CONTENTS

ABOUT THE BOOK

Have you ever played two truths and a lie?

A gripping new thriller that you won’t be able to put down with a plot that will keep you guessing. If you enjoyed A. J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window, you’ll love Last Time I Lied

Emma’s first summer away from home, she learned how to play the game. And she learned how to lie.

Then three of her new friends went into the woods and never returned…

Now, years later, Emma has been asked to go back to the newly re-opened Camp Nightingale. She thinks she’s laying old ghosts to rest but really she’s returning to the scene of a crime.

Because Emma’s innocence might be the biggest lie of all…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Riley Sager is the pseudonym of a former journalist, editor and graphic designer who previously published mysteries under his real name.

Now a full-time author, Riley’s first thriller, Final Girls, was a national and international bestseller that has been sold in 25 languages. A film version is being developed by Universal Pictures and Anonymous Content.

A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Also by Riley Sager

Final Girls

One

I paint the girls in the same order.

Vivian first.

Then Natalie.

Allison is last, even though she was first to leave the cabin and therefore technically the first to disappear.

My paintings are typically large. Massive, really. As big as a barn door, Randall likes to say. Yet the girls are always small. Inconsequential marks on a canvas that’s alarmingly wide.

Their arrival heralds the second stage of a painting, after I’ve laid down a background of earth and sky in hues with appropriately dark names. Spider black. Shadow gray. Blood red.

And midnight blue, of course. In my paintings, there’s always a bit of midnight.

Then come the girls, sometimes clustered together, sometimes scattered to far-flung corners of the canvas. I put them in white dresses that flare at the hems, as if they’re running from something. They’re usually turned so all that can be seen of them is their hair trailing behind them as they flee. On the rare occasions when I do paint a glimpse of their faces, it’s only the slimmest of profiles, nothing more than a single curved brushstroke.

I create the woods last, using a putty knife to slather paint onto the canvas in wide, unwieldy strokes. This process can take days, even weeks, me slightly dizzy from fumes as I glob on more paint, layer upon layer, keeping it thick.

I’ve heard Randall boast to potential buyers that my surfaces are like Van Gogh’s, with paint cresting as high as an inch off the canvas. I prefer to think I paint like nature, where true smoothness is a myth, especially in the woods. The chipped ridges of tree bark. The speckle of moss on rock. Several autumns’ worth of leaves coating the ground. That’s the nature I try to capture with my scrapes and bumps and whorls of paint.

So I add more and more, each wall-size canvas slowly succumbing to the forest of my imagination. Thick. Forbidding. Crowded with danger. The trees loom, dark and menacing. Vines don’t creep so much as coil, their loops tightening into choke holds. Underbrush covers the forest floor. Leaves blot out the sky.

I paint until there’s not a bare patch left on the canvas and the girls have been consumed by the forest, buried among the trees and vines and leaves, rendered invisible. Only then do I know a painting is finished, using the tip of a brush handle to swirl my name into the lower right-hand corner.

Emma Davis.

That same name, in that same borderline-illegible script, now graces a wall of the gallery, greeting visitors as they pass through the hulking sliding doors of this former warehouse in the Meatpacking District. Every other wall is filled with paintings. My paintings. Twenty-seven of them.

My first gallery show.

Randall has gone all out for the opening party, turning the place into a sort of urban forest. There are rust-colored walls and birch trees cut from a forest in New Jersey arranged in tasteful clumps. Ethereal house music throbs discreetly in the background. The lighting suggests October even though it’s a week until St. Patrick’s Day and outside the streets are piled with dirty slush.

The gallery is packed, though. I’ll give Randall that. Collectors, critics, and lookyloos elbow for space in front of the canvases, champagne glasses in hand, reaching every so often for the mushroom-and-goat-cheese croquettes that float by. Already I’ve been introduced to dozens of people whose names I’ve instantly forgotten. People of importance. Important enough for Randall to whisper who they are in my ear as I shake their hands.

“From the Times,” he says of a woman dressed head to toe in shades of purple. Of a man in an impeccably tailored suit and bright red sneakers, he simply whispers, “Christie’s.”

“Very impressive work,” Mr. Christie’s says, giving me a crooked smile. “They’re so bold.”

There’s surprise in his voice, as if women are somehow incapable of boldness. Or maybe his surprise stems from the fact that, in person, I’m anything but bold. Compared with other outsize personalities in the art world, I’m positively demure. No all-purple ensemble or flashy footwear for me. Tonight’s little black dress and black pumps with a kitten heel are as fancy as I get. Most days I dress in the same combination of khakis and paint-specked T-shirts. My only jewelry is the silver charm bracelet always wrapped around my left wrist. Hanging from it are three charms—tiny birds made of brushed pewter.

I once told Randall I dress so plainly because I want my paintings to stand out and not the other way around. In truth, boldness in one’s personality and appearance seems futile to me.

Vivian was bold in every way.

It didn’t keep her from disappearing.

