The Secrets Sisters Keep (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

H
er first thought was that Edward was dead, that he had hanged himself there in the noose on the island, his favorite refuge. Then Carleen realized that if he had done that, the noose would not be hanging empty, that, instead, he would be in it, or, at least, his head would be.

Unless his neck broke and his head somehow slipped out and he landed in the lake and sank to the bottom.

She scrambled down the embankment that led to the water as if she could rescue him if he was still there.

CPR!
Carleen thought. She’d been trained several years ago after one of her students had an alarming seizure. No one had ever had another in her classroom, but she’d kept her certification current; it was a school department requirement now. She’d never dreamed that the place she might use it would be on Squirrel Island, where she’d lost her virginity and now where Uncle Edward might have lost his life.

“Edward!” she called out when she reached the water, her eyes scanning the surface for telltale debris.

Without stopping to take off her shoes, Carleen plunged into the water. It was thick with lily pads and cattails and other things she did not want to think about, like snakes.

Snakes!

Water snakes.

Shiny.

Black.

Slithering.

She’d seen one years ago. She had not forgotten.

“Edward!” she cried out again, her skirt soaking wet now, her feet trying to maneuver along the deep, treacherous mud on the bottom. “Damn you!”

She looked up at the noose and tried to judge where he might be: she looked into the dark water, but there was nothing there, no shadow, no image, nothing but a few pollywogs.

Then the water rippled.

Her heart skipped. She braced for a snake. But when Carleen looked up, she saw a small rowboat curve around the bend. Inside sat a lone woman in a cherry red halter dress.

“W
hat have you done?” Amanda squealed. “What have you done to Uncle Edward!” She stood up in the boat, not caring that it rocked back and forth. She only knew Carleen was knee deep in water and a noose dangled above her head.

Carleen slogged through the water and lumbered onto the embankment. “For God’s sake, Amanda, I haven’t done anything. I was looking for his body, if you must know.”

“His
body
?” Amanda’s eyes narrowed and she scoured her sister, who stood on land now, wringing out her schoolteacher’s dress. “You’re looking for his
body
?
You hung Uncle Edward
?”

“Oh, Amanda, shut up. I didn’t hang anyone. Why don’t you row over here and check the water. If you poke around with the oars, maybe you can find him. Maybe he pinned a freaking note to his shirt.”

Amanda couldn’t tell if Carleen was being sarcastic. She looked back up at the noose, then stared down her sister again.

C
arleen decided she was done taking Amanda’s abuse. She’d taken too much from all of them, too long ago. She’d lost everyone she had loved, and she didn’t need them. Not anymore.

Without looking back at her mouthy sister, Carleen went up the hill, then crossed the land and headed toward the inlet where she’d left the canoe.
The hell with them,
she muttered to herself.
The hell with all of them.

“I’m going to tell Ellie!” Amanda’s shouts reverberated across the tiny strip of land. “Don’t think you’ll get away with this! Just because you stole Earl away from me, don’t think you’ll get away with this!”

Carleen climbed into the canoe, propped her elbows on her knees, and rested her face in her hands. Earl. Oh, God, did Amanda still hate her for that, too? It had been kid’s stuff! Still, Amanda would be the last person to think Carleen had changed, the last one to give her—or anyone—the benefit of any kind of doubt. She was so much like their father had been, so much like the way no one ever had acknowledged: self-centered and harsh. It was no wonder their mother had taken a lover.

Carleen lifted her head, then undid the pink ribbon wrapped around her ponytail, the same pink ribbon she’d untied from the letters she had found in the attic, the writings of love, the witness of adultery.

What had Mother been thinking when she’d saved those letters? Why had she tucked them in the house where her husband and her daughters had lived? Had she hoped one day her girls would find them? Had she thought they might read them? Would she have ever dreamed Carleen would burn them?

She’d burned them in the fireplace. She’d set their mother’s infidelity ablaze—then left it to smolder, hot and smoky, the way her forbidden love had been.

Carleen had been so upset that she’d forgotten to check the fireplace flue. She’d never meant for the house to burn down.

She’d never meant for her parents to turn to ashes. How could she have known they’d come home early from their childless vacation and were inside the house?

Their remains had been located in their bedroom—had they been making love in the middle of the day? No one had asked that out loud. And no one but Carleen had known enough to wonder whether they both had relinquished their lovers and returned to each other one last time.

