It is dark by the time we return to the cabin, and my limbs are throbbing dully with exhaustion. I all but collapse on the sofa in the brick-red Santa Fe pattern and lie there for a long time while Corrine and Henry stand too close to each other in the kitchen area behind me and exchange words in heated whispers.
“She doesn’t have a choice!” Corrine explodes, and then I hear her heavy jock-girl footsteps come nearer to me. She half circles the coffee table and stands there, appraising me. I’m in the fetal position with my knees tucked into my chest.
“You need to shower.”
I stare up at her with undisguised contempt. Her thin blond hair is shellacked to her skull with sweat. A bald alien, beamed into my bedroom to abduct me for the purposes of their strange science. “That’s your concern at the moment?”
“Yes, because you look like a hostage.” She stares into the kitchen, where I assume Henry still stands. “Both of you do.”
“I am a hostage.”
“Get up, Faye.”
“Fuck you, Corrine.”
Corrine’s eyes bulge in her big bald-looking head. I wonder if anyonehad ever said that to her before or if I have the honor of being the first. “Get the fuck up,” she growls, “before I shoot you in the face.”
I do not move. I’ve had it with her telling me what to do. “You can’t shoot me,” I tell her with a heady rush of fearlessness. “I can say anything I want to you, and you can’t shoot me. I can call you a dead-eyed fish. I can tell you that your son is a sweet kid who stands no chance, because he has a mother who displays such obvious disdain for him. And you have to take it because unlike you, I am a valuable, contributing member of society who has not murdered anyone for money.” I raise my eyebrows at her tauntingly while Corrine chews up the insides of her mouth and undoubtedly fantasizes about pecking my eyes out of my head, but in the end, she takes it, and this emboldens me. I am too important to kill. I do have a hand, and now is the time to play it.
I sit up on my own time and adjust my position so that I am longways on the couch and can turn my head between Henry in the kitchen and Corrine fuming on the other side of the coffee table. “Since when did this property pass to you, Henry?”
“Technically,” Henry answers, “it’s not mine yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because PT left it to HenryandCampbell,” Corrine says on the other side of me, “and no one knows Campbell is dead yet.”
I turn back to Corrine, see her licking her lips with abject pleasure that she is privy to all the gory details that I am not. “Private property within a public park has always been a tricky issue,” she explains. “So these guys have their little club to protect their little island and prevent the big, bad government from swooping in and taking what is rightfully theirs. There’s this language they’ve had formalized—willing seller, willing buyer. Sadly”—she sighs, decidedly not sad—“Camps was unwilling.”
I swivel my head, slowly, to look at Henry, understanding beginning to dawn. “You’re selling?”
Henry bows his head. It’s a yes.
“But… why?”
“Faye.” Corrine laughs. “Why does anyone do anything? For money. Retire before thirty-five, buy a third house, hire a third nanny, never have to share a California king with a scummy finance bro againmoney.”
“This is the largest piece of privately owned land in all of the Adirondacks,” Henry contributes in a much more decent tone. “The Forest Preserve will buy us out and then some.”
“But then the lake won’t be private anymore.”
“Boo-hoo,” Corrine says. “We’ll just have to cry into our golden pillows.”
Henry rubs his shoulder, like it is sore from carrying Sarah, though how much could a skeleton weigh? It occurs to me, then, why we had to do what we did today. “If the lands are public, obviously you can’t keep a body buried here.”
“Do you feel better now?” Corrine says. “Nancy fucking Drew. You figured it out.”
“I’d like to know how you’re going to explain Campbell’s death. I’d like to know what you expect me to say and not say when you let me go. I’m not going to do any of it, but for shits and giggles, tell me.”
Corrine throws her head back on her neck, closes her eyes, and probably counts to ten in her head. “You need to shower,” she says after about four seconds. “We’re already off schedule here.”
“I’m not cooperating until you tell me.”
Corrine groans and opens her eyes. “I am going to sound the alarm tonight, okay?”
“Tonight?” I repeat, incredulously. Outside, the sun has left the clouds smudged like charcoal. Itistonight.
Corrine continues in a put-upon tone, like I am a parent who has asked their teenager to elaborate on their plans for the evening before I will agree to give them the keys to the family vehicle. “Campbell was supposed to be here a few days to summerize the cabin. I’ve been getting messages and phone calls from him, but two days ago they stopped. I got worried. Drove up here to check on him. His car wasn’t in the parking lot, which was strange, but the boat’s there, so I took it to our cabin and poked around. Okay, clearly he’s been here. The bed is slept in. There’s food in the kitchen. But he’s nothere. I search the woods, in case he’s out there, injured or ripped to shreds by a bear. God, wouldn’t that have been convenient? Anyway. I’m truly baffled as to where he might be, and it’s getting dark, and so I decide to take the boat to the clubhouse to try and catch a signal and call someone. And there, I come upon a devastating scene.” Corrine says no more. She does not need to. It is my handiwork she will discover. Henry never even moved the body. My stomach roils, picturing Campbell lying there with one eye open and one eye shut while Henry and I carried on the way we did these last few days.