Five Days in Summer

PROLOGUE
    Five syringes lined the bleach-clean counter. Five shots, five days. No food, no water, just total darkness and the sway of the ocean. She would sleep and wake, and when the blindfold finally came off, her eyes would be frozen open. If the muscle inhibitor worked as it had before, along with starvation, whatever was right in front of her would be visible, but that was all.
    What she saw would terrify her.
    He prepared the boat, cleaning every surface of the cabin until the long wooden benches gleamed; their cushions had been beaten of dust and the galley fixtures appeared never to have been touched by sea air. He’d had many boats over the years, but this one was his favorite; built for the river, it was tough enough to handle the fickle estuarial crosscurrents of the coastal inlets and bays.
    The cabin stayed cool and damp despite the burning summer heat outside. A residual odor of mildew lingered even after the hatch had been left open all afternoon. He knew the smell would grow worse in the days ahead, and he hated it, but it would weave itself into her torment. The smell, the darkness, and damp coolness, the trickling away of life. It was all part of his plan.
    He checked his supplies. A wreath of hose in the cabinet under one bench. Under the other, an axe, sharpened and oiled. Cooking oil on the blade made the cut cleaner. A little research, that was all it took to discover these things; and of course, practice. A butcher’s knife. A paring knife. Scissors. Gardening shears. Long metal skewers. Bottles of purified water. Coiled rope.
    The smaller items were in the single drawer under the galley counter. A swath of black fabric, folded neatly in the corner. Extra syringes. One hundred straight pins equidistantly piercing the soft fabric of a pincushion shaped like a bulbous strawberry. It was a ridiculous item he’d been unable to resist, just like something he’d once discovered in his mother’s sewing box. He’d removed the hastily jammed pins and used the pincushion as a ball. Later that night, he was the pincushion. Eventually the scars were covered by chest hair.
    The small, under-counter refrigerator was clean and cold. Glass vials of pancuronium and trifluoperazine were lined up on the top shelf like little soldiers.
    He had waited seven years.

DAY ONE

Chapter 1
    Emily stepped back onto wet sand and looked out over Juniper Pond. A calm sky hovered over four acres of gleaming lake. Pines and lake grass roughened a shoreline that curved into secret places then reappeared. In a lifetime of summers here, there were parts of this lake she had rarely seen. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes against the afternoon sun and watched her middle child, Sam, lurch out of the water. He stood dripping at her side, scanning the shore with her.
    “Why is it doing that?”
    He pointed at what they had come to call the reaching tree. The old pine was anchored at a peculiar angle a few hundred yards away, just where the shoreline turned into a neighboring cove. Bent sharply at the base of its trunk, the tree seemed to reach with all its branches, like a bereft lover, toward the center of the pond.
    “There must be something it needs,” she said.
    “Or wants.” David, her eldest, glided into the shallow water.
    “What does the tree want?” was always the question Emily, as a child, had asked her mother.
    “I suppose it wants everything,” was always Sarah’s answer.
    Emily decided on a new answer. “Maybe it wants to fly,” she told her sons, and reached out to tousle Sam’s wet hair a moment too late; he was already back in the water, chasing David, who had swum away.
    A cloud shifted and the sun briefly vanished. Water lapped at Emily’s toes. She ached to go back in and join her mother and children for a swim but she’d already delayed her trip to the grocery store too long. It had to be at least three o’clock. She was taking the kids home to New York tomorrow — the boys started school later in the week — and she wanted to leave the house stocked with food as a thanks to her mother.
    Emily raised her arm to wave good-bye. A jangle of metal fell from her wrist; the clasp of her silver charm bracelet had come loose again. Snapping it shut, she called to Sarah, “Remind me to get my bracelet fixed.”
    “Careful not to let it fall into the water, dear,” Sarah called back. She stood to her waist in the lake, with year-old Maxi squirming in her arms. The broad rim of Sarah’s straw