Home

Chapter 33

I drive Brooke across the Dingmans Ferry Bridge.

Zorra has stayed behind. I can handle this myself. He has matters to attend to.

I glance at my cousin. She is staring straight ahead. I remember a family holiday when we were both teenagers. We were staying on our grandfather’s estate on Fishers Island. Fishers Island is nine miles long and one mile across. It’s off the coast of Connecticut but is technically part of New York. You probably haven’t been. It’s not a place that welcomes strangers.

One night, Brooke and I got both stoned and drunk on the beach. I have rarely gotten stoned. Myron does not approve and there are very few other people I trust enough that I am willing to lose control in front of them. At one point, Brooke suggested we take a night canoe ride.

So we did.

It was late by then, probably approaching midnight. We paddled and then started drifting. Both of us lay back. We talked about life. Even now I can remember every word. I stared up at the sky. The stars were out in full force.

It was glorious to behold.

I don’t know whether it was because we were high or because we were lost in the conversation or perhaps the beauty of the sky put us in a trance. But suddenly we heard a rushing noise. We bolted upright as the final ferry of the day headed directly toward us. The ferry is large-large enough to carry both passengers and vehicles from the mainland to our island.

It was bearing down on us. Nay, it was almost on top of us.

There would be no time to paddle to safety.

Brooke moved first. She jumped from her spot and tackled me, throwing us both into the water. We started to swim frantically as the ferry came closer. Even now, even as I sit in this car, I can feel that bow pass over my back. I have been close to death many times. But that, my friends, was the closest.

I didn’t react in time. Brooke did.

Brooke stares out the front windshield. “Rhys is dead, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

She looks at me.

“I think he is,” I say, “but I’m not giving up yet.”

“It’s starting to become clear to me. My son is dead. I think I have always known. I always felt it. But I would never rely on a mother’s intuition. I rely on facts, not emotion. I turned off emotion when my son vanished ten years ago.”

“You’ve been a good mother to Clark.”

She almost smiles. “I have been, haven’t I?”

“The best.”

“He’s a good boy,” she says. “He suffered so much over the years. Do you remember my father’s funeral?”

“Of course.”

“I was eleven. You were twelve. I never saw his body. The heart attack was so sudden. My mother wanted a closed casket. There was no point in seeing him that way. That’s what everybody told me. But… I had a friend, a soldier. She told me that the reason they made sure that they brought home the dead, even risking their own lives, was so that the families could mourn. She said that they needed something tangible in order to move on. We all need to say good-bye, Win. We need to accept it, no matter how terrible, and then move on. I knew Rhys was dead, even before Patrick told me. And yet, even though I know I’ll never see my boy again, I still have hope.”

I say nothing.

“And I hate hope,” Brooke says.

We reach Lake Charmaine. Someone had put the sign back in place by wrapping the chain around a post. I simply drive through it. The chain gives way easily. Hunter’s pickup truck is still blocking the driveway. I check the rental car’s location on the GPS again. It hasn’t moved, so the car is still at this house. I take out my revolver, a Smith & Wesson 460, and look at Brooke.

“May I request that you stay here until I suss this out?” I ask.

Her answer is to open the car door and get out. I figured that it would be a waste of time, but one must make the effort. We start up the driveway, just as I had done with Myron. Hunter is in the same Adirondack chair. The rifle is on his lap.

As we move closer, Hunter spots us. He begins to rise, pointing the rifle our way.

“Don’t kill him,” Brooke says.

I shoot him in the leg. He drops to one knee. I shoot him in the shoulder. The rifle goes flying. I move toward him now. Brooke is right behind me.

Hunter looks up at me, then at Brooke. He is crying.

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

“Where is she?” I ask.

“So sorry.”

I bend down, find the bullet wound on his shoulder, and squeeze hard.

He screams.

“Where is she?”

The front door of the house suddenly opens. A young woman with long hair steps outside.

Brooke puts a hand on my arm and nods.

“That’s Vada,” she says.