I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

  When she got back to the beach, Liddie had rolled her jeans up past her knees and was standing in the lake. Her legs were white against the black water.

  “How cold is it?”

  “Not too bad for Labor Day weekend.”

  Kate slipped off her boat shoes and considered whether she should take off the khaki skirt she was wearing until she realized she didn’t want Sean to see her in her underwear. She put her life jacket down on the seat and tossed the other one in the boat. Liddie pulled the boat into deeper water, then climbed in.

  “I’m paddling on the right,” Kate said.

  “Only on the way there.”

  “Fine.”

  They quickly found their old rhythm. Their paddles sliced soundlessly into the dark water as the prow cut through the light chop that had started up in the time it took them to push off. The weather could change on the lake in an instant, and Kate wished she’d checked the forecast. The Island was about a mile away, a swimmable distance that some of the campers did every summer. When Kate and Liddie were doing junior triathlons, they used to swim it every other morning, Margaux their lifeguard in the rowboat.

  “Remember how we used to swim to the Island in the dark?” Liddie asked.

  “You don’t need to remind me.”

  “Fine, then, I won’t.”

  They paddled twenty strokes in silence. Let me in, Kate thought, but nothing happened.

  “You still dating Owen?” Kate asked. She watched a blush color the back of her sister’s neck.

  “Off and on.”

  “You going to let the others know?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You can tell everyone else you’re straight, you know. It’s no big deal.”

  Liddie turned around.

  “You can tell everyone you’re gay, you know. It’s no big deal.”

  “I don’t like labels.”

  “Just on your clothes.”

  “You’re such a bitch sometimes.” Kate turned her paddle and flapped up an arc of water, soaking Liddie’s right side.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Careful, you’re going to tip the boat.”

  “You are so dead, you know that?”

  “This is probably not the best place to make threats like that.”

  Liddie put her paddle back into the water. Another minute of silence brought them close enough to see Sean’s boat propped against the rocks and Sean himself sitting next to it, watching their progress.

  “Why the hell did he come over here?” Liddie asked.

  “You know why.”

  Amanda

  July 22, 1998—11:00 p.m.

  The night crept by. I can’t tell you how many times I looked at my watch, flexing my wrist so the light on my Swatch lit up the screen. Margaux kept asking me what I was waiting for, some “hot date, ha, ha, ha.” I told her I was tired and we should get the kids to bed.

  “We’re not going to get any sleep either way,” she said.

  “At least we’ll be lying down.”

  “You feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just tired, like I said.”

  I stood up from my perch on a log around our campfire. Margaux had been playing songs on her guitar, camp favorites, and then taking requests. She had a pretty singing voice and the ability to play anything she’d heard once or twice. Mary sang along with her. Their voices blended well, like one of those all-girl singing groups from the sixties.

  “All right, kiddos,” I said. “Bedtime.”

  “Ah, man! Already?”

  “You can talk till your flashlights run out.”

  “Awesome!”

  I snapped my headlamp back on, and we coaxed the girls into their sleeping bags. When everyone was in place, I volunteered to take the water cans down to the beach to fill them and douse the fire.

  “I can do that,” Margaux said. “You rest.”

  “It’s fine. I want to do it.”

  I thought I might have to fight her for this thankless task, but then one of the kids called out that her flashlight was broken, and Margaux went to deal with it. I breathed a sigh of relief, but then my heart thumped loudly. Maybe Ryan was just messing with me? Maybe he wasn’t going to be able to make it? How would I ever face him again if that happened?

  I walked to the water—not the beach we’d arrived at but the one on the other side of the Island, Back Beach it was called. I walked along the dark path through the woods, looking for the signposts I’d marked earlier when I’d been collecting deadfall for the fire. This broken tree branch. That notch in a soft birch. There was light up ahead, the full moon bright enough to act as a night-light. The water slapped gently against the rocks. I could hear the girls in the distance, laughter, the snap of the fire, the creak of the trees. The lake smelled like rotting seaweed, and I knew my hair reeked of campfire smoke. Not the most attractive combination, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  I checked my watch again. It was past the time we’d set to meet. Where was Ryan? If he’d actually paddled over, he wouldn’t just leave again without waiting for me, would he?

  “Boo!” someone said into my ear.

  My heart stopped.

