They were all responsible! All those spoiled, immoral young people. Juvenile delinquents who took jobs as camp counselors so they could drink beer and take drugs and fondle one another in the darkness—Doing filthy, disgusting things to each other—coupling, like animals, heedless of the tender, innocent young lives that had been entrusted to them. They all had to pay, just as those who hired them had to pay. They were all responsible for twenty years she had relentlessly pursued her crusade.

Ever since that night, she had been working late in the kitchen, performing mindless tasks. Washing pots and pans several times, scrubbing the sinks and counters obsessively until they gleamed. She was always intent on finding things to keep her busy, to occupy her mind so she wouldn't keep seeing the image of her son sinking in the lake. So that she wouldn't think of Jason trashing weakly as the water filled his lungs.

Steve's father had kept her on as the camp cook, feeling sorry for her, sympathizing with her loss even though he'd had his doubts about her coming back after her son had drowned. Questioning the wisdom of her being where it all had happened, seeing the lake, hearing the laughter of other children. She had begged him, pleaded with him and he had relented. She seemed to need it. It seemed to help her, being around the children. It seemed to mitigate her loss and she was so good with them, so attentive and caring. Perhaps it was just the therapy she needed for overcoming her grief but the first seeds of the madness had already taken root. Being around the children only made her miss Jason that much more. Seeing them playfully splashing in the lake only made her think of Jason thrashing pitifully as he vainly fought to stay afloat. It made her think of his tiny body down in the muck at the bottom of the lake, slowly rotting.

No matter how hard she worked, trying to exhaust herself to the point where she could no longer even think, she could not rid herself of the pain that ate away at her, pain that slowly turned to raging hatred of those who were responsible for Jason's death.

At night, she dreamed of him and dreamed of his rotting body rising up from the lake. She heard his voice calling to her on the wind.

"Help me, mommy! Mommy! Help me!"

Someone trained in psychiatry might have spotted the tell-tale signs.

The obsessive way she went about her tasks, performing them all with a single-minded abnormal intensity.

Someone who knew what to look for might have noticed her gradual withdrawal, the increasing periods of preoccupation, the manic overcompensating, forced cheerfulness around other people, the edge of hysteria in her laughter, the dark foreboding in her silences. But no one noticed and madness had a crafty tendency to masquerade as sanity for fear of being discovered.