The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Emma Davis is an artist whose first gallery show opens with a series of 27 wall-sized paintings of wild forests. Three girls are hidden in every one of the paintings. Her process involves laying down a base layer and then painting the roommates who vanished from Camp Nightingale when she was 13: Vivian first, then Natalie, and finally Allison, all wearing white dresses and turned away from the viewer. Lastly, she covers the girls with thick “globs” of paint until they are hidden by a forest. Emma’s close friend Marc is the only one who knows that the girls are “[b]uried inside every painting” (12). Emma has been unable to paint anything but the girls for years no matter how hard she tries.

At the opening, the gallery owner, Randall, introduces Emma to important people whose names she forgets immediately. Everyone asks her what she is working on next, and she avoids the question, thinking of the blank canvasses she has been unable to fill in her studio. Randall pulls Emma over to meet someone whom Emma recognizes. It is Francesca Harris-White—“Franny” from Camp Nightingale. Emma worries that Franny blames her or associates her with the events that took place there. However, Franny invites Emma to lunch, telling the other woman she has a proposal to discuss. Still in shock, Emma agrees to the meeting.

The next day, Emma meets Franny at a Park Avenue high-rise bearing Franny’s family name and crest. She is greeted by Lottie, Franny’s “devoted assistant.” In the elevator, Emma tries and fails to look excited, and Lottie reassures her that Franny has “forgiven [Emma] a hundred times over” (20). Franny is waiting for Emma in her elaborate greenhouse. They share lunch, and Emma begins to relax after a few glasses of wine. After making small talk about Emma’s life and Franny’s family, Franny reveals her reason for inviting Emma to lunch. Fifteen years after Camp Nightingale’s closure, she plans to reopen the camp and wants Emma to return as an art teacher.

Camp Nightingale was an exclusive summer camp for wealthy girls from Manhattan. The mysterious disappearance of three girls from prominent New York City families kept the story in the news for weeks and destroyed the camp’s reputation. Emma is shocked by the “outlandish” offer to return but agrees to consider it.

After lunch with Franny, Emma “obsesses” about returning to Camp Nightingale. Marc argues that returning to the camp would finally give Emma closure. The girls’ bodies were never discovered, making closure difficult because there was still “the chance, however slim, that they could still be alive” (29).

Emma insists she doesn’t need closure. However, she admits that she hasn’t been able to paint anything since she decided to stop painting the girls six months ago. She admits to being “obsessed,” and Marc wonders why Emma remains so fixated on what happened to girls she only knew for a few weeks many years ago. Emma tells him she feels “bad” and “guilty” about what happened to her friends: As the last person to see them alive and leaving the cabin, she should have told someone sooner or done something to stop them from leaving. However, Emma reflects that she still hasn’t told Marc everything. Although Emma has tried not to lie since Camp Nightingale, she still relies on “omission.”

Back in her apartment, Emma thinks about the (unspecified) problems she caused after the girls disappeared; she feels that returning to camp could be a chance to “make [her sins] more bearable” (32). She calls Franny and leaves a message telling her she will return to Camp Nightingale. Then she calls Marc, telling him she plans to return and find out what happened to her friends.

Emma’s mother wakes her at eight o’clock in the morning, telling her daughter it is almost time to leave for camp. Emma is surprised and insists that her mother, who struggles with alcohol addiction, never told her about any camp. Her mother says Emma must be ready in an hour, and Emma sees her plans for the summer disintegrating in front of her. However, when her mother tells her she is going to Camp Nightingale, she perks up. Emma always dreamed of going to Camp Nightingale. Nevertheless, she is still angry with her mother and tells her “first [lie] in a summer filled with them” (37), insisting that she doesn’t want to go.

