generations of paperbacks and hardcovers, leftover books from childhood tossed together with the leavings of forty years of leadership groups. Grisham mixed with Rowling. Robinson Crusoe and A Is for Alibi.

  She ran her hand along the spines, feeling the words through the covers. Here was her favorite book, one she’d read countless times as a child. The Secret Garden. She’d always felt an affinity for strange little Mary Lennox. She was strange little Mary MacAllister, “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,” as Margaux called her when she was annoyed with something Mary had done.

  The door creaked behind her. This time, she knew who it was without looking.

  She was both scared again and not.

  CHAPTER 20

  I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE

  Kate

  Liddie and Kate were rummaging around their parents’ basement when they heard the eight clear gongs of the morning bell.

  Liddie had pulled Kate from bed before the sun was up, tugging her like she was a small child who had to get to school on time. Shoving clothes at her and telling her to “Hurry up” and “Keep quiet” so they didn’t wake Margaux. Kate didn’t think that was possible given how much Margaux had had to drink the night before. She’d heard Margaux rattling around the cottage when she’d come in, around one, the time of night at camp that Kate always thought of as the witching hour. It was hard to explain, but Kate never saw two a.m. here. You either went to bed at one or you were up at three; two was as mythical as the lake monster that people had claimed to be spying since the 1950s.

  Kate was pissed that Margaux had woken her. She was a light sleeper, a troubled sleeper, and nighttime disturbances usually led to several hours staring at the ceiling. Last night, those hours ended up being a reminder that she wasn’t where she wanted to be, in bed with Amy. She knew Amy was sleeping upstairs in the lodge, in one of those small cells with a
single bed down the hall from Sean, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like her bed in the French Teacher’s Cabin was so comfortable or welcoming.

  She’d tried to pull Amy aside last night after the fracas with Ryan. She suggested they visit their old haunt, the nurse’s cabin, but Amy had refused. She was tired, she said. She wanted to sleep. And “there’s no use in starting all that again.” Amy had never told her no before, not a definitive no like that. But she supposed she deserved it for the way she’d left after her parents had rejected her. She’d tried to convince Amy to come with her, back then, to move to Montreal, but she had her son and her family nearby and, ultimately, “they were something that only worked at camp.” Kate hadn’t fought her. Instead, she’d left and never called again, and so there she was, alone, awake, full of regrets.

  Then morning. Then Liddie. Kate’s breath had fogged around her face as they walked up the road in the semidarkness. It started getting cold at night in mid-August. Kate cursed herself for not bringing warmer clothes. Then again, she didn’t know she’d be creeping around before the sun was up, though she should’ve guessed. It was par for the course with Liddie.

  The light was pearl gray, the evergreens a dusky black. High, thin clouds wisped through the sky, signaling the near certain arrival of rain.

  Liddie held a finger to her lips when they got to the house, mumbling something about Ryan and “even though he was probably passed out for the day,” they’d better not take any chances. She tried to get Liddie to tell her what was going on, but Liddie tugged her arm again, and then they were inside, surrounded by the smell of old smoke and dank basements. Liddie snapped on the desk lamp, one of those kitschy lava lamps from the sixties Kate had always hated. It made a wavy pattern on the wall that made her feel queasy.