Chapter 54
Though it will take a while for them to identify the remains, Barb is certain the makeshift grave is holding what’s left of Marty Keiswetter.
According to Alice, now in handcuffs after being questioned by the same detectives she’s worked alongside for the past year at Seaside PD, Owen met a man named Marty about seven years ago on a subreddit.
But it wasn’t a sub for jigsaw puzzle lovers, which is where he first met Alice, or a sub for Trophy Wives fans, where Barb spends too much time.
Owen and Marty met in a community for amateur photographers, and bonded over their mutual love for Polaroid cameras.
“Christ,” Barb overheard an older detective mutter to Cameron Wallace. “Whatever happened to meeting people in real life?”
But they did meet in real life, eventually.
And this is where the details get fuzzy.
Alice said that when she met Owen a few months ago, he’d told her the Bear Lake property was his.
She assumed that meant he bought it. But that’s likely a lie, because there’s no record of sale.
The property, which spans ten acres along the lake and includes both cabins and a dock, is still in Marty’s and his father’s names.
Barb’s theory is that Owen killed Marty six years ago and took over the place.
Why, there’s no way to know. They may never know.
As with everything, there are more questions than answers.
For instance, did Alice even know the first time she visited the cabin that Kylie Kahl was locked in the other one?
And if she did know, why the hell didn’t she run as far away from Owen as possible?
Alice is insisting now that Owen forced her to help kidnap Ingrid and Sydney. And that it was both her love for him—and fear of him—that made her do it.
But this doesn’t sit right with Barb. It doesn’t jibe at all with the dynamic she witnessed between Alice and Owen in the cabin.
“So what do you think?” Barb asks Nicolette now.
The two of them are sitting in the back of one of the ambulances with the doors are open, allowing them to observe the commotion from a distance.
“Was Alice helping Owen, or was Owen helping Alice? I overheard Kylie say that he was the one in charge, and that they never saw Alice. But the way Alice was ordering Owen around in the cabin earlier . . . I just don’t know. ”
Nicolette, her head wrapped in a bandage, looks over at the police car across the way. With Alice sitting in the backseat, they can’t make out the details of her face, but they can see her silhouette. She seems completely still, her emotions finally in check.
“Are you familiar with string theory?” Nicolette asks.
“Do I look like a physicist?” Barb asks.
“Not that kind of string theory,” Nicolette says, turning back toward her.
The movement causes her to wince, and she touches her head gingerly.
“I’m talking about invisible string theory, in relationships.
It’s this very unscientific concept that suggests certain people are fated to be together, and that the universe will bring them together when the time is right.
If everyone has a soulmate, then sociopaths do, too. ”
“You mean psychopaths. And it sounds hokey. I’m not really into that woo-woo shit.”
“Use whatever word floats your boat,” Nicolette says. “They’re both fucking nutjobs, that’s what I know. And I don’t think it’s hokey at all.”
“Monsters in love,” Barb muses, and then snorts. “Hey, maybe that’s the title of my next book.”
“I’d read it,” Nicolette says. “But I bet they won’t.”
They both look over at the other ambulance, where Kylie and Sydney are huddled together. Both are receiving IV drips for dehydration as they continue to speak to the officers.
In the back of the third ambulance is the tarp-covered body of the man who called himself Owen Stark.
Barb touches her neck lightly. It’s tender, thanks to the bruises caused by his long fingers.
She has so many questions. But, like everything else, they may never know who he really is.
The only thing that’s certain is he’ll never hurt anyone again.
Kylie made sure of that.
“I’d give anything for a drink,” Barb says. “You think there’s any more wine in that cabin?”
“If there is, it’s all yours.” Nicolette smiles ruefully. “I’m heading to rehab after this. I was supposed to check in days ago, and I guess I got a little sidetracked.”
“Yeah, you’ve been back in town for like three days, and look what’s happened,” Barb says with a small smile. “And then after rehab, what’s next? Back to Toronto? Another season of Trophy Wives? What about you and Jordan?”
“Jordan and I are done,” Nicolette says. “He had an affair, as you know. But it’s okay. There’s an infidelity clause in our prenup.”
“It’s okay?” Barb stares at her. “I heard infidelity clauses can be difficult to execute.”
“Not if you have video,” Nicolette says, then pauses.
There’s a glint in her eyes, and it seems as if she’s about to elaborate.
But then she appears to change her mind.
