River Road (31 page)

“And what? Told him it was wrong to do drugs? Like that would have made him stop. You give yourself too much power. But that's not what I was talking about. You look like you're in physical pain. Your color isn't good. You're sweating and you're panting. I think I'd better take you to the ER to have those ribs and fingers looked at. Besides”—Cressida finished taking in the bleak, frozen riverside—“we're not doing any good here. Troy is either dead or long gone.”

C
ressida took me to the ER, where a harried-looking intern retaped my ribs and fingers and gave me a prescription for Vicodin. Seeing what had come from opiates perhaps I should have been more wary of taking the painkiller, but I would have done anything to stop the throbbing in my torso and hand. I swallowed the Vicodin on the drive back from the hospital.

“Do you want to come stay at my house?” Cressida asked as we turned up Orchard Drive. “I would think you wouldn't want to be alone.”

Knowing how much she valued her privacy I was grateful for the offer, but determined not to take it in case Joe came by. “Thank you,” I said, “but I'll be okay.”

“Well, if you need anything, call me. I'm just up the hill.”

I thanked her again and gave her an awkward one-armed hug before getting out. To my surprise she leaned in and squeezed me so hard my ribs throbbed. The Vicodin had kicked in, though, spreading an agreeable fuzziness and sense of well-being. “Thank you, Cressida,” I said, “you're a good friend.”

She looked startled and I decided I'd better get out before I started bawling.

My drive and path had been shoveled and my car moved from the
turnaround. When I got to the door I found that the lock had been repaired.
Joe
, I thought, the warmth spreading from my chest all the way out to my fingertips and toes. The elation seemed to spread into the house when I opened the door. The heat and electricity were on, courtesy, I suspected, from the hum I heard coming from the basement, of a new generator. The blankets had been folded next to the woodstove. There was a note on the kitchen counter.

I may have to stay at the station late overseeing the search operation. If you still want me to come over when I'm done leave a light on in the window.

All right,
I thought,
I can do that.

I got down on my hands and knees in front of the cabinet under the kitchen sink and reached past cleaning bottles and cobwebs to a box shoved all the way in the back. It jingled as I dragged it into the light, like bells. I lifted the box onto the counter, registering but barely feeling the twinge in my side as I did.
Vicodin
. No wonder people got hooked on this stuff. I thought foggily that taking Vicodin might not be the best way to quit drinking but I decided to worry about that later.

The first candle I took out was a tall blue glass column with a picture of St. Christopher on it. Protector of travelers and preventer of car accidents. Fitting. I placed it on the desk in front of the window and sat down at the chair with a matchbook in my hand. This is where I had been sitting the last day of Emmy's life. I'd just come in to jot down an idea before it flew away. The window was open and she was playing right outside. The door was open too, so I could run out if she needed me. I could hear her voice as she played in the little patch of dirt that Evan had decreed Emmy's Garden. She had been narrating a story in a singsong voice about a girl named Emmy and her voyage with the little tugboat Scuffy on the river down to the sea—it had given me an idea so I'd gone inside for just a minute to write it down in my notebook and then—

There'd been a moment of silence and I had thought,
I'll just get this down while she's quiet.
And then I'd looked up—it had just been a second, hadn't it?—and saw that it was quiet because Emmy wasn't there anymore.

I opened my eyes and the candle swam in front of them. I lit a match and, tilting the glass column, held it to the wick. It guttered for a moment, struggling to burn through years of dust, but I held it even as my fingers stung.
I'm sorry
, I said as it caught. Then I went back to the box and took out another candle, a Yahrzeit candle with a blue Jewish star on it, and a purple votive candle with a mandala. The people who had brought candles to Emmy's shrine had held a rainbow of beliefs, but I had plucked their candles off the stone wall, extinguished their flames, and carried them away in my pockets. Later I hid them in the box under the sink like a secret drinker hiding her empties. (When I started drinking I didn't bother to hide those.) I couldn't bear to look down the hill and see that shrine and be reminded of the moment of silence in which I could hear my own thoughts.