During these meet and greets, I smile as wide as instructed, accept compliments, coyly defer the inevitable questions about what I plan to do next.

Once Randall has exhausted his supply of strangers to introduce, I hang back from the crowd, willing myself not to check each painting for the telltale red sticker signaling it’s been sold. Instead, I nurse a glass of champagne in a corner, the branch of a recently deforested birch tapping against my shoulder as I look around the room for people I actually know. There are many, which makes me grateful, even though it’s strange seeing them together in the same place. High school friends mingling with coworkers from the ad agency, fellow painters standing next to relatives who took the train in from Connecticut.

All of them, save for a single cousin, are men.

That’s not entirely an accident.

I perk up once Marc arrives fashionably late, sporting a proud grin as he surveys the scene. Although he claims to loathe the art world, Marc fits in perfectly. Bearded with adorably mussed hair. A plaid sport coat thrown over his worn Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Red sneakers that make Mr. Christie’s do a disappointed double take. Passing through the crowd, Marc snags a glass of champagne and one of the croquettes, which he pops into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.

“The cheese saves it,” he informs me. “But those watery mushrooms are a major infraction.”

“I haven’t tried one yet,” I say. “Too nervous.”

Marc puts a hand on my shoulder, steadying me. Just like he used to do when we lived together during art school. Every person, especially artists, needs a calming influence. For me, that person is Marc Stewart. My voice of reason. My best friend. My probable husband if not for the fact that we both like men.

I’m drawn to the romantically unattainable. Again, not a coincidence.

“You’re allowed to enjoy this, you know,” he says.

“I know.”

“And you can be proud of yourself. There’s no need to feel guilty. Artists are supposed to be inspired by life experiences. That’s what creativity is all about.”

Marc’s talking about the girls, of course, buried inside every painting. Other than me, only he knows about their existence. The only thing I haven’t told him is why, fifteen years later, I continue to make them vanish over and over.

That’s one thing he’s better off not knowing.

I never intended to paint this way. In art school, I was drawn to simplicity in both color and form. Andy Warhol’s soup cans. Jasper Johns’s flags. Piet Mondrian’s bold squares and rigid black lines. Then came an assignment to paint a portrait of someone I knew who had died.

I chose the girls.

I painted Vivian first because she burned brightest in my memory. That blond hair right out of a shampoo ad. Those incongruously dark eyes that looked black in the right light. The pert nose sprayed with freckles brought out by the sun. I put her in a white dress with an elaborate Victorian collar fanning around her swanlike neck and gave her the same enigmatic smile she displayed on her way out of the cabin.

You’re too young for this, Em.

Natalie came next. High forehead. Square chin. Hair pulled tight in a ponytail. Her white dress got a dainty lace collar that downplayed her thick neck and broad shoulders.

Finally, there was Allison, with her wholesome look. Apple cheeks and slender nose. Brows two shades darker than her flaxen hair, so thin and perfect they looked like they had been drawn on with brown pencil. I painted an Elizabethan ruff around her neck, frilly and regal.

Yet there was something wrong with the finished painting. Something that gnawed at me until the night before the project was due, when I awoke at 2:00 a.m. and saw the three of them staring at me from across the room.

Seeing them. That was the problem.

I crept out of bed and approached the canvas. I grabbed a brush, dabbed it in some brown paint, and smeared a line over their eyes. A tree branch, blinding them. More branches followed. Then plants and vines and whole trees, all of them gliding off the brush onto the canvas, as if sprouting there. By dawn, most of the canvas had been besieged by forest. All that remained of Vivian, Natalie, and Allison were shreds of their white dresses, patches of skin, locks of hair.

That became No. 1. The first in my forest series. The only one where even a fraction of the girls is visible. That piece, which got the highest grade in the class after I explained its meaning to my instructor, is absent from the gallery show. It hangs in my loft, not for sale.

Most of the others are here, though, with each painting taking up a full wall of the multi-chambered gallery. Seeing them together like this, with their gnarled branches and vibrant leaves, makes me realize how obsessive the whole endeavor is. Knowing I’ve spent years painting the same subject unnerves me.

“I am proud,” I tell Marc before taking a sip of champagne.

He downs his glass in one gulp and grabs a fresh one. “Then what’s up? You seem vexed.”

He says it with a reedy British accent, a dead-on impersonation of Vincent Price in that campy horror movie neither of us can remember the name of. All we know is that we were stoned when we watched it on TV one night, and the line made us howl with laughter. We say it to each other far too often.

“It’s just weird. All of this.” I use my champagne flute to gesture at the paintings dominating the walls, the people lined up in front of them, Randall kissing both cheeks of a svelte European couple who just walked through the door. “I never expected any of this.”

I’m not being humble. It’s the truth. If I had expected a gallery show, I would have actually named my work. Instead, I simply numbered them in the order they were painted. No. 1 through No. 33.