The questions would forever be unanswered; the love letters were gone, unread by anyone but Carleen, after she’d untied the pink ribbon that had once bundled them neatly and now rested cool and smooth against her palm.

She looked at it a moment, so glad she had saved it, a memory of her mother that was hers alone.

Then, rewinding the strip of fabric around her ponytail, Carleen picked up the canoe paddle and began to stroke once, twice on the right; once, twice on the left. She’d go back to the house and get help to find Edward. Amanda would not accomplish what needed doing. Hysteria rarely did.

Chapter Twenty-nine

E
llie settled up with the musicians, the carnie folks, and the caterers, even though a handful of guests remained steadfast in their folding chairs with the quilted covers that they’d reassembled after the helicopter debacle. When the caterers politely, yet firmly, collected those chairs, the guests moved to the permanent benches inside the gazebo. Ellie supposed they would leave by dark, or when their silver flasks had been drained.

As for her, she was tired and felt no need to continue her role as Edward’s host-by-proxy. Making her way around trash bags, she avoided Jonathan, who was asking if anyone had seen his wife. She went into the house, then realized she had no idea where any of her sisters were. She only knew that, once again, she’d been left alone, the sane one in charge.

Upstairs in her room, Ellie closed the door, took off Babe’s scarf, and flopped onto the bed. She wondered if Chandler had told the truth (and Wes had lied) about seeing Edward on Squirrel Island. Even if he was there, it didn’t mean her uncle planned to come back. Maybe he’d decided to take his own life instead of letting cancer take it for him. Unlike Jonathan, Ellie didn’t think Edward could have “accidentally” gone over the falls: he knew the falls were there. There had been conflict among the neighbors when the castle owners had requested permission for the excavation. Edward had sided with the environmentalists, led by Ray Williams, though he’d refused to attend any of the meetings.

If Edward had committed suicide, Ellie supposed he would have left a note. The message would be humorous, in the spirit of his personality, an effort to entertain rather than be maudlin.

If Henry had done away with him, there would not be a note.

She turned onto her side. The amber light of sunset seeped into the room, softening the ache growing in her heart, a realization that, if not now, then someday, somehow, Edward would be gone.

Edward knew it, too. The signs were eerily visible: bringing the sisters back together; having his former friends gather to celebrate his name; using the party and its silliness to deflect his intent, to keep them all (well, mostly Ellie) busy.

However, if death had been on his mind, why had he taken the iPod, the binoculars, the Dickens? Had it been a perverse way of resting in peace?

She stared at the walls that had confined her for twenty years, then was jolted by a sudden thought: what had she believed would ever happen? Had she thought Edward would outlive her? That she’d never have to return to the real world?

The air in the room grew silent and still; her forehead grew moist, her breathing, shallow. She had never considered the
what if’s
or the
when’s
but had pushed such thoughts away, along with memories of her mother and her father and dreams of Tutankhamen and Cleopatra. But though Ellie had worked to forget the past, she’d forgotten to leave room for the future.

She sat up. She wiped her brow. Was it too late? When Edward came home,
if
Edward came home, could she convince him to have chemotherapy? She could nurse him through that, then she could leave. She could return to the Met and work her way to Alexandria. She could have her own life and not be afraid.

Couldn’t she?

Couldn’t she?

A firm knock on her door interrupted her thoughts.

“Ellie?” The door opened. It was Carleen.

Ellie straightened her dress. She tried to relax her throat and ease her breath back to normal.

“Ellie, I’m sorry to bother you. Were you sleeping?” Carleen stepped two steps into the room, wringing her hands the way Amanda did.

Oh, no,
Ellie thought.
Don’t tell me he’s dead. I’m not ready yet!

“Ellie, I think something has happened.”

Ellie could not inhale; her airway had a sudden sock in it.

Then Carleen told her about the tent and the campsite and the noose.

Somehow, Ellie managed to breathe again. She heaved herself up from the bed and hustled past Carleen. “Do you have the canoe? How fast can you paddle?”

B
abe and Ray were in the boathouse in what might be called a compromising position, except everyone there knew that Babe had compromised and been compromised long ago.

“Ray,” Ellie said, “get one of your boats. Meet us on the island. There’s apparently been an accident and Edward is there.” She would not yet let herself grasp any concept other than
accident
.

