And so, with two beers in her belly, and her inhibitions lowered, she floated this idea to Louise Donnadieu. Making sure she was out of earshot of her brother before she did.
Louise had laughed.
“What?” said Judy.
“There’s no way,” said Louise.
“Why?”
“A lot of people think T.J.’s strange,” said Louise, “but she’s harmless. She’s better than harmless. She’s a good person. All she wants to do is hunt and fish and be alone. Her family’s got a place on an island up north. I think she’d move there now if she could.”
Louise flagged the bartender down. Ordered a beer for herself.
“She just needs money first,” said Louise.
Judy watched her.
“Where exactly?” she said.
Louise furrowed her brow. “Where what?”
“The island. The house.”
“Oh, I don’t know the name of it,” said Louise. “But she’s got a map of it on the wall of the Director’s Cabin. Last time I looked, there was a pin where the cabin is.”
She drank again.
And then, slowly, she looked up at Judy. Realizing.
• • •
It would be career-making for Judy. Finding Barbara Van Laar—finding her alive, no less—would mean a promotion. Maybe two. It would set her on a path for success. And it would resolve the question that’s hovered over her head since she began her work as an investigator, the one that every male investigator she’s encountered has thought upon seeing her. Are women cut out for this work?
Captain LaRochelle, she knows, would find Barbara if he could. Every investigator would—but none of them would take into account Barbara’s preferences, or her safety.
Instead, they’d sacrifice Barbara’s well-being to better their own lot in life.
This, in fact, is what Captain LaRochelle did do, in a way, when Bear Van Laar disappeared, and when Carl Stoddard became a convenient suspect: he let Stoddard, voiceless in death, take the fall, while LaRochelle took the promotion that came with a closed case.
Judy disagrees with many of the things her parents have taught her, but one thing she respects them for is this: their belief in putting others before themselves.
If Barbara Van Laar has chosen to hide in the woods, of her own volition—if she is safe, and protected, and fed, and self-reliant—who is Judy to drag her back into the world she abandoned?
• • •
Still, she wants to be certain that her theory is correct.
And so, from her small apartment in Ray Brook, she makes plans: she’ll go back to the Van Laar Preserve; she’ll go back to the Director’s Cabin where she spent so many hours. Her guess is that it will be abandoned; the Hewitts, after all, have cut ties with the Van Laars. She’ll open the door, which has never had a lock.
She’ll pray that the map is still tacked to the wall.
If it is, she’ll make a note of the spot that a pin, or pinhole, marks:
The site of the Hewitt family’s cabin, way up north, in the middle of the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.
Barbara
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day One
The bed is empty.
In the moonlight, in the threshold of the cabin called Balsam, Barbara Van Laar takes a last look over her shoulder, saying goodbye in her mind to Tracy, to her bunkmates, to Camp Emerson.
She’s leaving later than she’d agreed upon with T.J., who’ll be pacing her cabin, buzzing with nerves. But Barbara’s counselors stayed out much later than she’d predicted; she had to wait for them to return, one after another, and then wait some more, until the sound of their movements quieted, until the sound of their breathing steadied.
Then she stood up, as silently as she could, and tiptoed to the doorway, where she now stands.
Her bag. She’s forgotten the paper bag she brought back from the main house—the one that almost gave her away.
What’s in the bag? Tracy had asked her, last week, and she pretended not to understand.
• • •
Outside, the air is fresh, the moon so bright that she doesn’t need the flashlight she brought along.
Her other things are waiting for her in T.J.’s cabin: her backpack, loaded with fresh food that should hold her for a week, at least. Her warm clothes, her hiking boots, into which she’ll change as quickly as she can.
Sure enough: when she steps onto the porch of the Director’s Cabin, the door opens swiftly. There is T.J., checking her watch. It’s almost three in the morning, says T.J.; they’ll barely make it.
