The Last Time I Lied(15)

“There you are!”

The voice belongs to a twentysomething woman who rushes down the dock. Behind her, still on land, is a man roughly the same age. Both are young and tan and fit. If it wasn’t for their official Camp Nightingale polos, they could easily be mistaken for J.Crew models. They have that same outdoorsy, sun-kissed glow.

“Emma, right?” the woman says. “Hooray! You’re here!”

I reach out to shake her hand but wind up getting pulled into an enthusiastically tight embrace. No Franny-like half hugs with this girl.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she says, breaking the embrace, slightly out of breath from the exertion of it all. “I’m Mindy. Chet’s fiancée.”

She gestures to the man on shore, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s referring to Chester, Franny’s younger son. He’s grown into a handsome man, lean and lithe and tall. So tall that he towers over both Mindy and me, stooping in a slightly self-conscious way. It’s a far cry from the short, skinny kid I had seen flitting around camp. Yet hints of that boyishness remain. In the sandy hair that flops over his face, covering one eye. In the shy smile that flickers across his lips as he calls out, “Hey there.”

“I was just getting reacquainted with the lake,” I say, when I’m not really sure that’s the case. I can’t shake the sense it was the other way around and Lake Midnight was getting reacquainted with me.

“Of course you were,” Mindy says, politely ignoring how unusual it was for me to immediately roam to the water’s edge. “It’s nice, right? Although the weather isn’t doing it any favors. It hasn’t rained in weeks, and the lake is looking a little ragged, if you ask me.”

It’s only after she’s pointed it out that I notice the telltale signs of drought around the lake. The plants on its bank bear several inches of browned stem—areas that had once been submerged. There was a drought happening the first time I was here, too. It didn’t rain once in two weeks. I remember climbing into a canoe, leaving sneaker prints in a strip of sunbaked earth between the bank of the lake and the water itself.

I’m eyeing a similar thirsty patch of land when Mindy grabs my hand and leads me off the dock.

“We’re thrilled to have you back, Emma,” she says. “Franny especially. This summer is going to be awesome. I just know it.”

Back on shore, I go to Chet and shake his hand.

“Emma Davis,” I say. “You probably don’t remember me.”

It’s wishful thinking. A hope that he remembers nothing about me. But the brow over Chet’s only visible eye lifts slightly. “Oh, I remember you well,” he says, not elaborating.

“Before you get settled in, Franny needs to see you,” Mindy says.

“About what?”

“There’s a slight problem with the rooming situation. But don’t worry. Franny’s going to sort it all out.”

Leaving Chet behind, she loops an arm through mine, guiding me up the slope and into the Lodge. It’s the first time I’ve ever been inside, and I’m surprised to see it’s not at all what I was expecting. As a girl on the outside looking in, I had pictured something from Architectural Digest. The kind of tastefully rustic retreat where movie stars spend Christmas in Aspen.

The Lodge isn’t like that. It’s musty and dim, the air inside tinged with a century’s worth of wood-fed blazes in the fireplace. The entrance hall we stand in leads to a general living area stuffed with worn furniture. Covering the walls are antlers, animal skins, and, oddly, an assortment of antique weapons. Rifles. Bowie knives with thick blades. A spear.

“Everything’s so old, right?” Mindy says. “I’m all for antiques, but some of this stuff is ancient. The first time Chet brought me here, it felt like sleeping in a museum. I’m still not used to it. But if it takes spending a summer working at a camp to impress my future mother-in-law, then so be it.”

She’s clearly a talker. Exhausting but also potentially useful. When we pass a small office on the left, I pause and ask, “What’s in there?”

“The study.”

I crane my neck to peek into the room. One wall is filled with framed photos. Another contains a bookshelf. As we pass, I glimpse the corner of a desk, a rotary telephone, a Tiffany lampshade.

“I use the electrical outlet in there to charge my phone,” Mindy says. “You’re welcome to do the same. Just don’t let Franny catch you. She wants all of us to disconnect and commune with nature or whatever.”

“How’s service up here?”

Mindy makes a dramatic gagging sound. “Horrible. Like, one bar most of the time. I honestly don’t know how these girls are going to cope.”

“The campers can’t use their phones?”

“They can until their batteries run out. No electricity in the cabins, remember? Franny’s orders.”

To my right, a staircase rises to the second floor, the steps tiny and impossibly narrow. Under the stairs sits a door intended to blend into the wall. The only things giving it away are a brass doorknob and an old-fashioned keyhole.

“And what’s that?” I ask.

“The basement,” Mindy says. “I’ve never been down there. It’s probably nothing but old furniture and cobwebs.”