  Amanda

  Margaux

  Ryan

  Mary

  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

  On the Island

  On the Island

  CHAPTER 7

  THE ISLAND—PART ONE

  Sean

  Sean watched the twins paddle their way across the lake. He figured they were coming for him, but he wished they’d leave him alone. Leave him to his routine, his memories. This place. His island. His.

  He loved the Island. It was his favorite part of camp. After what happened twenty years ago, it had been off-limits for several years. He’d missed coming there, enough to defy the MacAllisters once or twice. When they’d lifted the ban, they made the overnights coed, attended by twice as many counselors who worked in shifts and pairs. No one was allowed to be alone. Nothing untoward could happen. If one kid stepped out of line, they’d ruin it for everyone, forever. That’s what Mr. MacAllister had said, roving back and forth in front of the lined-up staff as if he were a drill sergeant at morning inspection.

  Everyone took him seriously. Mr. MacAllister wasn’t always the best manager, but he had the staff’s respect. He kept camp going through thick and thin, and he knew how to pick leaders, making sure that the staff coordinators each year were popular and well liked. No one wanted camp to close, least of all Sean.

  But even so, enforcing group togetherness was a waste of the Island. It was the perfect place to be alone, an actual circle of serenity on the lake, halfway from both shores, so thick with trees that unless you were right on the rocky beach, no one could see you.

  No one would even know you were there.

  Everyone needs a place like that sometimes.

  The campers called the Island haunted. They told ghost stories and scared themselves into near hysteria around the campfire. But to Sean, it was a churchyard, a memorial to the childhoods everyone but him seemed to have left behind. He couldn’t imagine his life
without this place, and he shouldn’t have to.

  He reached down into the cool water and picked up a stone the size of his palm. It was black and smooth, the perfect weight. He tested it, moving his hand up and down. The twins were almost to him now. He could make out some of their words, though not exactly what they were saying. He stood and turned his back to them, walking swiftly along the edge of the forest to Back Beach. There was a cairn on the edge of it, a memorial made of rocks. Sean put his on the top and said a small prayer under his breath, then turned away and arrived back where he’d been as the twins’ boat scraped onto the shore.

  “Hey, girls,” Sean said. “What’s up?”

  “You’re needed back at the house,” Liddie said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 8

  WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY

  Ryan

  Nothing about this day was going as Ryan had planned. He should’ve obeyed his first instinct: turn up the AC/DC and drive on down the road. But instead, here he was sitting in damp pants with his nuts still throbbing from the knee he’d received from Liddie. He deserved that knee; he could admit that. He was ashamed he’d grabbed her that way, strong enough to scare her. He’d worked hard to control his temper, been to therapy and anger management classes, and usually it was in check. But he could feel it loose now in his body, roving through his stomach, expanding into his chest. It had been a long time since it was this palpable, probably since the cops had arrived at his offices to search for evidence of John’s fraud.

  Fucking summer. It really was the worst.

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bottle of powdery pills. He was trying to cut back on the Klonopin, but he needed it today. Losing his temper for real could be disastrous. He cracked the cap, put one on his tongue, and let it dissolve, the bitter taste already having a placebo effect. He stowed the bottle as Swift and Margaux entered.

  “You look like shit,” Margaux said.

  “Thanks so much.”

  Swift sat down on the couch. It sagged under his weight, looking as tired as Ryan felt. Swift took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped at the sweat on his brow. He was wearing gumboots, jeans that looked fresh from the store, and a fishing vest. Ryan wanted to make a joke, but he couldn’t quite get the thought fully formed.

  “Everything all right?” Margaux asked Swift.

  “Oh, it’s fine, fine,” he said, panting slightly even though he’d only walked from the parking lot. “I’m used to working behind a desk, that’s all.”

  Ryan hadn’t seen Swift since the funeral, but not for lack of trying. Swift had been putting him off for months, saying Ryan would learn everything he wanted to know when they met at camp on Labor Day weekend, as per his father’s instructions. Ryan was frustrated, but what else could he do? He knew that somewhere his dad was sitting there laughing at them all, waiting for this silly meeting that reminded Ryan of one of those mystery books his dad was always reading. Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. A gathering of the family and then . . .

  Ryan pushed the thought away. He had to let the pill take effect and wait for the rest of his sisters to arrive, and then he’d know everything he needed to know, just like Swift had promised.

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” Margaux said. “Use a treadmill desk or something.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps.”

  “Why don’t I get us some drinks?”

