Chapter 1.

1.

Morning light filled my window. I squinted and turned away from the sun, pulling the blankets over my shoulders. A daddy longlegs crouched on my pillow, just inches from my face, and I brushed it away. Another spider watched me from my bedpost, but I left that one alone; I would deal with it later. I just wanted to sleep.

But then I remembered.

I sat up and swung my legs out of bed, and a sudden stabbing pain fired through the base of my skull. Holy mother of God. My brain felt skewered. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and tried to gather my bearings. I was back in my cottage. Back in the kiddie room with its storybook corner and brightly colored fish wallpaper. Back in the bottom bunk, though I had no recollection of coming here.

The last thing I remembered was wrestling a naked, sweaty Errol Gardner to the floor. I remembered mashing the flat front of my palm into his face.

A dream , I told myself.

A horrible, anxiety-fueled nightmare.

Except my knuckles were split. My lower back was sore. And I was dressed in all my same clothes from the night before.

I reached for my scalp and felt a tender, throbbing lump. My hair was caked with dried blood. And before I even understood what was happening, I was throwing up. I made it to the bathroom but not the toilet and vomited all over the sink.

I gripped the towel rack to steady myself and tried to collect my thoughts. Love is patient. Love is kind. He’s the Prince of Fucking Darkness. There they go, bending reality again. Dawn Taggart is the least of your worries. Your daughter is getting exactly what she wants. The hurt inside my head was excruciating. It felt like a piece of my brain had been cut out and now the raw, tender wound was exposed.

I switched on the light and cleared the spiders off the mirror so I could see my reflection. My shirt was streaked with dirt and blood. Two of its buttons were missing. I looked like an extra in a zombie movie, one of these businessmen commuting to the office who gets infected by the virus. I turned on the tap, splashed cold water on my face, and rinsed out my mouth. I had a couple of toiletries on the counter—a toothbrush, deodorant, a bottle of cologne—but I did not bother to collect them. I only cared about two things: getting Maggie, and getting far away from Osprey Cove.

The display on my Timex said 11:53, but of course this was still Gardner Standard Time. I fumbled with the little buttons and turned back the clock to 11:38, Eastern Standard Time. No more bullshit. Then I went into the closet to grab my suitcase. As soon as the motion light flickered on, dozens more spiders scattered across the walls, panicked by my sudden arrival. I just grabbed my bag and closed the door because they didn’t matter anymore. In another five minutes I would be gone.

I found my cell phone in my pocket and discovered the battery was down to its last 8 percent. And there was one new notification—a voice mail from Vicky, left at 10:52 a.m. I pressed play and listened:

“I didn’t hear back from you last night so I hope everything’s okay? I wanted to let you know, I did reach out to my son, Todd. The one at the newspaper? Now, don’t worry, Frank. I didn’t say anything. I just asked if he’d heard anything squirrelly about the Gardners. Because a lot of times, these writers have hints of a story, but not enough sources to put the whole thing into print? And I get the feeling this might be one of those situations. Because Todd got pretty quiet and said he couldn’t tell me anything. Which is his way of saying there is something. And you should be careful. So give me a call when you get this. I’ll explain it better over the phone.”

But I didn’t need her to explain it any better. I didn’t need advice from Vicky or anyone else. I put my suitcase on the bottom bunk and unzipped the lid, just as Tammy appeared at my bedroom door. She gave a quick perfunctory knock before opening it.

“Listen, Frankie, I just wanted to check on you, make sure you’re— Oh my goodness, look at your face! And your shirt!”

“Pack your stuff. We’re leaving.”

She smiled uneasily, like she was expecting me to follow my announcement with a punch line. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Tammy. I have no idea what’s happening. But I know this wedding’s a joke. Maggie’s made a terrible mistake, and we need to get her out of here.”

“Frankie, Frankie, calm down.” Tammy moved closer and rested a gentle hand on my arm. “Maggie is fine, okay? I just saw her. We just had breakfast together. Me and Maggie and Abigail, we had strawberry pancakes and Maggie is one hundred percent all right. Today is her wedding day, remember? She’s marrying Aidan Gardner.”

“I know what day it is. Why are you talking to me like I’m a toddler?”

“Because you sound confused. I was here last night when they brought you home. Maggie said you had too much to drink. She said you fell and hurt your head.”

“And you believed her?”

“Of course!”

“You think I got drunk? And blacked out? At my own daughter’s rehearsal dinner? Does that sound like anything I’ve ever done?”

“Well, no, Frankie, but if I’m being honest, you haven’t been yourself these past few days. I think you’re under an enormous amount of stress. What do you think happened last night?”

I didn’t want to tell her. A part of me hoped that if I kept my discoveries to myself, they wouldn’t be true. But I knew I wouldn’t get far without my sister’s help. I sat down on the lower bunk and invited her to sit beside me, because I knew the story would take a while. “Last night during dinner, I went inside Osprey Lodge and I met Catherine Gardner. She’s not sick, Tammy. She doesn’t have migraines. She’s had some kind of mental breakdown. She’s completely intoxicated around the clock, and that’s why she hasn’t joined us. And she’s the one who killed Dawn Taggart.”

