The Woods (Page 94)

“Paul, we still need to find her….”

Did he mean Camille’s body? Or Camille herself?

“My father found out my sister was still alive,” I said.

“It’s not that simple.”

“What do you mean, it’s not that simple? Did he find out or not? Did my mother tell him?”

“Natasha?” Sosh made a noise. “Never. You talk about brave, about being able to withstand hardships. Your mother wouldn’t speak. No matter what your father did to her.”

“Including strangling her to death?”

Sosh said nothing.

“Then how did he find out?”

“After he killed your mother, your father searched through her papers, through phone records. He put it together—or at least he had his suspicions.”

“So he did know?”

“Like I said, it’s not that simple.”

“You’re not making sense, Sosh. Did he search for Camille?”

Sosh closed his eyes. He moved back around his desk. “You asked me before about the siege of Leningrad,” he said. “Do you know what it taught me? The dead are nothing. They are gone. You bury them and you move on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Sosh.”

“You went on this quest. You wouldn’t leave the dead alone. And now where are you? Two more have been killed. You learned that your beloved father murdered your mother. Was it worth it, Pavel? Was it worth stirring up the old ghosts?”

“It depends,” I said.

“On what?”

“On what happened to my sister.”

I waited.

My father’s last words came to me:

“Did you know?”

I’d thought he was accusing me, that he saw guilt on my face. But that wasn’t it. Did I know about the real fate of my sister? Did I know what he’d done? Did I know that he murdered my own mother and buried her in the woods?

“What happened to my sister, Sosh?”

“This is what I meant when I said it’s not so simple.”

I waited.

“You have to understand. Your father was never sure. He found some evidence, yes, but all he knew for certain was that your mother was going to run with the money and take you with her.”

“So?”

“So he asked me for help. He asked me to look into his evidence. He asked me to find your sister.”

I looked at him.

“Did you?”

“I looked into it, yes.” He took a step toward me. “And when I was finished, I told your father that he got it wrong.”

“What?”

“I told your father that your sister died that night in the woods.”

I was confused. “Did she?”

“No, Pavel. She didn’t die that night.”

I felt my heart start to expand in my chest. “You lied to him. You didn’t want him to find her.”

He said nothing.

“And now? Where is she now?”

“Your sister knew what your father had done. She couldn’t come forward, of course. There was no proof of his guilt. There was still the matter of why she had disappeared in the first place. And of course, she feared your father. How could she just return to the man who murdered her mother?”

I thought about the Perez family, the charges of fraud and all that. It would have been the same with my sister. Even before you add my father into the equation, it would have been difficult for Camille to come home.

Hope again filled my chest.

“So you did find her?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And I gave her money.”

“You helped her hide from him.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“We lost touch years ago. You have to understand, Camille didn’t want to hurt you. She thought about taking you away. But that was impractical. She knew how much you loved your father. And then later, when you became a public figure, she knew what her return, what this scandal, would do to you. You see, if she came back, it would all have to come out. And once that happened, your career would be over.”

“It already is.”

“Yes. We know that now.”

We, he said. We.

“So where is Camille?” I asked.

“She’s here, Pavel.”

The air left the room. I couldn’t breathe. I shook my head.

“It took a while to find her after all these years,” he said. “But I did. We talked. She didn’t know your father had died. I told her. And that, of course, changed everything.”

“Wait a second. You…” I stopped. “You and Camille talked?”

It was my voice, I think.

“Yes, Pavel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you came in, that was her on the phone.”

My body went cold.

“She’s staying at a hotel two blocks away. I told her to come over.” He looked at the elevator. “That’s her now. On her way up.”

I slowly turned and watched the numbers climb above the elevator. I heard it ding. I took one step toward it. I didn’t believe it. This was another cruel trick. Hope was having its way with me again.

The elevator stopped. I heard the doors begin to open. They didn’t slide. They moved grudgingly as though afraid to surrender their passenger. I froze. My heart hammered hard against my chest. I kept my eyes on those doors, on the opening.

And then, twenty years after vanishing into those woods, my sister, Camille, stepped back into my life.

EPILOGUE

One Month Later

LUCY DOES NOT WANT ME TO TAKE THIS TRIP.

“It’s finally over,” she says to me, right before I head to the airport.

“Heard that before,” I counter.

“You don’t need to face him again, Cope.”

“I do. I need some final answers.”

Lucy closes her eyes.

“What?”

“It’s all so fragile, you know?”

I do.

“I’m afraid you’ll shift the ground again.”

I understand. But this needs to be done.

An hour later, I am looking out the window of a plane. Over the past month, life has returned to quasi-normal. The Jenrette and Marantz case took some wild and weird twists toward its rather glorious ending. The families did not give up. They applied whatever pressure they could on Judge Arnold Pierce and he broke. He threw out the porno DVD, claiming we didn’t produce it in a timely enough fashion. We appeared to be in trouble. But the jury saw through it—they often do—and came back with guilty verdicts. Flair and Mort are appealing, of course.