Suspiciously Obedient (13 page)

All of the roads at Escape Shores Campground were dirt and gravel. Gravel if you were lucky. And during mud season the golf carts frequently got stuck, requiring someone, normally whichever child was lowest in the totem pole—and that meant Lydia and Caleb—to get behind the golf cart and push. But in late July the roads were dry, if rutted, and Lydia’s car bounced as she drove at city speeds and then hit her brakes hard to realign herself—because now she was on Maine time. And that meant 5 mph through the campground at all times. You never knew when there might be a child riding a bike or a dog frolicking.

The front entrance was deceptive. A single long road that stretched on for a good quarter-mile with the occasional branch road off to the left and then after a slight clearing, off to the right, another one. The shrubbery that lined the main road was deceptive too. It wasn’t simple overgrowth or woodsy brush, for if you peered at the height of raspberry season, as it was now, you’d see little red dots here, there and everywhere. If you concentrated hard enough, suddenly you’d realize that what your eyes saw were thousands and thousands of succulent berries—at least the ones the birds hadn’t gotten to yet.

Her parents had, over the past three decades, painstakingly filled Escape Shores Campground with edible landscaping. From apple trees that yielded bountiful harvests in September and October to the summer berries to the careful protection of wild blueberries, a hallmark in Maine along the miles and miles of trails, over a hundred in all, that dotted the 140 acres of privately owned land. There were community gardens, and if you were a seasonal camper, you could get your own little eight-by-eight plot of land that would be good for growing your salads, your beans, and your tomatoes.

The gardening group were pretty hardcore, and a few years ago had lobbied to have their own section of the park, about fifteen of them all clustered together in RV slots that led to a stretch of land that Pete had cleared just for them so that they had their own extra space, away from the more lightweight hobby gardeners. These folks grew most of their food using a variety of techniques, from square-foot gardening to no-till methods and experimenting. The venture had even gotten Escape Shores Campground an article in a national gardening magazine and a national RV magazine, which had pleased Pete and Sandy to no end. Her parents were nothing if not innovators.

As she continued on down the dirt road, signs of life started to pick up. The roads were set up much like a tree with a thick, deep, tall trunk that fed into a bunch of branches that split off and off and off, all leading into the sea. The paths for children to ride bikes were far off the main road, the plan that her father had laid out so many decades ago still intact.

A careful preservation of a sense of community in camping was her parents’ ultimate goal, but in order to accomplish that, they’d had to adopt newer techniques. Escape Shores was noted nationwide as a telecommuter's dream. For RVers with businesses on the road, this had become something of a mecca, and for Bostonians looking to get away from the city but who could barely grab those two precious weeks of vacation that corporate life meted out to them, this was a dream come true. A little piece of beach, the ability to work from a remote location, and loads of fun. Sandy and Pete had worked so hard to create an idyllic life for their family and that had spread out into creating an idyllic vacation spot.

So much so that Sandy had instituted a rule. All wireless routers were turned off in the campground from the hours of 6 to 9 p.m. She called it “unplugged time,” and it was meant for families. If you were desperate and still needed to be plugged into the Matrix, you could do it with an ethernet cord. But the roaming about, heads down, fingers texting that drove her nuts was something that she absolutely banned during prime campground time, those hours when the grills came out and the campfires were fired up, the bags of marshmallows sold like crazy in the camp store and the final frolics as the sun set over the water turned people into shadows.

This is what Lydia looked forward to every year, six o’clock, just before the mosquitoes came out and just as the air turned cool enough to make it worth slipping your shoes off and wading in the water, but a little too nippy to wear your suit. And then to climb out, towel off your feet, throw on a warm sweatshirt and head over to someone’s campfire to chat, to catch up, to make a new friend, or to just sit in silence and enjoy the sounds of a little slice of utopia on the water.

This was Thursday. She knew that tomorrow Mom and Dad would be so busy they practically wouldn’t recognize her if she walked in off the street. Timing was perfect. That meant she could escape tomorrow—
escape from Escape Shores,
she and her brothers joked. She could come in, do her damage, and run away, leaving Mom and Dad with a busy night to keep their minds occupied, because Sandy was about to need the distraction. In her world, the idea that Lydia really wasn’t coming back and that she was actually going further, further than any of her children had ever gone except for Luke…well, that made Lydia glad that she would be escaping soon.

The tech cottage was filled with people sitting at laptops and, unless her eyes were deceiving her, it looked like her parents had added an espresso machine in there. She could see it through the window. Krysta was craning her neck, looking at the wildflower beds, at some kids playing croquet in one of the overgrown fields, at the giant pirate ship that her parents had added and turned into an herb garden rather than a child’s playground.

She pulled up in front of her parents’ house and they climbed out. She knew it would take fewer than fifteen steps before someone recognized her. Sure enough, it was Caleb who shouted her name. Caleb’s hands and shirt were full of greenery, what Lydia suspected were herbs from the herb ship. Of all her brothers, Caleb was the oddball, the one who had managed to get some combination of genes from a couple of generations past that involved bright blue eyes and sandy brown hair. They jokingly called him the milkman’s boy, except that if you looked at old Mr. Michaelson there was no way that any boy was coming out of him, and besides, Mr. Michaelson was as black Irish as the Charles’.

Caleb had the body of a marathon runner and the smile of a used car salesman. But it was his hands that were so distinct, long surgeon’s fingers that he used with great skill, not to cut people open, but to cut great chunks of meat, to julienne varying vegetables, to twist and turn an icing bag into a cake that was a work of art. Caleb had gone to culinary school and had come back home, which pleased Sandy and Pete to no end, to become the resident chef.