Randall, the gallery, this surreal opening reception—all of it is a happy accident. The product of being in the right place at the right time. That right place, incidentally, was Marc’s bistro in the West Village. At the time, I was in my fourth year of being the in-house artist at an ad agency. It was neither enjoyable nor fulfilling, but it paid the rent on a crumbling loft big enough to fit my forest canvases. After an overhead pipe leaked into the bistro, Marc needed something to temporarily mask a wall’s worth of water damage. I loaned him No. 8 because it was the biggest and most able to cover the square footage.

That right time was a week later, when the owner of a small gallery a few blocks away popped into Marc’s place for lunch. He saw the painting, was suitably intrigued, and asked Marc about the artist.

That led to one of my paintings—No. 7—being displayed in the gallery. It sold within a week. The owner asked for more. I gave him three. One of the paintings—lucky No. 13—caught the eye of a young art lover who posted a picture of it on Instagram. That picture was noticed by her employer, a television actress known for setting trends. She bought the painting and hung it in her dining room, showing it off during a dinner party for a small group of friends. One of those friends, an editor at Vogue, told his cousin, the owner of a larger, more prestigious gallery. That cousin is Randall, who currently roams the gallery, coiling his arms around every guest he sees.

What none of them knows—not Randall, not the actress, not even Marc—is that those thirty-three canvases are the only things I’ve painted outside my duties at the ad agency. There are no fresh ideas percolating in this artist’s brain, no inspiration sparking me into productivity. I’ve attempted other things, of course, more from a nagging sense of responsibility than actual desire. But I’m never able to move beyond those initial, halfhearted efforts. I return to the girls every damn time.

I know I can’t keep painting them, losing them in the woods again and again. To that end, I’ve vowed not to paint another. There won’t be a No. 34 or a No. 46 or, God forbid, a No. 112.

That’s why I don’t answer when everyone asks me what I’m working on next. I have no answer to give. My future is quite literally a blank canvas, waiting for me to fill it. The only thing I’ve painted in the past six months is my studio, using a roller to convert it from daffodil yellow to robin’s-egg blue.

If there’s anything vexing me, it’s that. I’m a one-hit wonder. A bold lady painter whose life’s work is on these walls.

As a result, I feel helpless when Marc leaves my side to chat up a handsome cater waiter, giving Randall the perfect moment to clutch my wrist and drag me to a slender woman studying No. 30, my largest work to date. Although I can’t see the woman’s face, I know she’s important. Everyone else I’ve met tonight has been guided to me instead of the other way around.

“Here she is, darling,” Randall announces. “The artist herself.”

The woman whirls around, fixing me with a friendly, green-eyed gaze I haven’t seen in fifteen years. It’s a look you easily remember. The kind of gaze that, when aimed at you, makes you feel like the most important person in the world.

“Hello, Emma,” she says.

I freeze, not sure what else to do. I have no idea how she’ll act. Or what she’ll say. Or even why she’s here. I had assumed Francesca Harris-White wanted nothing to do with me.

Yet she smiles warmly before pulling me close until our cheeks touch. A semi-embrace that Randall witnesses with palpable jealousy.

“You already know each other?”

“Yes,” I say, still stunned by her presence.

“It was ages ago. Emma was a mere slip of a girl. And I couldn’t be more proud of the woman she’s become.”

She gives me another look. The look. And although that sense of surprise hasn’t left me, I realize how happy I am to see her. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

“Thank you, Mrs. Harris-White,” I tell her. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

She mock frowns. “What’s with this ‘Mrs. Harris-White’ nonsense? It’s Franny. Always Franny.”

I remember that, too. Her standing before us in her khaki shorts and blue polo shirt, her bulky hiking boots making her feet look comically large. Call me Franny. I insist upon it. Here in the great outdoors, we’re all equals.

It didn’t last. Afterward, when what happened was in newspapers across the country, it was her full, formal name that was used. Francesca Harris-White. Only daughter of real estate magnate Theodore Harris. Sole grandchild of lumber baron Buchanan Harris. Much-younger widow of tobacco heir Robert White. Net worth estimated to be almost a billion, most of it old money stretching back to the Gilded Age.

Now she stands before me, seemingly untouched by time, even though she now must be in her late seventies. She wears her age well. Her skin is tan and radiant. Her sleeveless blue dress emphasizes her trim figure. Her hair, a shade balanced between blond and gray, has been pulled back in a chignon, showing off a single strand of pearls around her neck.

She turns to the painting again, her gaze scanning its formidable width. It’s one of my darker works—all blacks, deep blues, and mud browns. The canvas dwarfs her, making it look as though she’s actually standing in a forest, the trees about to overtake her.

“It’s really quite marvelous,” she says. “All of them are.”

There’s a catch in her voice. Something tremulous and uncertain, as if she can somehow glimpse the girls in their white dresses beneath the painted thicket.

“I must confess that I came here under false pretenses,” she says, still staring at the painting, seemingly unable to look away. “I’m here for the art, of course. But also for something else. I have what you might call an interesting proposition.”

