Chapter Thirty-Five
When I return to the lake, the rain has passed, and the sun casts a golden glow across Idlewood Cove.
On the dock, Reid stretches before his evening swim.
I leave the Volvo and cross the footbridge, through the blueberry bushes, over the exposed roots and granite, as though I’m in a dream.
At the house, I go through the motions of mixing a pitcher of martinis and setting snacks on a tray, before heading toward the dock to join my brother.
It’s happy hour.
And we might as well drink.
Reid turns at the sound of my footsteps. He sits on the dock, one leg twisted over the other. “We’re celebrating?” he asks. “After today?”
I pour myself a cocktail and balance on the arm of an Adirondack chair, letting the icy gin linger on my tongue.
Beside me, the boat tugs at its lines, thumping in rhythm as the wake sloshes at the dock.
This is the time before: before words that can’t be unsaid are spoken, and theories become reality; before I step through another door.
I strain a second martini and rest it on the edge of the dock. “You shouldn’t swim alone.”
“So I’ve heard, though I haven’t listened yet.” Reid takes a tiny sip of the cocktail. “I’ll have the rest when I’m done.”
“Did you know about Vance Moodey?” I ask. “About him and Jane?”
“Mom didn’t tell me,” Reid says, moving from his stretch into a set of push-ups. “She thought it was her secret, though they weren’t that great at hiding. All the guys on the crew knew.”
The sun has begun to dip toward the foothills, its light filtering through the trees.
In my mind, I go over the earlier phone call with Mrs. Haviland, trying to make sense of what she told me.
“I found a ledger,” she said, “with four payments from Vance Moodey to Reid Construction. The payments aren’t small. ”
“Vance is a supplier,” I responded. “Wouldn’t money usually go the other way?”
“That’s what caught my attention,” Mrs. Haviland said. “The payments are on a lease in Finstock. Vance may have invested in the project.”
Now, before I lose my nerve, I say, “The first time I met Vance, I was with Jane. He told her she’d have to deal with him eventually. I assumed she owed him money, so that day I overheard you and Vance out by the firepit, I thought you were talking about an overdue invoice, nothing more.”
Reid’s movement catches mid-push-up, if only for a second. “Mom hated when you called her Jane.”
“Okay, Mom, then. But it turns out,” I continue, “that if you run the only lumber supplier in the region and live in a trailer, you can save some bank. Vance thought he’d impress Mom by helping you out with a lucrative new project.
I bet he thought he’d get a good return, too.
Is that what the lease in Finstock was supposed to be? A good investment?”
“Investments are always risky,” Reid says.
“As long as the investments actually exist,” I say. “You were supposed to secure a lease for that outdoor mall. Vance wrote you a check to get in on the deal, but you lost the bid, and you never returned Vance’s money.”
Reid stands. “Is this for your podcast? Where’s the mic? Let me be sure you capture this: You’re full of shit. You’re trying to stir up drama where none exists. Vance was the one who came to me. He thought he could impress Mom by throwing money around. I told him to go to hell.”
“But where’s Vance’s money?” I ask. “He gave you over two hundred grand. Did you think he wouldn’t find out?
When I finish going through the firm’s accounts, what else will I find?
How leveraged is the company?” A thought forms at the back of my mind, one that connects two strands of this story.
The more I try to push the thought away, the more it takes shape. “Did Mom know what you’d done?”
“What if she did?”
“I met Vance at the mall construction site this afternoon,” I say. “He confirmed that Jane . . . that Mom planned to put Idlewood into conservation, that she was having Paul draw up papers. Did you know Mom was meeting Andrea Haviland that morning?”
“Mom was meeting Andrea to tell her to fuck the hell off, and Andrea hit her in the head and burned down the house. That’s what happened. And if Andrea had minded her own business, that spec house would have been finished a month ago, and I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now.”
I keep my voice steady. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I think Mom saw how you were managing the firm. She knew you owed Vance, and that’s why she was so standoffish with him when she saw him at Burkehaven.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I manage the firm,” Reid says.
