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I could leave, find a phone, and call the cops. I could go home, talk to Simon, figure out what to do depending on what he told me. What time was it? I had no way to tell. No phone with me, and I didn’t wear a watch, and the Frasers were due at the house at 6:00 A.M. I could put her back, exactly where I found her, but I must have left my DNA all over the place. Jesus. Fuck. I didn’t have a choice. I picked Nina up, still wrapped in her rug, and placed her a little off to the side. Then I filled in the grave, as best I could, and smoothed over the dirt. Working faster, I gathered leaves from farther up the trail and from the woods around me to try to disguise the disturbed ground. It worked better than I’d expected. I picked up a fallen branch, so heavy I could barely lift it. I dropped it where the grave had been, and then I heaped and scattered more leaves in as random a pattern as I could manage. If only it had been snowing. Snow would have covered everything.
I left the grave and returned to Nina. I told myself she was the rug and only the rug. I balanced the shovel on top and picked her up. I carried her down the trail. It was difficult. Wrapped in the rug, she was heavy, and I had to keep shifting the weight in my arms. Her body started to slip through the rug and soon I could see her hair, then a little of her forehead. I clenched the rug tighter to me and looked straight ahead. The moon was full and bright when I walked back out from the shelter of the trees. I took her all the way to the lake, to the jetty. I had to put her in the boat, and that wasn’t easy. I was tired and clumsy. The boat tipped dangerously, and I dropped her. The rug came loose. Her head was completely exposed in the moonlight. I heard myself groan, as if the sound had come from someone else. She was dead, but she was still Nina. She was wearing her small gold hoop earrings. Jamie had bought them for Simon to give to Nina for her birthday back in May. She’d come over for dinner. Nina had been so happy. She’d kissed him and thanked him and insisted on putting them on right away. Jamie had been pleased, even though she didn’t like the girl. I couldn’t look away from those earrings. And the bruise. It was large and unmistakable, around her left jaw and cheek. I looked closer. Her lip was split.
I reached out and flipped a corner of the rug back to cover her face. At the same time a barn own screeched nearby and scared the shit out of me. My hands were shaking. I forced myself to move. I went back to the house. I took off my shoes before I went inside. There was a gym downstairs with dumbbells. I took a set with me. There were ropes in the back of my truck. I took the dumbbells and the ropes to the boat. I tied the ropes around the rug at the top and the bottom, knotting them tightly so that they wouldn’t unravel. Then I tied the dumbbells on too. I tied knots upon knots, checking everything to make sure it was tight and secure. I found that I was checking the knots again and again, checking each one until I got to the end and then starting from the beginning and doing it over and over in a loop. My breath was coming faster. I had an image in my mind of the lake the way I had first seen it, shimmering blue under a sun-soaked sky. I imagined children playing on the shoreline, Simon’s children, our grandchildren. I heard their laughter. And then, in the background, I saw Nina’s body floating to the surface in pieces and bobbing there in the water, horrors waiting to be discovered. I had to force my hands away from the knots, force myself to finish my work.
When everything was done, I rowed out to the center of the lake, and I slipped her body into the dark water. For one awful moment I thought she was going to float, but the weights did their job, and her body disappeared in moments, sinking fast. I dropped the shovel in after her. The weight of the metal was enough to sink it.
I rowed back to the jetty. I checked the boat to make sure I hadn’t left traces. There was dirt in the bottom of the boat, but there had been when I’d arrived. My hands and nails and clothes were filthy. I couldn’t stand it. I walked into the freezing water until I was submerged. I scrubbed at my hands, my face, my hair, until my whole body was shaking from the cold. I staggered back to the truck. The house that Jamie had fallen in love with looked like a house of horrors to me now, lying low and dark under the moonlight. We would never be able to sell the place. We’d be stuck with it for the rest of our lives.
For one awful moment I thought I’d lost the keys to the truck, that they were buried at the bottom of that grave in the woods, or that they’d fallen into the water along with Nina’s body, then my fingers found them at the bottom of my pocket. I stripped off my wet clothes and threw them on the floor of the passenger seat. There was an old sweatshirt in the back seat. I pulled it on, started the car and turned up the heater. My hands were shaking so much that I could barely drive, but I couldn’t wait until I had warmed up. It was nearly 4:00 A.M., according to the truck’s display. I had just enough time to get home and shower and dress before I had to come back with my family and pretend to search for this dead girl. I tried to tell myself that it was over. That it was done. I wanted to put the memory of that night into a box, to seal it with lead, and to drop it deep into the recesses of my mind, never to be taken out again. I tried hard, but I couldn’t do it. All I could think about as I drove away was Nina’s face.