“I'm sorry,” I said aloud, lighting the Yahrzeit candle. I said it as I lit each candle in the box and set it on the desk in front of the window. When there wasn't any more room on the desk I put the candles on the living room table and lined them along the mantel. I wasn't seeking forgiveness. There was no forgiveness. I would forever know that my momentary lapse had led to Emmy's death. That guilt was the flame at the center of my core. It would keep burning as long as I lived.

When Joe came in and saw the dozens of candles burning in the room he smiled. “I guess this means you want me to come over?”

“Yes,” I told him, giving him his smile back. “That's exactly what it means.”

*  *  *

With the heat on, we could have gone upstairs, but we made love again in front of the fireplace in the flickering light of all those candles. We
went slower this time, because of the bandages around my ribs and his fatigue from a day of searching for a boy he suspected was dead, but also because we both wanted the other to know there was no rush. That what was happening between us was real and not just the result of being thrown together by the freakish life-and-death circumstances of last night.

I believed he meant that. And I think he believed I did too.

We made love until the morning, until the last of the candles guttered out and was replaced with the glow of dawn in the window. I fell asleep then, the afterimage of the candles still burning beneath my eyelids turning into the red flashes on Emmy's sneakers.

She was running away from me across the ice.

“Come back!” I screamed.

She stopped. Thank God, I'm on time—

But then a hand broke through the ice and grabbed her ankle to pull her down into the frozen water.

I startled awake to the smell of coffee and toast. Joe was already dressed. He brought me a cup of coffee with milk and a slice of the good sourdough from our local bakery.

“You went shopping,” I accused. “When did you have time for that?”

“I didn't, someone left it at your door. I think people in town are feeling bad they gave you a hard time. Like a loaf of bread makes up for treating you like a pariah—”

“It's how I treated Hannah Mulder,” I said. “I can understand how people felt.”

When I looked up he was watching me. “You're a lot more forgiving of others than you are of yourself.”

“You're a good detective,” I said, pulling his face down to mine to kiss him.

When he straightened up his eyes had clouded. “Not good enough to find Troy,” he said.

“Now who's hard on himself?”

He smiled. “We make quite a pair. Promise to rest today? There's no point going out looking for Troy. I'm afraid we'll find him when the ice on the river breaks up.”

Emmy running across the ice. A hand breaking through to drag her down—

“I promise I'll stay away from the river today.”

*  *  *

I kept my promise but I didn't stay holed away at home. I had things to do. First on my list was to visit Aleesha. She needed to know that Scully was dead. His death wouldn't bring back Shawna but at least she would know that he wouldn't hurt anyone else. I packed up a box before I went, straining my aching ribs in the process. I wanted very much to take another Vicodin but I couldn't take the risk of driving under the influence so I took two Extra Strength Tylenol instead. Besides, I'd been numbing myself with alcohol for years. It was time I let myself feel.

Aleesha was just getting off her night shift at Dunkin' Donuts when I pulled up in front of her house. She had a wax paper bag and a large thermos, which she handed me when she saw me struggling to remove a large box from my trunk.

“Lemme get that, Prof,” she said. “You look like you got a pain. What happened to you?”

I started telling her the story as we carried box, bag, and thermos into her kitchen and I finished telling it at her kitchen table over sticky sweet doughnuts and hazelnut coffee.

“Scully must've followed you from here,” she said. “I should've known he had eyes on my house. You say you saw a black-and-gold tank at the stoplight? That's his ride, all right. You could've gotten killed.”

“I would have if Troy hadn't attacked him. He did it to save me—and probably died doing it.”

She shook her head, her amber eyes shining in the clear yellow light of her spotless, cheery kitchen. “Maybe it was his way of evening things
out for what he did to Shawna and Leia. I can't forgive him for the part he played in Shawna's death but I don't figure him for a cold-blooded killer. If he did those things to Leia it was because he was scared and desperate. He'd have felt sorry. Saving you might've been his way of saving himself.”

