I'll Never Tell

by Catherine McKenzie

  “We should go,” Mary said.

  Margaux didn’t know what to say, so she followed Mary off the dock to where everyone was crowding together on the beach for the photograph.

  “Where were you?” Mark asked, appearing at her shoulder. “Everyone was asking.”

  “I had to take care of something.”

  “On the Island?”

  “Just leave it, Mark, okay?”

  He took a step back. She felt badly—this wasn’t his fault—but she couldn’t handle him right now. Why was he still here? They’d broken up. That had happened before the memorial, she was almost certain of it.

  She walked into the crowd, deflecting the questions of the curious. She found Kate and Liddie. She felt safe with them. Amy and Owen were there too but hanging back.

  “Where’s Sean?” Liddie asked.

  “Gone,” Margaux said.

  “I guess he did it,” Kate said.

  “Course he did, dummy,” Liddie said.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Keep your voices down,” Margaux hissed. “Both of you.”

  Mary climbed onto the ladder. Ryan was in the front row with Kerry and the girls. Their eyes met briefly and he mouthed, Where’s Sean? Margaux shook her head.

  “Get closer, everyone! Closer!” Mary yelled as the wind whipped her braid of hair around. They obeyed, and Mary set the timer. She left the camera on the ladder and scurried down, finding a place in the shot.

  “Okay, now everyone say, ‘Camp Macaw’!”

  “Camp Macaw!” they bellowed as one.

  Then the repeating began, mac-caw, caw, caw.

  • • •

  After the picture was taken, it was time for the lantern ceremony. Even though it wasn’t dark yet, it would still be effective. Mary took the position Ryan had so many years ago on the dock, a lighter in her hand as everyone lined up with their lanterns.

  “I brought this for you,” Kate said, handing her one.

  “I didn’t get time to make mine.”

  “I figured.”

  “Thanks, Kate.”

  Kate was holding her own lantern. Margaux could see her wish, a simple word: Amy. Kate saw her looking, then lifted her chin. “I’m not hiding anymore.”

  “Good.”

  Owen was standing off to the side of the line, his guitar strapped across his shoulder, gently strumming a tune. Margaux recognized it after a moment. “Amazing Grace.” Tears sprang to her eyes. That was her mother’s favorite around the campfire. Had Liddie told him that, or did he remember on his own?

  “That’s a pretty good guy you got yourself there,” she said to Liddie as they stepped onto the dock.

  “I know.” Liddie’s eyes turned serious. “What are we going to do?”

  “Let’s do this first. We’ll talk after, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Margaux held the lantern between her hands. The wind was stronger now, blowing the lanterns around as they were released. They rose anyway, the combination of heat and physics working as it always had. Margaux watched them, overcome by a web of memories. Not the ones she was trying to recover on the Island but the real moments before that. Amanda and her on the dock. How Ryan was holding his lighter. How Amanda was hiding her wish from him. Margaux could see it all now—Ryan had been her wish. How he’d winked at them, she’d thought then, but it must’ve been at Amanda.

  Oh, Amanda.

  The line moved quickly, Mary efficient. She lit Kate’s lantern, then Liddie’s. Now it was Margaux’s turn. She held hers out.

  “There’s no wish,” Mary said.

  “I forgot.”

  “Here, I’ve got a pencil. Step out of line.”

  She did as she was told. Mary passed the lighter to Liddie and instructed her to keep the line going. Liddie mock saluted her but was clearly pleased at the responsibility. So silly. They were all so silly, these rituals they clung to.

  Mary dug a pencil out of her pocket and handed it to Margaux.

  “Can you hold it while I write on it?” Margaux said.

  “Sure.”

  Mary held it sideways as Margaux bent over it. Her hair fell forward, obscuring the space. She brushed it back, wishing she’d braided it like Mary.

  Like Mary.

  “Hurry up,” Mary said. “You’re going to miss it.”

  Margaux’s hand was shaking as she wrote: I want to remember. She watched the words form, her handwriting acting like open sesame. The memories tumbled out. The handwriting on the whiteboard. The person who’d written that Sean was on the Island that night and wrote in her name.

  It was Mary.

  She looked up. Mary’s mouth was open slightly, a round O of surprise at her wish. Could she tell what Margaux was thinking, what she was puzzling out?

  “Are you going to let me light that or what?” Liddie asked.

  “Here, I’ll do it,” Mary said, plucking the lighter out of Liddie’s hand. She flicked it, and Margaux’s lantern was ablaze.

  “Let go, or you’ll get burned.”

  She let go.

  CHAPTER 47

  THE SECRET GARDEN

  Mary

  Margaux was staring at Mary with a strange look on her face.

  They’d left the docks and were on the beach, watching the lanterns float up into the sky. Owen was still strumming his guitar, shifting through a range of tunes. Mary could smell the rain in the air. They didn’t have long now before it would strike.

  “What is it, Margaux?”

  “You did it,” she said. “You hit Amanda.”

  Mary turned away. She felt almost nothing at this accusation. Only a small measure of relief. “That’s ridiculous. Sean did it.”

