Don't Tell ds-2 Read online

  She let go of me abruptly. “What a ridiculous thing to ask!”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he replied. “The last time Lauren was here her mother met with a fatal accident. At least we called it an accident. The sheriff isn’t calling this one anything other than deliberate. The only question is whether it was random or not.”

  Aunt Jule’s eyes flashed. “No one who knows Lauren would want to hurt her. And I resent what you’re implying about Sondra’s death. It was an accident — just like Margaret’s,” she added slyly.

  I figured the reference to his wife was meant to sting, but Frank responded mildly. “I guess that’s why it’s got me concerned. This was awfully similar to Marge’s accident, and she was killed instantly.”

  The color drained from Aunt Jule’s face.

  The porch door banged back, and Holly stepped outside.

  “Hey, Lauren, did you get everything?”

  “Yes, I’ll bring it in.”

  “Nick, we need help,” I heard Holly say. He followed her out of the house and down the path. “Where’s your car?”

  Holly asked, when she and Nick reached us.

  Frank filled them in on the accident. Aunt Jule listened to the details for a second time, rubbing one hand over the other. Holly grilled me with more questions.

  “I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed at the end. “People are such jerks!”

  Nick stood next to her silently, a wary expression on his face. Perhaps he was waiting for me to blame Nora. But even if I were positive that Nora was behind this, I wouldn’t have accused her. The more I tried to convince Aunt Jule and him that something was seriously wrong, the more they denied it.

  “Well, let’s get the food into the fridge,” I said. “Thanks for stopping, Frank. I was pretty rattled.”

  “No problem,” he replied. “Call me if you need anything.”

  I needed a clone — a look-alike who would go to the party, swim in the dark river, and act cool around Nick. It was nearly six o’clock and I still hadn’t put on my bathing suit.

  Holly stopped by my room to warn me that the entire class was invited, so Jason would be coming.

  “I figured that.”

  “Do you need a suit?” she asked, noticing my shorts and shirt. Then she grinned. “Do we dare to see what Mom has in her closet? Maybe a crochet bikini with matching beach mules?”

  I laughed out loud. “Think I’ll pass on that.”

  “You know, I’m glad to have your help tonight, Lauren.

  Really, I’m desperate for it! But you’re going to party, too, right?”

  “Right,” I replied, planning to keep a low profile.

  It wasn’t hard at a gathering attended by eighty kids.

  Jason, his buddies, and several girls passed by without noticing me while I was setting out trays of food. Rocky found me, but Nick was nowhere in sight. Frank came over about eight-thirty to munch and admire the work we’d done.

  He had lent Holly two dozen torches, which made a fiery trail down to the river. His strings of outdoor lights and electric generator had the dock glowing like Christmas.

  “Doesn’t it look terrific?” I asked.

  “Yup! It’s a perfect site for a party,” he said, surveying the landscape. “Where’s Jule?”

  “Last time I saw her, on the upper porch.”

  “Great chaperon,” he observed.

  “Don’t worry,” I teased, “if there’s any trouble I’ll come get you.”

  “Will you?” he replied, grinning. “I’m locking the door and pulling the shades. I guess Nora doesn’t show up for these things.”

  “She’s probably hiding in her room.”

  Frank asked about the estimate Pete had given me on my car. “Not too bad,” he said. “Not nearly as bad as I thought it’d be, but if your insurance company gives you any grief, let me know. I’ll tell them what they need to hear.” He moved on, then stopped twenty feet away to survey the partyscape again and smile at someone. I followed his gaze to Nick.

  I thought I had caught Nick’s eye, but he turned away and I didn’t see him for another hour. Holly and I were kneeling on the ground, bent over bags of ice, trying to break apart the cubes.

  “Muscles, just in time!” Holly said, smiling up at him.

  He didn’t smile back — barely acknowledged her — fixing his gaze on me. In the flickering torchlight he looked different, his jaw set, his eyes intense.

