In the Dead of the Night 🏚️ Chapter Two
In which Nell is late for orientation...
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When Sunday morning dawns, I’m on edge and dreading the next twenty-four hours. They will undoubtably be the hardest. Potentially harder than the first twenty-four after the scandal broke. That awful period when my phone pinged nonstop with texts. When my DMs exploded with hate—some from strangers, most from people I had considered friends just days earlier. I’m suddenly jealous of the seniors who graduated last week, who can head to college in the fall and never interact with high school classmates again.
My throat constricts. I bite my bottom lip, exhale hard.
It’s been better since I got up here, my phone falling silent with the lack of service. But today, I have to face people again. None of them my classmates of course, just the staff of Camp Durant for the summer season, but still.
My stomach is too uneasy for breakfast, so I gather my things. My white All Star sneakers are still damp from Friday night’s rain. The raincoat is dry, but cool to the touch. I pull them on, grab my gear, and head downstairs.
The front door I used the other night leads to the driveway and the county road. But Bradley House is built into a hill, and the slider in the downstairs family room puts me at ground level facing the lake.
It’s cool and damp outside, and the wrap-around deck overhead leaves me shivering in its shadow. Ahead, a winding trail of stone steps carves down the steep terrain and ends where the dock extends into the water. A whirligig loon mounted to a post idly spins its black wings. Mom and I got it at an arts festival in Inlet last summer, when Dad had locked himself in his office, too busy working to see an ounce of sunlight, let alone his family.
God, I hate him. Him and this mess he left behind.
I descend the steps, careful to watch my footing on the moss covered rocks. Mist rolls off the lake in twirling ribbons. It’s thick enough that I can’t see more than a stone’s throw beyond the dock, but two miles north along the same shoreline as Bradley House lies Camp Durant, where I’m due to check in for staff orientation by nine. It will be tight. I have to kayak after all. Because of the hitchhiking. I hadn’t considered that complication at the time of my escape.
I wrestle the kayak out of the boat house—it’s still in storage from the winter, hanging from the rafters, and I nearly kill myself getting it down. By the time all my gear is loaded—duffel stuffed inside between my legs, backpack strapped to the front under the cargo elastics—it’s almost seven.
The kayak cuts through the water like a knife in butter as I push off.
It’s calm this morning. Still. Barely a breeze. And a good thing, too. Two miles paddling is no easy feat. Somewhere beyond the fog, a loon cries mournfully. The wail sends a shiver up my limbs, and I suddenly feel as though I’m being watched, as though a pair of eyes lurks deep within the fog, tracking my every move. I half expect a reporter to jump forward, microphone out-held, or a classmate to appear, hurling insults. I even check my phone, but of course there’s no service. Which is what I wanted.
I dip the paddle in, pull, lift, dip the opposite side, pull again. Over and over. My palms sting in protest. The more progress I make, the more the knot of nerves tightens in my chest.
This won’t be like when I was a kid, heading to Camp Durant for the summer and reconnecting with friends from all over the northeast. It’s been five years since I fit the age range to attend as a camper. Five years since Mom and Dad shelled out several thousand dollars for a full summer, seven-week session of swimming and canoeing and campfires at one of the Adirondack’s most prestigious summer camps.
After I turned thirteen, I spent the summers at Bradley House instead of the camp. Mom spent her days drinking wine. Dad worked constantly. I sat on the docks, bored out of my mind for a variety of reasons, depending on the year. The first summer, it was because I was missing my camp friends. The next because Kylie had to visit her grandparents on the Cape and couldn’t spend the summer with me. Last summer, it was because Mom refused to let me have even a sip of her wine and wouldn’t let me out of her sight either, because maybe then I might see other humans my own age and they might have alcohol of their own. “Kids get into trouble without supervision,” she’d said.
Apparently, so do husbands.
This summer, Mom decided it was time I got a job and earned my own money. She said it would be good for me. I didn’t disagree, but I’d wanted to spend summer in the city, working an internship at a magazine or photography studio and enjoying the apartment while while Mom and Dad came north. It would have been good experience, a line to include on my college applications and hopefully make me stand out from other photojournalism major hopefuls.
But since Mom doesn’t control enough of my life already, she had to pick my job, too. Back in April she called in a favor to one of her best friends—an old sorority sister—and two months later, here I am: Camp Durant’s newest counselor, paddling up Corwin Lake to report to orientation.
