Nothing—not one board, shingle, pine needle, or grain of sand—had changed.
A twig fell and hit the roof of Cabin 1. Ted turned sharply and made sure he was alone. The startle primed his limp down The Row. His watch told him it was nine o’clock. People would be arriving at the funeral home, asking questions.
Where’s the husband?
Boy. He must be upset to be so late.
Or even, Why would he just up and skip out on his own wife’s funeral? Unless he’s guilty.
Haven’t you heard?
He killed his wife. Attacked her father.
I heard he shot up our town last night and hijacked a car.
At gunpoint!
That’s right. He’s running from the law.
Wouldn’t you skip a funeral if you were a wanted man?
Have you seen how many police are around here?
Make no mistake. There would be plenty of police, especially the ones who saw Ted almost rip John Radiford’s head off.
A black squirrel leapt through the cottonwoods outside Cabin 7.
Ted forged on. In his mind, he carried his duffel bag, and a fourteen-year-old Karen walked alongside him. He could see the cover of the science fiction book she carried that day. Crawdads from Space or whatever it was. Hoss danced down the row, mocking what Ted feared might be the last words he ever spoke to his dad.
And there was the bench. Ted first sat there with his dad in 1968, dreaming of seeing the far shore. He’d sat there with Zeke and Neil. At other times, with Karen. Ted made it to the bench, its feet cemented, as always, into the sand. He stood behind it for a moment, running his fingers across its deeply-lacquered, wooden texture. He remembered how he used to dream of being able to talk to his mom from that very spot. And how, for some reason, he convinced himself the light in the trees over there was his mom reaching to him from beyond her grave.
He stood, entranced, for longer than he could normally tolerate such cold. Vulnerable as could be. The wind bit into his cheek and seemed to wake him.
That’s enough, Ted. Snap out of it. Get those names.
He let go of the bench. Cabin 7 was maybe a hundred feet away.
He took two steps before someone called his name.
CHAPTER 48
Ted spun around, ready to try to run. But it was just Bradie. Thank God. Somehow, she’d cut him off by taking the left tine of the forked path, staying out of the harshest wind.
Smart kid.
She’d changed hats and put on big sunglasses, her toothy grin bigger than ever. Her steps were bold and confident and aimed right at him.
“Bradie told me you were here,” she said.
Ted’s throat seized and his mouth dropped open. It wasn’t the first time Karen had had that effect on him. She strolled up like every step she’d ever taken counted. Her face was the picture of comfort and familiarity, as though she’d just the week before gone out with Ted for margaritas. Her quiet confidence was just like always. The next cold gust from the lake was no match for her.
“Come here,” she said, opening her arms and wrapping them around his middle. She put her ear on his chest and gave a good squeeze. Then she took a step back, sliding her fingers down his arms and grabbing his hands.
“Look at you,” she said. “You look good, Ted. A little tired, maybe, but you look good.”
“I didn’t think Bradie would mind if I—”
“What did you do to her, anyway?”
“What? Whatever I did, I didn’t mean to—”
“She loves you.”
Ted frowned and shook his head.
“She described you down to the stubble on your face and your eye color. But when she said you have the original story? And kind of high-tailed it out of there when she mentioned me? Who else could you have …? It really is you, Ted.”
She described his exact sentiment, but he didn’t know what to say. “Did you drive to the cabins?”
“Nope. Walked. I thought, ‘If Ted can do it, I can, too.’”
“Um. Good to see you, Karen.” Ted bristled inside and felt an old kind of ache.
“Couldn’t agree more,” she said.
They were quiet for a moment. Ted struggled for something to say. Small talk was never his thing. Plus, there just wasn’t time.
“Bradie said you were here on a nostalgia tour.”
Ted nodded. “Yeah. Good way to put it.”
“Timing’s a little odd, but it’s beautiful out here.”
“I didn’t know about your book series until a few days ago,” he half-blurted. Now he was completely out of things to say.
