Chapter Five #2
The cottage appears through the trees, with its granite foundation, wraparound porch, and shingles stained brown.
Unlike that new house at Burkehaven, this cottage blends in with the shoreline.
Between bunkrooms and sleeping porches, the house accommodates twenty people.
My mother finally installed a septic system fifteen years ago, but our proximity to the lake necessitates selective flushing.
Inside, sheets have been pulled from furniture, and shutters have been removed and stowed in the crawlspace beneath the house.
Despite the open windows, the air in the vast great room retains a musty smell from being closed off for the winter.
I roll the suitcase across the warped floorboards and up the narrow back stairs to my room, where a twin bed covered in a green-and-blue quilt I most recently tucked in last October greets me.
Rickety secondhand furniture fills every corner of the room, and the crooked windows offer views of the lake.
Downstairs, I retrieve the old issue of Gourmet from a row of cookbooks covered in cobwebs.
I turn to the recipe for Bolognese, where a splatter of tomato sauce dots the magazine’s well-worn pages.
I start the digital recorder, moving the mic close to the cutting board to capture the knife slicing through onions.
I light the stove with a match and put an orange Dutch oven over the flame to heat.
“I don’t question enough,” I say. “So much of what happens at Idlewood is tradition. Five minutes ago, I parked my car in the same lot where my father stabbed Isaac Haviland. Right now, I’m making Bolognese using the same recipe from the same magazine my father used on the day he disappeared.
There’s a stain across the page I hope is from a tomato.
Later, we’ll watch paper lanterns floating over the lake.
Afterward, we’ll have this Bolognese for dinner and play cards on the screened-in porch, and we’ll do it all as though nothing ever happened here, as though this recipe, this magazine with its tomato stains, those white orbs floating overhead, don’t have meaning. ”
I add the onions to the Dutch oven, where they sizzle in the hot oil.
“I know how effed up this is,” I say.
Through the window, I see a barge-like boat turn around the point and chug toward the island.
A bevy of young men sit atop a pile of docks and rafts that they’ll spend the next week installing at camps along the shoreline.
A moment later, two red kayaks edge around the point, following the same path as the barge—my mother in one, Reid in the other.
A voice sounds from behind me. “Reid better hurry. He never misses the show.”
My aunt Hadley has materialized in the kitchen, still wearing those pink scrubs with the hand puppets on them. Another tradition at Idlewood is that Reid supervises the men in their skintight wetsuits as they install the docks. He used to believe no one noticed him watching. Now I doubt he cares.
“You were talking to yourself,” Hadley says.
I nod to where the digital recorder captures our words.
“A new project?” Hadley asks.
I unwrap ground beef and add it to the pot to brown. “Where were you when my father killed Isaac Haviland?”
Hadley glances at the recorder. “That kind of project,” she says. “Is it for the radio station?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Mostly.”
Hadley watches me cook for a moment before saying, “You remind me of your father. But only the good parts. You’re not a rampaging murderer. And you already know where I was that day.”
“Tell me again so I have it on tape.”
“I was in Kosovo. At a reception. I have a photo of me dancing with the Swiss ambassador.”
Hadley flew out of Kosovo the morning after the murder, as soon as she heard what had happened at the lake. She watched over Reid and me for the rest of the summer while our mother recuperated from her injuries.
I retrieve a can of whole tomatoes from the pantry. “I’m making a podcast,” I say. “You’re the only one who knows. You and Seton.”
“If you told Seton, her mother will know soon enough, and then everyone in town will find out, so get ready to fess up.” Hadley nods out the window, toward the kayaks. “The two of them will be pissed off. Practice on me. Why do this? And why at this moment?”
“They never found my father’s body.”
“They won’t find it now,” Hadley says. “Not after twenty-five years.”
“Why not?”
“Because a bear probably ate him.”
“Be serious,” I say. “We all pretend that day never happened. Most of what I know I learned from reading police reports or old newspapers. I’ve barely spoken about it with Reid or Jane.”
“You still call your mother Jane?”
“It’s her name,” I say.
“Well, she hates when you call her that,” Hadley says. “Butter her up by calling her Mom. You may need to when she finds out about this project.”
“I want the whole story, and to understand why my father did what he did. He was a monster.”
“Mark wasn’t a monster.”
“But he is to me,” I say. “And I want to know who he was, because that’s who I might be.”
“You are definitely not a monster, Charlie Kilgore, no matter who Mark became. But if you want to know more, here are some things to start with: Mark was a good skier, but not as good as he wanted to be. He played ukulele and sang ‘Tiny Bubbles’ at the firepit each summer. It drove me crazy, but I’d give anything to hear him sing it again.
And he wasn’t happy in New Hampshire, doing the books for the construction firm.
He wanted something else, something bigger. ”
Hadley steps to the window. My mother and Reid have paddled halfway across the cove. “What do those two talk about when they’re alone?” she asks. “Do they ever mention that day?”
That’s the kind of question Julian wants me to ask.
Hadley leans toward the digital recorder. The red record button flashes. “Don’t look too close,” she says. “You might not like what you find.” She pauses. “How’s that for a sound bite?”
“You’re a natural,” I say.