I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

  “What are we going to do with all this stuff?” Kate asked. “I doubt even Goodwill would want it.”

  “I’m thinking 1-800-GOT-JUNK.”

  “Don’t you want to keep anything?”

  “Do you?”

  She wished she could say yes, that there were memories here she wanted to hold on to. There probably were, but she wasn’t willing to sift through the 99 percent of it that she didn’t want to find the pearl. She wasn’t a discount shopper—she couldn’t stand to spend hours riffling through rows of clothes that might be a great deal but were mostly a load of crap. She’d rather one-click her way through her favorite online stores, the slight updates in style enough change for her.

  “I guess not.”

  “I’m sure the others will agree.” Liddie walked to the wall of cheap bifold doors and pulled them open, revealing a barely contained mountain of boxes and file folders. She reached in and took out a stack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for Dad’s case files.”

  “His what?”

  Liddie gave her a look. “You know, the files he put together on the things he was investigating.”

  Kate had a flash of memory—coming downstairs late at night in search of her father to ask him a question about something to do with the staff. He was sitting at his desk, his face blued by the lava lamp, then purpled, like a quickly advancing bruise. There were pictures tacked on the wall over his desk and a large piece of paper in front of him that contained an elaborate diagram. Names and places in circles and stars. Arrows and deeply pressed lines pointing out connections. When she’d spoken, he’d turned the page over and had acted as if what Kate had seen was normal. She’d done what she always did, brushed it off, asked her question, and gone back to Amy without giving it too much thought.

  That was probably a good summary of her life, her epitaph: Kate MacAllister. She never gave anything too much thought.

  “You think he investigated what happened to Amanda?”

  “Didn’t he say he had in that letter?”

  Liddie put the papers down on the floor. The pile slid and spread out across the dingy carpet like a deck of cards. She ran a hand through her short hair, already sticking up and out like a fan.

  “This might take a while.”

  Kate sat next to the pile of papers. The basement smelled vaguely like pot, a smell she’d never liked and appreciated even less at six a.m.

  She picked up a file folder. Stephanie was written on the side in her father’s oddly formal block lettering. “Are these camper files?”

  Liddie glanced up from the file she was looking through. “I think so.”

  She opened the folder. It contained a picture of a girl she vaguely remembered who’d spent two summers at camp before getting expelled for repeatedly being found in the boys’ section late at night. This must be one of her mother’s pictures. Her mother was the family photographer, and she kept an archive of the photographs she took every summer, her own set of much more neatly organized files that were in the metal cabinets under the stairs, ordered by year.

  Kate held up the picture. “Do you remember her?”

  “Stephanie Stephens, right? She was screwing Jack Cider and his friends. That’s why she got kicked out.”

  “I don’t think that’s why.”

  “That’s totally why. They had a threesome or something. It was pretty fucked up because some other kid was watching.”

  Kate scanned the notes her father had left, and yes, that’s what had happened. And even though it seemed to Kate that Stephanie was a victim, not of rape, technically, but certainly of gross manipulation, she was sent home along with the boys because they were afraid the story would get out and circulate among the campers.

  “How did you know that? We were, like”—she checked the date—“eleven when this happened.”

  “How did you not know?”

  “Because I didn’t hide under the stairs to listen in on people.”

  “Don’t judge me.”

  “I’m not judging.”

  “Of course you are. You always do.”

  Kate looked away. Why did things have to be like this between them? It was like fighting with yourself. Other twins she knew still dressed the same as adults, but her whole life, she always felt as if Liddie was trying to get away from her, deny their shared DNA except for when it suited her purposes, like getting her to participate in one of her stupid schemes. Once, after they’d watched this documentary about how people who thought they were identical twins were wrong, she’d even wanted them to take a DNA test. “Maybe we’re just fraternal twins,” she’d said. As if that would be a good thing.

  “Why would Dad keep all this stuff?”

  “Who knows.”

  She turned a page. The top of the sheet read Timeline. It started the year Stephanie came to camp and ended when she left. “It’s like he was investigating her, even before this happened.”

  “Maybe he was.”

  “Gross.”

  Liddie shrugged. “Dad was kind of gross sometimes. Didn’t Amanda say that she’d found him peering into her cabin once?”

  “When did she say that?”

  “That summer, I think.”

  “Why wouldn’t she tell anyone?”

  “She was telling someone.”

  “Who, you?”

  “Mom, I think. Sean might’ve been there also.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Please. He was always following her and Margaux around.”

  Kate thought about it. Was the memory she had of Sean lurking on the fringe of the duo Margaux and Amanda formed something she’d created at Liddie’s suggestion or a real memory? “Yeah, that rings a bell.”

  “Rings a bell? God, you’re so weird sometimes. It’s like you weren’t even at camp even though you were always at camp.”

  “Just because I focused on other things . . .”

  “Whatever.” Liddie stood up and went back to the closet. She started pulling out more boxes. “We should get rid of all this stuff.”

