One

Looking back now, the revelation that my mom actually killed someone started with the sound of a plate hitting the kitchen floor.

The day began like any other. I was sitting at the small round table where we always ate breakfast. I had my chemistry book open to the chapter on hydrogen bonding because Mr. Clarke was giving a test on it that day. My dad was next to me, reading on his propped-up iPad. Probably a stock report or some sports thing. He was dressed nice, shirt and tie with a jacket hanging over the back of the chair. He had a big business meeting in Colorado and was waiting for his ride to take him to the airport. And my mom was in the kitchen, standing at the stove working on our omelets. If this all sounds a bit too domestic-blissy, like something out of the Fifties or whatever, you should know that my mom wanted it this way. Her plan had always been to stay home, cooking and cleaning, while hubby went out to hunt and gather. It wouldn’t be much longer before I found out why she’d arranged her life that way.

The big TV in the living room—we had an open floor plan, so there was no wall between the living room and the kitchen—was on, tuned to the local news. My mom insisted on this every morning. That’s why my dad was on his iPad. I’m sure he would’ve preferred to get his updates from ESPN or CNBC on the big screen. But we started each day with the local news, period. My mom had always claimed this was because she was a crisis junkie. But if that was the case, how come she never watched any of the international channels like CNN or BBC World? It wasn’t like rest of the planet didn’t have enough crises going on. Here again was a mystery whose resolution was heading toward me at light speed. 

The report at that moment involved a big accident on Route 287, the main highway in our area. Someone at the wheel of a tractor trailer apparently dozed off in the middle of the night, drifted into the opposite lane, and ploughed into another trailer at high speed. According to the headline at the bottom of the screen, both drivers were killed. There was a live video of the crash site—lots of emergency vehicles with their lights going, people in uniforms walking around. The two trucks were still there, mostly covered by a huge tarp. I couldn’t help wondering if the bodies were still inside.

My dad’s phone chimed, and he pulled it out of the holster at the back of his belt to read the message.

“Limo’s ten minutes away,” he announced. Then, to me, “how’s the studying coming, brat?”

“Fine.”

“This is a big one, right?”

“A quarter of the grade for the marking period.”

“And you’re ready? You got this?”

“I do, yeah.”

I’d been prepping for the last three days and last three nights. My dream was to be a medical researcher, which meant I had a lot more schooling ahead of me. I’d need a master’s degree at least, but more likely a doctorate if I wanted to do something that would really make a difference. That was my ultimate goal—to make some kind of breakthrough that would change the world. None of that would happen, however, if I didn’t get into a good college in the first place. I’d been stressing about it from the moment I started high school, and now, as a senior and Young Woman Ready to Take on the World, it was in my thoughts every minute.

“I have no doubt you’ll ace it,” dad said, giving me that smile of his. It was a smile that said, I’m proud of you and believe in you completely. It’s amazing how much motivation comes from the desire to make sure you never let your parents down. And since I had no siblings, I found the reassurance particularly important.  

“Thanks, I’ve been basically living with this stupid book since—”

!!! >> CRASH << !!!

Our heads turned at the same time, and the first thought that came to me was Where did my mom go? She’d been standing at the island just a moment earlier, and now she wasn’t there.

“Barbara!”

My dad dove—seriously, he pretty much dove—out of the chair and went down to her. That’s when I realized she was on the floor.

“Oh my God, mom!” I screeched, then I was down there, too.

She was on all fours with this awful look on her face. Her eyes kept going from wide open to squeezed shut…wide open to squeezed shut…. Then one hand went to her chest as she tried to catch her breath. She’s having a heart attack, I thought.

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” I told them. I already had my phone in hand and no memory of reaching into my back pocket to get it.

“No,” my mom said with very little strength.

“Mom, you’re—”

“No….” She shook her head. “just wait.”

So that’s what my dad and I did. We remained there for an endless time, in some kind of bizarre huddle-type formation as we listened to her wheeze like someone twice her age who’d had a three-pack-a-day habit all their life. It was during this interminable pause that I realized there were bits of both food and shattered earthenware all over the tile floor. The plate in question had been this heavy orange thing with a thick coating of fired glaze. It was a miracle we didn’t kneel in any of the shards and cut ourselves.

With the same hand that she’d placed on her chest—a hand that was now shaking vividly—she reached for one of the drawer handles.

“Barb,” my dad said, “stop, let us help you up.”

“Yeah, Barb,” I added, hoping to inject some humor into the situation. I sometimes called my parents by their first names, as that had become a trend among some of my friends. It was only meant for fun, and they always seemed amused by it. Except now, that is. Not even a ghost of a smile passed across either of their lips.

She got to her feet—there were bits of egg sticking to her jeans from the knees down—and I expected her to say something very my-mom-ish, like, I’m okay, go back and sit down, then apologize for alarming us or whatever.

Instead, she turned away while clamping a hand over her mouth and hurried toward the hallway. I knew exactly where she was going.

My dad and I followed her in perfect step with each other, almost like we’d choreographed it. We reached the hall just in time to see the back of her disappear into the little bathroom and slam the door shut. Then we stood there, stunned and clueless about what to do next as we listened to her heave her guts out. I couldn’t believe how noisy it was for someone so small. It also struck me that I’d never known either of my parents to throw up before. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had, for that matter. Maybe at my mom’s cousin’s wedding in Arizona when I was twelve. My parents said I could try alcohol for the first time, so I asked for a scotch on the rocks from the open bar. I didn’t even know what it was, but I’d heard someone order it in a movie. I took the glass in both hands, downed a long first sip, and that was the end of that. My dad got me outside just in time to spew all over the nicely trimmed hedges.

The process my mom was undergoing sounded very similar. As we lingered by the door, I identified three distinct stages—the episodes of actual expulsion, her heavy breathing as she recovered, then a hideous silence as she geared up for the next one.

My dad leaned closer to the door. “Are you—”

Okay was the obvious end to that question, but I think he realized how ridiculous it would’ve sounded before he said it.   

“Sweetheart, what can I do?” he asked instead.

A few more labored breaths from the other side, and then, “I’m fine…I just….”

“You’re obviously not fine,” dad replied. “Do you want me to take you to the emergency room?”

“No, it’s…no.”

My dad’s phone picked that moment to chime again. As he inspected the screen, another layer of concern settled over his face.

“Go,” came my mom’s voice. “You’ll miss your flight.”

“Barb, I can always catch another one, but this is—”

“It’s nothing,” she said, and I sensed a weariness in her tone from more than just the vomiting. Was it frustration with him? She never got frustrated with either of us. Actually, no—that’s not completely right. I’m sure she did. In fact, thinking back to some of the stuff my dad and I have done through the years, I’m positive. But it never manifested itself in any outward way. She was the steadiest, calmest, most tolerant person I’ve ever known.

“I think maybe it was the onions I was cooking with,” she told us.

My dad and I looked at each other with vague confusion. About a month earlier, he had asked if she’d consider adding onions to his omelets. He knew she hated onions more than anything. But, ever the people pleaser, she said she would. And for all the times she’d used them since then, she hadn’t had any reaction beyond a the occasional grunt of disgust. So her explanation now didn’t really add up. I could tell my dad was thinking likewise because I could see the same calculation running through his eyes.

I don’t know if he was planning to launch into a discussion about it at this point; he does have that almost-exclusive-to-grown-men terrible sense of timing about such things. But then a car horn issued two quick notes outside.

“Go,” my mom said. “I’ll be fine.”

Dad remained rooted in place for another few seconds. (He really did love her so much, and I really did love him for that.) Then he fast-walked to the kitchen, grabbed his iPad and jacket, and came back.

“You’ll keep an eye on her?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I replied as if I didn’t have school today. What else was I going to say?

“Thanks.” He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. Then, to the bathroom door, he said, “Honey, please text me as soon as you can and let me know what’s going on.”

“I will.”

“Okay, love you.”

“You too….” she replied.

With that, he grabbed his bags from the foyer and went out the front door. 

Two

All was quiet now. Even from inside the bathroom, I didn’t hear a sound. I mean not a sound. No vomiting, no labored breathing, nothing.

I stepped closer and thought about putting my ear against the door. The reason I didn’t was because my mom would know. There wasn’t a noise in this house she didn’t hear.

After a few more moments—during which I found myself entertaining the notion that she might have fallen asleep—I said very gently, “mom?”

She let out one long and weary breath.

“Liss, go to school,” she replied with that same frustration-bordering-on-irritation tone that I’ve heard at least once from every person I know except her.

Be happy to, mom, but I need to check myself over in the mirror one more time before I go. Like I do every day, remember? I wasn’t one of those kids who was crazy concerned about every inch of my appearance. I was kind of smallish, with brown hair down to my shoulders, and I didn’t wear a ton of makeup. But I still tried to look halfway decent whenever I could.  

“Well…are you going to be all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Maybe I should stay in case you need me.”

“You have…your test.”

“I can ask Mr. Clarke to—”

“GO TO SCHOOL, MELISSA!!!”

Now I froze, and all sorts of poisonous things surged through me. My emotional side felt shades of hurt, anger, confusion that I’d never known before, while the intellectual side wondered what I’d done to make her so mad, why a simple matter of throwing up would cause her to react in this way, and—perhaps at the top of the list—just who the hell that was on the other side of the door…?

“Umm, okay,” I said finally. I wanted it to sound a little bit snotty, but it came out weak and timid instead. “I’ll see you later.”

I hung there for one more beat. Hoping, I suppose, that she would say something like I’m sorry, Liss or I didn’t mean to yell, I just don’t feel great right now or whatever.

She didn’t.

****

I usually had lunch at one of three places in town on a school day—the diner, the deli, or the sushi place. I chose the sushi place because they had a room in the back that was usually quiet. I sat there eating my rolls and thinking about my mom and things like whether or not demons really could enter and possess human souls.

On the way back to school, I decided to send her a text—

Me: Hey, how are you feeling?

That sounded good. Casual and not too prying. And my mom did respond—but not right away, which was really bizarre. She always texted back within a minute or two. This time it took awhile.

Mom: I’m fine.

The long delay wasn’t the only bizarre part. She also didn’t turn the conversation back to me at the end with something like, And how are you? Or, So what’s happening at school? For the first time ever, I got this vibe like she didn’t want to chat. Like if I didn’t keep the conversation going, it would be DOA.

Me: Are you feeling any better?

(Four minutes and twenty two seconds pass.)

Mom: A little.

Me: Are you lying down?

(Five minutes and eight seconds.)

Mom: Yes.

Me: Do you want me to stop and get you anything on the way home?

(Nine minutes and forty-four seconds—and now I was standing outside the school, and the bell was about to ring.)

Mom: No, just focus on your classes, please.

I stood there staring at that last message for a time. The bell did ring, but I was only aware of it in the muted way sounds register when you’re underwater. This isn’t my mom, I thought. This is someone else.

I couldn’t believe she had undergone such a radical transformation just because she’d thrown up. No matter how difficult the circumstances, she never acted like this. She was always kind and patient and civil. Always. And not just to me and my dad, but to everybody. I decided then and there that I was going to skip last period—a study hall in which I usually did my homework—and go back home.

Funny how the biggest changes in our life sometimes start with the smallest decisions. 

Three

Our house looks like a giant box from the street. And I suppose that’s pretty much all it is—a really big box made of wood and plaster and some glass and whatever else. What I’m saying is that it’s not architecturally interesting or anything. Just an enormous cube painted light blue, with white shutters on the windows and a white door above the little step at the front. The lawn is split by a concrete walkway, and some miniature shrubs stand in a neat line under the windows. All very nice and respectable.

On the right is the driveway, and at the back of that is a gate. It’s part of the fence that surrounds our backyard. I don’t think of it as a ‘real’ fence, though, because you can see through most fences. This one is more like a wall, and it’s so high that it’s impossible for anyone to get a good look back there. Once again, this was my mom’s idea. When she and dad really started throwing some effort into the yard, she insisted on complete privacy. After the Great Wall of Barbara was in place, she went on a kind of landscaping jihad, and what was once an uninspiring stretch of grass and trees was transformed into a wild and woody wonderland. They put in everything from bright flowers and ornamental bushes to birdhouses and statues. A little fountain in one corner burbled with water that gushed out of a fish’s mouth. Narrow pathways that didn’t even exist before now wound along the edges, behind ivy-laced trellises and tree-shaded arbors. And there was a garden, too, because my mom loved gardening, and because we all loved fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables.

Closer to the house was a flagstone patio. A team of professionals built that, along with a grill that was assembled from the ground up—large stones cemented together—and  was more like an altar than an appliance. It had a gas line running to it, but you could also use firewood. It even had a little chimney. My parents loved it, and once they found just the right table and chairs to match everything else, eating out there in the warmer months became standard procedure.

It was fairly warm for a northeastern October, with a high of 74Fº according to Weather Underground, so I figured my mom would’ve set our plates on the outside table. This was how I knew where we’d be eating each day—I’d get back from school, open the gate, and see the table nicely arranged and ready to go. But it wasn’t this time. And there were still autumn leaves scattered all over it, which she would’ve cleared away.

Maybe she just decided to have dinner inside instead, I thought. Because that’s what we do, right? We rationalize things we don’t understand, and we usually do it in the most positive manner possible.

Well, that didn’t last long, for as soon as I reached the sliding glass doors that stood between the flagstone patio and the living room, I knew no measure of rationality would be able to smother the stark reality that I saw inside.

The mess on the kitchen floor was still there.

****

You need to understand something about my mom. She likes things neat. And I mean neat. If you came into the house with a microscope, you wouldn’t find any filth. The corners of every room are spotless. There are no dusticles under the furniture. And that little space on the floor behind the toilet? Sterile. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen her down there with those yellow rubber gloves, a scrubby pad in one hand and a bottle of solvent nearby. Everything in the house has an assigned spot, too. I swear she has a schematic diagram tucked away somewhere, and every time we bring in something new—a vase, a plant, a picture frame, whatever—she updates it.

So to see that mess still on the kitchen floor after so many hours sent shockwaves through every part of me. From there my imagination went into overdrive—she really did have a heart attack…she’s lying dead right now…just like those two drivers in the tractor trailers this morning…maybe she’s still in the bathroom…. I could picture her clearly, on her side in a sloppy sort-of-fetal position, her body stiffened by rigor mortis.

I shook these thoughts away and opened the sliding door. I did this as slowly and quietly as a thief, then stepped inside and closed it again.

The morning mess, with its high egg-and-onion content, had started to reek a little bit. This was also a jolt to the system because my mom hated unpleasant smells. Then I saw that the remote for the big TV was still on the counter by the blender. The TV itself, however, was a blank screen, offering nothing more than a shadowy, distorted view of the room and a scrunched-down me at the back. That meant mom had taken the time to turn it off but didn’t return the remote to its proper spot on the end table by the fireplace.

I removed my clogs and set them on the mat next to the door. Another example of standard operating procedure in our household. (Although this time, I realized with some discomfort, I wasn’t doing it to honor that procedure but instead to remain as close to silent as possible.) After that I started tiptoeing—actually tiptoeing—across the carpet. 

I reached the hallway and saw that the door to the bathroom was open now and the light was off. That made me feel a little better. It meant she wasn’t in there anymore (and that my mental image of her rigid corpse lying there, with the lights on and the exhaust fan humming away, was invalid).

I went to the doorway and stopped. The last thing I wanted at that point was a noseful of vomit-stench, yet I still leaned forward a degree or two and sniffed. Two things registered immediately—some kind of cleaning fluid, and the pleasant fragrance of a scented candle. Pushing the door back a little further, I saw a votive on the basin, its tiny flame glowing peacefully. Then I caught a third aroma that was almost, but not quite, disguised by the solvent and the candle. It was whatever had decided to hit the eject button in my mom’s stomach that morning…which meant she had rushed through the cleanup process.

Impossible, I thought.

I continued down the hall until I reached the front door. There was a formal dining room through an archway on the right. Nothing had been disturbed in there, which wasn’t surprising since we only used that room when guests were over. The rest of the time it just sort of sat there in the dusty sunlight looking grand.

I turned to the staircase, and as soon as I took the first step, I heard her. The sound was faint but unmistakable. A sound I’d heard only once before and prayed I never would again.

She was upstairs, crying.

Four

My first impulse was to run up there and wrap my arms around her in a reassuring hug. She certainly had hugged me enough times when I needed it. When I sprained my knee during my first gymnastics practice. When I got my first period. When that slimebag Danny Wallace dumped me the day before the eighth-grade prom so he could go with someone else. Whenever I was upset and showing it, she was there.

But something held me back; probably the same something that told me to maintain that cat-burglar stealth. I took each step very gingerly in my fuzzy rainbow socks, and when I reached the top I realized she was in the office. This was the second door on the right, the first being the bathroom (a full one this time, with a shower and tub and everything), and the third being my bedroom.

As I drew closer, I realized she wasn’t just crying, she was hysterical. When I got there, I leaned over just far enough to peer in. What I saw was more like something out of a TV drama than real life. She was sitting in front of the computer, eyes on the screen, arms crossed tight, and rocking like a child. The grief pouring out of her was so intense that she was having trouble breathing; I could hear all the phlegm in her throat. But there were other hitchy sounds as well, the most disturbing of which were the puppy-whimpers.

What the…?

She didn’t notice me, thank goodness (the way the office was arranged, she and the desk were turned to one side). And the same instinct that led me to creep around silently now told me to get the hell out of there. Which I did, following a full reversal of the way I came—down the stairs, through the hallway, into the kitchen, back into my clogs, and outside again.

****

Without a clue where to go, I cut a straight line across our fairytale forest to the shed. It was situated in the farthest corner, tucked protectively beneath the overhanging branches of two maple trees.

I stepped inside, closed the door—the aromas of fresh potting soil and organic fertilizer were immediate and powerful—and sat down on my mom’s gardening stool. I didn’t realize until that moment how upset I was. When I put my hand on my chest, my heart was booming like a bass drum.

The only other time I’d known her to cry was when her father died. After we got back from the funeral, I saw her sitting on her bed with my dad next to her, an arm around her shoulders, as she dabbed at the tears with a wadded-up tissue. But I got that, you know? I loved her father, too. He was the best grandfather ever. Always in a good mood, gave fantastic birthday presents. And he had an endless supply of dumb jokes (which was okay because he knew they were dumb). He was also the best at-home cook in the world. So yeah, I got that my mom was crushed when he died.

But this I didn’t get at all. The only thing I knew for sure was that it wasn’t the onions—which meant she had been lying. And I just couldn’t get my mind around that.

I needed to find out what was on the computer. That was the key. The question was how. She was still there, face to face with it, and willing to lie to keep it hidden. So how could I check it out? And without her knowing? The only way that was going to happen was if she wasn’t in the hou—

Dinner.

Yeah, that was it. That was the answer.

Dinner….

****

Toward the end of each school day, my mom would text to ask what I wanted for dinner. If it was something we didn’t have in the fridge or freezer, she’d make a supermarket run. I usually didn’t want her to go to all that trouble. But every now and then I’d have a craving and couldn’t help myself. One of those was corn dogs. Another was pork shoulder. Then there was her homemade burritos. My mom’s from-scratch burritos were a trip to paradise and back. The problem was they required a lot of work because there were so many separate parts—the rice, the beans, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the cheese, the meat. The last time I asked for them was on my birthday, which was seven months ago. But now….

I took my phone out and started typing.

Me: I have a dinner request, if you’re feeling up for it.

Just over five minutes passed before she responded—

Mom: What is it?

I let out a long and very relieved sigh. If she’d said something like Sorry, not tonight or I’m still not feeling well, so you’ll have to order something, the plan would’ve been over before it started.

Me: I’d love to have one of your burritos. We haven’t had them in such a long time! And since you’re not feeling great, I’ll help you make them, but I don’t know what to get from the store. Pleeeeeease???

This time it took more than seven minutes for her to respond, during which my heart was pounding so hard I thought it might explode.

Mom: Okay.

That was it—Okay. Certainly better than No, sorry or Can’t do it or whatever. But again, these quick responses…it really didn’t seem like that was my mom on the other end of the conversation.

Another fifteen minutes passed before she left the house. I watched through the shed’s little window as she went out that side door and walked to the gate. She had her bag over her shoulder, and she was wearing her usual jeans, blouse, and sneakers. She had very little in the way of formal clothing because she rarely went anywhere.

She let the gate close with a bang. A few seconds later I heard the car start, then fade away as she went down the street.

Five

My mom is one of those people who likes to take her time when she’s at the supermarket. She stops and reads labels. She puts things in the cart, then changes her mind and puts them back on the shelf. She calculates the value of coupons and ends up buying ten of something instead of five just to save a dollar over the long haul. And if she sees a new product, she studies it with the intensity of a biologist examining a new species. That’s why my dad and I never go with her. I’m pretty patient for a teenager, but I’m not a saint.

Having said all that, I still felt the need to move as swiftly as possible because I didn’t want to push my luck. I got inside, removed my clogs again, and pattered across the carpet (realizing—I can’t believe I’m saying this—that I was still trying to be dead quiet; as if she had planted recording devices everywhere in the hopes of catching me).

As I passed by the kitchen, I noticed from the corner of my eye that she’d finally cleaned up the mess from this morning. That was probably why it took her so long to leave in the first place. I didn’t want to waste time inspecting the site to see how thorough she’d been. But I could still smell the eggs and onions, so my guess was not that much.

I went up the stairs, into the office, and sat at the desk. On the screen, I saw a bunch of icons scattered over an image of a Hawaiian beach at sunset. My dad loves anything to do with Hawaii. It’s where he and my mom went on their honeymoon, and he talks about going back all the time.

There were icons for all sorts of boring programs like Word and Excel, but I was only interested Firefox. That’s where my mom had been before.  

The browser opened to Google, which was the default page they’d set. Then I hit the ‘Alt’ button, and when ‘History’ appeared along the top of the screen, I clicked on it…and there was nothing.

Nothing.

She cleared it.

She actually cleared out the browsing history.

I stared at the empty gray box for a moment, then whispered, “Son of a….”

I didn’t even know she knew how to do that. She was reasonably competent around computers, but flushing a browser history? Not that it’s hard or anything, I just didn’t think it fell within her level of expertise.

Or desire, for that matter. She covered her tracks. She actually went somewhere on the Web that she didn’t want us to know about.

“Umm, okay….”

I typed ‘how recover deleted browser history Firefox’ into the Google strip and hit ‘Enter’. I knew there were multiple ways of doing this; ways that I’m positive she didn’t know about. And sure enough, the very first search result provided a solution. There was a hidden file in the C: drive called ‘index.dat’ that I had to locate. Then I had to download a free mini-app in order to open it. After that, I only needed to click ‘Restore’, and the list of sites where she’d been was back.

Turns out she’d only been to one.

One.

And nothing in the world could’ve prepared me for what was on it.

****

It was an article within a news site—the same local station that my mom has insisted on watching every morning for as long as I can remember. That in itself was pretty jarring. It also put the first piece of the puzzle into place, because I realized one of the stories that ran in the morning had to be what caused her to drop that plate and then run to the bathroom.

The headline read as follows—

LYNCHPORT POLICE TO USE NEW SONAR TECHNOLOGY TO SEARCH LAKE PHELAN

A frozen hand wrapped itself around my heart.

“What?”

That breathless feeling gradually morphed into something between drunk and dazed as I worked through the brief article below—

Bill Barton, Chief of Police in the town of Lynchport, announced today that his investigative team would soon be making use of an increasingly popular search-and-recovery tool known as ‘side scan technology’. A side scan unit is being loaned to them by state authorities to audit the murky bottom of Lake Phelan, a freshwater spring lake on Lynchport’s thickly forested western border. It is also among the deepest in the region and has been the subject of numerous dark rumors through the years. The most persistent is that it has served as a dumping ground for one of the most notorious auto insurance fraud rings in American history. However, due to the difficulties of exploring the lake’s depths, authorities have previously been unable to substantiate this claim.

“Side scan technology is an investigator’s dream,” Barton said on Tuesday. “Searching waterways via divers is not only a long process, but also adds a considerable level of risk to an already dangerous assignment. Side scan sonar allows us to remove that risk, plus it scans quickly and produces detailed images of the bottom, regardless of relative depth or water clarity.” Barton added that a side scanner might not work in places of extreme depth like the open ocean, but is ideal for a target area like Lake Phelan.

When asked if he was confident they would locate any vehicles utilized as part of a fraud ring should there be any down there, he replied, “One hundred percent, yes. If they’re there, we’ll find them.”

My mouth was hanging open as I read and re-read every word, a thousand questions swirling through my mind. But only one was persistent—My mom was part of an insurance fraud ring?

As turns out, no, that wasn’t it at all.

Not even close.

Six

After I read the article for what felt like the hundreth time, I erased the browsing history again. Then I went straight to my bedroom. I had to read Chapter 17 in Chemical Analysis for tomorrow, although that wasn’t the only reason I went in there. It was also because that’s where my mom would expect me to be, and what she’d expect me to be doing, when she got back. All part of the routine in our home.

I got on the bed and opened the book to Chapter 17 (‘Valance Bond Theory’). Then something unexpected happened—I found myself unable to absorb the information. My eyes were going over the words, but the data wasn’t encoding into my brain. I would read a sentence once, then twice. Then I’d notice I really hadn’t ‘gotten it’ the first two times, and I’d go at it again. Like a team of medieval soldiers trying to bust down a gate with a battering ram. Except my battering ram wasn’t made of birch or maple. It was more like that Nerf material.

