A Version of the Truth

A weathered canoe drifted along the black lake. An eagle soared down, splashing down and snatching a fish out of the water.

“You may have heard of Fairfield Lake. But the name Eliza Fleming has all been lost to time. Two decades later, detectives agree the case has gone cold. They refuse to keep looking, but we refuse to keep asking questions. What happened to Eliza Fleming?”

I muted the television before the woman could answer. I already knew what they were going to get wrong.

I had suffered every day for over twenty years to keep her name buried. I knew how this story ended, same as how her story ended. It ended with grainy security footage of me lying to the police.

Fairfield Lake used to be my haven for the summer when I still lived in that town, my escape away from the cruel kids at school. It was where I made a promise I’ve spent years wondering if I should regret.

I was only 13 then. Eliza was 19, and I idolized her. She was friends with all the other counselors while I struggled to make conversation with the other campers. Eliza seemed to have it all. Lots of friends, a fun job, and a bright smile. But that smile never reached her eyes.

“Do you ever feel like you want to get away? Just leave it all behind?” She once asked me on our long walk over to the canoes.

I didn’t know how to answer and laughed it off, making a joke about how we were as far away from town as we could get in these woods. No one else had ever talked to me like I was an adult. She squeezed my shoulder and sighed.

“Not far enough,” she replied.

Back then, my whole world was much smaller. I had never left the state. I could barely picture what lay beyond the county lines. Eliza hadn’t seen much of the country, but she knew there was more out there for her, more than what our town could give her. That’s why she made a plan.

I don’t think she had told anyone else about it. I think if she had, then the case would have been solved years ago. I was pretty sure I was the only person who had any of the answers the police were searching for. Well, besides Eliza, of course. But she was gone for good before the end of the summer.

I still don’t know why she trusted me. I was just a kid trying to get through a lonely summer. I guess she understood that I wouldn’t have anyone to tell the truth to—as if anyone would believe a crazy story from the mouth of a 13-year-old girl.

The beloved Eliza Fleming leaving her life and loved ones behind just to start over? Healthy young women don’t just skip town and leave it all behind. The truth had to be juicier. At least that’s what everyone insisted.

An unhappy camp counselor just didn’t make the news unless something awful happened to her. Once the reporters caught a whiff of the story, they intended to make the most out of the mystery. Nothing really happened in our little town, and it was the biggest story anyone had heard since the factory fire.

I hated what the newspapers were saying. I hated the rumors. For a moment, I even hated Eliza for putting that burden on my shoulders. But most of all, I hated myself for feeling like I was the only one in the way of the truth.

Eliza’s parents were hysterical when she disappeared. They insisted that the police question everyone Eliza talked to. I heard that her boyfriend was interrogated for hours. I felt guilty for letting them go through all that when I could have stopped it by just admitting what she told me that night on the walk back to my cabin.

“Steph, you’re the only person I can really talk to around here.”

I looked at her like she had three heads. “Why can’t you talk to anyone else?”

She shook her head. “You know how your parents always tell you what to do? Well, that doesn’t end when you’re an adult. It just feels like you get opened up to a whole world of people who want nothing more than to tell you that what you think, say, and do is wrong. And for once, it feels like I’m not wrong. It feels like I have the right answer, but I know no one else will get it. Hopefully you do.”

I wanted her to think I was cool and grown up like she was. “I totally get it,” I said, trying my hardest to sound confident.

“Well, I hope you do. Because I’m planning something big that no one else can know about. I’m getting out of here, Steph. Going to Colorado and living in the mountains where no one knows my name. I’ve been saving up money from my summer jobs and I think I finally have enough to make a clean break. This time, there’s no one who will be able to stop me.”

I blinked at her, my only friend telling me she was about to disappear forever. “You’re leaving?” I sounded so small then.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Before the morning comes.”

I swallowed. “But… why?”

“Everyone has already decided who I am or… or who I’m supposed to be. I need to start over somewhere where Eliza Fleming doesn’t exist and never will. Someplace where no one is looking for the version of me they’ve already decided I must be.”

“Oh, I get it,” I lied. It sounded like the right thing to say. I didn’t want her to see me as the little kid everyone else saw me as. I wanted her to feel like I understood in a way no else could.

“Can I ask you to do one thing for me?” Eliza asked.

“Sure, anything.”

“If anyone asks, don’t tell them where I’m going. I’m not going to be here in the morning, but I want you to pretend nothing is wrong. Promise?”

