Page 78 of The Last Time I Lied

“Hello?”

I drop the photos back into the box and quickly replace the lid. The motion sets the charms on my bracelet clicking. I press my wrist against my stomach to silence them.

“Is someone in here?” the voice calls.

“I am,” I say, hoping it will cover the sound of me closing the desk drawer. “Emma Davis.”

Springing to my feet behind the desk, I find Lottie in the doorway. She’s surprised to see me. The feeling is mutual.

“I’m charging my phone. Mindy told me I could do it here if I needed to.”

“You’re lucky Franny’s not here to see you. She’s a stickler about such things.” Lottie sneaks a glance behind her, making sure Franny is indeed elsewhere. Then she creeps into the room with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “It’s a silly rule if you ask me. I warned her that girls are different now than they were back then. Always glued to their phones. But she insisted. You know how stubborn she can be.”

Lottie joins me at the desk, and for a heart-stopping second, I think she knows what I’ve been doing. I brace myself for questions, perhaps a thinly veiled threat similar to the one Franny offered this morning. Instead, she focuses on the framed photographs cramming the wall behind the desk. They seem to have been placed there in no discernible order. Color photos mingle with black-and-white ones, forming a wall-size collage of images. I spot a grainy picture of an imposing man in front of what I presume to be Lake Midnight. A date has been hastily scrawled in the picture’s lower right corner: 1903.

“That’s Franny’s grandfather,” Lottie says. “Buchanan Harris himself.”

He has a hugeness so many important men of that age possessed. Big shoulders. Big belly. Big, ruddy cheeks. He looks like the kindof man who could make a fortune stripping the land of its trees and then spend that money creating a lake just for his personal enjoyment.

Lottie points to a birdlike woman also in the photo. She has big eyes and Kewpie doll lips and is dwarfed by her husband. “Franny’s grandmother.”

“I heard she drowned,” I say.

“Childbirth,” Lottie replies. “It was Franny’s husband who drowned.”

“How did it happen?”

“The drowning? That was before my time. What I heard is that Franny and Douglas went for a late-night swim together like they did every day. Nothing strange about that. Only on that particular night, Franny came back alone. She was hysterical. Carrying on about how Douglas went under and never came back up. That she searched and searched but couldn’t find him. They all went out in boats to look for him. His body wasn’t found until the next morning. Washed up on shore. The poor man. This place certainly has seen its fair share of tragedy.”

Lottie moves on to another black-and-white one showing a young girl leaning against a tree, a pair of binoculars around her neck. Clearly Franny. Below it is another photo of her, also taken at the lake, rendered in the garish colors of Kodachrome. She’s a few years older in this one, standing on the Lodge’s deck, her back turned to the water. Another girl stands beside her, smiling.

“There she is,” Lottie says. “My mother.”

I take a step closer to the photo, noticing the similarities between the woman posing with Franny and the one standing at my side. Same pale skin. Same Bette Davis eyebrows. Same heart-shaped faced that tapers to a pointed chin.

“Your mother knew Franny?”

“Oh, yes,” Lottie says. “They grew up together. My grandmother was the personal secretary to Franny’s mother. Before that, mygreat-grandfather was Buchanan Harris’s right-hand man. In fact, he helped create Lake Midnight. When Franny turned eighteen, my mother became her secretary. When she passed away, Franny offered the job to me.”

“Is this what you wanted to do?”

I’m aware of how rude the question sounds. Like I’m judging Lottie. In truth, I’m judging Franny for continuing the Harris tradition of using generations of the same family to make their own lives easier.

“Not exactly,” Lottie says with unyielding tact. “I was going to be an actress. Which meant I was a waitress. When my mother died and Franny offered me the job, I almost turned it down. But then I came to my senses. I was in my thirties, barely scraping by. And the Harris-Whites have been so kind to me. I even think of them as family. I grew up with them. I’ve spent more time here at Lake Midnight than Theo and Chet combined. So I accepted Franny’s offer and have been with them ever since.”

There’s so much more I want to ask. If she’s happy doing the same thing her mother did. If the family treats her well. And, most important, if she knows why Franny keeps photos of asylum patients in her desk.

“I think I see Casey in this one,” Lottie says farther down the wall, at a spot of pictures of Camp Nightingale during its prime. Groups of girls posing on the tennis court and lined up at the archery range, bows pulled back. “Right here. With Theo.”

She points to a photo of the two of them swimming in the lake. Theo stands waist-deep in the water, the telltale lifeguard whistle around his neck. Cradled in his arms—in the exact way he cradled me during my swimming lesson—is Casey. She’s slimmer in the picture, with a happy, youthful glow. I suspect it was taken when she was still a camper here.

Just above that picture is one of two girls in polo shirts. The sun is in their eyes, making them squint. The photographer’s shadowstretches into the bottom of the frame, like an unnoticed ghost swooping down on them.

One of the girls in the photograph is Vivian.

The other is Rebecca Schoenfeld.

The realization stops my heart cold. Just for a second or so. In that pulseless moment, I stare at the two of them and their easy familiarity. Wide, unforced smiles. Skinny arms tossed over shoulders. Keds touching.

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