I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

“I thought we could all put in where we were that night.”

  “Your big giant plan for helping Ryan is to figure out which one of the rest of us did it?” Liddie said.

  Her stomach churned. “It’s only fair, isn’t it?”

  “What if this proves Ryan did it?”

  “I didn’t,” Ryan said.

  “If you say so.”

  “Come on, guys. Let’s try and see how it goes.” Margaux looked around at her family. She saw a variety of emotions, from mild curiosity to . . . was that fear? No, that was Liddie looking angry, and Kate looking worried, and Mary inscrutable as always. Sean was frowning, and Amy looked mildly curious. Only Ryan looked eager, almost happy to see what this might bring. Somehow, this solidified things for Margaux. If Ryan had no fear, then this must be the right path to take.

  “Sure,” Mary said. “I’ll play along.” She picked up one of the pens from the table and filled in her box at 10:00 p.m. with the words On the Island. Then she drew an arrow down each of her boxes to indicate she was in the same place the whole night. She stood back to admire her work. “That was easy. Here, I’ll fill you in too.”

  She did the same in Margaux’s column.

  “Wait,” Margaux said. “That’s not right.”

  Mary looked puzzled. They’d always been each other’s alibi, but Mary was forgetting that Margaux had gone to find Amanda. “It’s not what you think.” She walked to the whiteboard and erased the line in the 11:00 p.m. square. She replaced it with the words Back Beach. Then she crouched down and wrote at 5:00 a.m.: Searching for A.

  She stood back and looked at what she’d written. As she reread the words Searching for A., she shuddered. The memory was so vivid: the odd panic she’d felt when she’d opened her eyes around 5:30 as the sun crept up and Amanda wasn’t sleeping next to her. She didn’t believe in premonitions, but it was hard to think what else it was. She was the first one awake, she realized as she sat up. The campers, who’d finally worn themselves out talking around one in the morning, were breathing heavily, their arms flung up over their eyes to block out the rising sun.

  She’d untangled herself from her sleeping bag and looked around. Mary was also missing. Somehow this relieved her, but then her heart started sprinting when Mary emerged from the woods with a roll of toilet paper and a camp towel.

  She walked over to Mary. “Where’s Amanda?” she whispered.

  “How should I know?”

  “Did she come back last night?”

  “I fell asleep.”

  That was true. Mary had been asleep when Margaux returned from Back Beach. She’d been annoyed, worried the kids would take advantage, but they hadn’t even noticed.

  “Amanda didn’t come back?”

  “I don’t know. Stay with the kids, okay? I’m going to go looking for her.”

  Margaux had rushed off through the woods toward Back Beach. Halfway there, she tripped on a root and landed on the forest floor with her hands out in front of her. She stood, her legs shaking, her hands stinging from the scrapes she’d gotten on the rocks. But she moved on anyway, a fear like she’d never known pushing her. Maybe it was the odd dreams she’d had all night, her brain tossing out images from the ghost stories the girls had been telling around the fire. Halfway there, Margaux stopped up short with a memory. Had that been a scream she’d heard? Or was that a dream?

  She continued. When she was close enough, she started calling for Amanda. Maybe she and Ryan had fallen asleep? She didn’t want to walk in on anything she didn’t want to see.

  “Amanda!”

  Her voice echoed off the water as she arrived at the beach. She was alone. She turned around in a full circle.

  “Amanda?”

  Her heart was racing. Where could she be? Had Ryan ever shown up? She should’ve gone looking for her when she hadn’t come back by midnight. But it had been warm in her sleeping bag, and she didn’t want to disturb her with Ryan and . . . There was no excuse. None at all. Where could she have gone? Their canoe was on the other side of the Island. The only way back was to swim.

  She’d stood still and listened. She wasn’t sure what it was she wanted to hear, but there was something tugging at her. There, that was it. The sound of something clunking against the rocks, a dull wooden thud. She took off her shoes and walked into the water. Something caught her attention to the left of the small bay. She pushed through the cool water, ignoring the fact that her pants were getting wet. She could see what it was now. A paddle, caught among the rocks. She picked it up. It had the marking all the Macaw paddles had, an intertwining C and M. It felt like spiders were crawling down Margaux’s spine. She turned the paddle over and stifled a scream. It was smeared with blood.

  “What were you talking to Amanda about?” Liddie asked.

  “What?”

  Margaux shook herself back to the present. The memory of that awful discovery was clinging to her like the sap from a pine tree.

  “Me,” Ryan said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, here.” Ryan picked up a red pen, then looked like he thought better of it and reached for the black one. He filled in the squares below his name: Lantern ceremony; Back Beach; Back Beach; Cabin, and then drew a line down to 6:00 a.m.

  “What time did you get to the Island?” Kate asked.

  “Around eleven thirty.”

  “And then?” Liddie asked.

  “And then we, you know, fooled around for a bit.”

  “And you left at one?”

  “More like twelve thirty. I was back in my cabin by one. Ty was covering for me, and we talked for a few minutes when I got back.”

  “Do they know what time Amanda . . . ?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know,” Liddie said, looking at Ryan. “Do we?”

