by Lisa Jackson
“Don’t go there,” she warned herself, and felt her stomach turn over. What was she thinking?
Closing her eyes, she whispered a quick prayer, talked to God, and found her center, then breathed out on a heartfelt “Amen” and restarted her car. With a glance at the dash, she saw that the engine appeared to have cooled a bit, so she backed up and drove out of the parking lot.
The town was small enough that she saw a church spire rising over the tops of trees that were beginning to shed their leaves. Her heart clutched and she fought tears, passing by taverns on opposing sides of the main street as she drove past a wooden sign that listed the population of Averille as under a thousand.
She hit the gas at the outskirts and her Ford leaped forward, sailing along the road as it wound through the foothills of the Coast Range and toward the Pacific Coast Highway. Californians, like Joshua, referred to it as the PCH, while Oregonians called it 101. Either way, it snaked near the coast line offering peekaboo views of the ocean in this part of the Northwest. Traffic on the two-lane road was sparse, but she waited for a motorhome to pass before she pulled onto the highway and headed south. From the juncture, she spied Cape Horseshoe jutting into the ocean.
Three miles later, she pulled into the park on the northern side of the cape, and, after locking the car, zipped up her parka and walked across the parking lot to the series of trails leading through the forest and upward to the ridge, the backbone of this narrow strip of land that fell to the curving stretch of beach abutting the property once owned by the Dalton family. Nell, who had lived most of her life in Averille, had mentioned that the property had originally been part of a homestead and that Naomi Dalton’s father had owned it but donated it to the church somewhere along the line.
Sosi didn’t know the true story and doubted it mattered as she hiked up the steep grade. She felt the salt-laden wind pressing against her, rolling inland from the sea, and she knotted her hood under her chin as she reached the summit, where the trees gave way to a headland. She was aware that far beneath her was the cavern where the girls had gathered that night, all waiting, all clutching flashlights, all having abandoned their charges to collect and create a lie with enough elements of the truth in it to be plausible.
How stupid they’d all been.
As she stepped closer to the southern edge, she stared down upon the rocky shelf known as Suicide Ridge, where everyone assumed that Elle had dived or jumped into the ocean and died, her body being pulled by the tide out to sea.
Sosi squinted into the horizon. The ocean rolled and bucked, huge gunmetal swells breaking into whitecaps before thundering inland and breaking noisily against the cliff face. What really had happened that night? And what had she seen?
Elle? Alive and well?
Her ghost? Haunting the camp and all of those who had mistreated her?
Or someone else?
So much had been in play that night . . .
And then there was the knife.
What had become of the butcher knife Reva had “borrowed”?
She leaned over, saw tracks on the beach. The police? Curiosity seekers? Lookie-loos who wanted to catch a glimpse of a long-ago tragedy? Or someone more sinister, someone intimately involved?
As she gazed across the expanse of beach to the south and the stretch of land that was the old camp, she focused on the spot where so long ago she’d seen the figure in white, a ghost, she’d thought, Elle’s spirit awakened from the dead.
But you don’t even know that Elle’s dead.
Her body had never been discovered, as far as Sosi knew, and now there were bones discovered, a skeleton. Elle’s? Monica’s? Or someone else’s?
She felt a chill and rubbed her arms as the tide rolled in, crawling across the sand in a frothy wave, intent, it seemed, on erasing the prints, of hiding the past, of keeping the truth hidden.
Which, for Sosi, was best.
CHAPTER 17
The Washington–Oregon Border, Highway 101
Now
Bernadette
“I’m not going to let Jo-Beth bully me,” Annette said from the passenger seat of Bernadette’s Honda as they drove through Astoria and headed south. She’d gotten more and more quiet as they’d traveled from Seattle, down I-5, then headed west to the coast highway. The moment they’d merged onto the four-mile span of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, Annette had fallen into silence, pretending interest in the steel-gray waters of the Columbia River, watching seagulls wheeling and crying through the rain-spattered windshield.
“No one’s asking you to.”
“You know how she is.”