“I owe it all to you.”
What’d she say?
“It’s true. Do you remember telling me I should write more sloth stories?” She took off her sunglasses. Green eyes. Green as ever.
“I remember saying you should write me more sloth stories.”
She laughed. “Who says I didn’t? I wrote them, and I thought of you with each one. I remember how I felt when you encouraged me. When you first told me you wanted me to write more. That’s never really gone away.”
Meeting Karen again was like meeting Zeke and Neil had always been. A reacquaintance period didn’t seem necessary. It was more like a simple turn of a page. Introverts with something in common are like that.
“The writing took me a few years to get started, though,” she said.
He smiled politely. Work to do, Ted.
“I needed the diversion after my divorce. The books saved me. They’ve also made my last ten years pretty good.”
The sad warmth filled his chest again. “Whatever happened in your marriage, I’m sure it was his fault.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
Under the circumstances, Ted would rather take Karen’s hand, stroll down to Mosquito Point, and have another shot at 1970. He’d warn Mr. Dinwiddie not to trust Hoss and not to hire Lloyd. But Ted had to get inside Cabin 7, and he worried about how to do it without drawing Karen in. Right as he wondered how to get her to go away, she broke the uncomfortable silence.
“What are you really doing here, Ted?”
CHAPTER 49
Ted dropped his chin and swallowed hard. He knew the truth—even if he delivered it in the most cogent and eloquent way possible—would sound like a schizophrenic’s delusion. “I told Bradie it was a—”
“Nostalgia tour?” Despite the rose color on her cheeks, her expression was steely. She didn’t seem suspicious, but her earnestness demanded honesty.
“A nostalgia tour is what it’s turned out to be so far, especially since you showed up.” The pressure to reveal the truth mounted like hot lava. If anyone on Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot needed to hear this truth more than the Honorable Roy Gables, it was Karen Dinwiddie. And maybe, just maybe, right now was the time to spill it.
“I wish I’d kept writing you letters,” Ted said. “Truth is, I wrote you a long one, one day when I was thirteen. It was for you and only you. Ten or twelve pages’ worth. Nothing I ever told my dad. I stamped it, put it in the mailbox, lifted the little flag. But when the mail truck was one house away, I took the letter out and ran. Burned it in my back yard. After that, I never wrote again. Not even to say sorry.”
Karen’s mouth opened a bit. “Wow, Ted,” she said. “Bradie said you seemed a little troubled. I can see she was right.”
Damned straight, sister.
“Why are you here, Ted?”
The cloak of deception felt like his own skin. Wasn’t it too late to take it off? His heart sped up, and the sun on that green field of hope seemed to fade.
“Someone broke into the office maybe a week ago,” Karen said, as though stalling, letting Ted gather his will to speak, “but didn’t seem to take anything. Not even the few dollars in the cash drawer. But today, we learned what was taken. Each and every paper, picture, and shred of our records of Cabin Seven in 1970.”
“Surgically precise, wasn’t it?”
“So you knew?”
“Not exactly, but I figured it would’ve happened.”
Karen crossed her arms and leaned to one side. “Ted, you’re smart enough not to come looking for something you knew was gone. And I’m smart enough to know what you’d do, maybe, is come looking to see if something’s gone. To make completely sure.”
She’d gotten it right so far.
“So tell me, Mr. Nostalgia Tour. Before we call the police. Did you come all the way up to White Birch to look in the cabin?”
She’d read him like one of her Sloth books. But it was no surprise she could think like him. Karen Dinwiddie had a lot to do with what Ted became as a grown man.
“I came all the way up here because I had no place else to go.”
She took a step back and put her gloved hands on her hips. She never took her eyes off him. He knew he’d scared her, at least a little.
“Ted, I’m not trying to play detective or anything.” Her voice grew stern. “I know there’s a good chance you’re still the great guy you were way back in the day, but I’m going to have to insist you tell me what you’re doing here. This is my camp, and I want to know.”
