The Woods

“My mother and I?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen her in eighteen years.”

We sat there.

“You’ve lost a lot of people, Paul.”

“You’re not going to psychoanalyze me, are you?”

“No, nothing like that.” She sat back and looked up and away. It was a look that sent me right back. We would sit out in the camp’s old baseball field, where the grass was overgrown, and I would hold her and she would look up and away like that.

“When I was in college,” Lucy began, “I had this friend. She was a twin. Fraternal, not identical. I guess that doesn’t make much of a difference, but with the identical, there seems to be a stronger bond. Anyway, when we were sophomores her sister died in a car crash. My friend had the strangest reaction. She was devastated, of course, but part of her was almost relieved. She thought, well, that’s it. God got me. That was my turn. I’m okay for now. I gave at the office. You lose a twin sister like that, you’re sorta safe the rest of your life. One heartbreaking tragedy per person. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“But life isn’t like that. Some get a lifetime pass. Others, like you, get more than your share. Much more. And the worst part is, it doesn’t make you immune to even more.”

“Life ain’t fair,” I said.

“Amen.” Then she smiled at me. “This is so weird, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I know we were together for, what, six weeks?”

“Something like that.”

“And it was just a summer fling, when you think about it. You’ve probably had dozens of girls since then.”

“Dozens?” I repeated.

“What, more like hundreds?”

“At the very least,” I said.

Silence. I felt something well up in my chest.

“But you were special, Lucy. You were…”

I stopped.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “So were you. That’s why this is awkward. I want to know everything about you. But I’m not sure now is the time.”

It was as if a surgeon was at work, a time-warping plastic surgeon maybe. He had snipped off the last twenty years, pulled my eighteen-year-old self up to meet my thirty-eight-year-old one, done it almost seamlessly.

“So what made you call me?” I asked.

“The strange thing?”

“Yeah.”

“You said you had one too.”

I nodded.

“Would you mind going first?” she asked. “You know, like when we messed around?”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.” She stopped, crossed her arms over her chest as if cold. “I’m babbling like a ditz. Can’t help it.”

“You haven’t changed, Luce.”

“Yeah, Cope. I’ve changed. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve changed.”

Our eyes met, really met, for the first time since I entered the room. I’m not big on reading people’s eyes. I have seen too many good liars to believe much of what I see. But she was telling me something there, a tale, and the tale had a lot of pain in it.

I didn’t want any lies between the two of us.

“Do you know what I do now?” I asked.

“You’re the county prosecutor. I saw that online too.”

“Right. That gives me access to information. One of my investigators did a quick background check on you.”

“I see. So you know about my drinking and driving.”

I said nothing.

“I drank too much, Cope. Still do. But I don’t drive anymore.”

“Not my business.”

“No, it’s not. But I’m glad you told me.” She leaned back, folded her hands, placed them in her lap. “So tell me what happened, Cope.”

“A few days ago, a couple of Manhattan homicide detectives showed me an unidentified male victim,” I said. “I think the man—a man they said was in his mid to late thirties—was Gil Perez.”

Her jaw dropped. “Our Gil?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell is that possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s been alive all this time?”

“Apparently.”

She stopped and shook her head. “Wait, did you tell his parents?”

“The police brought them in to ID him.”

“What did they say?”

“They said it wasn’t Gil. That Gil died twenty years ago.”

She collapsed back in the chair. “Wow.” I watched her tap her lower lip as she mulled it over. Another gesture straight back from our camp days. “So what has Gil been doing all this time?”

“Wait, you’re not going to ask me if I’m sure it’s him?”

“Of course you’re sure. You wouldn’t have said it if you weren’t. So his parents are either lying or, more likely, in denial.”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m leaning toward lying.”

“We should confront them.”

“We?”

“Yes. What else have you learned about Gil?”

“Not much.” I shifted in my seat. “How about you? What happened?”

“My students write anonymous journals. I got one that pretty much described what happened to us that night.”

I thought I was hearing wrong. “A student journal?”

“Yep. They had a lot of it right. How we went into the woods. How we were messing around. How we heard the scream.”

I was still having trouble understanding. “A journal written by one of your students?”

“Yeah.”

“And you have no idea who wrote it?”

“Nope.”

I thought about it. “Who knows your real identity?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t change identities, just my name. It wouldn’t be that hard to find.”

“And when did you get this journal?”

“Monday.”

“Pretty much the day after Gil was murdered.”

We sat and let that settle.

I asked, “Do you have the journal here?”

“I made you a copy.”

She handed the pages across the desk. I read them. It brought it back. It hurt, reading it. I wondered about the heart stuff, about never getting over the mysterious “P.” But when I put it down, the first thing I said to her was, “This isn’t what happened.”