Chapter 8.

8.

My new bedroom had nowhere to sit, apart from a tiny “story corner” furnished with plump pillows and colorful picture books. I unpacked my things as quickly as possible, then went down to the kitchen and sat alone at the buffet. All the downtime was driving me crazy. I wanted to walk outdoors and see the entire camp. I wanted to go swimming and hiking and canoeing. And more than anything I wanted to meet my future in-laws.

I think that’s the real reason I felt so irritable. I couldn’t believe that Errol and Catherine still hadn’t come over to welcome us. I was upset that Aidan had immediately bolted to spend time with his college buddy. And then Maggie rushed off into town and wouldn’t even let me come with her. I tried to remind myself that she was very busy and sometimes the best way to help a person is to just get out of their way. But I already had the uneasy feeling that we were unwelcome, that we’d only been invited due to a sense of obligation.

At three o’clock I went outside to wait for my daughter. Abigail was sitting in a porch rocker and leaning over a checkerboard, playing a game against herself.

“Thanks for switching rooms, Mister Frank.”

“It’s fine.”

She tapped the checkerboard. “Do you want to play?”

“I can’t. Maggie’s going to be here any minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“She wants to show me the camp.”

“Can I come?”

“Well, it’s not going to be very interesting. We’re just going to look at the buildings and, you know, talk about the history of the place.”

She stood up anyway. “That’s okay.”

“Well, and the other thing is, Maggie wants to spend a little one-on-one time with me. Because we don’t see much of each other.” Abigail just stared at me, still not grasping the point, and I realized I had to spell it out for her. “It’s better if you just stay here.”

She sank back into her chair. “All right.”

“What’s Tammy doing?”

“She’s taking a bubble bath. They didn’t have bubbles in her bathroom? But she dialed zero on the house phone and a lady brought some right over. Three different scent options.”

“Go tell her you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored. I just wanted to come with.” Abigail returned her focus to the game and used a red checker to double-jump two blacks. I looked all around for Maggie, hoping she would materialize and rescue me from the awkwardness of the conversation, but there was still no trace of her. So I stood there and watched Abigail play an imaginary opponent until my phone started ringing. I checked the display—“Maggie ??? ”—and then answered immediately.

“Hey, what’s the holdup?”

“Sorry, I’m still here in town.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” she said, before firing off a list of the latest disasters: the florist mixed up the table settings, the videographer tested positive for COVID, and she still needed a solution to the bus problem. All her problems seemed to be multiplying.

“What about your wedding planner? Isn’t she supposed to handle this stuff?”

“It’s a team effort, Dad. We’re all doing the best we can. I should be back in time for dinner, okay?”

In time for dinner? “You mean six o’clock?”

“Dad, listen. You don’t need me to see the camp. Take the map. Go exploring. Meet some people. There’s horseshoes, a game room, a million different activities.”

She spoke to me like I was a kid on summer vacation with no friends and nothing to do. She didn’t seem to understand that I’d come to New Hampshire to spend time with family—not play horseshoes with a bunch of random strangers. But I could hear the aggravation in her voice and I didn’t want to make things any worse. So I just said, “All right, see you soon,” and ended the call.

Abigail was still hunched over the checkerboard and pretending that she hadn’t been eavesdropping. But I’d been careful not to say anything that would reveal my change of plans.

“Heading out now,” I told her.

“Where’s Maggie?”

“I’m going to meet her at the lodge.”

She flashed me a thumbs-up and I suddenly felt very silly for lying to a ten-year-old. But I guess I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been ditched. Abigail said, “See you later, Mister Frank,” and that was the end of it.