“You deserve that and more. But you’re about to become part of this.”
“Part of what?”
“I came to look for something. Records inside the cabin, just like you said. Didn’t think I’d find them in the office. In fact, I was so sure, I didn’t even ask. The cabin is where I figured I needed to go. And I’ll betcha a dollar the 1970 plaque’s not in there, either. Since I have a big story to tell and I’m ready to do it—and there’s a good chance you’re still the… fine exemplar of humanity you always were—I’m gonna tell you.”
She crossed her arms in front of her again, and blew out a cloud of mist.
“My wife, Kathryn, died four days ago. She was murdered.”
“Ted,” Karen whispered.
He went on. “Do you remember my two buddies up here? Zeke and Neil?”
“One kid African-American, the other heavyset?”
“Yeah. Neil and Zeke, in that order. A couple days ago, right before Kathryn died, Neil was killed in Ann Arbor. Stabbed to death in an alley.”
“Oh, no. Wait. On his daughter’s birthday?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“He’s that law professor down there.”
“Afraid so.”
“That’s awful,” she said, adjusting her crossed arms.
“The local police in Blue River think I had my wife killed—let me say I didn’t, just so you’ll know.”
A wisp of red hair blew off her cheek, and she squinted through a small gust. She put her sunglasses back on. Ted found it much easier to talk to the dark lenses, and not those green eyes.
“But last night, in Ohio, it dawned on me in kind of a hurry her bullet was meant for me.”
“What?”
“Couple of guys tried to shoot me.”
Karen gasped and put one hand up to her mouth, and her eyebrows popped up from beneath her sunglasses. “Why?”
“I didn’t know why at the time.”
Ted absently noticed her left eyebrow still had that small streak of blonde in it. The familiarity, insignificant as it was, was nice. It made him realize he still knew her. And, despite everything he’d taught himself for thirty years, she was one he felt he could always trust.
He leaned against the bench and let his fingers move along the top of the backrest.
“But now you do know?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Ted, we need to call the police.”
“No.”
Karen took a step back.
“I mean, not yet. We’ll call them in a few minutes. This was less than twelve hours ago,” Ted said. “I was too busy trying to get away. Wasn’t going to call anyone until I was out of there.”
Something that looked like anger or distrust, maybe both, crossed Karen’s face. She may have even looked ready to run. “This doesn’t make any sense, Ted.”
“I’ll explain it to you.”
“Good enough. So now you’re out of there, right? Why can’t we call right now?”
“These guys knew where I was, where I was going to be, and the times I’d get there. Home, work, everything. They even tracked me down to the bar I went to last night. These aren’t stupid bank robbers or druggies. These guys… they’re trained mercenaries or something. They’re professionals. It was just blind-ass luck that I got away. And more luck that I made it all the way here.
“By the time I disappeared, I officially became an interstate fugitive. I decided the only person I could call, the only one nobody could connect with me…”
“Zeke?”
She’d turned another page and read him again. “Exactly. Zeke. I called him from Toledo.”
“Okay? So?”
The exhausted anger burned. “Zeke is dead.”
Karen covered her mouth and nose with what looked like a Namaste greeting. When she took her sunglasses off her face and put them into her coat pocket, she said, “But… Why? What’s going on?”
This is it. After thirty years of agonizing deception, the time had come. Karen would hear it first, and it would happen at the bench. How fitting. He had to try twice to speak again.
“Ted.” Stern as a grade-school teacher, she glared at him.
“I have to tell you a story you’re not going to like.”
“I expect not,” she said, “but it’s past time for you to get started. I want to be happy to see you, but this isn’t—” She took two steps back this time, and brazen distrust overtook her face. “Are you going to hurt me?”
Ted gasped. “God, no.” He leaned against the bench again, arms down in the least-threatening body language possible. Karen’s toughness nearly knocked him down. The cold wind bored into his neck. “Karen. No. After everything you’ve been to me? Over all this time?” Someone he’d appreciate for the rest of his life but never expected to see again? The best first love any kid ever had? “I’d never hurt you.”