  “She was fine when I left her.”

  “Fine?” Margaux said. “I doubt she was fine.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “She was upset. I wasn’t . . . Things weren’t working out between us. But I didn’t do that. I swear to God. When I left, she was sitting on the beach, looking out at the water, watching me row away.”

  “What happened to her then?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is such horseshit,” Liddie said.

  “Liddie,” Kate warned. “Shhh.”

  “No, Kate. I’m tired of keeping this to myself. If he wants us to give him the benefit of the doubt, then he has to stop lying. He has to stop lying right now.”

  “Lying about what?” Margaux asked. “What do you know?”

  “Are you going to tell them, Ryan, or should I?”

  Ryan stood there, looking lost.

  “Fine, then. Fine.” She walked to the whiteboard. She used her hand to rub out the line in Ryan’s 5:00 a.m. column. Then she crouched and wrote: Secret Beach.

  CHAPTER 31

  THE HEART WANTS WHAT THE HEART WANTS

  Ryan

  Ryan felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed it. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. He should’ve known that Liddie had had enough. He should’ve known that when Margaux laid out her plan—not even a plan, a stupid suggestion to become amateur detectives—it wouldn’t work. People cling to secrets. Ryan knew that better than anyone. If you went looking, if you started trying to peel them away and expose them, even the innocent felt threatened.

  “Ryan?”

  “What?”

  Margaux was standing in front of him with that look on her face. He’d seen it before, not only from her but from every woman in his life who he’d ever disappointed. His mother. His wife. Stacey Kensington in the minutes before it had all gone wrong.

  “Is what Liddie said true? Were you on Secret Beach that morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh m
y God.”

  “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “How can you say that?” Margaux said. “It changes everything.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “Then why were you there?”

  Ryan felt that pressure in his chest again. Like his heart was being cold-pressed. How could he explain? No one wanted his explanations. No one believed them.

  It had been like that with Stacey too. Even though he’d accepted responsibility, that wasn’t enough. He’d had to do more.

  Because the real mistake he’d made, the thing he was entirely responsible for, was talking to Stacey at all. He and Kerry had been dating for years. Things were serious, and Kerry wanted them to be more serious. He wasn’t sure he was ready for all of it. Marriage. Fatherhood. He needed a bit of time to figure it out, but Kerry wasn’t having it, because his doubts felt personal. If she was who he was meant to be with, then he should know. He shouldn’t wonder. He was waiting for someone else to come along. Someone better. That’s what she said. Try as he might, he couldn’t explain to her that he was the one he wasn’t sure about. He’d never seen himself as a father. He hadn’t thought he’d settle down. Kerry had come as a surprise. She’d challenged his perceptions of himself. He wanted things he didn’t understand, that he would’ve scoffed at only a few years earlier. Maybe he was growing up. Or maybe he was still as fucked up as he’d been from fifteen on, when girls were interchangeable to him. He didn’t want to let Kerry down. If he was being honest, he didn’t understand why she loved him.

  Meeting Stacey had been like a redo on his meeting with Kerry. Her younger brother was a camper. She was there for the family weekend. He’d come up to camp after a fight with Kerry to try to figure out, once and for all, what he was going to do. Break up or commit. That was the choice he had.

  And there was Stacey, twenty-two, beautiful, interested in him the way girls were always interested. He knew what it meant. He was the right prescription for someone looking for a weekend of fun. That’s what family weekend was about. She laughed a lot, that he remembered. But in the intervening years, what she actually looked like faded. In fact, she looked similar enough to Kerry that sometimes, when he tried to remember the details, it was Kerry laughing next to him on the dock, Kerry tugging at his hand under the dinner table, Kerry who he pulled into the woods and kissed against the staff cabin the way he’d kissed so many girls before.

  She’d wanted cigarettes. That’s what she said, her hands on her hips, her hair wild from the humidity. “Take me for some cigarettes,” she’d said. Ryan wasn’t sure if that was some kind of euphemism for having hot sex in his car or she simply cared that much about smoking. He didn’t think that much about it. She laughed as they made their way through the trees to the parking lot, and again when he fumbled for his keys. He’d only had one beer that night, one, so he knew he was okay to drive. But he was nervous, scared of what he was thinking of doing.

  They’d gone into town, her hands in between his legs. He’d pulled over at one point so he could touch her. He still remembered the zip of the seat belt as it flew away from his chest. She’d climbed into the back seat, and he’d followed her. The sex was raw, and Kerry was in his mind the whole time, and even before he came, he felt bad. What the fuck was he doing? He’d had this. He’d always had this. It wasn’t what he wanted anymore. He could see that clearly now. But now he’d screwed up things with Kerry. Because when she said he should take a couple of days to figure things out, she most definitely did not mean to go fuck some stranger in the back of his car on the side of the road.

  Stacey had been unaware of his turmoil. Why should she care? He was a guy who was willing to have sex with a girl in a car a few hours after they’d met. She’d judged him accurately.

  “I still want those cigarettes though,” she’d said when they’d rearranged their clothes. He’d taken her to town and bought her two packs of cigarettes, and when he went for the driver’s side, she’d rushed ahead of him and said she wanted to drive.

