Promise Not to Tell: A Novel (22 page)

O
PAL TUGGED AT THE TURTLENECK
she wore to cover her colorful necklace of bruises—a literal choker—coming out in splotches of purple, yellow, and brown. Sometimes, since that night in the cabin, she felt panicked and short of breath, like an asthmatic, and the trick, her shrink had told her, was to count slowly in her head: breathe in, one, two, three, four; breathe out, one, two, three, four.

This is what she was doing as she sat across the table from Kate in the airport coffee shop. She picked at the cherry pie on her plate, the berries looking strangely limp and pale in their bright red syrup. Kate’s plane was boarding in twenty minutes and there was still so much Opal wanted to say, there were so many questions she thought Kate might know how to answer. Raven and Nicky had gone downstairs to the gift shop to get some maple syrup for Kate to bring home.

“I always wanted a sister,” Opal said.

“So did Del,” Kate told her.

Del’s sister. It was going to take Opal a while to get used to the idea, though in her heart, she knew it was true the second Zack said it.
This little bitch is going to join her sister
….

Opal went back to counting breaths, picking at the overly sweet cherry pie. She moved her right hand off the table, reached into the pocket of her coat, and felt for her latest prize: a small bottle of tea tree oil shampoo. Something Kate probably wouldn’t even miss, and if she did, she’d figure she just forgot it in the shower in the big barn.

The borrowing would stop. She knew she
had
to stop. Look at the trouble it had caused. If she hadn’t taken the star from the cigar box in Zack’s desk the day she dropped off the cookies, then Tori would still be alive.

There was the constricting feeling again. Coarse rope pressing into her neck. She tugged at the turtleneck, rubbed the painful bruises.
Breathe in, one, two, three, four. Breathe out, one, two, three, four.

She thought about what they’d learned just that morning: there was a third piece of skin inside Zack’s necklace and the police were looking into unsolved murders of young girls in the Toronto area. It still didn’t seem real to her that her beloved uncle Zack was capable of such monstrosities. She couldn’t imagine the cold-hearted calculation; the planning and foresight; the skill involved in not leaving a trace of evidence behind.

She had been so sure there had to be some mistake when Kate first told her about Del’s star. She had gotten on her bike and ridden out to the college to ask Zack where he’d gotten it, positive there was a reasonable explanation. And he had seemed so genuinely surprised when she told him that the star she’d found in his drawer may have been Del’s. In fact, he had suggested that they go straight to the police that very minute. He’d said he’d tell her the whole story of where the star had come from on the way. They’d thrown her bike into the back of his Subaru, and he’d driven, waxen-faced, not to the state police barracks, but to the Griswolds’ old place, where he’d steered the car across the snow-covered fields and parked it in the woods. By the time she knew she was in trouble, it was too late.

Breathe in, one, two, three, four. Breathe out, one, two, three, four.

“I still don’t understand how your mother—Del, I mean—ended up with the star,” Opal said.

“She found it in my room. Zack took it from Tori and planted it in my purse. I don’t know if it was part of some strange, psychotic game or if he was hoping the police would find it on me. After all the trouble he went to to get the star back, you’d think he’d want to keep it. But maybe some tiny, still-rational part of his brain knew it wasn’t safe to hold on to something so incriminating. I’m guessing he took my Swiss Army knife at the same time.”

“So he was…what? Trying to frame you or something?”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “It was perfect, really—my showing up in town right when I did, with everyone knowing my connection to Del. I was a likely suspect. He went to a lot of trouble to set me up, even leaving the knife he used the night he…hurt Tori…on my mother’s kitchen table. I found my mother with it the next morning. Christ, he even had me suspecting her! She was out in the woods the night Tori was killed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what she did or didn’t see. I’m guessing it was really Del using my mother to try to save you.”

“The ghost I saw when I went back for the jacket was really your mother?” Opal asked.

Kate nodded. “I think it must have been.”

“What about that night you and I met in the woods?” Opal asked.