Karen pursed her lips, crossed her arms in front of her chest again and shifted her posture. Her glare softened for a half-second. “Nice of you to say,” she said. Then her eyes turned angry. “Now get on with your story.”
“All right. I’d never want to hurt you—”
“You just said that.”
“—but this story will.”
She huffed through both nostrils, clearly losing her patience.
Ted lifted a hitch-hiker thumb, gesturing behind him, toward the lake’s other side. “I watched Lloyd die over there. We all did.”
CHAPTER 50
Karen’s lips parted, and her arms uncrossed. Her hands hovered at mid-chest level, self-protective. Her eyes went cold and sharp. Her jaw moved up and down a couple of times, but no voice came out.
“I wrote it all down in that letter I burned in my back yard. Lloyd did fall into that fire, but not because of some heart problem from drinking.”
“You’re not lying to me, Ted. Are you?”
“Nope. I’m telling you the… a truth I’ve never told. Wild horses couldn’t stop me now. The more I talk to you, the more I know you’re the one who deserves to hear it first. Remember when we saw each other at Mosquito Point? After Tornado Night?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“You said something about the two of us stealing a canoe and”—Ted jerked his head back to refer to the far shore—“paddling over there?”
“Tell me you didn’t actually do that.”
“We did that. We had a little afternoon canoe trip as a cabin one day. Neil and I shared one canoe, and I told him I’d like to paddle over there.”
She shifted her balance, more gently this time.
“Voices carry over water, you know,” he said.
“So?”
“Hoss overheard.”
“Oh, God. Hoss.”
“You remember him?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I couldn’t forget him for money. So
he convinced you guys to go over there. The night Lloyd died?”
“Karen… I’m so sor—”
“Look. Lloyd’s dead. And he’s still going to be dead when you’re done with your story, so let’s hear it.”
“All right. The night came around. It was Lloyd’s night out—”
“He’d been fired.”
“He had. After what he did to you, but we didn’t know that at the time.”
Karen nodded. “Okay. Go on.”
“We were ready. I have to admit I was pretty much excited to go. I also happened to be the only one who wouldn’t make enough stupid mistakes to get us caught. So I took charge of the trip. When the Cabin 6 counselor—roving the division—finally went into the cabin and cleared the way for—”
“You got the canoes, got across the lake. What happened then?”
The trees responded to the gale and seemed to shush Ted. But he was on his precipice and meant to jump.
“There was this campfire burning. Nobody was there that we could see, and nobody seemed to worry about who built the fire. It was strange. Mysterious. Contradictory. All that. With a bunch of twelve-year-old boys’ imaginations, it was like we’d just discovered…”
“Got it. What next?”
A snowflake hit the back of Ted’s neck. “We scattered. I stayed back with Neil and Zeke. Hoss jumped up on a stump and pretended he was the king of something or other. Buck took a pile of dry sticks—you remember the drought that summer—and kind of force-fed the campfire. Pyromaniac-like. Did the same to the fire on Tornado Night.”
Karen moved her hand in the air in the manner of a forward-rolling wheel.
“Lloyd. He was there. Drunk, passed out. Something. Wearing camouflage, lying next to this log. Couldn’t see him, even if you looked at him, not till he moved.”
“Okay.”
“Well, he moved. Scared Bud. You remember Bud. The shrimpy—”
“Creepy kid with white skin?”
“You know those blind rages he flew into?”
“Rages?” she asked.
“Yeah. Rages. Hoss scared Bud early on that summer, and Bud tore into Zeke. Happened two or three times when he was scared or surprised. Or just plain mad. But over there? That night? Lloyd scared the hell out of Bud, and Bud attacked. See, Lloyd was wearing a mosquito net on his face. No one knew who it was, except me and Hoss. We’d seen the net and camouflage before.”
White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2) Page 20