A mile down the road I pulled off to the side, opened the door, and dry retched. Afterward I drove on. My fingers were clenched around the steering wheel. The car warmed up. I stopped shaking. I knew my son. I knew him. He was not a murderer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Leanne
On Wednesday morning I put on my hiking gear—old hiking pants and boots, and a light wool long-sleeved shirt with my fleece over it. I would put my jacket on as another layer before leaving the house. I packed a day pack with water, my rain gear, food, and my compass. I’d use my phone where I could, but it was better not to rely on phones because service would likely be patchy, and offline trail maps only worked as long as your battery lasted. Besides, I’d searched online for trail maps of the area and had found nothing. I wondered if the Jordans had some. I wondered if they would meet us, as promised.
When I got downstairs, Grace was waiting. She was dressed in thermal leggings and boots and a fleece sweater. Her jacket was hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, and she was tying her hair back into a ponytail when I came in. She turned to face me.
“I’m coming,” she said.
Andy made a helpless gesture in my direction. He’d obviously already tried to talk her out of the idea and failed.
“I don’t know, Gracey,” I said.
“I’m not staying at home, or worse, going to school, while you guys are out searching for Nina. How could I ever explain to her that I sat on my ass when she needed me? And the other thing is, the Jordans’ place has a lot of land. We’re going to need to cover a lot of ground. Every person counts today.”
She was right. I couldn’t argue with her, so I put my arms around her and hugged her tight. Andy drove, I sat in the passenger seat, and Grace sat in the back. We didn’t talk, and Andy turned off the radio. Everything felt heavy and quiet. I reached out and took his hand, and we drove like that for a while. His skin was warm and dry. He had calluses on his fingers, from his work and from playing guitar. He squeezed my hand.
“I think... maybe we’re not going to find her today,” Andy said. “This idea. It’s a real long shot.”
I looked out the window. Andy was doing what he always did. Getting ahead of the problem. Trying to prepare Grace and me for bad news, or no news. He hated to see us upset, which was not a bad thing, except that it so often resulted in him avoiding conflict, avoiding reality, when it was ugly. If Nina was with friends in Boston, she would have called us.
“Dad?” Grace said, in a very quiet voice.
“Hmm?”
“Do you think... you don’t think that Nina might have hurt herself or something? If she was really upset about breaking up with Simon?”
“No,” I said. I turned around in my seat so that I could look Grace right in the eye. “You know your sister, Grace. She’s a strong girl. She loves you, she loves her family, and she loves her life. Nina would never do that. Okay?”
“Okay, Mom.”
We weren’t the first to arrive at the Jordan house. Alice was there, and Julie Bradley and her brother, along with seven or eight others. Alice and Julie greeted me with hugs. Grace hung back a little.
“You remember my brother?” Julie said. She was less awkward than she’d been at the house. More willing to look me in the eye.
I said hello. Isaac Bradley was tall, almost as tall as Andy, with dark hair and brown eyes. When I’d seen him last, he’d been going through that awkward, pimply stage, but he seemed to have grown out of that. He looked very young, but he and Julie were twins, so he must be twenty, Nina’s age. I asked myself why she couldn’t have fallen for this boy instead of Simon. I’d never liked Simon, not really, but because Nina was crazy about him and because they were so young, I’d trained myself to ignore his bad points. His self-obsession. His arrogance.
“I asked Isaac to record some video today, if that’s all right,” Julie said. “I think we should make some videos for social media. If people can see what we’re doing, if they can see us actively searching and asking questions, then I think they’ll be more likely to want to get involved.”
“I won’t get in the way,” Isaac said. He held up his phone. “I’ll just be using this. It’s just a boots-on-the-ground kind of thing.”
I thanked him. I couldn’t remember if he was in college. When she was younger, Julie used to talk about him all the time, but then she’d stopped coming around the house.
“I meant to tell you, Julie, I gave the police your number. There’s a detective—Matthew Wright—he might be in touch.”
