Page 41 of What You Never Knew

“Leslie tried her hardest. Somehow she found out about the arrears and started to put pressure on the municipality to sell the place. And apparently she wanted first rights to it. I, of course, got involved, begged them to hold off.”

“But why? She has her own goddamn cottage.” My anger is escalating with each bit of the story, along with my disbelief at how she was able to sit there having tea with me as though she hadn’t tried to steal Avril Island. “And how did she even find out about the status of my family’s property taxes?”

“It’s a small community, June. All you need is one guy from the tax office telling his friend over a beer, and the whole town knows.” Ezra sighs deeply. “I saw her out one night at the Bridgeside Tavern. She has a group of friends from around here who enjoy the odd big night out. Anyway, she was pretty wasted and came up to me spitting and hissing about trying to keep Avril Island from her. I asked why the hell she cared so much, and she said she wanted to burn the place to the ground in memory of her dead mother. Said that April Bennett was a menace to society and should pay for what she’d done and a string of other bullshit that didn’t make much sense.”

“She wanted to buy it just to burn it down? That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

“It’s the Swann way, June. That family has always had more money than they know what to do with. Suzanne Swann inherited a trust worth millions, and then so did Leslie.”

“And yet she had a revenge plot over fifty thousand,” I mumble to myself.

“A what?” Ezra asks.

I end up telling him everything Leslie told me the other day at her cottage—about my mother wanting her mother to lie to the police and borrowing money that she never paid back.

“Seems like small infractions in comparison with wanting to burn down your cottage,” Ezra says, making me feel better about the whole thing. “But like I said before, Leslie is a crackpot, and her mother probably was too. You need to stay away from her, June.”

“I know.” I give him the answer he wants, but in truth I want to drive over to her cottage right now and tell her what I think of her.

“Seriously, June, she knows a lot of people in this area, and she’s unpredictable.”

“I understand, Ezra. I certainly don’t want any trouble. No more than I’ve already brought on myself by coming back here.”

“Good,” he says sternly. “Do you regret coming back?” His voice has softened.

“No, not at all. I would never regret coming back here. Coming back to you. It’s just brought a lot of stuff up, that’s all. But it’s worth it, I promise.”

Ezra pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around me, making all the bad stuff disappear. Even if it’s just for a few seconds, I’ll take it. I’ll take any reprieve I can get at the moment.

MAY

He’s here again. Ezra. They’re on the verandah in the middle of the night, hugging. June steps out of the embrace when I arrive and looks over her shoulder in my direction, a flash of confusion running through her expression.

June? I call out, but she turns back to face Ezra.

Ezra holds up his empty beer bottle. “I think I’d better go. I have to get up in a couple of hours for work. I have a dock repair that’s going to take all day. Maybe more.” He rubs June’s arm. “You’re okay?”

“Of course,” June says with a forced smile. “Thanks for coming to check on me. Even though you scared the shit out of me and I almost knocked you out with a lamp.” He laughs and pulls her in for another hug.

She stands on the verandah and watches him go. The moon has come out from behind the clouds, illuminating his departure. Watching his tall, thin frame recede brings forward a random sliver of memory that doesn’t seem to be attached to any specific event, but it’s right there, so clear.

It’s of West coming up the path in the middle of the night, the moon lighting his way because my mother hadn’t turned on any lights. We both stood there watching him come—there was a sense of relief at his arrival for both of us, but I don’t know why. It’s out of place and strange to have him arrive under the cover of night. There’s a sense to the memory, that it’s tied to something bigger—the secret that I’ve buried down deep and which thankfully has yet to surface.

If that’s the case, then it means that my mother and West were involved in the secret as well. This fact makes it all even more unsettling. What was West coming here to do in the middle of the night? And why was it me along with my mother standing there waiting for him, relieved at his arrival?

June goes into the cottage once Ezra’s boat has driven away from the dock, and I follow. She wanders into the kitchen, gets a glass of water, and sits down with it at the kitchen table. I should be sitting across from her. We’d open a bottle of wine or make some tea and eat our way through a bag of cookies while we talked. We’d solve all the problems or at the very least find a way to laugh about them through the tears.

And now she sits alone. I circle around her, hoping my motion will make waves of something that she’ll pick up on. Passing by the kitchen window, through a beam of moonlight, I feel that tug again, the sense of solidity I got the first night I was here. I pause, soaking up whatever power the moon is giving off.

June looks right at me. She squints her eyes and leans forward. “May?”

Yes, I scream. Yes. I make the mistake of moving forward, out of the moonlight, and the solid feeling disappears. I shift back, but by then June has put her head in her hands and is gently shaking it back and forth.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says out loud to herself. “She’s gone.” The last words are a mere whisper. She stays like that for a while, looking as though she’s in some kind of sorrowful prayer, her head still bowed.

I move around in the moonlight, hoping something will catch her attention again. She must have seen me or at least a flash of me. June, June, June, June, June, June, June … I say it over and over again, but she’s doing everything to block it out.

June. This time I use every bit of energy I have to scream her name. She pulls her head from her hands and sits up but keeps her eyes averted from me and the moonlight.