Chapter Twenty-eight

We are back in Westbridge. Maura parks the car at the Benjamin Franklin Middle School lot.

“I need you to give me your phone,” she says to me.

I’m surprised to find it’s still in my pocket. I use my fingerprint to unlock it and hand it to her. Her thumbs dance across the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re a cop,” she says. “You know that these phones can be traced, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m loading on a sort of VPN antitracker, so it looks like you’re in another state.”

I didn’t know that kind of technology existed, but I’m not surprised. Her thumbs finish the dance. Then she hands me back the phone, opens the car door, gets out. I do the same.

“What are we doing here, Maura?”

“I want to see it again.”

“See what?”

But she starts toward the Path and I follow. I try not to stare as she moves, her walk still panther-like, but I can’t help it. As we head up into the darkness, she turns around and says, “God, how I’ve missed you,” and then turns back around and keeps walking.

Just like that.

I don’t react. I can’t react. But every part of me feels ripped open.

I hurry to catch up to her.

The full moon tonight gives off enough light. The shadows cut across our faces as we start up the familiar route. We stay silent, both because the darkness calls for that and because, well, these woods used to be our place. You would think tonight of all nights that would haunt me. You would think that tonight of all nights, walking with Maura, the ghosts would be surrounding me, tapping me on the shoulder, mocking me from behind the rocks and trees.

But they are not.

Tonight I’m not falling back. I don’t hear the whispers. The ghosts, oddly enough, stay hidden.

“You know about the videotape,” Maura says, part question, mostly statement.

“How long have you been following me?” I ask.

“Two days.”

“I know about the tape,” I say. “Did you know?”

“I was on it, Nap.”

“No, I mean, did you know Hank had it? Or that he gave it to David Rainiv for safekeeping?”

She shakes her head. Up ahead the old fence comes into view. Maura veers off the Path to the right. She bounces a few steps down the hill and stops herself by a tree. I make my way there. We are getting closer to the old base.

She stops and stares at the old fence. I stop and stare at her face.

“I waited here that night. Behind this tree.” She looks down at the ground. “I sat right here and watched the fence. I had a joint from your brother. And I had my flask from you.” She meets my eyes, and maybe it’s not the ghosts, but something smacks me hard in the heart. “You remember that flask?”

I’d gotten it at a garage sale at the old Siegel house. It was old and dented. The color was gunmetal. The faded engraving read: A Ma Vie de Coer Entier, which was a fifteenth-century French saying, “You Have My Whole Heart for My Whole Life.” I remember asking Mr. Siegel where he’d gotten it, but he couldn’t remember. He called over Mrs. Siegel and asked her, but neither of them could even remember owning it. It felt somehow magical and stupid, like a genie’s lamp I was supposed to find, and so I bought it for three dollars and I gave it to Maura, who giddily said, “A gift that involves romance and alcohol?”

“Am I not the perfect boyfriend?”

“You are,” she’d said. And then she threw her arms around me and kissed me hard.

“I remember,” I say now. Then: “So you sat by this tree with a joint and a flask. Who else was with you?”

“I was alone.”

“What about the Conspiracy Club?”

“You knew about that?”

I give a half shrug.

Maura looks back toward the base. “We weren’t supposed to meet that night. I think seeing that copter, making that tape—it freaked some of them out. It was all a game before then. That night made it real. Anyway, I wasn’t really part of the”—finger quotes—“‘club.’ My only real friend was Leo. He had plans with Diana that night. So I came here and sat against this tree. I had my joint and my Jack in the flask.”

Maura slides now to the ground and sits just as, I assume, she sat that night. A small smile is on her face. “I was thinking about you. I wished I was at your game. I hated the whole jock thing before you, but I loved to watch you skate.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I stay still.

“Anyway, I could only get to the home games, and you guys were playing away that night. Summit, I think.”

“Parsippany Hills.”

She chuckles. “Figures you’d remember. Anyway it didn’t matter. We’d be together in a few hours. I was just getting a little ahead of you here in the woods. The kids call it ‘pregaming’ now. So I kept drinking, and I remember feeling a little sad.”

“Why sad?”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I want to know.”

“It’d be over soon.”

“What?”

From her spot on the ground she looks up. “You and me.”

“Wait, you knew all that when you were just sitting here?”

Maura shakes her head. “You can still be so obtuse, Nap. I had no idea what was about to happen.”

“Then—?”

“What I mean is, I knew you and I would never make it. Not for the long haul. We’d finish senior year, maybe last the summer—”

“I loved you.”

I just blurt it out, like that. It startles her for a second, but not much longer than that.

“And I loved you, Nap. But you were off to a fancy college and a big life and there wouldn’t be room for me and, God, what a cliché, right?” Maura stops, closes her eyes, shakes it off. “There’s no reason to revisit this right now.”

She’s right. I help her ease back on topic. “So you were sitting here drinking and smoking.”

“Right. And I’m getting a little wasted. Not terribly. Just tipsy. And I’m staring at this base. It’s always so quiet there, but suddenly I hear a noise.”

“What kind of noise?”

