Second Honeymoon

Chapter 43

EDWARD BARLISS, DIRECTOR of Camp Wilderlocke, looked at me as if I were from Mars. No, worse. He looked at me as if I were the parent from hell.

After a three-hour drive straight from Manhattan, I’d walked unannounced into his small, pine-scented office on the camp’s fifty-acre complex in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Did I mention the unannounced part?

“Mr. O’Hara, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m here to see my kids.”

“Family visiting day isn’t until next week, though.”

I was well aware of this. I was also well aware that I was breaking the rules at Camp Wilderlocke, and that Edward Barliss and his fellow “Wilderlockians” took their rules very seriously. In addition to not being permitted to use electronic gadgets—a ban I wholly supported—the kids weren’t allowed to call home until they were ten days into their four-week session. That was a rule I begrudgingly supported.

“I know it’s not visiting day, and I’m sorry,” I said. “But this couldn’t wait. I need to see them.”

“Is it some kind of family emergency? Has someone died?” he asked.

“No, no one has died.”

“But it is an emergency?”

“Yes, you could say that.”

“Is it health-related?”

He stared at me, waiting for my answer. I stared right back at him, a vision in a red plaid shirt and hiking shorts, wondering how long this little game of twenty questions was going to continue. To glance around his tidy office—the neatly stacked files, the pushpins all aligned perfectly on the bulletin board—was to know immediately that Barliss was a man who prided himself on being organized, on top of things. As an uninvited guest, I was about as welcome as a bedbug in one of his cabins.

Wait until you hear the rest, buddy. Brace yourself, okay?

If he didn’t like my being there to see Max and John Jr., he really wasn’t going to like what I had planned for them.

Screw beating around the bush. I blurted it out.

“You want to do what?” he asked. It was complete disbelief. As though I’d just told a kid there was no Santa Claus, Easter bunny, or tooth fairy while eating a piece of his Halloween candy.

“Think of it as a brief field trip,” I explained. “I promise to have them back in a couple of hours.”

“Mr. O’Hara, I’m afraid—”

I cut him off. I had to. Barliss was exactly what you wanted from someone you’ve entrusted your kids to…up to a point. But ultimately he was camp director, not camp dictator, and I hadn’t driven all this way just so I could turn around and go home. Desperate times, desperate measures. It was time to rearrange his pushpins.

“Afraid? Don’t be afraid, Ed,” I said. “The fact that I just came from the shrink my boss at the FBI is making me see because he’s afraid I’m going to go completely postal on someone should in no way make you feel ill at ease. And even if it did, rest assured I’ve been stripped of my firearm—at least the one the Bureau knows about. Now can you have someone round up my boys?”

The poor guy. Slowly, he reached for one of those short-range walkie-talkie things and radioed a couple of counselors with the message that they should find Max and John Jr. All the while he kept one eye trained on me, watching for any sudden moves.

Two minutes later, the boys walked through the door. They were tan and sweaty in their shorts and T-shirts, scrapes on their knees, smudges of dirt on their necks and elbows. They looked and smelled exactly like…well…camp.

Max’s face lit up; he was excited to see me. J.J.? Not so much. He had the same first question as Director Barliss.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

“I need to take you guys somewhere, a place you need to see.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. It won’t take too long, I promise. I’ll have you both back by dinner.”

J.J. looked at me as only a thirteen-year-old boy who’s embarrassed to share your DNA can.

“Are you crazy?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m your father. Now let’s go.”