  “He said he didn’t, and I believe him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he thinks I did it.”

  “You’d never hurt Amanda.”

  “You’re right. But if Sean thinks I did, then he obviously didn’t do it. Which leaves only one person.”

  Mary’s eyes were fixed on her own lantern, the last one released. She’d never believed in wishes, and yet, she’d written a name on hers like she had every year. His name.

  “Why are you so convinced all of a sudden? It could’ve been anyone . . . those boys on the other side of the lake.”

  “It wasn’t them.”

  Owen started playing “Fire’s Burning.” One of the lifers began singing, then Kate and Liddie joined in. Mary expected Margaux to do so as well, but instead she kept looking at Mary in that same accusatory way.

  Ryan walked up to them. “It’s going to rain. We should probably get everyone back to the lodge.” He leaned closer so he couldn’t be heard. “Then we should reconvene at the house and decide what to do.”

  Now Mary felt a measure of fear. “Decide what to do about what?”

  “Sean.”

  “You’re not actually going to call the police, are you?” Margaux asked.

  “I think we should, and Liddie agrees.”

  “Don’t do that,” Mary said.

  “You think we should just let him go?” Ryan said. “Let him get away with it?”

  “He’s not going to get your share of camp. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” Margaux said quietly. “I don’t think so.”

  Margaux was on the verge of tears. Mary understood what that meant. Margaux was sad because she was going to do something she didn’t want to do, but that wasn’t going to keep her from doing it.

  “Please, Margaux. It won’t solve anything.”

  “We shouldn’t talk about this here. Let’s get everyone to the lodge, and we’ll meet at the house and decide, okay?”

  Mary nodded, but she had no intention of complying.

  • • •

&nbs
p; The rain came earlier than expected. It was easy to slip away in the chaos that followed. Shrieking kids acting as though getting water on their Sunday best was going to melt them away. Concerned parents trying to make sure all their belongings were coming with them. Her family acting as shepherds. And what was she? One lone figure in a rain jacket she’d pulled from the lost-and-found barrel in the lodge, rushing up the road.

  Lightning cracked overhead. Mary counted automatically. One, and two, and . . . It was five seconds away, five miles. The rain was falling in thick sheets, a curtain that wet her to the bone despite the yellow slicker. It wasn’t a warm summer rain but that cold, wet rain of fall, one that will leave you shivering and running for the indoors.

  Mary reached the barn. She felt as if she’d run for miles instead of minutes, her mouth full of spit, her muscles screaming. She hung her raincoat on a peg and flipped on the lights. The long row of stalls was empty save for Cinnamon. Thinking about this calmed her. She only had to make it to tomorrow, maybe even tonight, and she could return to her home, her solitude. She’d ride outside all fall until the snow fell, and then she’d go somewhere warm for the winter. She’d struggled these last few years, under the cold graying sky. Seasonal affective disorder, she read online after she’d typed in her symptoms. A form of depression related to the weather.

  Seasonal defective disorder, as Mary had read it the first time. It was how she thought of it still. A fitting diagnosis for her, the defective member of the family.

  Cinnamon was staring at her, probably wondering why she hadn’t come over to rub her nose. Horses were so attuned to the people who cared for them, any slight change in routine. They were much better than people that way. Mary remembered how her mother had fretted over Margaux after Amanda was found. Why didn’t anyone notice her, comfort her? Sean had held Margaux as if she were a prize he’d won at the fair, his face lit up, happy. After he’d let Margaux go, and it was only her, he hadn’t offered the same solace.

  Sean. It was best not to think too much about him. Mary had lots of practice at that, and if he was their brother—their half brother, though the thought of this made her almost physically sick—then all the more reason to tuck him away for good into the place where she kept all the things she wasn’t supposed to think about.

  Like that night on the road when Ryan had been with that girl. Stacey Kensington. It was family weekend, and Mary had been in the staff cabin with some of the lifers. She never used to go there, but that night, she was feeling restless. She didn’t usually drink much either or smoke what was passed around, but she did both. There she was, twenty-six, still living with her parents. Kate was, too, but she was younger, and it was what Kate wanted. Mary wanted to leave. She wanted to be free. For a few minutes, she’d felt that way.

  Then she’d kissed Simon Vauclair on the path to the bathroom. He told her she looked like Margaux, who hadn’t come, as usual. That’s when she did it. He tasted like liquor, and his mouth was aggressive. When he’d reached for the zipper on her jeans, she’d broken free and run away from him. Run right to the barn. She’d gotten on a horse, Miranda, who had a dark coat, and raced up the road. Then lights, that awful scrape of metal. Miranda reared, and she’d fallen into the ditch. Then Ryan had been there, making sure she was okay, telling her to go and hide in the woods. She learned about Stacey later. She’d felt a bit guilty about that. It was her fault, that accident. She shouldn’t have been riding drunk at night.

  But Stacey was also a stupid, reckless girl who’d had cocaine in her system. That and the fact that she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, and Ryan’s tests had been clean, had saved him. Ryan told her he would keep her involvement to himself, and Swift had appeared, as Swift always did when there was something threatening camp. Mary wondered at his loyalty sometimes, but he’d been the family lawyer for forty years. Swift took care of things; Stacey’s parents said they were going to sue, but when her tox screen came back, that was the end of that. Another crisis averted.