I was alerted to my mom’s return a short time later by an invocation of familiar sounds downstairs—the porch door as it slid open and closed, the crinkling of shopping bags, the clatter of pots and pans as they were removed from the cabinets. Again, a normal part of our happy life, except that my whole body had tightened like a fist. My breathing paused for a time, too. That’s when a sickening thought hit me like an icy wind: I’m SCARED. I’m actually SCARED of her right now. I have never once felt fearful of my parents. My dad’s a pretty big guy and is prone to grumpiness every now and then, but that’s about it. When he gets really frustrated, he’ll shake his head and curse under his breath. And when my mom runs out of emotional rope, she stiffens up, her mouth shrinks to a little pucker, and her eyes narrow into this wicked kind of stare. But neither of them yell or hit or throw things. Like I said, I never felt fearful before. I did now, though.

I knew that she knew I was up here. My clogs were on the mat by the door; the same place where I left my shoes every day. She would see them, and then, following procedure, go the bottom of the stairs and call up to see how I was doing and how my classes went. It was pretty much choreographed at that point.

Except she didn’t do that now. All I heard was dropping something, then banging something else. I can’t say for sure if either was done in anger, but it didn’t help my anxiety any. Then I heard the can opener on the beans, the knife chopping the lettuce and cilantro, the water filling into the pot to boil the rice. Soon the rich aromas were drifting up my way. I never realized how comforting they were until that moment. Cozy and warm and beautiful. All that was good about being home.

I allowed myself to pretend everything was okay again, if only for a few seconds. Like it had been yesterday and the day before that. Dad was getting ready for his trip to Colorado, mom was polishing water spots off one of the bathroom mirrors or whatever, and I was focused on my future as a ruthless destroyer of diseases. I went back to Chemical Analysis and, in my happy-happy mindset, started to read that first page of Chapter 17 again. But this brief journey into fantasyland ended when a text message arrived with a ping—

Dad: Well, I got here alive! I’m in an Uber heading for my hotel. How’s your mom doing?

Two startling facts immediately came to mind. First, he and my mom hadn’t communicated since he landed. And second, he clearly knew nothing about the local news story concerning the sonar device and Lake Phelan.

Okay, that’s good, I thought. At least I think it is.

Me: She’s doing better. She cleaned up both the bathroom and the kitchen. Then she went to the supermarket to get stuff for burritos. That’s what she’s doing now—making dinner.

I felt bad about omitting any mention of the article, plus the fact that mom had gone all-out Chernobyl when she read it. But I rationalized this by reminding myself I still had no idea how there was a connection between her and a bunch of sunken cars (that might not even be down there) in the first place.

Dad: Oh man, Barb’s burritos! Wish I could be there for that!

I knew he was going to say something like this, and I couldn’t help smiling. My dad is definitely a ‘foodie’, with a long list of things he absolutely loves (most of which he shouldn’t, and he knows it). If I’m being honest, I’ve become a bit like that, too, and we could both stand to lose a few pounds. But it’s hard when there’s so many great things you can stuff into your mouth these days.

Me: I’ll have her make one for you, wrap it in tin foil, and put it in the fridge.

Dad: You’re the bestest kid ever, you know that?

Me: I do, yeah.

Dad: Okay, I’m here at the Sheraton. Let me get into my room and get settled, then I’ll text you again in a little bit. Mom, too.

Me: Good luck. Love you.

Dad: Love you, too, kiddo.

I smiled again. Always when he called me ‘kiddo’. Not a particularly imaginative pet name, but I knew it came from the heart. And there was that warm feeling again. A feeling of comfort and security and safety. The feeling a kid(do) can only get from parents who truly care about them. Maybe the best feeling there is. A few moments later, my mom called up to let me know everything was ready.

That short walk I took from my room to the kitchen represented the last moments of true innocence I would ever have.   

Seven

The moment I emerged from the hallway and entered the kitchen, I could tell things weren’t quite right.

For starters, the shopping bags were still on the counter, unpacked except for whatever she needed to make the burritos. My mom never leaves them unpacked when she comes home from the supermarket. At the very least, she always makes sure to put the freezer stuff away. But I could see a quart of ice cream peeking out the top of one bag, and some French fries in another.

Second, she had now authored her third mess of the day—the pots that heated the beans and boiled the rice, the cutting board where she chopped the lettuce and the cilantro, the pan in which she spiced and sautéed the beef. She always followed the clean-as-you-go approach to cooking because she rarely wanted to bother with it once the meal was over. But this time the evidence was lying around everywhere.

Third, she was sitting at the little round table already eating. She never did that. She always waited for my dad and I so we could all eat together. It was surreal to see her there by herself, monster burrito half gone as she stared idly through the sliding glass door and into the backyard.

Finally, and perhaps most telling of all, the TV was off. As I said before, it was never off while we ate. Ever.

She didn’t realize I was standing there at first. Didn’t turn around or say hello or anything. It was true that I, still in my rainbow socks, hadn’t made a sound. But that wasn’t the reason. As I continued watching her, I could tell she had completely disconnected from our blissful domestic world and traveled to the fabled land of Elsewhere.

I started forward again.

“Hey mom,” I said as companionably as I could. It sensed then this wasn’t going to be an ordinary dinner chat but rather an interrogation—something I’d never done and had no clue how to do.

She didn’t react right away; just kept staring into the void. Then her head kind of snapped around. Not severely, but enough to indicate that she’d been really gone and was pulled back to the present against her will.

“Oh…hi.”

 I saw actual guilt on her face. Yippee, another first! Again I felt like I was dealing with someone else. Someone who just looked like my mom. 

With my sense of civil fortitude deteriorating by the second, I pulled out a chair and sat.

“How are you feeling?”

“Huh?”

“Are you feeling any bet—”

The words cut off in my mouth without my intending it. I had just lifted the cover on my plate (my mom uses these to keep our food warm), and I didn’t so much find a burrito underneath but something that was once a burrito before the soft shell relaxed, loosened, and then opened like a spring flower. I don’t want to sound like some socialite here, who expects every meal to be flawlessly prepared and presented. It’s just that my mom knows how to construct a burrito with the best of them. She wraps each one so tight you could bounce it off the wall. Every time we go to a restaurant and I get some inferior burrito, I always think Mom could teach these people a thing or two. But the master wasn’t home at the moment, because this wasn’t an Official Mom Burrito lying in front of me. It looked like something I’d make.

I gave her a quick glance and could tell she hadn’t noticed any of this.

“I was just wondering how you were feeling now,” I rolled on. “Y’know, since this morning.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine.”

She seemed irritated by the question, which for whatever reason irritated me. So now I had four emotions fighting for dominance. At the front of the pack was the ongoing fear. My mom—short hair, glasses, not quite petite in size but close—wasn’t a particularly imposing figure, yet she was scaring the living crap out of me. Then there was the obvious curiosity about whatever the hell was really going on here. Just behind that was concern for her well being. And now, newly arrived on the scene and gaining fast, was vexation bordering on mild anger.

As my inexperienced hands tried to reconstruct my dinner, I said, “Your stomach’s not turning somersaults anymore, is it?”

No response.

“Mom?”

Now she looked really irked.

“What is it, Alyssa?”

“Umm, okay, I think we can do without that tone,” I volleyed back. It was infused with more of my growing frustration than it should’ve been, as I was merely hoping to turn down the temperature with a little humor. 

“I’m fine, I said. Just….” She swiped through the air with a flattened hand in the internationally recognized gesture for leave it alone “I’m fine.”

I might have let it go at that moment if both the hand in question and her voice weren’t shaking so badly. And hey, there we had another ground-breaking moment, as I’ve never witnessed her emotionally coming unglued before.

“Mom, you’re obviously not fine. Why don’t you tell me what’s—”

“Please leave me alone, would you?”

I paused here, as the nuts and bolts were popping off her sanity, while I considered the notion of dropping the subject one last time. But, of course, I didn’t. Or maybe couldn’t is more accurate.

“Mom, I’m just—”

“MELISSA!” she screamed, slapping her hand so hard on the table that the salt and peppers shakers jumped about an inch before toppling over. “STOP!”

I have re-examined what happened next about a thousand times in my mind, and my final conclusion is that I allowed my freshly blossomed irritation to surge ahead of all my other emotions. There was nothing more to it than that.

After a short and exquisitely uncomfortable silence, I said to her in the most dangerous tone I’ve ever heard from myself, “Mom, just what the HELL is at the bottom of Lake Phelan?”

 More silence followed. And more discomfort. More tension between us, so sharp you could neatly slice a diamond in two.

I thought she was going to hit me. Neither of my parents has ever hit me. Not even a spanking. They were philosophically opposed to it. Nevertheless, every sensor in my system instructed my muscles to harden for the blow. There was nothing but fury in her eyes. Fury and, dare I say it, hatred. Sizzling black hatred. 

Then it was gone, and what replaced it was the look of a very frightened child. A little girl who had done something terribly wrong and knew she’d been caught. She suddenly became almost spasmodic, like a machine being pumped with too much voltage.

I grabbed her hand. “Mom! Mom! Come on, tell me!”

“I…um….”

“It’s okay, really. Whatever it is, you can say it. Is it the cars?”

“Liss….”

“Were you really part of some insurance fraud thing?”

She made a high-pitched kind of murmuring sound just like the one I’d heard from her in the office earlier. An animal in tremendous pain. Then she was rocking back and forth again, one arm pressed against her stomach. Tears were spilling down her cheeks. 

“Mom,” I said softly. Somewhere in the distant reaches of my brain, I was amazed at how well I was holding myself together. What teenager sees one of their parents come apart like this? But then one of us had to keep it together.

She began shaking her head, left and then right, left and then right. At first I thought this was just a rhythmic thing, keeping time with the rocking of her body. Then I realized she was saying no…no….

“Liss,” she tried again, “ummmm….”

She was looking down now. At the floor, maybe. Or her shoes. Whatever it was didn’t matter—she just didn’t want to look at me.

I set my other hand on top of the one already holding hers. And I said in a voice so calm and mature that I sounded like the grownup, “Mom, what’s down there that you don’t want anyone to find?”

I don’t know how much time passed before she responded because it seemed like the forward motion of time had ceased. I heard nothing, I felt nothing. She and I were together in a vacuum, a small corridor of existence that had formed just for us. If I’d had to wait forever, it wouldn’t have mattered. Reality wasn’t going to start rolling again until she answered.

And then she did. She looked up with red-rimmed eyes and said, “Dennis Tilton is down there.”

She had regained enough of her composure to deliver this information in an almost-rational tone.

“Mom, who’s Dennis Til—”

“And the reason is because I…I, um….”

That regained composure disappeared again, and she emotionally collapsed like an old building in one of those demolition videos.

Tightening her grip on my hand, said in a hoarse whisper, “He’s there because I KILLED HIM!!!”

Eight

The next ten or fifteen minutes were a dreamy blur. I’ve heard about a state of mind where you feel like you’re outside your body and become a floating spectator to what’s going on around you. It was very much like that.

At some point our hands parted while she kept wailing away, still rocking back and forth as her sanity evaporated. I don’t think I said anything further, nor her to me. We were done with the talking portion of the conversation, the transference of information from one brain to another. All that remained was reaction.

I got up, went down the hallway, took the stairs again, and returned to my room. To be honest, I don’t really remember any of that, either. But it must’ve happened because, in the next frame of this crazy feature film, I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I had closed the door; not to the point where the lock clicked, but far enough so that no one could see inside. This was the signal from me not to be disturbed. My parents had always been respectful of it, and I expected my mom to regard it no differently now. Maybe she was becoming so overwrought with grief that she’d call the police to come get her. Or she was thinking about going into the garage to hang herself from one of the beams that supports the storage loft we have in there. At that precise moment, I didn’t give a damn.

I never bothered to turn on the lights—there was plenty coming through the blinds courtesy of the moon—nor did I change into my normal sleepwear of shorts and a t-shirt. I just got onto my nice firm bed, lay flat on my back, and laced my fingers together over my stomach.

I thought about nothing for a long time. A hailstorm of questions and ideas and accusations and theories tried to get through, but I refused delivery. I didn’t need to think at that point, I needed to not think. I needed to keep the slate clean for my own sanity. Maybe my mom was losing hers, but I wasn’t going to lose mine. I was creating distance between myself and the gigantic chunk of horrifying ugliness she had just dropped into my life. I would address it when I was ready. Which wouldn’t be long, of course. But not just yet. The one and only enquiry I allowed myself to entertain was the possibility that she was lying. That seemed ridiculous, however. Why would anyone lie about committing murder? I also realized my subconscious likely invented this notion simply because that would be the easiest way to resolve the problem—She didn’t actually kill anyone, she just made that up for…well, whatever reason. Yeah, no; it wasn’t going to be that simple.

I lay there for at least an hour. The ceiling in my room—simple white with no texturing—never seemed so interesting. I kept browsing for happy memories as I searched for a distraction. I started with the ceiling itself, remembering the day the three of us painted in here. It’s not a particularly big space, so it didn’t take long. My mom taped everything off, I used a roller on the walls, then my dad used it on the ceiling. I think we were finished by noon. Afterward, we had a pizza delivered and sat downstairs eating it.

While the TV was on…and you know what channel….

(Shut up. Just shut the hell up for two minutes, please.)

Then my mind went to our Disneyworld trip. I know a lot of people throw shade on Disney, but it was a lot of fun. I was ten at the time, and since I’m an only child, my parents let me do and have pretty much anything I wanted. I went on about a million rides, ate all sorts of sugary junk, and amassed a collection of gift-shop goodies that made all my friends insanely jealous. The weather also stayed perfect, even on the days when the forecast warned otherwise. My dad, who follows the weather religiously, was both thrilled and amazed.

Your mom was following something else religiously, wasn’t she? a little voice in my brain pointed out. Repeatedly checking her phone each day. Checking her laptop, too, which she insisted on bringing along. But checking on what, Alyssa? Come on, you know. You even saw it that one time in the hotel room.

(Shut…the frig…UP.)

I took in a deep breath and let it out again. This foray into denial wasn’t working. I knew it wouldn’t; of course I knew. So I gave in to the inevitable. And, like wolves sniffing along the bottom of a locked door, the questions and ideas and accusations and theories rushed in the moment I opened it.

Okay, so how did she actually kill this person? Did she use a knife? A gun? Did she hit him with something heavy, like a hammer or a baseball bat? Or did she poison him, like in the movies? People get poisoned in real life, right?

I found it nearly impossible to believe I was asking these questions in relation to my mother. The woman who never raised her voice. Who always tried to look on the positive side of everything. Who cupped flies and spiders in her hands so she could put them outside rather than kill them. In the winter, she’d bring them to the basement so they could stay warm by the furnace.

But asking questions around the possibility (yes, still—possibility) that she took another person’s life was a little bit easier when I utilized them in purely objective and  investigative terms. I was trying to protect myself by taking the human element out of it.

Did he know it was coming? Was there some kind of fight? Were they friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Or was this a revenge thing? Like he assaulted her without anyone else finding out, and she came back to settle the score.

The only person who knew the answers, of course, was her. And I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Not even close.

Plus, you don’t even know if she’ll be straight with you about it.

Now that thought was truly startling. I had never once doubted my mom’s capacity or willingness to be honest. Up until then, I would’ve said she was one of the most honest people on the planet.

So if she’s hidden this, what else is she keeping from you? And, for that matter, from dad?

Did he know about it? I couldn’t imagine. His soul’s as tough as tanned leather when it needs to be, but there’s a lot of sensitivity underneath. Something of this magnitude would scorch him to his bones. So there’s no way he knew. I had no proof of that (yet), but I simply could not believe it. Besides, if he did, then that would mean he was criminally liable for keeping it a secret. I didn’t know much about the law, but I at least knew that someone who became aware of something like a murder and chose not to report it would then, themselves, automatically be—

Wait a second.

No.

No effing way….

“Does that mean I’m now liable, too?” I whispered.

No.

Could it really mean that?

Could it…?

I let out another weary breath and shook my head.

Fuck.

Nine

I’m one of those people who can remember things from my dreams. Not entire dreams, of course. But some really vivid bits and pieces. And once those fragments reach that level of my consciousness, they remain there forever.

As I lay on my bed trying to figure out what degree of legal culpability my mom had exposed me to, my exhausted brain reached a point where it decided enough was enough and hit the shutoff button. Whatever storyline the dreaming part of my brain then manufactured, I don’t recall, so I have no sense of context. But the segments that stuck with me are as follows—

First, I saw myself running through the woods that surround Lake Phelan. In the bizarre way that dream-rules work, I was both the runner and the person just behind me, so I was watching myself as I was fleeing from something or someone. It was nighttime, and there was a full moon again, so everything was awash in that neon-blueish glow. I could see my breath puffing out of my mouth every time I exhaled, yet it wasn’t cold at all. I stumbled over a fallen tree at one point, but I didn’t go down. Just kind of pinwheeled my arms around wildly until I regained my balance.

Next, I’m standing on the lake’s muddy shore, hugging myself tight. Then I look back. There are tears drawing glossy tracks down my freckled cheeks, and I’m making those same animalistic mewing sounds that my mom was. I turn toward the water again, and I’m thinking about diving in. Maybe to get away from whoever / whatever is after me. I survey the surrounding landscape. It’s a usually beautiful place—on the right kind of day, with a big blue sky and lots of sun, a photographer could take a few shots and sell them to the printing companies that make calendars. But it’s not beautiful in my dream. This version of Lake Phelan is unsteady and foreboding, a creepy world full of disjunct sounds and hulking shadows and mind-bending secrets.

I look into the water, a rippling pane of dark glass, and see my reflection. Then my eyes widen as I let out a steel-cutting scream. In the very next frame, I’m dropped into the water with a muted sploosh! as bubbles boil around me. My body’s been wrapped in ropes and chains with cinder blocks attached. Writhing madly, I look up to see the distorted image of two figures standing on the shore. I can’t make out many details, but I do understand that one is male and the other female.

As I lose the battle against overwhelming physics, I scream one last thing before going down—

“DO SOMETHING!!!”

****

Immediately awake, I slid up onto my elbows. I didn’t know where I was for the first few seconds.

Then I remembered everything—not just the dream, but the events that led up to it. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand and saw that it was a little after two in the morning. After that I dropped back onto the mattress and retrained my gaze on the ceiling. 

What now?

Two simple words, but they said it all. Anyone interested in saving their own butt would have the police come and haul the guilty party away. But was that an option here? Was I really going to turn my mother in?

The logical side of my brain understood that it was the quickest way out of the problem. She gets arrested and convicted, and I’m no longer legally liable because I did The Right Thing.

But what about after that? My dad is devastated because his wife is going to jail for killing someone. He and I then have to move to a new town, and good luck finding one where the media won’t follow us. Everything that the three of us have built all these years—the life that we’ve pieced together—will be gone forever. And this thing that she did will be the centerpiece of our days until we, too, are gone forever.

Did any part of this sound appealing? No it didn’t.

Okay, so…WHAT NOW?

If I was really going to do this—really going to try to find some kind of resolution to this ridiculous problem—I knew I couldn’t share it with anyone. Not relatives, not any of my friends. It was a secret no one could possibly keep. I knew enough about human nature to understand that much. I was on my own here, period.

I also realized I had to view things as objectively and dispassionately as possible. If I let too much emotion into my thinking, it would only make things harder. I’d already started to learn about that in the medical field. The less emotion, the better. Take a clinical approach, I remember reading somewhere. Focus on the science, the math. The black and white of the problem. I doubted I’d be able to separate my feelings from the situation entirely, but I had to try.

It occurred me then that I would need more information. Not some detour into idle fantasy, either. I needed to know what happened. The details, and the more the better. Perhaps what she did was a clear of example of self defense. She could’ve been in danger, or at least believed she was, and was only trying to protect herself. Or it was an accident. A string of events that, while leading to a tragic conclusion, were altogether unintentional. My mom could have handed him a candy bar with peanuts, and he died of an allergic reaction. In a case like that, how could she be viewed as guilty? Hardly grounds for a murder conviction, right?

(Maybe…maybe….)

“Yeah, I need data,” I said aloud. Then I reached for my iPad, which was on the nightstand next to my clock.

There were three text messages from my dad, each about fifteen minutes apart—

Just got back to the hotel after a great dinner. Roast chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, and some other stuff. Hazelnut cheesecake for dessert, which was fantastic. So what’s going on with you guys at the moment?

Liss? You there? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Okay, I guess you’re asleep. I’ll text again in the morning. Love you so much, kiddo.

I felt bad that I missed these, as I know he liked to end each day by communicating with us when he traveled.

Does that mean he has unanswered messages from mom, too? I wondered. There was no doubt in my mind that he texted her as well. Did she get it together enough to respond? And in a way that didn’t spark any suspicion?

I pushed these questions aside and returned to the ones that really mattered. Opening the iPad’s browser, I went to Google and typed in four keywords—

Dennis Tilton Missing Lynchport.

To my amazement, there were a few results. One was a local blog with a bunch of people around my mom’s age talking about what a nutcase Tilton was. These were former classmates of his at all three Lynchport schools—elementary, middle, and high. It seems Tilton had behavioral issues that resulted in numerous disciplinary measures, including a few suspensions. He frequently got into fights with both kids and teachers, and he earned failing grades in quite a few classes. When he was a junior, he dropped out to work at some auto-repair place.

The last three entries were particularly noteworthy—

LynchPin82067—Whatever happened to him? Didn’t he change his name and take off for the Midwest or something?

StockStuffer—I’m not sure, he just disappeared. Probably died in a drug shootout in LA or something.

LynchPin82067—That sounds about right.

I went back to the Google results and clicked on one from our town newspaper, The Lynchport Leader. The article, first published in April of 1995, had the headline ‘Lynchport Boy Now Officially a Missing Person’—

 Dennis Michael Tilton, 19, now bears the official designation of ‘missing person’ according to police. He was last seen by his mother, Dorothy, at their 191 Mission Street home around 7:00 PM on Friday, December 8. Mrs. Tilton said the two had an argument in their front yard that became particularly heated before her son got into his car and sped off. A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, has corroborated this story, saying the altercation could be heard clearly. The neighbor also added that arguments were a common occurrence at the Tilton property, where Mrs. Tilton, who is divorced, lives with her four children.

Dennis, the second oldest, already has several arrests for violations ranging from petty theft to possession of cannabis, and he spent two weeks at the Hartzell Juvenile Detention Center in Deptford last summer.

“I don’t know where he went off to,” his mother told the officer who filed the formal report, “but he has to get back here, because we need the money he’s making right now if we want to keep this house. And he knows that.” Asked where he might have gone, Mrs. Tilton said she had no idea.

Lynchport Police are asking anyone who might have information pertaining to this case to contact them immediately.

At the bottom of the article was a recent-at-the-time photo of Dennis—messy dark hair, narrow eyes that were both suspicious and mocking, and an arrogant grin that emphasized his love of rebellion. In spite of all those red flags, however, he was still handsome, although I wasn’t able to define how or why. It was like he could’ve been a male model if he cleaned himself up, yet you could tell he never would. And somehow that made him all the more attractive.

That’s when I began to get an idea of what might have happened.

Ten

I turned eighteen in December, and after that I was able to sign myself out of school whenever I wanted. But since what I wanted even more was to get into a good college, I took this privilege very seriously and never used it. That is, not until my mom dropped a damn depth charge into my life.

I called first thing in the morning and told Mrs. Palmer in the Main Office that I wasn’t feeling well. Which was technically true enough. I’d barely slept, and my frame of mind was hardly what anyone would call normal.

I came downstairs a little after seven thirty to find the kitchen in the same state as the night before. My mom hadn’t left a scrap of her burrito behind, but she did leave her plate on the table. And there was my own burrito, still a culinary catastrophe and now reeking like a dead animal in the woods.

I looked next toward the counter and cabinets. The dirty pots and pans remained scattered around the dirty stovetop, and the three bags from the supermarket remained overloaded with products ranging from still good because they didn’t need to be refrigerated to gone bad because they hadn’t been.

I whistled nothing but air and went about remediating the disaster. Considering how rarely I did any of the cleaning around the house, I think I did pretty well. The pots and pans were scoured, rinsed, dried, and replaced in their proper drawers. The plates, after a thorough pre-cleaning, went into the dishwasher. And I unpacked the groceries, tossing anything that should’ve been refrigerated (the chocolate chip mint ice cream had morphed into a foamy kind of soup) and storing the rest.

After that, I retrieved some cleaning supplies from beneath the sink and gave every surface—counter, stove, table, floor—a vigorous scrubbing until that awful egg-and-onion smell from yesterday morning was no more. I was initially quite surprised by the effort I threw into all this, then realized my real motivation wasn’t so much cleanliness as a desire to return to the life I’d always had and loved.

Plus, I was procrastinating—and I knew it.

****

Procrastination never made much sense to me. If there was something unpleasant I knew I’d have to do sooner or later, I always wanted to get it over with. Better that than have it hanging over my head and extending the misery.

So now we had yet another first. I knew I’d have to talk to my mom about Dennis Tilton eventually. The only other option—going the rest of our lives without doing so—seemed unlikely. And yet I remained rooted to that spot in the kitchen, scanning my surroundings in search of something else to clean or straighten or whatever, knowing full well that the inevitable was the inevitable. 

I forced myself to the stairs again. I knew she was in her room because the door had been closed when I passed it earlier. She only left it open after she was out of there for the day.

Every step was a deeper progression into foreboding and dread, but I managed to get to the top and make the short trip down the hall. Then I stood there for a time, suddenly finding the door’s details—faux woodgrain painted white—really interesting.

I knocked.

“Mom?”

There was no answer. I knocked again.

“Mom.”

It occurred to me that the second dead body in this story might be in there. That she, having confessed to her crime and certain that the authorities were about to catch up with her anyway, decided to pull her own plug. 