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  She pouted. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Concerned for your safety?”

  “A spoilsport.”

  “You had those two drinks I brought you,” Ryan said. “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  Ryan’s shoulders tensed. “Sir” was what people called his dad. He looked at Stacey. She didn’t seem drunk. There was something about her though. She was keyed up. Was she on something? Ryan hadn’t ever been into drugs, not serious ones anyway. Pot didn’t count, and he knew she wasn’t high.

  “Why do you care about driving so much?”

  She raised her arms above her head. She was wearing a tank top, and her limbs looked too thin extended that way. “I want to have fun! Not be analyzed about it.”

  He held out the keys. “Fine, sure. Take them.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, her tongue in his mouth, her teeth against his lips. He thought she might drag him back into the rear of the car, but instead, after a moment, she broke the kiss and slipped behind the wheel.

  He barely had time to buckle up before she backed out of the parking space. He told her to put on her seat belt, feeling like a dad, his dad, but she stuck out her tongue and rolled down the windows. She lit up a cigarette and drove like they do in the movies, her head half out the window, yelling at the night. Ryan tried to squelch the urge to tell her to slow down. He was distracted by thoughts of Kerry. Did he have to tell her what happened? No. What good would that do? Besides, they were on a break of sorts. If this stupid night had crystalized things for him, if he now knew what he wanted, her, wasn’t that enough? Did she have to know the details?

  They came around a curve. He saw it too late. A horse on the road, a blonde braid flashing in the headlights. He tried to reach over to the wheel, but Stacey had already hit the brakes. The car fishtailed, and then it got hazy. There was a scream and the sound of a horse panicking. Maybe they were the same noise. He might’ve been screaming. He never blacked out, but the world was tumbling, askew. He was upside down. The car had turned over in the ditch, and Stacey wasn’t next to him anymore. He unclipped his seat belt, trying to brace himself as best he could from falling on his head. The car was dinging because the keys were in the ignition, that awful ding, ding, ding that always drove Ryan nuts. He managed, somehow, to get out of the car. The air smelled of burned tires and gasoline. Where was Stacey? Where was the horse? Who’d been on it?

  He knew with a sickening certainty. Mary. He ran up the embankment. One of the camp horses named Miranda was in the ditch on the other side, pawing at the ground. Mary was on the tarmac, an awful shade of white. And then, in the distance, somehow, a siren. He’d learn later that someone had heard the accident and called 9-1-1—the ambulance was nearby on a false alarm—but that night he couldn’t understand it. They were ten miles from town. How were they coming so fast?

  He made himself concentrate. Stacey was missing. His sister was lying crumpled on the road, smelling like alcohol. He had to do something. Mary sat up.

  “Stay still,” he said, rushing to her side.

  “What happened?”

  “There was a car accident.”

  “I was riding.”

  She was confused, drunk, he realized. Although she was twenty-six then, she’d always seemed younger to Ryan. Naive. Still living at home and riding horses. Ryan didn’t have enough time to think properly; thoughts were racing through his mind. Mary had been riding her horse on a dark road drunk. She’d caused a car accident. Stacey might be . . . Whatever she was, Mary was going to be in trouble. Lots of trouble.

  “Can you stand?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you think you could lead Miranda into the woods over there and go home the back way?”

  She stood, swaying slightly. There was a trickle of blood on her f
orehead, and her eyes seemed unfocused. “Yes, but why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Just do it, okay? And quickly. I don’t want the police to know you were here.” The sirens grew louder. “Go, Mary.”

  She scrambled down the hill, wobbly but in control. Ryan crossed the road back to the car, standing at a safe distance as the ambulance turned the corner and slowed. A police car arrived a minute later. Mary was out of view, a retreating speck in the woods that you wouldn’t look for if you didn’t know to.

  The EMTs checked him out, but he was, amazingly, all right. They found Stacey a few minutes later. They wouldn’t tell Ryan how she was, but he knew by their faces. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was thinking other than that he needed to protect Mary, but when the officer asked him what had happened, who was driving, Ryan had looked at the car and the seat belt that he hadn’t forced Stacey to wear, and he thought of his sister hiding in the woods, of the whole fucking mess, and said, “It was me.”

  • • •

  “Ryan?”

  “What?”

  Margaux was standing in front of him. She seemed out of focus, but that couldn’t be right. “You . . . Are you okay?”

  “I’m having trouble breathing.”

  “Why is he holding his arm like that . . . Oh, shit. Liddie, call 9-1-1. Call 9-1-1 now!”

  CHAPTER 32

  PAST DUE

  Kate

  As Kate watched Ryan being taken out of the lodge on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance, she made a decision.

  “Where are you going?” Amy asked.

  “I need to make a call. Margaux, will you wait for me before going to the hospital?”

  “Of course, but hurry up.”

  Kate went into the office. She sat at the desk and stared at the old rotary-dial phone. She had to do this, but she hesitated. Right now, they were in a bubble. Even though bad things had happened, they seemed self-contained. Once she made this phone call, it felt like all the worry and problems and suffering from this weekend and all the time before that would seep out.