Tammy leaned away from me, like she suddenly feared I was contagious. “Okay, stop.”

“She crushed her skull with a car battery. And Aidan was here when it happened. He saw the whole thing.”

“Stop-stop-stop. I don’t need to know.”

“Tammy, you’re not hearing me clearly. I am telling you that Catherine Gardner murdered a pregnant woman. Right here in the camp. And Aidan helped her cover it up.”

“I am hearing you clearly. And I’m telling you: it’s not our dirty laundry. Every family has secrets. Let’s mind our own business.”

I stared at my sister in disbelief. This was a woman who had devoted her entire life to helping others—dozens of foster children and countless senior citizens. She’d always been quick to rail against injustice, but now I felt like I was speaking to a different person. And I still hadn’t told her the worst part: “After I talked to Catherine, I went to Maggie’s cottage. Way off deep in the woods. And I found her in bed with Errol Gardner.” I searched my sister’s face, looking for any kind of reaction, but her expression didn’t change. “Do you understand what I just told you? She was having sex with her future father-in-law. The night before her wedding. I threw him on the floor and started hitting him, then Hugo clubbed me over the head and that’s the last thing I remember.”

For a long moment, my sister didn’t say anything. I assumed she was overwhelmed by the story and struggling to make sense of it. But when she finally spoke, she surprised me.

“I hear that you’re upset.”

I blinked. “You hear that I’m upset?”

“I believe everything you’re saying is true. And I understand why it bothers you. It bothers me, too. I wish Maggie had made different choices. But this is Maggie we’re talking about. You can’t say you’re surprised.”

“Yes, I can. I am.”

“Frankie, come on. I helped you bring her up. And I love that girl as much as you do. But be honest with yourself. She has a history.”

“What kind of history?”

“Of manipulating people. Using them to get what she wants. All that business with her sorority sisters. And Dr. Cell Phone. Think about the whole reason Maggie stopped talking to you.”

“She stopped talking to me because I let her down. She asked for my help and I turned my back on her.”

“No, Frankie, that is not what happened. She’s manipulated you into seeing things that way. Because—again—she is very good at manipulating people. Especially you. As I recall, you were just trying to do the right thing.”

I couldn’t process what she was saying. Things were moving too quickly and I just wanted everything to stop. “We need to help her.”

“She doesn’t need help. This isn’t Taken and you’re not Liam Neeson. You don’t need to rescue Maggie. She knows exactly what she’s doing. I don’t understand the choice she’s made, but it is clearly her choice. She wants this. I think we’ll be a lot happier if we just accept it.”

“Dawn Taggart was murdered . And then Gwendolyn found out and she was murdered, too. Hugo drugged her and drowned her and dumped her body like it was garbage.”

“But Maggie didn’t hurt either one of them. And you know the Gardners are going to get away with it. These kinds of people always get away with it. They hire their lawyers and work the system.”

“So you’re just going to pretend nothing happened? You think you can actually do that?”

“Frankie, I know I can. Because I’m tired, okay?” She could tell I was bewildered, so she tried to frame her answer differently: “We have very different circumstances, little brother. In three more years, you’re going to retire with a pension and healthcare and the freedom to do anything you want. But me? There’s no pension for me. If this wedding falls apart, if Errol takes back his thousand shares, I’ve got forty grand in an IRA plus whatever I shake out of social security. At that rate, I will never stop working. I’ll be lubing catheters and treating bedsores until I’m ninety years old. And I don’t want that life for myself anymore.” She gestured out the window to the rest of the camp. “Especially after seeing all this. Everything’s so beautiful here.”

“I would take care of you, Tammy. I’m not going to let you end up in the poorhouse.”

“I don’t want to leech off you. I don’t want to ask for a handout every time my car needs new tires. I want to keep my thousand shares and have a nice quiet retirement.”

I felt another wave of pain coming on and gritted my teeth and squeezed the edge of the mattress, bracing myself for the worst. My big sister had always looked after me, always supported me, always stood by my side, but now she was a Capaciti shareholder and I didn’t recognize her anymore. She swiveled her fanny pack around her waist and unzipped the tiny pocket and removed a small bottle of Advil. She shook out two of the little brown tablets and gently placed them in my hand.

“Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m gonna find Maggie and have her come over so you can talk. But before she gets here, you need to shower. You look awful and you smell absolutely foul. Go clean yourself up. And while you’re in there, I want you to remember why you and Maggie stopped speaking. Be honest with yourself. Because this whole situation feels very familiar, Frankie. It feels very three years ago. And I don’t want to see you make the same mistakes. You can trust that Maggie is ready to make adult choices with adult consequences, and you can have a real relationship with her. Or you can keep fighting her and undermining her decisions and destroy any chance of a future together. And as someone who cares about you, I am going to suggest you choose the former.” She patted my knee and then looked at her watch and discovered it was almost noon. “And you better get going, because you’ve only got three hours.”