“Mom,” I said more firmly now, reaching down to shake the knob. As I did, the door loosened from the lock and drifted back a few inches. The squeal from the hinges was like something out of a horror movie.

I couldn’t see much because it was so dark, which meant she’d closed the blinds. Usually she leaves them open a little bit so the sun will wake her up.

I pushed my way in and saw her, or at least the shape of her, under the covers. She was on her side, facing away from me. And she wasn’t moving.

I waited, although for what I have no idea. Signs of life, I suppose. Some sort of movement beneath those blankets. Perhaps the rise and fall of her respiration. Or at least the sound of her respiration. My dad was a noisy sleeper sometimes. I could hear him snoring from my own room every once in awhile. And it was my understanding that I was also guilty of that on occasion. But was my mom? I had no idea. It’s strange how we can know someone for so long and yet know so little about the traits that make them who they are.

With my heart hammering, I walked around in front of her. My imagination kicked into overdrive, fortified by the limited medical knowledge I’d acquired through my studies so far. The vision of my mom as a corpse came to me, her side-turned face blackening along the bottom as the blood settled to the lowest available point. My hands started to shake as I convinced myself this was exactly what I was going to find—my dead mother, with vacant eyes in a final thousand-yard stare as her body continued its transition into an inflexible mass.

Then I saw the empty prescription bottle.

Eleven

My tears came faster than they ever had before. I reached out to give her a good shake. And if that didn’t produce any response, I’d feel for a pulse before calling 911.

Then I realized her eyes were open. And as soon as I did, they shifted up to me.

“Christ,” I said sharply, stepping back as if I’d just stumbled upon a hornet’s nest.

Her eyes shifted again…then again…then once more. They were the expressions of a very frightened child.

Cautiously, I knelt beside her.

“How are you feeling?”

She cleared her throat and sniffled. “Not great.”

“I wouldn’t imagine.”

“No school today?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m up for it.”

“I wouldn’t imagine,” she said, looking straight at me for just a moment. And it was an amazing moment, I have to say. In spite of all the darkness she had poured into our lives in the last twenty-four hours, and in spite of the even darker darkness that had to be churning inside of her (for the last three decades, I reminded myself), she managed to put forth a little humor. In that instant, I saw the mom I’d always known and loved. Just a flash, breaking the surface before going under again. But she was still in there.

I got the stool from her makeup table and sat down. Now I really did look like a medical professional spending time with a patient.

I waited to see if she’d say anything else, but no such luck. If this conversation was going to happen, I would have to take the lead.  

“You had a thing for him, didn’t you,” I began. Technically a question, but I didn’t deliver it like one.

She sniffled again, then nodded.

“You saw his picture online?” she asked. This surprised me, because it meant she’d seen it, too. If I’d killed somebody, I don’t think I could bring myself to look at any pictures of them afterward.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I found the article in The Leader from when he first disappeared.”

She nodded again.

“Mom, I realize this is probably the least important of the details, but I just can’t imagine you being with someone like that. From everything I know about you, you were completely different from him. And I know people say opposites attract, but he was really opposite. So how did that happen?”

She lay there staring into nothingness, and I thought she had withdrawn again. Her way of telling me I’m not going to discuss this anymore, and then I’d have to make the uncomfortable decision to either prod her further or give up and try again later. 

Finally, she said, “I still don’t really know,” in a voice so small and fragile that I almost didn’t hear it. “But I couldn’t help myself. There were days when I wanted to, but I was drawn to that…that danger.”

“From what? From him?”

“Yeah. There was a lot more going on with him than anyone realized. Even his mother or his brothers and sisters. He was very troubled.”

“In what way?”

“He was an angry person. Angry at everything because his life was a mess. Both of his parents were alcoholics who beat him when they weren’t beating each other. After they finally got divorced, his mother went through a string of boyfriends who weren’t much better. His one sister was a cocaine addict, and his brother Bill spent time in juvenile detention for breaking into people’s homes. Every time there was a theft in town, the police went to the Tilton house first and asked for Bill. Anyway, Dennis got lost in the shuffle. When he wasn’t being beaten, he was ignored. Totally ignored.”

“And you saw something in him?” I was already feeling enormous sympathy for this person, wondering what he might have become if he’d been raised in a loving, nurturing home. 

“Not at first, no. Like any other good, respectable girl, I steered clear of him. He got in trouble at school all the time. Every other day, it seemed. I remember one time when he freaked out in the cafeteria about something, and two of the gym teachers had to come and drag him out. Another time I remember walking back to school after lunch and seeing him getting into a police car. He was chaos.”

“And yet you had a thing for him.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said softly, “he had a thing for me.”

This revelation went through my system like an electrical charge, and I knew exactly why—because until that moment, I’d never thought of anyone else being with my mom. She never talked about past boyfriends or anything like that. Never. It was like she and my dad had been together since birth. I tried to envision a younger version of her going out with Dennis Tilton, but the idea was so bizarre it wouldn’t form in my imagination.

“He…wait. He approached you?”

“In our junior year. I was walking through the parking lot on the way home after class one day. He already had a car by then, a black Dodge Stealth. He made some alterations to it—he was good at mechanical work—and he loved that thing. He was sitting on the hood when I came by, and he started talking to me. I was scared to death, but also too scared to walk away.”

“I would’ve gone straight to one of the counselors,” I said in an unmistakable tone of self-righteous indignation.

“Choices like that—having someone in authority on your side, civil-rights lawyers, the MeToo movement—were still pretty scarce back in the Nineties. If I’d told someone he was bothering me, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

“But was he? I mean, bothering you?”

“Well…as repulsed as I was by him, I was also fascinated. I’d never known anyone like that. All my friends were like me. We went straight to our rooms after we got back from school and did our homework. We listened to our parents. And we never got into any trouble. We always did the right thing. And now I’d drawn the attention of someone who loved doing the wrong thing. I was kind of curious.” 

“Plus he was a good-looking guy, right?” I asked. “I saw his picture. You’re not going to tell me you didn’t think about how he’d look all cleaned up? In a suit and tie or something?”

“He would never have done that.”

“I’m sure. But the possibility of it is part of the allure, isn’t it? The challenge of trying to change him? Seeing the potential there?”

My mom’s eyes starting shifting around again as she browsed through the past. I felt bad about that, making her relive certain parts of it.

“I do remember thinking he should cut his hair and shave once in awhile.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. It was one of the first things I thought when I saw the picture—if he straightened himself up, he’d really look good.”

“Maybe, but like I said, that wasn’t going to happen. Everything about him screamed nonconformity. The more someone wanted him to do something, the more he became determined not to.”

“A rebel.”

“He had so much rage in him. So, so much.”

The restless eyes again as she trailed off. I sat watching this for a few moments, wondering what memories were flickering across the movie screen of her mind.

Then, in a near whisper, she said, “That’s what drew me to him. The idea that maybe…just maybe….”

“You could help?”

She nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“And no one knew about the two of you, did they.”

“No.”

“Not even Maggie?”

Maggie Anderson was my mom’s best friend back then. They grew up together, a few houses apart on the same street. Their friendship faded a little when Maggie went to college in Wisconsin, then got married and moved to Connecticut. But they never fell out of touch and still texted to this day.

“No, Maggie didn’t know. Teri didn’t know. Gayle didn’t know. And my family most certainly didn’t know.”

“What about his friends and family?”

“He didn’t have any friends, and he hated his family. He didn’t want them involved in his life any more than necessary. He was the classic loner.”

I was nodding. “So I guess you didn’t spend a lot of time going to the movies or walking around the mall?”

“We never went out in public together. It was like we were having an affair, although we weren’t cheating on anybody. I don’t know what his own reasons were for keeping it a secret, but I certainly had mine. So we went places where we no one would see us.” 

I delivered my next sentence as calmly and steadily as I could.

“I’m going to guess the lake was one of those places.”

She went back to that dead-battery stare from before.

“It was.”

****

My mom knew what I wanted to hear next. Of course she knew. This was where the conversation was going all along. We were both perfectly aware of that. And now the time had come.

Because she was lying on her left side, the tear that rolled out of her right eye dropped from the bridge of her nose and landed in a dark splat on the bedsheet.

“It was a Friday night,” she began, her voice as thin as a child’s. “He’d had a really bad day, first at school and then at home. He was getting suspended again because he threw a sneaker at our gym teacher, Mr. Royce. And when his mom found out, she freaked. Her boyfriend at the time, this big guy named Jimmy who worked construction, also jumped into the mix. Dennis already hated him more than all the other boyfriends combined. So he packed a bag and got out of there. We—” her words were becoming wobbly now “—met at the lake. I had my dad’s car, he had his beloved Stealth. It was after ten and already dark. I didn’t know about what happened until I saw him. He was already there when I pulled up, sitting in the back seat. That was our routine, meet somewhere and make out in his car.”

“Please tell me you also didn’t—”

“No, he always wanted to, but I wasn’t ready.”

“Okay.”

“I could tell he was in a bad mood as soon as I opened the door. His mouth shrank into this little circle, and he was shaking his head. That meant something had ticked him off. As I got into the seat next to him, I asked what was wrong. I remember trying to sound soothing, hoping it would calm him down. But it didn’t matter. He started going off about Mr. Royce, his mother, her boyfriend, everybody. I’d never seen him so mad. I’d never seen anyone so mad. I thought he was going to take it all out on me. I thought he was going to start beating me right there, because he couldn’t beat the people he really wanted to.”

“Did he ever hit you before?”

“No, I never gave him a reason to. I told you, I was always kind of scared of him, and that was part of the attraction. But this was different. It was like part of him really was crazy, and now that part was coming out. He was talking about how he wanted to kill Mr. Royce and kill his mom’s boyfriend. I must’ve looked horrified, but he didn’t notice. There was this raging storm inside of him, and nothing I could do or say was going to make it stop.”

She reached up and swiped some of the wetness off her face.

“He turned to me with total lunacy in his eyes, and said he wanted us to run away together. He had a bag packed in the trunk. As foolish as the idea sounded, I knew he was serious. If I’d said yes, he would’ve done it. But I said no as gently as I knew how. I said we couldn’t possibly. How would we survive? We were both kids in high school, no money, no job. As I was telling him all this, I could feel him getting angrier, and I realized too late that I was doing what everyone else in his life had done—letting him down. Up until that moment, I was his escape from all of that. Now I had turned into one of them. So he said he wanted to have sex, right then and there. He started undoing his belt, but I told him no, not while he was acting like that. I shouldn’t have put it that way, but I was so frightened that the words just spilled out. He stopped and looked straight at me. Every muscle in his face got real tight, and his mouth formed into that little ‘O’ again.”

As she paused here, one shaking hand went to her mouth.

“And that’s when he…he took the gun out.”

Twelve

I was at the park down the street a few hours later, sitting in one of the swings. I had to get out of the house and absorb some fresh air. Fresh air, fresh surroundings, fresh perspective, fresh everything. Like taking off clothes you’ve been wearing too long and getting into the shower.

I suppose I was hoping to ‘clear my head’, too, but that wasn’t happening. The rest of my mom’s story was echoing relentlessly. As she continued telling it, her tears dried up and her hysteria abated, which really surprised me. Instead, her emotional needle swung in the other direction and she became more like a cipher, merely reciting words that were moving like a news crawl through her mind. 

The moment Dennis brought out the gun, she screamed. Her parents had been devout anti-violence advocates from the Sixties, so she’d never seen a weapon up close. It was chrome plated and huge, like something out of an old Western movie. She told him to put it away, but he wasn’t listening. He leaned toward her, sweating and breathing heavily, and aimed it at her head. She pushed it aside, but he kept moving it back. Then he said, “You’re gonna to do what I fucking tell you.” That’s when she decided she’d had enough of Dennis Tilton. She reached for the door handle, but he grabbed her arm with one hand while cocking the hammer of the gun in the other. She said never before or since did she feel as frightened as when she heard that clicking sound, and some kind of survival instinct kicked in. She turned back, saw the barrel of the gun inches from her face, and shoved it away with all her strength. That’s when it went off, removing a portion of Dennis’s head in the process.

His body slumped back and went still, and one of the details I wish she’d kept to herself was how his remaining eye remained open in a look of total astonishment. She got out of there and dropped to the ground, crying and moaning like a child. She was sure someone had heard the shot and the police would be arriving any minute. So she waited there, having made the decision that she deserved whatever she got. But after an hour passed and nothing happened, she began thinking very differently.

She got into the driver’s seat, making sure not to look back at the body, and started the engine. Then she put the car into drive and let it roll down the short incline into the lake. It went under in seconds, after which the water became still again. She got back into her own car and sat there crying for awhile longer. She said a part of her was hoping Dennis would reappear. He’d break through the surface mad as hell and somehow only wounded. But of course he didn’t, and that’s when she began to accept that he was really dead. So she got into her car and drove back home.

The next few months were like a horror movie. Every time the phone rang or someone knocked on the door of her parents’ house, she thought it would be the police. Her parents were friends with some of them, and she kept dreading the embarrassment that they’d have to endure once the truth came out. Meanwhile, Dennis’s mother thought at first he’d gone to live with his father in Oregon, but when that turned out to be wrong she officially reported him missing. Of course, he was never found, but my mom always lived with the fear that he would be. She used to get sick over it sometimes. She said no one at home—her parents, her older brother Theo, her younger sister Carol—ever noticed she was acting different because her fear of them finding out was the one thing greater than her fear of being arrested and charged. The only time anyone came close was about three weeks after it happened, when her mom heard her throwing up in the bathroom. But when she asked what was wrong, my mom told her she was feeling sick from a really bad period. Her mom wasn’t the kind of person who was comfortable discussing such things, so she accepted that explanation and let it go.

Months turned into years, years became decades, and the emotional turmoil of what happened settled back a little. But my mom said it was always there, just under the surface. Like a fish swimming beneath the ice, that’s how she put it. Every time you looked down, you’d see it go by. The guilt didn’t altogether prevent her from having a life—she went to college, met and married my dad, had me—but it imposed serious limitations. She wanted a career in child psychology, for example, but she never pursued the postgrad degree. She wanted three children of her own, just like her parents had, yet she only had one. She also never, ever bought anything nice for herself; never got a new car or nice jewelry or anything. She didn’t believe she deserved any of it. So she lived like that for all those years—in denial, in fear, and in a degree of pain that was unimaginable to me—until the moment that report came on the local news. Then the nightmare began crystallizing into reality.

By the end of our conversation, I only had one question left—how would anyone even know she was the one who killed him? That’s when she told me about her class ring. The one with her name engraved on the inside of the shank.

And the one he always carried around in his front pocket.

****

Some other people came to the park while I was sitting there. Specifically, three little kids and two parents, both young moms. The only boy in the group—blond hair, striped shirt—gave an apprehensive look in my direction before one of the women put her hands on his shoulders and steered him toward the jungle gym instead.

As I watched all this play out in front of me, a litany of other realizations marched through my brain; details about my mom and her life and our life together that likely connected to what was clearly the pivotal incident in her personal history. The first was that I’d never seen her swim. We lived about an hour from the nearest beach, and the three of us had gone there a few times. But while I loved the water and my dad went in occasionally, my mom always remained in her folding chair reading a book or whatever. She never went near a pool, either. We encountered several during our Disney vacation, where she parked herself on the nearest sunlounger. I wasn’t even sure she could swim.

Second, I’d never known her to go anywhere near Lake Phelan. Or, for that matter, near the Tiltons’ house. I’d checked online and learned that Dennis’s mother still lived there, although I couldn’t determine if anyone else did. Through the years, I’m sure she crossed paths some of the Tiltons here and there; maybe at the supermarket or the mall or whatever. I see people I know all the time, and she’s lived in this town since she was born. So when I asked myself why she never moved away—if only to put some distance between herself and the dark memories that lingered for her every minute of the day—the answer was already clear. She couldn’t. I’m not a mind reader, but I’ll bet she felt she had to be here in case Dennis was found. And once I spun out that theory, I tried to imagine what it was like trying to carry on a normal life knowing the person you killed was slowly decaying, underwater and still inside that car, just a few miles away.

My God….

How the guilt hadn’t driven her mad was a mystery. How she hadn’t ended up in a padded room wearing a canvas jacket with belts on the arms was incomprehensible. Had she thought about Dennis every time she heard that name, on TV or in a movie or in some conversation? I’m sure she did. I know she was a terrible sleeper, as I often found her on the downstairs couch with a blanket and a pillow. Was it because she had nightmares all the time? Visions of an enraged Dennis Tilton, eyes hollowed out and flesh rotted, come for revenge, his chrome-plated gun somehow as shiny as ever, with one bullet left in the chamber? And was the guilt the reason she never lost her temper with me or my dad? Was that what drove her to be so giving and caring and hyper-concerned about us while doing the absolute minimum to care for herself?

Have I been a witness to a prolonged form of suicide all this time??

What jolted me out of this train of thought wasn’t just the realization that I felt sympathy toward her, but that I felt a lot of it. Not because she was my mom, although that certainly contributed. But in light of the fact—or, perhaps more specifically, in spite of the fact—that she actually killed someone. She killed him, and then she disposed of his body and fled the crime scene. And after that, bumpy road or not, she went on with her life. If you told someone that and told it in just that way, they’d scream for the death penalty. But I didn’t feel that way at all. Again, not because of who she was to me, but because of the circumstances. I was as sure as I could be that the shooting was accidental. All she really wanted to do was get out of that car and as far away from Dennis Tilton as possible. But there’s no way the woman who raised me intended to kill anyone. Not a chance in hell.

That’s when I remembered how much I loved her; when the initial shock of her confession finally began to fade and the reality of my feelings for her regained the upper hand. She was the person who had always taken great care of me. Always protected me. Taught me about the alphabet and basic numbers and primary colors even before I went to preschool. How to bake cookies and tie my shoes and braid my hair. Yes, she had done a terrible thing. And yes, she handled it badly. But she had been a very young and very innocent kid at the time, in an impossible situation for which there was no ‘best-case scenario’. And from that time forward, she had punished herself every hour of every day, in every way she could fathom. She’d accepted that torment alone and in silence, all the while showing incredible kindness toward me and my dad, not to mention virtually everyone else who crossed her path.

She had suffered enough, I decided. The sentence had been handed down and carried out. Enough was enough. Whatever debt she owed to the universe, she’d paid it. I loved her, and I forgave her.

Now I had to set her free.

Thirteen

The moment I returned home, I went straight up to my room. On the way, I saw that the door to my mom’s was in the same position mine had been earlier—closed, but not to where the lock clicked into place. As I said before, this had become the generally accepted do-not-disturb sign in our household. A subtle form of communication, essentially, which every family develops over time.

I paused but didn’t hear anything, so I assumed she was either asleep or just lying there. It didn’t matter one way or the other. My only job now was to make sure she didn’t get arrested, and nothing was going to stop me—including her, because she wouldn’t want me taking any risks on her behalf. But what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

I got behind my desk and opened the laptop. Then it was time to visit the smartest relative I knew—Uncle Google. I’ve become pretty good not only at digging up information with his help, but also knowing when he’s telling the truth and when he’s full of crap. In my school district, they started teaching us how to evaluate online sources when I was in seventh grade. I remember my librarian, Ms. Shaw, telling us how important this would be in the future because, as she put it, “The Internet is a cultural wasteland.” She taught us how to get a sense of what information was truly reliable by judging the credibility of who was offering it.

I went back to the Lynchport Leader article to make sure I had the best search words. Choosing exactly the right words is the real secret to effective searches, and the more unique and unusual those words are, the better. I spotted the right ones immediately—side scan sonar. That was the technology they’d be using at Lake Phelan, so that’s what I wanted to learn about. It was all part of a problem-solving approach that my parents had indoctrinated into me since birth. The first step always involved gathering as much information as possible. “Once you have all the info you need,” I remember my dad saying, “the right decision is usually pretty clear.”

The five keywords I ended up using were side scan sonar how works. This produced more than four million results. The first was a Wikipedia article. I remember Ms. Shaw telling us that stepping into Wikipedia’s parlor used to be a dangerous undertaking, but that it had gotten better over the years. “They cite their sources now,” she said, “and you can always backtrack with those if you’re still unsure about something.” In my own experience, Wiki has always been a good starting point for things, but you then had to go elsewhere for the deep dive.

The article on side scan sonar wasn’t particularly long, but it gave the basics. There’s this thing that looks like a small missile—an elongated cylinder with a rounded nose at the front and four fins sticking out the back. That’s the scanner. While connected to a cable, it hovers just above the bottom of a body of water, where it sends out sound waves in all directions. The amount of time it takes for those waves to bounce back indicates how close or far away things are. Each sound wave is released as a kind of ‘slice’. Once all the slices are compiled by the computer that’s back on the boat, a picture of everything that’s down there can be produced.

I saw some of the scanner images, and I was chilled to discover they were pretty detailed. There was one of an old shipwreck, for example. While I couldn’t see every rivet or every spot of rust, there was no question it was a shipwreck. Maybe certain things wouldn’t be quite so obvious. A submerged tree might look like a meaningless blob after awhile. An old shipping container wouldn’t look like much more than a box. But an airplane would have a very distinct shape to it. Or a bicycle.

Or a car.

Or a skeleton….

I cursed and opened a new tab in my browser.

****

The next three search words I used were how disrupt sonar.

This time, Uncle Google dealt me more than two million results. Wikipedia was at the top of the pile again, with an article called ‘Echolocation jamming.’ Unfortunately, that had to do with animal sonar, as did all the others I saw before I got tired of scrolling. I read a few anyway, hoping maybe there’d be some information I could adapt to my own situation, but that didn’t work. I wasn’t dealing with bats or whales here.

I went back to the first search and found some articles on side-scan sonar that were so technical they made me sorry to be alive. But I forced myself through them anyway, reading a few sentences four and five times before I really understood what the eff they were talking about. I dragged myself through this for just one reason—in the hope that I’d find just one small detail I could exploit. Anything that could help me throw off the scanner when the police used it. Exactly how I would get close enough to it, I had no idea. That was an entirely different problem to be puzzled out later. First things first.

I thought I’d found the answer when I learned that the sound waves put out by the scanner had a frequency range of between 100 and 500 kHz. There had to be a way to disrupt them since any wave on a known frequency could be disrupted. My imagination immediately kicked into overdrive, and I saw myself paddling across the lake in the middle of the night with my homemade acoustic-pulse-disrupter device, like something out of a spy movie, where I pressed the ‘activate’ button (which, on the theatrical screen of my mind, was round and a slightly translucent red) before easing the disrupter into the water in just the right location.

Then reality roared back and smothered my little fantasy. How would I be able to build such a device? Where would I start? And even if I had a set of instructions right in front of me, where would I get the parts? Or the tools? My dad had plenty of those in the garage, but I’m guessing a circular saw or a baby sledgehammer wouldn’t be particularly useful in building a customized sonic-wave suppresser. And then there was the fact that the police were going to be scanning the lake in four days—hardly enough time to build much of anything when you had no parts, no tools, and no freakin’ clue how to do it. So yeah, my wave-disruption idea was a bit of a nonstarter.

I took a deep breath and ran a few other options through my mind, all as absurd as the first one.

Maybe I could somehow damage or destroy the scanner.

(No—they’d just get another one.)

I could reprogram the computer that receives the scanner’s signals.

(How would you get near it? And even if you could, you know nothing about computer programming.)

Wait—I could cover Dennis Tilton’s car with tin foil! Doesn’t tin foil disrupt sound waves?

(Even if it did, how would you go deep enough in the water to do that?)

Diving equipment. A mask and an oxygen tank.

(Do you own those things?)

No, but I could probably get some.

(Do you know how to use them?)

Well, no….

(And how would you hold all the tin foil in place anyway?)

“Yeah, okay….” I muttered, shaking my head as I declared myself the loser of the first round. There was nothing I could do where the sonar equipment was concerned. Clearly it was time to explore Plan B.

Which I would do as soon as I figured out what that was.

Fourteen

Monday came and I had to go to school.

When I woke up, I was surprised by how normal I felt. Everything seemed pretty much the same. Same sunlight coming through my window. Same fresh sheets on my bed. Then the reality of everything that happened over the weekend poured over me like a bucket of filthy water.

Oh yeah…this.

I had no Plan B yet. No great moment of inspiration striking me like a missile zooming out of the sky, no glowy-edged Thomas Edison vision that had me running around yelling Eureka! I’d had a few ideas, sure. But they all sucked. One involved me in a wetsuit going underwater while they were scanning, maybe cutting the line that connected the scanner to the onboard computer. Then I realized they’d see me in the scans before I got anywhere near it. Followed, no doubt, by my arrest about two minutes later.

Another brilliant scheme had me cutting down trees on the hard-packed dirt road to the lake so they couldn’t get there. But all that would do was make it obvious someone was trying to keep them from it in the first place. Plus, trees fall all the time around here. Then the guys with the chainsaws show up in a utility truck, and the roads are cleared in an hour or so.

Dammit.

****

I showered and dressed, and when I went downstairs I found her sitting at the table. She was still in her robe, her hair corkscrewing in every direction. Just when I thought I couldn’t be further shocked, I realized I’d never seen my mom in such a state of disarray. There was a small plate on the quilted mat in front of her, with a single piece of buttered toast about half eaten. There was also a cup of coffee, still full. And the TV was off.

I froze for a second, and I think she saw me from the edge of her periphery.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

“Hey,” she murmured.

I went to the fridge to get an apple. “How are you feeling?”

A ridiculous question, all things considered. As if she was recovering from a cold or something.

“Okay.”