From our cottage, there were several different trails into the woods, but I just walked back the way we’d arrived, following the shore of Lake Wyndham for a minute or two until I was back on the beach. All the lounge chairs were still empty, and no one was swimming in the water. But up on the main lawn, closer to Osprey Lodge, men and women in white coats were rolling large tables across the grass and carrying out armfuls of folding chairs. They appeared to be setting up for the reception, even though it was only Thursday. I saw a carpenter in a Dartmouth sweatshirt firing a nail gun into a lumber frame. He was constructing a large platform, a kind of elevated stage, and I asked if he needed help. I suppose I was still looking for some way to contribute. He gave me a sideways look and asked, “You work here?”

I explained that I was Maggie’s father, in town for the wedding, and he immediately straightened and set down his nail gun. “That’s okay, Mr. Szatowski. You should just relax and enjoy the camp.”

Why was everyone telling me to relax and enjoy the camp?

“I’m surprised you’re setting up so early,” I said. “What if it rains before Saturday?”

“This isn’t for the wedding.” He gestured to the big round tables, now draped with white linens and ringed by folding chairs. “All this is for tonight.”

Up until that moment, I’d expected Thursday’s dinner to be an intimate meal with just my family and the Gardners. But the caterers were setting out glasses and silverware for dozens of people. It might not have been the actual wedding, but it was already far more extravagant than any wedding I’d ever seen.

The carpenter returned to his work and fired a long line of nails into the platform. And as I stood there, deliberating my next move, Aidan emerged from the back of the lodge, accompanied by a woman with long red hair. I waved and called his name, but with the nail gun blasting, he didn’t hear me. He and the woman set off on a narrow trail that disappeared into the trees. I hurried across the lawn, weaving around tables and caterers, trying to catch up. By the time I reached the start of the trail, they had already vanished into the woods.

But since everybody kept encouraging me to explore the camp, I decided to follow the path anyway. Inside the woods, it was cooler and darker and surprisingly quiet. The sounds of the camp fell away and soon I heard nothing but trilling cicadas and the occasional birdsong. From time to time I’d glance at the paper map and try to orient myself, but the trail wasn’t marked. I was west of Osprey Lodge in a large cluster of trees labeled Imagination Grove, and the path was leading me to the outermost boundaries of the property. I began to understand that the map couldn’t possibly be drawn to scale—that the wooded grove must have been much larger than shown, so all the areas would fit on a single page.

Or maybe I was just lost.

One of the most useful things I learned during my four years in the United States Army is a concept known as situational awareness. The idea is that you’re always assessing your surroundings with a focus on threats, risks, and signs of recent disturbances. A very useful mindset for a scared nineteen-year-old kid patrolling Iraqi villages during the 1991 Gulf War, and I’ve found the habits hard to shake. To this day, I can’t walk into a restaurant without taking note of the emergency exits. After several minutes of following the trail, I stopped and turned around, and I did not see a single living creature. There was no reason for me to feel nervous in an open wooded area with clear sight lines in every direction. But I had the uneasy feeling that an ambush was waiting just around the corner, that I was walking into some kind of trap.

The path brought me up a steep section of trail that was poorly maintained, and then I glimpsed a structure in the distance. Something resembling an old toolshed, and completely unlike all the modern buildings back at the camp. This one had worn-out wooden siding, dusty windows, and a gray shingled roof speckled with spongy green moss. I checked the map to orient myself but the building wasn’t on it. I approached from the side, a flat and mostly featureless wall with two rusty vents and a single hung window. The curtains were drawn, but the screen was open and I could hear voices within.

One belonged to Aidan, but the other person—the woman—was doing most of the talking. I couldn’t discern all of her words, just the general tenor of the conversation. She was angry and Aidan was placating her, or trying to.

“This isn’t fair.”

“I know.”

“It’s not fair to me .”

“I hear you. I understand.”

“Don’t say you understand, Aidan. Because if you really understood, if you actually agreed with me, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

He said something I couldn’t make out, and I dared to move even closer, stepping softly across dry leaves until I was right beside the window.

Then he said, “What would you like me to do?”

“Tell the truth.”

“Besides that.”

“I’ll help you. I still care about you. We can do it together—”

“No, no, no. We are not doing anything. There is no we .”