“Maybe she’s changed,” Bernadette said, remembering the bossy counselor who had, without invitation, stepped into the role of leader at Camp Horseshoe, as if it were her God-given right.
“Yeah, right.” She cast Bernadette a don’t-try-to-peddle-me-any-crap glance and searched in her oversize bag to withdraw a pack of gum. “You didn’t talk to her. I did.”
That much was true. Bernadette had never bothered phoning Jo-Beth; she’d gotten the message and she didn’t want to start a long phone call or endless texting thread. Annette had handled the communication between them, but she was right. No more allowing Jo-Beth to manipulate them. Bernadette wondered what the hell that was all about. At the time she was only concerned about saving her own skin. Now, though, that it was all brought up again, she thought it might have more to do with Jo-Beth’s self-preservation mode. The deceptions had always bothered her, but since learning about the body being found, all her own doubts and suspicions had come to the fore. Yeah, it was time to take the bossy woman on. No matter what the consequences.
“She’s a lawyer now, you know,” Annette said.
“So I’ve heard.” That wasn’t a surprise.
“And she didn’t end up with Tyler,” Annette added, “after all of that. Gum?” She was holding out the pack, but Bernadette shook her head and, with a shrug, Annette dropped the rest of the half-empty pack into her open purse. “Suit yourself. It helps. Calms my nerves. Y’know, since I gave up smoking.”
Annette was chewing furiously and lapsed into silence as they passed through the town that spread down the river’s banks below the bridge, where businesses sprawled along the shore, docks jutting into the steely waters. Bernadette turned south on the highway that cut between the riverfront and the rolling hills, where grand, 200-year-old houses, the original homes of settlers and seagoing captains, stood next to newer, smaller buildings, most with sweeping views of the river as it rolled into the Pacific.
The sky was gray and overcast, and enough of a mist collected on the windshield to cause Bernadette to use the wipers. Annette’s somber, reflective mood was infectious; Bernadette felt it as well. Oregon held no appeal for her, no sense of wonder. The beauty of the area was lost in the grayness of it all and the knowledge that the past was about to come to the fore.
She thought about Lucas and her heart quickened a bit despite her dread. She’d had such an intense crush on him that summer. She’d known he was supposedly going with Elle but had accepted the fact that he’d broken it off with her. And she really hadn’t cared, she now admitted, her need for him superseding her sense of propriety or decency or whatever you wanted to label it. All she’d known then was that she’d wanted him, had fancied herself in love with him, and when everything had blown up and Elle had gone missing, she’d finally taken a hard look at what she was doing and felt ashamed. By then, of course, it had been too late; the damage had been done.
Even now, though . . . even after another couple of relationships, culminating in a failed marriage, she felt her cheeks heat at the thought of those moments between her and Lucas, what they’d done together, sometimes in broad daylight in the woods or on the beach. Sex with Lucas had been an intense and driving need, despite the fact that she’d heard he was practically engaged to Elle. He had a reputation, rumors had swirled about him, but the whole bad-boy rep had appealed to her, and she hadn’t been deterred
when she’d overheard Jo-Beth confiding to Reva that Lucas had even been involved with his own stepmother, that they’d had a very taboo and intimate relationship.
“I don’t believe it,” Reva had said, but there was a breathless quality to her voice. She’d wanted the rumor to be the truth. “With his own stepmother? Seriously? Sick.”
“Twisted, but true,” Jo-Beth had insisted. They had been standing behind the Dumpster just off the kitchen, smoking cigarettes after dinner when they were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen. “I heard it from David.”
“He said that about his own mother?” Reva’s voice inched up an octave and Bernadette, who had been walking to the dining hall to return a napkin she’d inadvertently stuffed into a back pocket, stopped cold. “He had to be lying,” Reva pronounced.
“Why?”
“Shock value.”
Bernadette flattened herself on the other side of the Dumpster, the one facing the parking lot and the kitchen, where anyone, especially Cookie if she came onto the back porch, could see her.
“You think?” Jo-Beth asked.
Bernadette’s heart had cracked. Could it be possible? His own stepmother? True, they weren’t related and Naomi wasn’t all that old, but . . . oh, God, she couldn’t believe it . . . wouldn’t believe it.