“I don’t know. Men shouting. An engine starting up. So I stand up”—Maura does that now, sliding her back up the tree—“and I figure what the hell. Let’s get to the bottom of this once and for all. Be a hero to the whole Conspiracy Club cause. So I start marching toward the fence.”

Maura marches toward the base. I stay right with her.

“What did you see?” I ask.

“There were a bunch more of those warning signs. Like a ton circling the base. They were all bright red, remember?”

“Yes.”

“Like, ‘this is your last chance, go back or die.’ We were always afraid to go past them because they were too close to the fence line. But that night I didn’t even slow down. I actually started sprinting.”

We are both back there now, on that night, and I almost hesitate at the spot where those red signs used to be. We cross the invisible barrier, heading straight toward the rusted fence. She points to the top of the corner pole.

“There was a camera up there. I remember thinking that they might see me. But I was flying high, not a care in the world. I just kept running and then . . .”

She slows, stops. Her hand comes up to her throat.

“Maura?”

“I was right about here when the lights came on.”

“Lights?”

“Spotlights. Huge ones with big beams. They were so bright I had to put my hand up to shade my eyes.” She does that now, shading her eyes from an imaginary light. “I couldn’t make out a thing. I was sort of frozen there, in the beam, not sure what to do. And then I heard the gunfire.”

Maura lowers her hand.

“They were shooting at you?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?”

“I mean, that’s what started it, right?” Maura’s voice goes up an octave now. I can hear the fear, the regret. “Me. I ran toward the fence like a stupid kid. I ignored the warning signs. I tripped a wire or they spotted me or something, so they did what they promised on the signs. They started shooting. So, yeah, I guess they were shooting at me.”

“What did you do?”

“I turned and ran. I remember hearing a bullet hit a tree right by my head. But, see, eventually I made it out alive. The bullets—they never hit me.”

She raises her head and looks me straight in the eyes.

“Leo,” I say.

“I kept running, and they kept shooting. And then . . .”

“Then what?”

“I heard a woman scream. I’m sprinting as fast as I can, dodging trees, trying to keep low so I make a smaller target. But I turn when I hear the scream. A woman’s scream. I see someone, maybe a man, in silhouette through those bright lights . . . more gunfire blasts . . . then I hear the woman scream again, except this time . . . this time I think I recognize the voice. She screams, ‘Leo!’ She screams, ‘Leo, help,’ except the ‘help’ is cut off by another shot being fired.”

I realize I’m holding my breath.

“And now . . . now I hear a man yell for everyone to hold their fire . . . silence . . . dead silence . . . and then maybe, I don’t know anymore, but maybe someone yells, ‘What have you done . . .’ And then someone else yells, ‘There was another girl, we have to find her . . .’ but I don’t hear that for sure, I don’t know if it’s in my head or for real, because I’m running. I’m running and I’m not stopping . . .”

She looks at me like she needs my help and like I better not offer any.

I don’t move. I don’t think I can.

“They . . . they just shot them?”

Maura doesn’t reply.

Then I say something dumb. “And you just ran away?”

“What?”

“I mean, I get why you ran then—to get away from the danger. But when you were safe, why didn’t you call the police?”

“And say what?”

“How about ‘Hello, I saw two people shot’?”

Her eyes flick away from me. “Maybe I should have,” she says.

“That’s not really a good enough answer.”

“I was stoned and scared and I freaked out, okay? It’s not like I knew they’d been shot dead or something. I didn’t see or hear Leo, just Diana. I panicked. You get that, right? So I hid for a while.”

“Where?”

“You remember that stone hut behind the town pool?”

I nod.

“I just sat there in the dark. I don’t know how long. You can see Hobart Avenue from there. I saw big black cars driving by slowly. Maybe I was just paranoid, but I thought they were looking for me. At some point I decided to go to your house.”

This is news to me, but then again, what about tonight isn’t? “You went to my house?”

“That was my destination, yeah, but when I reached your street, I saw another big black car parked on the corner. It’s past midnight. Two men are sitting in suits watching your house. So I knew. They were covering their bases.” She came closer to me. “Pretend now that I call this in to the police. I call and I say I think the guys at the base maybe shot someone. I don’t really have any details or anything. But I have to give my name. They’d ask what I was doing near the base. I could lie or I could say I was up there smoking a joint and drinking some Jack. By the time they’d listen to me, those guys at the base—they’d clean it up. Do you really not see this?”

“So you just ran again,” I say.

“Yes.”

“To Ellie’s.”

She nods. “At one point, I said to myself, ‘Let’s give it a day or two, see what happens.’ Maybe they’ll forget about me. But of course they don’t. I’m watching from behind a rock when they interrogate my mother. And then when I see on the news that they found Leo’s and Diana’s bodies . . . I mean, I knew. The news didn’t say anything about them being shot. They said they were hit by a train on the other side of town. So now what? What could I do? The evidence was gone. Who would ever believe me?”

“I would have,” I say. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Oh, Nap, are you serious?”

“You could have told me, Maura.”

“And what would you have done? You, a hotheaded eighteen-year-old boy?” She glares at me for a moment. “If I’d told you, you’d be dead too.”

We stand there and let that truth hang in the air.

“Come on,” Maura says with a shiver. “Let’s get out of here.”