The Last Time I Lied(14)

5


I bolt from my slumped position in the back seat when the rounded peaks of the Adirondacks push over the horizon. The sight of them sets my heart racing ever-so-slightly—a soft hum in my chest that I try to ignore. It gets worse once the driver turns off the highway and announces, “Almost there, Miss Davis.”

Immediately, the car starts to bump down a gravel road. Both sides of the road are lined with forest that seems to get thicker and darker the deeper we go. Gnarled limbs stretch overhead, reaching for one another, branches intertwined. Towering pines diffuse the sun. The underbrush is a tangle of leaves, stems, thorns. It is, I realize, like one of my paintings come to life.

Soon we’re at the wrought-iron gate that serves as the only way into Camp Nightingale. It’s wide-open—an invitation to enter. But the gate and its surroundings are anything but inviting. Flanking the road are four-foot-high stone walls that stretch into the woods. An ornate archway, also wrought iron, curves over the road, giving the impression that we’re about to enter a cemetery.

The camp reveals itself in increments. Structures slide into view as if pushed there by stagehands. All of them are remnants from when the land was a private retreat for the Harris family, now repurposed for camp use. The arts and crafts building, low-slung and quaint, used to be a horse stable. All white paint and gingerbread trim. A flower bed sits in front of it, bright with crocuses and tiger lilies. Next is the mess hall. Less pretty. More utilitarian. A former hay barn turned into a cafeteria. A side door gapes open as workers haul in cases of food from an idling delivery truck.

In the distance to my right are the cabins, barely visible through the trees. Nothing but edges of moss-stippled roof and slivers of pine siding. I catch glimpses of girls settling in. Bare legs. Slender arms. Glistening hair.

At first glance, the camp looks the same as it did when I left it all those years ago. It’s a weird sensation, like I’ve been shuttled back in time. One foot in the present, another planted in the past. Yet something about the place feels slightly off. An air of neglect hangs over everything like cobwebs. And the longer I’m here, the more I become aware of what has changed in the past fifteen years. The tennis court and archery range both now sit in a startling state of disuse. Spiky weeds burst through the court’s surface in jagged lines. The grass in the archery range is knee-high, dotted on the far end with rotting hay bales that had once held targets.

Atop the otherwise immaculate arts and crafts building, a handyman nails shingles to the roof. He stills his hammer as the town car passes, peering down at me, his face round and reddened. I stare back, suddenly recognizing him from my first visit. I remember seeing him quite a bit around camp, constantly tinkering and fixing. He was younger then, of course. Better looking. Possessed a brooding intensity that intimidated some, intrigued others.

I’d grab his tool any day, Vivian once said at lunch, prompting eye rolls from the rest of us.

I wave to him, wondering if he also recognizes the older me. He returns his gaze to a shingle, raises his hammer, pounds it into place.

By then the town car is whipping around the circular drive in front of the Lodge. Franny’s home away from home, as she calls it, although it’s more home than most people will ever lay claim to. But that’s been its purpose ever since it was built by her grandfather on the shore of the lake he also created. A summer house for a family that chose nature over Newport. Like most old structures, there’s a heaviness to the Lodge, a somberness. I think of all the years it’s witnessed. All those seasons and storms and secrets.

“We’ve arrived,” the driver says as he stops the car in front of the Lodge’s red front door. “I’ll get your bags from the trunk.”

I exit the car, legs stiff and back aching, and I’m immediately engulfed by fresh air. It’s a smell I’d forgotten. Clean and pine-scented. So different from the city’s fumes. It sparks a hundred memories I’d also forgotten. Simple ones of walking through the woods behind Vivian or sitting alone with my toes in the lake, contemplating everything and nothing all at once. The scent beckons me, pulling me forward. I start walking, unsure of where I’m headed.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell the driver, who’s busily unloading my suitcase and box of painting supplies. “I need to stretch my legs.”

I keep walking, around the Lodge to the grassy slope behind it. There I see what the fresh air has led me to.

Lake Midnight.

It’s larger than I remember. In my memory, it had become similar to the Central Park Reservoir. Something contained. Something that could be controlled. In reality, it’s a vast, sparkling presence that dominates the landscape. The trees lining its bank lean slightly toward it, branches bending over the water.

I start down the sloping lawn, continuing until I reach the tidy dock that juts over the water. Two motorboats are moored to it. On the shore nearby are two racks upon which upside-down canoes have been stacked like firewood.

I walk the length of the dock, my footfalls slipping through cracks in the planks and echoing off the water. At its edge, I stop to look across the lake to the far shore a half mile away. The forest there is thicker—a dense wall of foliage shimmering in the sunlight, at once inviting and forbidding.

I’m still staring at the far shore when someone approaches. I hear the swish of sneakers in grass, followed by their thunk against the planks of the dock. Before I can turn around, a voice rises behind me like a bird chirp catching the breeze.