Daniela emerged from under the hemlock branches and joined Cadie on the rock. “Okay. It’s a boat. I don’t get it.”
“I found it floating in the lake this morning. I swam out and rescued it. My parents weren’t even awake yet.”
Three inches taller than Cadie, with a confidence Cadie longed for, Daniela turned to Cadie as if seeing her for the first time. She looked at Cadie’s muddy sneakers, her bony knees, mismatched clothes, and unruly hair.
Cadie had made a mistake. If Daniela told anyone about the boat, Cadie would lose her chance to explore the lake. Daniela might think Cadie was being childish for hiding the boat, or unethical for not trying to find its owner.
Or, like Cadie, Daniela might be looking for something more than blueberries.
“Whose is it?”
“It’s mine now.” Cadie pressed up and down on her tiptoes.
Daniela stepped closer to the boat and ran her hand across the rim. Yellow paint flaked off and she flicked it in the water.
Friar sniffed at the boat and growled.
“After my parents go to work tomorrow, I’m taking it out. You can come if you want.” Cadie rubbed Friar’s ears.
Daniela squinted at Cadie, at the boat, then back at Cadie.
With her shoe, Cadie scratched at a patch of lichen clinging to the rock.
“No one else knows about this?” Daniela said.
“No one else can ever know.”
Daniela slapped a mosquito on her arm, leaving a bloody smear. “What time should I be here?”
3
PRESENT DAY
Cadie turned down the gnarled road weaving through the woods past the Talbots’ ramshackle sugarhouse. Her mother had always called it the James Taylor Road because she liked to listen to his mellow, rolling voice on the twisting, rolling road. Cadie hummed to her mental soundtrack, but sped up the tempo. She wanted to get to the cottage before Daniela.
Her ears popped, as they always did, on the steady incline leading to the “Welcome to Maple Crest” sign. She pressed down on the gas, urging the vehicle to speed up, but the air around her pushed back on the car as if gravity, the mountains, even the road, wanted her to turn around.
A female deer lay on the side of the road, motionless. Its flat eyes stared at oncoming traffic. The fires had been pushing animals out of the deep woods into neighborhoods, parks, and highways for weeks. The number of foxes, deer, and moose struck by vehicles in the past month already surpassed the previous two years combined. The deer looked as if it might peel itself off the sweltering blacktop at any moment and walk away. No blood, no visibly broken bones.
If Daniela came forward with the truth about what they had done, Cadie would never be able to drive back to Concord and reenter her life the way she’d left it. She would become the girl who had covered up a murder, the woman who had harbored the lie.
Even as she considered the ramifications, a yearning simmered in her gut. To tell the truth. The cost of redemption might be her career. Maybe she could live with that. But the New Hampshire woodlands and its inhabitants would pay a much bigger price if no one stepped in to complete her work.
Paint curled off the edges of auction and foreclosure signs slouching in dusty pastures flanked by barns leaning at severe angles. The drought had sucked this land dry, leaving behind stretches of browned cornstalks to stand guard like brittle ghosts.
Towering hemlocks and balsam firs wrapped around the road she and Daniela once soared down on their bikes, focused on the taste of the wind and their next adventure, fixated by maps and secrets. Deep secrets—not the kind that draw heads together in fluttering whispers, but the sort that move between two bodies like shared blood—bind souls closer. Or repel them. She could feel Daniela getting closer as she approached the cottage.
The spice of pine needles and forest decay flooded through the car window as Cadie crept down the driveway of her childhood home. The screen door creaked open weightlessly. Her breath hitched at the familiar scent of musty newspapers, lavender, and oil paint. The year she turned thirteen, after her parents took jobs teaching in Boston, the cottage became a summer place instead of their full-time home. She spent each spring of her teen years trying to find reasons not to join her parents at the cottage that summer. Sleep-away camps, nanny jobs, visiting friends. Anything so she didn’t have to bide time in those woods.
She tugged the chain attached to the naked light bulb over the kitchen’s butcher-block island. The wrought-iron trivet that read “Kissin’ Don’t Last, But Cookin’ Do” hung, as it had forever, above the sink. She slumped into an oak chair at the table. The seat’s caning had cracked with age. Sharp edges pushed through her jeans, enough to notice, but not enough to make her get up.
Tires crunched on the gravel driveway. A string cinched around her heart with a pinch.
Daniela knocked, but didn’t wait for a response before walking in. She wore light blue hospital scrubs, her hair swept back in a ponytail. She carried a six-pack of beer and a half gallon of mint chip ice cream.
This woman had Daniela’s jawline and dark eyes, but she felt like a stranger. Cadie gripped the countertop, unsure if she wanted to hug Daniela, shake her hand, or run away.
“It’s like time stopped in here.” Daniela dropped her provisions on the counter and looked around the cottage. She picked up a Mason jar full of pennies from the counter and put it back down.
Cadie brushed a crumble of leaves from the curled-up edge of the shirt she had been wearing for four straight days.
Daniela leaned close to Cadie’s face, pulled a dried pine needle from Cadie’s hair, and grinned, her head cocked to one side. “Have you seen any bears?”
And there she was. Daniela.
The naked light bulb cast a cozy glow instead of a glare. Daniela softened the sharp edges, as she always had.
“No bears.” Cadie picked up a beer and handed one to Daniela.
“Thanks for coming.” Daniela’s aches had always seemed deeper than Cadie’s. She had this way of smiling with her mouth but not her eyes when she wanted people to think she was having fun or interested in a conversation. Seeing the disconnect on Daniela’s face caused a lump to rise in Cadie’s throat.
“They haven’t identified the remains.” Daniela twisted the top off a beer bottle. “But there’s plenty of speculation.”
“And your dad?” The words tasted bitter in Cadie’s mouth.
“Right now, they’re just talking to him. But he’s scared, I can tell. It’s the same thing all over again. But it’s not going away this time.” Daniela put her beer down and leaned on the counter. “He didn’t do anything. He knows they can’t convict him of anything, but if they start a serious investigation my family’s status could be exposed. And I have a kid now.”
Cadie choked on a swallow of beer. “You’re a mom? I didn’t know.”
“Sal. She’s thirteen.”
Cadie coughed harder, laughing, choking.
“Sal? Like Blueberries?”
“Exactly.”
So much had passed between them in such a short period of time. That one summer took up more space in Cadie’s memory than all her other years combined. Each moment lived large and vivid, easily accessible if Cadie allowed herself to remember them.