“But he saw them,” Jo-Beth insisted.
“What?”
“Up over the office. Not in the living quarters, but there’s some attic space up there at the end of a hall, like an unused room you can almost stand in. It’s got extra stuff for the camp, towels and shit and an old bed. David heard them and peeked through a window on the roof and they were going at it like crazy, his mother holding on to the bars of an old brass bed and Lucas on top of her, sweating and humping, and to quote David, ‘Fucking the living hell right out of her. Riding her like a stallion.’ His words, not mine.”
Bernadette’s stomach had turned over, acid crawling up her throat. In her mind’s eye she saw them, Naomi, the sexy stepmother, her makeup and hair never out of place, married to the reverend, lying on her back, her mouth parted, her pupils widening as he thrust into her. And wild, untamed Lucas, with his rippling back muscles, sinuous arms, strong thighs, atop her, hands on her breasts, caressing her, twisting her nipples, biting at her neck.
She’d gasped just as she heard a crunch of gravel.
“What was that?” Reva had hissed sharply. On alert.
Bernadette had stopped still, froze.
“What?” Jo-Beth.
Reva whispered, “I heard something.”
“Fuck. What?”
“I don’t know!” A pause.
Bernadette had mentally willed her wildly racing pulse to slow.
“Let’s get outta here,” Jo-Beth muttered. “Give me a friggin’ Altoid and let’s go.”
Hearing footsteps crunch on the gravel, knowing Jo-Beth and Reva would be able to spot her, Bernadette slipped around the side of the Dumpster away from the kitchen. They were walking away, farther from the building, but it did keep them out of Cookie’s view a few minutes longer. Besides, they could claim they were on their way back from the stable. Bernadette had seized her chance to ease her way back around the face of the Dumpster, holding her breath and moving silently and slowly over the tiny rocks. She’d turned a corner and nearly stepped on the camp cat sunning himself near the recycle bin.
With a loud shriek and a hiss, the cat arched its back, then streaked away, a gray blur diving into the brambles surrounding the back parking lot.
“What the hell was that?” Reva’s voice reached Bernadette’s ears. Heart drumming crazily, adrenaline pumping through her veins, she hadn’t dared move a muscle. She’d bitten down hard on her lip to keep from making a sound.
Jo-Beth said, “The damned cat.”
“But what scared him?”
“Who knows? Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘scaredy-cat’? Don’t worry about it.”
“But, I think I heard—”
“So there you are!” Another voice suddenly rang out, cutting off Reva’s speculation. Heart in her throat, Bernadette spied Cookie stepping out of the kitchen and onto the porch. She’d been squinting, making a shelf of her hand and holding it to her forehead to shade her eyes.
Bernadette’s heart sank and she’d silently prayed that Cookie’s attention was focused the other girls.
“You have work to do!” Cookie had yelled, as Bernadette eased her way along the far length of the Dumpster, still quietly, to stop in the shade near the still-burning cigarette butts, lipstick visible on the remains of their filters. “Hurry! Chop! Chop!”
Closing her eyes, she waited, counting her heartbeats, and finally heard some grumbling under Jo-Beth’s breath, then footsteps crunching on the gravel as the two friends headed inside. Floorboards creaked as they climbed the two steps to the porch; then Bernadette heard the bang of the screen door.
Letting out her breath, she slid down the side of the Dumpster, then angrily kicked gravel and sand over the smoldering remains of the cigarettes and dropped her head in her hands. How could he? How? Tears welled in her eyes when she thought of Lucas and his stepmother. Holy crap. What kind of a pervert was he? Was she?
His damned stepmother? Sick! Reva is right. Sick, sick, sick!
She didn’t want to believe it, but hadn’t she seen them together? Riding horses, on the second or third day of the camp, when she and Annette and Jayla and Sosi had toured the stables? Dusty, the resident camp cowboy, had pointed out the areas where the feed, tack, and equipment had been kept in the cedar plank building with its rough walls. The heat had been sweltering that afternoon, inordinately hot for a June day on the Oregon coast.