  “I want to talk to you, Lauren.”

  I saw Holly raise an eyebrow. “Shall I leave?” she asked, a note of irritation in her voice.

  “No,” he replied quickly. “This isn’t private. I want to thank you, Lauren, for getting my cartoon pulled from the newspaper.”

  “What?”

  “The cartoon you saw hanging above my drafting table, the one I sold to the Easton paper.”

  I looked at Nick confused. “What about it?”

  “Aren’t they running it?” Holly asked.

  “No.”

  She frowned. “Did they give you a reason why?”

  “Oh, yeah, they gave me a reason. Editorial decision.

  Funny thing, the editors loved it last week.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did they change their minds?”

  He stared at me coldly.

  I stood up. “You can’t be blaming me.”

  “Who else on the Shore would want to protect your father?” he asked.

  “I resent that.”

  “I resent your getting my cartoon pulled.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  Holly rose and stood next to me. “Perhaps, Nick, you should have asked for a more specific reason than editorial decision.”

  “I did, several times, but they were evasive. Obviously, someone has put pressure on the paper. Maybe not you, Lauren, maybe it was your father or his supporters. But then, how would they know about the cartoon? Who would have seen it and told them?”

  I shook my head at him, amazed that he would accuse me.

  “Things like small publications may not seem important to you,” Nick went on. “You’ve got connections — people will bend over backward for Senator Brandt’s kid. But I have to earn my way. One publication leads to the next. Every acceptance is important to me.”

  “How can you think I’d do that to you?” I demanded. “I wouldn’t do it to anyone! I thought you knew me better.”

  He glanced past me, then met my eyes with steely intensity. “So did I.”

  thirteen

  Nick strode away. I stood there dumbfounded. When I finally realized Holly’s hand was resting on my shoulder, I turned to her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “When Nick cools down, I’ll talk to him.”

  “I didn’t ask them to pull it, Holly.”

  “I believe you. And after I talk to Nick, he will, too.”

  “Maybe.” I looked down at the lumpy bags of ice, then picked up one of the crab mallets that we were using as hammers. “Leave this job to me. I’ll enjoy it.”

  She laughed. “Go for it, girl.”

  I banged away, feeling better with each shattering of ice.

  Several guys tried to help, but I politely declined their offers and filled up two cold chests by myself.

  Karen, my guide at the yearbook office, stopped to talk.

  Redheaded Steve came by and told me he had a photo of Jason and me at the prom, posing inside the arch of roses, and several excellent shots of Jason lying among the punch cups. Steve was hoping Holly would okay his before-andafter idea.

  I laughed in spite of myself.

  A little while later Holly tried to get me involved in the party by asking me to help with the dancing-on-the-dock contest.

  We played music while blindfolded couples slow danced, trying not to fall in the water. Jason and a pretty girl went quickly. Nick and his partner didn’t tumble over till near the end.

  We awarded silly prizes and the party went on. Some kids hung out on the dock, s
ome swam, and others sat in groups scattered over the lawn. I wanted to leave but was afraid I’d hurt Holly’s feelings. I sat with Karen and her friends from yearbook, watching the party like a movie, trying hard to keep my eyes off Nick.

  “Earth to Lauren,” Karen said.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “We’re going up on the dock. Want to come?”

  I hesitated. “Okay.”

  I followed the group, wishing I had made myself walk to the end of the dock before the party. A tall guy, one of Jason’s friends, was giving the girls a leg up, but when it was my turn, he withdrew his hand.

  “Well, look who it is.”

  “Hi,” I said, and climbed onto the dock unassisted.

  Jason’s friend leaped up behind me.

  “Want to play tag?” he asked. “We’re getting up a game of water tag.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I was following Karen.”

  When I tried to move on, he stepped on my heel. “Don’t you swim?”

  “I do, but I don’t want to tonight.”

  “Why not tonight?” he persisted.

  “I’m not in the mood. And I’m not wearing a bathing suit,” I added, walking ahead.

