“But why, Carrie? Why here?”
“As you said, the cavern protected her,” she says. “But there's another reason.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Come on,” she says, walking to one side of the open cavern mouth. I follow her as she climbs up to actually stand on top of the cavern. "I've been coming to this park since I was a little girl. I explored quite a bit, and I found this cavern. I loved how peaceful and secluded it was. But there was something particularly special about it that came back to mean so much to me the day I had to decide what to do with my little girl.”
“What is it?” I ask.
She points ahead of us. “When there was still electricity in the campground, you could stand right here and see the green lights on the front porch. That was why I brought her here. So, she could always come home.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“So, it really was a coincidence?” Dean asks from his hospital bed the next day. “She happened to die on the same date as Aaron drowned.”
“I don't really think of that as a coincidence,” I say. “It's two tragedies that happened on the same date. It was just convenient for Carrie that you showed up at the campground that year. If it wasn't for those two unrelated events happening at the same time, Carrie wouldn't have anything to fall back on. It was belated, but the creation of the Arrow Lake curse rumors helped to give some context to Violet's death. There was somebody to blame and it took the heat off her.”
“I can't believe she would leave her own daughter's body out like that for two months,” Bellamy says, her hands on her own belly. “It's just not something I could ever do.”
“Carrie probably didn't think it was something she could do, either. But she was desperate to protect her relationship with Travis. She just did it in a really horrible way.”
“What's going to happen to her?” Eric asks.
“She's been arrested,” I say. “They'll evaluate what happened and determine what charges to bring against her. In the end, Violet’s death really was an accident. Just not the kind anybody thought. She tried the strawberries because Travis liked them so much. She brought them outside so her mother couldn't see her do it. It's that simple. It was what happened after her mother found her that turned it into a criminal matter.”
“Alright, but what about you?” Bellamy asks Dean. “Why was Laura Mitchell so obsessed with you?”
“After seeing that picture of Aaron and me from when I was little, a lot of memories came back,” Dean says. “I don't really think of them as negative memories or things that my brain tried to block out. It's just that it happened a long time ago, and I tried to move on. And things happened to me that forced me to move on. But then I remembered. My mother did use to bring me to the campground all the time. It was her escape. And I don't remember the day I got to meet Emma, but I do know that I saw Ian and Murdock at the campground. I didn't know who they were, and I didn't interact with them, but they were there.”
“His mother made friends with a woman who lived at the park,” I say.
“Laura Mitchell,” Bellamy says.
Dean nods. “I made friends with Aaron and Rodney. We played for a couple of summers in a row. Then one day, he decided he wanted to go swimming. I knew he couldn't. Not without his life jacket. He hated that thing. He said it was uncomfortable. That it made it harder for him to move. He got out into the lake and took it off. Suddenly, he was gone. It happened that fast.
“Laura was devastated. Aaron was her entire life, I think. She loved Rodney. But there was something special about Aaron. The next summer, my mother took me back to the campground. She didn't want me to have bad memories associated with Sherando Ridge, didn't want me to be afraid of the water. We didn't expect to see Laura, but she was there. She was very interested in me. She watched me play, and I found her following behind us a couple of times when we were walking in the woods. We ended up leaving early.
“The next year, I went back again, and she was even more interested in me. I didn't recognize her at the time. Looking back, I can see it. Then I was sitting on the beach playing in the sand and she came up and sat beside me. She picked up a shovel and filled it with sand, then let it stream back down onto the ground. She told me that was how she used to play when she was little. My mother was really unhappy to find us sitting like that. She packed us up into the car and left. I didn't see her again until I went with my friends.”
“It started then,” Bellamy says.
Dean nods. “But the killing started when I went back as a teenager. It was a complete accident that I was there at the same time. I never even paid attention.”
Dean stayed in the hospital for another two weeks. The arrow tore right through him, entering at the front of his shoulder and exiting just above the shoulder blade in the back. It created extensive damage, and he lost a huge amount of blood. But he's doing better now and can finally be discharged. I happen to believe he pushed himself to recover as well as he did because he knew this appointment was waiting for him.
I drive up the long access road and turn to him one more time.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” I ask. “We don't have to do it.”
“I know we don't,” he says. “I want to. I need to, Emma.”
“Then I'm here for you,” I say. “Let's do this.”
Forty-five minutes later, we're