“Except you owe money to Vance Moodey and God knows who else, and those condos on the harbor have to be rebuilt.”
“There are some issues with the foundation and the septic system. I can manage it.”
I count off on my fingers. “You owe money you don’t have. Mom didn’t trust you anymore, and she said as much that night we played cards.” I pause. “It’s my thirty grand. She told me she’d never let Idlewood be developed, but you were trying to convince her to sell.”
Reid closes his eyes. “Move on with your life, Charlie,” he says, his voice softer this time. “The rest of us have.”
We haven’t, though. We’ve spent twenty-five years pretending our whole lives didn’t change in an instant, and I’ve spent the last few weeks using a podcast as an excuse to make people talk to me. “Mom’s dead,” I say, “and Dad’s in hiding.”
“Dad isn’t in hiding,” Reid says. “He died after trying to kill both of us, and he got exactly what he deserved. Imagine what it was like for me that night. Imagine having the man who cared for you for your entire life come at you with a knife stained with your own mother’s blood.
Imagine lying in a boat on a cold night watching paper lanterns floating in the sky while trying to protect your baby brother and hoping to be rescued from a nightmare.
I thought Mom was in the woods dying in a pool of her own blood and that we’d be joining her soon.
And now, imagine twenty-five years later, having your brother question what happened to you as though it was his to discover.
I saved you that night, Charlie. I was a fucking hero. ”
Reid is the only one left who can tell the story of what happened on the island the night Isaac Haviland died.
“What did Mr. Haviland say?” I ask. “Right before Dad stabbed him?”
“How would I know?”
“It was in the papers. The police reports, too. You told the detectives he called Mom my love.”
“Then that’s what he said. She was having an affair with him.”
“But how could you have heard him? You were on the porch. Mom, Dad, and Mr. Haviland were by the cars.”
“Maybe I didn’t hear him,” Reid says. “Or I made it up. Or Mom told me later on, and I reported it to the police as though I’d heard it myself. I was twelve years old, and didn’t understand how important it was to stick to the facts.”
“Mom hated what Paul was doing to Burkehaven,” I say. “And today, you were lurking by Freya’s truck. You used to have photos of her posted all over your bedroom walls.”
“When I was a teenager trying to convince my mother I was straight,” Reid says.
Reid seems to have an answer ready for whatever I throw at him. “Fine, maybe that’s true,” I say. “But today, by the trailhead, were you trying to distract Gilcrest from the homicide investigation? Is that why you did that to Freya’s truck?”
“What, exactly, was I distracting him from?” Reid asks.
When I don’t answer, he says, “Okay, tell me if I’m getting this right: I lied about what happened to Isaac Haviland and I also killed my own mother, to .
. . what? Cover up a two-hundred-thousand-dollar debt?
In my world, two hundred grand is pocket change. ”
Pocket change that selling a lake house would provide.
Reid comes at me. I brace myself, but he grips me by the shoulders and looks me in the eyes.
“I didn’t kill Mom,” he says, “and no matter how mad you are, you don’t get to say I’m a murderer so you can get a little attention with some podcast no one will listen to.
Unlike you, I live in a world where bills come in, and people need things from me, and there are expectations. ”
Reid strips off his T-shirt and shorts, then swings his arms back and forth as he moves to the edge of the dock.
“This house costs tens of thousands of dollars a year in taxes and maintenance,” he says.
“Way more than you can afford, Charlie. If you want to buy me out, come up with the cash, because I have plenty of others lining up with offers.” He fits a red swimming cap over his blond hair and adjusts his goggles.
“Tonight, when you’re lying in bed feeling awful about yourself, know that I love you and forgive you for every terrible thing you said to me, but I don’t want to see you right now.
Also, I have an airtight alibi for the time Mom was killed. Do you?”
He dives into the water and takes off across the cove.
I could accept what’s been told to me: My father killed Isaac Haviland; my mother dragged herself through the woods to save her children; my brother fled with me in a rickety old rowboat and floated offshore until a handsome, young police officer arrived to rescue us.
And years later, a widow exacted revenge. That’s a story to remember.
But I don’t believe it.