The hardest, I suppose, was that my mother blames me in some ways for Jimmy’s death. I was supposed to be watching him, but I’d ventured off the dock to gather the blackberries I could see growing in brambles farther along the lakeshore. While I was picking berries, he went off the edge of the dock with his tricycle. By the time I heard the splash ... Guilt can be a terrible thing. I felt guilt for years. My mother still does, I think. Because she left me with Jimmy, and I was only nine at the time. My mother shouldn’t have given me that responsibility at that age.
Slowly Angie returned her gaze from the black-and-white photograph to their faces.
Both appeared to have seen a ghost, some dreadful specter from the past that was rising in the space between them.
“Jimmy drowned,” Angie said, her voice hushed. “Like Jasmine drowned. Both were alone with Eden, weren’t they? You saw her push Jasmine? Youfilmedit?”
Rachel’s legs gave out under her. Doug quickly grabbed her arm and helped her to a chair in the living room. Rachel fell down into the chair like a broken doll. A silent communication passed between Doug and his wife. She nodded, almost imperceptibly. He reached for the back of a chair, holding himself upright, his complexion gray. He appeared utterly and suddenly broken.
Angie guessed this was the first time Doug realized his daughter might have drowned his son. Rachel, on the other hand, had suspected it a lot longer, probably after she saw Eden push Jasmine into the Nahamish River. She’d protected her husband from the horror that one of their children had killed the other.
“You saw Eden, Rachel,” Angie said with stronger conviction. “Yousawyour fourteen-year-old daughter pushing Jasmine Gulati into the Nahamish River above the deadly Plunge Falls. You did not call for help. You did nothing and said nothing because it would expose your child to a murder charge. And when you asked Eden why she’d done it, it was her, not Doug, who explained to you what was in that journal and why she’d followed Jasmine down to the bay. Eden was trying to stop Jasmine from destroying her family, her relationship with her father, her life. You were a mother trying to protect both your child and yourself. Because you couldn’t allow Jasmine in death to destroy Eden and your family on top of what Jasmine in life had already done.”
Tears welled in Rachel’s eyes. They slid in a silent sheen down her cheeks. She started to shake.
Doug looked at Angie in horror, his mouth moving, but he was unable to speak. He dropped to his knees in front of Rachel’s chair and took his wife’s hands in his.
“And you, Doug,” Angie said, “had no idea both your daughter and wife knew about your affair and the engagement. You thought your lover had just conveniently slipped away forever, and you were safe.”
“Is ... is it true, Rachel?” His voice came out a rasp. “Please, God, don’t let this be true. Did ... how long have you believed Eden could have hurt our Jimmy—that our own daughter could have killed our son? Why?Why, Rachel? Why would she do it? Jealousy? Possessiveness?Why didn’t you talk to me?”
Rachel seemed to have slipped into some distant fugue state. Doug turned to Angie. “You need to leave. You need to leave right now.”
“I need to call the police and report this,” she said softly. “You do know that.”
He surged to his feet. “Please, please donotlet that woman destroy my wife, my family, for the mistakes I made with her.”
“Your own daughter destroyed your family a long time ago, if she really did do something to effect Jimmy’s drowning.”
He slammed his fist into the wall that divided the living room and the hallway. The impact shuddered through his body and left a dent in the drywall. He stared at his bloodied hand, his whole body vibrating.
Rachel suddenly spoke in a voice that did not sound like her own. “She needs to tell the police now, Doug. She has the journal. It’s all out in the open now. Eden ...” She shifted in her chair and faced Angie.
“Eden learned from Jimmy’s death that drowning works. I ... I don’t know what a parent is supposed to do when they start to suspect terrible things about a child of theirs, yet they’re never certain. Things you don’t want to ... can’t possibly believe. Can’t even ask them about.” She swiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands. “I think Eden learned from her success in eliminating Jasmine that organizing a remote trip works. She ... the police need to look into another death, the drowning of a woman named Jayne Elliot. She ... she’s Michael’s ex—Michael is Eden’s husband. I—”
“Rachel! Stop it!” Doug yelled. “Stop right there! Donotsay another word.”
“No. No, I need to, I have to say it. I always wondered. Eden is bad, Doug. She’s got an evil seed inside her. Three years ago, she organized an all-girls salmon-fishing trip up the coast. She invited Michael’s ex, which surprised me, but Eden said she was trying to make amends and get on with the woman. They’d had issues in the past. Eden feared Michael had never properly gotten over Jayne. Eden invited Jayne and a few other friends, hired a boat and a guide—they all chipped in. On the last day of their expedition up the BC coast, Jayne Elliot went overboard in extremely cold and stormy weather. She was swept away, and a search was mounted. They found her body days later, washed up on an island beach. Drowned. No one saw her go overboard apart from Eden. You need to look into that trip. You need to look.”
“Whywould she do that?” Doug said.
“She’s like that, Doug. She has to be the center of attention. She had to be the apple ofyoureye, too—especially you. She couldn’t allow Jimmy and a budding father-son relationship to steal that from her. She’s possessive and lethal in her jealousy or when betrayed.”
Doug sank slowly to the sofa. “I can’t believe you never said anything.”
“To who? About what? What was I going to say, Ithinkmy child is a serial killer?”
“You had proof, Rachel. If you filmed her pushing Jasmine into the river, you had proof.”
“I hardly filmed her. I froze when I saw it happen, just froze. I let the film run. I didn’t scream. I didn’t run down to the little bay. That was as much an indictment against me. Then Eden told me why she did it, and I couldn’t tell everyone about what you’d done. For Chrissakes, you havegotto see how that would have all played out. Our life would have crumbled. You would have been terminated at the university. And ... at the time, I never put two and two together with Jimmy’s drowning. That came only later. Even then, I was never certain. It ... it was just a dark and horrible suspicion, and I’d been a bad mother by leaving a nine-year-old alone with her four-year-old brother in the first place.” She faced Angie.
“I looked for that diary, you know? When no one seemed to know where it had gone, I thought Eden had taken it. If Eden had taken it, then she would be safe from suspicion in Jasmine’s death and so would I. Because if Eden had it, the contents would never get out. But if anyone else had taken it ... I worried for years. Then when Jasmine was never found, when the journal never surfaced, I just buried it all away. Deep, deep down in my mind, I compartmentalized it. I went forward believing it never really happened the way I saw it.”
“How did it happen? What exactly did you see?” Angie said.
She inhaled deeply. “I’d been filming Jasmine casting alone. The light was so beautiful, the droplets from her line like jewels in the air. I ... I suddenly saw Eden enter the frame. She was wearing her red Kinabulu toque, and she was carrying a log in her hand. She left the forest fringe and headed directly down the rocky embankment to where Jasmine was casting.” Rachel’s voice caught, and she took a moment to gather herself. Clearing her throat, she said, “Jasmine turned and saw Eden, and she called out. But Eden was like a robot. She just kept moving down among the rocks until she was right in front of Jasmine. She swung the log. She struck Jasmine hard. Jasmine’s boots slid out under her, and she went straight into the water.” Rachel started to rock in her chair, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest.
“I ... I knew how the water swirled back into the next little cove above the falls. I did run down there as fast as I could. I got down to the water to find Jasmine clinging to a strainer—a big tree with a massive root ball that had fallen into the river. But I ... I ... All I could see in my mind was Eden swinging that stick, and I knew if I pulled Jasmine out she would tell authorities my fourteen-year-old tried to kill her, and I ... I just let her slide back into the river.” Rachel began to gag.
