He cleared his throat. “There isn’t much to explain. Your father’s wishes are clear. Ryan will only inherit if you all agree that he should. If you don’t, then Sean will get the fifth share in the property and you’ll have to decide what happens to it.”
“Do we have to be unanimous about that also?” Margaux asked.
“No, that decision can be taken by simple majority since your father only specified unanimity for the decision about Ryan.”
“What do you mean, do you have to be unanimous about what happens to this place?” Ryan asked. “Have you already made up your mind that it’s Sean and not me?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Ryan said. “I’m sure if I talked to my lawyer—”
“And tell him what?” Kate said. “That Dad thought you hurt Amanda? That you did?”
Ryan paled. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
“That is so fucking sick,” Liddie said. “Not even Ryan deserves to be treated this way.”
“Liddie,” Mary warned.
“What? I mean, what’s going on here? Some kind of restorative justice?”
“Stop it, Liddie,” Margaux said. “Just stop.”
Kate put her hand on Liddie’s arm, and some silent communication passed between them. Liddie harrumphed but didn’t continue.
“This is a game, isn’t it?” Margaux asked Swift. “One of Dad’s jokes? We’ll spend the weekend trying to make this decision, and then there’ll be another letter telling us that he was ‘just joshing’ and sorry if we didn’t enjoy his last bit of fun.”
“That’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t have another letter.”
“What happened to Amanda wasn’t a joke,” Sean said. “That girl was innocent.”
“Not that innocent,” Mary said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Margaux and Mary locked eyes. Margaux had heard this kind of thing about Amanda before, and it always made her angry. If Amanda hadn’t sneaked away . . . If Amanda had been doing her job . . . If Amanda, if Amanda. “What happened to Amanda wasn’t her fault.”
Mary looked away. She never stood her ground about anything, which was something Margaux kind of despised about her. You had to stand up for yourself sometimes in this world.
“Are we supposed to vote now?” Margaux asked.
“In forty-eight hours. That’s what the letter said. So, on Sunday, after the memorial, I guess,” Kate said.
“So Ryan has forty-eight hours to convince us he’s innocent?”
“Or to convince us to look the other way and let him inherit anyway,” Kate said.
“I told you this was sick,” Liddie said, then turned back to Swift. “This is so typical. How long? How long ago did he set this up?”
“Ten years ago.”
“Ten? Ten? You mean, after . . .”
“Yes.”
“But that was an accident.”
“Perhaps your father didn’t think so.”
“Clearly. Fantastic, Mary, way to go.”
Mary stared back placidly. “I hardly see how I’m to blame for that.”
“Because you never see. God, I’m so sick of the lot of you.”
Liddie turned on her heel and stormed out of the room. Kate stood to go after her.
“Don’t, Kate,” Margaux said. “Let her blow off some steam.”
“But what if she leaves?”
“She won’t.”
Kate sat back down. Margaux watched her siblings. Ryan was sweating and rubbing his arm where Sean had pinned him against the wall. Kate was biting at the nail on her thumb. Mary was sitting tall, as if she were on her horse, setting up for a jump. And Sean was bumping his leg up and down, which he did, Margaux knew, when he was excited.
Whether there was another letter coming or not, this really was a terrible joke.
• • •
Margaux walked Swift back to his car after the family meeting broke up. “Sorry about all that,” she said when they reached his car. “I’m not sure what came over Ryan.”
He wiped at his brow with a handkerchief he pulled from his jacket.
“Hold still.” She took the handkerchief and used it to wipe him down. There were fine flecks of glass on Swift’s shoulders.
“There was glass,” she explained.
He didn’t say anything, just took the handkerchief and shook it out before putting it back in his pocket. She thought about suggesting that he check in with his doctor—make sure his heart was operating on all cylinders or valves or whatever it was that made hearts go other than love—but decided not to. Swift wasn’t her problem. At least, not in that way.
“I tried to talk him out of this,” he said.
“I’m sure you did.”
“It doesn’t give me any pleasure to have to deliver this message.”
“I believe that.”
“What do you think will happen?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.”
He wiped at his brow again. “Families are complicated.”
“I’ll say. Did he ever tell you why he was so sure it was Ryan?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Are you going to go to the police?”
“What would I tell them?”
She stared at the line of trees that blocked the view to the lake. The wind had picked up. She could hear the floating docks banging against each other.
“You know what’s funny?” she said. “I always thought my parents held me responsible for what happened.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was one of the last people to see her that night. Doesn’t that make me a prime suspect?”
Amanda
July 22, 1998—11:00 p.m.