The ride to camp takes longer than Emma remembered. To calm her nerves in the back seat, she sorts through her maps of the area and newspaper clippings about the girls’ disappearance. The clippings offer only “vague” details. The girls vanished early in the morning and were reported missing by Emma. The camp was searched that morning, and by the afternoon, Franny had contacted the police. The Secret Service and the FBI joined the search. The only thing anyone found was Vivian’s Princeton sweatshirt, neatly folded in the forest. However, Emma is sure Vivian didn’t have the sweatshirt when she left the cabin.

Franny’s son Theo was the only suspect in the disappearances, but as he had an alibi and there was no evidence of an actual crime, he was never charged. The search efforts slowly petered out, and news coverage “evaporated.” However, rumors and conspiracy theories about the girls’ fates multiplied online. Some even suggested supernatural explanations.

On the drive, Emma opens Facebook and unmutes the posts from a group of Camp Nightingale alumni. There is a new photo of Lake Midnight from Casey Anderson, a former camp counselor who has returned for the summer. Comments on the photo call Camp Nightingale “messed up” and talk about a “legend” that scared them as campers. The commenters express surprise when Casey mentions that Emma is returning; one references “all that shit she said about Theo” (44). Tired of gossip, Emma closes her phone. However, she continues to feel responsible for the girls’ disappearance.

Upon arriving at Camp Nightingale, Emma feels she has “been shuttled back in time” (46). However, the camp is different than she remembers; the place looks run-down, and evidence of “disuse” is apparent. She notices the handyman is the same man from before, whom she remembers Vivian having a crush on.

As the driver unloads her suitcases, Emma walks toward Lake Midnight. It’s vaster than she remembered, and she looks across the lake to the densely forested far shore. A young woman bounces up behind her. She introduces herself as Mindy, the fiancée of Franny’s younger son, Chet. Mindy points out that the lake is “looking a little ragged” from the drought (48). As Mindy gushes about her excitement for the summer, Emma introduces herself to Chet, hoping he won’t remember her. He claims to recall her, but Mindy continues talking before either can say more. She tells Emma that Franny needs to see her before Emma settles into her room.

Mindy leads Emma into the Lodge. She is surprised to find the interior “musty and dim,” quite unlike the “tasteful rustic retreat” she always imagined (49). Mindy reminds Emma that there is no electricity in the cabins but says that she can charge her phone in the Lodge as long as Franny, who wants them to “disconnect and commune with nature” (50), doesn’t find out.

Franny and Lottie are waiting for Emma on the back deck. She is surprised to find Franny looking older and more tired than when she saw her in the city. She tells Emma there are more campers than they anticipated, so instructors will have to share with the campers instead of getting their own cabin. Although Emma doesn’t relish spending the next six weeks bunking with teenagers, she asks if she can at least choose her own cabin. She wants Dogwood cabin, which she stayed in as a girl. Franny agrees but tells Emma she is “either very brave or very foolish” (53).

Because of her mother’s forgetfulness, Emma arrives at Camp Nightingale late. Franny and Lottie assumed she canceled, and there are no more open beds in the junior campers’ cabins. The only spot is in Dogwood cabin, which Emma will have to share with three older girls. When Theo appears to show Emma to her cabin, she is immediately smitten with the older boy.

Inside Dogwood cabin, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison introduce themselves and direct Emma to the empty bottom bunk and hickory trunk. Intimidated by the older girls, who are “so effortless cool,” Emma knows that “to survive, [she] [has] to be just like them” (57). When Vivian taunts her, she stands up for herself, making Natalie and Allison giggle, and the threesome accepts her into their group.

Entering Dogwood cabin, Emma has a moment of fear, almost expecting to be greeted by ghosts. Instead, the cabin has three new girls: Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda. Miranda, the oldest, climbs out of her bunk and stretches her “enviably thin” limbs like she is “marking her territory” (60). Emma feels “naive” and “tremulous,” just like when she first entered the cabin as a 13-year-old. She tells the girls she will be their painting instructor, and Krystal, who likes to draw, shows her a superhero sketch that impresses Emma. She insists that she does not want to get in their way and asks the girls to think of her as their “big sister.” Sasha, the “inquisitive” one, starts asking Emma questions about the dangers posed by bears, snakes, and sinkholes. Emma assures Sasha that she only has to worry about poison ivy. The girl adds that getting lost in the woods is also a danger, and Emma cannot deny that fear. 