I’d never admit it to Mom, but I’m glad to be up here now. I can’t imagine being in the city, Dad’s headshot flashing in every news reports and our family name a permanent fixture on the chyrons at the bottom of each screen. I bet the cameras are still lining the block outside our apartment building.
He wasn’t home when the cops showed up at the apartment. Mom and I thought he was at work, but they said he wasn’t at the office either; they’d tried there first. He’d disappeared.
It’s like he knew it was coming. Like he knew he stood no chance. No chance with the law, and no chance of mending the broken pieces of his family, either. If he reappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t have a thing to say to him. He better keep running because he’s as good as dead to me.
I wonder, for the first time, what people back home will think of my running. When I left New York, everyone at school had turned on me and the media was already starting to speculate about our family. How much did Mom and I know? Were we in on it? Were we as heartless and greedy and cruel as him?
The answer is nothing, and no, and of course not. But that’s a boring answer, and people love a scandal. Perhaps the only thing they love more than a villain is making villains.
I don’t know what I’ve missed on the news this weekend, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
My kayak hits bottom beside the swimming area at 9:07. I’m officially late.
I scramble out, ignoring the cold morning water that bites at my shins, and tug the kayak farther into the sand so it doesn’t float away. Fog still hovers above the lake like a moth-eaten shawl, obscuring the opposite shoreline behind a hazy white. Glancing inland, things are clearer.
Camp Durant looks unaltered by the five years that have passed since I last set foot here. Already, I can sense the dampness of the place down to my bones; a sluggish, heavy weight that makes me feel lonely. I curl my toes into the damp sand and fish my sneakers from the bottom of the kayak.
Beyond the beach, several worn walking paths cut through grass, climbing the rise toward the woods. There, the pines appear weary, limbs sagging with the weight of the recent rain. The paths disappear into the trees, leading toward the cabins. I’ve spent enough summers here to know exactly where they’ll appear between tree trunks, dank and humid and smelling of moss. Each is named after one of the Adirondacks’ Great Camps, houses and estates built by the rich, and now famous for their quintessential Adirondack architecture. So quintessential, that Mom had Bradley House fashioned to mimic the style, though I’m not sure the builders pulled it off.
West of all these paths, is a small clearing that’s home to the Performing Arts Building, where orientation will be held, according to an email I received a week ago. I set off at a brisk pace, knowing I’ll be a solid twenty minutes late by the time I arrive.
When I finally shove inside, things are already underway. The door screeches in protest, someone speaking near the front stage pauses, and dozens of faces swivel to great me. Most of them are young. My age. Teens working as counselors for the summer.
“Is that her?” I hear someone whisper.
“Eleanor Bradley?”
“The Bradley? From the news?!”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
I immediately question everything. They all hate me. They hate him too, which is justified, but the way their eyes are now widening into shock and gall, as if to say, How dare she show her face here, is too much.
But for all the people talking about me, I realize there are just as many who look confused, clueless. They haven’t placed me yet, or maybe they haven’t even heard the news. Perhaps coming a few hours north was enough to escape everything.
Someone touches my arm. A willowy woman wearing a light blue fleece pullover and a bit too much makeup. It takes me a moment to place her. Mrs. Goodwin—owner of the camp, Mom’s BFF, and the reason I have this job. “Nell, darling,” she says. “I’m so glad you could join us. I didn’t know if you’d be coming, not with… Well, why don’t you grab a seat?”
Everyone is still staring.
“Hi,” I announce with a small wave. “I’m Nell.”
“Thief,” someone coughs out from the back of the room. A few teen staff members chuckle. The older staff members bristle uncomfortably.
“You know what? Let me just get this out of the way.” I roll my shoulders back, stand a bit straighter. “Yes, my father is Duncan Bradley. Yes, he’s wanted for embezzling funds from his clients. No, I don’t know where he is, and no, my mom and I weren’t in on it.”
There, I’ve said it. It’s out.
And just like that, the room erupts in chaos.
"Perhaps the only thing they love more than a villain is making villains." So good Erin!!!!! I'm taking notes, that's how good this is so far. I'm so intrigued.
You gave me a flashback to my days in TV news using the word “chyron.” My first job in TV was as a chyron operator.