  He caught me by the elbow. “You know how to swim better than your mother, right?”

  That didn’t deserve a response. I strode toward the end of the T-shaped dock and tried to turn right, where Karen had gone. But Jason’s friend followed and deftly stepped in front of me, separating me from my group.

  “Come on. You can swim in what you’re wearing.”

  “I really don’t want to.”

  “Water’s warm.” There was no warmth in his voice.

  He took a quick step toward me, and I moved away, toward the left side of the dock. Kids lined both sides of the walkway, dangling their feet over the river. As the guy pressed forward, the only thing I could do was continue to the left. We reached the end of that part of the dock.

  “Hey, everybody, look who I found,” he announced to the kids gathered in the water below us.

  I gazed down at the place where my mother had died. For a moment all I could see were the dark river and blurs of swimmers looking up at me, the party lights turning their shiny skins green and orange. The faces of Jason and his teammates slowly came into focus.

  “I tried to get her to come in, but she doesn’t want to play with us.”

  “Aw,” one guy said mockingly.

  “Snob,” said another.

  “Step on her foot, Ken,” Jason suggested.

  Ken moved closer to me. Feeling lightheaded, I reached for a piling to steady myself. The wood was wet and I shrank from it. It was the piling on which my mother had bled.

  With a sudden move Ken pulled my knees out from under me, flipping me into the water. For a moment I was stunned by the impact and cold. The black river rushed over my head. My ears felt swollen from the surge of water. I hit bottom, kicked hard, and surfaced.

  Jason and his friends encircled me. They were tall enough to keep their heads above water, but I had to tread.

  Jason reached out, his wide hand coming down swiftly on my head, shoving me under. I pushed up, angry, gasping for air. Laughing faces surrounded me.

  Another hand hovered, then pushed me down. I fought my way back to the surface and tried to swim away, going left, then right. Their circle tightened. They shoved me under and held me there. When I surfaced, I tried to call for help, but I didn’t have enough air in my lungs. They kept pushing me down like a bobbing toy. I began to panic. The taste of river mud was in my mouth. I saw black spots, as if the darkness of the water was seeping into my brain. My stomach cramped and I doubled over.

  Then a force came rushing through the water, scattering us. The circle broke. I swam through it and kept swimming, wanting to stop for breath, but not daring to. When I kicked my foot against the bottom I finally stood up, breathing hard, with the water just above my knees. Rocky was next to me.

  I heard the raucous laughter behind me. “Dumb dog!”

  “Smart dog,” I whispered to Rocky as we waded to shore.

  Holly and Nick were standing close together at the edge of the water.

  “I knew you should have put on a suit,” Holly said, smiling at me.

  I stared at her. Didn’t she realize what those guys were doing? Didn’t she see how scared I was?

  “They’re a mean group,” I said.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “They knew I was out of breath.”

  “Oh, Lauren, they were just having fun.”

  “Then their sense of fun is warped.”

  She didn’t get it — she seemed amused. “The guys were teasing you. It’s how they flirt.”

  I turned to Nick, but he said nothing. I wondered what he would have done if they had “teased” Nora like that. “I’m going in.”

  “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” Holly asked.

  “No.” The dog was still by my side. “Nick, I want to take Rocky with me. I’ll let him out later, okay?”

  “He’s going to smell awful,” Holly reminded me.

  “Fine,” Nick said with a shrug.

  When I got to the kitchen, I gave Rocky a bowl of water and a piece of turkey. “Sorry I don’t have any waterfowl to offer you.” I found an old towel and dried him off as best I could. “I don’t know what I would have done without you, big guy,” I whispered.

  Holding on to his tags so they wouldn’t jingle, I led Rocky upstairs. I heard Aunt Jule’s television and tiptoed past her bedroom. When I was a child, I told my godmother everything. It hurt not to trust her now, but I could guess what she’d say if I recounted the incident in the river. At best, she’d dismiss it, seeing it as Holly did; at worst, she’d say I was obsessed with my mother’s drowning.