Ray straightened his hair, his T-shirt, and his pants and said, “I’ll take the pontoon. The motor’s small, but it’s faster than rowing.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Just get there. And please be quick.”

Ellie didn’t wait to see if Babe would go with him. Instead, she rushed to the end of the dock where Carleen already sat in the canoe. Ellie jumped in and they started to paddle. “One can only imagine what Babe is up to,” Ellie said to Carleen. “But I’m done trying to solve other people’s problems. Let them figure out their own lives for a change.” It was a statement to herself, as well as to Carleen.

“Ellie,” Carleen said, “I didn’t take any of your jewelry. I didn’t for one second intend to. I hope you believe me.”

“Look,” Ellie said, “can’t we just worry about Edward right now?”

“Amanda is going to tell you I did something to Edward. I was wading through the water, looking for his body, when she appeared out of nowhere, spotted the noose, and assumed I was to blame.”

Ellie quietly paddled and wondered if tomorrow would be too soon to return to New York. She could get a hotel room and stay overnight and go to the Met in the morning. She could use her honeymoon money for a studio apartment. Maybe she could volunteer at the museum until a position came up. She could find a part-time job until then. Waiting tables. Sweeping floors. Anything would be mentally healthier than spending one more day with this idiotic family. Panic attacks be damned.

“Ellie?” Carleen called. “Did you hear me?”

Ellie dug the paddle into the water and pulled it so hard that the canoe turned to the right. “I heard you.”

“I had nothing to do with Edward or the noose. Any more than I was stealing your jewelry. You can believe me or not. I suppose it really doesn’t matter.”

When they got to the island, Ellie saw Amanda sitting on the beach, holding binoculars that no doubt were Edward’s. Ellie landed the canoe, disembarked on the shore, and didn’t care that Carleen had to step out in the water.

“You haven’t found him?”

Amanda shook her head. “Perhaps someone tied cement shoes to his feet.” She threw a hard stare at Carleen.

Ellie left her sisters to deal with each other. She was halfway up the hill when they caught up, God forbid they should leave her alone.

Ducking inside the tent, she checked it out. “Damn you, Edward,” she whispered when she found nothing there.

Back outside, she kicked the burned campfire remnants, then picked up the knapsack and emptied the contents: two unopened cans of baked beans, an unopened bottle of wine, a folded piece of aluminum foil. She spread open the foil: there were several crumbs. She raised it to her nose: the scent of her rum cake wafted up.

“This was his,” she said, not that she needed to confirm it to her sisters.

But on further examination, Ellie realized the foil was small. Half her cake had been missing from the kitchen—too big a hunk to have been wrapped in such a meager piece. Where was the rest? If Edward had eaten half a cake, there would be more trash. Edward was fastidious about picking up trash, especially when he was outdoors.

Which left only one explanation.

“Edward isn’t dead,” Ellie announced. “I expect he hung up the noose because he thought it would be funny. He’s gone off somewhere and he’s taken what was left of the rum cake. God forbid he should leave it behind for the rest of the squirrels.”

Amanda stood rigid, hands on hips.

“But where can he be?” Carleen asked. “He didn’t have a boat.”

“I have no idea,” Ellie replied as she stood up, “but he must have had help.” She turned to Amanda. “Amanda-Belle, where are your boys?” Then Ellie remembered she’d seen the boys juggling the plastic champagne flutes, trying to emulate one of the carnival acts. She’d seen Wes and Jonathan, too, ambling around, surveying the terrain the way men sometimes did. And, of course, they hadn’t arrived at Kamp Kasteel until after Edward had disappeared.

Heather and her boyfriend were accounted for, too, having been more help than Ellie’s sisters combined.

Which left Henry.

“
You might be wise to do a background check on Henry. You might learn this isn’t the first time one of his lovers has disappeared,
” David Goldsmith had said.

Ellie felt a slow roll of her stomach. Good Lord, had Henry really done something to Edward? Had Henry been acting concerned, excited, erratic, in order to throw suspicion off himself? Why had she pooh-poohed David Goldsmith? What else did David know about the little man?

“I should have asked for details,” Ellie said out loud, and Carleen asked what she meant.

But just then, they heard a putt-putting motor. They turned and saw a silver pontoon head toward the shore. Ray’s son, Kevin, stood at the controls; Ray sat on a bench, waving to the women. Next to him sat Edward, the wandering man.