“The turnoff for Camp Cadiz should be close,” she said.
We’d gone less than a quarter of a mile when I spotted the small, reflective green sign pointing the way to Camp Cadiz with white letters. A quick turn down a gravel road and we were there.
Seven decades earlier, when F.D.R. had been president and long before southern Illinois bothered itself with concerns about tourism, Camp Cadiz had been a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The shadowy remains of half a dozen old barracks still dotted the campground. River-stone foundations and clumps of trees and brush provided privacy between a dozen primitive campsites. Along the camp’s perimeter, thick foliage joined with the night to create a wall of darkness beneath a starry sky.
The outhouse was at the far edge of the campground.
Missy was curled up sleeping on the bench seat at the very rear of the van. She straightened when I turned into the rutted lot and shifted into Park. I looked over my shoulder in time to see her confused and panicked look as her eyes darted around the interior.
Gran, who sat just behind me, turned her head and spoke before I could.
“It’s all right, honey,” she said, her tone as soothing as the slow, soft syllables that marked her speech and belied her energetic personality. “You’re safe. We’re just stopping so that I can use the facilities.”
“We’ll be at the Cherokee Rose in under an hour,” I added. “Where there’s a nice, clean bathroom. With a toilet that flushes. But if you can’t wait…”
Missy shook her head and managed a weak, exhausted smile. Then she turned to rest her forehead against the side window and stared out at the darkness.
Katie was beside me in the front seat, still snoring softly.
Even half-asleep, my sister was beautiful—petite and curvy with pale yellow hair, hazel eyes flecked with gold and a peaches-and-cream complexion. An angel, people were always saying. And I agreed, not only because she was pretty but because she’d been my guardian angel during the earliest years of our childhood. Maybe that’s why I’d stood up for her that morning when she’d stripped off her apron, come running from the kitchen and unexpectedly climbed into the van.
“I’m going, too,” she’d announced breathlessly.
Gran shook her head.
“You and I have talked about this before, Katie. You have to accept that there are things that you simply can’t manage.”
I hated it when Gran used that tone with Katie. Katie’s asthma, according to Aunt Lucy, was the only reason her involvement with the Underground was limited to playing hostess and cooking—something she already did for the paying guests at the Cherokee Rose. But there was more to it than that.
“She’s not like Brooke,” I’d once overheard Gran tell Aunt Lucy. “Katie’s not strong emotionally. You’ve seen it yourself. Tears one moment, anger the next. Face it, Lucy. She’s never gotten over her mother abandoning her. Or the abuse.”
As I looked at my sister, I saw uncharacteristic determination in the way she lifted her dimpled chin. Just a couple months short of her eighteenth birthday, Katie was my senior by a year and a half. But over the past couple of years, she’d grown so timid and unsure of herself that I’d begun to think of her as much younger than me.
Now I wondered if the root of that problem was not our mother, but Gran. Although she pushed me to be independent, to take on challenges and pursue my ambitions, she still made most of Katie’s decisions for her. And encouraged Katie to stay close to home. Where it was safe. Usually, Katie seemed content to do whatever Gran wanted.
But not today.
“Go back inside, Katie,” Gran was saying, and her tone made it sound as if she were speaking to a child. “Like a good girl.”
Though twin red blotches were already standing out against her pale cheeks and she’d started wheezing, Katie didn’t move from the backseat. Nothing about her expression changed as she dug in a pocket, took out the inhaler she always carried and gave herself a puff of medicine before tucking it away again.
In that one quick action she reminded me that she was fragile, at least physically. I opened my mouth, ready to suggest to Katie that she’d be more useful if she stayed at home, when she did something she’d never done before. She leaned forward and stretched out her hand to clasp my shoulder.
“Please, Brooke. Don’t leave me behind. I can help, if you’ll let me. I want to make Gran and Aunt Lucy proud of me, just like they are of you. I’m a good driver. When you and Gran go to the house, I’ll sit with the engine running. In case we have to leave fast.”
Maybe it was Katie’s courage that inspired me. Or maybe it was the yearning I heard in my sister’s voice. But it prompted me to do something I’d never done before. I told Gran that Katie was brave and helpful and that she was going with us. I was surprised when Gran hadn’t protested.
Now, I nudged Katie’s shoulder.
“Hey, sleepyhead.”
Katie yawned, stretched her arms upward until they touched the van’s ceiling, then yawned again as she turned her head slowly, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she looked around.
“Pit stop at Camp Cadiz,” I said. “You interested?”
“Ugh,” she muttered. “An outhouse. No way.”
She snuggled back down into the seat and put her arm across her face.
I turned off the engine and the radio, but left the headlights on, aimed in the direction of the outhouse.
I’d planned to sit and wait for Gran. But I shifted in my seat just in time to see her step out and nearly fall headlong into a pothole that she hadn’t noticed in the dark. And it occurred to me that the stretch of weedy meadow between her and the outhouse would present similar hazards, without benefit of the van’s door to grab onto.
I scooted out from behind the wheel and met Gran as she was carefully stepping over one of the logs that kept cars from driving into the campground. I took her arm and held it tight. We walked across Camp Cadiz together, our bodies throwing long shadows in the headlight beams.
Tina kicked and cried out in her sleep.
“Mommy! Daddy!”
I tightened my hold on her.
“Soon, little one. You’ll see them soon.”
I dug through memory, came up with the lullaby that Aunt Lucy had sung to Katie and me when she’d first brought us home to the massive, redbrick hotel. Our great-grandfather had built the Cherokee Rose back when Maryville had been a center of river commerce and no one had thought the swampy northern Illinois town of Chicago would ever amount to much. Gran had grown up there, as had Aunt Lucy and our mother, Lydia. It would be our home, too.
I began singing softly to Tina.
Soon, her body relaxed and her breathing grew deeper and more regular. Asleep again, I thought, allowing my voice to trail off.
I began thinking again about the skeleton that lay on the ledge above us. If nature hadn’t undermined the makeshift grave and eventually deposited the remains onto the ledge below and if I hadn’t been desperately searching for Tina, I would never have found the body. And someone’s guilty secret would have remained hidden forever.
I wondered suddenly, horribly, if my own secret might someday be exposed in just that way. By accident. It was too easy to imagine Missy’s bloated corpse somehow escaping its tomb of steel, floating to the surface within sight of human eyes.
I shook my head, tried to clear away the flood of grim memories by focusing on Tina. I pressed my face down against her sleep-dampened curls and listened to the deep rhythm of her breathing as I inhaled her odd, slightly sweet baby scent. An innocent