And then:
The boat on the water.
The oncoming storm.
The darkening sky.
The face of her son as he sat in the bow of the boat, smiling tightly, his small brow furrowed, while she rowed. How he’d looked toward the shore, and then the sky, and then his mother, seeking her reassurance at the first clap of thunder.
The rain came on so quickly that she could see it moving toward them like a curtain, east to west across the lake. When it reached them, it had filled their boat.
She tried to bail with her hands. She clawed at the water.
The boat tipped, and the two of them spilled out.
The far gunnel came crashing down with a slap on something hard. A human form.
She shouted the name of her son.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Six
She’ll sign a statement?” says Hayes.
“She will,” says Judy.
They’re standing outside an interrogation room at Ray Brook—the same one in which Judy first met Jacob Sluiter. On the other side of the mirrored window, they watch T.J. Hewitt, who sits as still as stone, both hands on the table before her.
“You know what she told me?” says Judy. “That time I heard noises up above the slaughterhouse? She said that was them. The Hewitts. That when I left, T.J. hustled the two of them off the property, knowing that I’d return with backup. So when the troopers climbed the stairs,” she says.
“It looked empty.”
“Right.”
“Thing I don’t get,” says Hayes, “is why choose this moment to confess? Why keep the secret for fourteen years, only to give it up now?”
“I’ve got a theory about that.”
“I bet you do.”
They pause, watching T.J., who closes her eyes for such a long time that Judy wonders if she’s asleep. Then she opens them.
“I think she was afraid the Van Laars were right on the cusp of framing an innocent person again. Just like they did with Carl Stoddard.”
Hayes turns to her, frowning. “McLellan?” he says. “She thinks McLellan’s innocent?”
“No,” says Judy. “She thinks he did it. But McLellan, Junior, is the Van Laar’s godson. He’ll take over the bank someday, according to his sister—since the Van Laars have no son. And McLellan, Senior, has a lot of sway over the family, and the bank. T.J. was afraid the McLellans would convince the family that Louise Donnadieu was the culprit.”
Hayes pauses.
“So the Hewitts came forward to save Louise Donnadieu’s reputation?”
“And Carl Stoddard’s. All these years later.”
Hayes nods.
“Never too late, I guess,” he says.
• • •
Together, they watch as T.J. Hewitt turns her face toward the one window in the interrogation room. It’s too high to give any view of the buildings outside, or even of the trees; but still she searches it, her eyes moving rapidly. She breathes deeply, face turned toward the bright sky.
What will she do now, wonders Judy, if the Hewitts lose the camp? If the Van Laars cut them out entirely, as they’ll no doubt do, snapping the thin thread that has stretched for decades between the Hewitts and Peter the First?
And she answers her question herself: They’ll be fine. The Hewitts—like Judy, like Louise Donnadieu, like Denny Hayes, even—don’t need to rely on anyone but themselves.
It’s the Van Laars, and families like them, who have always depended on others.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Six
Technically, her shift is over. But now that she no longer has to answer to her parents each night, Judy can stay as long as she likes. Until her work is done.
Hayes, on the other hand, has to get home to his family.
Before he leaves, he claps her on the shoulder. “Good work,” he says. “I mean it.”