  I probably never thanked Ryan properly, she thought as she scratched Cinnamon’s muzzle. But that was okay. She’d thank him tonight and encourage him to call the police on Sean. It would be okay to do that. He probably wouldn’t go to jail. Not after twenty years. Sean wouldn’t confess to something he didn’t do. He wasn’t stupid enough to take the fall for Margaux, not now.

  The barn door opened, and there was Margaux, as if Mary’s thoughts had conjured her. Her hair was matted to her head.

  “Planning your escape?” she asked.

  Mary tried to keep her tone light, but her voice came out rough. “Should I be?”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “You have to admit what you did. If you don’t, the others are going to call the police and blame Sean.”

  There was that twinge of guilt again. But Mary could deal with it. She must.

  “Innocent people don’t go to jail,” she said.

  “That’s ridiculous. Sure they do.”

  “Not . . .”

  “People like us?” Margaux completed her thought. “But Sean’s not like us, is he? He’s the camp caretaker who slept with a seventeen-year-old girl when he was in his midtwenties. And he moved her body and hid both those facts all these years . . . That doesn’t sound too innocent to me.”

  “Maybe he did do it, then.”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I told you. He thought I did it.”

  “So what?”

  “You should be asking me why. Why he thought that.”

  “Okay, why, then?”

  “Because he thought he saw me. He was out on the lake, and he saw who hit her.”

  “It was dark. He was mistaken. And that doesn’t make it me.”

  Margaux took a step toward her. She tugged at the end of Mary’s braid.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hold still for a second.”

  She felt Margaux’s fingers in her hair, undoing it. Then she shook out her own wet hair. It was shorter than Mary’s, falling only to her shoulders. But Mary got her point. With their hair down, even in the light of the barn, they looked similar. Not the twins she’d always wished they’d been, but close enough.

  “He saw a blonde girl hit Amanda in the head with a paddle,” Margaux said. “It could only be me or you, and it wasn’t me.”

  Mary felt trapped. By Margaux standing so close, by the words she was saying. She was having trouble breathing.

  “He thought he saw you,” she gasped. “Maybe he was right.”

  “He wasn’t. I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “You made a mistake, writing on the whiteboard like that. Pointing a finger at me and at Sean. No one knew Sean was on the Island that night.”

  They stared at one another. Mary could smell sweat. Her own. That had been a stupid, stupid mistake. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d done it. Only, when she’d looked at the whiteboard in that early morning after she returned from the barn and J-F, her guilt screamed out at her. Everyone’s actions seemed accounted for but hers and Margaux’s. Someone was going to notice that soon. When they did, if they started asking questions, someone might figure it out. She’d picked up the pen and written that Sean was on the Island, and then, for good measure, she’d written in and circled Margaux’s name at the time it happened.

  Then she’d gone to the bathroom and scrubbed the marker off her hands.

  “You don’t know I wrote that.”

  “I recognized your handwriting.”

  “I knew Sean was on the Island that night. So what?”

  “It means you were up. It means you saw him with Amanda.”

  She looked past Margaux to the door. She wasn’t going to get out of here easily, not without hurting Margaux. And Margaux was strong, stronger than he
r.

  She took a step back, opening Cinnamon’s stall and slipping inside. She shut the door quickly behind her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re frightening Cinnamon.” Margaux would let her leave if she asked. She’d let her ride out of here.

  “You have to confess.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t let Sean go to jail for something you did. Besides, isn’t that why you did it in the first place? Because of Sean?”

  Mary recoiled. She felt like a bug that’d been hiding under a rock that had been flipped over. Exposed. She was against the back of the stall now, its wooden slats rubbing at her back.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “Tell me. Tell me what made you do it. Was it because you saw him with Amanda? Was that it?”

  “I said, stop it!”

  Mary bent and grabbed a bucket from the corner of the stall. She pushed it up against the back wall, stood on it, and grabbed at the sill. She hoisted herself up and onto one of the beams in the ceiling below the hay barn, straddling it.

  “What are you doing? Come back here!”

  Margaux’s voice receded as she pushed herself up into a standing position, holding on to the wall. She tried to steady her breathing. The next step was tricky. There was another beam above her, but she’d have to jump to get to it, then use it to swing into the hay loft. She’d done it before, she and Margaux both had, but it had been years. More than twenty.

  “Mary!”

  The thunder cracked again, closer this time. Mary controlled her panic as she sighted the beam. She could do this. It was only a matter of timing.

  “Mary, don’t. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Mary blocked her out and counted. One, two . . . on three, she was springing through the air, her hands in position to catch the beam. She did it, and held, then swung her legs back and forth, gaining momentum for the second move. Her hands felt slick, but she couldn’t slip, she couldn’t, and one, and two, and . . . She released and flew through the air. Her feet hit the hayloft floor, and she shifted her body weight forward, landing on her knees on a pile of scratchy hay.