“I’ll get a nice payout. I’m only keeping half, but it’s more than enough to start over, even without Trophy Wives.
Even if they offer me another season—which they damn well might now, after all this—I think I’m done there, too. ”
“I understand,” Barb says. And then it hits her what her friend just said. “Hold on. What do you mean, you’re only keeping half?”
“The other woman gets the other half,” Nicolette says. “A deal’s a deal.”
Barb’s mouth drops open. “You and your husband’s mistress planned it?”
“In fairness, Annika wasn’t his mistress until we decided she would be.” Nicolette looks away. “She took one for the team, as they say. She wanted out of her marriage, too.”
Barb leans back, stunned as she tries to process this.
“Six years Kylie was locked in there,” Nicolette says, her gaze drifting out of the ambulance toward the smaller cabin. The door is open, and there’s a forensic team working inside it. “Six years of her life stolen by that monster who did god knows what to her. How does she get past it?”
“I don’t know,” Barb says. “But what I do know is she’s a survivor, and if she survived this, she can survive anything.”
Nicolette is quiet for a moment. “I guess with Marty gone, we don’t have to worry about our . . . secret. About Lorelei.”
“Maybe not, but we still have to live with it.”
“You ever think about coming clean?”
“All the time.”
“Coming clean with what?” a voice says, and both women look up to see Kylie standing outside their ambulance.
“Nothing,” Barb says, maybe a little too quickly. “What’s that?”
The other woman has just pulled out a brown leather notebook she had hidden in her sweatpants. “One of the journals from the cabin. The officers let me go back in and look around, and I, uh, swiped it.”
“That’s evidence,” Barb says, surprised. “You’re supposed to leave that in there.”
“What are they going to do, arrest me for stealing a diary?” Kylie says with a shrug.
“I thought the two of you might want to see something. For six years, I’ve been reading and rereading those journals, looking for .
. . I don’t even know. It was something to do, I guess, and Thing One—that’s what I call him—never gave me any information.
I thought maybe if I could learn something personal about him, I might be able to find a way to use it to get him to let me go.
But it turns out I wasn’t reading anything he actually wrote. These are all Marty’s journals.”
She offers the journal to Nicolette, who takes it, looking dubious.
“Marty wrote about the night your friend Lorelei died,” Kylie says.
“And he wrote about the two of you as well. I just thought you might want to see it before the cops take it away as evidence, because I have a feeling you . . . Anyway, you can skip to the last couple of pages. It’s . . . all there.”
Barb’s breath catches. Across from her, Nicolette looks at her with such fear that there’s no way Kylie won’t notice something is wrong.
“They said I could call Freddie with the satellite phone,” Kylie says. “And then I need to call my sister.” She pauses. “I’m sure we’ll talk more, but for now . . . thank you both. For everything.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” Barb says when she’s gone. “We won’t have to decide to come clean because Marty’s done it for us. We’re screwed.”
Taking a shaky breath, Nicolette opens the journal. “Might as well read it for ourselves.”
Barb moves and sits beside her old friend. Flipping the pages, filled with paragraphs of Marty’s small, neat handwriting, she finds the page about the Starlight.
In silence, they read.
* * *
Barb gasps first, echoed by Nicolette.
“We didn’t do it,” Barb says in disbelief, looking down at the page before looking up at Nicolette. “We didn’t kill Lorelei. She woke up after we left, she was awake and talking, she was alive. It wasn’t us.”
“Hawk strangled her,” Nicolette says, her voice cracking.
She seems equally stunned. “And then he blackmailed Marty into helping him move her body into the cranberry field. He’d found those Polaroids Marty took of Lorelei while she was sleeping, and said he’d hand them over to the police and tell them that Marty seemed obsessed with his own stepsister.
And maybe he was. But Marty didn’t do it.
We didn’t do it. All this time, it was fucking Hawk. ”
They stare at each other as the realization fully sinks in. The guilt, grief, and shame of what happened that night have shaped every part of their lives for the past twenty-five years, but they now know it was never theirs to carry.
“God, I hate crying,” Nicolette says, her face crumpling.
Barb bursts into tears.
In the back of the ambulance, in the midst of all the activity, they cry for Lorelei for a long time, separately at first, and then together, holding tight like the best friends they used to be, and might one day be again.
Maybe Nicolette is right about string theory. Maybe it isn’t such woo-woo shit after all.