Bernadette could recall a creepiness to the old building where sunlight pierced through the gaps and knot holes in the siding to play into the interior that smelled of horses and leather and oil. The four of them had had to walk single file down a long, cement-floored aisle set between two rows of stalls.
Then they’d headed outside to the heat of the day, the sun intense enough that she was sweating and bored with Dusty’s speech. Bernadette had glanced overhead to notice a wasp busily constructing a tiny nest under the stable’s eave as Dusty droned on in some kind of drawl—Texas, she guessed, as her eyes had moved past him to the closest paddock where three horses stood, tails flicking at flies, ears moving, heads lowered to pick at the barest pieces of grass near the fence.
Dusty had pointed to the horses in the paddock as he’d walked the fence line, the geldings, disinterested, still swooshing their tails as Dusty went on about their schedules. Bernadette had only been half listening, lagging back, caught in her own daydream about Lucas, of course, when she’d caught sight of two riders appearing over a rise in a far pasture. She’d squinted, shading her eyes, and recognized Naomi Dalton, in shorts and a T-shirt, her red hair clipped back, astride a thick-chested palomino. Loping alongside the pale horse was a rangy bay, and atop that horse was Lucas. Bare-chested, wearing faded jeans, his hair mussed, he’d leaned over and said something to Naomi before quickly moving his arms and leaning over his mount’s neck. The bay had taken off like a shot and Naomi had responded, giving the palomino free rein and streaking off after the other horse and rider.
Bernadette had felt a bit of exhilaration as she’d watched Lucas move with the galloping horse as they raced across the top of the hillside to disappear below the crest of the hill again. The palomino with Naomi astride was only a few feet behind.
Where are they going?
“Weird. I know,” a voice had said from behind her, and Bernadette had physically started. From the corner of her eye she saw Leah, Lucas’s little sister, sitting on the top rail of the fence, close to the edge of the stable, half-hidden by a scraggly pine. Bernadette hadn’t noticed the girl, or the cat that had been lying in the mashed, dry grass that had grown around the post. “I’m Leah, by the way,” the girl had added.
“Bernadette.”
“I know. Lucas said.”
She’d felt a surprising warmth run through her veins. He’d mentioned her?
All of eleven, wearing cowboy boots, cutoff jeans, and a faded pink T-shirt, her teeth seeming too big for her pixie-like face, Leah had followed Bernadette’s gaze as she’d stared back at the now-empty field. “Mom and Lucas do that all the time, y’know? Ride together.” Her face had pulled into a thoughtful pucker. “It’s like they’re bonding or something. They didn’t like each other much, I guess, when Dad married Mom.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wasn’t here then, but I was on the way, I guess. Anyway, Mom and Luke fought a lot. That’s what David says and he remembers. David’s my brother. Technically my half brother, but then they all are. Ryan and David and Luke—er, Lucas.”
Bernadette had nodded and Leah had seemed to take that as an invitation to go on. “Lucas’s mom, his real mom? She’s dead. Been dead a long time, and David and Ryan’s dad is a real loser. Doesn’t go to church or nuthin’. A real deadbeat, that’s what Mom says.” Leah had shot another look to the now-empty pasture, where the green grass was already starting to bleach a bit. “Sometimes Mom and Lucas take me with them,” she’d added wistfully. “Sometimes they don’t.”
“Hey! We’re talkin’ over here!” Dusty had yelled, looking over Jayla’s shoulder, his gaze settling on Bernadette. “Could be important, y’know? Horse and riding safety? For your campers?”
Bernadette had blushed at the reprimand.
Leah had then hopped off the fence and started toward the stable, tossing a sour look at Dusty before she whispered to Bernadette, “I hate that guy.”
“Dusty?”
“He’s a douche. And a liar. Don’t trust him.” With that she’d ducked into the open door of the stables and from around the corner the gray cat, tail aloft, had trotted after her.
Bernadette hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but after overhearing Reva and Jo-Beth, she’d started to wonder if maybe there was something between Lucas and his stepmother.