“It’s funny,” Kate said. “I was trying to get rid of the very thing you were out looking for. I buried the star in the Griswolds’ old root cellar. Nicky convinced me to dig it up the next night—I stuck it under my pillow and my mother found it. I think finding the star was what gave Del the strength to come back all the way.”

Opal let out a long sigh. “I was so wrong about her,” she said quietly.

“We all were,” Kate said. “It’s sad really. She was as misunderstood in death as she was in life.”

“All those times I saw her, she was watching out for me, right? Checking on me, trying to warn me?”

“Yeah,” Kate said, staring down into the dregs of her coffee, turning the cup in her hands. “I think so, Opal, I really do.”

Raven and Nicky came up to the table, wielding a bag full of syrup, maple sugar candy, a moose T-shirt, and a copy of
Vermont Life
magazine.

“This should hold you over until you come back for Christmas,” Raven said.

“I feel like a true tourist now,” Kate told them, accepting the bag of treats.

Kate looked over the coffee shop bill and laid some money down on the table, then began gathering up her things.

“I can’t believe I’m leaving,” she said. “That tonight I’ll have dinner in my very own kitchen. God, I’ve missed my microwave—and my dishwasher! But it’s strange, after everything…”

“Kate,” Raven said. “Don’t worry about your mother. Meg says Spruce View is the best. And we’ll visit her all the time, won’t we, Opal?”

Opal nodded vigorously. They’d left Jean earlier that morning, sitting down to tea in a small dining room with cloth napkins. She’d picked up the jar of jam on the table, winked at Kate, and said, “Strawberry, Katydid. Our favorite. Mimi and I put up extra jars of preserves this year. It was a good crop.”

“It sure was, Ma,” Kate had said. “The best season ever.”

A
FTER HUGS AND KISSES
and promises to call, they watched Kate pass through the security gate and down the ramp to her flight. Opal touched the shampoo bottle as she watched Kate go. When she turned back, she saw that Nicky had tears in his eyes, which was a little weird, but then again, he’d been through a lot in the past few days.

“She’ll be back for Christmas,” Opal said to the man she’d just learned was her half brother. He smiled weakly, like a little boy who’s been promised dessert if he can just get his spinach down.

“Can we go up to the observation tower?” Opal asked.

“If you’re up for it,” Raven said.

“I’ll wait here,” Nicky said, easing himself into a seat.

Opal led the way down the gray-carpeted hallway, around the bend, and up the winding narrow metal steps to the top of the tower, which had always been her favorite part of the airport. It was the size of a small bedroom, with huge windows covering each wall. An old man who sometimes gave tours said it had once been the control tower, before they built the new one. There were some ugly orange seats facing the windows, and a crackling speaker in the ceiling playing all the radio contact from the control tower. Opal and Raven were the only two visitors.

Opal went to the west window and spotted the small DC-9 that would take Kate to Boston, where she’d catch a bigger plane for Seattle. Opal watched as the last of the passengers climbed up the metal boarding stairs. In a few minutes, the stairs were retracted, the door closed, and the plane was taxiing to the runway, the pilot jabbering radio-speak with the guy in the control tower.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s go,” Raven said as she made her way to the stairs and started down, the heels of her boots echoing on the metal steps. “Nicky’s waiting.”

“Coming,” Opal called after her mother. But then, out on the tarmac, something caught her eye just as Kate’s plane was taking off. A little glint of light coming from the wing, like someone was using a mirror to send a signal. It hit her face, bounced off the window behind her, and was gone. The plane lifted off the ground and banked to the left, climbing steadily.

There, on the wing, was Del—her sister—silver star gleaming in the sunlight, arms outstretched as she did a little gravity-defying, daredevil dance. Her cowgirl shirt billowed and her hair flew around her face as she rode the big white bird up into the clouds—the greatest wing walker of all time. And even through the thick glass of the observation tower, Opal was sure she could hear laughter in the wind followed by a playful taunt:
Catch me if you can
.