And then he said something I couldn’t make out again. The woman was upset, but Aidan’s tone was steady, stubborn, immutable. I glanced around, afraid that someone might catch me eavesdropping. But from what I could gather, the three of us were all alone in the forest. I sidestepped to the back of the cabin, to a larger window where their voices were easier to hear.

“… you’re not seeing the big picture.”

“Maybe I should talk to Margaret.”

“ Do not talk to Margaret.”

“I just think—”

“Stay the fuck away from Margaret.”

“Jesus, Aidan—”

“She cannot know about this conversation. If you say one word to her—”

The rest of the sentence was spoken under his breath.

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, I just—”

“Are you sure? Because that sounded like a threat.”

“Relax, okay? Come here.”

Hanging over the back window were faded yellow curtains that didn’t quite reach the sill. I pressed my face to the screen and squinted through the open gap. I saw a cluttered room, dimly lit. Canvases leaned against the walls in stacks that were six or seven deep. There was a workbench full of paints and supplies and a large wooden easel. Aidan stood with his back to me, and the woman was embracing him. She was my daughter’s age, tall with long red hair and a freckled complexion, and we immediately locked eyes. She straightened her shoulders and shook off Aidan’s hands.

“Someone’s here,” she said.

The sun was at my back; I realized I had cast a shadow on the curtains. Aidan spun around and I leaped away from the window. He walked over and peered outside. “Frank? What are you doing here?”

I gave the first explanation that came to mind. “Just exploring the camp.” Then I showed him the paper map, hoping it would add some credibility to my story. “It seems like I got myself lost.”

“You’re not lost. This is my studio. Come around to the front and I’ll give you a tour.”

Aidan was waiting in the doorway when I reached the entrance. “You’ve found my little secret. I’ve tried painting back at the lodge but it’s impossible. Too many distractions. All the staff coming and going. But this place is perfect. It’s the last surviving structure from the original summer camp. Super quiet and you won’t find it on any of the maps. Most people don’t even know it’s here.”

I followed him inside. The air was musty and smelled of chemicals—mineral spirits, turpentine, linseed oil. There were paintings everywhere—lots of haunted black-and-white faces like the ones in his penthouse apartment. But many more were incomplete or abandoned, and these canvases showed just pieces of faces: An open mouth. A long slender neck. A single ear half-concealed by lengths of hair. I found these face parts even more unsettling than the completed portraits.

The redhead was leaning against Aidan’s workbench. She wore a cream-colored blouse, a long green skirt, and brown leather sandals. All her clothes and jewelry looked homemade and slightly primitive, like she’d come from a Renaissance fair.

“Frank, this is Gwendolyn,” Aidan said, and I realized I’d misheard him earlier. He’d been running off to meet Gwen , not Glen. “We went to art school together. Now she’s a teacher, like me.”

She seemed amused by the comparison. “Aidan likes to make people sound important. I teach at a preschool on Tuesdays. Finger paints and Popsicle sticks. The rest of the week, I’m just driving for DoorDash.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I told her. “I’ve been at UPS for twenty-six years.”

“Driving?”

“It’s hard work but I guarantee we pay better than DoorDash.” She seemed genuinely intrigued so I bragged a little about my union benefits—about the pension plan and the healthcare and the perks of being a Teamster. “Plus they’re dying to hire more women right now. Because of MeToo and everything. Depending on your location, you could have a real good shot.”

“You know, I might just look into it,” she said. “How do you guys know each other?”

“Frank is Margaret’s father,” Aidan explained.

And it was like he’d flipped a switch. All at once, her entire demeanor soured.

“Wait, you’re Margaret’s father?”

“Yes, Frank Szatowski.”

“Then I guess you’ll be hanging up the brown uniform pretty soon, right? Have you delivered your last package?”