Although Escape Shores didn’t have an official restaurant, Lydia knew they soon would. Sandy lived in fear that Grandma would lure Caleb into the city, to work at Grandma's diner. At twenty-four, Caleb was the closest in age to her and as youngsters had palled around, people called them Irish twins, for they were only fourteen months apart. She was proud of him, and his tarragon butter draw for dipping lobster really was worth the drive.

“Hey, sis!” he called out. The bottom of his t-shirt was curled up, making a cloth bowl of sorts, and it was stuffed silly with different shades of green, stretches of herbs that he’d clearly just picked. She spotted rosemary—was that some kind of mint?—and maybe a cilantro in there.

“That better not be cilantro!” she shouted back.

“Why?”

“Because it tastes like soap.”

“You’re the only one in the family with that freak gene,” he called out, smiling.

“Don’t talk about genes, Mr. Michaelson.” He rolled his eyes but the mirth was still there. Krysta watched them, her eyes lit up. It was no secret that Krysta had a thing for Caleb. Caleb, though, didn’t seem to notice that Krysta was there. He was polite enough and friendly, and they talked and joked just like Caleb talked and joked with everyone else. But she knew his eyes were on, funnily enough, the Stillman's daughter, Julie. He’d had a crush on her since third grade and she wanted to tell Krysta that it was hopeless but she couldn’t bring herself to crush anyone’s spirit when it came to love, least of all her own.

She couldn’t get Matt out of her head. But worse, she couldn’t stop thinking about Michael, and the fact that they were the same person just made her wonder why, if she had two men in her life, it had to be under these circumstances. From the look on Caleb’s face he hadn’t heard about the video, or seen it. There was no covert, sidelong glance, no non-verbal questioning, and so she breathed a sigh of relief. If anyone in her family took a really good, long look or put two and two together, they would know—and the shame that she felt, not at what she had done in that office, but at being so
exposed,
was something that ran so counter to how she normally felt when she set foot back home.

Home was a safe place. Home was comforting. Home was steady and stable and would always be there. Having it tainted by her life in the city was one thing, but having the biggest risk she had ever taken in her life exposed on camera and gone viral for late-night talk show fodder and gossip blogs and for jokes about her body, her sexual technique, the sounds she made in the throes of passion, that…that made
nowhere
safe. Home, absolutely, had to remain sacrosanct. She had seven people here to worry about. Seven people who might know the truth, and so far it was one down, six to go.

It is mint,
she thought as Caleb embraced her, crushing the herbs between them, the scent of broken leaves and of released aromas tickling her nose and making her mouth water with anticipation of the culinary delights that would come tonight. Krysta, she knew, drooled for other reasons.

As Caleb released her and turned to Krysta to give her a polite hug, she watched her friend close her eyes and breathe in not the scent of the herbs but the scent of Caleb. It skeeved her out a little—she just didn’t like to think of Caleb
that
way—but if she pulled back and looked at him not as her brother, but objectively as a man, she could see that he was attractive, and she would love for Krysta to find that for herself.

She knew before she even got in the car to come up here that her mom couldn’t possibly know about the video because she would have had fourteen phone calls, nineteen text messages, and a smoke signal had Sandy been remotely aware of what happened. Grandma would keep her mouth shut. Hell, Madge knew where all the bodies were buried, and now Lydia owed her yet another favor.

“So, where are the rest of the gang?” she asked.

Caleb grinned. “Beats me. Adam and Dan are at some conference thing. I don’t know? Something business blah-blah-blah…increase your profits blah-blah-blah. And that’s down in Boston.”

“They’re in Boston and they didn’t tell me?”

“You know them, they’re all business. Besides, maybe they were planning to surprise you. It’s not like you just hop in the car and drive four hours north every Thursday, Lydia.” He looked at her with suspicion. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, just thought I’d come up and say hi.”

“Okay,” he said, clearly unconvinced. Krysta tried desperately to keep a straight face and Lydia, if she’d been close enough, would have kicked her in the ankle to convince her to do so, but right now she was just mooning over Caleb, so luckily Lydia didn’t have to worry about having her secret spilled.

She did some quick family math. If Adam and Dan were gone, then it was Miles she had to worry about—and Mom and Dad. She had already crossed Sandy off the list so, worst case, Miles or Pete might have figured it out. She wasn’t worried about her dad. Dad was about as technologically savvy as an Amish guy in an Apple Store.

“Mom’s going to fall over. She had no idea you were coming.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a surprise visit. It’s all good.”

He narrowed his eyes and now she wondered. “You okay, Lyd?”

“I’m okay.”

She put on her best fake smile and hoped he believed it, and it looked like he did. Distracted by whatever he was cooking, he suddenly took off at a sprint and shouted, “My sauce! Gotta go, bye!” And then she heard him in the distance shouting, “Hey, Mom! Go out to the store!”

“What a view,” Krysta said. Lydia turned and looked at the ocean, the water gleaming as the mid-afternoon sun shone down on it.

“Yeah, it is.” She looked back at Krysta and realized Krysta was watching Caleb’s ass. “The water’s nice too, Krysta.”

Krysta just shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for—”

“Lydia!” her mother screamed. Never one to leave guests feeling unloved, she followed it up with a shout of, “Krysta! Both of you! This is fabulous!” She then embraced both of them in a giant group hug, listing to and fro, arms eating up as much of them as she could, planting kisses on Lydia’s face. “What brought you all the way up here?”