Bloodstream (29 page)

I thought I did.

“For a while, maybe, it seems to work out,” he said. “A new house, a new town—it keeps your mind off the things you were running away from. Everyone hopes for a new beginning, a chance to make things right. And they think, what better time and place to start a new life than a summer by the lake?”

“He stole a car," she said.

He didn’t respond. She wondered what she’d see in his eyes if she were to turn and look at him now. Surely not surprise; somehow he had already known or guessed that her coming to Tranquility had been an act of desperation.

“It wasn’t the only crime he committed, of course. After he was arrested, I learned about all the other things he’d done. The shoplifting. The graffiti. The break-ins at the neighborhood grocery store. They did it together, Noah and his friends. Three boys who just got bored and decided to add a little excitement to their lives. To their parents’ lives.” She leaned back, her gaze focused on the empty street. Snow was beginning to fall, and as the flakes slithered onto the windshield they melted and slid down like tears on the glass. “The worst part about it was I didn’t know. That’s how little he told me, how completely out of touch I was with my own son.

“When the police called me that night, and told me there’d been an accident—that Noah had been in a stolen car—I told them it was a mistake. My son wouldn’t do something like that. My son was spending the night at a friend’s house. But he wasn’t. He was sitting in the emergency room with a scalp laceration. And his friend—one of the boys—was in a coma. I guess I should be grateful for the fact that my son never forgets to buckle his seat belt. Even in the act of stealing a car.” She shook her head and gave an ironic sigh. “The other parents were as stunned as I was. They couldn’t believe their boys would do such a thing. They thought Noah talked them into it. Noah was the bad influence. What could you expect from a boy who has no father?

“It made no difference to them that my son was the youngest of the three. They blamed it on his lack of a father. And the fact I was too busy working as a doctor, taking care of other peoples’ families, to pay attention to my own.”

Outside the snow was falling more thickly now, blanketing the windshield, cutting off her view of the street.

“The worst part about it was, I agreed with them. I had to be doing something wrong, failing him in some way. And all I could think of was, how could I set things right again?”

“Packing up and leaving home is a pretty drastic measure.”

“I was looking for a miracle. A magic solution. We’d gotten to the point where we hated each other. I couldn’t control where he went or what he did. Worst of all, I couldn’t choose his friends. I could see where it was leading. Another stolen car, another arrest. Another round of useless family counseling.
. .“
She took a deep breath. The windshield was covered by snow now, and she felt buried away, entombed with this man beside her.

“And then,” she said, “we visited Tranquility.”

“When?”

“It was a weekend in fall. A little over a year ago. Most of the tourists were gone, and the weather was still nice. Indian summer. Noah and I rented a cottage on the lake. Every morning, when I woke up, I’d hear the loons. And nothing else. Just the loons, and silence. That’s what I loved most about that weekend, the feeling of complete peace. For once we didn’t argue. We actually enjoyed being together. That’s when I knew I wanted to leave Baltimore.
. .“
She shook her head. “I guess you had me pegged right, Lincoln. I’m like every other outsider who moves to this town, who’s running away from another life, another set of problems. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I only knew I couldn’t stay where I was.”

“And flow?”

“I can’t stay here either,” she said brokenly.

“It’s too soon to make that decision, Claire. You haven’t been here long enough to build up the practice.”

“I’ve had nine months. All summer and fall, I sat in that office waiting for the flood of patients. Almost all I got were tourists. Summer people coming in for a sprained ankle or an upset stomach. When summer was over, they all went home. And I suddenly realized how few of my patients actually lived in this town. I thought I could hang on, that people would learn to trust me. It might’ve happened in

another year or two. But after tonight, there’s no chance of it. I said what I had to say at that meeting and the town didn’t like it. Now my best option is to pack up and leave. And hope it’s not too late to go back to Baltimore.”

“You’re giving up so easily?”

It was a statement designed to provoke. Angry, she turned to look at him. “So easily? And when does it get hard?”

“It’s not the whole town attacking you. It’s a few disturbed individuals. You have more support than you realize?’