She wasn’t, of course, but you ask dumb questions and you get dumb answers.

I nodded. “Okay, well, I gotta get to class. Another test today.”

Usually she was the one who would ask about such things—Any tests? Did you study? Do you have everything you need? Are you coming right home afterward? But I realized intuitively that I’d have to volunteer this kind of information for awhile. And for that matter, take on the mom role in general to some degree.

She nodded but didn’t say anything further, and I couldn’t help wondering where her normally smothering concern for my academic progress had gone. Was it still in there, buried under the worry that she might be sitting in a jail cell this time next week? Was it part of her programming at all anymore? I wasn’t thinking any of this in a selfish way, as if someone in her position wouldn’t be obsessing over visions of themselves in an orange jumpsuit and leg irons. It’s just that she was now so different from the person I’d always known. It felt like I was looking at a stranger sitting there. Which I guess I was.

I went out the sliding door as usual, then through the gate, along the driveway, and onto the sidewalk. As soon as I reached the first corner—Bryce and Piedmont—my cellphone chimed with a new text message.

Dad: On your way to school, I’m guessing?

Me: I am.

Dad: How are things going at the homestead?

He always called it that—the homestead. Just one of his many dorky dad sayings, and it caused this depth charge of warmth to explode in the pit of my stomach. On his end, I’m sure he was just being conversational. But for me it was much more. It was a reminder of how things had always been, back before this ugliness came to the surface. The time from then until now could be measured in hours, yet it felt like months. Like my old life (I supposed I should start calling it that) was part of a story that had passed a dozen chapters ago. And this text from my dad—the tone, the content, all of it—was like an echo from that time. Because he had no idea. In his mind, everything that made life bright and shiny was still in play. No wife who killed someone and then deposited the body at the bottom of a lake. No daughter trying to figure out how to fix the situation while strategically ignoring the fact that she was in so far over her head it would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so terrible. In his mind, the domestic dream that the three of us created together was as true and real and magical as ever.

I would’ve given anything to trade places with him.

Pretty much status quo, I wrote back, also strategically ignoring the fact that I was lying through my teeth. It was something I never did with him.

Dad: How’s your mom feeling today?

She seemed pretty much the same this morning, I said, which was only a half-lie. She seemed just as miserably distant and out of it as she was yesterday, when she confessed to killing someone. Then I found myself adding, How has she sounded in her text messages? I really didn’t want to delve any deeper into this subject at the moment, but a stronger part of me just had to know.

Dad: Her responses are very short and to the point, which is normal when she isn’t feeling quite right.

‘Isn’t feeling quite right’ was perhaps the understatement of the century, but I hear you, is all I typed back as I turned off Bryce and onto Calumet. I could see the school in the distance, but there was a stop I needed to make first—the Starbucks a little further down on the right. I didn’t go there every day, but definitely when my stress levels were redlining.

Me: I’m going to be stopping at Starbs in a minute.

Dad: Ha—I was wondering. Nerves feeling a little ragged? Big test today?

“Sure, that’s why,” I mumbled.

Me: Physics.

Dad: Ooo, good stuff. Okay, I’ll leave you to your caffeine and your peace. Good luck, kiddo! Love you more than anything!

I can’t remember ever wanting to break down and cry as much as I did just then.

Me: I love you too, dad. So much.

Fifteen

My go-to item at Starbucks has always been a grande iced caramel macchiato. It has great flavor and just enough of a jolt to get me through the day without feeling like a washing machine on spin cycle.

As I stood in line, I thought about what else could be done about the damn scanner those damn cops were going to put into that damn lake. All my ideas so far were idiotic delusions built upon wildly implausible concepts. I was usually a pretty creative person. Maybe not Leonardo da Vinci or Lennon and McCartney, but I’d always been able to push my thoughts outside the box when necessary. The jamb in the system came from two impossible-to-ignore facts—first, I basically had my mother’s fate in my hands, and second, there were only four days left before the damn scanner went into the damn water. So yeah, no pressure.

I need my macchiato. I need that flavor burst in my mouth and that power surge in my veins, or I’m going to lose it. After that, I’ll be able to—

“…heard through the years that at least a two dozen cars had been dumped down there,” someone said. “Including Andy Hall’s 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme convertible.”

This pulled me out of my brain-lab and back into the present. There were two guys standing on line in front of me. Judging by the fine silver strokes beginning to show in their hair, I guessed they were about my dad’s age, maybe a little older. One wore boots, jeans, and a plaid utility jacket decorated with a constellation of well-established grease and stains, so I was thinking he was a mechanic of some kind. The other also wore jeans, but they were of a more stylish variety and matched his casual dress shoes and button down shirt. An engineer, maybe. Still mechanical in a way, but without having to scrub under his nails at the end of the day. The easy body language between them made it clear they knew each other well.

The engineer nodded and smiled. “Oh yeah, Andy’s Oldsmobile Cutlass. I remember when that disappeared. He freaked.”

“He was sure Baker did it,” the mechanic went on, “because Baker was so pissed when he got it, remember?”

The engineer was still nodding. “Yea, Baker wanted it bad, but he couldn’t scrape up the money in time, right? Something like that?”

“He was working at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and was short about two hundred bucks. When he asked his boss for the money in advance, he got shot down. But Andy already had it because mommy and daddy were rich. When he bought the car, he called Baker to rub his nose in it.”

Now the engineer laughed, and his head shifted from up and down to left and right. “Yeah yeah, I remember. This was eighty six or eighty seven.”

“Eighty eight, I’m pretty sure.”

“Eighty eight. Baker wanted to kill him.”

“I think that made Andy love the Olds even more. Used to drive it by Baker’s house at least once a week, just to be a prick. And then, about a month later, it just disappeared…poof!” The mechanic emphasized this by holding up one hand and splaying all the fingers.

“Didn’t Andy file charges against Baker or something?”

“He wanted to. But he couldn’t come up with any evidence beyond saying I’m sure it was him. That wasn’t really good enough, of course. But he did still file a stolen-vehicle report. That was a really nice car.”

“Yes it was. White with black and red trim. Convertible, too, I believe.”

“Black ragtop.”

“And didn’t it go around an Indy track or something?”

“Yeah, a certified pace car. That made it a one of a kind, really.”

“I’ll bet the insurance company got involved quick.”

Now the mechanic was nodding. “They did, because Andy was claiming a value of around twenty-five grand, which was probably accurate and a shitload of money back then. They pressed the police to find the vehicle fast.”

The line moved and those two got up to the counter, which was a problem because it made them turn away from me so they could talk to the barista. Normally I keep a reasonable distance from other people when I’m standing in a line, in part out of habit from the pandemic. But also because, as a student of medical research, I know what a germ factory most human bodies are, spewing their nastiness pretty much around the clock. Nevertheless, I had to hear the rest of the conversation—and I was glad I did.

I stepped closer, pretending I was having trouble reading the menu board that was high on the wall behind the counter.

“…Andy really thought Baker was the one who took it?”

“At first, yeah, I think he did. Maybe just as a joke, to give him a heart attack or something. But the police ultimately concluded Baker had nothing to do with it.”

“So it was, like, a real theft.”

The mechanic shrugged. “I guess so. Maybe we’ll find out when they scan Phelan with that sonar thing. Maybe it’s down there right now.”

The engineer sniffed a little laugh through his nose. “Y’know, when I heard about that, I was surprised they decided to search Phelan instead of Holcombe.”

“Me too, because it’s even deeper.”

“And further away from the highway.”

“That’s right.”

“Plus more people go to Phelan to swim and fish and water ski.”

The engineer was nodding again. “Yeah, no one does any of that stuff in Holcombe. In Phelan, a fisherman could easily catch a line on an old car that was down there. But no one ever fishes in Holcombe because…”

…water…too dirty…no one would ever…and also…

Their voices were fading into echoes for me, weaker and more remote, because it happened then—the idea for Plan B struck at last. I was back in the corridors of my imagination, watching all the details come together. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle flying into place to form the picture. Yes! I told myself. Yes!!! I knew what to do now, and I knew how to do it.

Best of all, it was so simple.

Sixteen

I had the physics test in second period, and I’m pretty sure I aced it. Even with all the madness that was whirling through my reality, I was super focused. Not just because I studied, either. It was also because of my confidence in Plan B. No matter how whacked out life gets, the first step to feeling better is to put together a plan to deal with it.

I kept going over it in my head. Every detail, every step. I even wrote the steps down, although I used a shorthand that only I understood in case someone found the sheet later on (which was doubtful; I was going to toss it before the day was over anyway). Then, during last period—when I normally had the study hall that, as a senior, I could blow off if I wanted—I moved out of the planning phase and into the implementation phase.

I went down the hall on the west side of the building, which is mostly lockers on one side and huge windows on the other. I moved at a casual pace and acted like I would on any other day. I saw a few people I knew, gave my usual smile—amiable, nonthreatening. Then, as I reached the chem lab, I made a right turn and went in.

It was a big white room with slate-topped tables, metal stools, and the scent of a thousand past experiments. Each table had a sink, and each sink had a rubber mat, a dish drainer, and a set of washed-out tubes and beakers. There were safety placards every five feet, and you didn’t have to go much further for a pair of gloves or goggles.

As much as I enjoyed my chemistry courses, none of these things interested me at the moment. What did interest me was the fact that the room was empty. Mr. Kemp didn’t have an eighth-period class this year, so he made a point of letting us know that the room was available to anyone who wanted a quiet place to study (adding that anyone who “screwed around with” things that shouldn’t be touched would be subjected to unpleasant disciplinary measures).

I closed the door but didn’t lock it, as that would’ve sparked all sorts of unwanted questions if someone showed up. This was one of the many little details I’d considered during the planning phase.

Next I went a computer—specifically, one that was facing away from the door and its grid of little windows (again, the details…)—and opened a blank document in MS Word. Then, removing a folded sheet from my back pocket, I retyped what I’d written earlier. It only took a few minutes. After that, I hit Ctrl + P, and the laser printer next to the bookshelf hummed to life.

I took a pair of disposable latex gloves from a box so overstuffed that it looked like they were all trying to escape. After working one onto each hand, I removed the printout and set it in a manila folder that I’d brought along in my bag. After one more check to see if anyone was loitering in the hallway, I went to Mr. Kemp’s desk—and this really was the genius part, in my opinion. Mr. Kemp was the kind of teacher who didn’t think twice about tending to personal business when his students were occupied. During things like tests or experiments that had no chance of blowing up the school, I’d see him texting people, shopping on Amazon, reading the news, stuff like that. And another thing he did was pay his bills. He did this the old-fashioned way, with stamps and envelopes. Specifically, stamps and envelopes that he kept in the top drawer.

When I opened it, there they were. Being a millennial, I wasn’t too familiar with the sending side of the US postal system. I’ve mailed a few packages over the years, but always with my parents’ help. Letters or cards, though? Almost none. Still, I knew the routine because my mom—somewhat ironically, I suppose—paid a few of our own bills through the mail.

I took out an envelope, then the book of stamps. I removed one of the latter and applied it to the top right of the former. Then, taking one of Mr. Kemp’s pens in hand, I addressed the envelope—in the most generic print I could manage—to the Lynchport Police Department. After that, I neatly folded the letter and slid it in there.

I almost made the critical mistake of licking the envelope’s flap. I came so close, which meant my DNA would’ve been all over it. At that point, I might as well have included my birth certificate and a recent photo. But I stopped myself just in time, moistened a paper towel at one of the sinks, and used that instead. 

After slipping the envelope into the manila folder and then the folder into my bag, I went back to the computer and closed the Word file. It asked if I wanted to save it, and I clicked ‘No’. Since it had never been saved in the first place, there would be no digital record of it.

Perfect.

I felt a little bad about stealing some of Mr. Kemp’s things—he was one of the nicest teachers I had—but these were desperate circumstances. I promised myself I’d volunteer for cleanup duty the next time he had us do lycopodium fireballs or whatever.

I removed the rubber gloves and put them in my bag to be thrown away later. Then I got the hell out of there.

****

I had one particular mailbox in mind. It was a few blocks away from my house, a little bit out of my way but not much. Since school was still going on, there weren’t any other kids walking home or whatever. Not that being seen would’ve been a big deal. People drop things into mailboxes all the time.

As I approached it, my heart started pounding. And questions that had been perched along the edge of my mind seemed to rush forward now.

Can I really get into trouble for this?

Would it be considered interfering with an investigation, maybe?

And if so, isn’t that illegal?

I found myself hesitating. Then I remembered why I was doing this—to save my mom. Even if I got caught in the end, arrested and hauled away and then put before a judge and jury, I would stand tall and explain my reasoning—I was just trying to save my mom, like any of you would’ve done. And that’d be the end of it, right? Who would actually punish a kid for trying to do that?

I thought again about the short note I’d put in the envelope—

I know you’re planning to search Lake Phelan for cars that were stolen as part of an insurance-fraud operation years ago. Although I had nothing to do with it, I had a friend who did, and I have always felt guilty about staying silent. But he has since passed away, so I am letting you know that the cars you are seeking were not put in Lake Phelan, but in Lake Holcombe. I overheard my friend speaking with others about this one night. They said Lake Holcombe was deeper and further away from the highway, and that hardly anyone went there to swim or fish. So they thought it was the perfect spot. That’s where you should search.

It really did strike the perfect tone. I kept the writing style plain, and I stuck only to the ‘facts’ (i.e., as I created them). And the reasoning was strong, based on what those two guys were saying in Starbucks.

So it’s good to go?

“Yeah,” I said out loud. “It is.”

I removed the manila folder from my bag. Then I opened the mailbox.

Taking the folder by one corner and being careful not to touch the envelope within, I held it in the ‘Local Delivery’ slot and gave it a good shake. I heard the envelope slide out of it and fall onto the pile of others at the bottom. I pictured this happening in slow motion, with booming levels of sound.

My heart was beating harder than ever. Like it was going to burst.

I put the folder into my bag again and walked away as casually as my shaking body would allow.

Seventeen

When I stepped into the house a short time later, I was greeted with an eerie silence. No—a stillness. As if the forward motion of time and all the other forces that governed the universe had no effect there. A stark beam of sunlight slanted through the hexagonal window by the fireplace, and I could see a million dust motes swimming through it. Aside from that, the scene before me was frozen in place.

On any other day, I doubt I would’ve thought twice about it. Because on any other day, the word peaceful would’ve come to mind instead of eerie. My mom had always liked things peaceful, and I was beginning to understand why. I was no psychologist, but I was reasonably sure her desire to keep her surroundings calm and stable served to counteract the permanent restlessness she carried inside. The unease and anxiety and sense of unresolvedness. Which—just as I’m no psychologist, I’m also no doctor—had probably done significant damage to her physical health as well.

I walked around a little, hoping for a sign of her presence. I went into the basement, specifically to the laundry room (Mondays and Thursday were laundry days), but there was only a little mountain of clothes and pillowcases and bath towels next to the washer, waiting for her attention. Normally everything would be dried and folded by this time, each neat pile brought to its assigned place—my clothes in my room, my parents’ clothes in theirs, and last week’s towels and sheets in the hallway closet until their next turn in the cycle.

I went back to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator. Mondays were also supermarket days, when my mom would load up for the week in accordance with her meal planning. But I saw nothing beyond what had been there this morning. Even that was strange, because it didn’t look as though anything had been touched. That meant she probably hadn’t eaten in the last eight hours. When I checked the markerboard on the side of the fridge (where she would post the list of meal choices she’d made for the week, and my dad and I would often write comments that were mostly complimentary but sometimes childish), I was astonished to find it blank. I couldn’t remember ever seeing it that way.

A horrible idea came to me—that she’d killed herself. Maybe by asphyxiation in the garage after running a hose from the tailpipe of her Honda. Or by opening her wrists with one of dad’s double-edged razor blades in the upstairs bathroom. But—and I realize this sounds a little nonsensical—I didn’t think so because I didn’t feel it. The house was eerily silent, but it didn’t have the pallor of death in the air. 

I found her upstairs a few minutes later. She was lying under the covers, on her side and facing away from the door as usual. The blinds were drawn, but enough sunlight glowed around the edges for me to recognize general shapes in the room. It reminded me of a drawing in one of my health textbooks from freshman year. A guy was in his bed with a sad look on his face, and through the window behind him was a postcard-perfect day outside. The caption was only one word—DEPRESSION.

I went around to check on her and saw that she was sleeping. She still had a tissue in hand, and there were quite a few others on the floor. I also noticed a little orange bottle on the nightstand—the sleeping pills that had been prescribed to her by Dr. Braniff years ago. It wasn’t lying on its side, empty with the cap nearby, like something out of a movie. In fact, it was very nearly full with the cap firmly in place. She’d only taken as many as she so she could escape for awhile. And again, I understood. Not just for today, but for so many hundreds—probably thousands, actually—of days and nights when sleep refused to carry her away, and the demons came instead. I once heard depression compared to a pack of rabid dogs sniffing under the door, waiting for the moment when your strength gives out and you can’t hold it shut any longer.

I leaned down to make sure she was still breathing—What a ridiculous thing to have to do, I thought—and she was.

I kissed her on the forehead before I went out.

****

I had a ton of homework—physics, chem, bio—so I went to my room and got started. Biology was first, with the assigned chapter mostly about the immune system. I became so absorbed by it that I read well beyond what was required. The section on organ transplants and skin grafts was particularly interesting. What finally pulled me back to reality wasn’t an awareness of how much time had passed but rather that my stomach was demanding I put something into it.

I paused at my mom’s door on the way downstairs and heard her snoring lightly, so I was clearly on my own where dinner was concerned. I ended up making pasta with marinara sauce. I could actually manage a little cooking when it was necessary, things that were slightly more complicated than pasta and red sauce. But I wasn’t in the mood for anything too involved.

I watched TV while I ate, and when I was finished I surprised myself by happily cleaning everything up. The bowl, glass, and silverware went into the dishwasher, then I soaped and scrubbed the pots and set them into the drying rack. I also wiped down the stove and counter tops. The leftover pasta and sauce went into containers and then into the fridge in case my mom wanted some later.

The self-surprising didn’t end once all the kitchen tasks were finished—instead of heading back to my room to continue my homework, I went into the basement and got all that laundry going. I had no memory of the last time I’d done laundry, yet I had immediate recall on which buttons to push, how much detergent to use, and separating the whites from the colors. Observing that last detail led me to break down the laundry mountain into four little hills, each to be its own load in the process.

Then I went back upstairs and vacuumed the entire first floor (and if my mom woke up, so be it). I included the formal dining room that I mentioned earlier, in spite of the fact that no one ever goes in there. The carpet, which is a weird shade of deep reddish purple, looked as flawless as ever. But I still made sure to cover every inch of it. I even pulled the chairs out from around the table so I could get underneath.

After that, I dusted. I actually freakin’ dusted. I knew exactly where my mom kept the soft cotton cloths and the can of spray (hallway closet), and I went around from room to room polishing any object that looked like it might need it. There was a tiny voice in my brain demanding to know just what the hell was going on here. But a louder one kept telling the first one to shush. That in itself was profoundly surprising—that the part of me wanting to do all these unsolicited house chores was telling the opposing part to shut the hell up.

When the dusting was done, it was time to clean all the glass surfaces—windows, mirrors, clockfaces, etc. After that, all the garbage was collected and brought to the big cans outside. Then I put the recycling out. By that point, I felt like every inch of the first floor was ready for a photoshoot in some magazine on domestic living. The adrenaline continued surging through me as I stood in the middle of the living room with my hands on my hips, wondering what to do next. And in that brief pause, I allowed myself to contemplate the very understandable question my little voice had asked earlier. The answer was already there, because of course it was. Of course I knew why I was subjecting myself to some kind of deranged house-maintenance jihad—because I wanted to believe that, in some cosmic way, getting the house back to a state of normalcy would provide the necessary force to get everything else back to normalcy. As if there was a correlation between how much housework I did and the likelihood that the police would abandon their plans to search Lake Phelan for Lake Holcombe instead, and all because of that note I sent them.

Before the little voice could start laughing its ass off, I shushed it again and headed back to the basement. A few shelves down there looked like they needed straightening.

Eighteen

I did manage to get back to my room and continue with my homework. I didn’t even know what time it was, which was unusual for me since I’d always been a pretty time-sensitive person. There’s a clock in every room in our house, and I never go anywhere without a watch on.

Yet I was purposely avoiding it because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Once all the basement shelves looked militarily neat and the laundry was washed and folded, I returned to my room, ignoring the fatigue that had settled into my bones, and picked up where I’d left off. My body—my physiology—tolerated all this nonsense right up until the last of the schoolwork was finished. Then it was like someone flicked a switch and the world went black. I did not dream or have any other sense that I was sleeping; I was just gone. The next moment—seriously, it felt instantaneous—I could feel the weight of the chemistry book on my chest and the morning sun on my face.

A teen’s constitution really is an amazing thing, because I was a little worn but still rested. I got out of bed and went straight into the shower. As I stood there enjoying the hot water beat against me and the soapy fragrance mingling with the steam, I allowed myself to revel in the normalcy I’d worked so hard to achieve the night before. In that moment, I really did feel like everything was going to be all right. That I’d reversed the course fate had set me on—set all of us on—by writing and mailing that letter. The problem suddenly seemed so distant, like something in the rearview mirror that was growing smaller by the minute. I even felt a little proud of myself, to be completely honest. My mom had been in a horrible bind, and I saved her. Me. Her seventeen-year-old daughter who was still in high school and hadn’t made even the smallest mark on the world (yet), and loved her enough to take whatever steps were necessary to keep her safe. That was all me.

I was on such a high by the time I got back to my room that I decided to tell her what I’d done so she could chill out and return to whatever state of mind she’d had before all of this started. Maybe it wasn’t a perfect state of mind even then, but it was a few levels up from the agonizing, slow-burn meltdown she was experiencing now. Anything was better than that. Her instinct to self-punish was chopping her away one inch at a time, and I was the one lucky person on a planet of more than eight billion with a front-row seat.

After I got dressed and loaded my backpack, I stopped by her room again. She was snoring louder this time, and I wondered how much sleep a person could possibly get. Didn’t your body just kind of wake up and stay up after awhile? I had no idea, but I decided to leave her be. Maybe she was having a good dream for a change, or no dreams at all.

   When I got to the kitchen, I made myself another omelet. Resetting the clock…back to a few days ago…before any of this entered our life…. As if she and I had experienced an actual nightmare together, and now it was over. The police would scan Lake Holcombe and find nothing (or, for all I gave a damn, a thousand other cars, as long none of them contained Dennis Tilton). Then my dad would return from his business trip, and we’d carry on as always. The whole mess would be reduced to little more than an unpleasant secret between my mom and I. The secret of what my mom did. She’d know I’d never share with anyone—even my dad—and that would provide her with some comfort. And then, over time, I could help her deal with the guilt and the pain and everything else, until the day came when even she could live like an ordinary human being again.

YES!

I shook the finished omelet onto a plate and sat down at the table. The remote was still there from the night before, so I turned on the news. A planning board announced they were finally going to demolish some former retail outlet called Peddler’s Village, which apparently had been sitting idle since it permanently closed eight years earlier. Then there was something about another recall on one of the Tesla self-driving cars, which caused two more deaths. That was followed by a report about one of our state senators switching parties, from Republican to Democrat, and the outrage the Republicans felt because they were already the minority party here.

   When the next story came and three members of the Lynchport Police appeared on the screen, a layer of frost settled over my body. They were standing around a microphone with Chief Barton in the middle. None of them looked too happy, Barton least of all, his chubby face lined with deep concern. The headline along the bottom read UPDATE ON SEARCH FOR STOLEN CARS IN INSURANCE FRAUD CASE.

“We have received some new information,” Barton began, “via an anonymous tip, that some of the vehicles we’re currently hoping to find in this investigation may be in a different location than the one we were originally intending to search. Which, as you know, was Lake Phelan, on the western side of town.”

 My body wasn’t feeling frosted anymore. Now it was solid, like wood or stone, with no feeling at all. Every function had ceased—no bloodflow, no respiration, nothing.

That was me. I did that.

“So where is this new location?” asked someone out of the frame.

“Holcombe,” Barton replied. “Lake Holcombe. We’ve received a tip that the cars had been deposited there as part of the insurance-fraud operation that occurred in this area back in the 1980s.”

“This was a phone call?” someone else asked. “This anonymous tip?”

“A letter,” Barton said.

Now my heart started pounding like a fist.

Wow.

One minute I was sitting in the chem lab writing out some note that I had composed in my mind. And now there were police on television talking to reporters about it. On a news show that thousands of people watched. Tens of thousands, in fact.

Oh…my…God….

I wondered how many other people were watching right then; watching and listening and forming their own opinions. Some would be shaking their heads, telling their spouses how pathetic it was that someone would steal a car and then dump it in a lake in order to defraud an insurance company. Maybe a few would be like, Wow, I wish I’d thought of that. I could’ve gotten rich. And I’m sure some—including, very likely, the police themselves—wanted to know the identity of the anonymous figure who sent the letter. That alone sent chills through my already reeling system.

But it was nothing compared to what came next.

“So that means you’re shifting the search from Phelan to Holcombe?” asked the first voice.

“No,” Barton said with a tiny shake of the head, and I swear in that moment it felt like he was speaking to me directly. “It means that now we’ll be searching both.”

Nineteen

I was shaking so badly on the way to school that I made multiple errors in my back-and-forth texts with my dad. I almost never make errors in my text messages, or my emails, or any of my other writings. My parents were always real big on that—making sure I never came across like an idiot in any written communication. My dad always said people got a lot of information about a person from the way they wrote things. You could make a really good impression or a really bad one from just one letter or one email. So they always kept on me about spelling and grammar and all that.

