Page 27

June 2017

“Sarah, what happened?” Izzy said.

Beer in hand on a warm spring day in the park, Izzy had just asked the question that Sarah had been dreading for months. It wasn’t the question in the absolute that scared Sarah but what it unearthed about the night Matthew disappeared. Sarah didn’t blame Izzy, or Bella for that matter. She always knew it was a truth that wouldn’t stay buried forever. Secrets, Sarah thought, can be gluttonous beasts. They settle into your core and feed on experiences. Matthew’s secrets had gnawed around the edges of two families, marring every perfect day. So many secrets, Sarah knew they would shape the world for Bella and Charlie. And yet, the worst secrets were the ones that couldn’t be revealed. Those secrets needed to be swallowed and buried far beneath the light of seeing.

Sarah felt again the smooth plastic of the screwdriver handle in her hand, the hard steel of the tip, and the oddly fluid motion of stabbing the point through the neoprene wet suit. She remembered being startled by the lack of resistance as the cold point of metal slit into the thick rubber. Then, there was the satisfaction in marring the material, the feeling of recompense for the slights and small lies that were mounting to an undefinable wrong.

Aboveground, in the sunshine, there was no small amount of shame with those thoughts. Everyday sounds of the park—the squeals of kids, the chatter of parents, the clipped whistle of a cardinal—filled the space behind them while Sarah told Izzy about the destroyed wet suit and its disappearance. The pieces fit, telling a story but not solving the mystery.

“Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?” Izzy said.

“I was angry. I didn’t do it on purpose,” Sarah said. “It was just a moment. One of those moments where you slip into another skin. Like you’re somewhere else, watching yourself lose control and come back when the explosion’s over.

“There was nothing to tell. I don’t know if Matthew used the wet suit. It’s not at home and it wasn’t with our camping gear, but I also didn’t see it that weekend. I saw the bag it had been in. Not the wet suit itself. It might have nothing to do with any of this. Maybe Matthew found it ruined and chucked it. Decided not to tell me. And really, why does it matter? It won’t bring him back. He’s gone, Izzy. I have the kids to think about now.”

“Sarah, if he went into the water with a damaged wet suit, it may be a factor.”

Though it required every motherly instinct she had, Sarah held her tongue about Bella having shared the secret with her months before. Matthew falling and pretending to be asleep. It was in the past. It wouldn’t change things. It would only bring Bella into a circus from which Sarah had been trying to protect her. She would be questioned by the police, her memory poked and prodded. In the end, all that would be gained was an unprovable suggestion that Bella had contributed to her father’s disappearance or, worse, if Boychuk was to be believed, his death. No, Sarah had barely survived it herself; she would never subject her daughter to that scrutiny and insinuation.

“It’s just a wet suit, Iz. It couldn’t have saved him.” Sarah repeated the phrase. She’d said it so many times to herself that it had burrowed a crater in her memory, so deep and profound that it started to seem like truth.

“That doesn’t make sense, Sarah. What about Bella’s story?”

“You’re missing the main point, Izzy.” Sarah’s voice dropped into an angry whisper. “Why in God’s name would Matthew have taken the canoe across the lake, beached it, and then gone into the water? None of it makes sense. We can’t know anything for sure, and I can’t ... I won’t let Bella live with even the suggestion that she may have contributed to her dad’s disappearance. If I tell the police, then there is a chance Bella might see it that way too. That can’t happen, Iz.”

“So, you’d rather they believe he ran away?”

“Well, if he was running away, then he deserved what he got. Don’t you think?”

Izzy didn’t rise to the challenge in Sarah’s question. “You don’t believe he ran,” she said. “Even I know Matthew would never have done that to you and the kids.”

“I don’t know what to believe. The car Boychuk found was enough to keep the police wondering. If it keeps them away from Bella, away from my family, then that’s good enough for me, even if it had nothing to do with Matthew.”

There were layers of understanding that would forever be out of Sarah’s grasp. She thought about each little decision, nuance, and discovery that led inescapably to the night on Nagadon Lake. Each moment clicked into place like LEGO bricks, creating a monstrosity that would cleave her family. She knew there was no denying it, no fighting against it. The details might clarify, but the outcome would forever be the same. The universe had spoken.

Sarah, Matthew, and the kids had arrived at the campsite on Nagadon Lake around midafternoon. The autumn sun still had some strength, so it was warm enough to play in the water after the short morning paddle. The water was colder than Sarah expected, though it was refreshing. After a swim, Matthew took the kids and the fishing rods back to the canoe.

“Mom can cook it! Right, Mom?” Bella said as she climbed into the front of the boat, her body quivering with excitement.

“Sure,” Sarah said. Secretly, she hoped she wouldn’t have to gut and clean a fish.

Charlie stood on the shore. Bella’s giddiness pulled him along, but the furrow in his brow gave away his reluctance to actually catch a fish. Charlie hardened his lips and shook his head.

