Page 30 of This is Why We Lied

She felt her head shaking. Part of her wished that he’d pummeled the prick into the dirt.

“I’m sorry this happened,” Will said. “I promise I won’t let it get in the way of our honeymoon.”

“Nothing’s going to get in the way.” Sara thought of an addendum to her mother’s Bible verse. Will’s enemies were her enemies. Dave better pray he didn’t run into Sara this week. “Is he a guest?”

“I think he’s an employee. Maintenance, by the way he was dressed.” Will kept stroking her arm. “It’s funny, because Dave ran away from the home a few years before I aged out. The cops interviewed all of us, and I told them he was probably up here. Dave loved the camp. Tried to go every year. I used to help him with the Bible verses. He’d read them out loud so many times that I’d memorize them. He’d practice with me on the bus, during PE, study hall. If he’d put half that effort into school, he sure wouldn’t’ve been stuck with the slow kids like me.”

Sara pressed her finger to his lips. He was not slow.

Will took her hand and kissed her palm. “Are we finished with confessions?”

“I have one more.”

He laughed. “Okay.”

She sat up so that they could look at each other. “There’s a trail on the map called Little Deer. It leads to the back side of the lake.”

“Jon said that awinita is the Cherokee word for fawn, which is a little deer.”

“Do you think the trail leads to the campsite?”

“Let’s find out.”

5

SIX HOURS BEFORE THE MURDER

The kitchen staff was doing its usual mad dash to prepare for dinner service when Mercy walked in. She darted out of the way, barely missing a stack of plates that was piled over the dishwasher’s head. She caught Alejandro’s eye. He gave her a quick nod that everything was okay.

Still, she asked him, “You got the message about the peanut allergy?”

He nodded again, this time with a tilt of his chin that said she should leave.

Mercy didn’t take it personally. She was content to let him work. Their last cook was a handsy old coot with a bad oxy habit who’d been arrested for trafficking the week after Papa’s accident. Alejandro was a young Puerto Rican chef fresh out of the Atlanta Culinary School. Mercy had offered him carte blanche over the kitchen if he could start the next day. The guests loved him. The two townie kids who worked the kitchen seemed enthralled. She just didn’t know how much longer he’d be content to cook bland white-people-spicy up in the hills.

She pushed open the door to the dining room. A sudden wave of nausea sent her stomach into a spin. Mercy braced her hand against the door. Her brain kept pushing down all the stress, but her body kept reminding her that it was there. She opened her mouth to draw in a deep breath, then got back to work.

Mercy went around the table, adjusting a spoon here, a knife there. The light caught a water stain on one of the glasses. She used her shirt tail to wipe it off as she scanned the room. Two long tables bisected the space. During Papa’s time, there had only been bench seating, but Mercy had splurged on proper chairs. People drank more when they could sit back. She’d also invested in speakers to play soft music and lighting that could be dimmed to set the mood, both of which Papa hated, but there wasn’t much he could do about it because he couldn’t work the controls.

She returned the glass, adjusted another fork, moved a candelabra to center it on the table. She silently counted place settings. Frank and Monica, Sara and Will, Landry and Gordon, Drew and Keisha. Sydney and Max, the investors, were down with the family. Chuck was by Fish so they could sulk together. Delilah had been put at the end like an afterthought, which seemed appropriate. Mercy knew that Jon wouldn’t show his face. Not only because he’d probably talked to Papa about the investors by now, but because Mercy had foolishly given him the night off. Alejandro didn’t do dishes and the townies liked to be off the mountain by eight-thirty at the latest. Mercy would be up until midnight cleaning and doing breakfast prep.

She looked at her watch. Cocktail service would start soon. She walked onto the deck. Another upgrade after Papa’s accident. She’d had Dave enlarge the viewing platform that the boards cantilevered over the cliff. He’d had to get help with the supports, him and his buddies drinking beer while they dangled from ropes over a fifty-foot drop into the ravine. He’d finished off the project by wrapping string lights around the railings. There were bench seats and ledges for drinks and it was actually perfect if you didn’t know he’d been six months late and charged her three times what he’d quoted.

Silently, Mercy let her eyes scan the bottles of liquor on the bar. Their exotic labels showed well in the early evening sunlight. Under Papa, the lodge had only offered a house wine with the taste and consistency of Smucker’s. Now, they sold whiskey sours and gin and tonics for ridiculous amounts of money. Mercy had always suspected their level of guests would pay for Tito’s and Macallan. What she hadn’t anticipated was that the lodge could bring in almost as much from liquor sales as they could from the rack rate.

Penny, another townie, was behind the bar getting things ready. She was older than the rest of the staff, time-worn and no-nonsense. Mercy had known her for years, dating back to when Penny started cleaning rooms in high school. They had both partied their asses off during those days, then both hit sobriety the hard way. Fortunately, Penny didn’t need to drink to know what tasted good. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure cocktails that thrilled guests and encouraged them to order more.

Mercy asked her, “Going good?”

“It’s going.” Penny looked up from slicing limes when voices echoed down the trail. Then she looked at her watch and frowned.

Mercy was not surprised to see that Monica and Frank had shown up early for cocktails. At least the dentist could hold her liquor. Monica wasn’t loud or obnoxious, just eerily silent. Mercy had been around her share of drunks, and the quiet ones were usually the worst. Not because they could turn nasty or unpredictable. Because they were on a mission to drink themselves to death. Frank was annoying, but Mercy didn’t see that he was drink-yourself-to-death bad.

Then again, people thought the same thing about Dave.

“Welcome!” Mercy plastered on a smile when they reached the deck. “Everything good?”

Frank smiled back. “It’s fantastic. We’re so glad we came.”