  “Probably.”

  “Enthusiastic much?”

  “Quit it, Liddie.”

  “You’re so sensitive . . . Aha. Bingo.”

  Liddie pulled out a box from the back. It was heavy, and she half dragged it along the floor. Kate could see the name Stacey scrawled across the top.

  “Who’s Stacey?” Kate asked, feeling stupid. Maybe Liddie was right. She was supposed to be the one for whom camp was inevitable, a part of her skin. And yet, try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single camper who was ever named Stacey. It had to be her parents’ fault. The shock of their betrayal must’ve erased her memories, created something like a blackout. How else to explain the gaps in her knowledge, the things Liddie took for granted? Or the lingering sense that she had something to hide?

  Liddie was looking at her as if she were losing her mind. And she might be, because the last thing she expected Liddie to say was:

  “Stacey Kensington. Jesus, Kate. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the girl Ryan killed ten years ago?”

  CHAPTER 21

  HANGING AROUND, DOWNTOWN BY MYSELF

  Ryan

  That name—Stacey Kensington—got Ryan’s attention. It had been both a long time and no time at all since he’d thought about her. She lived with him, haunted him, the way nothing else in his life did, even Amanda.

  He’d come to that morning in his parents’ bed rather than his own, flat on his back, still in his clothes, to the loudly ringing bell, and then to the sound of his sisters talking. That felt like the default setting of his life—his sisters’ voices, always one of them speaking, often several of them at once. Now they’d been replaced by the voices of his daughters and his wife. A lifetime surrounded by women’s voices; you’d t
hink he’d be used to it.

  He’d known, somehow, when he and Kerry decided to have kids that he’d have daughters, and he was good with that. Kerry had wanted boys; she thought they’d be easier, safer. She’d been disappointed when they’d learned the sex of each of their girls, doubly so when Ryan had put his foot down after Sasha was born and said that three was enough. He wanted to be able to focus on each of them, both because they were his daughters and he loved them, and also because, goddammit, he was going to be a better father than his own.

  He wanted the best for his daughters for many reasons, but one of them was Stacey.

  That was probably warped—ensuring three good lives to replace one life taken—but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t change what had happened. Life didn’t work like that.

  He lay there and listened to his sisters talking in the basement. He could hear them clearly through the grate above the bed, something he never knew before, but it explained a lot. All his life, his parents had this way of knowing things they weren’t supposed to, especially during the summer. Ryan had always thought they gleaned their information from counselors. Stoolies. But if they could hear what was going on in the basement this whole time by simply lying in bed . . . Ryan’s stomach rolled at the thought of his parents listening in on some of the things he’d gotten up to in the basement. Jesus.

  “The girl Ryan killed ten years ago . . . ,” Liddie said. That came through clearly and drove him up and out of the room. He nearly didn’t make it to the bathroom in time, the vomit barely contained by the hand he’d slapped against his mouth.

  He raised the lid on the toilet bowl and hunched over. Everything he had inside left as he heaved and heaved. When he was finally done, he felt weak in the knees. He sat on the edge of the tub and watched his hands shaking. A mistake, a mistake, a stupid mistake.

  Will I never be free of this?

  • • •

  He was still sitting there twenty minutes later, when he heard his phone buzzing from the bedroom. Kerry. While he wasn’t in control of most of the details in his life these days, he did know one thing: ignoring her was a bad idea.

  He pried himself off the floor and padded down the hall. His head was pounding, and he felt embarrassed by his own smell. He needed to make a change, a serious one. Stop drinking, at the very least, but probably something more fundamental.

  The text was floating on his iPhone’s screen. {tm}Call me.

  He reached for the landline. It was off the hook. He had no recollection of having done that. Perhaps he’d knocked it off in the night.

  “What’s going on?” Kerry said before the phone had even completed its first ring.

  “I’m getting a late start.”

  He looked at the clock. It was only seven thirty. He picked up his iPhone. He’d missed four texts from Kerry. No wonder she was in a panic. He both loved and hated his phone. Mostly, he wished he could have both its access to the internet and be free from the constraint of people knowing he had it with him at all times.

  “I mean, early.”

  “What are you talking about? I texted you a million times last night. And then I called and you hung up on me.”

  “I did?”

  Ryan had no memory of talking to Kerry. The last thing he remembered was the vote. Oh God. The vote. Fuck. He was completely fucked.

  “Someone did, anyway. The receiver picked up, and then it was put down and no one was there.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. It was . . . a rough night.”

  Kerry’s tone softened. “I knew you’d go all, ‘I love you, man.’ ”

  “Ha. Yes. You were right. You know me too well.”

  Ryan’s brain was whirring. He knew how to do this: make up to Kerry after he’d been bad. Ask her what she’s wearing. No, wait. Ask her how she is.

  “How are you?”

  “What?”

  “How are you? What are you and the girls up to today?”