When the girls leave for dinner, Emma hangs back for a moment alone in Dogwood. As she unpacks her suitcase into the hickory trunk at the end of her bed, she wonders what Allison, Natalie, and Vivian might look like if they hadn’t disappeared. Camp tradition dictates that each girl carve her name into the trunk she’ll be using, and Emma finds each girl’s name on her respective trunk. She looks for Vivian’s last and opens the trunk that now belongs to Miranda.

There is a tear in the fabric of the trunk’s lining that Vivian used as a hiding place. Her sister had recently died, and Vivian wore a small heart-shaped locket that had belonged to her. At night, Vivian stored the locket in the torn lining. Now Emma reaches into the hidden pocket and is surprised to find two pieces of paper. The first is an old photograph of a woman with long dark hair. She holds a silver hairbrush, but her eyes are full of “loneliness,” and “distress.” The woman’s expression reminds Emma of her own eyes after leaving Camp Nightingale. On the back is the name “Eleanor Auburn.” The photograph fills Emma with questions, which multiply when she turns her attention to the second piece of paper. At first, the paper seems to feature an abstract drawing, but Emma gasps when she realizes it is a map of Camp Nightingale and Lake Midnight. A mysterious place on the far side of the lake has been marked with an X. Emma is sure that it marks the location of something important but has no idea what it could be. She hides the map and photograph, deciding to keep both a secret.

On Emma’s first morning, Vivian walks her to the mess hall. On the way, Emma notices a girl with a camera, but when she asks Vivian about her, she replies that the girl, Becca, is “a nobody.” In the cafeteria, Vivian fills Emma’s tray with oatmeal and a banana, and Emma orders toast and bacon. They sit with Allison and Natalie, and Emma observes the group’s dynamics. Allison picks at a bowl of fruit while Natalie eats pancakes and bacon. Vivian remarks on how much Natalie eats and then apologizes, telling the other girl she looks “fine” in a thinly veiled insult. Emma doesn’t eat the bacon on her plate but instead watches Vivian throughout breakfast, eating only when she does.

On their way to their afternoon activities, Becca stops Emma. She tells Emma not to let Vivian “fool her” and warns that “[s]he’ll turn on [Emma] eventually” (73).

When Emma arrives for dinner, Franny is halfway through her well-rehearsed welcome speech. Emma fills her tray and sits with the other counselors and instructors. Becca Schoenfeld is missing, but Emma recognizes Casey Anderson, who greets Emma with a hug. The other counselors stare at Emma, who realizes they all know about the missing girls and Emma’s connection to them. They begin talking about Franny’s decision to reopen the camp but are interrupted by Mindy, who scolds them for not showing more camp pride. Emma sees Becca enter the cafeteria, take an apple, and then leave when she sees Emma.

Emma hurries after Becca. There is no sign of her outside, but Emma is surprised by the sound of a familiar voice behind her. It’s Theo, and the sound of his voice immediately brings back a deluge of painful memories. Emma especially remembers the last time she saw Theo, when she pounded on his chest and accused him of doing something to the missing girls. Theo’s grown-up handsomeness strikes her, and having assumed he would resent her, she is surprised when he pulls her into a hug.

He tells her he is a pediatrician and has just returned from a year in Africa working with Doctors Without Borders. He is serving as the camp nurse this summer and has just finished fixing up Emma’s painting studio in the arts and crafts building. She follows him inside, and Theo leads her to a semicircle of easels in a back corner. He watches as she unpacks her painting supplies, and Emma notices something different about his face: a scar on his left cheek. On his way out, he hesitates but then tells Emma he is glad she came back, saying that it “means a lot to [him]” and to Franny (84). Emma thinks this means that Theo forgives her and privately hopes she can “find a way to forgive [her]self” (84).