At last, she turns away from the painting, fixing those green eyes on me. “I’d love to discuss it with you, when you have the time.”

I shoot a glance to Randall, who stands behind Franny at a discreet distance. He mouths the word every artist longs to hear: commission.

The idea prompts me to immediately say, “Of course.” Under any other circumstance, I already would have declined.

“Then join me for lunch tomorrow. Let’s say twelve thirty? At my place? It will give us a chance to catch up.”

I find myself nodding, even though I’m not entirely sure what’s happening. Franny’s unexpected appearance. Her even more unexpected invitation to lunch. The scary-yet-tantalizing prospect of being commissioned to paint something for her. It’s another surreal touch to an already strange evening.

“Of course,” I say again, lacking the wherewithal to utter anything else.

Franny beams. “Wonderful.”

She presses a card into my hand. Navy print on heavy white vellum. Simple but elegant. It bears her name, a phone number, and a Park Avenue address. Before leaving, she pulls me into another half hug. Then she turns to Randall and gestures toward No. 30.

“I’ll take it,” she says.

Two

Franny’s building is easy to find. It’s the one that bears her family’s name.

The Harris.

Much like its residents, the Harris is steadfastly inconspicuous. No Dakota-like dormers and gables here. Just understated architecture rising high over Park Avenue. Above the doorway is the Harris family crest carved in marble. It depicts two tall pines crossed together to form an X, surrounded by an ivy laurel. Appropriate, considering the family’s initial fortune came from the culling of such trees.

The inside of the Harris is as somber and hushed as a cathedral. And I’m the sinner tiptoeing inside. An imposter. Someone who doesn’t belong. Yet the doorman smiles and greets me by name, as if I’ve lived here for years.

The warm welcome continues when I’m directed to the elevator. Standing inside is another familiar face from Camp Nightingale.

“Lottie?” I say.

Unlike Franny, she’s changed quite a bit in the past fifteen years. Older, of course. More sophisticated. The shorts and plaid shirt I last saw her wearing have been replaced with a charcoal pantsuit over a crisp white blouse. Her hair, once long and the color of mahogany, is now jet-black and cut into a sleek bob that frames her pale face. But the smile is the same. It has a warm, friendly glow that’s just as vibrant now as it was at Camp Nightingale.

“Emma,” she says, pulling me into a hug. “My God, it’s nice to see you again.”

I hug her back. “You too, Lottie. I wondered if you still worked for Franny.”

“She couldn’t get rid of me if she tried. Not that she’d ever want to.”

Indeed, the two of them were rarely seen apart. Franny the master of the camp and Lottie the devoted assistant. Together they ruled not with an iron fist but with a velvet glove, their benevolent patience never strained, even when surprised by a latecomer like myself. I can still picture the moment I met Lottie. The unhurried way she emerged from the Lodge after my parents and I arrived hours later than expected. She greeted us with a smile, a wave, and a sincere Welcome to Camp Nightingale.

Now she ushers me into the elevator and presses the top button. As we’re whisked upward, she says, “You and Franny will be lunching in the greenhouse. Just wait until you see it.”

I nod, feigning excitement. Lottie sees right through me. She eyes me from head to toe, taking in my stiff-backed posture, my tapping foot, the uncontrollable wavering of my plastered-on smile.

“Don’t be nervous,” she says. “Franny’s forgiven you a hundred times over.”

I wish I could believe that. Even though Franny was nothing but friendly to me at the gallery, a gnawing doubt persists. I can’t shake the feeling that this is more than just a friendly visit.

The elevator doors open, and I find myself looking at the entrance foyer to Franny’s penthouse. To my surprise, the wall directly facing the elevator already bears the painting she had purchased the night before. No little red sticker or weeks of waiting for Francesca Harris-White. Randall must have been up all night organizing its shipment from the gallery to here.

“It’s a beautiful piece,” Lottie says of No. 30. “I can see why Franny was taken with it.”

I wonder if Franny would still be taken if she knew the girls were secreted within the painting, hiding there, waiting to be found. I then wonder how the girls themselves would feel about taking up residence in Franny’s penthouse. Allison and Natalie likely wouldn’t care. But Vivian? She’d fucking love it.

“I plan on taking an afternoon off to visit the gallery and see what else you’ve painted,” Lottie says. “I’m so proud of you, Emma. We all are.”

She leads me down a short hallway to the left, past a formal dining room and through a sunken sitting room. “Here we are. The greenhouse.”

The word doesn’t begin to do the room justice. It’s a greenhouse in the same way Grand Central is a train station. Both are so ornate it defies easy description.

Franny’s greenhouse is in reality a two-story conservatory built on what was once the penthouse terrace. Panes of heavy glass rise from floor to vaulted ceiling, some still bearing triangles of snow in their exterior corners. Contained within this fanciful structure is a miniature forest. There are squat pines, flowering cherry trees, and rosebushes aflame with red blooms. Slick moss and tendrils of ivy cover the ground. There’s even a babbling brook, which flows over a creek bed stippled with rocks. In the center of this fairy-tale forest is a redbrick patio. That’s where I find Franny, seated at a wrought-iron table already set for lunch.

