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. Cant 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. Howe 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."

"I know."

"But it's close."

She nodded.

"I met this young woman who knew Gil. She said she overheard him talking about us. He said that we lied." Lucy kept still for a moment. She spun the chair so that now I saw her profile. "We did."

"Not about anything that mattered," I said.

"We were making love," she said, "while they were being murdered."

I said nothing. I partitioned again. That was how I got through my day. Because if I didn't partition, I would remember that I was the counselor on guard duty that night. That I shouldn't have sneaked off with my girlfriend. That I should have watched them better. That if I had been a responsible kid, if I had done what I was supposed to, I wouldn't have said I had done head counts when I hadn't. I wouldn't have lied about it the next morning. We would have known that they were gone since the night before, not just that morning. So maybe, while I put check marks next to cabin inspections that I had never done, my sister was having her throat slashed.

Lucy said, "We were just kids, Cope."

Still nothing.

"They sneaked out. They would have sneaked out if we were there or not."

Probably not, I thought. I would have been there. I would have spotted them. Or I would have noticed empty beds when I did my rounds. I did none of that. I went off and had a good time with my girlfriend. And the next morning, when they weren't there, I figured that they were just having fun. Gil had been dating Margot, though I thought they'd broken up. My sister was seeing Doug Billingham, though they weren't too serious. They had run off, were having fun.

So I lied. I said I'd checked the cabins and that they'd been safely tucked away. Because I didn't realize the danger. I said I was alone that night-I stuck to that lie for too long-because I wanted to protect Lucy. Isn't that strange? I didn't know all the damage. So yeah, I lied. Once Margot Green was found, I admitted most of the truth-that I'd been negligent on guard duty. But I left off Lucy's role. And once I stuck with that lie, I was afraid to go back and tell the whole truth. They were suspicious of me already-I still remember Sheriff Lowell's skeptical face-and if I admitted it later, the police would wonder why I lied in the first place. It was irrelevant anyway.

What difference did it make if I was alone or with somebody? Either way, I didn't watch out for them. During the lawsuit, Ira Silversteins office tried to lay some of the blame on me. But I was only a kid. There were twelve cabins on the boys' side of the camp alone. Even if I had been in position, it would have been easy enough to sneak out. The security was inadequate. That was true. Legally, it wasn't my fault.

Legally.

"My father used to go back to those woods," I said.

She turned toward me.

"He would go digging."

"For what?"

"For my sister. He told us he was going fishing. But I knew. He did it for two years." "What made him stop?" "My mother left us. I think he figured that his obsession had cost him too much already. He hired private eyes instead. Called some old friends. But I don't think he dug anymore."

I looked at her desk. It was a mess. Papers were scattered, some half-tumbling off like a frozen waterfall. There were open textbooks sprawled out like wounded soldiers.

"That's the problem when you don't have a body," I said. "I assume you've studied the stages of grief?"

"I have." She nodded, seeing it. "The first step is denial."

"Exactly. In a sense, we never got past that."

"No body, ergo, denial. You needed proof to move on."

"My father did. I mean, I was sure Wayne had killed her. But then I would see my father going out like that." "It made you doubt." "Let's just say it kept the possibility alive in my mind." "And what about your mother?" "She grew more and more distant. My parents never had the greatest marriage. There were cracks already. When my sister died – or what ever the hell happened – she totally withdrew from him." We both went quiet. The last remnants of sunlight were fading away. The sky was turning into a purple swirl. I looked out the window to my left. She looked out too. We sat there, the closest we had been to each other in twenty years.