  Ryan felt a spark of hope, but all Margaux brought back were several glasses of iced tea made of that sugary mix their mother liked so much. Ryan drank it down, wishing he’d planned ahead and brought a flask, but that would’ve been a terrible idea. Alcohol didn’t equal calm. Maybe Kerry was right and he did need her to pull this off.

  “What’s with all the doom and gloom?” Liddie said as she, Kate, and Sean entered smelling like the lake. “You’d think this was a funeral.”

  “Liddie!”

  “What, Margaux-Mommy? The funeral was months ago. This is supposed to be the celebration.”

  Margaux frowned. Everyone knew that she hated it when Liddie called her that, which was exactly why Liddie did it.

  Kate waved her hands. “Ignore her. You know she’s only looking for attention. As always.”

  “Oh, touché,” Liddie said.

  Sean went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of iced tea.

  “You could’ve asked us if we wanted some,” Liddie said. “We’re thirsty too.”

  “I’m fine,” Kate said.

  Sean returned to the kitchen and brought back two more glasses.

  “Thank you, Sean,” Margaux said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Sean shrugged and perched on the edge of the couch. That was typical of him, Ryan thought. He never did anything that might make someone think he was acting like one of the family. They all treated him like that, Ryan knew, but what he didn’t understand was why Sean put up with it. Were there people who wanted to be the heel on someone’s boot?

  Kate and Liddie sat on the other couch, leaving a cushion of space between them.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” Liddie said.

  “We can’t start till you’re all here,” Swift said. “Those are my instructions.”

  “Oh, hell,” Liddie said. “Where’s Mary? Has anyone heard from her?”

  “She told me she’d be here,” Margaux said. “But you know she’s never on time for anything.”

  “We should call her,” Ryan said.

  “She doesn’t have a cell phone. And she never picks up her landline.”

  “So what? We just have to wait?”

  No one answered him. Instead, they all turned and looked at the front door as if their collective will might make Mary suddenly appear like something that had been summoned at a séance.

  Like a ghost.

  Amanda

  July 23, 1998—6:00 a.m.

  There’s this line at the end of The Great Gatsby—the famous one about boats against a current—that gave me the shivers the first time I read it in school. It made me think of camp, about how much of my time there was spent in one kind of boat or another: a sailboat, a canoe, the water-skiing boat—I was like the Forrest Gump of boats. I loved being out on the water, the way I knew instinctively how to stand with my feet farther apart so I was balanced. “Sea legs,” they called them, and I had them.

  I always felt saddest when we pulled the boats from the water at the end of summer and put them in their dry cradles for the winter. I didn’t want to be away from camp for that long, a whole fall and winter and spring. Sometimes, when I dreamed about the future, it involved sailing around the world or living somewhere where I could be on the water year-round. Half-formed thoughts for a half-formed girl.

  You see, I thought my life would start on the water, not end. I didn’t know—how could I?—that the last boat ride I’d take would be unknown to me, unknowable. How I’d be splayed out on my back, my boat beating against the shore of Secret Beach, waiting for someone to find me. That the current would take me there, then hold me in place.

  How it seemed like forever before someone came.

  Amanda

  Margaux

  Ryan

  Mary

  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

  On the Island

  On the Island

  6:00 a.m.

  Secret Beach

  CHAPTER 9

  HIGH JUMP

  Mary

  The thing about jumping a horse, Mary MacAllister always said to her students, was knowing when to give the right signal. If your timing was even a little off, then you’d crash.

  Life was like that too, she found. Timing was everything. She was bad at it, she knew, when she wasn’t on a horse. Often late, sometimes missing events altogether. It didn’t matter, mostly. She was never late with the kids she gave lessons to. She wasn’t late for the horses; she rose at dawn every day without an alarm in order to make sure they were fed and watered and exercised. It was the rest of it—the details of life that seemed to occupy others—that she never seemed able to nail down.

  She’d meant to be punctual today, but one of her horses had thrown a shoe and another had a hot foreleg and honestly, what did it matter? Part of her was probably enjoying the thought of them all sitting there, waiting for her, knowing that their greedy plans couldn’t be put into motion until she showed up.

  Mary had never fully understood the trust that tied up camp. The technical details didn’t matter. What they all knew—because her father railed against it with the frequency and tone of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice whining about “the entail”—was that so long as their father was alive, the property couldn’t be sold. “It’ll be up to you, kids,” her father used to say, “to figure out what to do with this place.”