When that terrifying voice whispered in my ear, I’d been so certain it was Ryan. But it took only a second after I turned around to realize it wasn’t and for me to start to feel foolish.
“Margaux!” I said, ashamed and confused that I could’ve mixed up the two. “Shouldn’t you be with the kids?”
Her hands were on her hips. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
She was dressed all in black—black hiking pants, black sweatshirt; even her hair was slicked back so it didn’t reflect light the way it usually did. When she’d changed into this outfit earlier, I hadn’t thought much about it, but now I realized that it was how she dressed when we’d go on midnight raids in the boys’ section. All that was missing was the black mascara she usually wiped under her eyes like a football player.
“I got distracted,” I said.
“Really?” She was swinging her flashlight back and forth by its lanyard. An arc of light hit the rocks on the beach, then the trees behind her.
“What’s with the tone?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You were acting strange all night, and then you said you were going to get water to put out the fire, and instead, here you are, pacing the beach, clearly waiting for someone. So what’s going on? Who are you meeting?”
“No one.”
“Puh-lease. It’s Simon, isn’t it? That’s why he stopped talking to me.”
She meant Simon Vauclair, a fellow counselor who also happened to be the person Margaux had lost her virginity to the summer before. He’d dumped her about a week after, and she’d been devastated. She wasn’t always rational about him, but the accusation felt like it came out of nowhere. Though I’d known Simon as long as Margaux had, we’d never gotten along, which she knew.
“You think I’m waiting for Simon? That’s nuts.”
“Why? You danced with him last week.”
“Once. And he only asked me because he was in the bathroom when everyone partnered up, and he was trying to avoid Tracy.”
“That’s not what it loo
ked like to me.”
“Why do you care? You told me you hated him.”
She flinched. She’d tried to convince everyone of that, but deep down she still wanted him. I knew it; he knew it. He treated her like shit, anyway. It was one of the reasons I hated the guy.
“So you are meeting him,” she said. “You’ve been acting weird all day.”
“I have not.”
“You have so.”
My chest felt tight. We’d never had a fight before, not in the ten years we’d known each other, and now here we were, fighting like six-year-olds.
“This is stupid. You know I don’t like Simon.”
“If you say so.”
I watched the flashlight arc back and forth, getting higher each time. When the light reached my eyes, I turned away.
“If you’re here,” I said, “who’s with the kids?”
“They’re fine. Mary’s there.”
“Dammit, Margaux, we’re not supposed to leave them alone with her. We better get back before someone gets injured.”
“But what about Simon?”
“I’m not meeting him. I told you.”
“What are you doing here, then?”
I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t seem to have a choice. “It’s Ryan.”
“Ryan?”
“Yeah, you know, your brother. Ryan.”
“Ryan’s meeting you.”
“Yes.”
The flashlight dipped toward the ground. I knew she wasn’t going to believe me, but she seemed to be thinking it over. Testing it out.
“Huh.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s nothing. I’m just surprised. Wow. Okay. Interesting.” She stepped forward and hugged me unexpectedly. She smelled like the campfire and marshmallows. “Be careful, okay?”
“What?”
She let me go. “With Ryan. Don’t let him break your heart.”
“He’s probably not even going to show.”
“I bet he does.”
“We should go back.”
“It’s fine. You stay here. I got this.”
“What about the kids?”
“It’ll be fine.” She bent down and took the fire cans from where I’d left them on the ground. “I better go before they notice that they don’t have any adult supervision.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“Thanks, Margaux.”
“Of course. And, I don’t know. Have fun. Okay?”
I watched her walk into the woods, her words echoing in my head. Have fun? Somehow, I’d never thought of that. I’d always been so nervous around Ryan that it never was fun. Exciting, yes. Pit-of-the-stomach feelings, for sure. Maybe that’s what I was missing out on. The fun.
When she disappeared in the trees, I turned back to the water and scanned the horizon. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear it.
Oars.
Ryan was coming.
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
Back Beach
On the Island
6:00 a.m.
Secret Beach
CHAPTER 11
JOHN DEERE
Sean
Sean was doing what he always did when he needed to think: riding his mower, taking down the grass and letting it collect in the bag attachment he’d repaired so many times over the years that he’d lost count. That clean cut-grass smell and the look of it after—he loved those things. It was so easy to keep on going until you hit the woods; he always wished he could go a bit farther. Mowing felt like church to him, what church was supposed to feel like, anyway. Solemn. Peaceful. His sermon was nature and a job well done.
But today it wasn’t working like it had in the past. Course, he’d never had to face this kind of possibility before, that he might finally get what was coming to him. That he could have a real say in what happened to camp and whether it would continue on as it should.
