“You don’t want to know. You couldn’t handle it,” Lola whispered in return.

“How about handling this…take a look at that embankment and tell me how in the hell we’re going to get back up there. It didn’t look that steep from the top.”

“We’ll worry about that later. Oh dear, we left our gear at the top and our lunch. Anthony, can you get it? Just toss it down. Mandy and I will catch it.”

“Shut up, Lola. Just shut up. I’m not catching any camp stools, and neither are you. Wherever did you get the idea I would sit on a stick?”

“You sit on a camp stool around a fire on safari. I knew you’d pitch a fit, so I had Anthony put aluminum deck chairs in the car.” The moment she finished speaking, three aluminum chairs slid down the embankment.

“We’ll leave them here when we leave just in case we want to come back. You have to hide the last piece of fencing, Anthony. Be careful with our lunch, dear.”

“I hate you, Lola.”

“I hate you, too, Mandy. I adore Anthony, though. He’s a good sport, unlike some people I know. Now, let’s see what delectable goodies we have here? Weenies with chili and onions. Hmmmm. Potato skins. Hmmmm. Eat, Mandy, or I’m jamming it down your throat.”

“Why are you being so mean to me, Lola?”

“Because, damn it, you’re raining on my parade. Eat! We have work to do. These are so good, Anthony,” Lola said as she wolfed down her hot dog. What do you call this stuff in the plastic cup?”

“A root beer slush.”

“Wonderful, just wonderful!”

Thirty minutes later Lola held up her hands, palms outward. “It’s time to do what we came here to do. I didn’t sleep much last night because I was thinking about how we were going to figure out what happened here that day to my granddaughter. Originally, I thought that being an actress and Mandy being a stuntwoman and Anthony being a director, we could pool our brains. I had to fall back and regroup because, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t put myself in a child’s mind. I think we now need to think in terms of a director and a producer.

“Let’s say we were casting for a film to be made here with that stunt the children pulled. It’s all here, we don’t even need props. We have a bully and the bully’s friend. Then we have the four good kids. The object that day must have been for Cady to ride the zip line. She was the only one of the four who had never done it. Cady said the bullies rode the zip line, too.

“She has no clear memory of that day at all. All she could tell me was she had never done the zip line, and she wanted to do it before she moved away. She came here. The question is, did she come alone? We can’t discount the fact that she might have wanted to do it when no one else was around so if she chickened out, there would be no one to see her fear. Now if I were directing this film, I’d want other children in the scene, wouldn’t you, Anthony?”