I nodded. “Promise.”

The next morning, her bunk was empty. Eliza was gone. Things were simpler then. I naively thought the town would just let her go like a fish that had escaped its hook. I couldn’t imagine the turmoil our secret would cause.

They sent all the campers home when she didn’t turn up by sundown. By then, the counselors had hiked through the woods, hoping to find her lost on a hike.

The police thought she might have been at the bottom of the lake, so they sent divers to sweep it. They found a sunken canoe with a hole smashed into it. Some believed that was the end of the story, but part of me always thought Eliza had left that on purpose so her trail would disappear.

It took a day for the police to ask me questions. Some counselors had seen us talking throughout the summer and hoped I would be able to offer a clue as to what had happened to her. I remember the cold metal of the chair at the station digging into my legs as I tried my hardest to lie.

“She was the happiest girl I knew,” I said, hoping the detective wouldn’t notice my voice shaking. “Everyone loved her. And she had big plans. I mean, well, I saw her before bedtime, and she kept talking about how excited she was to take over her parents’ business when she finished school. She’s going to come back home any day now.”

I was mad at the news, mad at the town’s rumor mill. They threatened to disrupt the ounce of peace that Eliza had hoped to claim. Still, part of me hoped she would see the news, realize everyone missed her, and come right back. Though selfishly, it was more to soothe my own guilt. I felt sick lying to everyone like that.

I pressed play on the documentary again. “What happened to camp counselor Eliza Fleming?” The documentary flashed an old photo on the screen. It was the camp director, Ryan. “And why did Ryan Ellis turn investigators away after just a week of searching?”

I froze. Ryan was always kind to those of us campers who were usually left out. Could this documentary really be insinuating that he was responsible for Eliza’s disappearance?

“It took our team some time to locate him since he skipped town years ago, but Ryan Ellis has declined to appear in this documentary. He said he wants to put this story behind him. We think that’s awfully convenient, isn’t it?”

I felt nauseous. I lied because I thought it would protect Eliza. I thought that the case was closed once the police stopped investigating. But the media needed someone to pin this whole mystery on. My lie had put the spotlight on the wrong man.

The documentary served up a series of interviews filmed with old camp counselors, neighbors, and detectives. Everyone said that a camper had seen her right before lights out, and she was gushing about all the big things she planned to do in town. That a promising young woman like that was far from some teenage runaway. Something bad must have happened to her.

Maybe the years hadn’t been so kind to my memories. Maybe time had filled in gaps, maybe I had seen things in Eliza’s face that weren’t really there. If everyone insisted she was so happy, then what did my childhood self really know? I hadn’t grown up with her, hadn’t really known her outside of the perimeter of the camp at Fairfield Lake. Maybe all she told me was just big talk from a confused teenager, and something bad really had happened. And thanks to me, people stopped looking.

I was startled back to the present when I heard the mail slot on my front door open. I heard letters drift down onto the hardwood. Shaking my head, I wandered over to check what bills had made their way into my home that day.

I picked up the pile and rifled through the stack. Water bill, electric bill, spam from some car insurance company. Then a postcard caught my eye. It had a picture of a big, snowy mountain on the front with “Denver” written in script over it. There was a message scrawled onto the back: “I made it. Everyone can stop looking.”

There was no signature, no return address. But I knew who it was from: someone who didn’t want to be found. Someone who wanted it to be over after twenty years of running.

I held onto that postcard, reading it over and over again as if a secret message would rise off the page if I just kept hammering it into my brain. A week passed. I thought the story would finally die with that documentary, releasing me from the secret’s hold. That it would let me get back to the life I hadn’t quite finished building. Then I got the call.

It was from a 323 area code. A quick search told me that it was coming from California. “Hello, I’m looking for a Stephanie? Stephanie Redding?”

I didn’t get many calls those days. “Yes, this is Stephanie. Who am I speaking with?”

“So great to hear from you, Stephanie. This is Mystery Pictures. We’re filming a followup to our documentary on the Eliza Fleming case, and were wondering if you might be available for an interview. It’s totally voluntary, of course, but we were hoping you could shed light on a few things for us. We understand Eliza was once friendly with you, and were hoping you could share a little bit about anything she might have said that last summer before she… disappeared.”