Only, it was conditional. Just like everything Mr. MacAllister did for him, come to think of it. He could work at camp, but he couldn’t be a counselor. He could be Mr. Fix It, but he wasn’t a real member of the family. Everything had a catch. He searched for the right words in his mind, but ah, hell, he never was any good at this sort of thing. He only knew that Mr. MacAllister had said one thing—he’d be able to stay on at camp as long as he wanted—and it turned out that what that meant was that he’d be able to stay only if the others wanted him to.
Sean’s throat felt tight at the thought. He didn’t know where he’d go if he had to leave. What would he do? His whole adult life had been given to this place—he didn’t know how to do anything else but be at camp, work at camp.
Would they ever choose him over Ryan, their own brother, even if most of them didn’t even like Ryan? Was that a possible outcome? And how did they feel about him? He’d never been able to tell if he was someone they put up with or if there was more to it. As he understood it, if they couldn’t agree, then he’d get in there anyway, the default option. That was clever on Mr. MacAllister’s part. They’d never all agreed on anything in their whole lives. And he wanted to be fair to Ryan. That was right for a father to do, wasn’t it?
He didn’t have a father, none he knew about, anyway, because his mama, herself a faded memory, never told him anything about the man who got her pregnant. That was okay. Real family seemed like a lot of trouble—all the feelings you had to take into account, the people you had to accommodate. Half family was enough for Sean.
Just so long as he could stay at Camp Macaw.
CHAPTER 12
RUNAWAY
Liddie
When Liddie left the house, she went down the stairs and then turned and went into the basement through its separate entrance. There was a grate down there that allowed you to listen to conversations in the living room perfectly. She’d found it the summer she was eight, and she’d used it to discover any manner of things. Mostly, she listened to the Sunday night staff meetings. Liddie gathered all kinds of useful information during those. The names of the kids who’d been caught having sex in the woods, or smoking pot, or anything else you’d like to know. Most of the kids were naive enough to think that the Mackerels weren’t aware of what was going on in camp. Liddie knew they were wrong and used it to her advantage.
She’d never gotten used to how strange it was, though, to listen to a conversation you’d just left. There was always a risk you’d hear something about yourself you wished you hadn’t. Take today. Liddie didn’t like the tone Margaux had used, so certain Liddie wouldn’t leave, but she did like that Kate wanted to come after her. That was her biggest fear: that she might one day say she was going to do something dramatic—kill herself, for example—and Kate wouldn’t stop her. She’d have to go through with it, then, or be humiliated.
The rest of the meeting was boring. There was a lot of yelling, mostly by Ryan. Then Ryan got morose, professing his innocence, saying over and over again that he’d had nothing to do with what had happened to Amanda. It was
kind of sad. Then Swifty left with Margaux, and she heard something even more upsetting: Ryan working on Kate to get her to vote for him. Kate didn’t say much. Liddie could imagine her face as she listened to Ryan, struggling to avoid his charm. Liddie knew what would happen. Kate was so straitlaced, so buttoned up, particularly around her family, that she wouldn’t do anything to rock the boat. If everyone else agreed, Kate wouldn’t be the one to spoil the plan. It was brilliant to go to her first, actually. Liddie would’ve done the same. Because if Kate thought it was okay, if even Kate thought it was okay, then it must be the right thing to do.
When she heard Kate say, “I hadn’t thought about it like that before,” Liddie couldn’t stand to listen anymore, so she changed into her running things, grabbed her phone and headphones, and left. She was sweating hard by the time she got to the main road, but she knew that once she crested the hill, she’d have a clear signal.
She dialed the familiar number.
“Hey, babe, how’s it going?”
She felt relieved. Talking to Owen always calmed her down. He was steady and unflappable, a perfect counterpoint to the wildness that lived inside her. Which was funny, given what he did for a living. But that matched her too. Neither of them was what people expected from their outsides.
“It’s a shitshow.”
“Are you running?”
“Yep.”
“Things must be bad, then.”
Though the hilly terrain was taxing, she filled Owen in. How she already regretted coming to camp. How she could see the weekend unfolding. How she wanted to go home.
“I’ll come get you if you want.”
He’d dropped her off the night before, leaving her at the top of the road because she wanted a day to settle in without anyone knowing she was there.
“Isn’t it some kind of Palooza tomorrow?”
Owen was, for want of a better term, a rock star. Not a headliner, yet, but about to become one.
“I could blow it off.”
“I thought you needed the money to fund your next album, since you’re leaving the label.”
“I could find it elsewhere. Do a GoFundMe or something.”
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