I couldn’t help it, though. I was so insanely distracted and scared and stressed out, a part of me was hoping he wouldn’t text at all. Maybe he was so busy that he’d forget. But no—halfway to the school, the daily texting duel began. I forgot an entire word in the first reply, but he didn’t say anything about that. Then I left a question mark off another one, and he wrote back Are you asking a question there? That was his polite way of pointing out the mistake. When I made a third error—I failed to capitalize the ‘C’ in ‘Colorado’—his immediately reply was Is everything okay, kiddo? I lied yet again, to this person I loved with all my heart, and said Yes, sorry—I’m just thinking about my chem homework, going over it in my head. So, really, two lies for the price of one, because my chemistry homework was the last thing on my mind.

Just before I had turned off the TV and left the house, the local station did their usual quick recap of news highlights from around the rest of the world. And one of them was about a politician who was in hot water for concealing evidence while investigators searched his home. They called it ‘obstruction of justice’—a term I’d heard before, of course. But it certainly never grabbed my attention like it did then.

Is that what I did?! I asked myself as more fear rippled through me. Seriously, the politician in question was a rich, powerful guy who’d been in Washington for, like, ten years or whatever, and the FBI was all over him. The news reporter was talking about the Department of Justice filing charges against him. Shit…they really aren’t kidding around when it comes to obstruction of justice, are they….

I was no legal expert, but I sounded like a perfect description of what I tried to do with that letter—obstruct justice. So I Google’d it on my phone on the way out the door, and yeah—that’s exactly what it was.

EXACTLY what I’d done….

“Fuck,” I said as tears started stinging the corners of my eyes.

By the time that first text from my dad arrived, I felt sick to my stomach. And like I said, I was shaking all over. So much so that I could barely hold the phone in my hand.

I’m going to go to jail. To freaking JAIL.

I wiped away the tears that were spilling down my cheeks. Not because I was ashamed to cry or anything, but because I didn’t want anyone who knew me to see it. Then the questions would start, and I’d be dealing out more lies. The fewer people who suspected anything about what was going on in my life, the better. At the moment, it was just me and my mom, and I intended to keep it just like that.

Yeah, well…fate sucks, doesn’t it?

****

I had a really bad day at school. Like, really bad. I wasn’t paying attention pretty much the whole time, which in turn earned me a few snarky comments. Mr. Presby, who taught chem, apparently called my name over and over to ask about the nomenclature of organic compounds. But I was staring out the window and didn’t hear him. Then the rest of the class looked over at me and starting laughing. That didn’t snap me out of my trance, either. So Amanda Yamamoto, who sits in the next row, put a hand on my shoulder and pushed. My head snapped back and I said Wha? like some stoned-out dopehead, which made everyone laugh even harder. Then Mr. Presby asked if I was bored—a question he usually tossed at the kids who were cruising in the slow land to a dead-end life. I told him no (which was true; I like chemistry quite a lot and find it anything but boring) and apologized. But the silence that followed as he and the rest of the class waited for some kind of explanation was about as awkward as it got. I sure as hell wasn’t going to unleash the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to a whole roomful of people. So I just sat there doing the things you normally do to show that you were recommitting yourself to The Moment—straightening up in my seat, squaring off the corners of the loose papers on my desk, intently re-reading what was on the blackboard, etc.

By lunchtime, I desperately needed to get out of there. I couldn’t go far, so I wandered around the parking lot. If anyone was watching me (I know that sounds paranoid, but that’s what goes on in your brain after you’ve committed a crime but haven’t been caught yet), I wanted to make sure it looked like I was just getting some exercise. So I pushed my hands into my pockets and followed an invisible course that I invented on the fly.

I’d never paid much attention to the cars that were there every day. The school had a designated section for staff and another for students. It wasn’t hard to tell one from the other because the cars in the latter were mostly crap. There were a few hot rods and on-the-way-to-being-hot-rods. Some were upscale vehicles belonging to kids whose parents had enough money lying around. (One was a canary-yellow Beamer with a blinged-out dashboard and a furry steering wheel.) Others were creaky old bombs that looked like a strong wind would blow them into dust. And then there were the obvious hand-me-down sedans that no teenager in their right mind would’ve chosen, but came free of charge courtesy of whichever parent just upgraded or whichever grandparent just died.

I stopped in my tracks when it occurred to me that Dennis Tilton parked his Dodge Stealth here back in the Nineties. A flood of questions followed. Did he have a favorite spot? (I felt like he did, and that he was the kind of person who wanted the one farthest from the school.) Was he one of those jerks who’d take up two spots at an angle so no other cars could get too close? (Again—yeah, probably.) Did other gearheads dig the Stealth and stop to check it out all the time? Maybe ask him some questions? If so, did he engage them, or was he all moody and aloof like my mom described? And what about that time she stopped and talked to him? Where, exactly, did that happen? Was I standing near that spot now? What did they say to each oth—

Wait…that’s it! THAT’S IT!

Out of the clear blue, the answer to the question of What Should I Do Next struck me good and hard. All at once, in a single flash of inspiration, I saw every step and every detail. What to do, how to do it, everything.

And it’s so simple.. It’s so…damn…SIMPLE!!!

I was sure it would work. Positive, in fact. Ready to bet everything on it. Everything and more. I was that certain.

I hurried back inside to put my brilliant plan into action.

Two hours later, I was in sitting in the Lynchport Police Station. 

In handcuffs.

Twenty

“They’re not comfortable, are they,” the officer asked, although it came out more like a statement than a question. This was Bill Ramsey, Lynchport’s deputy police chief. He stood there hovering over me with his hands on his hips and a smile that seemed a little sadistic. He was a cleancut guy all right—dark hair kept short and trimmed to perfection, and a shave so close that his skin looked artificial. His uniform was equally flawless, without so much as a crease or blemish. Even his black shoes were mirror-shiny.

“No, definitely not comfortable,” I said, moving my fisted hands back and forth to make the chain rattle. The cuffs were on way too tight, and I couldn’t help feeling this had been done on purpose. “Would it be okay if you took them off now?”

Ramsey remained as he was—hands on hips, cruel smile in place—for a few more seconds. I felt like a bug that some little brat just spotted on the sidewalk and couldn’t wait to squash. 

Then he took the keys out of his pocket and leaned down. He got so close that I could smell his cologne, which was cheap and disgusting.

“I let all the kids try them on,” he announced proudly, as if wearing handcuffs scored the same on the joy meter as a carnival ride. “It gives them a taste of reality.”

 I tried rubbing away the scarlet grooves that remained on my wrists, but it didn’t do much good.

“The reality of what life is like for a criminal,” he continued, as if I’d asked for further clarification. “That’s why I put this here.”

He tapped a sign on the wall with his forefinger. It had a basic graphic of a pair of handcuffs, along with the line ‘ASK FOR A FREE DEMONSTRATION!’ That’s how I ended up cuffed in the first place—I was looking at that sign when Ramsey walked in. When he asked if I would like a free demonstration, I said no thanks as politely as I could. It didn’t make any difference, though. He had them on me in seconds, that creepy-as-hell smile already beaming.

“Kids need to understand that things like being handcuffed and put in jail don’t only happen on television.”

“Sure, I get it,” I replied, hoping my willingness to agree with him would put an end to the topic.

“If you’d like to see what the jail cell in the basement looks like, I can bring—”

“Bill, enough,” the woman behind the reception window said forcefully. Her name, according to the tag she wore on her fleece pullover, was ‘Dot’. She was a bit on the heavy side and seemed every bit as cheerful as Ramsey was unsettling. “That’s not why she’s here!”

His hands went to his hips again. “No? Okay, then why are you here, young lady?”

“I’m doing an article for The Clarion, my high school newspaper.”

“On what, exactly?”

“On the thing,” Dot answered for me, pointing with her pen in some random direction. “The scanner. The thing that scans the lakes.”

“Ahhh….” Ramsey nodded and studied me one more time from top to bottom. Like I said—creepy. He paused at my chest (I do have some bulk in that area), which absolutely skeeved me out. Then he remembered I also had a face, and that’s where his eyes went next.

“There’s only so much I can tell you about it,” he said seriously. “It’s a key component to an ongoing investigation.”

“I know. People are talking about that all over town, and I’m sure they’d love whatever juicy details they can get their hands on. But I’m only looking for some information on the science. How the scanner works, things like that.”

Even I was amazed at how convincing this lie sounded. I think it was because, like some of the others I’d issued recently, it wasn’t a total lie. I really was fascinated by the tech behind the scanner and its software. And I really was writing an article for The Clarion. It was the centerpiece of my plan. When all those questions about Dennis Tilton and the parking lot started bubbling in my mind, I realized I was thinking like a journalist—and a journalist can often gain access to things that other people can’t. So I went to Ms. Cartwright, the English teacher who runs The Clarion, and told her I’d be interested in writing an article about it. She was thrilled with the idea and told me to go for it.

“So I don’t need any, y’know, sensitive information,” I said to Ramsey. “Just basic things.”

This, too, was a lie—but it had to be told if I had any chance of digging out the information I really wanted.

****

We went down two long hallways, then he opened a door on the left. This led to a three-bay garage that looked more like an industrial warehouse, with bright lights in cages hanging from a high ceiling of corrugated metal. In the left bay was an SUV on a hydraulic lift. The wheels had been removed, and there were a few tools lying on the oil-spotted concrete beneath it. The middle bay was empty, and the third bay had a motorboat on a trailer. And just behind that, on a smaller trailer of its own, was a long yellow tube with four fins at the back.

That’s it, I thought. The thing that could send my mom to jail for the rest of her life.

“…needs a tire rotation and an oil change,” Ramsey was saying as he pointed to the SUV. “We do regular maintenance on all our vehicles.”

“Oh…that’s good,” I replied. 

“The squad cars, the vans, the motorcycles, we take care of all of them ourselves.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Yep.”

When we got to the boat and the scanner, he turned around—I could hear the grit under his shoes—and smiled again.

“Okay, so, this is the boat we use, and that’s the scanner. What would you like to know?”

All of a sudden, I was nervous again. I wasn’t even sure why. Maybe it had to do with the question he just asked.

No, my brain-voice told me, it’s the fact that he asked one at all. Because it means that, so far, you’ve really fooled him into thinking the only reason you’re here is to write an article for the school paper.

Yeah, that was it. This was the second time I’d played around with the local police, and so far I hadn’t been caught. The first time—the anonymous letter—didn’t produce the result I wanted. But I didn’t get caught, and that was a victory in itself. Now I was here doing it again. I felt like a waitress carrying a load of drinks on one of those enormous trays—once you get started, you pretty much have to see it through to the end.

“Um, okay,” I said, taking out my notebook and flipping to a blank page. “So how does the scanner work, exactly?”

“We drop it in the water and let it submerge a ways down. Then we get the boat moving and tow it along very slowly. As it moves, it sends out sonar signals that bounce back. Each of those bounced signals then produces an image on the computer screen. As more sonar images come together, we get a full picture of what’s down there.”

I scribbled all of this in my notebook as if I didn’t already know it. At the same time, I was trying desperately to think up questions that would get some information out of him I didn’t have.

“Does it make a difference whether you use it day or night?”

No idea where that one came from; it just popped out.

Ramsey shook his head. “No difference at all. It’s pretty dark down in the deep waters of Lake Phelan regardless of what the clock says.”

“Okay, and, um…how is the scanner powered?”

“The long cable that connects it to the computer also feeds power to it.”

I nodded and scribbled some more. From the corner of my eye, I could see him staring at me. But even worse, I could feel him. That was the moment I realized something that should’ve occurred to me much earlier—this guy was probably a human polygraph machine. I was no expert on police work, but I knew cops were trained to spot signs of deception. Was he seeing them now? Was I giving myself away without even realizing it? I read something about that once—how some people display markers of dishonesty and don’t even know it.

My throat closed up and my heart began pounding.

You’ve got to end this and get out of here, my mind-voice was telling me. He’s going to figure it out…he’s going to figure out EVERYTHING.

“…like to see some of the samples?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Samples. Of scans that were made with this thing?”

“Oh…sure, yeah.” My stress-fracked brain was hearing something very different come out of his mouth—something like, You’re not really here to write an article for the school paper, are you…?

He reached into the boat and retrieved a brown folder. Then he began taking papers out of it and handing them to me. Each one was different from the others, but they all had the same basic scenery—a vast field of brown that looked like a bird’s-eye view of a desert, with some familiar shapes settled into it here and there. One was a bicycle lying on its side. Another was a refrigerator with its door open. And then there was what appeared to be a helicopter with its overhead rotor intact but most of the tail missing. I was very thankful there weren’t any cars, as that would’ve freaked me out even further.

“This is pretty amazing,” I said. “The level of detail, I mean.”

“It is. And the technology’s improving all the time.”

“Oh? Will it ever be good enough to show what’s inside something?”

I regretted the question the moment it came out. I could just hear the voice screaming in his own brain at that moment—Now why would she want to know that? The only possible explanation is that there’s something in one of the cars in Lake Phelan she doesn’t want us to see! ARREST HER RIGHT NOW!

But—oh my God—he didn’t say anything of the sort. In fact, he reacted as if he got that question all the time.

“I doubt it,” he replied with a little sniff of laughter. “The sonar waves can’t go through things. Just water.”

Which means they’ll have to inspect each submerged vehicle up close anyway….

It also meant they’d find Dennis Tilton’s body, I thought with a miserable sinking feeling. And after that, my mom’s ring. And then they’ll—

“…like this, for example,” Ramsey went on, “we have no way of knowing what it is.”

He was holding another scan from the pile and pointing to a shape in the lower right corner. I couldn’t tell what it was because that pukey-yellowish-brown color was covering it.

“I don’t understand,” I replied.

“It’s buried,” Ramsey said. “Whatever’s under there, the scanner can’t pick it up. It’s covered by mud and sediment.”

I looked more closely, and he was right—there was something under there for sure. But as far as the scanner was concerned, it was just a smallish hump in an otherwise vast terrain.

“What do you do when you see one of those?”

“There’s nothing we can do. There are lots of them, and we don’t have either the time or the manpower to check them all.”

“But what if it’s one of the cars that the insurance-fraud guys put down there?”

“We won’t need to find every car they stole in order to make an arrest,” Ramsey told me.

I smiled back at him and said no, I guess they wouldn’t. That wasn’t the reason I was smiling, though.

It was because I had just found what I came for. 

Twenty One

I continued inventing and asking questions for awhile, although I barely remember what they were. Or Ramsey’s answers, for that matter. I scribbled them down so I’d have the material I needed to write the article. And he let me take a few pictures, too. Then Ramsey insisted on walking me back to the entrance, and after a few more glances at my chest that he thought I didn’t see, he let me get the hell out of there.

I texted my dad on the way home. He was already finished with his meetings for the day, he said, and was relaxing in the hotel bar. I could picture him there, with his tie loosened and a cold beer in front of him.

When I got back, everything was as deathly quiet as always. Nothing out of place, and not a sound in the air. I went up to my room and wrote the article for The Clarion while the critical details were still fresh in my mind. Plus, let’s face it, I didn’t really want to do the stupid thing in the first place, so the sooner I got it done, the better. It ended up being just over five-hundred words and pretty straightforward. Not too dry, but I didn’t attempt to spin it into something more than it was, either. A nonfiction piece about the technology behind this cool missile-looking thing that our town was currently borrowing from the state police so we could track down some insurance scammers, half of whom were probably dead after all this time anyway.

I wrote it in Google Docs and sent the link to Ms. Cartwright along with every photo I was allowed to take (fourteen in total). Then, without so much as a pause to breathe, I dove into my homework. It was light this time, thankfully—read two organic chemistry chapters, then answer some questions at the end of each to make sure I understood what it all meant.

What was really driving me, of course, was the next step in The Plan. I wanted to get to that as soon as possible and focus on it without distractions. The moment my homework was out of the way, I got up and went down the hall to my mom’s room. I could hear the TV on inside, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was awake. So I gave three soft knocks on the door.

“Yeah?” Flat, lifeless. No spirit there at all.

“Mom, can I come in for a minute?”

“Yeah.”

The first thing that hit me was the smell. It wasn’t overpowering, but you have to remember that my mom never allowed herself to smell bad. Ever. She was every bit as OCD about her body as she was about the house. She showered once a day in cooler weather and twice a day when it was hot. She had a collection—not just a few, but a collection—of deodorants, body sprays, and perfumes gathered together like a mini metropolis on her dresser. I once saw her put on a t-shirt, decide she wanted a different one, and throw the first one in the hamper.

The person sitting under those covers was very different. Her hair was everywhere and badly in need of a wash. Her shirt had a food stain on the front (something yellowish). And there was a faint scent of I don’t know what drifting around. I don’t want to contemplate the specifics, but for sure it was the odor of someone who no longer gave a damn.

I sat down on the bed as close as I dared and gave her a smile.

“How are you doing today?”

“Fine.”

I looked to the TV for just a second. I didn’t expect to see the news, and I was right. It was the Game Show Network—a rerun of Family Feud, to be exact—with the sound turned low.

“Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m okay.”

She was about as far off from okay as possible. In that instant, in fact, she looked like a child sitting in the security office of a shopping mall being told her parents can’t be found.

I nodded. “Okay. Mom, look, I need to ask you a question. And I’m sure you won’t want to think about the answer, but maybe something good can come of it.”

She looked up at me with a curiosity that seemed peculiar given the events of the last few days. As if a question that would be in any way uncomfortable was outside the realm of the possible at the moment.

“Mom…where, exactly, did this thing with Dennis Tilton happen? I mean, I know it was at Lake Phelan. But where, exactly, at the lake?”

Her eyes moved off me again, which I fully expected. What I did not expect was that there was no other outward reaction. She looked toward the end of the bed and remained that way for awhile. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind. I was guessing she was reliving the whole thing, which I hated myself for. But it couldn’t be avoided; I had to have this information.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked. It came out very quietly. Again, with no life or spirit to it.

“Because I read something online about where the police are planning to search”—yet another lie (gosh, weren’t they piling up)—“and I realized there was a chance they wouldn’t get too close to where his car was anyway.”

His car…and his dead body was the unspoken line that hung in the space between us with a greater stench than anything that was already in the room.

“When it went into the water,” I continued—mostly because, for as bizarre as this conversation was, she seemed to be listening—“I’m guessing it sunk right away. Which means it more or less went straight down. If the lake’s really that deep, then it’s probably sitting kind of at the edge of it. I doubt the police will need to locate every single car that was used in the insurance scam. Just a few for evidence so they can make the arrests.”

The irony that I was using information given to me by the pervy Deputy Ramsey wasn’t lost on me.

“So they might not go near Dennis’s car at all,” I concluded.

More silence from her, more mindless gazing, and more of me hating myself for dragging her back to any of it. I browsed through a mental catalog of possible responses from her—I don’t really remember…I don’t want to talk about this…It doesn’t matter now…It’s really none of your business…. That last one would be particularly troubling because she still had no idea what I’d been doing to resolve this little problem over the last few days. I had made it my business, very much.

“There was an old road we always took,” she said suddenly, and something in her expression told me she was, indeed, back there in her mind. She was seeing and hearing and feeling all the same things, which had to be intensely painful. “He knew about it, I didn’t. He said loggers used it a long time ago. We went there three times in total. It was perfect for us because we were keeping everything a secret. I don’t really remember how we got to it now.”

“I’m sure you didn’t want to go back after….”

“No, I never went back. I never even went near it. But it was a dirt road just off Paynters Boulevard. It was starting to get overgrown then. I’m sure it’s disappeared now.”

“So you couldn’t find it even if you wanted to? I’m not saying you should, I’m just asking.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sure it’s gone after all this time.”

My stomach dropped—and there went the next step in my brilliant plan. If I couldn’t find the way to where they were that night, there wasn’t much I could do.

“—just before it,” she was saying.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I remember there was a bus stop just before it.”

“A bus stop?”

“One of those little shelters. Two or three people can stand in it if it’s raining.”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“This was an old wooden one. Clapboard or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was gone, too.

I kept nodding. “Yeah, okay….”

She eyed me cautiously. “Why are you asking this again? I don’t want you doing anything foolish, Liss.”

Time to whip out another lie. I was becoming a pro.

“No no,” I replied, waving my hands. “Like I said before, there’s a chance the police won’t even go near where you and Dennis were. I just wanted to know so I could check it out online. Look at one of those Earth maps. Maybe there’s nothing to be worried about.”

Her expression transformed again, softening around the edges and the sadness reclaimed her.  

“There’s never a moment when I’m not worried,” she said.

I’d never seen anyone look so tired of being alive.

Twenty Two

At least I was honest about one thing—I did go back to my room, get on the computer, and open up an Earth map online. 

Paynters Road in Lynchport was easy enough to find. And the default view, conveniently enough, looked to be about a hundred yards overhead. The hand-grab tool allowed me to navigate rapidly over a large terrain. I started at the intersection of Route 287 and, moving northeast on Paynters, was soon surrounded by nothing but forest. It looked like fresh broccoli on either side.

Eventually a body of water appeared in the upper left corner of the screen, and it felt like a light layer of frost settled onto my skin when the words ‘Lake Phelan’ scrolled into view. It became so real then. Until that moment, at least from my perspective, it had all been talk, theoretical and abstract. But now Phelan was a real place that anyone could go and see because it was there. There and waiting to give up its secrets.

I continued following Paynters while keeping Phelan on the screen, hoping beyond hope that I’d see some sign of the old logging road. If it really was overgrown, perhaps a light scar would still be visible. Like those Nazca Lines in Peru that form pictographs if you see them from the sky.

As it turned out, the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t see anything that might’ve once been a road—it was that there were lots of things that might’ve been a road. There were faint lines randomly starting and stopping all over the place. They can’t all be old logging roads, I thought, and then I started wondering if any of them were. More likely they were simple clearings, areas where very few trees or shrubs had grown for whatever reason.

The quality of the satellite images didn’t help, either. You could see things generally, but nothing was of a high enough resolution for any serious detail. If someone had been walking their dog when these pictures were taken, both the person and the dog would likely look like nothing more than blobs of color. And the more I magnified, the more pixilated and meaningless everything became.

I decided to take a different approach. Time to break out my supernatural Google skills again, I decided. I opened a new browser window and did a search for bus routes in our area. When that produced nothing of value, I did a second search, through Google Images this time, using the keywords ‘Lynchport’, ‘New Jersey’, ‘Paynters’, ‘Boulevard’, ‘bus’, and ‘shelter’.

I got two results. One was an ancient black and white showing the wooden shelter exactly as my mom described. It had a slanted roof and a little bench inside. Very basic, probably took two guys half a day to build. An old woman holding what appeared to be a shopping bag was standing inside.

The other picture was in color, although it didn’t appear to be very recent. The caption was particularly depressing—BUS SHELTER ON PAYNTERS BLVD TO BE ELIMINATED.

I clicked on the link, and there was a short article from 2004 talking about how the administrators of the bus company had decided the Paynters stop was too far out from the normal routes, yet used too infrequently, to justify building a newer and more modern shelter. So they were just going to remove the old one, which had begun to fall apart. They cited all the normal reasons, of course—cost this and cost that, etc. Bottom line, too expensive.

Great, now what….

I stared at the two photos for awhile, studying them for…well, I didn’t even know. They were cropped so tight around the shelter that you couldn’t really see anything beyond it. I was hoping for a mailbox or a phone booth or a tree with a distinctive shape. But no, nothing like that.

Unbelievable. But then what did I expect? Nothing was ever really there in the first place except three little walls, one little roof, and a little cement foundation that had—

“Oh, wait a minute,” I said out loud. “Wait just a minute….”

Returning to the Earth map I’d opened first, I hand-dragged my way back to the spot where the forestation began and followed along Paynters, inch by excruciating inch, using a reasonable magnification. And by ‘reasonable’ I mean not so high that individual images became pixilated out of existence, yet still high enough that I could recognize basic forms like cars and streetlights and telephone poles. About three-quarter of the way to the end, I saw it.

“Whoa….” I said breathlessly. “There it is.”

It was tiny, of course. And nothing more than a little rectangle at the side of the road. But definitely a rectangle, and a man-made rectangle at that. Not some weird little clearing that just happened to be shaped that way. No, this was an object that had been put there for a purpose and then later abandoned.

The foundation…the actual foundation of the bus shelter. It’s really still there.

I went to the closet to change my clothes.

****

I picked out dark jeans, black sneakers, and a black hoodie. Not quite the uniform of a cat burglar, but close. I also wanted to look like a kid who was simply out for a walk, should anyone see me.

Pausing again in the hallway, I could hear my mom snoring away. That made things a little easier. I went downstairs and wrote a note saying I was going to the mall for a bit. I had already decided to stop counting the lies I’d been telling her, but it did occur to me that this was the first one I put in writing. I left it on the same table where I’d been sitting when all of this began for me.

Then to the garage. Two cars were parked there—a Jeep Cherokee and a Toyota Corolla. My dad drove the Toyota when he was here. He called it ‘a solid everyday car’. Good gas mileage, reliable manufacturer, etc. All the dad-reasons. The Jeep, on the other hand, was acquired purely for safety, as it was shared by my mom and me. I got my license back in November, but I rarely went anywhere. The high school was only a few blocks away, and I was basically a homebody the rest of the time. I was never intrigued by driving like a lot of other kids at school, who’d spend hours cruising around just because they could.

There were two flashlights in a dual charger on the wall over the slop sink. My dad got them because the power went out on our street at least once a year, and the lights on our phones were fairly useless during a blackout. These flashlights, however—steel-cased and ridiculously heavy—produced a beam that could burn a spot on Mars.

