The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Chet sits before a series of monitors and explains the camera’s setup to Theo, Franny, Emma, and Flynn. Chet plays a recording from 4:55 am that shows the three girls sneaking out of the cabin and heading toward the center of camp. Five minutes later, another recording shows Emma stepping out of the cabin and walking in the opposite direction, toward the latrine. A few moments later, Emma reenters the frame, walking in the direction the girls disappeared. Emma knows the footage makes her look guilty, but she is also devastated to have missed the girls by so little time.

Emma insists again that she didn’t do anything to the girls, but instead of backing her up, Franny tells the detective about Emma’s history of mental illness. She insists that she’s not accusing Emma of hurting the girls but explains that she installed the camera as a “precaution.” Then Emma gasps as she sees Vivian on the monitor. She points to the figure, telling them Vivian is there, but no one else can see her. Fear and panic overtake Emma, and she faints.

A police officer interviewing Emma asks if the girls had any secrets, and after some hesitation, Emma tells her that Vivian was seeing Theo. On her way back to Dogwood, Emma sees Theo coming out of the woods with a search party. She rushes at him, pounds his chest, and demands to know what he did to Vivian and the others. Theo doesn’t move or respond, convincing Emma of his guilt.

Emma wakes up in her bed in Dogwood. The girls are still missing, and Theo is waiting for her. Emma admits to seeing Vivian before she fainted and tells Theo about the hallucinations that put her in a mental institution as a teenager. Theo tells Emma it might be better if she left the camp, but she insists that she won’t go until the girls are found. Theo replies that neither he nor Franny trusts her; she was so drunk the night before that she could have hurt the girls without remembering it. Deflated, Emma apologizes and begs Theo to believe in her innocence. He tells her he does, and Emma kisses him. Theo returns the kiss and carries her to the bed, taking his shirt off and exposing the many scars from the accident Emma feels responsible for. She tells him to stop, insisting she has to confess something before they continue. Then she tells him she knows about him and Vivian and describes what she saw in the shower, saying it hurt her deeply. For the first time, Theo understands why Emma accused him. However, he insists that he never had sex with Vivian. Thinking back, Emma realizes that she never saw the face of the man and that there was another young man in the camp: the groundskeeper, Ben.

Flynn questions Ben in the arts and crafts room with Theo and Emma. Fifteen years ago, Ben was a year out of high school and was hired by the Harris-White family as a groundskeeper. When the detective asks about a possible relationship with Vivian, he doesn’t deny it. He says that Vivian would chat with him around camp and was open about wanting sex with him. On the Fourth of July, she found him during the campfire, kissed him, and led him to the latrine. Afterward, Ben noticed his set of keys were missing. When he returned to work the next morning, the girls were already missing, and he found his keys in the open lock of the toolshed door. Emma is sure Vivian took the shovel she used to bury the diary from the toolshed.

They hear a shout from the lake, and Emma, Theo, and Flynn rush outside to see a canoe adrift in the water. Emma, Theo, and Chet dive into the lake and drag the boat to shore. The canoe is empty except for a pair of cracked glasses that belong to Sasha.

Back in Dogwood, Flynn asks Emma why she was so anxious to reach the canoe, telling her that she, Chet, and Theo tainted possible evidence. Then he holds up a plastic bag with Emma’s missing charm bracelet inside. Emma tries to tell him how she lost the bracelet and suggests that one of the girls was planning on returning it to her, but the detective becomes more suspicious of Emma, and she finally tells him to leave the cabin.

Emma is soon interrupted by another knock on the door. She is surprised to see Becca, especially after the previous night’s argument. Becca tells her everyone in the camp, Becca included, thinks Emma “snapped and made those girls disappear” (298). However, Becca noticed something strange in the photos she took of Emma screaming in the lake. She shows Emma the images, pointing out that everyone but Lottie is assembled on the shore. Emma remembers seeing Lottie in the Lodge and realizes this is the last time she remembers the bracelet being on her wrist. She thinks of Lottie’s family’s generations-long devotion to the Harris-Whites and wonders if “Lottie wasn’t there because she already knew what was happening” (301).

After accusing Theo, Emma returns to Dogwood and cries for the rest of the day. That evening, Lottie brings her some food, but Emma manages only a few bites of pizza before her stomach cramps with guilt. She knows she accused Theo out of jealousy rather than because she truly believes in his guilt. Later, Franny comes to Dogwood armed with a sleeping bag, snacks, and board games. She spent the previous night in the cabin, insisting that Emma shouldn’t be alone, but Emma is surprised to see her again after the accusation.

Franny rubs Emma’s back in a comforting gesture and asks if she really believes that Theo hurt her friends. Emma knows that Theo is in trouble but also knows that she will be in trouble if she “admit[s] [her] accusation was a lie” (304). She says nothing, and Franny leaves without another word.

In the morning, Emma’s parents arrive to pick her up. As they drive away, she sees Theo escorted across camp by two detectives. She again considers confessing but stays silent. The last thing she sees is Chet running after his brother, crying and shouting Theo’s name.

At dinnertime, Mindy appears with a tray of food and a bottle of wine. Emma is too anxious to eat, but she shares the wine with Mindy, who has “been ordered to spend the night” and look after Emma (307). Mindy tells Emma that she knows Emma doesn’t like her. However, she is not the “spoiled sorority girl” Emma thinks of her as (308). She tells the other woman about her childhood on a farm and how hard she worked to get ahead and win the attention of someone like Chet. Mindy also admits that the Harris-Whites have considerably less money than they used to. She tells Emma that Franny “threw” money at the families of the missing girls and spent a fortune getting Harvard to take Theo back after he was accused of harming the girls.

Mindy tells Emma she is glad the family now has less money; it makes her feel like she doesn’t have to “pretend” as much. Emma apologizes for judging her, and Mindy tells Emma that she doesn’t suspect her.

Mindy falls asleep after they finish the wine, but Emma stays awake, worried about seeing Vivian again. Around midnight, Marc calls. Not wanting to trigger the camera, Emma climbs out the window and hides in the latrine to take the call. He tells Emma about a connection between Charles Cutler and a wigmaker in Manhattan, confirming her theory about the female patients’ hair. Next Marc tells her about a German immigrant searching for his sister after years out west. He learned that Cutler had moved her from an institute in New York City to Peaceful Valley. However, when the man looked for Peaceful Valley, it had “vanished.” Those living nearby could only tell the man that the land had been sold the year before.

Marc emails Emma the files, and they end the call. Emma opens the message and flips through the documents. Nothing is interesting until she comes to the final picture, which shows the gate and stone wall outside of Peaceful Valley: They are the same as those at Camp Nightingale’s entrance. Emma realizes that the hospital itself must now lie at the bottom of Lake Midnight and concludes that Vivian was afraid because she had learned the story of the valley’s flooding was true.