“Where is it? Why didn’t anyone else stand up for me at the meeting? You were the only one.”

“Some of them are confused. Or they’re afraid to speak up.”

“No wonder. They could get their tires slashed as well,” she said sarcastically

“It’s a very small town, Claire. People here think they know each other, but when you get right down to it, we really don’t. We keep our secrets to ourselves. We stake out our private territory and we don’t let others cross the line. Speaking up at a town meeting is opening ourselves to the public. Most choose to say nothing at all, even though they may agree with you.”

“All that silent support won’t help me earn a living.”

“No, it won’t.”

“There’s no guarantee any patients will walk into my office now?’

“It’d be a gamble, yes.”

“So why should I? Give me one reason why I should stay in this town?”

“Because I don’t want you to leave.”

This was not the answer she had expected. She stared at him, straining to read his expression in the gloom.

“This town needs someone like you:’ he said. “Someone who comes in and stirs things up a little. Who makes us ask ourselves questions we’ve never had the nerve to ask. It would be a loss if you left us, Claire. It would be a loss to us all.”

“So you’re speaking on behalf of the town?”

“Yes.” He paused. And added softly, “And for myself as well.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“I’m not sure what it means, either. I don’t even know why I’m saying it. It doesn’t do either of us any good.” Abruptly he grasped the door handle and was about to open it when she reached out and touched his arm. At once he fell still, his hand clutching the door, his body poised to step into the cold.

“I used to think you didn’t like me,” she said.

He looked at her in surprise. “I gave you that impression?”

“It wasn’t anything you said.”

“What was it, then?”

“You never talked about anything personal. As if you didn’t want me to know things about you. It didn’t bother me. I realized that’s just how it is up here. People keep to themselves, the way you did. But after a while, after we’d known each other, and that invisible wall still seemed to stand between us, I thought: Maybe it’s not just the fact I’m an outsider. Maybe it’s me. Something he doesn’t like about
me.”

“It is because of you, Claire.”

She paused. “I see.”

“I knew what would happen if I didn’t keep that wall up between us.” His shoulders sagged, as though under the weight of his unhappiness. “A person gets used to anything, even misery, if it goes on long enough. I’ve been married to Doreen so long, I guess I accepted it as the way things are supposed to be. I made a bad choice, I took on a responsibility, and I’ve done the best I could.”

“One mistake shouldn’t ruin your life.”

“When there’s someone else who’ll be hurt, it’s not easy to be selfish, to think only of yourself. It’s almost easier to do nothing and just let things slide. Add on another layer of numbness.”

A gust swept the windshield, leaving streaks of melting snow on the glass. Fresh snow swirled down, whitening over that fleeting glimpse of the night.

“If it seems I didn’t warm up to you, Claire,” he said, “it’s only because I was trying so hard not to.”

He reached, once again, to open the door.

Once again, she stopped him with a touch, her hand lingering on his arm.

He turned to face her. This time their gazes held, neither one flinching away, neither one retreating.

He cupped her face in his hand and kissed her. Before he could pull away before he had time to regret the impulse, she leaned toward him, welcoming his kiss with one of her own.

His lips, the taste of his mouth, were new and unfamiliar to her. The kiss of a stranger. A man whose longing for her, so long concealed, now burned like a fever. She too had caught the sickness, felt the same heat flush her face, her whole body, as he pulled her against him. He said her name once, twice, a murmur of wonder that she was the one in his arms.

The glare of headlights suddenly penetrated the snow-covered windshield. They pulled apart and sat in guilty silence, listening to the sound of footsteps approaching the truck. Someone rapped on the passenger side. Snowflakes slithered in as Lincoln rolled down the window.

Officer Mark Dolan stared into the truck. His gaze took in both Lincoln and Claire, and all he said was, “Oh.” One syllable, an ocean’s worth of meaning.

“I, uh, I saw the doc’s engine running and wondered if everything was okay,” Dolan explained. “You know, carbon monoxide poisoning and all
.

