Chapter Eight
I wake with the sun. In the light of day, last night’s events—the questions I asked, the secrets I kept, the relationships I risked—feel reckless, as though I approached a truth I’m not sure I want to find.
I remember my brother sitting by the fire, transported to his worst night.
I think about my mother and the secret she promised to reveal.
I’m not sure I’m ready to hear whatever she has to say.
I slip out of bed and creep down the hallway to where her room is empty, her bed unmade.
She must have already left for the site visit in Finstock.
Back in my room, I stare at my phone. The podcast had seemed like a good idea in theory when Julian proposed it.
I’d gotten a thrill from the advice to dig deep, to follow the emotion, and believed exposing my family’s hidden truths would make me feel whole.
I’d also hoped the podcast would take off and be good for my career in the way Julian’s series about the Boston Strangler had jump-started his own.
But this morning, I’m not so sure anymore.
I type a text to Julian—I may scrap the podcast. Sorry—and stare at the screen, my thumb hovering over the send button.
Despite my misgivings, I’m not actually ready to abort the project, though I’ll see how I feel later, after I speak with my mother.
I keep the unsent message on the screen, turn the phone face down, and leave it behind as I change into my running gear and make my way down the stairs and through the Ping-Pong room.
When I get outside, my breath freezes in the cold air.
Spring in New Hampshire can be fickle, and the long, lazy days of summer are a month off.
After stretching, I take off at a slow pace, across the island, over the footbridge to the parking area, where I notice Reid’s Audi hasn’t returned from wherever he escaped to last night.
I’ll text him an apology when I get back to the cottage.
I jog along the shore and onto a path through the woods.
A half mile later, I emerge at Burkehaven in the next cove, with its idle construction equipment and half-built house.
Heading inland, I run by the VW-size boulder marking the fork in the road, then past the bungalow where Hadley’s staying.
Eventually, I cut onto a dirt road by a white farmhouse set back among maple trees, where Paul’s car is parked outside a red sugarhouse.
This is Burkehaven Farm, where Paul grew up, living here in the farmhouse during the offseason, and at the cabin on Burkehaven Cove during the summer.
Fieldstone walls and hiking paths crisscross the farm, including a trailhead I come upon that follows a swollen brook up into the foothills.
I run most mornings. It’s the one thing I’m good at.
I competed on a national level in prep school and kept at it through college.
Now I push myself as the trail steepens and my breathing grows heavy.
Sweat pours from my face and my thighs burn.
I reach a fork in the trail, one way leading to Miller Pond, two miles off, and the other to the Ridge Trail, which I follow until the path levels out on a field dotted with wooden posts.
This is a remnant of an old firing range where parents would send their kids to shoot at aluminum cans with BB guns.
(“Different times,” Hadley would say if she were here now.)
My breathing steadies. I increase my speed, sprinting the last mile, until I emerge at an overlook perched above Hero Lake.
Here, an abandoned hunting cabin with broken windows and a caved-in roof has begun to return to nature.
Below, the lake spans almost to the horizon, the coves and inlets forming a kind of inkblot among the trees.
I catch my breath, then stretch toward the sky before working my way through a routine of push-ups and squats.
This is my special place, one I look forward to visiting for the first time each year.
I take another cleansing breath and settle further into myself.
Today I’ll make things right. I’ll meet Seton at the Landing for a drink.
I’ll apologize to Reid. I’ll listen to whatever my mother has to tell me, and if I decide to scrap the podcast, I’ll explain the decision to Julian in a way he’ll understand.
Maybe he’ll be relieved not to have to serve as a mentor.
I finish the workout and perch on an outcropping of granite.
My legs dangle over a sheer drop to a rocky surface fifty yards below.
Here, it feels as though I’m the only person in the entire world, even as, out on the water, a single motorboat speeds across the surface, leaving a wake in its trail.
I close my eyes and allow the sounds of nature—the breeze, the birds, the rustling of leaves—to fill in the quiet, as I contemplate what I learned yesterday.
For me, my father’s been a blank slate waiting to be filled in.
Some of his story I found in newspaper articles and police reports during my research—his job, his reputation, his motive for murder—but yesterday added shading to that image.
He sang tenor and had a beautiful voice.
He played ukulele and dreamed of a world away from Hero.
He was Paul’s friend. He danced to Blondie on a night my mother would yearn to relive decades later.
The edges of his character have begun to soften. He wasn’t the monster I grew up believing he was, but a person, one who made terrible mistakes. And maybe this story is worth pursuing, whether I turn it into a podcast or not.
A scent brings me back to the present.
Smoke.
I pull my legs from over the cliff and scan the clearing and the crumbling cabin for another hiker. “Hello?” I call out.
No one answers, but the scent is stronger now, too strong to be from a cigarette. I search the horizon. Below, on the lakeshore, a plume of smoke rises from Burkehaven. Then a burst of flames erupts through the trees.
Fire.
I instinctively reach for my phone only to remember leaving it behind at Idlewood.
I take off along the ridge, my feet pounding as I leave the summit, pass the shooting range, and scramble sideways down the steep trail, grasping at tree roots and granite to keep from falling until I emerge on the street below.
At the turnoff to Burkehaven, I thump my fist on the bungalow’s kitchen door.
When Hadley doesn’t answer, I test the knob.
The door’s unlocked. I shout Hadley’s name, then use the wall phone to dial 9-1-1, before sprinting the last half mile through the trees to Burkehaven.
Thick, black smoke fills the air.
The half-constructed house on the point is in flames. At the dock, a maroon Bryant 219, the same type of motorboat we have tied to our dock at home, the same type Andrea Haviland floated in yesterday afternoon as she yelled into her bullhorn, tugs at a single line.
Glass shatters. Flames shoot toward the sky.
I shout Reid’s name, then Mrs. Haviland’s, wondering who could be here, who might be trapped in the fire, as I jog along the muddy path, shielding my face from the intense heat.
A shower of embers singes my skin, while smoke fills my lungs.
I throw myself into the frigid lake water.
As I emerge, someone stumbles from the house, silhouetted against the flames, and collapses in the courtyard.
“Who’s there?” I shout, pressing forward. “I’m coming.”
Behind me, something rustles. I turn. A tree limb swings. My head explodes with pain. And the world goes black.