“Here she is,” Lottie announces. “And probably famished. Which means I better start serving.”

Franny greet me with another semi-embrace. “How wonderful to see you again, Emma. And dressed so beautifully, too.”

Since I had no idea what to wear, I put on the nicest thing I own—a printed Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress my parents gave me for Christmas. It turns out I shouldn’t have worried about being underdressed. Next to Franny’s outfit of black pants and white button-down, I feel the opposite. Stiff, formal, and agonizingly nervous about why I’ve been summoned here.

“What do you think of my little greenhouse?” Franny asks.

I take another look around, spying details previously missed. The statue of an angel half-consumed by ivy. The daffodils sprouting beside the creek. “It’s marvelous,” I say. “Too beautiful for words.”

“It’s my tiny oasis in the big city. I decided years ago that if I couldn’t live outdoors, then I’d have to bring the outdoors inside to live with me.”

“So that’s why you bought my biggest painting,” I say.

“Exactly. Looking at it feels like standing before a dark woods, and I must decide if I should venture forth into it. The answer, of course, is yes.”

That would be my answer, too. But unlike Franny, I’d go only because I know the girls are waiting for me just beyond the tree line.

Lunch is trout almondine and arugula salad, washed down with a crisp Riesling. The first glass of wine calms my nerves. The second lets me lower my guard. By the third, when Franny asks me about my job, my personal life, my family, I answer honestly—hate it, still single, parents retired to Boca Raton.

“Everything was delicious,” I say when we finish a dessert of lemon tart so tasty I’m tempted to lick the plate.

“I’m so pleased,” Franny says. “The trout came from Lake Midnight, you know.”

The mention of the lake startles me. Franny notices my surprise and says, “We can still think fondly of a place where bad things have occurred. At least, I can. And I do.”

It’s understandable that Franny feels this way in spite of everything that happened. It is, after all, her family’s property. Four thousand acres of wilderness at the southern base of the Adirondacks, all preserved by her grandfather after he spent a lifetime deforesting land five times that size. I suppose Buchanan Harris thought saving those four thousand acres made up for it. Perhaps it did, even though that preservation also came at a cost to the environment. Disappointed he couldn’t find a tract of land that contained a large body of water, Franny’s grandfather decided to create one himself. He dammed the tributary of a nearby river, slamming the gates shut with the push of a button at the stroke of midnight on a rainy New Year’s Eve in 1902. Within days, what was once a quiet valley became a lake.

The story of Lake Midnight. It was told to every new arrival at Camp Nightingale.

“It hasn’t changed one bit,” Franny continues. “The Lodge is still there, of course. My home away from home. I was just there this past weekend, which is how I happened upon the trout. I caught them myself. The boys hate that I go so often. Especially when it’s just Lottie and myself. Theo worries that there’s no one around to help if something terrible befalls us.”

Hearing about Franny’s sons gives me another uneasy jolt.

Theodore and Chester Harris-White. Such unbearably WASPish names. Like their mother, they prefer their nicknames—Theo and Chet. The youngest, Chet, is hazy in my memory. He was just a boy when I was at Camp Nightingale, no more than ten. The product of a surprise, late-in-life adoption. I can’t recall ever speaking to him, although I must have at some point. I simply remember getting occasional glimpses of him running barefoot down the Lodge’s sloped back lawn to the edge of the lake.

Theo was also adopted. Years before Chet.

I remember a lot about him. Maybe too much.

“How are they?” I ask, even though I have no right to know. I do it only because Franny gives me an expectant look, clearly waiting for me to inquire about them.

“They’re both well. Theo is spending the year in Africa, working with Doctors Without Borders. Chet will be getting his master’s from Yale in the spring. He’s engaged to a lovely girl.” She pauses, allowing the information to settle over me. The silence speaks volumes. It tells me that her family is thriving, in spite of what I did to them. “I thought you might already know all this. I’ve heard the Camp Nightingale grapevine is still fully intact.”

“I’m not really in touch with anyone from there anymore,” I admit.

Not that the girls I knew at camp didn’t try. When Facebook became the rage, I received friend requests from several former campers. I ignored them all, seeing no point in staying in touch. We had nothing in common other than spending two weeks in the same place at the same unfortunate time. That didn’t stop me from being included in a Facebook group of Camp Nightingale alumni. I muted all posts years ago.

“Perhaps we can change that,” Franny says.

“How?”

“I suppose it’s time I reveal why I’ve asked you here today,” she says, adding a tactful “Although I do enjoy your company very much.”

“I’ll admit I’m curious,” I say, which is the understatement of the year.

“I’m going to reopen Camp Nightingale,” Franny announces.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

The words tumble forth, unplanned. They contain a derisive edge. Cold and almost cruel.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That came out wrong.”