“Everything’s fine,” said Lincoln.

“Yeah. All right.” Dolan backed away from the window. “Night, Lincoln.”

“Good night.”

After Dolan had walked away, Claire and Lincoln sat without speaking for a moment. Then Lincoln said, “It’ll be all over town tomorrow.”

“I’m sure it will be. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” As he stepped out of her truck, he gave a reckless laugh. “Truth is, Claire, I don’t give a damn. Everything that’s gone wrong in my life has been public knowledge in this town. Now, for once, something's gone right for me, and it might as well be public knowledge as well.”

She turned on the windshield wipers. Through the clearing glass she watched him wave good-night, then walk away to his car. Officer Dolan was still parked nearby, and Lincoln stopped to speak to him.

As she drove away, she suddenly remembered what Mitchell Groome had told her earlier that evening about Damaris Horne’s inside source.

Dark-haired, medium build. Works the night shift.

Mark Dolan, she thought.

The next morning Lincoln drove south, to Orono. He had not slept well, had lain awake for hours mulling over the night’s events. The town meeting. His conversation with Iris Keating. The damage to Claire’s office. And Claire herself.

Most of all, he’d thought about Claire.

At seven he’d awakened unrefreshed, and gone downstairs. It was a cold slap of reality to find Doreen still asleep on his living room couch. She lay with one arm dangling off the side, her red hair dull and greasy, her mouth half open. He stood for a moment, looking down at her, pondering how to convince her to leave with a minimum of yelling and crying on her part, but he was too weary to deal with the problem at that moment. Worrying about Doreen had already drained so much energy from his life. Just the sight of her seemed to drag down on his limbs, making them hang heavy, as though Doreen and the force of gravity were intimately connected.

“I’m sorry, Honey,” he said softly. “But I’m going on with my life.”

He made one phone call, then he left Doreen sleeping on the couch and walked out of the house. As he drove away, he felt the first layers of depression peel away like a worn outer skin. The roads were plowed, the pavement sanded; he pressed the accelerator, and as he picked up speed he felt he was shedding more and more layers, that if he just drove far enough, fast enough, the real Lincoln, the man he used to be, would finally emerge, scrubbed and clean and reborn. He sped past fields where the snow, so freshly fallen, puffed up in clouds of white powder with the slightest gust of wind.
Keep driving, don’t stop, don’t look back.
He had a destination in mind, and a purpose to

this journey, but for now, what he experienced was the joyful rush of escape.

When he reached the University of Maine campus an hour later, he felt renewed and refreshed, as though he had enjoyed a long night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. He parked his car and walked onto the campus, and the cold air, the crystalline morning, invigorated him.

Lucy Overlock was in her office in the physical anthropology department. With her six-foot frame clad in her usual attire of blue jeans and flannel shirt, she looked more like a lumberjack than a college professor.

She greeted him with a calloused hand and a no-nonsense nod and sat down behind her desk. Even seated, she was an imposing woman of Amazonian proportions. “You said on the phone you had questions about the Locust Lake remains.”

“I want to know about the Gow family. How they died. Who killed them.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s about a hundred years too late to arrest anyone for that crime.”

“I’m bothered by the circumstances of their deaths. Did you ever locate any news articles about the murders?”

“Vince did—my grad student. He’s using the Gow case for his doctoral thesis. A reconstruction of an old murder, based on the remains. It took him weeks to track down an account. Not every old newspaper, you see, has been archived. Your particular area was so sparsely populated at that time, there wasn’t much news coverage.”

“So how did the Gow family die?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s the same old story. Unfortunately, family violence is not a modern phenomenon.”

“The father did it?”

“No. It was their seventeen-year-old son. His body was found weeks later, hanging from a tree. Apparently a suicide.”

“What about motive? Was the boy disturbed?”

Lucy leaned back, her tanned face catching the light from the window. Years of work in the outdoors had taken their toll on her complexion, and the wintry light illuminated every freckle, every deepening crease. “We don’t know. The family apparently lived in relative