  Nora’s door was closed as usual. So was mine, though I didn’t remember shutting it. I opened the door and flicked on the overhead light. Rocky trotted in happily. I stood frozen in the doorway, surveying my room in disbelief.

  The curtains hung half off the rod, as if someone had yanked on them furiously, each panel tied in a knot. The sheets were pulled off the bed and twisted grotesquely, their corners in knots. My bedside lamp lay on its side, its shade bent, its cord knotted. My heart necklace, muddy stockings, and the bras in my laundry hamper were all tied in knots.

  Now I knew how my mother had felt — this attack was personal.

  I pulled open bureau drawers. My clothes were a mess, rolled up on themselves as if someone had tried tying their clumsy shapes. In the closet, the arms of my long-sleeved shirts were knotted.

  Just touching the knots made me feel creepy, but I had to get rid of them. As I untied my things, I reviewed the events of the last three days, trying to determine what was truly a threat and cause for fear. The water in the boathouse was probably stirred by a wake. The note left in my car and the brick thrown at my windshield could have been done by or for Nora, but they also could have been random pranks. It seemed likely that the harassment in the river was revenge for decking Jason at the prom. Setting aside those events, the strangest ones remained: the swing incident, the nighttime experience in the greenhouse, and these knots.

  I thought about showing some of the knots to Holly, then I kept on untying. Like me, Holly saw that Nora had serious problems and she wanted those problems fixed, but the incident with Jason’s friends had made it clear — Holly read only the surface of things. I was convinced there was a lot going on beneath it. As for Frank, I didn’t see how I could talk to him about things that sounded so crazy.

  I had untied everything but my heart necklace. I stared down at its tiny knots, thinking about the way the chain had crept along my neck, the way the jade plant moved on its own, and the swing rope snapped and knotted. What power was at work here? The power of my own imagination and fear — or something stranger — an invisible, dangerous thing?

  I pulled out the card with Dr. Parker’s number and reached for my cell phone. I was
finally scared to the point of desperate. My mother had seen things knotted in the weeks before she died. Now I was.

  fourteen

  Dr. Parker’s pink glasses looked like magic spectacles in the lava-lamp interior of Wayne’s Bar. When he’d asked me to meet him there at eleven P.M., I’d wondered what I was getting myself into, but Wayne’s turned out to be a health bar serving various flavors of springwater, herbal teas, and vegetable dishes, some of which looked suspiciously like cooked bay grass.

  I was sipping my raspberry water and staring at Dr.

  Parker’s glasses, as if an answer might suddenly rise to the surface of them the way it does on a Magic 8 Ball. He had listened without interrupting while I recounted some of the events of seven years ago and the strange things that had been happening recently. Now he was either thinking or asleep.

  “An interesting image,” he murmured, then opened his eyes. “Tell me, Lauren, tell me all about knots. What do they mean?”

  I stared at him blankly. “I don’t want to be rude, but I thought you were going to explain them.”

  “If you were writing a poem,” he said, “and used a knot as a symbol, an image, what might it stand for?”

  I gazed down at my hands, twisting my fingers around one another.

  “Think of all the different kinds of knots you have seen,” he prompted, “not just the recent ones — others. What do they do? How do they work?”

  “Well, there are nautical knots,” I began. “You could use one to tie a boat to a dock or make fast a sail.”

  “So a knot can link things and hold them steady,” he said.

  “Yes, like a knot that ties a plant to a trellis and gives it the support it needs.”

  “Good. Keep going.”

  I traced a shape on the table with my finger. “I’ve seen jewelry, silver and gold wires, that has been twisted into shapes called love knots. I guess they symbolize the linking of two people.”

  I drew the shape again, as if it were dangling from a chain, then thought of the heart necklace pulling against my neck. “There are knots that can be tied and tightened until they hurt you, even kill you. Like a hangman’s noose.”