I nodded and took a sip of my lukewarm coffee, easing the tightness in my throat. “I wish there'd been a way I could've saved him.”

She reached across the shiny table and squeezed my hand. “Thank you for coming and telling me about how Shawna died. It might sound funny but I'm glad to know she wasn't alone with that bastard Scully and that Leia cared enough about what happened to try and make it right. And I'm glad Scully's dead.” She took a deep breath, looked around her kitchen, and spied my box on the floor. “So what else did you bring me?”

“Just some things for Isabel—they're a little out of date. . . .”

Aleesha squealed when she opened the box as if she were the four-year-old for whom the contents were intended. “Jasmine Barbie! Isabel loves her—and Mulan, that's her favorite. And Cinderella and Snow White. You've got all the Disney Princess dolls—and Disney Princess bedding! Hey, I thought you were too feminist for this kind of stuff.”

I laughed. “Evan said the same thing when I bought it all for Emmy but she begged for it and I have to admit that I love the stories. This was her favorite collection of fairy tales.” I held up the lavishly illustrated book to show Aleesha and noticed that there were tears in her eyes.

“Are you sure you want to part with all this?” she asked. “Your little girl's stuff?”

“Yes,” I said, getting to my feet. “It will make me happy knowing Isabel is enjoying it.”

“She'll be over the moon,” Aleesha said. She stood up from the box and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back, gratefully inhaling the warm scent of powdered sugar and hazelnut in her hair, and then I
got out of there quick, before she found the envelope at the bottom of the box.

I stopped by Vassar Brothers next to visit Ross. He was sitting up in bed, gold-rimmed half-moon glasses perched on his nose, reading the
New York Times
. To my surprise and relief he greeted me with a smile and a coherent sentence.

“Nan! My savior! I've been trying to call you since they took me off that blasted ventilator.”

“You can talk,” I said, sitting down in the chair by his bed. “And you're making sense.”

He laughed. “The doctor says my aphasia was only temporary—although I
am
finding it hard to finish today's crossword, and it's only a Tuesday puzzle! I find it all fascinating. I'm thinking of writing something about it—a writer loses his words. It's actually made me feel . . .
inspired
.”

“I'm glad nearly being asphyxiated has cured your writer's block,” I said.

“Abbie says it was a wake-up call—quite literally—for both of us.”

I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow. Ross blushed. “I know, I should apologize for the other night. I don't know what I was thinking—I thought that things were never going to work out with Abbie—but now she's leaving Dave and we're going to try making a go of it, gossip be damned. And if we lose our jobs . . .” He shrugged. “I've got money put aside. We'll move someplace warm and I'll write again. Abbie has a book idea she's been wanting to get to.”

“Everyone's a writer,” I said drily. I found I didn't mind the idea of him and Abbie together. They were more suited for each other than we'd ever been. “You sound . . .
happy
.”

“Happy to be alive! And I have you to thank. If you hadn't dragged me out of that garage—”

“Do you remember how you got there?”

“No. I'm sure I wouldn't have done it myself. Yes, the rumors being
spread about me were heinous, but I knew they weren't true. I
never
slept with Leia—and you know I wasn't driving the Peugeot when it hit her. . . . Dottie says the police think it was Troy.”

“Yes, so it seems. . . . Are you sure you don't remember Troy leading you out to your garage?”

He screwed up his eyes in thought. Ross was a good storyteller. I was afraid that if he thought too hard he'd invent a story about Troy luring him out to the garage, but after a moment he shrugged his shoulders. “It's a total blank. It may be the first time I've forgotten something that happened to me. I feel like I'm in an Oliver Sacks essay!”

“The man who forgot his own story,” I said, not sure if I was disappointed or not that he couldn't corroborate Troy's part in the garage incident. If Troy locked me in that garage why had he saved me from Scully? Would I ever know—or would that part of the story always remain a mystery?