I broke one free of its charger and got into the Toyota, choosing that over the Jeep because it was also black. The magnetic key fob was already inside; I just had to start it. Then I pressed the button to lift the garage door, and out I went.

Twenty Three

Paynters Boulevard was on the west side of town, an area where the homes-to-land ratio is a very different. The houses are farther apart, the properties larger. It was dark and quiet, which was kind of eerie but also very good for my purposes.

It took me about twenty minutes to get there, which made me wonder what it must’ve been like for my mom all these years, knowing Dennis Tilton’s body was so close. He could’ve been found at any time, and if her ring was found along with him, her life was done. I just couldn’t imagine what that felt like, knowing your personal freedom sat next to a ticking bomb all the time.

As I moved along Paynters and drew closer to where I judged the old foundation to be, I took the flashlight in hand. Just as I was about to fire it up, another pair of headlights appeared far in the opposite direction. My heart damn near exploded. Five seconds earlier, maybe two, and I would’ve had the light on and shining out the window.

I had to keep going at normal speed, and by the time the other car passed me in the opposite lane, I estimated that I’d missed the spot. That proved to be incorrect, however, as I saw it just before I was going to turn around.

I pulled to the shoulder and got out. It was only then that I realized I probably should’ve written some kind of note to leave on the dashboard. GONE FOR A WALK or something like that, to make it clear the car wasn’t broken down or abandoned should a curious cop happen by. With my luck, it’d be Deputy Ramsey himself, who’d then run the plates on the computer in his squad car and connect at least a few of the dots that I didn’t want connected. But there was nothing I could do about it now, so I grabbed the flashlight and locked the doors.

I went to the foundation as a starting point. The back half of it was no barely visible, covered by a rough layer of sod that was slowly winning the battle to take back nature’s territory.

My mom had said the logging road was just past this point, but I didn’t know whether she meant to the left or the right. So I crossed to the other side of Paynters, turned around, and clicked on the flashlight.

“Shit!” I said when I saw the beam. It was like having the freaking sun in my hand.

My first instinct was to shine it straight down, as if it might otherwise start a forest fire. Then, checking to make sure there were no other cars coming, I brought the beam back up and started scanning. I found the logging road in a matter of minutes; it turned out to be maybe fifty or sixty feet away. Yes, it was largely covered by overgrowth. But there was still enough of it to accommodate one person.

I decided to turn off the flashlight and use my phone from there. If I needed extra light, I certainly had it available. But I didn’t want to risk anyone seeing me unless it was absolutely necessary.

You just never knew what might happen out there in the woods, right?

****

The walk to the lake was pleasant enough, if a little eerie. I heard a few crickets and the cicadas, which was fine. But every now and then something else would scamper through the dry leaves, which kind of freaked me out. These were small creatures—squirrels, chipmunks, whatever. But it made me wonder what else was out there. Did we even have bears in this area? Or bobcats or foxes? I had no idea, and I was a little ashamed of that. I haven’t spent a lot of time in nature, but I always liked it. At least the scents were nice. Honeysuckle and pine sap were two that I could identify. No idea what the others were.

After about ten minutes of walking, the lake appeared on the left. I could see it through the trees, gray and misty like something out of an old movie. I was coming up to it at an angle, so the further I went, the more I could see. There were boulders of varying sizes all around the shoreline. Some looked like they weighed a thousand pounds, others about a million or so. This is an old place, I thought, although I certainly didn’t have the expertise in geology or hydrology to know that for sure. Just a gut feeling. And the older a place is, the more secrets it has.

The logging road made a sharp left turn, exiting the trees and bringing me to a small clearing. This, too, had begun to fade beneath a layer of scrubby overgrowth. And as I walked to the center of it, I noticed something that caused my heart to stall—a break in the borderline of boulders and packed earth that outlined the lake. It was maybe twenty across, which was plenty wide enough for….

That’s where it happened—right there. It’s the only spot where a car could be driven into the water. Everywhere else is blocked.

The forestation resumed just beyond that, which meant there was nowhere else to go. So yeah, this was where it happened. It had to be.

I stood there—unable to move, barely able to breathe—replaying the events of that day in my mind.

He’s already here, leaning against his black Dodge Stealth. Then she pulls up, feeling a little scared, as she always does around him. Part fear, part excitement. She gets out. Maybe they kiss a few times, just to get things going. Then they’re in the back seat of the Stealth, him trying to move everything to the next level. But he’s being rough, which she doesn’t like. Rougher than usual, which really starts to frighten her. He makes a big move, and she pushes back. He’s pissed about this, but she stands her ground. The gun comes out…then it goes off….

I heard the shot clearly in my mind. Then I was back in the present, with the crickets and the cicadas.

He’s down there right now, I thought. Along with his Dodge Stealth. Life had not gone on for him. One mistake on one day at one moment in time, and it was all over. Everything he wanted to be or could’ve been stopped right there.

Right here.  

A completely random question came to me then—Would his clothes still be on him? I have no idea why. It was so bizarre, not to mention idiotic. After nearly forty years, the material most certainly would have deteriorated. Forty years and whatever creatures lived down there. They would’ve nibbled away at everything, including most of him. Dennis Tilton would be nothing but bones now. A grinning skeleton in the murky dark, trapped in the back seat of a car on a never-ending ride to nowhere.

But the ring…the ring would still be there, I reminded myself. That couldn’t have deteriorated. Not even close.

It’d probably be still be in perfect condition, in fact. A few moments in a good cleaning solution would brighten it up like a sunny day. Then the police would see the inscription that ran around the inside, and a short time later there’d be a knock at our front door. What followed would be something along the lines of two or three squad cars outside with their lights swirling while my mom was perp-walked in handcuffs and our neighbors stood on the sidewalk taking pictures and videos to post online. Then an arrest would be announced on the news. Definitely local and maybe even national, since it had a certain morbid appeal. Who doesn’t love a good boyfriend-shot-and-then-buried-in-a-lake-along-with-his-car story?

But none of that was going to happen if I could help it. As I stood there in the moon’s neon glow, I assessed the workability of my latest idea. It involved covering up the Stealth so the sonar couldn’t find it. It would be nothing more than a meaningless lump in the muddy substrate, just like whatever else was in those printouts Ramsey showed me. Things that they couldn’t identify and, in his words, they “…didn’t have the manpower to dig out.” Between that and his claim that they didn’t need to locate every vehicle in order to start making arrests in the first place, the Dodge Stealth could stay right the hell where it was.

The part of my plan that I still hadn’t puzzled out involved the how. Between all the boulders and the weedy soil between them, there was more than enough material to cover the Stealth. I figured the vehicle itself likely hadn’t drifted very far from the shoreline. A car weighs a few tons, right? I doubt it went drifting around the lake like some Disneyland paddleboat before bubbling under. No—it went straight down, or damn close. So the key question was how to get all that earthen material down there?

I browsed through a few options in my mind, none of which seemed particularly workable. A stick of dynamite would do it…except for the fact that I don’t have a stick of dynamite lying around, and I’m thinking Home Depot doesn’t stock explosives. I’ll bet a truck could push a lot of it off the edge and into the water. Certainly a bulldozer could. But again, I don’t have a truck or a bulldozer, and I don’t know anyone who does. Even if I did, what would I ask them? Hey, wanna help me cover up a crime scene so my mom doesn’t spend the rest of her life in jail for killing an old boyfriend who got a little handsy with her?

I had just begun pondering a third idea—coming back with a shovel—when something yanked me out of my thoughts. It was a voice, hard and cruel, speaking just two words.  

“Don’t move.”

And after that, the distinct click of a handgun.

Twenty Four

It was not someone standing right next to me, or even within a few feet. The person to whom the voice belonged was somewhere in the woods to my right. It was that quiet, so much so that I could hear him very clearly. He hadn’t shouted or anything. But he cut through the softer noises in the night without any trouble.

It’s a cop, I realized. That would explain not only the commanding, no-bullshit tone but also the fact that he had a gun. Then another realization came, one that I should’ve had long before that moment—This area is being watched. Patrolled or whatever.

Of course it was. How did I not consider that? As long as the investigation was going on, the whole lake was essentially a crime scene, right?

I fully expected the officer in question to walk out of the woods, weapon still aimed and ready, and start firing—not bullets, but questions. Who are you? Why are you out here? What are you doing?

The machinery in my brain wasn’t coming up with any answers. It hadn’t seized completely, but it was sputtering, jammed by the fear coursing through my system. Like one of those dreams where a spider about the size of a cat is crawling on you, but you can’t raise your hand to push it away.

Then I thought, The article…I’ll say I’m here working on the article. Research or something. Maybe taking some pictures, too. Yeah, that might work.

Then again it probably wouldn’t. What aspect of the article could I possibly be researching in the dark? And why would I be taking pictures in the dark? Not to mention, the article had already been turned in. It would only take one phone call to the school to confirm this.

Then a third realization, perhaps the most chilling of all—Even if the police do believe that’s what I’m doing, what happens after they find the Dodge Stealth…and then the body…and then the RING???

I’d be cooked at that point. Totally finished. They’d know why I offered to write the article in the first place, i.e., just to get close to the investigation and learn a few things. Things other people wouldn’t know about. And get information that could help me cover up the crime.

The crime…oh fuck….

My mom wouldn’t be the only criminal in the matter at that point—I would, too. A conspirator after the fact, I believe they called it. Something like that. Someone who found out what happened later on and decided to help the guilty parties conceal the truth. Let’s face it, that is who I was, and that’s exactly what I’d been doing. I found out what she did, and I made the choice, entirely on my own, to make sure no one got to the bottom of it.

So then my mom’s life would be over, and mine would, too. She’d be put in jail forever, and I’d be a few doors down in a cell of my own. Maybe not forever, but certainly for awhile. Long enough to keep you from ever achieving all those dreams of yours, because who the hell would want to hire someone who tried to cover up a murder? The medical field was brutally competitive. I’d learned that happy little fact a long time ago. The tiniest difference in two resumes could change everything. I was pretty sure ‘convicted felon’ would qualify as one of those dealbreakers.

Dammit….

As the tears started rolling down my face, I realized my hands were up. Not all the way, like I was signaling for a touchdown. Maybe about half that. What’s weird is I had no memory of raising them. But, clearly, I had resigned myself to my fate. I was just waiting now for the officer in question to come and—

There was some kind of a commotion. Crashing leaves and breaking branches and the sounds of other voices, harsh and angry and direct.

I took a chance and turned my head, slowly, in that direction. I could not have been more shocked by what I saw.

There were two officers at least. They appeared to be in their usual dark-navy uniforms, and they had grabbed hold of someone else. Someone not a cop. I couldn’t really see much (remember—dead of night, and the moon generally doesn’t do a good job of shining through the trees). But I could tell the guy was pretty skinny and wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He also had long, scraggly hair that kind of swung on either side of his bearded face.

Fuck off!

Let’s go!

Get your fucking hands off me!

If you continue to resist, I’ll have to taser you!

At that point my body once again wrestled command from my petrified mind, because the next thing I knew I had hurried out of the clearing and crouched low between two of the lakeshore boulders.

Get…the fuck…OFF ME!

Sir, you’d better shut your mouth….

I could barely see anything now, but I heard more of the leaves-and-branches noise-ology. Then it all started to fade, and I realized the police were walking away with their suspect, probably in the direction of their squad car or whatever. I really didn’t know.

What I did know—and all I cared about—was that they were moving away from me.

****

I remained in that hidden position for quite awhile after they left. I was too scared to do anything else. Perhaps those two officers were no longer on the scene, but were there others? If they really were patrolling the lake, how many more might there be? Phelan was pretty big. Would they send only two guys to keep an eye on it? That didn’t seem likely.

But I couldn’t spend the rest of the night lying there, either. The sun would come up in a few hours, and if there were other cops, I’m guessing they’d have a much easier time finding me in the daylight.

I have to take the chance. There’s no other choice.

I got to my feet, slowly, and started back toward the logging road. My stomach was tight from the fear that I would hear someone say don’t move. All the woodland sounds that I found charming before were menacing now. Every rustle was a man with a gun, every crunch an officer with a taser. Halfway back I dropped to all fours and vomited. But I made it to the car eventually.

Even then, I couldn’t stop shaking or crying.

****

No sooner had I turned off the car and shut the garage door than my phone pinged.

Dad: What’s going on with you, kiddo?

I took a deep breath and let it out.

Me: Nothing really. You?

Dad: Keeping busy, like always. Did you have a fun and exciting day?

Me: Absolutely. I live a life of full-throttle, breakneck excitement, as you know.

His response came back in seconds—

Dad: Seriously, what’s going on over there?

Me: I’ve already done my homework, so I’m going to hit the shower and then the bed pretty soon. Have you been texting mom?

Dad: A little bit. How’s she doing?

Me: Basically the same, I wrote since I didn’t yet have any idea how wrong that was. I’m going to check on her in a few. Do you want me to ask her to text you?

Dad: If she’s awake, sure. If she’s asleep, just leave her be.

Me: Okay.

We went back and forth a little more after that, mostly about his business meetings. It sounded like things were going really well, and I was honestly happy for him. And hey, here’s a silver lining— I didn’t get my shit together and figure something out fast, at least we’d have money to post my mom’s bail.

When I walked into the house, I was surprised to find (or feel, I suppose is the better word) the vibe was not quite as ominous as it had been over the last few days. At first I thought that was purely an intuitive thing, the byproduct of wish fulfillment. Then I realized it was because I could clearly hear the TV up in my mom’s room from where I stood in the kitchen. That meant she either had the volume set to a deafening pitch—which was unlikely, as she hated loud noises—or the door was wide open.

I took the steps very cautiously. The creeped-out part of me couldn’t help wondering if this was all part of some off-the-wall suicide ritual, where a TV or radio is jacked really loud ‘to keep the demons from Hell at bay while the spirit passes out of the body’ or whatever.

But when I got to the door and peeked inside, all I found was my mom sitting on the bed with the TV going (and at a volume only slightly higher than what might be considered normal) and her food tray in front of her. On top of the tray was an empty plate, an empty glass, and a neatly folded linen napkin.

I looked to the screen and saw an old rerun of Match Game. That had always been one of her favorites. My dad, too. I guess the only strange part was that she wasn’t laughing or even smiling. She and my dad were always either laughing or smiling during Match Game. Not so this time, however. She just stared with the dead-eyed gaze of a cipher.

“Is all your homework done?” she asked suddenly. I didn’t even realize she realized I was there.

“It is,” I replied.

“Okay.”

That was it; not another word. Which was good, actually, because I didn’t want to spin out any more lies to either of my parents that night. I can’t imagine she wasn’t aware that I’d taken the car earlier. If nothing else, I’m sure she heard the garage door both when I left and when I returned. But it didn’t seem to interest her.

Or maybe it did, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell at that point. And frankly, for the first time since all of this started, I honestly didn’t care. Not about school, not about what my mom did, not about anything. I’d had enough for the day. More than enough.

I took a shower, got into bed, and fell instantly asleep.

Twenty Six

The next morning, the door to my mom’s room was wide open.

I went for a closer look and saw that the blinds along the back wall were also fully open, bathing the room in sunshine for the first time in days. Then some other details began to register, each one as surprising as the last. The bed had a fresh set of sheets and was made to military perfection. There were no dishes or glasses or silverware in sight. All stray clothes had been picked up. And every item on her dresser and nightstand had been returned to its assigned place. The carpet had been vacuumed, and whatever traces of reekiness had previously lingered were long gone. I could detect the faint scent of air freshener, but most sanitizing was the breeze blowing through the open windows.

What the hell…?

I didn’t find her anywhere on the first floor, and that’s when a touch of panic set in. I was about to go to the garage to see if one of the cars was gone. Then I saw that the door to the basement was open and the light shining in the stairwell.

“Mom?” I called down.

“Yeah, I’m doing laundry,” she replied in a tone that wasn’t quite her old self, but it was better. The million-dollar question was why? As far as I could tell, nothing had changed. From her perspective, the police were still on the verge of discovering her little secret and would be knocking on our front door soon thereafter. I can’t imagine she’d have any reason to think otherwi—

But maybe that’s it, a voice in my mind said very clearly. Maybe she’s accepted her fate. She knows what’s going to happen and has decided not get all worked up about it anymore.

That happened sometimes. I remember reading about it in a criminology class I took last year. When some people know they’re about to get caught, rather than making their situation—and, inevitably, their sentencing—worse, they skip the whole hit-the-road strategy and go straight to the next step. Allow themselves to get caught and then fight the fight somewhere else in the process.

That would explain her behavior to some degree. The straightening up, the cleaning, the feeling of things returning to normal. I could absolutely see her making those choices. Wanting to put everything in our little world back in order so at least we would feel like things were okay after she was gone. Which meant that, essentially, she was giving up.

But that didn’t mean I was. Eff that. I was still on my idea of somehow pushing a few boulders and a ton of dirt into the water so Dennis Tilton finally got something close to a proper burial, and his Dodge Stealth along with it. I was playing around with a few other ideas, too, comfortable in the knowledge that I still had some time to do so. But this turned out to be a delusion I would enjoy for only a few more minutes.

I put a container of instant oatmeal into the microwave. While it was being bombarded by radioactivity or whatever it was, I poured a glass of milk and peeled a banana. Then I took my royal breakfast to the round table and turned on the TV. The local news had a report about someone in a manufacturing plant being arrested on embezzlement charges. He, along with his girlfriend, had been skimming from the company for more than five years. A few of his co-workers were interviewed, and they all said the same thing—nicest guy in the world, hard to believe he’d commit such a crime, etc. The irony was not lost on me.

The next segment was about a family-owned restaurant in Deensbrook that was closing after more than forty years. The grandkids didn’t want anything to do with it, so it would be torn down to make room for a convenience store. The story after that had to do with some local athlete breaking a national track record. 

Then the Lynchport police were on the screen again. Same guys as last time, with Chief Barton at the microphone. The headline at the bottom read—

ARREST MADE IN CONNECTION WITH LONGTIME INSURANCE FRAUD CASE

The reporters were firing away like mad.

“Can you tell us who you arrested last night?”

“What role did he play in the insurance scam?”

“Is he still in your custody?”

The Chief patted the air with his hands as if trying to quiet a group of unruly children.

“I have a prepared statement,” he told them, “after which I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”

He removed a set of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, gave them a quick polish with a tissue, and set them on his face. It was maybe the longest ten seconds of my life. Seriously, if a bomb had gone off behind me, I wouldn’t have heard it.

Then, with each word he read, my body temperature dropped a few more degrees.

“Last night, two officers apprehended a suspect in the woods by the western shore of Lake Phelan as part of a coordinated sting operation concerning the insurance-fraud case involving both Phelan and Lake Holcombe. The suspect in question, who was released on bond earlier today, is sixty-seven-year-old Albee Holmes. At this time, we have reason to believe Holmes was part of a larger consortium of criminals operating in this area in the late 1980s and early 1990s to purchase vehicles, have them insured, and then report them stolen and, ultimately, strip them of all valuable parts before discarding them in the lakes previously mentioned.”

The rapid-fire questioning continued at this point even though Barton hadn’t yet signaled he was finished—

“When did the arrest take place?”

“Has Holmes confessed to anything?”

“Was anyone else involved?”

More air-patting from Barton until the group settled down again.

“Guys…okay, I’ll try to answer the questions I heard. First, the arrest was made around ten thirty last night. Second, no, Albee Holmes has not provided any confessions or other admissions as of yet. He asked for an attorney and that was pretty much it.”

“And is he the only one you’ve arrested so far?” someone yelled quickly.

Barton nodded. “Yes, so far.”

“But you do have other suspects?” another reporter, a woman, cut in.

“Sure. As I said, we do not believe Albee Holmes was the only one involved, but rather part of a larger criminal ring. And before you ask, no, I can’t tell you the names of our other persons of interest. I remind you that this is an ongoing investigation.”

I allowed myself to relax a little at this point. If they’d had any idea someone else had been there, I’m guessing they would’ve mentioned it. Maybe not, but still…I was feeling a little better about the whole thing.

Then came the question that shot a spear into my chest.

“And is it true that you’ve finished scanning both lakes already?”

Again, if a bomb had gone off ten feet away from me—a nuke, even—I wouldn’t have heard a thing.

Barton froze as if he’d been hit by some kind of alien stun ray. He stared at the reporter for what seemed like a long time, then said, “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

A very awkward silence followed.

“You…how can you know about that?” Barton asked, then shook his head. “It had to be Holmes, because we showed him the scans. It was Holmes, right?”

“I’m sorry, Chief,” the reporter said, “you know I can’t reveal a source.”

Now Barton looked pissed.

“Okay…guys, I really can’t comment any further. That’s it for now.”

He began gathering his papers and was about to turn away when someone else said, “But you can confirm that all the scanning of the lakes has been done?”

Looking angry enough to punch a hole through a brick wall, Barton said, “Yes, it has.”

Suddenly I felt like I was going to vomit again.

****

School was a disaster for me that day.

All I kept thinking was What else can I do…what else can I do…. My mom’s life was on the line. And I suppose mine was, too, being an accessory and all. So I really didn’t give a flying shit about my classes. I had a chemistry test, but my mind wasn’t even in the room let alone on the test itself. Then there was the incident in Ms. Hawthorne’s lit class, where she made a single and very loud clap to get my attention. She had a policy of doing this after calling someone’s name three times. I’d been amused watching it play out with other kids, but this was the first time it happened to me.

There are options, I kept telling myself while the anxiety continued surging through my system. There are always options. Ironically, my parents had taught me that. All part of the never-give-up and always-solider-on worldview. Just because you couldn’t see a possibility in your mind didn’t mean it wasn’t out there somewhere. Look at everything, all the details both big and small, and if you still can’t come up with a solution, start thinking outside the box.

Following the latter approach, something came to me that seemed both funny (not that anything was really funny at that point) and realistic—blowing up the Dodge Stealth. Maybe getting a stick of dynamite down there somehow. It was a completely absurd idea, of course…and yet, hey, it would solve the problem, wouldn’t it? If nothing else, my mom’s ring would likely get blown well away from Dennis’s body, settle in the mud somewhere, and lay unnoticed for the next two thousand years like the one in those J. R. R. Tolkien stories.

I had a few others—Mom and dad and I take off in the middle of the night and change our names…or we bribe the cop who finds the ring to pretend he didn’t see anything—but none seemed even remotely plausible. I even thought about going down there to search for the ring myself, since I was actually a pretty good swimmer. Then I did a Google search and discovered that an ordinary person can dive no more than about seventy-five feet before the pressure starts causing serious damage. Lake Phelan went down almost two hundred feet in some places, which would be a challenge even for an experienced diver with professional equipment. And since I was neither an experienced diver nor had any professional equipment, that wasn’t going to be happening for me.

But it will be for them, my little mind-voice chirped up. They’ll be able to get down there. Or attached a few chains to the Stealth and bring it up. One way or another, they’ll have that ring any day now.

For all I knew, they had it already. They’d done such a good job of keeping the sonar scanning a secret, who the hell knew what else had already happened? That’s why I kept checking my phone all day (and got caught once by Mr. Bateman, who gave me an earful for “…disappointing conduct from a student who knows better…”) in search of updates on the story. One mentioned that the around-the-clock police presence would continue at both lakes. Another had a comment from Barton confirming that they would try to bring up as many cars as possible because they needed the vehicle identification numbers. That one turned my blood to ice water, as I got a clear image of a dripping Dodge Stealth hanging from the end of a crane, and everyone absolutely losing it when they realized there was a body in the back seat. That would be the Point of No Return. The moment someone noticed whatever remained of Dennis Tilton, my mom’s life wouldn’t be worth a dime. And I had absolutely no way of knowing when that moment would come. Barton hadn’t said anything about it. Neither had Ramsey, nor—

Wait, that’s it, I thought as I was in the hallway heading to my last class. I’d even stopped walking and didn’t realize it until someone behind me said, “Can you get out of the way, asshole?” But I didn’t see who because, like everything else at the school that day, I couldn’t have cared less.

Ramsey…the police station…I can go back there. Say I’m doing a followup to my story for the school paper….

Yeah, that worked. They let me do it once, why not again? I think I established myself pretty positively the first time. Didn’t ask any questions I shouldn’t. Didn’t act aggressive or even hostile like the reporters on TV. At least one of them had spoken with Albee Holmes, which clearly pushed the wrong buttons with Chief Barton. But I hadn’t done anything like that. I was polite and respectful, and most of my questions were about the sonar technology. Now that word was out that they’d finished all the scanning, I could say that lots of people were talking about it in school, and that I’d been asked to do a second article. Not exactly the truth, but I doubted anyone at the station was going to call Ms. Cartwright and check.

Then I can find out exactly what’s going on. And from there, I could figure out what to do next.

Simple, right?

Yeah—not so much….

Twenty Seven

The police station was as busy as a beehive. Cops going in and out, reporters on the sidewalk and the steps—denied entry into the station itself, I assumed—firing questions that were systematically ignored, and ordinary people trying to conduct ordinary business that would have been no problem on an ordinary day.

The chaotic vibe continued inside. Lots of people moving everywhere and the staticky noisiness of all the radios in the dispatch area, which was behind a pane of glass that looked thick enough to halt a missile strike. I went to the reception desk, behind which sat the same woman as last time—Dot.

She smiled as soon as she saw me. “Well, hello there!”

“Hey,” I replied with a little smile of my own. “I’m sorry to bother you on such a crazy day.”

“Oh, that’s okay. This kind of thing happens once in awhile. Last time was that Carl Spencer business a few years ago.”