She wasn’t the first person to make this kind of joke. A lot of my friends at work had made similar comments. Like they all expected Maggie to turn over some vast sum of money that would allow me to move to Key West and vacation in Hawaii and live a life of leisure with all my new Gardner relations. But I had no intention of taking a penny from my daughter. I’ve always felt that family fortunes should only travel in one direction—downhill, from parent to child, and not the other way around.

“I’m pretty happy with my life,” I told her. “I’m not making any changes.”

She didn’t try to hide her skepticism—or her sudden inexplicable contempt for me. “And is Aidan going to call you Dad? Or do you think you’ll keep things on a first-name basis?”

“We haven’t talked about it.” I turned to Aidan. “But since Gwen brought it up, I’m happy to answer to either one. Whatever makes you more comfortable.”

“I know, Frank, and thank you. Gwen’s just being provocative. It’s kind of her brand.”

She snorted at the assessment. “Sure, Aidan. Telling the truth is soooo edgy. I’m a real loose cannon.” Then she leaned closer to me, squinting at my wristwatch. “Tell me something, Frank. What time do you have?”

“Three-thirty.”

She shot a wry look at Aidan, as if this proved some kind of point. “All right, I’m going to go jump off a cliff. But it was great to meet you, Frank. I’m sure you’ll have an amazing weekend. Give my best to Margaret.”

Then she went out the door and bounded off into the woods, and maybe I was imagining it, but I thought she put some extra swing in her hips, like she knew we were watching.

“Sorry about that,” Aidan said.

“Did I say something to offend her?”

“It’s nothing you did. She’s just weird about money.”

He explained that Gwendolyn lost her parents at the age of seven, so she’d been raised by her grandmother, an Irish immigrant who worked as a housekeeper. Somehow Gwendolyn managed to attend NYU Steinhardt on a full scholarship, where she and Aidan struck up an unlikely friendship. They were close friends and confidantes for four years, then parted ways after graduation. Aidan moved to his penthouse apartment in Boston and Gwendolyn went back to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and her eighty-one-year-old grandmother. Because the world wasn’t fair, Aidan said, and making a living as a visual artist was just about impossible.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“It’s got nothing to do with you. She’s just weird whenever she’s here. Very critical of the camp. And she hates Capaciti. It was probably a mistake to invite her, but we used to be good friends.”

I wanted to ask about the conversation I’d overheard, but there was no way to do it without admitting I’d been eavesdropping.

This isn’t fair.

Tell the truth.

Maybe I should talk to Margaret.

I reminded myself that I hadn’t heard the entire conversation, so they could have been talking about anything. But still:

Are you threatening me?

He was waiting for me to say something. Waiting to see if I’d make another move in this weird game we were playing. But I needed time to process everything I’d learned. I looked around the studio and noticed a metal spiral staircase in the far corner, descending through a hole in the floor. “Where does that go?”

“To the fallout shelter.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “This camp was built in 1954, at the height of the Red Scare. Back when the government was subsidizing bomb shelters and everybody was building them.” He was interrupted by a chirping from his pocket. Aidan reached for his phone and checked the screen. “It’s my dad. I better take this.”

He turned away from me, seeking some small measure of privacy, and I studied the spiral staircase. Narrow steps of grated metal wrapped around and around a black steel pole before vanishing into the darkness. It was like staring down into a well. “Yeah, I’m actually with him right now.… We’re at my studio.” Aidan listened for a moment before turning to me. “Dad wants to know if you’re free for a drink.”

“Of course.”

Aidan said we’d be right over and then ended the call. As we exited the studio, he pulled the door shut and I noticed it was fitted with another Bluetooth lock. Aidan said his father was waiting for us in Osprey Lodge and I invited him to lead the way, but instead he turned in the direction of the lake. “Just one other thing, Frank. Margaret mentioned you received something in the mail? Some kind of photograph?”

“Right. It’s in my suitcase.”

He forced an awkward smile, apologizing for putting me out. “Do you think we could grab it on the way? My dad really wants to see it.”