Franny reaches across the table, gives my hand a squeeze, and says, “Don’t feel bad at all. You’re not the first person to have that reaction. And even I can admit it’s not the most logical idea. But I feel like it’s the right time. The camp has been quiet long enough.”

Fifteen years. That’s how long it’s been. It feels like a lifetime ago. It also feels like yesterday.

The camp closed early that summer, shutting down after only two weeks and throwing lots of families’ schedules into chaos. It couldn’t be helped. Not after what happened. My parents vacillated between sympathy and annoyance after they picked me up a day later than everyone else. Last to arrive, last to leave. I remember sitting in our Volvo, staring out the back window as the camp receded. Even at thirteen, I knew it would never reopen.

A different camp could have survived the scrutiny. But Camp Nightingale wasn’t just any summer camp. It was the summer camp if you lived in Manhattan and had a bit of money. The place where generations of young women from well-to-do families spent their summers swimming, sailing, gossiping. My mother went there. So did my aunt. At my school, it was known as Camp Rich Bitch. We said it with scorn, trying to hide both our jealousy and our disappointment that our parents couldn’t quite afford to send us there. Except, in my case, for one summer.

The same summer that shattered the camp’s reputation.

The people involved were all notable enough to keep the story in the news for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Natalie, the daughter of the city’s top orthopedic surgeon. Allison, the child of a prominent Broadway actress. And Vivian, the senator’s daughter, whose name often appeared in the newspaper with the word troubled in close proximity.

The press mostly left me alone. Compared with the others, I was a nobody. Just the daughter of a neglectful investment banker father and a high-functioning alcoholic mother. A gangly thirteen-year-old whose grandmother had recently died, leaving her with enough money to spend six weeks at one of the nation’s most exclusive summer camps.

It was Franny who ultimately received the bulk of the media’s scorn. Francesca Harris-White, the rich girl who had always befuddled the society columns with her refusal to play the game. Marrying a contemporary of her father at twenty-one. Burying him before she turned thirty. Adopting a child at forty, then another at fifty.

The coverage was brutal. Articles about how Lake Midnight was an unsafe place for a summer camp, especially considering that her husband had drowned there the year before Camp Nightingale opened. Claims that the camp was understaffed and unsupervised. Think pieces blaming Franny for standing by her son when suspicion swirled around him. Some even insinuated there might be something sinister about Camp Nightingale, about Franny, about her family.

I probably had something to do with that.

Scratch that. I know I did.

Yet Franny shows no ill will as she sits in her faux forest, outlining her vision for the new Camp Nightingale.

“It won’t be the same, of course,” she says. “It can’t be. Although fifteen years is a long enough time, what happened will always be like a shadow hanging over the camp. That’s why I’m going to do things differently this time. I’ve set up a charitable trust. No one will have to pay a penny to stay there. The camp will be completely free and merit-based, serving girls from around the tri-state area.”

“That’s very generous,” I say.

“I don’t want anyone’s money. I certainly don’t need it. All I need is to see the place filled again with girls enjoying the outdoors. And I’d truly love it if you would join me.”

I gulp. Me? Spend the summer at Camp Nightingale? This is far different than the commission offer I had expected to receive. It’s so outlandish I start to think I’ve misheard her.

“It’s not that strange of an idea,” Franny says. “I want the camp to have a strong arts component. Yes, the girls there will swim and hike and do all the usual camp activities. But I also want them to learn about writing, photography, painting.”

“You want me to teach them to paint?”

“Of course,” Franny says. “But you’ll also have plenty of time to work on your own. There’s no better inspiration than nature.”

I still don’t get why Franny wants me, of all people, to be there. I should be the last person she wants around. She senses my hesitation, of course. It’s impossible not to, considering how I sit stiff-backed in my chair, fiddling with the napkin in my lap, twisting it into a coiled knot.

“I understand your trepidation,” she says. “I’d feel the same way if our roles were reversed. But I don’t blame you for what happened, Emma. You were young and confused, and the situation was horrible for everyone. I firmly believe in letting bygones be bygones. And it’s my great wish to have some former campers there. To show everyone that it’s a safe, happy place again. Rebecca Schoenfeld has agreed to do it.”

Becca Schoenfeld. Notable photojournalist. Her image of two young Syrian refugees holding hands while covered in blood made front pages around the world. But more important for Franny’s purposes, Becca’s also a veteran of Camp Nightingale’s final summer.

She noticeably wasn’t one of the girls who sought me out on Facebook. Not that I expected her to. Becca was a mystery to me. Not standoffish, necessarily. Aloof. She was quiet, often alone, content to view the world through the lens of the camera that always hung around her neck, even when she was waist-deep in the lake.

I imagine her sitting at this very table, that same camera dangling from its canvas strap as Franny convinces her to return to Camp Nightingale. Knowing that she’s agreed changes things. It makes Franny’s idea seem less like a folly and more like something that could actually happen. Although not with me.

“It’s an awfully big commitment,” I say.

“You’ll be compensated financially, of course.”

