“We should probably go inside before it pours,” Janelle said.
The trio walked up the dock and back into the campgrounds. Stevie and Janelle walked Nate to the treehouse, then continued on to their cabin behind the art pavilion. Stevie had become accustomed to the dark of the woods at Ellingham Academy—winter nights in the mountains of Vermont are very long, and very dark indeed. But at Ellingham, there were always lights in the windows or a fire in the hearth, and the walls of the buildings were made of brick and stone, built to keep out the elements. Here at the camp, the veil between the outside and the inside was much thinner. There was a thick moistness to the air, gluing everything together.
And, of course, these were murder woods.
Stevie shook off the thought and followed Janelle inside their cabin. There was one overhead lamp inside, which seemed to cast more shadow than glow. They each had a small reading lamp at their bedside. It wasn’t a lot of light. They set to work unpacking and setting up their cabin. Janelle removed a stack of citronella candles from one of her bags and began placing them around the room in what seemed to be a ritualistic fashion, though they were more likely to be in the places insects could access the bunk, including under the screen with the hole in it. Stevie arranged her medications on the top of her bureau. She had learned from her Ellingham experience that sometimes she needed something to help her rest when she was in a new place or things were especially stressful. She took a pill, washing it down with the warm remains of soda in the can. She dumped her suitcase out onto her bed and shuffled through the contents, stuffing them in drawers. Janelle opened the drawers of her dresser one by one, testing them for sturdiness and sniffing them.
“These can use some freshening up,” she said. “I’m letting these air out overnight. Tomorrow I’ll make some scented liners.”
“You can make scented liners?” Stevie asked.
Janelle looked at Stevie as if she had asked her if she could spell her own name.
“I couldn’t bring my full tool bench with me, or my sewing machine, but I figured since we have a whole art pavilion to use, that would be okay.”
Janelle sat on the edge of her bed.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Today was weird.”
Stevie nodded in agreement.
They changed for bed and lay down to rest. Janelle cracked open her computer, and Stevie got out her tablet.
Outside, there was the chirp of cicadas and the occasional hoot of an owl. They cranked the fan on high, but it barely penetrated the thick air. The rain began to fall in earnest—a fresh summer rain that turned up the soil and drummed on the roof of the cabin. There was low, rolling thunder. The air was sweet with ozone and earth.
Carson had sent Stevie his entire collection of files on the case. There were over eight hundred documents, organized by subjects like SUSPECTS, CRIME SCENE, ARTICLES. She scanned through these, then opened one of the excerpts in the file marked SABRINA. It was from a book on the case.
Of the four victims that night, Sabrina Abbott’s presence in the woods is the hardest to explain.
Sabrina Abbott was born in 1960 to the town dentist, Dr. James Abbott, and his wife, Cindy. Cindy Abbott was a self-described homemaker, and the Abbott household had a squeaky-clean feel to it. Theirs was a house where there was always a casserole or a pie in the oven, where Mrs. Abbott did the dusting and the grocery shopping while Dr. Abbott saw patients. Sabrina and her younger sister, Allison, played horseshoes together in their large backyard. Allison was twelve when her eighteen-year-old sister graduated high school. They’d roller-skate together in the street or at the local rink.
“Even though I was younger, she never complained about having me around,” she said. “Sabrina loved me. She let me come into her room whenever I wanted. She helped me with my homework. She was the perfect older sister and I worshipped her. I really did.”
Perfect is a word often applied to Sabrina.
Sabrina was at the top of the graduating class of Liberty High in 1978 and was valedictorian. She had an unbroken 4.0 grade point average, was a highly proficient pianist, and was the editor in chief of the Liberty High School newspaper, the Trumpet. On weekends, she volunteered at the local library, reading to small children. She was the kind of person the teachers could count on to take tests down to the office, or to watch over a class for a moment. Sabrina was never known to say an unkind word about anyone. She was the quintessential goody two-shoes but seemed to have been widely liked.
Her boyfriend for most of high school, Shawn Greenvale, was a similarly dedicated student, though his accomplishments were not as great as Sabrina’s. At Liberty High, Sabrina was known for being talented at everything, and for being good in general.
She set the tablet down and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.
“You okay?” Janelle asked.
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “It’s just . . . the Ellingham case felt really far away. It was really far away. There was no one left to . . .”
Stevie couldn’t quite finish the thought, so Janelle stepped in.
“Feel any pain?”
“Yeah. Allison is still so raw. It’s never stopped for her. And here I am—I’m at this camp, trying to work it out. Do I have any right to do that?”
Janelle considered this for a moment as the rain strummed its fingers on the roof.
“I think it’s good that you’re wondering that,” she said after a moment. “It means you know where your priorities are. You are also the person who worked out what happened at Ellingham Academy in 1936.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. You really are.”
“So why do I feel like a fake?”
“Because most people feel like fakes,” Janelle replied. “Impostor syndrome. It’s a thing.”
“Do you ever feel that way?”
Janelle considered this.
“No,” she said. “But what I do is different. I make things. If they work, I can see them work. If they don’t work, I take them apart until they do. I have science on my side. You’re making things you can’t see.”
It was good to have smart friends.
“The only times I feel it are when I think about Vi,” Janelle said. “Not . . . like, not about us. But now that they’re so far away . . . I can’t think sometimes. I only think about them. I think about the next text message, the next chat, the next picture. I should be more serious. I should be thinking about my project for next year, or college, and I am . . . but then I check my phone to see if they texted.”
“Isn’t that normal?” Stevie said.
“I guess. But I don’t want to be normal.”
“You love Vi,” Stevie said.
“Yeah. I do.”
“And Vi loves you.”
“Yeah,” Janelle said with a little sigh. “They do.”
“So I guess you have to ride it out.”
“I . . . I want Vi here. Vietnam is too far. September is too far.”
A silence settled over them, full of rain.
“Can you imagine how much Nate would hate this conversation?” Stevie finally said.
Janelle’s laughter rang out like a bell.
“I’m going to put my headphones in,” she said. “I listen to music to go to sleep.”