I remembered it as soon as she mentioned the name because the Spencers had lived just a few blocks from us. Their divorce was nearly finalized, and she’d raked him over the coals pretty good—got the kids, substantial payments in both child support and alimony, and the satisfaction of having everyone in town learn about his affair with one of the women who worked in his office. So, in an age when winning (or at least each person’s perception of it) was all that mattered, Carl went to the townhouse where his wife was staying and killed her with his hunting rifle before turning it on himself. Their kids, nine and eleven, came home from school and found their bodies in the living room.

It wasn’t the memory that caught me by surprise, but rather the casual way in which Dot recalled it. Like she was discussing what she’d had for dinner last night. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve worked at a police station long enough.

“Anyway,” she went on, “what can I do for you, hon?”

“I’m working on a followup article for the school paper,” I told her—now surprising myself a second time, for I dealt out this lie as smoothly as a seasoned con artist—“and I’d like to know if I could talk to Deputy Ramsey for just a few minutes. It won’t take long.”

Looking genuinely disappointed on my behalf, Dot said, “Oh, I’m sorry, but he’s not here. And I don’t expect him back for awhile. He’s dealing with…you know. The big story of the day.”

My insides deflated. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be there. But then of course there was a chance he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like he was sitting around with nothing to do and hoping that I’d show up with more questions.

Dammit—I really needed to talk to him.

Just as I started to consider what to do next, the gods that determine the course of our lives tossed me a bone.

“Maybe someone else could help you out,” Dot said. “In fact, I think I have just the man.” Before I could reply, she turned toward the dispatch booth and said, “Hey Josh? Could you come here a second?”

An officer who barely looked old enough to be on the force came out the door. He even had a little acne thing going on. His hair was army-short and his uniform was pressed to perfection.

“What’s up?” he asked in a voice that seemed too deep for the rest of him.

Dot pointed to me with her pen. “This is Alyssa, umm…what was it again, sweetie?”

“Lindstrom. Alyssa Lindstrom.”

“Oh, you wrote that article for the school paper,” Officer Josh said, grinning. “It was really good.”

I didn’t need a mirror to know how shocked I looked.

“You read it?”

He nodded. “My sister is Kelly Townsend. She’s one grade before you, and she always brings the school paper home.”

I knew Kelly pretty well. We were in the same chemistry class and had one study hall together. She was thin and athletic, with straight dark hair and green eyes that, honest to God, looked like a pair of emeralds. They were stunning.

“Oh sure,” I said. “Kelly’s great.”

He see-sawed his hand. “Most of the time. So what can I help you with?”

It wasn’t until that moment I realized I hadn’t prepared for this in any way. Here was a guy who’d read the last article and liked it. So there was a pretty good chance his opinion of me and my capacity for organization and professionalism was pretty high. As it turned out, though, I had nothing to worry about—I reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook before I even realized I was doing it. Apparently, my recently surfaced deception skills were developing at Jedi-like speed.

“The last article generated a lot of interest among the student body,” I heard myself say while also understanding that there was virtually no chance of him wasting time checking on it due to the fact that, since he liked the article, selling the lie about its popularity was now that much easier. “And I’ve been asked to write a followup, so I need to ask a few more questions.” Then, since I was on roll, I added, “I realize there are some things you can’t talk about, but I don’t think I need to know any of that stuff.”

A hint of concern passed over his face and was gone again, like a little bird checking out an empty feeder. I think it was my last line that did it.

“Sure,” he said with fresh smile. “How can I help?”

****

The time it took to walk back to the garage gave me the chance to formulate a few questions. The SUV that had been up on the lift days earlier was no longer there, replaced with a longish van that had the town’s emblem about halfway down. Some caging was visible on the inside of the back windows, and the sight of them frosted me as I wondered if that would be the vehicle where they’d place my mom after they cuffed her in our front hallway and then walked her outside.

When we got to the boat and the scanner, I was surprised by how clean they both were.

“Now that you’re finished scanning both lakes, I figured they’d be pretty filthy.”

“They were disgusting,” Josh said, hands on his hips as he looked them over. “But if you’ve been following the story in the media—and you obviously have—then you know the scanner’s on loan from the state. So we have to clean it before sending it back. That was my job yesterday, to spit and polish both of them.” He pointed to someplace through the closest bay door, which was fully closed. “I did it right out there with a bucket of soapy water and a hose.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Oh yeah.”

“When do you have to give it back?”

“They’re coming for it tomorrow.”

I nodded as if this was important. Which I suppose it was in a way. This was Friday, which meant they really were finished with the scans.

“I have to say,” I went on, “I’m pretty impressed that you guys kept the scanning process a secret.”

My chaperone took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, well, we did it at night. And we were hoping to keep it a secret for a little while longer.”

“So you could catch more people than just Albee Holmes?”

He was looking away from me now, sort of staring into space with just the tiniest grin on one corner of his mouth.

“We had high hopes that more people would return to the crime scene. But thanks to Holmes, the word is out. If there are any others who were thinking about it, they’re not thinking about it now.”

“What was Holmes trying to do there?” I asked, eager to keep the questions going and maintain the illusion that I was prepared. Then I said quickly, “Oh, sorry—that’s probably not something you can discuss.”

“It’s not, but it doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t talk to anyone anyway, and I’m okay telling you that because the chief already said it to the media.”

“He just wanted a lawyer, right?”

“Just wants a lawyer.”

I nodded as if this was old news and not worth bothering with. Besides, I had to get back to cajoling information out of him that might be useful to me.

“So if you guys were using the site as part of some kind of sting operation, then I’m guessing you really did find a lot of cars when you were scanning. The thing about a whole insurance-fraud ring, I guess it’s true.”

“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t believe how many were down there.” His eyebrows went up in a way that made it seem like he was almost impressed by the scale of it. Then he laughed a little. “I really shouldn’t be telling you that, either.”

“I won’t put it in the new article, I promise.” Then, realizing I could soothe him into letting his guard down even further, I said, “Besides, the next issue of the school paper won’t come out until the end of next week. I’m sure the media will know by then anyway, right?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“And didn’t I hear something about you guys planning to bring up a bunch of the cars because you needed the vehicle ID numbers?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Josh sounded very mature here, very professional. “We can’t do anything in court without those. It’s the proof, really. Otherwise, they’re just a bunch of old cars sitting down there.”

That’s when I gave him my most charming smile. “Can I check out some of the scans?” I asked this in a very low tone, as if I knew that he knew that I knew my request didn’t strictly follow the rules. “I swear to God I won’t mention them in the article. I won’t describe any details or anything. But I’d love to see them just, y’know, to see them.”

He was hesitant at first, and I thought for sure he was going to say no.

Then—“They are pretty interesting.”

“I’ll bet. You and Kelly have lived your whole lives in Lynchport, haven’t you?” I already knew this because Kelly had always been one grade behind me.

“Yes, in the same house on Dykstra Boulevard.”

“So you guys probably swam in either Phelan or Holcombe at some point.”

His smile grew wider. “We did. Our parents used to take us there all the time when we were little.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “How cool is it to think that those cars were below us while we were there?”

He was nodding again. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Then let’s check ‘em out.”

“Okay….”

Twenty Eight

I don’t know where he had to go in order to get them, and I didn’t really care. All that mattered was that he did. While he was gone, my stomach lurched and twisted as I worried he’d come back and say he’d changed his mind. Or that someone had seen him with the scans, asked him where he was going with them, and then changed his mind for him.

But no—he returned a few minutes later with a big folder in his hand, and my stomach started fluttering with excitement. He set it down on the edge of the boat by the middle seat and flipped open the cover.

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here….” he mumbled.

The first one in the pile looked like all the others I’d seen, with that same field of eerie greenish brown. Right in the middle, with a severe shadow emanating from the full length of the passenger side, was one of the cars. It was sitting on all four wheels, as if someone had intentionally parked it there. What made the image particularly creepy was that it was from my lake, not some other body of water from around the country and then posted on Google Images by some random person. This is less than two miles away from where I’m standing, I thought. That made it much more disturbing.

I noticed a set of numbers along the top of the printout, in the white margin—

05-11-25 / 3:12 / 250 / 210

“Okay, what are those? I get that the first one is the date. The second is the time?”

“Yeah, in military format, so that’s three twelve in the morning.”

“And the two fifty?”

“Megahertz, the frequency of the sonar waves.”

“Lower frequencies produce lower-quality images but reach a wider area,” I said, “but higher ones, like around five hundred to a thousand, give sharper images but can’t scan as far out.”

Josh smiled. “Right. You really did do your homework.”

“So the two fifty is somewhere in the middle.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, and the two ten? What does that mean?”

“That’s the depth,” he said. “In feet, that’s how far down in the lake that car is sitting.”

I nodded. “Where in the lake is it, exactly?”

“I can’t give you specifics on that, sorry.”

“Oh, sure,” I said quickly, wanting to remain as amiable as possible. “Sorry.”

“But I can show you the others.”

“That’d be cool.”

He started going through them in a maddeningly methodical fashion, letting me see one for a few seconds before peeling it back to show the next. Meanwhile, I was struggling like a drug addict to keep from shoving him aside so I could zip through them faster.

His narration was no less boring and dronelike—

…this is where four were found together.

…this one looks like it might be a Rolls Royce.

…this is probably the only truck in the group.

My heart began beating harder as the pile got lower. I hadn’t seen anything that looked like a Dodge Stealth yet, which meant it was coming up any second….

Then the pile was done. Nothing but an empty folder now.

“Wait, that’s it?” I blurted, and my tone—an unfortunate mixture of shock and  irritation—was regrettable to say the least.

But all he did was laugh.

“Take it easy, take it easy,” he said, playfully raising one hand. “Boy, you journalistic types are so hyper. Don’t worry, there’s more….”

He put the scans back and closed the folder. That’s when I saw there was another one underneath.

“Oh…jeez,” was all I could think of saying as blood filled up my face. “I didn’t realize there were two.”

“The first one was all the cars that are probably too deep for us to retrieve,” he said. “We could if we had to, but we’d have to hire an outside firm to do it, so the cost would be considerable. Whereas these—” he held up the second folder “—are in much shallower water.”

He set it down and started his agonizing narration again. My heart hammered in my chest and I struggled to hold onto my sanity each time I saw a shape that didn’t match the Stealth. (By that point, I could probably identify it faster than the guy who designed it.) GO TO THE NEXT ONE!!! I screamed in my head so loud that it physically hurt. COME ON!!!

And then there it was.

****

I grabbed Josh’s arm so he wouldn’t go to the next one. I knew immediately that was a mistake. But I couldn’t help it—I was mesmerized.

There it is, I kept thinking. There…it…really…is….

I registered a few details right away. One was that the Stealth was sitting at a slight angle, but still on ‘all fours’, so to speak. Just like the first Lake Phelan car I saw earlier. A second detail was that it looked like it was in pretty good shape. I was hoping maybe it had fallen apart or something, or that another car (or two, or three) had been piled on top of it. But no, it was all by itself on an otherwise empty, muddy plain.

“—the matter?”

I didn’t even realize Josh had been talking to me.

“Huh?”

“I said, what’s the matter?”

“Oh….” My mind started scrambling for something credible to say in that moment. “This one,” I started, “this scan here. Why is it so, umm—”

Come on, come on….

Fuck!

“Bright!” I said finally. Glorious relief washed through me just then, because that particular scan was brighter than the others. Unfortunately, my reprieve from emotional hell wouldn’t last long.

“Because it’s so much closer to the water’s surface,” Josh answered.

I looked up at him. “What?”

“It’s brighter because it’s in relatively shallow water, and the sun was shining when they scanned. See?”

He pointed to the numbers in the upper white margin, and when I saw them my heart damn near exploded—

05-09-25 / 13:41 / 250 / 48

I stared for what felt like a long time.

“One forty one in the afternoon,” I said.

He turned away from me and looked back at the scan. “That’s right.”

“And this car’s only in forty-eight feet of water?”

“Correct.”

Then, before I had a chance to ask anything else, he said something that almost caused me to faint, no kidding.

“Because it’s so close to the surface, that’s one of the first cars we’ll be bringing up.”

Now I felt like I was caught up in one of those out-of-body experiences, my spirit floating around the room while my physical self remained in place.

“And when does that happen?” I managed to ask.

“Tomorrow morning,” he replied, “eight o’clock sharp.”

Twenty Nine

I didn’t so much shake on the way home as I vibrated. That’s the best way I can describe it. As if every molecule that made up my body was trembling with the overwhelming amount of stress and anxiety jamming through my system. Like a hundred gallons of water being forced through a hose that can really only handle about ten.

At the core of this was the realization that I had no choice now. I had to—absolutely had to—make an attempt to swim down to that effing car and try to get that effing ring before the effing police did. No more time to sit and wonder, sit and plan, or even sit and agonize. And the dangers…Jesus H, the dangers. I didn’t even know where to begin. The cops would be swarming that area. I didn’t know how many they had on the force, but I’m pretty confident about half of them would be there. If Albee Holmes showed up, then others might, too. People who were part of Holmes’s criminal gang. Maybe other people who put things in those lakes that weren’t supposed to be there. And—hey, let’s not forget this one—people whose fucking mothers killed their fucking boyfriends.

Then there was the car itself. Could I really go down far enough to reach it? I’d swam pretty deep before. But that deep? How was I going to breathe?! It’s not like there was any scuba gear lying around our house. I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a full wetsuit along with flippers, a mask, and an oxygen tank sitting in some box in the garage that I’d forgotten about. So even if there wasn’t a cop in sight (and for a moment I actually thought about setting some empty house on fire—maybe the one down the street that was currently for sale—to draw their attention away from the lake), how was I supposed to get down to the Stealth and get the ring off Dennis Tilton’s mold-slimy skeleton in the first place? I couldn’t hold my breath that long. No one could. How was I even supposed to SEE???

“No freaking idea,” I said as I slid the patio door aside.

****

The stillness in the house prevailed. End of day, dinnertime approaching, and no signs of activity. Nothing on the stove, nothing defrosting on the counter. All I could hear was the tick of the mantle clock, like in the dusty library of some Gothic novel. Everything was in its place and photo perfect, but there was no pulse here. It was now just a memorial to an era that was fading fast.

I felt something in that moment that I’d never felt before—genuine hatred for my mother. Not a lot, not for long, and certainly not the kind that made me want to do an Amityville Horror on her while she was sleeping. But a very real and very fiery resentment.

 You’re the reason I’m in this up to my eyeballs. Why it’s become MY burden. I’M the one who now has to go out in the middle of the night—when I’m already worn out and torn down and stressed to my LIMIT—and put my life and my future on the line. Because of YOU. You and the stupid-shit thing you did three decades ago. And because you don’t have the guts to face up to it NOW. So I’M the one who gets straddled with it. No matter how you look at it, no matter how you slice it, this is ALL…BECAUSE…OF…YOU.

And where was she? In her room of course, snoring away like a goddamn queen. I went up there and found the door in that closed-but-not-clicked position, and this time I didn’t give a damn in the universe what that meant. I opened it and stuck my head in, and there she was, sawing away peacefully. I realized something else pretty awful in that moment—She hadn’t returned to her old self before, when she picked up her room and changed the sheets and did a load of laundry, for our benefit. She just did all that because it’s the way SHE wanted things. The way that made HER comfortable. It had nothing to do with stepping back onto the road to normalcy. She was just pleasing herself.

“Enjoying those nice clean sheets are we?” I asked. It didn’t come out loud enough to wake her, although I’d be lying if I said I cared. “Good, I’m glad you’re in your big comfy bed. I hope you’re having the very sweetest dreams, mommie dearest.”

Then I walked away without bothering to close the door again.

Why?

Because fuck her, that’s why.

****

The first thing I did when I got to my own room was check the time on the nightstand clock. It was nearly six, which meant only a few more hours of daylight. I already knew I wouldn’t be going to the lake until it was dark. But not just dark—more like around midnight. Other than that, my plan was a blank slate, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. I was emotionally and mentally seized. I couldn’t think about what I needed to think about because I had only one thing on my mind. And until that was flushed out of the pipes, nothing else was going to flow through.

I sat at my laptop and started typing—

Mom,

I don’t know when you’ll read this, but it might happen some time during the night, after your phone wakes you up and there’s someone from the Lynchport police on the other end telling you they’ve arrested me. If that’s the case, then you should know the reason is because I went to Lake Phelan to try to get your ring back. Without the ring, there’s nothing to tie you to Dennis Tilton, so I had to take the chance. Why? Because the police are planning to bring his Dodge Stealth out of the lake early tomorrow morning. And how do I know this? Because, in spite of being scared to death, I’ve been trying a million different things to save you from getting arrested. None of the those things worked, however, and now I’m out of options. Like I said, I had to take this chance, even if it was only a tiny chance at best.

If I really do get caught—and it’s not going to take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what I’m doing or why—then we’re both finished. You because of what you did, and me because I tried to save you from it. And if that happens, I want you to know something. Honestly, I’m pretty pissed off at the way you’ve handled yourself since all of this started. I know you’ve been scared about someone finding out for a really long time. And I’m sure the moment you heard that the police were going to use that scanner in the lake, your biggest fear became reality. But still, you’ve done nothing but lay in bed most of the time. Knowing what was coming. Knowing how it would shatter the life we had. Knowing what would happen to dad and me. How we’d be shamed and humiliated, and we’d have to carry the weight of your crime long after you were thrown in jail. And yet you didn’t try to do anything about it—like figure out a way to get your ring back. So now I’m the one who has to try. This whole ridiculous mess has fallen into MY lap. And if it all goes wrong, it’s not just the rest of your life that’s finished, it’s MINE, too. All my hard work, all my dreams, gone. Meanwhile, there you’ve been every day, in your room, doing nothing. I’m sorry, mom, but it’s fucking DISGUSTING.

Nevertheless, I’m going to the lake now and try to save you.

****

I folded it into an envelope and set it on the kitchen table as I went out a few hours later.

Thirty

I left the house at exactly one minute after midnight, and I shook the whole way over in the car. I tried my best to calm myself before I had a stroke or blew an aneurysm, but it didn’t help. And when it occurred to me that I’d been shaking a lot lately, I released a string of profanities in my mom’s honor that would’ve made a prostitute blush.

The plan that I finally pieced together was barely workable at best, not to mention ridiculously idealistic. Another of my parents’ favorite little nuggets of wisdom was that you shouldn’t pursue any objective until you see a clear pathway to it. That means every step should be carefully considered and every variable explored. So that’s what I tried to do, sitting at my laptop typing everything out in stream-of-consciousness fashion. I figured I’d hit all the important points as they came to me, then organize them. 

The car I took, as I said before, was a very dark blue, which was good. I planned to park in the same spot. Since it was a fairly good distance away from the lake, it seemed unlikely anyone would be patrolling there. If I could stick it further into the woods somehow—like maybe behind some shrubs or whatever—it would help. If that meant getting a few scratches, so be it.

I’d then get out of the car and go down the same overgrown path. I was assuming there wouldn’t be anyone patrolling that, either. I based this on a few things. One, I wasn’t sure that many people even knew the old logging road was there. And those who did probably figured no one ever used it because it was so overgrown. Then two, how would the police keep an eye on it? There was barely enough room for one person to walk.

The walk…that was the next thing I had to think about. I couldn’t just la-dee-da my way along, with a pair of buds in my ears as I belted out my favorite tunes. I had to be as close to invisible as possible. That meant going slow, staying low, and wearing nothing that would show. So, dark clothes from top to bottom. Black sneakers, black pants, black shirt, black everything. I thought about putting some black makeup on my face, too. But if I got caught…well, nothing says I’m out here doing things I shouldn’t like black makeup all over your face. So I nixed that idea.

In the event that I did get caught on the way to the lake, I figured I’d need some kind of cover story. I imagined myself standing there with a cop on either side of me, one of them demanding an explanation. And I realized I already had one—I was working on the next article. Sorry, officer, I would say, I know I’m not supposed to be out here. But it’s just such an interesting story, and everyone in school’s really been into it, etc. They’d be pissed at me, but when all was said and done, they’d just think I was some misguided kid with way too much ambition for her own good. So I brought along a pen and a notebook to act as ‘proof’ of this illusion.

Those went into my backpack along with a few other things—the Really Important Stuff. First, there was a goggles-and-snorkel combo. We had three of these in the garage, bought during a trip to Hawaii years ago. I was a lot smaller then, so I had to take my dad’s (which, by pure coincidence, was also black). Then there was a coiled-up garden hose exactly fifty feet long—the longest one we had—and a roll of duct tape. This is where things got a little crazy, but I just didn’t know what else to do. I was going to tape one end of the garden hose to the end of the candy-cane-shaped snorkel, then set the other end somewhere on dry land, and voila, I could breathe underwater. No idea if it would actually work, but it sounded like it might. Finally, I brought along the zillion-watt flashlight again, along with a zip-seal plastic bag from the kitchen so I could use it underwater. 

So yeah, that was my plan—breathing through a garden hose in a murky lake and trying to find a dead body with a flashlight in a plastic bag while cops were crawling everywhere.

This was what my mom’s future, not to mention my own, was riding on.

****

The road was deserted, thank goodness. No one else in sight. A bit too creepy for my liking, but there was no turning back. 

I did manage to pull the car a little further into the woods before I parked it, and I cringed as a hundred or so dried branches clawed their way along the sides. My dad would lose it when he saw whatever drag-lines they left behind.

The no-one-around creepiness spiked to new highs when I got out and was struck by how still it was. Not even any crickets or cicadas this time. For just a moment, it felt like I was on some Hollywood soundstage. And from there I got the heart-freezing vision that one of those massive Klieg lights would suddenly switch on, and I’d be spotlighted before I had the chance to do anything else. A squad of cops would appear out of nowhere and haul me away, and that’d be the end of it. 

Nothing like that happened, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The first time I came here, I was probably within a few seconds of getting caught by the guys who grabbed Albee Holmes, and even then I had a better vibe about the situation. It didn’t just feel like I was being watched now. It felt like I was expected.

I took the backpack out of the car and shut the door as quietly as I could. Then I crossed the road and, crouching low, started down the path. There was almost no moonlight this time, which was good. As I went along, I stopped every twenty feet or so, holding my breath as I waited for other signs of other life. Now it really was like last time—crickets, cicadas, other bugs of unknown identity, and the occasional bird or squirrel. But certainly nothing that looked, sounded, or smelled like another person. Nevertheless, my heart wasn’t merely pounding away, it was hammering. Like the fist of someone with a wicked case of claustrophobia stuck in a stalled elevator. 

When I got to the clearing, I stayed close to the rocky border around the lake. If there’s a bunch of guys in the woods on the other side, they’ll probably see me anyway, I told myself. That’s when I started wondering if a few of the cops might have night-vision goggles or whatever. Just shut up and keep going….

As soon as I reached the spot where the boulder-border stopped—the ‘driveway’ into the lake was how I thought of it—I climbed over the last of the boulders and stepped into the shallow water. It was freezing, and I almost cried out as my feet and ankles went numb.

I set the bag down on one of the smaller stones and unzipped it. Then I took out the four items I needed most—the goggles-and-snorkel set, the fifty-foot hose, the flashlight, and the plastic bag. That’s when I realized my first mistake. (Or at least the first that I knew about.) I really should’ve duct-taped the garden hose to the snorkel before I left the house. Not just because doing it now was a waste of precious time, but also because duct tape is so noisy.

I took the tape out of the bag and worked off a long piece by pulling it away from the roll in a side-to-side fashion. This was agonizingly slow, but it least it was quiet. Once the first strip was applied, I did another, then another.

Once that was done, I searched for somewhere to put the other end of the hose; kind of important since that’s where I’d be drawing my air. I settled on a narrow space between two of the boulders, where it was just tight enough to stay in place, but almost impossible to see from the other side. Then I put the flashlight into the bag and zipped it shut. That’s when I realized my second mistake—I should’ve tested it back home or in the car or something.

The last step was to put on the goggles. And there was my third mistake—I never checked to see if they fit just right. Too lose and they’d flood. Too tight and the strap, which had dried out from lack of use, might break (I’d really be screwed if that happened). I could adjust them, of course, but adjusting the rubber strap on a pair of goggles was a royal pain in the ass.

As it turned out, they fit just fine.

Here’s the thing about that, though—I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed, because there was nothing left to do now but go into the water. 

Thirty One

I dipped in one foot. It was so damn cold that it felt hot, if that makes any sense. Like it seeped through my sneaker and sock and started burning my skin. The very thought of that same feeling spreading over the rest of my body had me throwing curses in my mom’s honor again. Just as before, I hated her in that moment, and a common phrase popped into my head—The sins of the father. I couldn’t help thinking, The mother is very capable of committing her own.

I’d been in cold water before, and I knew there were two ways to approach it—ease yourself in a little at a time, or say screw it and do the dive. Both were pure torture, since the prolonged agony of the first was compressed into a single, heart-stopping jolt with the second. But in this case the second wasn’t an option, as I tried to imagine how many of Lynchport’s finest would come hustling out of the woods as soon as they heard an atomic sploosh!

I decided to modify the first option and ease myself in at an accelerated pace. I doubt there are words in any language that can describe how painful that was. I read somewhere that the few lucky people who survived the sinking of the Titanic after spending a few hours in the frigid ocean water said the immersion felt like a million needles being shot into your skin. This wasn’t quite that bad, but it was close. I had to make the supreme effort of my life to keep from screaming. I still let out a few gasps—totally beyond my control—as I tried to catch my breath. The water was like a living thing, creeping up my legs and then across my abdomen, over my chest, and finally closing on my neck like a pair of icy hands. I couldn’t even swim around for a few minutes to elevate my core temperature; again, it would be too noisy. I was at the mercy of…everything.