“It’s not that,” I say, still twisting the napkin so hard it’s starting to look like rope. “I’m not sure I can go back there again. Not after what happened.”

“Maybe that’s precisely why you should go back,” Franny says. “I was afraid to return, too. I avoided it for two years. I thought I’d find nothing there but darkness and bad memories. That wasn’t the case. It was as beautiful as ever. Nature heals, Emma. I firmly believe that.”

I say nothing. It’s hard to speak when Fanny’s green-eyed gaze is fixed on me, intense and compassionate and, yes, a little bit needy.

“Tell me you’ll at least give it some thought,” she says.

“I will,” I tell her. “I’ll think about it.”

Three

I don’t think about it.

I obsess.

Franny’s offer dominates my thoughts for the rest of the day. But it’s not the kind of thinking she was hoping for. Instead of pondering how wonderful it might be to go back to Camp Nightingale, I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t return. Crushing guilt I haven’t been able to shake in fifteen years. Plain old anxiety. All of them continue to flutter through my thoughts when I meet Marc for dinner at his bistro.

“I think you should go,” he says as he pushes a plate of ratatouille in front of me. It’s my favorite dish on the menu, steaming and ripe with the scent of tomatoes and herbs de Provence. Normally, I’d already be digging in. But Franny’s proposal has sapped my appetite. Marc senses this and slides a large wineglass next to the plate, filled almost to the rim with pinot noir. “It might do you some good.”

“My therapist would beg to differ.”

“I doubt that. It’s a textbook case of closure.”

God knows, I haven’t had much of that. There were memorial services for all three girls, staggered over a six-month period, depending on when their families gave up hope. Allison’s was first. All song and drama. Then Natalie’s, always in the middle, her service a quiet, family-only affair. Vivian’s was the last, on a bitterly cold January morning. Hers was the only one I attended. My parents told me I couldn’t go, but I went anyway, ditching school to slide into the last pew of the packed church, far away from her weeping parents. There were so many senators and congressmen present that it felt like watching C-SPAN.

The service didn’t help. Neither did reading about Allison’s and Natalie’s services online. Mostly because there was the chance, however slim, that they could still be alive. It doesn’t matter that the state of New York declared all of them legally dead after three years. Until their bodies are found, there’s no way of knowing.

“I’m not sure closure is the issue,” I say.

“Then what is the issue, Em?”

“It’s the place where three people vanished into thin air. That’s the issue.”

“Understood,” Marc says. “But there’s something else going on. Something you’re not telling me.”

“Fine.” I sigh into my ratatouille, steam skirting across the table. “I haven’t painted a thing in the past six months.”

A stricken look crosses Marc’s face, like he doesn’t quite believe me. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“So you’re stuck,” he says.

“It’s more than that.”

I admit everything. How I can’t seem to paint anything but the girls. How I refuse to continue down that path of obliterating their white-frocked forms with trees and vines. How day after day I stare at the giant canvas in my loft, trying to summon the will to create something new.

“Okay, so you’re obsessed.”

“Bingo,” I say, reaching for the wine and taking a hearty gulp.

“I don’t want to seem insensitive,” Marc says. “And I certainly don’t want to belittle your emotions. You feel what you feel, and I get that. What I don’t understand is why, after all this time, what happened at that camp still haunts you so much. Those girls were practically strangers.”

My therapist has said the same thing. As if I don’t know how weird it is to be so affected by something that happened fifteen years ago and fixated on girls I knew for only two weeks.

“They were friends,” I say. “And I feel bad about what happened to them.”

“Bad or guilty?”

“Both.”

I was the last person to see them alive. I could have stopped them from doing whatever the hell it was they had planned to do. Or I could have told Franny or a counselor as soon as they left. Instead, I went back to sleep. Now I still sometimes hear Vivian’s parting words in my dreams.

You’re too young for this, Em.

“And you’re afraid that being back there again will make you feel even worse,” Marc says.

Rather than answer, I reach for the glass, the wine catching my wobbly reflection. I stare at myself, shocked by how strange I appear. Do I really look that sad? I must, because Marc’s tone softens as he says, “It’s natural to be afraid. Friends of yours died.”

“Vanished,” I say.

“But they are dead, Emma. You know that, right? The worst thing that could happen has already taken place.”

“There’s something worse than death.”

“Such as?”

“Not knowing,” I say. “Which is why I’m only able to paint those girls. And I can’t keep doing that, Marc. I need to move on.”

There’s more to it than that. Although he knows the basics of what took place, there’s still plenty I haven’t told Marc. Things that happened at Camp Nightingale. Things that happened afterward. The real reason I always wear the charm bracelet, the birds clinking each time I move my left arm. To admit them out loud would mean that they’re true. And I don’t want to confront that truth.

Some would say I’ve been lying to Marc. To everyone, really. But after my time at Camp Nightingale, I vowed never to lie again.

Omission. That’s my tactic. A different sin entirely.

