Chapter 1

My family has a rite of passage. It’s not really a bar mitzvah or quinceanera. It is more equivalent to a debutante ball. Starting at fourteen or fifteen your parents would decide that you were ‘mature’ enough to join the family and you would be presented to the whole of the family at my grandparents’ home. Once you’ve been presented you get to go to the family’s monthly meetings and contribute to decisions that affect the family as a whole. Until then you’re either left at home or stay in the cabin your family is in for the event.

If you weren’t presented by the time you were twenty you just kind of ‘went away.’ Nobody talked about the handful of cousins it had happened too, and it hadn’t happened since the seventies as far as I was aware. At least that was my understanding of things when this all came to a head.

I was sixteen. I’d been passed over twice before. The first year I was told I was ‘out of control’ and couldn’t be counted on. They had a point. I’d been arrested along with a few of my friends. It wasn’t on anything ‘big’, just kids drunk and trespassing and I wasn’t in a good state of mind at the time, but I’d dropped those friends and been on my best behavior since. It wasn’t so much of a wake-up call as a reminder that I had a mission and I owed it to my brother to make sure I was presented, so I could find out the truth.

When I was 15, I was told I wasn’t going because I needed to watch my little sister, Zoey. She was 13 years old at the time and of course couldn’t come. I was angry, but I had a mission, and anger wouldn’t help that cause. So, I played the dutiful son and babysat while my parents and older sister went up to the main house to the family meeting and did my best to maintain my composure when they came back the next day.

This year things were supposed to be different. I had a 4.0 GPA, a part time job, was in a committed relationship although I’d been hiding that from my parents, I hadn’t had so much as a detention since the arrest, I had two extracurriculars (Track and Field and Student Government), and I’d done everything they’d asked of me in the past year. Despite everything I’d done that things were never the same after my fuck-up. My parents had gone cold and things hadn’t been right since I was brought home by the cops. They hadn’t even processed me, just cuffed me and taken me home probably to try and scare me. This was supposed to be my moment, but instead my mother said, “No. You’re not ready.”

“You’re taking Zoey and she’s only 14.”

“She’s ready and you’re not.”

I tried to calm my annoyance and took a deep breath, “What am I not doing?”

She seemed surprised by the question and sat down on the wooden bench of the cabin’s table, “You’re disobedient and a criminal. You’re not ready.”

“I got drunk over two years ago and got picked up by a cop. They didn’t even book me. I’ve got perfect grades. I’ve got a job. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. What am I not doing? Why am I not ready?”

I need to get in, so I can find out the secrets ... for Jared. I need to know why.

She smirked, “Just the way you’re reacting proves you’re not ready.”

“So, I should just suck it up and accept it like I did the last two years? I’ve done that. You obviously think there is something I’m not doing. Tell me what it is. I can’t improve if you don’t tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“You’re not going and that’s final. You’re not ready to be a part of the family.”

I tried to tamp down the anger, but a bit of it flared. I was doing what I had to for Jared, but my self-control was still lacking, “Why did you even bring me? You knew you weren’t going to present me to the family, the way you’re doing Zoey, but you brought me anyway. You could’ve just let me stay home.”

“Your brother didn’t get presented till he was 19. You may be the same way. It’s my decision!” She stopped and rethought her words, “I mean it’s our decision and you’re just not ready.” The slip up was telling. It was clear who wore the pants in my family and it certainly wasn’t my father.

I tried to fight the urge to respond. I knew it would only hurt my case, but the words slipped out tinged with a bit of venom, “So, you want me to end up like Jared then.”

She leaped to her feet and slapped me, screaming, “Don’t you fucking dare.” I could’ve grabbed her hand, but I let the slap land. I watched the immediate flash of guilt on her face. She’d never been a violent woman and bring up Jared did mean I deserved it. He’d been presented at nineteen and hung himself before he was twenty.

Three years ago, I’d been the one to find him in his closet. I was the one to find the notes he wrote. One of them I showed to the police and my parents. It was straight forward, “I can’t deal with the secrets anymore.”

The other note he’d written to me. I’d kept it hidden and I’d memorized it. After my initial attempt to drown my sorrows led to me being brought home courtesy of blue lights I’d taken to repeating it in my head ... to drive me, cause I had to know why my brother had killed himself.

The note read, “Z, I know you’ll find me and I’m sorry. You need to watch Uncle Dave. I can’t deal with the family’s secrets. I can’t deal with the things I’ve done. Love ya, J.”

Uncle Dave was a state senator. One of my mother’s two brothers. He lived close enough to us that he was a regular at the house, but this week we were halfway across the country.

I turned and started to move to the door, and she called from behind me, “Where are you going?”

“For a walk around the lake. Need to clear my head.”

“Just don’t...”

