She hadn’t had as much to drink that week as she normally did; she’d been happily distracted by Peter’s attention. But the final Saturday of the Blackfly Good-by—when she realized Peter would not be coming out of his room—she took a glass of wine at lunch, and continued to refill it in the kitchen whenever she had a moment to herself.
By four o’clock, the smell of the air had changed. Rain was coming, everyone said.
The staff had been busy all day, bringing bags of groceries back from town.
At some point, somebody proposed an outing on Lake Joan: it would be their last chance to boat before the storm. And so the decision was made, and everyone retreated to their rooms to change.
Bear would enjoy that, thought Alice. And she set off to find him.
For most of the week, he’d been running here and there with John Paul and Marnie McLellan; she could go long stretches without seeing him. She’d never paid so little attention to him as she did that week; she’d never had anything to distract her the way that Peter had. It was all right, she told herself. Bear, too, was having fun.
Tessie Jo Hewitt was part of their group as well. Slightly older than the rest, she seemed to be their leader. Alice wasn’t certain, but she thought it possible that Vic Hewitt had assigned his daughter the task of acting as babysitter for the other children.
Alice didn’t find Bear in his room, or in any of the McLellans’ rooms.
She looked down at the beach, and in the boathouse, where two of the staff were readying several watercraft for that afternoon’s excursion.
“Have you seen Bear?” she asked them, but they hadn’t.
• • •
She saved Peter’s room for last. For one thing, she thought it unlikely that her son was there: Bear and his father had become closer, lately, but really he was hers alone. Peter seemed always to look at him from a distance, even when they were in the same room.
She walked down the carpeted hallway of Self-Reliance, listening for children’s voices, for the voice of her son.
She stood outside Peter’s room, her ear to the door.
And then, hearing nothing, she turned the knob.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Two
Inside the now-abandoned slaughterhouse, Judy stands silent.
She listens: more footsteps. Five, six, seven in a row.
Toward the back of the shadowy room, she sees a staircase leading upward into darkness. If she were in a movie, she thinks, she’d head in that direction. But all of her training tells her not to go solo toward a potential threat, and so instead she backs out of the structure.
In the daylight, headed in the direction of Camp Emerson, she breaks into a jog.
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, Judy stands next to Denny Hayes and Captain LaRochelle on the dirt driveway. Across from them, a squadron of six state troopers—guns drawn, backs to walls—enters the structure two by two.
“This feels unnecessary,” whispers Judy, and Denny turns and shushes her.
“Captain’s orders,” he says.
When the last of the troopers has disappeared out of sight, Judy feels the weight of what she’s done.
For three long minutes, she looks up at the sky. Down at the ground.
How many footsteps did she actually hear? Just a few, she thinks. And were they loud? Not particularly. Could they have been something else? A tree, tapping on the roof. Acorns falling. Dozens of possibilities occur to her, until at last the troopers file out of the slaughterhouse, relaxed now.
The two at the front cross the dirt road to talk to Captain LaRochelle.
“Found the culprit,” says one.
“Family of squirrels,” says the other, grinning.
LaRochelle clears his throat. “That’s it, huh? You sure?”
“Yeah. We searched the whole upstairs.”
LaRochelle says nothing. Then, not looking at Judy, he turns to Hayes.
“I was interrupted during a conversation with Mr. Van Laar,” says LaRochelle. “So I think it best that I return to him now.”
He strides off.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Two
Back at the Command Post in the Director’s Cabin, Denny Hayes positions himself at the front of the room, preparing to pick up where he left off with the small group of investigators gathered before him.
The superintendent, he says, is not happy with their efforts so far. The Adirondack Search and Rescue Team—a crew of civilian volunteers—is being dispatched to do a Type Three search today in the surrounding woods, after EnCon’s failure to locate anyone, or anything, yesterday.
“Any leads from this morning?” Hayes asks.
The other investigators glance around. The looks on their faces are clear: not much.
One says: “Couple kids have said they’ve seen a woman in the woods in the past. This summer and other summers, too. Apparently she’s a local legend. Ghost-story type of thing.”
Hayes blinks.
“Ghost story about a woman. Noted,” says Hayes. “Anyone able to tell us more about what this ghost looks like?”
The same investigator says, “Older woman. Thin. Gray hair. That’s all I got. Aside from what they call her.”
“Which is?”
The investigator, chagrined, makes a display of inspecting his notes. Reads it off: “Scary Mary.”
“Scary Mary,” says Hayes.
The investigator nods.