“This is all the more reason for you to go.” Marc reaches across the table and clasps my hands. His palms are callused, his fingers lined with scars. The hands of a lifelong cook. “Maybe being there again is all you need to start painting something different. You know the old saying—sometimes the only way out is through.”

After dinner, I return to my loft and stand before a blank canvas. Its emptiness taunts me, as it’s done for weeks. A wide expanse of nothing daring me to fill it.

I grab a palette, well-worn and rainbow-hued. I smear some paint onto it, dab it with the tip of a brush, and will myself to paint something. Anything but the girls. I touch the brush to the canvas, bristles gliding, trailing color.

But then I take a step back and stare at the brushstroke, studying it. It’s yellow. Slightly curved. Like an S that’s been squished. It is, I realize, a length of Vivian’s hair, the blond streak doing a little flip as she retreats. There’s nothing else it could be.

I grab a nearby rag that reeks of turpentine and swipe it over the yellow paint until it’s just a faint smudge marring the canvas. Tears spring from my eyes as I realize the only thing I’ve painted in weeks is this indistinct smear.

It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.

I wipe my eyes, noticing something on the edge of my vision. Near the window. A movement. A flash.

Blond hair. Pale skin.

Vivian.

I yelp and drop the rag, the fingers of my right hand grasping at the bracelet around my left. I give it a twist, the birds taking flight as I whirl around to face her.

Only it’s not Vivian I see.

It’s me, reflected in the window. In the night-darkened glass, I look startled, weak, and, above all else, shaken.

Shaken that the girls are always in my thoughts and on my canvases, even though it makes no sense. That after fifteen long years, I know as much about what happened now as I did the night they left the cabin. That in the days following the disappearance, I only made things worse. For Franny. For her family. For myself.

I could finally change that. Just one small hint about what happened could make a difference. It won’t erase my sins. But there is a chance it could make them more bearable.

I turn away from the window, grab my phone, and dial the number printed so elegantly on the calling card Franny gave me last night. The call goes straight to voicemail and a recording of Lottie suggesting I leave a message.

“This is Emma Davis. I’ve given more thought about Franny’s offer to spend the summer at Camp Nightingale.” I pause, not quite believing what I’m about to say next. “And my answer is yes. I’ll do it.”

I hang up before I can change my mind. Even so, I’m struck with the urge to call again and take it all back. My finger twitches against the phone’s screen, itching to do just that. Instead, I call Marc.

“I’m going back to Camp Nightingale,” I announce before he can say hello.

“I’m glad to hear my pep talk worked,” Marc says. “Closure is a good thing, Em.”

“I want to try to find them.”

There’s silence on Marc’s end. I picture him blinking a few times while running a hand through his hair—his normal reaction to something he can’t quite comprehend. Eventually, he says, “I know I encouraged you to go, Em, but this doesn’t sound like the best idea.”

“Bad idea or not, that’s why I’m going.”

“But try to think clearly here. What do you rationally expect to find?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably nothing.”

I certainly don’t expect to uncover Vivian, Natalie, and Allison. They literally vanished without a trace, which makes it hard to know where to start looking for them. Then there’s the sheer size of the place. While Camp Nightingale may be small, much more land surrounds it. More than six square miles of forest. If several hundred searchers couldn’t find them fifteen years ago, I’m not going to find them now.

“But what if one of them left something behind?” I say. “Something hinting at where they were going or what they were up to.”

“And what if there is?” Marc asks. “It still won’t bring them back.”

“I understand that.”

“Which begs another question: Why do you need this so much?”

I pause, thinking of a way to explain the unexplainable. It’s not easy, especially when Marc doesn’t know the full story. I settle on saying, “Have you ever regretted something days, weeks, even years after you’ve done it?”

“Sure,” Marc says. “I think everyone has at least one big regret.”

“What happened at that camp is mine. For fifteen years, I’ve waited for a clue. Just some small thing hinting at what happened to them. Now I have a chance to go back there and look for myself. Likely the last chance I’ll get to try to find some answers. If I turn that down, I worry it will just become another thing to regret.”

Marc sighs, which means I’ve convinced him. “Just promise me you won’t do something stupid,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Like put yourself in danger.”

“It’s a summer camp,” I say. “It’s not like I’m infiltrating the mob. I’m simply going to go, look around, maybe ask a few questions. And when those six weeks are over, perhaps I’ll have some idea of what happened to them. Even if I don’t, maybe being there again is all I need to start painting something different. You said it yourself—sometimes the only way out is through.”

“Fine,” Marc says with another sigh. “Plan your camping trip. Try to get some answers. Come back ready to paint.”

As we say our good-nights, I get a glimpse of my first painting of the girls. No. 1, offering its scant views of Vivian, Natalie, and Allison. I approach it, looking for flashes of hair, bits of dress.

Even though a branch covers their eyes, I know they’re staring back at me. It’s as if they’ve understood all along that I’d one day return to Camp Nightingale. Only I can’t tell if they’re urging me to go or begging me to stay away.