I whispered the word bitch. Then I pulled the goggles on, fixed the snorkel into my mouth, and went under.

****

Green….

What little I could see was a filthy greenish color with bits of God-knows-what floating around. I hadn’t a clue what those little bits were, nor did I care to know. But I was thoroughly skeeved out by the thought that I was swimming through them.

I went down a ways—best guess would be maybe twenty feet—and I could already feel the pressure building on my temples. That’s when I decided to turn on the flashlight. The beam was as bright as ever, so much so that I suddenly wondered (and again, how come I didn’t think of this before…?) if the heat of it would melt the flimsy plastic bag the light was in. Goddammit, what the fuck else can go wrong??? 

In that moment, something remarkable and very surprising happened. My ever-growing anger became a channel not just for my energy and focus but also my determination. I am going to do this—I’m going to find that ring and get out of here, and that’ll be the end of this bullshit once and for all. Nothing in the world could’ve stopped me then. And the core of it was the realization that the moment I had my mom’s ring in hand, this was over. The only remaining obstacle would be getting back to the car without being seen, but I had a feeling my luck would hold. I knew it would. I would’ve bet anything on it.

I swam down further while waving the light everywhere. My makeshift breathing apparatus appeared to be working. I could hear my breathing in my ears. It was pretty creepy, but I reminded myself it was better than the alternative. The light, on the other hand, even with its supernova brightness, didn’t reach very far through the water. Maybe ten feet at the most. But like my garden-hose version of an aqualung, having it was better than not having it.

I’d been down there less than a minute when the first tiny grubs of panic began nibbling their way into my system. Not so bad at first, but it would worsen quickly if I didn’t locate the Stealth soon. The longer I remained in the water, the greater the chance of someone in a blue uniform wandering by and noticing either the hose (Could they actually hear my breathing at that end?) or the backpack (Did I hide it well enough? Wait…did I hide it at all?!)

I swam even deeper, my heart aching as I realized there was nothing to see except more of that horror-movie greenishness and those foul floating pieces of whatev—

OH MY GOD THERE IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The driver’s-side rear corner of the Stealth emerged from the gloom like some giant sleeping thing. And in spite of my dedication to getting the hell out of there as soon as possible, I couldn’t help but pause and stare at it for a moment.

One ordinary day…three decades ago…that was up on the shore…with my mom and her boyfriend in the back seat…then she killed him…and put that car into drive…and it’s been sitting right there ever since. Right…over…there….

I thought I’d be frightened to death the moment I saw it. But I was more mesmerized than anything else. The fear was surging, of course. I could feel it pulsing away, waiting for its turn to come forward. But macabre fascination was standing center stage just then, strong and unwavering.

No—stop. STOP! You have to get MOVING!!!

Yeah, I did. I needed to stay focused. Get this done.

The longer you stay down here….

Yeah.

I forced myself forward, and the first thing I did was put my hand on the Stealth  (again, maybe to be sure it was real and this was actually happening) by the seam where the trunk lid closed. It was covered with a fine layer of mud, which felt positively disgusting. Then I moved to the left and, knowing I had to do this sooner or later, aimed the light through the driver’s-side window. There were two of them, actually—the larger one on the door, and the much smaller one behind it. The smaller one was triangular…and it was through this window that I saw what was left of Dennis Tilton.

There was nothing but a skeleton, hunched in the back seat like someone taking a nap on their lunch break. The bones were mostly covered with a shaggy brown algae that waved in an eerily graceful manner. The jaw was wide open, as if Dennis had been laughing at some final, uproariously funny joke. Beyond the bones, there were no remaining traces of skin or clothing or anything else. It had all been erased by time and tide and whatever creatures called this their home. 

The larger window was open, same as the one on the opposite side. A question flashed through my mind—Did my mom do that on purpose to make sure the car would sink faster? If so, then she had put a bit more calculation into the matter than she’d implied. No, the weather was warm that day…right? Wasn’t it? I couldn’t remember, and it didn’t really make any difference. You’re stalling. Stop.

 I went through the open window on my side, unable to avoid thinking that the last person who was in this car along with Dennis was her. Hey, sorry to bother you, I’m just here to clean up her mess and finish what she started. You’re okay with that, right?  My nervous system was on full-circuit overload at this point. A control panel with every light flashing. The accompanying euphoria was equally intense, from a situation that was so surreal as to turn the mind inside out as it struggled to pin down some form of rational comprehension. I barely even felt the chill of the water anymore. As solid and genuine as I knew everything to be, I still had the sense that I was dreaming all of this.

Just get the ring, came the transmission from whatever reasonable part of my brain continued operating. Just get it and go.

I swept the light all around Dennis’s remains, doing my best to view the grisly scene objectively. It was something I’d read about in my pre-med studies—ways to scale back normal human reactions in order to analyze and formulate with greater accuracy. But I could not shake the feeling that Dennis was watching me. Watching and waiting for me to get close enough so he could grab hold and, at long last, get his revenge on the woman who denied him a life by taking that of her only child.

Enough. It’s just his bones, nothing else. If he’d had the ability to exact some kind of vengeance, he would’ve done it long ago. And besides, you didn’t kill him, she did.

That’s what did it—that thought right there. If there was even an echo of his spirit left in that corpse, then he’d be well aware that my mother’s sins weren’t my sins. Furthermore, he’d at least understand what I was doing. I was trying to save my mother. Who wouldn’t do that? Or at least try? I had the feeling, very strong and very clear, that he really did get this. Maybe he even admired me a little for having the balls to do it. Just like all the crazy things he’d done in his abbreviated life.

I splashed the light all around while scanning every inch of the compartment with manic focus. I looked on the floor, on the seats, and, yes, on and around what was left of my mom’s ex. That was when I realized yet another of my mistakes—I couldn’t remember where she said he kept the ring in the first place.

It was also when the hose separated from the snorkel.

Thirty Two

There was a muted snap, then the tension released as the line went slack. I spun around and watched in wide-eyed horror as the hose made a lazy retreat back through the window. After that, it disappeared from view.

Noooo! I screeched as water now rushed into the snorkel tube. It flowed into the mouthpiece and started down my throat. I swallowed some of it very much against my will, spit out the mouthpiece, and then vomited a pinkish cloud that blossomed before my eyes in a weirdly elegant way.

My next thought came very clearly—I’m fucked. I had no method of breathing now, and no good options for restoring the old one. If I went out and chased down the hose, there was no way to reattach it. Even if I could, there would be water both in the hoseline and the snorkel. How would I get that out? I couldn’t swallow another drop. I just couldn’t do that. And if I tried to blow it all out, the noise at the other end of the line would be tremendous. I wasn’t even sure I could blow that hard. What did Officer Josh say? The Stealth was forty-eight feet down? I don’t think an opera singer could push water that far through a vertical tube.

I…am…fucked.

I had to get what I came for NOW. All other possibilities were over. The police would be pulling the Stealth out of here in a matter of hours, so there would be no second chances. For all I knew, they were onto me already; a whole division standing up there waiting for me to resurface. Plus, I couldn’t hold my breath for more than another minute at the most. It was now or never.

Whatever remaining respect I had for Dennis’s carcass went the same way as the hose—right out the window. I moved his slimy bones every which way as I ran my hands around, feeling for anything small and metallic. I felt around his neck for a chain and then on the seat behind him. While I did a pretty good job of ignoring his ghastly clown’s expression, I felt an icy spear slide through my heart when his skull bobbed up and down in a bemused nod as if to say, Yeah, good luck with that, sweetheart—you ain’t finding nothin’. The fact that I noticed the blown-out portion in the back for the first time didn’t help, either.

Then a crushing pain began to form in my lungs as my air began running out, and that’s when I started crying.

Where is this FUCKING RING???

I went into crazy-woman mode, running my hands along every surface while the light drifted away behind me. The beam was irrelevant now because there was no time left to scrutinize every millimeter. I thrust my fingers into nearly forty years of accumulated goo that had settled on the floormats and under the seats. A brownish fog rose from various places like a choreographed series of geysers, eliminating all remaining visibility. I wondered briefly if I would come across the gun, but that didn’t happen (which was fine). I felt for the light again and found it, but even that didn’t help. In the time it would take for all the filth to settle back, I’d be dead from oxygen deprivation.

You need to go, my smart-voice told me. There was no time left. No time, no visibility, no air, no nothing. And it wasn’t likely I’d be able to come back down. This was over. It was done and I fucking fail—

His pocket. He kept her ring in his pocket….

That’s right—that’s exactly what my mom had said. 

His POCKET.

I turned the light back to Dennis’s now-jumbled remains, slipped my free hand beneath him, and started feeling around while my logical side took over—His pants would’ve disintegrated within the first year or two, which means the ring would’ve settled nearby. If it didn’t fall onto the seat beneath him, then it might have drifted down to the—

And that’s when I found it.

****

The moment my fingers touched it, I knew. I knew and grabbed onto it and stuffed it into my own pocket. (Again—irony.) Then I turned and swam out of there at lunatic speed. I think I may have inadvertently struck some part of him with my foot on the way out, but I didn’t know for sure and honestly didn’t care. My lungs felt like they were in a vice now. As I got near the surface, a dreamy lightheadedness began to eclipse my perception. My vision became gray and fuzzy along the edges; an aperture that was closing rapidly. I’m going to pass out, I realized. Everything will go black, and that’ll be the end of me.

Then I broke the surface and, pulling in the air I desperately needed, found it impossible to maintain the required silence. I covered my mouth as much as my greedy, starving lungs would allow. But if I’d already given myself away, it wouldn’t make any difference.

As my breathing eased, I paddled in place and waited. A moment ticked by, then another. The quiet was deathly…but I didn’t see or hear anything that implicated the presence of others.

I was just about to swim the forty or so feet to shore when another heart-stopper came to mind—WHERE’S THE FLASHLIGHT???

Something close to rage flared inside as I realized I’d have to go back down and get it. When I was in the midst of my no-holds-barred examination of the deathmobile, I must’ve let it fall somewhere behind me. So that’s where it had to be now. Still on, too, I realized. Gee, I wonder how the cops will react when they get the Stealth on dry land and find Dennis sitting there with that laugh-a-minute grin on the side of his skull that wasn’t blown away by my mother…then see the flashlight’s intergalactic brightness shining through the plastic bag…AND THEN LIFT MY FINGERPRINTS OFF ITS SHINY ALUMINUM CASING???

“You’ve got to be fucking kidd—” I started.

Then I stopped.

I had the light.

I’d tucked it between my legs when I broke the surface and then used both hands to cover my mouth.

Thirty Three

I made it to the shore as quietly as I could, and when I got within about ten or fifteen feet, the lake’s muddy bottom came up beneath me at a rising angle. That was a problem in itself, because the moment I stood up, the water that ran off me would make enough noise to alert every living thing in the area.

So I essentially belly-crawled my way back to dry land. More specifically, to the hose that had abandoned me—the one end was still wedged between those rocks, the rest of it floating in the water like a dead serpent—and to my backpack. I paused to collect myself and wonder how many other kids my age were committing a crime of such magnitude just then. I also felt in the pocket of my soaked jeans for the shape of my mom’s ring. It was there sure enough, which sparked a degree of gratitude that was simply bizarre given the nature of the occasion. And if I hadn’t been so consumed by all these thoughts, I might have noticed that the backpack was in a different spot from where I’d left it before I went down.

I drew the hose out of the water, coiling it as I did so, then tucked it into the backpack’s main compartment along with the flashlight-in-a-bag. I crouched down and closed the zipper with the exacting slowness of a brain surgeon. Finally, I stood and took one last look at the dark-glass surface of a lake I vowed never to visit again. It was time to get the hell out of here.

That’s when I heard the click behind me, followed by the one phrase that came straight from my most recent nightmares.

“Don’t move.”

****

I felt fear, no doubt about it. Fear of all that was going to happen to me now. Of being arrested, of being charged, of being put in a jail cell with other criminals (since that’s what I was). Of becoming the unwilling star of a very dark media circus—I had absolutely no doubt this would become a national story—with me, rather than my mom, at the center of it. All the boxes on the intrigue list were checked. There’d be interviews with neighbors who knew me, with my teachers, and with all of my friends. Photographers would be fighting each other for pictures, even if it was a dim silhouette through the tinted window of a black Suburban as I was taken from one holding area to another. Maybe for arraignment or to meet with my attorneys or whatever. And my career ambitions, my dreams…all gone. As soon as I heard that male voice, I knew the road I’d planned to take in life was no longer open.

But even beyond the fear was a feeling I hadn’t expected—defeat. Defeat and disappointment at the failure. So ingrained was my drive to succeed at everything I did that, even in the moment of reckoning, I felt profoundly disappointed that I’d failed. As if that really should’ve been my primary concern at that moment. But it was. I just couldn’t believe, in spite of all my plotting and forethought, I hadn’t reached my objective.

Without being told, I brought my hands up slowly. Because that’s what you did when the police caught you.

“Take it easy there,” the voice instructed. As I said, male. Definitely authoritative. It could’ve been someone other than a cop behind me, but that was unlikely. A mugger or a petty thief out here in the woods…?

“Easy….” he went on. “Easy. Okay, now turn around.”

As I started doing so, it occurred to me that the game was really over the moment he got a look at my face. Even if he didn’t recognize me already—maybe he was one of the other officers who’d been at the station either of the two times I’d been there working on the articles—someone else would. Yeah, I thought with a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, it’s over.

Then something else happened.

Just as I’d turned far enough to get a peripheral glimpse of him, he lunged forward. I took a step back purely out of reflex, terrified that he intended to engage in a quick round of sexual assault before bringing me to the station. But the look on his youngish, clean-shaven face wasn’t one of sadomasochistic joy—it was agony.

Following this parallel a step further, the officer in question looked past me with something close to wide-eyed astonishment. Then those eyes closed as he fell forward, landing on the ground with a dull thump.

In the hand of the man who had been standing behind him, I could see the undulating electric thread of a small taser.

“Oh my God!” I said in the most shocking moment of my life. “Daddy!!!”

Thirty Four

All movement in the universe ceased while I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that my dad was really standing there, dressed in black from head to toe just like me. In the middle of the woods. In the middle of the night.

My first impulse was to ask what on Earth he was doing there, but he cut me off with a question of his own—

“Did you get the ring, kiddo?”

He showed absolutely no emotion when I said that I had, only replied with the fairly obvious

“Okay, then it’s time to get the hell out of here. Let’s go….”

We went back the way I came, following the overgrown logger’s trail, moving low and slow. I figured I’d be leading the way, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going.

As soon as we reached the main road, he asked where I’d parked the Honda. How did he already knew I even had it? When I asked this, he reminded me that there would be plenty of time for questions later. When I pointed toward an overgrown area on the opposite side, a look of stunned anxiety emerged on his face. I could just about hear his thoughts, assessing the damage to the paint job and calculating the cost at the local body shop. In an epic moment of self-control, however, he said nothing about any of this. Instead, he told me his own car—I had no idea which one he meant, since our other one was sitting in the garage back home—was about a hundred yards further on, and that I should get into the Honda and follow him ASAP.

‘His’ car turned out to be a black Nissan sedan that I’d never seen before. All that did was launch a fresh round questions. Why would he have another car? Wait…did he have a second life somewhere? With another home, another wife, and a few other kids? This sounded pretty ridiculous until I remembered that many people had been caught living double lives. But my dad? Yeah, pretty ridiculous—but then you thought he was still on a business trip in Colorado, too….

By the time I shoved all this aside and returned to the present, I realized we’d been driving for awhile and I had no clue where we were.

I grabbed my phone.

“Where are we going?” I asked the second he answered.

“We’re almost there.”

“Dad….”

“Maybe ten more minutes. Just…it’s about ten minutes away. Keep following.”

We continued along roads I’d never seen before, first through a town west of Lynchport called Sherlis, and then, I think, Allerton. I noticed we were traveling only through wooded areas, which stood in direct contrast to his preference for highways and other main arteries whenever possible. It’s intentional, I realized. He wants us to stay out of sight.

I glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that it was just after two thirty in the morning. When I looked back, my dad had just shut off his lights as he pulled into our destination.

A little hotel in the middle of nowhere.

****

He already had a finger to his lips—Shhh—as he got out of the car. Then he hurried to the door with a brass ‘5’ on it and worked a key into the lock. He made sure to close the door and lock it again before turning on any lights. I couldn’t help noticing the curtains were drawn, too.

The room, just like the grounds outside, was tidy and modest. There were two neatly made beds, with his suitcases lying on the one closer to the bathroom. I also saw that many of his things had been taken out and neatly arranged—suit jackets in the open closet, deodorant and cologne on the dresser, laptop on the desk. All of which only meant one thing….

“You never went to Colorado, did you.” This didn’t come out in any way accusatory. Just a mere statement in search of confirmation.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Other pieces of the puzzle began forming in my mind then.

“So you knew.”

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

He paused, which was rare for him. My dad was nothing if not courageous, always willing to address a problem head on until a resolution was reached. But he seemed hesitant here, which was an unsettling sight for me.

“Dad, how long have you kn—”

“Since before you were born, kiddo,” He said, letting out a deep breath that conveyed the weight of this burden.

“What?!”

“We were married about a year when she told me.”

“And you didn’t do anything about it?”

He held his hands out. “What was I supposed to do? I’m not the world’s greatest swimmer, you know that. And she certainly wasn’t going down there.”

“So you decided to just let it be.”

“There was no other choice. We never thought in a million years it would become a problem. At least not in a legal sense.”

“Huh? I don’t understand what that means.”

My dad went to the desk and basically fell into the chair. Then he ran a hand over his face like was trying to wipe away all the stress in one quick gesture.

“The law aside, this thing has been eating away at your mom like acid since I’ve known her. Even though she didn’t tell me about it right away, the moment she did, I looked back and could see all the signs. It’s completely against her nature to do such a thing. She is about the most loving, caring, considerate, selfless person on the planet. And I’ll bet you think that’s because of the guilt. That the guilt of what happened with Dennis Tilton drives her to be that way.”

I sat on the edge of the first bed. “It crossed my mind.”

“Perfectly understandable. But guess what—it’s not. Even though she and I didn’t grow up in the same town, I’ve known her, and known about her, since I was in elementary school. We had some of the same friends, and I played against her older brother, your Uncle Tim, in baseball and basketball. So she was always part of my life—and she was always that kind, thoughtful, compassionate person. All the things she’s been to you, all the things she’s done for you, for both of us, are real. A hundred percent.”

Every word he spoke and everything those words meant had the same effect on me that my mom herself always did—they made me feel safe. Safe and secure and able to face the world with confidence. Because I knew he was right, just as I’d known from the beginning. There was no way my mom could have faked it all those years. No way she could have been so loving and giving that long without meaning it. She was the same person I’d always believed her to be, and I was wrong to doubt that. There was no cruelty in her and never had been. She made one horrible mistake, but it truly had been unintentional. Yes, the outcome had been tragic and unfortunate. But there was no way it was premeditated. Not a chance.

A tear rolled down my face. “I love her so much.”

“I know you do.”

I gave him a little smile of my own. “You’re supposed to say ‘me too’ there.”

He laughed. “She’s my whole world, kiddo. You and her. I couldn’t love either of you more.”

I nodded and told him I loved him right back, then went into the bathroom and got a tissue to staunch the flow of grossness that was running out of my nose now.

When I returned, I said, “So what happens next?”

“Well, let me see the ring, please.” He held out his hand as I dug it from my pocket. I realized then that I’d never actually looked at it. In spite of all the years it had spent in that environment, it retained more of its silvery brilliance than I would’ve expected. The stone was ruby red and, I had no doubt, would fully recover its own luminescence with a good cleaning.

My dad was clearly thinking the same thing, for he rose with an energy that seemed impossible at that point. I followed him back into the bathroom, where he leaned over the sink and proceeded to scrub the ring down with the aid of ordinary bar soap and his travel toothbrush.

“Yeah, see? That’s hers….”

As he held it out, he pointed to the inscription that ran around the inside—Barbara Ann Loughlin, Class of 1995.

Then he gave me the kind of admiring look that I think all daughters dream of seeing from their fathers at least once in their lives.

“What you did was amazing, Liss. Really.”

That’s when I told him about all the stupid ideas and failed attempts, and then the last desperate plan that, miraculously, seemed to work out.

“And I broke about a dozen laws in the process,” I said in conclusion.

He put the ring in his pocket and began washing away the residual grime in the basin.

“Probably more like a hundred.”

“Thanks.”

Looking at me in the mirror, he said, “Oh, don’t worry, I broke quite a few myself along the way. Maybe they’ll let us share a cell together.”

“Yeah, about that—what exactly have you been doing since you left on your supposed business trip?”

He spilled everything then. He had made some connections in the Lynchport Police Department over the years. Nothing more than casual acquaintances; the kind of people he’d stop and chat with at the diner or the supermarket whatever. And he maintained those relationships for just one reason—because he’d heard the same rumors about the insurance scam as everyone else, and he knew there’d be an investigation at Lake Phelan sooner or later. When they decided to finally launch one last month following the promise from the state to loan out the sonar scanner, he made up the story about a business trip with the hope of securing the ring and then telling my mom about it later. Since most investigations were conducted in secret, he didn’t expect the one concerning insurance fraud to go public. But once it started to leak, the police held a press conference in order to control the story. 

“That was the morning mom freaked,” I said.

“Yep.”

“And that was why she was always a news junkie, too. Local news.”

Dad nodded. “I had a feeling something like this would happen sooner or later, but I hoped she’d never find out about it. I wanted to spare her all that suffering. And, by extension, I didn’t want it to affect you, either.”

“Well, that part of your plan didn’t quite work out.”

“No it did not.”

“By the way, how did you know I was at the lake tonight?”

He chuckled. “The letter you left. Your mom found it and called me.”

“I—wait, she knew what you’d been doing all this time?”

“Of course. Once she saw that press conference, I told her everything.”

“Then why did she—”

I was going to finish with let me do all those things to try and save her? until I realized she hadn’t known because I never told her. I guess keeping secrets from each other was a fairly consistent trait in our family.

“She had no idea what you were up to,” my dad went on. “And the moment I found out, I knew the area around Phelan would be crawling with police. So I dropped everything and got over there.”

“And you happened to have an all-black outfit handy just in case you—”

I stopped myself a second time, my eyes widening as he waited for me to fit the rest of the puzzle together.

“You were going to try, too,” I said.

My dad shrugged. “Tried. Twice, in fact. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to actually do it. Like I said, I don’t swim real well. Plus I didn’t have any kind of underwater breathing equipment. No kidding, Liss, what you did was incredible. You saved the day in the end, not me. I thought it was game over, and not just for your mom, for me, too. You saved both of us.”

“And myself,” I reminded him. I thought, Criminals—we’re all criminals. A little crime family in the sleepy suburb of Lynchport, where the town holds a street fair every August, where the schools have art shows and pot-luck fundraisers, and where the kids ride their bikes to the park on summer afternoons.

An immense wave of exhaustion poured into me just then, and I wanted nothing more than to be done with all of this.

“Okay, so what now?” I asked.

Another shrug. “There’s really only one thing we can do, kiddo.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

Thirty Five

The next morning I was lured downstairs by the scent of bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee. It was the same old scene—dad at the little round table scrolling through ESPN on his iPad while mom busied herself at the island getting everyone’s plates ready.

We hadn’t talked about any of it yet. And I knew it was possible we wouldn’t for a long time. Maybe never. But as I sat there watching my mom, I realized something—I didn’t care. A part of me was expecting to feel some of that same anger, but I just didn’t. If anything, I felt grateful that she was still there. Still with us, still free, and still my mom, making breakfast and thinking about the laundry and the food shopping and vacuuming the dining room that didn’t really need it. I know she was thinking about other things, too. About Dennis Tilton and what happened on that horrifying afternoon, and how it not only could have imploded her life but also that of her husband and daughter. I’m sure it would continue chipping away at her soul. She remained a still pond on the outside, of course. And yet I could see the suffering now, in subtle ways. Knowing what happened somehow completed my image of her. So many of the little things that she did and said, they suddenly made a lot more sense. In short, I understood her better. And, maybe, people in general. I always thought of my mom as something close to perfect, and yet she wasn’t. No one was, and I had no right to expect that anyone would be. I also used to think the life that the three of had together was also perfect. Also untrue. I know lots of kids who act like their lives are perfect. I’m sure the truth is very different. Everyone has their secrets, and as they get older, the list gets longer. Does that make them bad people? Maybe. But most of the time, probably not. I didn’t think of my mom as bad now. Just human. If what she’d done didn’t bother her so much, then yeah, I’m sure I’d have a problem with that. But it did, a lot. And it made me love her all the more. 

****

About halfway through breakfast, the familiar site of Chief of Police Bill Barton standing behind a spray of microphones appeared on the screen. The headline below read BODY OF LONG-MISSING TEEN DISCOVERED IN LYNCHPORT’S LAKE PHELAN. Reporters shelled him with questions about the rumor that one of the other officers was assaulted the night before while apprehending someone possibly related to the crime. Barton refused to comment, but he did ask that any member of the public who might have information please call the station immediately. He did confirm that Dennis Tilton was likely the victim of a gunshot wound through the head, and therefore the recovery of both his body and his Dodge Stealth were now considered part of a murder investigation. This launched a fresh round of questions, at which time my mom took the remote in hand and turned the TV off. I never saw her watch local news again. 

I grabbed my backpack—a nice new one my dad picked up at the all-night Walmart on Route 3 after depositing the old one in a dumpster—and went to school.