My heart raced. I couldn’t go through this again. I couldn’t afford another chance to risk saying the wrong thing and leading the world right back to Eliza. Then I thought of Ryan, and how the documentary had ended up pointing fingers at his potential involvement. My mother had just told me over the phone that his life was ruined by the suspicions. I alone had the answers everyone else was desperate to find.

“Okay, I can do the interview,” I replied against my better judgment.

“Amazing, thank you. We can send someone out to your location. How about this Saturday at 3?”

“Yes, sure,” I mumbled, already feeling a pang of regret at agreeing to cooperate.

I spent the week frantically cleaning and rehearsing what I was going to say. I had made up my mind—I wasn’t going to lie again. Real people had been hurt by my lie. Not just Ryan, but Eliza’s parents and friends. All the people who had loved her for far longer than the summer we became friends.

When the knock at my door came that Saturday, I was ready. I sat on the couch as the production team set up their equipment around me. The documentary host was an immaculately dressed and styled woman with the whitest teeth I had ever seen in real life.

“Alright, Stephanie, let’s begin.” She flashed a blinding smile.

“Oh, okay.” I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves. “Where do I start?”

Her smile didn’t waver. “Wherever the story begins.”

“Alright. Well, Eliza was really popular at camp. Everyone loved her. I looked up to that, I guess, because I didn’t have that many people on my side back then, you know? I was an awkward kid. I told the police that I was the last to see her that night. All the counselors said that she was late coming to the cabin, but they thought she was just taking a walk before bed. No one guessed she wouldn’t be there in the morning.”

“Did she say anything that night? Anything at all that might have given a clue as to what happened to her?”

“Well, she was… no, I have to be honest here. I know I told the cops that she was the happiest girl ever or whatever, but that wasn’t true. She wanted to get away. She wanted to run away and start a new life somewhere no one would find her. She told me she was leaving with some cash she had stashed away from her summer jobs.”

“Ms. Redding, I have to make sure we’re clear here. You’re saying she just left everyone behind to start a new life?”

“Yes. I know that sounds kind of… convenient. But it’s the truth. That’s what she told me herself. I have something to show you guys, actually.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded-up postcard.

“I know this sounds crazy, but I got this from Eliza. She said she was going to Colorado.”

The camera pivoted to the postcard. I tried my best to stop my hands from shaking so they could get the shot.

“It’s really her,” I whispered, my eyes welling up with tears. “She really made it out.”

The documentary host’s eyes widened, and she made a quick gesture at the cameramen. “We’re all set here. Thank you so much, Ms. Redding. I think we have all we need.”

“That’s all? Oh. Okay. I can, uh, let you guys out.”

Part of me felt a wave of relief wash over me. Part of me worried that I hadn’t done the right thing. Eliza has trusted me with her secret just for me to give away her location. But it was the right thing to do… I hoped. This case had to be closed. The police may have given up, but the town hadn’t. Hopefully my reveal would give them some closure.

A couple months later, I got a call from my mom to watch the newest part of the documentary. Specifically, to “drop everything I was doing and watch it now.” I thought she was just surprised to hear what I had known all along.

It started with that overly-polished documentary host talking over panoramic shots of Fairfield Lake. Then she said, “What you see today may shock you.”

The documentary cut to the scene in my living room. My voice came out of the TV speakers. “Eliza was really popular at camp. Everyone loved her. I looked up to that, I guess, because I didn’t have that many people on my side back then, you know? I was an awkward kid.”

The camera zoomed in on my face as the music grew. “I told the police that I was the last to see her that night. All the counselors said that she was late coming to the cabin, but they thought she was just taking a walk before bed. No one guessed she wouldn’t be there in the morning.”

The music cut out, and the video stopped on my face, on my eyes nervously zipping left and right.

I thought I knew what came next. But instead, the documentary showed a clip of a detective at his desk with his eyes narrowed. “Her statement never quite sat right with me.”

The documentary host filled the screen. “Psychologists say guilt can distort memory even decades later. Was this young witness finally telling the truth, or was she rewriting history to ease a lifetime of regret? What else has Stephanie Redding kept buried all these years?”

I stayed glued to the TV for the rest of the documentary. They never showed the postcard. They never mentioned Eliza’s plan to run away.

“To the viewers at home, keep your loved ones close, but most importantly, keep an eye on the ones around them. Because they may be hiding secrets that cost lives.”

I stumbled back onto the couch, struggling to catch my breath. The truth had finally been told, but that wasn’t the story the world wanted to hear.