  Kerry paused for a moment, and he could tell that she was wondering if this was a trap. A diversion. “They have that water park thingy for Maisy’s friend’s birthday.”

  Ryan reached deep for a name.

  “Cristal?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do they all want to go?”

  “They’re dying to.”

  “Are you talking to Daddy? I want to talk to Daddy!” Maisy’s voice was as loud as the bell Sean had pulled with extra force that morning. Ryan winced, but his heart warmed at the thought of her. He’d done something right in this world. One thing. Three.

  “Maisy wants to talk to you.”

  “Put her on.”

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  “Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”

  “We’re going to the water park!”

  “I know. That sounds like super fun.”

  “It’s going to be super fun. Only, Daddy?”

  “What is it?”

  “Mommy said I couldn’t wear a two-piece bathing suit, and all the other girls are going to be wearing them, and I don’t want to be a freak.”

  “Holy shit.” That came through the grate, loud and clear. Ryan could only imagine what they were getting up to down there. What they were discovering.

  “You said a bad word!”

  “I think that was one of your aunts.”

  “I bet it was Aunt Liddie.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Mommy always says she’s up to no good.”

  Ryan smiled, both at the image of his daughter doing a dead-on impersonation of his wife and the truth of it. The normalcy. On Thursday—less than forty-eight hours ago—he’d woken up with two of the girls in the bed between him and Kerry, and they’d had a goddamn tickle fight. He’d felt so happy then, so sure everything was about to be on track. He should’ve known better. It wasn’t the first time his life had changed in a flash. A bang.

  A scream.

  “Put your mom back on the phone.”

  “You’ll ask her about the bathing suit?”

  “We’ll see. But listen to what she tells you.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you more.”

  “Not possible.”

  Maisy giggled and handed off the phone.

  “She can’t wear that bathing suit,” Kerry said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with the other mothers. I never wore a two-piece until I was in college!”

  “You looked great in it though.”

  Ryan could remember it exactly, that first summer he’d met Kerry. It was family day, and she’d come with her parents to visit her younger brother. They’d had a swim race to the Island, and Kerry had stepped right out of her dress, revealing a black two-piece that fit her nineteen-year-old body perfectly. She dove into the water with grace and came in second, right behind Ryan. Later, after the bonfire, he’d snuck her into the woods and kissed her against a tree until she complained about the dents the bark was leaving on her back. She was the first girl he’d done anything with since Amanda.

  But not the last.

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “It’s true. You still do.”

  He heard his sisters again in the basement. Less distinctive this time. He needed to get off this call and find out what they were up to. But it was nice lingering with his family for a moment, remembering what he was fighting for.

  “How is everything going there?” Kerry asked.

  “No surprises.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope.”

  “So how is everyone going to vote?”

  “Vote?”

  “On whether to sell the property? Hello?”

  “Right, sorry. About how you’d expect.�
�

  “Mary, no. Margaux, maybe. Kate, no. Liddie, yes.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “So it’s not happening.”

  Kerry sounded strangely defeated. Ryan’s heart squeezed. He reached up and rubbed his chest. He could fix this. He could.

  “I’ll convince them.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes. I have to, right?”

  “We’d be okay if you don’t. My parents could help.”

  He closed his eyes. He felt strangely like crying, something he hadn’t done since Maisy had broken her arm in two places at her birthday party the summer he wasn’t living at home. She and the other girls had been so wild in the bouncy castle they’d rented, and then there was this sickening shriek. He’d stayed calm through the whole thing, though he felt sick to his stomach at the sight of her arm so out of whack. Then afterward, when her arm was set in a white cast, and she held it out to him to sign it, that was when he lost it.

  “You know I don’t want to have to rely on them.”

  “That’s what family’s for, isn’t it?”

  Ryan sat there in silence. Could he do this? Could he take money from Kerry’s parents and simply forget about camp? No, he couldn’t. They’d constantly remind him of the loan, making him feel like a failure. He had to fix this on his own.

  “You all right?” Kerry asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe less drinking today?”

  “Less drinking definitely.”

  The twins were talking again. Ryan strained to hear what they were saying. Were they still discussing Stacey? What else was in that basement?

  “I’ll talk to you later?” Ryan said.

  “You promise?”

  “Of course.”

  What was one more broken promise, anyway?

  CHAPTER 22

  CRAFTING

  Sean

  “Hi, Mary,” Sean said as he entered the Craft Shop. Though he said it quietly, he saw Mary’s shoulders twitch. Why was this everyone’s reaction to him? Even after the closeness of last night? Why was his existence always such a surprise?

  “Hey, Sean.”

  She turned. She was in riding clothes. Tight suede-colored pants, tall brown boots that shone with care, a white polo, and a loose jacket. Her uniform. He always thought of her this way, though he knew she wore other clothes. The one thing that was different from usual was the color of her skin. Mary was generally as tanned as he was, and he could’ve sworn she was yesterday. But today, she looked pale. Like she’d been indoors all summer, or ill.