“Go to the main house. Yeah, I know the rules.”

I exited the room and saw my father and Zoey trying to set up a tetherball, but Dad wasn’t quite able to stand still long enough for her to get the cord in the top of the pole. I turned away and towards one of the hiking trails and saw my older sister sitting on a bench with a cigarette in hand. Her hair was the familial black in a pixie cut with lime highlights.

She smiled and waved as I tried to march by, but she stood and followed, “What do you need, Trace?”

“You ready to be presented? I remember back when I was fourteen, I was fucking nervous as hell.” She paused and then giggled at some joke I wasn’t privy too.

I continued down the path and she walked with me, “No need to worry about embarrassing yourself, when you’re not invited.”

“She didn’t.”

“She did.”

She stepped ahead of me and stopped and turned hugging me. It took me a second to return the gesture, “She is probably just worried. After what happened with ... You know who ... she just doesn’t want to take any chances. She’ll probably make you and Zoey wait until she is sure. Losing you know who almost killed her.”

I really wanted to start yelling, “His names was fucking Jared. He was our brother.” I didn’t. It wouldn’t help anything. His name was taboo to the family. They’d had his stuff packed up and shipped off by professionals the day after the funeral. We didn’t even get a chance to look for something that might hold sentimental value; something to remember him by. The pictures of him that had hung around the house, even the family ones were all gone the next day. I don’t know if they’d been packed away or had been destroyed. Even the ‘family portrait’ we’d had to get dressed up for and sit still for hours as it was being painted was taken off the wall and came back a month later with him no longer in it. He was just a piece of history forgotten with as little evidence of his existence as possible remaining.

“Which is why Zoey is going.”

“What?” She seemed surprised. I was even pretty sure I heard a squeak of fear in her voice.

“Zoey will be presented tonight at whatever cult shit you’ve got going.”

“It isn’t cult shit.”

“Sure, You could just tell me.”

“You know I can’t. It’s the rules.”

I sighed.

Were it so easy.

“I need to clear my head. I’m going to walk around the lake. You should probably get ready for the virgin sacrifice.”

She flinched and my eyes widened. She tried to cover it, but that joke hit home. I continued down the path and she headed back towards the cabin. I walked once around the lake and brooded. By the time I got back to the cabin, my family was long gone and I was dead certain about what I was going to do. The sun had set and the night would further my ends.

I needed to know why my brother killed himself, no matter the cost. I entered the cabin and went to the safe in the ‘master bedroom closet.’ The rules for the annual reunion were clear. ‘No phones allowed’ was number 8. So, the second we’d gotten to the cabin all of ours were confiscated and my mother had put them in the safe.

In theory, the only key to the safe was on my mother’s ring given to her by her parents when we’d picked up the cabin keys. We always stayed in the same cabin though and a couple years before Jared’s death he taken the second key to it. He’d been obsessed with some kind of mobile game and slipped his phone out every night, of course I demanded mine when I caught him.

The theft had been noticed halfway though the week and we’d buried the key rather than cough it up ... and I’d dug it up on my trip around the lake. It was still dirty and a bit rusty, but I slid it in the lock and it turned easily. I pulled out my phone. The battery was partially drained, but I needed it now and wasn’t going to wait for it to charge.

I changed into darker clothes and headed up towards my grandparents’ home. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I knew it was going to be the answer to why my brother was dead.

The lake itself was man made. The ‘family’ cabins were on this end of it, twelve in all. My grandparents made a mint renting them out to vacationers save for the week of the family retreat and when a member of the family reserved their cabin. At the top of the hill above them was the main house, a reception center, and a small restaurant that was only open at dinner time when the cabins were full. The opposite side of the lake was a scout camp, the land had been donated as a tax dodge decades ago. The east side of the lake was mostly forested save a section that had been leveled in a mudslide when I was a kid. We used to play there. The west side of the lake was a playground, an abandoned water park, and a string of houses that had been built on land that had been sold off after the water park failed.

I continued up the zigzag path a couple hours behind my parents who would have set off. It was dark by the time I reached the end. The main house was three stories, built when the lake was far more of a draw then a vacation spot for old-fashioned families. The most recent renovation was the ‘wall of glass’ my uncle had paid for meaning the great room had floor to ceiling windows. There was also a walk-out basement with sliding glass doors and most of the upper bedrooms had windows.

I hadn’t been in the main house in years, not since Jared broke his leg when I was nine and Zoey and I had to stay with my grandparents for a couple of weeks. The house was strictly a ‘no-kids’ zone during the family retreat, and we’d lived on the coast for a decade. We’d moved right after my uncle had gained his seat and insisted my mother and the family ‘stay close.’ So, we hadn’t gotten to come here aside from the retreat since I was little.