“It’s all right, Charlie,” Sarah said before she scooped him up and brought him over to the canoe. She leaned her lips to his ear. “Don’t tell Bella. If it’s too little, it gets put back in the lake. We only eat the big ones who are ready to be eaten.” His body slackened.

Sarah waded a couple of steps into the water and deposited Charlie in the middle of the canoe. A flash of sun-dappled red at the bow caught her eye. The dry bag remained shoved into the front. Sarah replayed the conversation she’d had that morning with Matthew, as they were packing the car. They were standing with the doors open.

“You have the down sleeping bags?” she asked Matthew. “It’s supposed to be chilly at night. May even rain.”

“Got ’em,” Matthew said.

“What about your wet suit? You may want it if you’re going for a long swim?” It was a test. A way to determine whether Matthew had seen the evidence of her wrath.

“Naw, I left it. I don’t think there’ll be time for a long swim. Plus, it’s family time, right?”

Sarah shook loose from the memory. As she looked up from the boat, a spark of anger flared at the indirect reminder of his betrayal, but as she had done so many times in the last few months, she turned away from it. She buried it along with the business trips and late work nights and Grace. Let it smother beneath the fable of her happy family as Matthew, Bella, and Charlie had waved at her from the canoe.

Matthew’s casual dismissal of the wet suit came back to Sarah as her sister grilled her on a pleasant late-spring evening in the park. There was time now for regret. For a pain beyond imagining. But there was a promise to keep. One that Sarah knew she would keep to the end of her days. Not to Matthew. No, her promise was to her beautiful, willful, innocent child who had no idea what she may have unleashed on that cold September weekend. What did the damaged, and now missing, wet suit—the one Matthew said he hadn’t even brought—matter against the immensity of her daughter’s future.

Sarah had held Bella in her arms nine months ago and heard her little voice relay Matthew’s fall on the shore of Nagadon Lake. While she didn’t know exactly what had happened to Matthew after that, she could protect her daughter. Sarah felt almost guilty, relishing her daughter’s need for her in the midst of their unfolding tragedy.

“It’s my fault. I lost Daddy,” Bella had said.

Sarah tried to comfort her daughter. She smoothed her hair and echoed platitudes into the night. Told her it wasn’t Bella’s fault.

“But I scared him, Mommy. And he went away.” The words came out on a wail.

Sarah had heard grief, pain, and so much unrelenting guilt in her daughter’s voice. She knew, just knew, she couldn’t let Bella carry that. So, she lied.

She lied to Bella, she lied to the police, and she lied to Izzy. A lie by omission but a lie nonetheless. She buried the secret beneath a mother’s love, beneath Matthew’s secrets, beneath Ritter’s suspicion of Sarah. She would carry that secret all the way to the end, until she was no longer part of this earth.

Sarah sat next to Izzy on the park bench and felt recrimination like a blade. There was so much she still wanted to tell Izzy but knew she never would. The secret would lie between them, always keeping them a step apart from each other. And Sarah would live with that. Bella’s happiness mattered so much more.

Tears came then, slipping between her closed lids, their salty warmth scalding her cheeks.

Sarah heard birdsong again. The clipped call of a northern cardinal.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Charlie said as he climbed onto her lap. She opened her eyes to the little furrow on his brow and his deep hazel eyes, so much like Matthew’s.

“Thanks, buddy,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him. She felt the thump of her heartbeat against her chest. “Do you hear the cardinal?” she asked.

“I see him, Mama! Look!” Charlie pointed to an elm tree on the edge of the playground, where the bright red plumage stood out against green leaves. “Where’s the mama bird?” They both scanned the park, looking for the bird’s less colorful mate.

“I don’t know, baby. Maybe this one’s on his own?” Sarah said, her eyes pleading with Izzy.

Izzy reached over and tousled Charlie’s hair. The velvety curls under her fingers were like an invitation. She leaned over and kissed his head, which smelled of sunshine and sand and the promise of happiness. She tried to hold Sarah’s eye, but her sister looked toward the playground.

“Ready to go?” Izzy said, a question so much bigger than the immediate moment.

Everything she’d learned this afternoon from Boychuk and Bella and Sarah would rattle around in Izzy’s head, she knew. She would question the details, but only to herself. She saw grace in what Sarah had said, what she was trying to do, and more than a little self-preservation. They’d lost so much already. There was nothing to be gained by opening still-fresh wounds just to hunt an unattainable truth. As Sarah had said, it would not change anything. There was no bad guy in this story, no smoking gun. Sometimes the butterfly effect went with you, sometimes against.

Bella came running up, breathless and windblown from the swing. She grabbed Izzy’s hand. Izzy looked around at these people who were part of her life and took in the absence at the center. She met Sarah’s eyes. There was more. A lifetime of secret sharing had trained Izzy to know when her sister had more of the story to tell. But she also saw an entreaty she’d never seen before, a silent request for complicity. Izzy couldn’t—wouldn’t—ever know the whole truth, but she understood her sister’s silent plea to protect Bella and Charlie. She stood and reached out her hand to Sarah.

“I am,” Sarah said, and took her sister’s outstretched hand.